• About

The Naked Theologian

~ A blog for stripped-down theology

The Naked Theologian

Category Archives: Theology

#46 Hikers on Pilgrim Routes: A Cautionary Tale

14 Wednesday Jul 2010

Posted by TheNakedTheologian in God, Prayer, Spiritual Exercises, Spirituality, Theology

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

pilgrimages, Santiago de Compostela, Way of St. James

No longer content to hike the Appalachian trail or climb Denali, devout secularists have turned their sights on pilgrim routes.  One such route is the Way of St. James which wends through rugged French terrain, up and over the Pyrenees, and across the desolate plains of Northern Spain until it reaches the city of Santiago, just short of the Atlantic coast that ancients believed to be the edge of the world.  The Way now attracts a great deal of attention not just from pilgrims but from such challenge-seekers.  Anxious to share the good news of this difficult, but achievable journey, some return home and write guides to assist their fellow non-pilgrims.  So what?  So this:  some of these writers, anxious to underscore their secular motivations, betray in their travelogues their distaste for religious piety.

Such is the viewpoint of Conrad Rudolph, Professor of Medieval Art at the University of California Riverside.  In Pilgrimage to the End of the World, his book about hiking the Way of St. James, he repeatedly reminds the reader that he is most definitely “not a believer in miracles or the otherworldly.”  The book’s very title serves as Rudolph’s first disclaimer.  A bona fide pilgrim undertakes the journey to reach the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela because its Cathedral is reputed to house the remains of Jesus’ disciple, Saint James the Greater.  Rudolph, seemingly worried that he’ll be mistaken for a religious pilgrim, signals, in his title, that the real goal of his pilgrimage was not the purported relics of St. James but the Atlantic Ocean, the “End of the World,” which is three days further on foot.  No wonder then, that when Rudolph reaches Santiago, traditionally the “emotional high point” of the journey, he describes his arrival as “fun but not emotional.”

And so we have the novel phenomenon of pilgrimages undertaken by secularists, so embarrassed by the religious trappings of their journeys that they feel compelled to trumpet their lack of faith.

Rudolph defends his decision to hike The Way by explaining that he is merely following the ancient tradition of the “curious” onlooker.  According to him, even in Medieval times, “many were highly curious about the world around them.”  Apparently, this condition was so widespread that it was common for condemnations to be issued against those who made pilgrimages merely for reasons of “curiosity.”

Okay, point taken.  Except that Rudolph’s curiosity never extends to wondering what it might be (or have been) like for pilgrims to undertake the journey to Santiago out of faith.  Indeed, most pilgrims, are not “inveterate hikers” like Rudolph and so they, like their Medieval forebears, likely endure greater suffering as they negotiate rough terrain with heavy backpacks.  What motivates them to keep going day after day?  How does their faith sustain them when they are ailing, hurting and still weeks from reaching their goal?  If Rudolph asked these questions of pilgrims he met along the way, he does not share the answers in his book.

The Way of St. James was especially popular during the Middle Ages.  It attracted many pilgrims from France but pilgrims also set out from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, the eastern Austrian domains, and Slovakia.  Before they could officially begin their treks, they first had to reach the town of Le Puy in France’s Massif Central.  Then, braving bandits, persistent hunger, unpredictable weather, and ankle-busting paths, they set off to walk the thousand miles to Santiago.  There’s every reason to suspect that the roundtrip journey would have lasted six months since Medieval pilgrims covered, on average, about 15 miles a day.  While they belonged to all social classes, most pilgrims were penniless agrarians, serfs who set out for Santiago after becoming too broken down to provide useful labor to their masters or freeholders who “were better off in theory only.”  Although poverty-stricken and often in ill health, tens of thousands set off on pilgrimage every year.

Why did these Medieval serfs and freeholders choose to undertake this journey?  According to William Melczer, a Medieval scholar, they had many reasons.  Pious love for St. James was the most common.  Some went simply to pray.  Others wanted forgiveness for a laundry-list of minor transgressions.  Many used the journey as penance to atone for particularly soul-searing sins.  Still others made their way to plead for better health and relief from pain.  Their spirits were open to God and they had faith.  How often they must have prayed, especially when they looked at the path ahead, knowing full well that having overcome one challenge, they would reach another.  They rarely had enough food, often they had only pathetic shelter.  Somehow, though, every morning, they found fresh courage and set off anew in spite of the hardships they had already endured and in spite of the hardships that awaited them.

Interestingly, theologians have discouraged pilgrimages.  Church Doctors like Augustine railed against them.  In his opinion they were “pointless” because the holy cannot “be localized in any given place.”  And since the holy is everywhere, it follows that the holy is not found in extra measure in places where sacred relics are housed.  No matter.  For hundreds of years, pilgrims have ignored these theological directives.  They know that when life follows its regular rhythms, the holy, though everywhere present, is easy to ignore.  So they walk to be with God.  During a thousand miles of contemplation, the holy is close—as close as one’s breath.

Why did Rudolph undertake this journey?  He’s quite unclear on that score, fuzzy even.  He writes about wandering through the early dawn light along a mountain ridge in northwestern Spain where the wind rustled the grass, the sun sparkled, and sheep bells sounded faintly from far off vales.  His language is evocative and lovely, his prose pleasant.  From time to time, he invokes the language of magic, saying “it was almost as if a spell had been cast.”  Perhaps afraid of venturing into intellectually indefensible territory, he changes his mind and rejects magic, writing that, after all, “experiences like these can happen anywhere.”  And then, he recants, explaining that, unlike walking Appalachian trail or hiking Denali, there is a special pay-off to pilgrimages because these experiences “don’t often happen with either the regularity or the strength that they did on the pilgrimage, where every day is an adventure…”  Hmmm, not sure most hikers would agree.

In the end, Rudolph shifts gears again.  It is not the “almost-magic” quality of his experiences, he decides, but the people he meets who made the journey a special event.  The people are, he recalls, “almost consistently as interested in what you’re doing as you are yourself.”

Oh oh.   Wait a minute here.  There’s just a little problem.

People were consistently interested in what Rudolph was doing because they assumed that he was travelling to Santiago out of deeply-felt, religious convictions.  Although a hiker, he decided to wear a clamshell tied to a cord around his neck.  The clamshell is the symbol of St. James.  By wearing it, Rudolph styled himself as a pilgrim.  It placed him, he admits, in a “special group…worthy of immediate public informality, warmth, and help, no questions asked.”  He recounts how, in a small mountain village, two old women “bless” him when they learn he is a pilgrim.  Even more notable, he says, are those who ask him “to pray for them; one horribly desperate man clearly needing it, or something, very badly.”

For unfathomable reasons, Rudolph accepts those prayer requests.  Sort of.  After he arrives in Santiago and enters St. James Cathedral, he explains (with a clear conscience) that, “no,” he didn’t pray for the “horribly desperate man.”  Nor did he pray “for any of the others who had asked [him] along the way to pray for them.”  It is enough, he decides, to “think about them” as he stands in the transept.  How lame is that?  Would the “horribly desperate man” agree with him or would he hope that even a hiker like Rudolph would, upon reaching the Cathedral at the end of the road, drop his pride, bend his knees, and pray?

These, then, are some of the quandaries you will face if you are a devoutly-secular hiker interested in hiking the Way of St. James or some other pilgrimage route.  Why choose this option instead of a hike through one of America’s or Europe’s fine national parks?  Will you wear the pilgrim’s badge?  Will you accept the kindness of strangers even when you realize they offer it because they mistake you for a pilgrim?  Will you accept prayer requests?  Will you honor those requests?  How?

Whatever you decide, you will be just as welcome on the pilgrim routes as you would have been in Medieval times.  To close, here are some verses from “La Pretiosa,” a 12th Century hymn about a hospice for pilgrims on the road to Santiago.  Other stanzas describe how monks would wash the feet, cut the hair, and trim the beards of male pilgrims—services you are, sad to say, unlikely to find today.

Its doors open to the sick and well,

to Catholics as well as to pagans,

Jews, heretics, beggars, and the indigent,

and it embraces all like brothers.

Resources:  David Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson, The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago:  The Complete Cultural Handbook (New York:  St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000); William Melczer, The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela (New York:  Italica Press, 1993); Conrad Rudolph, The Pilgrimage to the End of the World:  The Road to Santiago de Compostela (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 2004).

#45 Take to the sea for four days of Lent

23 Tuesday Feb 2010

Posted by TheNakedTheologian in God, Prayer, Spiritual Exercises, Theological Ethics, Theology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Howard Westwood, Lenten Manual

Courage!  Howard Westwood’s 1939 Lenten Manual uses outdated, high-flown language, is written in the mode of all-men-all-of-the-time, and mentions several, mostly-forgotten dead people.  Still, his exercises and meditations are worth a look.

Besides, Lent isn’t supposed to be easy.  So, as Westwood might say, abandon your safe haven and sail into the high seas of engaged reflection.

Here are a few more days from his Manual, in grey, one of the colors of the season.

DAY 6 (1st Tuesday):  “We Avow Our Faith”

“Here I stand, so help me God, I can do no other.” These words of Luther remind us of a statement by Prof. Kirsopp Lake: “Faith is not belief in spite of evidence, but life in scorn of consequence — a courageous trust in the great purpose of all things and pressing forward to finish the work which is in sign, whatever the price may be.” So do we avow our faith, without hesitation, equivocation or apology. For the moment we leave argument and discussion behind.  We are engaged in an enterprise that we will defend at all hazards and promote without compromise. We do not ask for a secure haven for we propose to sail the high seas. We do not ask for guaranteed certainty for we possess what is more important, the inward certitude of consecrated purpose.

Exercise: Dwell upon the assertion, “We become what we affirm.” Some psychologists condemn wishful thinking, therefore comment on, “The right kind of wishful thinking leads to creative power.”

Meditation: Spirit of Life, give us the courage to match our purpose, the will to endure and the trust which falters not. Above all, strengthen daily within us faith equal to our high resolve.

[The 2nd week’s theme.]
IMPLICATIONS OF THE AVOWAL

DAY 7 (2nd Wednesday):  “In God”

In his essay “Is Life Worth Living?” William James utters words of profound insight in declaring “God himself may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity.” He also quotes William Salter, the late leader of the Philadelphia Ethical Society: “As the essence of courage is to stake one’s life as a possibility, so the essence of faith is to believe that the possibility exists.” In avowing our faith in God, we are staking our life on the possibility that the world is not a meaningless void, but that the highest within us reflects and reveals the Life and Intelligence through which all things exist.”

Exercise: Dwell on St. Paul’s statement, “We are co-laborers with God.” What do you think about the quotation from Wm. James?

Meditation: O Soul of All in the heart of each, help me to trust my deepest intuitions as expression of thy purpose, and in loyal devotion teach me to fulfill them in the experience of life.

DAY 8 (2nd Thursday):  “In Eternal Love”

How keen in their insight these words of the Bard of Avon:

Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.

How beautiful in its constancy the frequent devotion of husband and wife, of parent and child! Yet human love is sometimes inconstant, for often it is influenced by changing circumstance and the passing of the years. The prophet causes the Eternal to say, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” Reflect on the eternal constancy of Nature in the rhythms of day
and night, the seasons, seed-time and harvest, etc. Note the great certainties in the invariableness of Nature’s laws. The manifestations of Nature are infinite, but Nature herself is unchanging. The laws of Love are likewise unchanging.

Exercise: The thought in the lesson is a challenge to our own constancy. This phase of the avowal is a pledge to overcome fickleness of mood and temper. Let us examine ourselves in this.

Meditation: O Spirit of Love, how often have we betrayed thee! By they divine constancy, control our changing moods and the waywardness of our affections. Keep the compass of our spirits ever true.

DAY 9 (2nd Friday):  In All-Conquering Love

It is the nature of Love never to know defeat.  Among the most revealing parables of the Great Teacher is that of the Lost Sheep, in which the shepherd seeks for the wanderer from the fold “until he finds it.” In his majestic poem, “The Hound of Heaven,” Francis Thompson likens the Divine Spirit to a relentless seeker forever on the trail of the soul of man. Likewise, the unknown author of the 139th Psalm, when he exclaims, “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”

In his hour of trial George Matheson cried, “O Love, that wilt not let me go!” There is a persistent quality in Love which never surrenders.

Exercise: Read Thompson’s poem referred to in the less. Take the time, even if you have to visit a library to obtain the poem. Treat the thought personally, “Love is destined to have its way with me.”

Meditation: O Love forever seeking us, teach experiences of our lives, thou art indeed the highest expression of the Universal Life. Teach me the secret of thine enduring patience, for in this is the assurance that thou shalt prevail, even with me.

#44 Her Nakedness passes her Ph.D. comps!

23 Tuesday Feb 2010

Posted by TheNakedTheologian in God, Spiritual Exercises, Theology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Howard Westwood, Lenten Manual

Phew.  Comps are over!  Now onward to the dissertation proposal.  A Ph.D. student’s work is never done–or so it seems.

The season of Lent has begun.  Whether or not you spent last Wednesday with a sooty cross on your forehead, you may be wondering how to participate in this season.  Horace Westwood’s 1939 Lenten Manual could be just the ticket.  While serving as a Unitarian minister, the Reverend Westwood wrote a Manual making it a straightforward affair to participate in Lent through the practice of a daily, guided meditation.  It’s a wonderful resource–because, after all, who wants to reinvent the wheel for every religious holiday. Should you decide to create your own manual, however, please share!

Westwood’s Manual is based on his faith in God as Eternal and All-Conquering Love. The Manual is broken down by weekly themes and daily meditations except for Sundays since Westwood assumed Lentenites would be in Church (where else could you possibly want to be?).

Now, for the promised manual.   The foreword explains how Westwood intended it to be used.  Also included are Saturday’s meditation to situate and prepare you for today’s meditation, the first Monday of Lent.

FOREWORD

The Great Avowal: “We avow our faith in God as Eternal and All-Conquering Love.” (The Worcester Statement)

This Lenten booklet is based on the plan of a brief daily lesson, followed by an exercise and a meditation. The purpose of the lesson, however, is not to instruct but to stimulate thought on the part of the reader. It makes little difference whether or not there is agreement with the writer. The important thing is that those who follow the lessons should do their own thinking and form their own conclusions. In other words, this is a work booklet.

It is not intended to encourage sentimental piety, than which there is no greater enemy to religion. The times [1939] demand a certain ruggedness of temper and incisiveness of mind.  The period through which the world is passing calls for spiritual hardihood, fortitude and strength. While our central theme is “Eternal and All-Conquering Love,” and while we may not overlook that Love has its tender side, the reader is reminded that Love can be most searching in its demands and stern in its requirements.

A few practical suggestions for the best use of the booklet:

(1) Set aside a definite period each day during Lent, at least ten minutes, better still, fifteen
or twenty.

(2) Try to relax and quiet the mind before reading the lesson.

(3) Read the lesson slowly and thoughtfully.
Sometimes its thought may seem obscure and sometimes you may profoundly disagree. Well, this is a sign that you are using your mind, which is the important thing.

(4) Use the exercises faithfully

(5) Keep a notebook and record your reactions.

(6) Use the meditation as a sincere expression of your own purpose.

(7) Remember that in using these lessons day by day you are sharing an experience with hundreds of others who are doing the same thing. Seek, then, to become aware of the fellowship you share. It will be to you a source of encouragement and power. Also, you will be a source of inspiration to others.

[The 1st week’s theme.]
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE AVOWAL

DAY 4 (1st Saturday):  A Way of Behavior

The importance of the Great Avowal [“We avow our faith in God as Eternal and All-Conquering Love”] lies in that it is more than an argument. It means that you and I pledge ourselves to a particular way of life. It means that we “highly resolve” to behave as though Love were the Supreme Reality behind the centuries of history and the events of the passing show. It means, despite the terrible record of the past few years, despite dictatorships, concentration camps, persecutions and the exploitation of human life on behalf of the “will to power,” and despite the hatred of class struggle, war and revolution, we proclaim that Love will endure and will prevail.

Exercise: Why do we say “to behave” rather than “to live”? Comment on, “A reasonable argument without the committal of self to the conclusion is of no avail.”

Meditation:
Creation’s Lord, we give thee thanks
That this thy world is incomplete;
That battle calls our marshaled ranks
That work awaits our hands and feet;

That thou hast not yet finished man,
That we are in the making still, –
As friends who share the Maker’s plan,
As sons who know the Father’s will.

Since what we choose is what we are,
And what we love we yet shall be,
The goal may ever shine afar, –
The will to win it makes us free.
(William De Witt Hyde)

DAY 5 (1st Monday):  The Importance of Demonstration

How few of us realize that there is a sense in which we make the truth! When Clara Barton undertook her great work during the Civil War she began to make the truth of the Red Cross movement. When Jesus cried, “Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do,” he added to the truth of the power of magnanimity and the redeeming strength of the forgiving heart. In later lessons we shall discover that the avowal of “God as Eternal and All-Conquering Love” is grounded in reason. But because we avow it, we make it the truth by which we conduct the affairs of life. We enter upon the most thrilling and daring of adventures. Cowardly spirits will shrink from the enterprise. What more important task could we undertake than to demonstrate the Supremacy of Love?

Exercise: We must beware of sentimentalism in our thought of love. Contemplate the sentence, “Love can be hard.” Review previous lessons.

Meditation: O Love revealing to us the heart of God and the depths of the soul of Man, give us the wisdom to perceive thee at work behind the events of the hour. We would adventure with thee into the dark places of life and reveal thy power in thought, word, and deed.

#43 Countdown to exams, gotta go go go

24 Thursday Dec 2009

Posted by TheNakedTheologian in God, Prayer, Religion, Theology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

A. Powell Davies

It hardly seems possible, but a full year has passed since my first post!  Forty-two posts later, the time has come for me to set blogging aside.  With Ph.D. exams scheduled for February, 2010, I must focus on my studies and nothing but my studies.

When I launched this blog, little did I expect the number of visits it has received (more than 5000 to date) nor the number of comments (more than 100).

So thanks.  Thanks for walking with me and for sharing your thoughts.  I’ve enjoyed hearing from you!

I’ll continue to monitor this site so please don’t hesitate to leave more comments.

I may return to blogging sometime in March.  No promises though.  I’ll have to see what kind of demands there are on my time.

Good-bye for now.  May life treat you tenderly.

I leave you with the following prayer, written by one of my favorite authors, the Unitarian minister, A. Powell Davies:

Help Us, O God, in a world so full of what is wonderful, ever changing, ever surprising us with new revelations of life’s power and beauty, to accept with gratitude all that gladdens us, and with fortitude all that brings us grief.

Let us take time to watch the morning and the evening skies, to look often and long at the marvelous earth and all that lives upon it, to be with heart and soul a friend and neighbor and a part of humankind.

Let us rejoice in the heritage bequeathed to us from yesterday, and in the festivals of faith and hope.

Let us look at our world as it is, and seek a wisdom that is not censorious.

Let us look into our own hearts and be brave enough to separate the evil from the good.

Let us be learning always, from all that we see and do, and from all that happens to us.

And if shadows overtake us, let us not dim within ourselves the light that helps others to live.

Give us, O God, to carry with us the kindness that we look for, to be gentle as we wish the world were gentle, and by being loving, to bring closer to fulfillment all that is the fruit of love.

Amen.

#38 Multifaith squabble–over love!

31 Saturday Oct 2009

Posted by TheNakedTheologian in God, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Religions, Religion, Theological Ethics, Theology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Multifaith dialogue, Papal encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI, Thomas Aquinas, Thomism

iStock_000000779206XSmall

If you imagine that multifaith dialogue is easy, this post will change your mind. Continue reading but be warned that you’ll be asked to tease out the intricacies of an argument between the University of Chicago historian, David Nirenberg, a champion of secularism, and His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, the champion par excellence of Roman Catholicism.

Ideally, when we enter into a dialogue about religious beliefs, we do so with a genuine desire for authentic conversation.  We attempt to understand, as much as possible, our interlocutor’s point of view especially when we find his or her point of view offensive.  But, in the present case, even a brilliant scholar like Nirenberg, who’s written insightful books about the three Abrahamic religions, loses his patience and calls on His Holiness to stop speaking like a Roman Catholic.

Nirenberg aired his differences with the Pope in a September 23, 2009, article in The New Republic, “Love and Capitalism,” in which he reviewed Benedict’s book-length encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate:  On Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth.”

The problem, for Nirenberg, is not the Pope’s claim to the Truth:  “Popes,” Nirenberg writes, “have the right, indeed the obligation, to teach believers the truth as they are given to perceive it, no matter how controversial.”

No, Nirenberg’s disagreement with the Pope centers around the meaning of the term “caritas,” a word that can be loosely translated into English as “charity” or “love.”

For Roman Catholics, however, caritas doesn’t mean plain old love or sympathy or concern or even charity in the way that most of us might use such words over a glass of beer. Caritas, as used by Roman Catholic theologians, including Benedict, is a technical term with a history that dates back to the 3rd Century Church Father, St. Augustine.

Nirenberg gets the Augustine connection (he quotes Augustine several times), but he doesn’t seem to recognize that Augustine’s usage of caritas has been superseded.  In the 13th Century, the theologian and so-called Angelic Doctor of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, redefined caritas.  And Aquinas, it turns out, is the key to an accurate understanding of Benedict’s “Caritas in Veritate.”  Why?  Because since the late 19th century (thanks to Pope Leo XIII), Aquinas’s thought has dominated Roman Catholic theology, including its usage of the technical theological term, caritas.

For Aquinas, caritas is a special virtue—a theological virtue, because human beings are incapable of caritas on their own.  The virtue of caritas requires God’s gracious gift.  It is the most important of the three theological virtues (the other two are hope and faith).  Aquinas taught, and the Pope agrees, that only members of the Roman Catholic Church who participate in its sacramental life may receive God’s gift of the theological virtues, including caritas.

The bottom line, then: if you’re not a Roman Catholic, God will pass you over when it comes to granting caritas.  And without God-granted caritas, you may act in what appears to be a virtuous, loving way, but your actions can never be perfectly virtuous since you, a mere human being, are the source of the virtuous acts.

In his encyclical, Benedict claims that only Roman Catholicism offers the possibility of the kind of universal fraternity necessary for authentic community. But he’s following Aquinas here; only Roman Catholicism offers a path to God-given love (caritas), and God-given love (caritas) is required for universal fraternity.  Only with God-given love are we able to love God first (as the first proper object of our love), and then, and only then, out of love for God, are we able to love God’s creatures—i.e. other human beings.

A bit more familiarity with Aquinas’ thought (called Thomism, another technical term!) is necessary to understand the Pope’s encyclical.  Aquinas (unlike Augustine) has a high anthropology.  According to him, there are some capacities all persons enjoy, whether they are Roman Catholic or not.  For example, he maintained that every person is born with the ability to reason.  Thanks to our natural reason, we can come together and solve problems.

With this brief primer on Thomism, we could have anticipated what Benedict did, in fact, say in his encyclical:  “Reason, by itself, is capable of grasping the equality between men and of giving stability to their civic coexistence, but it cannot establish fraternity.  This originates in a transcendent vocation from God the Father, who loved us first, teaching us through the Son what fraternal charity is.”

Like every good book reviewer, Nirenberg is tasked with picking a fight over some point and so he chooses this one:  “The problem is that Benedict is claiming to offer general answers to global questions that affect people of every faith (and sometimes of no faith), while at the same time insisting that the only possible answer to those questions is Catholicism.  Such a suggestion might be a plausible prescription for global peace and development in a Catholic world, but the world is not Catholic.”

But Benedict offers general answers to global questions that affect people of every faith (including some of no faith) because he believes (following Aquinas) that every human being has reason.  And because we’re blessed with reason, Benedict can issue a global call for us to work together to address global problems.  However (still following Aquinas), fraternal charity, which grows out of caritas or God-given love, is only available to Roman Catholics.  If the rest of the world wants to co-exist in fraternal charity, it must convert and join the Roman Catholic Church.

For Benedict to discuss the global crisis in purely secular terms would be to act without love (in the ordinary sense of that word).  Would it be loving of Benedict to choose silence over sharing with the non-Catholic part of the world the fact (as he perceives it) that there is only one path to fraternal charity?

Nirenberg, however, wants Benedict to set his Roman Catholicism aside and offer global answers “taught in a way that seeks to transcend the boundaries of the traditions that produced them.”  What if Benedict made an analogous demand of Nirenberg?  He’d insist Nirenberg leave his secular commitments aside and offer teachings “taught in a way that seeks” to reflect the Roman Catholic tradition!

Which man has the more loving approach?

At the very least, Benedict engages in authentic multi-faith dialogue.  He doesn’t pretend to set aside his convictions—as if he could!—rather, he shows the full set of cards he’s holding in one hand and extends the other hand in greeting.  We may, like Nirenberg, not like the cards he’s holding, but we can appreciate the fact that he’s showing us what he’s got.

One of the goals of an authentic conversation about religion is to try to understand our conversation partner’s point of view.  For this we must set aside our own religious commitments and adopt a willingness to interpret (i.e. make familiar the unfamiliar) what he or she shares with us.  Nirenberg was tasked with interpreting the Pope’s latest encyclical.  Unfortunately, conversing with an author via his or her book does not offer the possibility of a back-and-forth dialogue.  If he and the Pope had had the opportunity to get together at the local bar and talk over a glass of beer, Nirenberg could simply have asked, “Exactly what do you mean, Your Holiness, by caritas?”  The two could have had a brief discussion about their differing definitions of love.  Then they could have moved on to discuss something more important—the Pope’s central concern of his encyclical—how to solve our global problems.

References:  David Nirenberg, “Love and Capitalism,” The New Republic 240, no. 4868 (23 September 2009): 39-42; Waldo Beach and H. R. Niebuhr, eds, Christian Ethics:  Sources of the Living Tradition, 2nd ed. (New York:  The Ronald Press Company, 1973).

#36 The luminous gospel of transcendental universalism

11 Sunday Oct 2009

Posted by TheNakedTheologian in God, Religion, Religious Philosophy, Theology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Emersonian transcendentalism, Forrest Church, universalism

iStock_000009265015XSmall

The Reverend Forrest Church died of esophageal cancer last week at the much-too-young age of 61.

His life story continues to speak to us.

Church began his ministerial career preaching the gospel of rational belief—the kind of gospel that limits itself to teachings the human mind can comprehend and experience can confirm.  He surveyed the theological field for its various doctrines and claims about God and laid them on a dissecting table so he could cut them open and discover how they worked.  Did they meet the constraints of rationality?  If no, he’d toss them in the waste bin. If yes, he’d add them to his keeper pile.  This approach challenged him intellectually but left him spiritually dry.

He studied God, but God was absent to him.

He turned to alcohol and used it as a buffer against his emptiness.  The drinking worked—for many years, anyway.  He managed to drink and juggle his hefty duties as senior minister of All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Manhattan.  He even managed to write several books.

In the late 1980’s, he realized that he needed God’s help to find peace.  Not at home in himself, he began to look for a home in the universe while still sharing the common Unitarian aversion to God-language.  He’d kept his altar crowded with “icons to knowledge” but now he cleared a space for mystery.  While most of his beliefs had not changed, he declared that religion was a human response to the inevitability of death.  This inevitability gave meaning to human love because the more love we found and gave, the more we risked losing.

Eventually, he embraced God-language and used it more readily than his co-religionists liked.  But how could he keep the saving news to himself?   He’d found God and God filled the God-shaped hole he’d harbored and denied for much too long.  God, he proclaimed, was “that which is greater than all and yet present in each.”

He loved God, and God was present to him.

The Universalist strand of his faith tradition, with its promise of shared salvation, held particular appeal for Church, especially when integrated with Emersonian transcendentalism.  Christian became an important part of his religious identity and he adopted the label of Christian Universalist.  As such, he made room in his theology for many religious approaches.  The cathedral of the world became his credo—while there was a single Reality or Truth (God), this reality shone through the many windows of the world’s cathedral.  The windows’ patterns refracted the light into multiple patterns suggesting different meanings.  One Light, many patterns.  One Truth, many meanings.

Church often said that God was “the most famous liberal of all time.”  Every word that describes God is a synonym for liberal, he explained:  “God is munificent and openhanded.  The creation is ample and plenteous.  As healer and comforter, God is charitable and benevolent.  As our redeemer, God is generous and forgiving…God has a bleeding that simply never stops.”

May God, as healer and comforter, heal and comfort his family.

References:  Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology:  Crisis, Irony, & Postmodernity 1950-2005 (Louisville, KY:  Westminster John Knox Pres, 2006), 455-459; Forrest Church, The CATHEDRAL of the WORLD:  A Universalist Theology (Boston:  Beacon Press, 2009).

#35 The art of forgiving God

04 Sunday Oct 2009

Posted by TheNakedTheologian in God, Philosophy of Religion, Religious Philosophy, Theology

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

atonement, forgiveness, sins of commission, sins of omission, Yom Kippur

iStock_000004991754XSmall

Yom Kippur just passed, that Jewish day of atonement and of human-granted and God-granted forgiveness.

But what about God’s atonement for God’s sins of omission and of commission?

After all, many of us hold God responsible for the tragedies that plague our world.  “Look God,” we might say, “Take a good look around will You?  See the people weeping over here and see the people weeping over there—why don’t You do something about their troubles?  Why do You allow their sorrows to continue?  You’re God, right?  So You could make the suffering stop if You wanted.”

Some of those who hold God responsible for standing-by and doing nothing, don’t believe in miracles.  When it comes to miracles, they’re deniers.  They’re the ones who would stand on a cliff’s edge on a lovely, starry night, and having asked God for a sign, would continue to wait even after a meteor with a sparkler-like tail swooshed in a majestic arc across a darkened sky.  They would notice the meteor but expect that a scientific explanation would neatly explain why the meteor appeared at this particular time and place.

The miracle-deniers are the ones who, having cursed God for failing to rid us of misery, no longer wait for God’s answer.  They wait even after they notice the letters SORRY tucked among some garish graffiti.

Basically, then, miracle-deniers are demanding miracles from God without believing in them.  Because, wouldn’t the interventions they expect from God qualify as miracles?  Aren’t they asking God to act like a cosmic magician who’s every wish (and ours too) is fulfilled instantaneously and effortlessly?

What if God was like a human agent with intelligence, with the capacity to make decisions, and with some super-powers thrown into the mix?  What if this God was willing to interfere in our affairs?  Then our lives would be either be less predictable than they are now or we would have unmitigated peacefulness.

If God interfered now and again, then events would occur around us, and to us, without any causal explanation.  The cause-and-effect rules we now perceive would become inconsistent and unreliable.

If God intervened every time suffering could occur, then we’d get into car accidents but walk away unscathed.  Parents would always die before their children.  With God’s consistent interference we’d live in what we call paradise, or in the end-time some call the Kingdom of God.

Isn’t it more likely that if an agent-like God is interested in human-affairs, God is sorrowful when we experience pain?  God weeps when we weep.  God suffers when we suffer.  But isn’t it also more likely that the agent-God works tirelessly but imperceptibly through cosmic and human history to help us achieve the goal of becoming what God would want us to be?  As of yet, there is no evidence that any of us are even close to 100% perfect human beings.

If the agent-God could wave a wand and change the course of history instantly, then why not simply ask God for this miracle—to turn all human beings, present and future, into 100% moral beings?  Wars would end instantly.  Crime, too.  Children would never suffer at the hands of others.  No one would starve or go without shelter or medical attention—as fully moral beings, we’d busy ourselves taking care of those in need.

Sit with this miracle for just a few minutes—imagine every single person, you included—100% moral, 100% of the time.

To return to the original question—if God has agency, then God is, in a sense, responsible for the tragedies that plague this world—responsible because God doesn’t step in and bring them to a halt.  Perhaps the agent-God does atone and hopes for our forgiveness.  If God prefers to work tirelessly, but surreptitiously to end our tragedies, then can God be forgiven for this choice?  There’s no good answer to this question.

Here’s the bottom line, then, for those who hold God responsible—it’s up to each to decide whether and how much s/he can forgive God.  Easy formulas are lacking.  Forgiveness, even (or especially) of God likely requires practice (to improve) and patience (to persevere).

#34 Blah blah blah: help or hindrance?

25 Friday Sep 2009

Posted by TheNakedTheologian in Philosophy of Religions, Religious Philosophy, Theology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

commonalities, dialogue, differences, Martin Buber, monologue

SilencedIt’s common wisdom that religion is NEVER, EVER a topic of polite conversation.  Talking about religious views supposedly leads to arguments, so if one wishes to avoid the risk of a friendship-ending conflict, one should keep mum.  We are trained at near Pavlovian levels;  if our interlocutor has the bad grace to bring up religion, we either find an excuse to leave, switch to a different topic, or fall back on the conversation-stopper “let’s just agree to disagree.”

Which is a waste, because the imagined conversation between Tillich and Anderson in Post #33 helped identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of Anderson’s empirical theology.

Given the importance of religion in all of our lives (atheists are as impacted by religion as anyone else), shouldn’t we engage this topic at every opportunity?  Doing so would require the conversation partners to be honest about their views, including their concerns and disagreements.  Because how can common ground be discovered (if any is to be had) unless differences are acknowledged?

The Jewish theologian, Martin Buber, in an address delivered at a conference of Christian missionary societies in 1930, did not subscribe to the self-censorship practiced by so many liberal religionists and theologians then and today.  He broached, with frankness but also with hope, the subjects of what Christians and Jews have in common and of where they cannot agree.

This a slightly adapted version of what Buber said to the missionaries (Buber’s words are in italics):

What do Christians and Jews have in common?  To put it in the most concrete way, Jews and Christians have a book and an expectation. The book they have in common is called the Tanakh by Jews and the Old Testament by Christians.

It is the sanctuary itself for Jews but only the antechamber for Christians who walk through it on the way to a different sanctuary—the New Testament.  Still, it is a place they have in common, and in it they may listen together to the voice which speaks in it. They can labor together digging for the speech that is buried there, liberating the living word that is imprisoned.

They also share an expectation for a different reality.  The expectation of Jews is for a coming of what has not yet been. The expectation of Christians is for the second coming.  Their fortunes took separate directions in the pre-Messianic era.  Since then, the Jew is incomprehensible to the Christian; he is the stiff-necked one who refuses to see that God came in the person of Jesus to inaugurate a new and redeemed history.  The Christian is equally incomprehensible to the Jew; he is the presumptuous one who asserts redemption as an accomplished fact in a world which is unredeemed.

This schism, no human power can bridge.  But it does not preclude harmonious cooperation in watching for the oneness coming from God.  Although they expect a different oneness, they can wait together for that which is to come, and in those moments, pave the road for it in joint effort.

— End of adapted excerpt —

Some reading Buber’s words today would find that he simply named the obvious schism between Judaism and Christianity.  Others might have preferred that he had used gentler terms than “stiff-necked” or “presumptious,” or resorted to more round-about language, or not mentioned the schism at all.  Were Buber’s remarks inflammatory?  The missionaries to whom he spoke had no illusion about the abyss separating the two faith-traditions.  And Buber, having demonstrated his willingness to discuss that abyss, could be taken seriously when he explored what the Jewish and Christian communities could hope accomplish in “harmonious cooperation.”  Having openly discussed their differences, when he described his vision of the work they could undertake together, his vision seemed a genuine possibility and mutual enrichment seemed plausible.

So here’s a plea to set aside the old adage of “be polite; don’t talk about religion.”  Whether you’re an atheist talking to a theist or vice-versa, or a Lutheran talking to a Roman Catholic or vice-versa, or a process theologian talking to an Orthodox theologian, or pick-your- group talking to someone from pick-another-group, try to have an authentic conversation.

If you wish to be authentic, you’ll name the schism.  Then you just might have a shot at a more interesting dialogue—the one about harmonious cooperation.

HNFFT:  If you reacted negatively to Buber’s comments, how would you have broached the differences between Jews and Christians?  If you’d have chosen to say nothing at all about them, do you think it’s possible to have an authentic conversation without mentioning disagreements?

Reference:  The address, delivered by Martin Buber to a conference of Christian missionary societies in 1930, is quoted in Samuel Bergman’s Faith and Reason:  An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought, trans. and ed. by Alfred Jospe (Washington, D.C.:  B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, 1961), 96.

#33 Theology: it’s all about conversation

17 Thursday Sep 2009

Posted by TheNakedTheologian in God, Philosophy of Religion, Theology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

circular thinking, empirical theology, Karen Armstrong, Paul Tillich

Handshake Silhouette

The work of Paul Tillich (1886-1965), who is considered by many to be the leading Protestant theologian of the 20th century, offers an intriguing perspective on the God-musings of religion-scholar Karen Armstrong (see Post #32).   If nothing else, taking a look at Karen Armstrong’s views from the perspective of his work reminds us that theology is an ongoing conversation—at least for those with open, inquiring minds.

For the purposes of this post, we’ll set aside most of Tillich’s three volume systematic-theology and focus on a mere two pages in the introduction to his first volume, entitled Reason and Revelation, Being and God.  In case you’d like to reflect further on what follows, or want to bring your own mojo to bear on Tillich’s work, check pages 42-43.

In this short, but typically brilliant, part of his introduction, Tillich discusses what he calls the “experiential theology” which has grown out of the “evangelical tradition of American Christianity.”  Although Tillich was born and educated in Germany, a large swath of his career took place on American soil, giving him the unique ability to reach objective, well-informed conclusions.  He perceived that experiential theology, at least the kind particular to the American situation, attempts to generate an “empirical theology” grounded in experience.

Now we can bring Karen Armstrong into the conversation because her “sense-of-God” approach falls neatly into Tillich’s “empirical theology” category.

The first move of what Tillich calls empirical theology is to show that “religious objects [like God] are not objects among others.”  Armstrong made this exact move when she decided God was not an object among objects.  God was not like a plate or a glass or a table she could pick up and examine.  Those objects existed, and so they could be found.  But since she couldn’t find God (like an object), making God’s existence the starting point for her search had led her down a dead end.  That path had only served to alienate her from God—her travels had yielded nothing more than a shadowy abstraction.

Still with me?  Whoever said theology, even stripped-down theology, was simplistic?

Armstrong, having abandoning God’s existence as the starting-point for her search, found God when she identified a different starting-point—that of creating a “sense of God.”  In other words, she decided to look for God in what seemed, to her, to be the most secure source available—her own experiences.  Instead of starting with the question “Does God exist?” she started with “What does God mean to me?”

How many of you have reached a dead end like Armstrong’s and resorted to finding God in the quality or dimension of your own experiences?  If you have, then, like hers, yours is an American empirical theology.  Sounds impressive, doesn’t it?  Your friends’ jaws will surely drop open when you spring the words “American empirical theology” on them.  Try it and see.

Tillich further explains that American empirical theology agrees with European phenomenological theology a la Rudolph Otto in his famous book, The Idea of the Holy.   Now you can also tell your friends that your empirical theology has something in common with “phenomenological theology.”  A warning:  you’ll have to practice saying “phenomenological” several dozen times before you nail it.  But it’ll be worth it.  Your friends’ jaws will drop even lower.

Besides the concerns raised at the end of Post #32 by yours truly and by those who took the time (or had the time) to leave comments, Tillich identified a few problems with Armstrong’s empirical-theology approach.  Any theology, like most things in life, has its advantages and drawbacks.  The advantages, as Armstrong herself so well illustrated, was that she was able to find God after decades of fruitless search “out there”.

But here’s a potential drawback.  Let’s pretend that we’re using Armstrong’s empirical-theological method.  Since the whole of experience can’t serve as the source for a “sense of God,” we have to identify an experience as having a unique quality.  Surveying the vast set of our experiences, we look for one few that strike us as having a special quality, special enough so that we can label them religious experiences.  It could be that feeling of wonder when watching the sun rise (see Post #30), or an unexplainable feeling of calm in the midst of crisis (see Post #4).

This means that we’ve had the “special” experiences before we ever label them as such.  Until we assign to them the “special” status of religious as a result of theological analysis, the “special” experiences were simply part of the whole of our experiences.  Our theological analysis, looking for experiences to label religious, finds them.  Then, on the basis of these so-labeled religious experiences, we develop an empirical theology.  Philosophers call this circular thinking.

Is circular thinking a problem?  Not necessarily, but proponents of empirical theology should realize that their thinking is as circular as those who adopt other kinds of theologies, including ones that empirical-theology-proponents might find objectionable.

Are there any other (potential) downsides?  Empirical theology traps God in our experience.  God is “trapped” because God no longer transcends experience.  God, in the traditional sense of the God-Who-is-not-us is excluded from this kind of theology.  While such an entrapment is attractive for Armstrong, others will find it harder to walk away from theologies that locate God outside of the human realm.

The bottom line is that, like the conversation between Tillich and Armstrong in this post, theological conversation is ongoing.  All theologies, including our own are (or should be) works in progress.  As such, we benefit (as do academic theologians) from the ability to be clear about our assumptions and about what counts as adequate criteria of validity for us.  Any theology can be called into question.  Plusses and minuses are part of the package.  Does this mean we shouldn’t adopt an empirical theology like Armstrong’s?  Not at all.  But theologians, academic or not, will want to informed about the strengths and weaknesses of their positions.

#32 The wait for God is over

09 Wednesday Sep 2009

Posted by TheNakedTheologian in God, Religious Philosophy, Theological Ethics, Theology

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

existence, history of God, Karen Armstrong, reality

iStock_000004087861XSmall

Like many of us, the religion-scholar and popular author, Karen Armstrong, spent decades waiting for God.  Raised a Roman Catholic, God remained a shadowy figure even as she sat through countless sermons and countless catechism classes.  God, described to her in abstract terms, meant little to her.  God existed—of this, Armstrong was certain, at least on an intellectual level—but God remained out of reach, too remote to become a reality for her.

Sound familiar?

Armstrong has more patience than the average Joe or Jane and so she continued to wait for God.  She was convinced that if she kept up her efforts to find God, she would eventually be rewarded by a vision that “would transfigure the whole of created reality.”  To prepare for this vision, she joined an order of nuns.

Armstrong never did glimpse “the God described by the prophets and mystics.”  She suffered from what some call “spiritual dryness.”  Except that she’d never been blessed with a period of spiritual wetness to help her through the dryness.  Unable to maintain the status quo, she decided, with regret, to abandon the religious life.  Soon, her belief in God’s existence slipped away.

Although she’d stopped hoping for an encounter with God, Armstrong maintained her academic study of the history of religions.  Ultimately, the research that went into writing her bestseller, The History of God, put her in touch with clergy from the three “religions of the book”— Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  Several of these rabbis, priests, and Sufis offered her this advice.  “Instead of waiting for God to descend from on high,” they suggested, she “should deliberately create a sense of him for” herself.

Reflecting on her many years of waiting (in vain) for God, she realized that she’d always looked for God who, she’d believed, existed “out there.”  But God wasn’t to be found “out there.”  God wasn’t an ordinary object like a glass or a plate or a table.  God wasn’t an object she could pick up and examine.

She wrote that, in hindsight, the rabbis, priests, and Sufis would “have told me that in an important sense God was a product of the creative imagination, like the poetry and music that I found so inspiring.”

They would have encouraged her to stop looking for God “out there” and, instead, to find ways to make God a reality for herself.  Also, “A few highly respected monotheists would have told me quietly and firmly that God did not really exist—and yet that ‘he’ was the most important reality in the world.”

Must something exist to be real?  Tough question.  Lucky for us that Armstrong likes brainteasers of this sort.   After pondering the question, she decided that she could set aside the question of God’s existence.  By setting aside that question, she freed herself to create a sense of God’s reality for herself.  She could even make her sense of God the most important reality.

Hallelujah.  Her wait was over.  She had finally found God.

To recap, Armstrong ended her wait by changing the question from “Must God exist to be real?” to “How can I make God real for myself?”

Here’s a note of concern, though.  Armstrong’s God is no doubt as lovely and gentle as the poetry and music she finds inspiring.  But (there’s always a but, isn’t there?) for the rest of us, are checks needed on the sense of God we create for ourselves?  How do we put a damper on creating a sense of God Who looks like a green-eyed spaghetti monster?  The part about the green eyes is too over-the-top for an acceptable God, don’t you agree?  Seriously, how do we put a damper on say, a sense of God Who looks the other way when we make promises we don’t intend to keep?  Or worst, Who orders us to harm or kill others?  Here, the September-11-2001 terrorists’ God comes to mind.

Reference:  Karen Armstrong, A History of God:  The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (New York:  Ballantine Books, 1993).

← Older posts
Newer posts →

The Naked Theologian

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Top Posts

  • #74 After the "Death of God," new gods?
  • #73 Will Her Methodist Faith Help HRC Make a Comeback?
  • #72 Trump's White Evangelical Voters: What Were They Thinking?

Recent Posts

  • #74 After the “Death of God,” new gods?
  • #73 Will Her Methodist Faith Help HRC Make a Comeback?
  • #72 Trump’s White Evangelical Voters: What Were They Thinking?

Recent Comments

Tulayhah on #69 How To Read the Qur…
clinton on #18 God and the Devil duke it…
marysedl on #72 Trump’s White Evange…
DaCoot on #11 What’s in a name? Go…
Home And Spirit on #68 Suffering on Trial

Categories

Ethics God Philosophy of Religion Prayer Religion Religious Philosophy Spiritual Exercises Spirituality Theological Ethics Theology

Posts by Category

  • Ethics (15)
  • God (55)
  • Interpretation (1)
  • Philosophy (5)
  • Philosophy of Religion (27)
  • Philosophy of Religions (8)
  • Politics (1)
  • Prayer (11)
  • Religion (57)
  • Religious Philosophy (26)
  • Spiritual Exercises (9)
  • Spirituality (15)
  • Theological Ethics (26)
  • Theology (55)

Archives

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • The Naked Theologian
    • Join 67 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Naked Theologian
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...