Category Archives: Theology

#30 Deists of the world, unite!

22 Wednesday Jul 2009

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

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Deist, deist, theist—say those words in Jersey (pronounced Joy-zie) and they all sound the same.  Fortunately, spelling will help us keep tabs on which is which.  Besides spelling, there are important differences.  Of note: Deists (capital D) went the way of the dodo bird and deists (lowercase d) are rarer than diamonds.  Theists rule–like it or not.

Now to clarify.  A story about François-Marie Arouet , a.k.a. Voltaire (1694-1778), nicely illustrates the difference between a Deist, a deist, and a theist.  He’s considered by people-in-the-know to have been a “mystical, and even emotional deist.”

Voltaire was already eighty years old when this incident took place.  He rose before dawn and, with a visitor, he climbed a nearby hill to watch the sunrise.  Upon reaching the top, Voltaire was overcome by the beauty of the morning scene.  He took off his hat and knelt, exclaiming:  “I believe, I believe in you, Powerful God, I believe.”  Then, on his feet again, he drily proclaimed, “As for monsieur the Son and madame his Mother, that is a different story!”

Voltaire was a French Deist (note the capital D).  Deism (with a capital D) was a religious movement. Also called the “religion of reason,” it originated in 18th century England.  

Today, if someone adopts tenets like those of the English and French Deists, he or she qualifies as a deist (lowercase d).  How you doing with keeping the capital D’s and the lowercase d’s straight?

Here’s more.  Deism, deism and deists (words derived from the Latin for god, deo) subscribe to a God who created us and the universe.   Since then, the universe has continued to operate under reliable and discoverable laws.  And since then, God has not mucked with the laws of nature or with our personal lives. 

By contrast, theism and theists (words derived from the Greek for god, theos) subscribe to a personal God, active in human history, and guarantor of eternal life. You know—the beliefs to which most of today’s religious believers in the West subscribe.  In case you forgot, let me remind you–theists rule.

Probably because French philosophes like Voltaire were literary individuals, not trained philosophers, they were able to popularize and disseminate the new religious movement.  They believed (wrongly, it turns out) Deism would emancipate society from ignorance and fanaticism. 

Here’s how, in a lightly adapted passage, Voltaire described the deist:

A deist is a person firmly persuaded of the existence of a Supreme Being equally good and powerful, who has formed all existences; who perpetuates their species, who punishes crimes without cruelty, and rewards virtuous actions with kindness.  

The deist does not know how God punishes, how God rewards, how God pardons, for he is not presumptuous enough to flatter himself that he understands how God acts; but he knows that God does act and that God is just.  The difficulties opposed to a providence do not stagger him in his faith, because they are only great difficulties, not proofs.

He does not join any of the sects, who all contradict themselves.  His religion is the most ancient and the most extended, for the simple adoration of a God preceded all the systems in the world.

He believes that religion consists neither in the opinions of incomprehensible metaphysics, nor in vain decorations, but in adoration and justice.  To do good–that is his worship; to submit oneself to God–that is his doctrine.  He succours the poor and defends the oppressed.

Does this describe you?  Then you’re a deist. 

If so, it may be instructive to consider why Deism, the religious movement, was short-lived. 

Yes, Deism died in fairly short order both in England (in its more theoretical and abstract version) and in France (in its more popular and literary version).  

In place of Christianity, Voltaire envisioned a rather vague, popular form of Deism.  Doctrine would be reduced to belief in a just God, whose service was the practice of virtue.  Worship would be simple and would consist primarily in praise and adoration and lessons in morality. 

According to religious-studies scholar, James Livingston, Deism fizzled, in part, because it failed to attract the masses.  Why?

 1.            It was too abstract, too intellectual in spite of its claim to simplicity; feeling and aesthetic sense are required of any religious faith that expects a wide appeal

2.            It lacked unity—its radical demands for autonomy were liberating but did not encourage the shared sense of faith and worship necessary for congregation-building

So, deists of the world, you’re likely feeling pretty alone.  There aren’t many of your kind.  And anyway, you (supposedly) aren’t the sort to seek each other out to worship together.  Which is why there’s not a First Deist Church of insert-your-town’s-name-here.  Why not unite and start one today?  Dare to prove the experts wrong.

HNFFT:  If you qualify as a deist, what do you say to the charge that your beliefs are too abstract and intellectual for most people (this is not necessarily a negative)?  How do feelings and aesthetics come together with your deistic beliefs?

Reference:  James C. Livingston:  Modern Christian Thought:  The Enlightenment and the Nineteenth Century, vol 1, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Prentice Hall, 1997), p. 26-28.

#29 Wisdom, Prophecy and God

15 Wednesday Jul 2009

Posted by in God, Prayer, Religion, Theology

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iStock_000005417329XSmallA Situation:

The man gazed guiltily at his old friend across his congealing plate of huevos rancheros.  He’d flown into Albuquerque the day before, two months after he’d watched his wife lose her battle with breast cancer.  Now, as he ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant, he agonized over the affair he’d had during his previous visit to Albuquerque a year earlier.  His wife had already been diagnosed.  He’d been scared and lonely.  He’d wanted to forget his troubles, if only for an hour or two.  “I should’ve stopped myself,” he sighed now with remorse.  Both men felt uneasy.  What the speaker wanted, more than anything else, was to make amends.  He wanted forgiveness, too.  But now that his wife had died, who could forgive him?  Most importantly, he wanted to be made whole once more; in other words, he wanted redemption.  But to whom could he make amends?  And who could forgive him? Where was redemption to be found?

A Midrash:  

Wisdom was asked:  what is the punishment of a sinner?  and answered:  sinners will be prosecuted by [their own] vice.

Prophecy was asked:  what is the punishment for the sinner?  and answered “the soul that sins, it shall die” [Ezek. 14:4].

God was asked:  what is the punishment of the sinner?  and answered:  let him do repentance [teshuva] and be expiated. 

Reference:  Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 69.

#26 No theology, no science–no joke!

18 Thursday Jun 2009

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

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Science and theology are perceived, by some, as sitting on opposite banks of an abyss.  They assume that the twain never can (or should) meet.  But the separation between science and theology is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of the West.  Until the Renaissance, science was barely more than a descriptive discipline, while theology, considered the queen of the sciences, was a richly speculative and complex field of endeavor.  

Fortunately, theology (yes—theology!) came to the rescue of science by providing it with a new understanding of reality.  Theology (yes—theology!) provided science with the intellectual and conceptual tools it needed to get out of a deep rut and push forward with several important discoveries.  These discoveries, in turn, allowed the development of technologies that now seem as essential to us as air or water.  What–life without a computer?  Without Wi-Fi?  A cell phone?  Pleeease! 

This shift in human beings’ way of looking at reality occurred long enough ago that we’ve mostly forgotten that we haven’t always grasped reality the way we do today. Here’s a key illustration:  there was a time when it was “common knowledge” that the earth moved around the sun.  Peoples in the ancient world conceived of reality such that, for them, astral bodies such as the sun and moon rotated in orderly and eternally-static circles around the earth.  Based on simple observation this view of reality made sense.  The things they could see appeared to revolve around them while the ground on which they stood seemed solid and stationary.   Today, of course, we know that while we tend to perceive motion relative to where we ourselves stand, we may, from the perspective of someone else, be moving.

So how did our mindset change?  A 15th theologian by the name of Nicholas de Cusa (1401 – 1464) reached several novel conclusions about perspective.  Some scholars still refuse to count his contributions as scientific because, technically-speaking, he was a theologian.  But others, like philosophy professor, Karsten Harries, the author of Infinity and Perspective, credit him with destroying the belief in the geocentric theory of the cosmos inherited by pre-Renaissance science from the ancient world.

Thanks to Cusa, Harries argues in his book, Copernicus was able to break out of this mindset, a mindset that had persisted millenia.  

So what was Cusa’s insight, exactly?  It underwhelms us moderns but, in the 15th century, his insight was revolutionary.  Cusa had been sent by the Pope to negotiate a reconciliation between the Greek Church and the Roman Church.  On the return sea-voyage, his ship was heading home from Greece when he realized that if he couldn’t see the shore, he wouldn’t have any idea the ship was moving; instead, he would perceive the ship as sitting still in the water.  He also realized that if he were not a passenger but, rather, someone standing on the shoreline watching the ship, he would, from his vantage point on land, perceive the ship as moving.  Two perspectives (the one on the ship, the other on land) led to two experiences of movement. 

In his theological work, On Learned Ignorance, Cusa wrote that the centers “by which we orient ourselves are fictions, created by us” to reflect the standpoint of the observer.  Multiple centers of perspective, he realized, were not only possible but equally valid.  Applying this insight to the universe, he argued that a person standing on Mars or on the moon was just as likely as an earthling to consider his or her piece of rock to be the center of the cosmos.  Cusa concluded that the universe “will have its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere, so to speak; for God, who is everywhere and nowhere, is its circumference and center.”

By undermining the idea of a single-center based perspective, Cusa called into question any cosmology based on just one center.  His clarity about the possibility of multiple centers and perspectives took him even further than Copernicus and Kepler would go a century later with their heliocentric cosmology.  His influence was so sweeping and long-lasting that Kepler and Descartes acknowledged him as a precursor.  

The Cusa-Copernicus-Kepler scenario offers more than just intellectual interest.  If Harries is spot-on about Cusa’s contribution to science (historians of science, do you care to weigh in?), then there’s an important lesson to take away from this fascinating chapter in science-theology relations.  The lesson is that if scientists like Copernicus and Kepler had refused to take seriously the theological writings of a pious genius like Cusa, then we might all have had to wait a lot longer for modern science.   

Theologians and scientists live in the same world and, as fellow human beings, they’re charmed by mystery and seized by wonder.  They ask many of the same questions about the world.  They simply turn to different resources in their attempts to answer those questions, resources which need not be labeled incompatible.  But as long as scientists and theologians sit on opposite banks of an abyss (created ex nihilo), no conversation will take place.  Let’s start building a bridge, shall we?

References:  Karsten Harries, Infinity and Perspective (Cambridge, MA:  MIT Press, 2001); Nicolas of Cusa, Selected Spiritual Writings, trans. H. Lawrence Bond, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York:  Paulist Press, 1997).

#25 Spiritual (But Not Religious)

08 Monday Jun 2009

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

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dreamstime_9033984Have you ever noticed how some opinions say more about the opiniators themselves than the thing they’re opiniating about?  God would be one such example.  The opinions people have about God often say more about who they are than they do about who God is.  But, uncharacteristically, God is not the topic of this post. 

“Spiritual but not religious” is the topic at hand.  And according to the work of Heinz Streib, a psychologist of religion at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, the ever-more popular phrase, “spiritual but not religious,” mostly reflects ambivalence about organized religion.  

Surprising?  Maybe not.  If you’ve paid attention, folks out there who label themselves “spiritual but not religious” usually add a wave of the hand and a shake of the head to indicate their disapproval of religion in-general and their level-headed decision to embrace ‘spirituality’ instead.

While spiritual and religious are different words, the difference may end there.  At least, that’s what was revealed by a recent study conducted by another psychologist of religion, Peter Hill (as reported by Streib).  Participants in the study identified themselves as either religious or as spiritual but both groups ended up with equivalent scores on a test for ‘religiosity.’  In essence, then, the test-subjects who considered themselves ‘spiritual but not religious’ actually qualified as ‘religious.’  Yikes.  Probably not something the ‘spiritual’ types wanted to hear.

But spirituality and religiosity both refer to the feelings, thoughts, and experiences that arise during one’s search for the sacred.  In fact, Streib ended up wondering whether it makes any sense for scholars of religion to spend time studying spirituality in addition to religion.  Better, he concluded, to stick with the single category of ‘religious.’

Too bad, really, that members of organized religions, including non-doctrinal ones like Unitarian Universalism, call themselves ‘spiritual not religious.’  They’re members of organized religions after all; but, instead of claiming, with pride, their chosen faith, they use a label that underscores their ambivalence toward any religion, including their own.  

Sure, they may have trouble putting down the burden (bad memories, anger at clergy, rejected teachings) of their previous religion(s).  But, who knows, reclaiming the word ‘religious’ might just indicate a healthy level of healing.  It would announce that they’ve moved on.  As for those who have always been unchurched, the willingness to call themselves ‘religious,’ in this most pluralistic of times, would announce a desirable respect for religion (with a capital R).

So, “spiritual but not religious” people of the world, here’s a challenge.  Try calling yourselves ‘religious’ for a couple of weeks.  No handwaving or headshaking please.  See how it feels.  You might just discover the label fits after all.

#24 Everybody goes to heaven, right?

31 Sunday May 2009

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

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Most Americans agree that yes, everybody goes to heaven after they die.  Not buying it?  The part about most Americans agreeing that everybody goes to heaven? Here’s the empirical evidence.  A few months ago, a study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (mentioned by Charles Blow in a New York Times editorial) showed that 70 percent of Americans believe religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life.

So it’s true, 70% of Americans agree–everybody goes to heaven.  

Still not buying the poll data?  Evangelicals didn’t buy it, because they argued that the respondents had obviously not understood the question.  After all, Jesus clearly states in the gospel of John, “I am the way, the truth and the life:  no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”  In other words, there’s a segregationist sign posted over the only gate into heaven.  It says:  Christians only.  To believe otherwise is a heresy called universalism.

So Pew decided to ask the question again.  The results, released in December 2008, confirmed their initial findings.  Sixty-five percent said that yes, other religions could lead to eternal life.  Just to make sure no one was confused, Pew also asked its respondents to specify which religion(s) could lead to eternal life.  The sixty-five percent yes-sayers threw open heaven’s gate to pretty much every religion.  Fifty percent even said atheists would pass muster, and people with no religious faith, too.  How’s that for generous?  So tear down that sign, Mr. Evangelical.

Okay, so the majority of 21st century Americans agree that almost everyone goes heaven after they die.

But if God doesn’t hold us accountable in the afterlife, is it okay to set aside meaningful discussions about moral requirements in this life?

That’s not a rhetorical question, since polls show that religious Americans, whether affiliated with a specific faith tradition or not, whether liberal or conservative, are shearing moral requirements from their theologies (see Post #23 for more on this topic).

The mystic and universalist, Julian of Norwich, offers an intriguing answer to balancing a belief in an all-loving God with the impulse to make people accountable in the afterlife for the harm they’ve caused in this life.  Julian, a woman who sought God actively, was rewarded in 1373, when she was a little over thirty years old, by several mystical experiences that she called showings. 

Try as she might to find the Church’s ‘fatherly,’ angry, and punishing God, she found only a God who “is the goodness that cannot be angry, for he is nothing but goodness.”  The fact that any of us exists, Julian reasoned, is proof that God isn’t an a punishing God.  Since everyone commits sins of commission or omission, if God could become angry, we’d all be gonners.  According to Julian, human beings, not God, are the ones who judge whether a deed is well done or is evil.  As far as God is concerned, even our “lowest deed is done as well as the best”.  And since God is nothing but goodness, Julian concluded that we’re all heaven-bound. 

How does she balance a loving God with moral requirements?  Julian handles this difficult theological quandary by finding a sneaky way to introduce a system of reward.  Based on her showings, she identifies a sliding scale of heavenly bliss.  The first and lowest degree of bliss in heaven is God’s gratitude for our service, a gratitude that is “so exalted and so glorious that it would seem to fill the soul.”  The second degree of bliss in heaven indulges our pride because God makes a public announcement to all the souls in heaven, praising our good deeds.  The third degree of bliss is a pleasure that remains forever “as new and delightful” as it did when we first felt it.  

To assign the appropriate degree of bliss, God uses a formula mostly based on time and length of service.  The formula favors those who “willingly and freely offered their youth”, as well as those who, even for one day, served “with the wish to serve forever.”

According to Julian then, everybody goes to heaven, everybody gets bliss, but depending on our deeds, we are eligible for one of three degrees of bliss.  Her God is perched on the narrow edge of that judge’s bench in the sky but hasn’t been shoved off altogether.  This all-about-love-God, to whom Julian prayed, sits in minimal judgment of us. 

Like her, many religious Americans are quite sure that any God worthy of the name loves us and is too good to condemn us.  The mercy-justice issue may continue to trouble us in spite of a creative solution like Julian’s.  Is a three-bliss kind of God really the kind of God we want?  

Because if we all end up blissed-out in heaven, is God just? 

If God grants first-degree (or second or third-degree) bliss to the daughter who routinely calms her work-rage by pummeling her frail, elderly father, is that God just?  Is that God fair?  

If God grants bliss to the single mother who turns a blind eye while her boyfriend sexually assaults her ten-year old daughter, is that God just?  Is that God fair?

But why dwell on this issue at all?  Must we insist that God be fair when it comes to putting out the welcome mat at heaven’s door?  No.  We need not insist that God be fair.  

Maybe Julian’s right and we get assigned one of three degrees of bliss.  Right or not, we can agree with her conviction that “the more the loving soul sees…generosity in God, the gladder” we will be to serve God all of our days.  Simply put:  belief in a loving God leads us to be more loving ourselves.  And if belief in a loving God leads us to be more loving ourselves–what’s not to love about that?

References:  Charles Blow, “Heaven for the Godless?” The New York Times online edition, 26 December 2008;  Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love LT, trans. Elizabeth Spearing (London:  Penguin Books, 1998).

#23 Generalized religiousness and the American dream

22 Friday May 2009

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

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dreamstimefree_2776077In a recent New York Times editorial, Ross Douthat, describes religious trends in 21st century America as neither shifting towards the extreme of unbelief or the extreme of fundamentalism.  Instead, religious trends are shifting toward a “generalized ‘religiousness’ detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.”  While growing numbers of Americans are abandoning organized religion (Douthat bases this claim on recent polling data), we are, by and large, not opting for atheism. 

Stay-at-home religionists are actively seeking and building eclectic and high-personalized theologies “with traditional religion’s dogmas and moral requirements shorn away.” 

Pause here, please.  Douthat himself pauses on the part about “moral requirements shorn away.”  It should give us pause too. 

Yes, build-your-own-theology-types are shearing moral requirements from their generalized religiousness.  But they are not alone.  Americans affiliated with specific faith traditions, whether liberal or conservative, seem to be following the same trend.  Douthat complains that religious people of all stripes are showing a distinct preference for a God “who’s too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, how much money they’re making or how many times they’ve been married.” 

Hmmm.  Not sure what Douthat means here because large incomes and numerous divorces aren’t necessarily moral no-nos. Most likely he’s wagging his finger at Americans whose God doesn’t raise a peep at HOW they make their money or HOW they spend it (see Post #22 “How good are we without God?”).  He’s probably wagging his finger at Americans whose God doesn’t raise a peep even when children are involved in a divorce.

Christians, Douthat says (and here, his meaning is quite clear), are drawn to “a Jesus who’s a thoroughly modern sort of messiah—sexy, worldly, and Goddess-worshipping, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity.” 

Hyperbolic language and claims aside, does Douthat have a point? 

Okay, so polls show that generalized-religiousness Americans are shearing moral requirements from religious ones.  But why are we doing so?

One answer:  we’re done with religions or Gods that ask us to reflect on the harm we may have caused.  These religions or Gods have too often made us feel like we’re bad people and we deserve to go to hell.

Another answer:  many of us are quasi-universalists–any God worthy of that name loves us and is simply too good to condemn us.  We’ve removed God from the judge’s bench in the sky.  The all-about-love God, the one to whom we’re willing to pray, no longer sits in judgment of us.  God loves us, unconditionally.  

And since God loves us, unconditionally, God loves us regardless of how much money we earn (or how we made it and what we do with it) or how many times we’ve been married (even if our kids end up with exponentially-more-difficult lives).

So, is the unconditional-love God really the kind of God we want?  Even a liberal Jewish theologian like Martin Buber, who made a principled decision not to attend worship services, imagined that the soul, after death, would be reunited with God (or not) based on the quality of our deeds.  The Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant, no lover of worship services, imagined the afterlife as an opportunity to encounter more situations requiring moral choices; in this way we would get all the time we needed to hone our willingness to do the right thing for the right reasons. 

What would Buber or Kant think of a “thoroughly modern” God who is “too busy validating” our particular version of the American dream to care about our moral decisions?

And you, what do you think?  Are you troubled by the current trend to triage moral requirements from religiousness (whether yours is a generalized religiousness or a specific-faith-tradition religiousness)?

Next week’s post will take up this issue again and explore the creative approach of the mystical theologian, Julian of Norwich.

References:   Ross Douthat, “Dan Brown’s America” in The New York Times online edition,18 May 2009.

#21 Love like the whip used to start a top

05 Tuesday May 2009

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

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dreamstime_3200609Those who turn over part of their day to spiritual exercises know that a process like the four-step lectio divina process takes dedication and practice.  Without a doubt, the more transcendent the God, the harder it is to reach that God.  Because smart readers want to know, and there were smart readers during the late medieval ages (the golden age of mysticism), a whole host of spiritual ‘how-to’ guides were written and circulated.  Their purpose?  Not much different from today’s–to offer helpful tips to monastics and devout lay-people trying to make a connection with an invisible, unknowable God through ascetic devotions. 

One such manual was written by a Spaniard called Francisco de Osuna in the early 1500’s.  A Franciscan monk whose life was dedicated to prayer, he not only meditated on the passion of Christ but he also practiced what he called ‘recollection.’  This term doesn’t mean ‘to remember,’ but rather to collect one’s self again and again—the way we use the word when we say something like:  “she’s always so calm and collected!”  For Osuna, becoming spiritually ‘collected’ was best achieved through a process of prayer designed to go deeper into one’s self rather than designed to turn outward to ‘mere word and reading’ (a dig at lectio divina?).  Perfect recollection “is a moderation and serenity of the soul that is as quiet as if becalmed and purified and disciplined in harmony within.”  Osuna wanted nothing less than to achieve a state of nearly-permanent recollection, or of alertness and receptivity to God.

Osuna’s recollection demands both mental concentration and active directing of the mind, but the pay-off of such hard work (so he claimed) is making friendship and communion with God possible—a friendship he described as “more sure and more intimate than ever existed between brothers or even between mother and child.”   

He wrote several books but the Third Spiritual Alphabet is the ‘how-to’ guide for recollection.  A ‘spiritual alphabet’ will strike some as strange.  Osuna decided to organize his maxims and treatises according to the letters (and the Spanish tilde) of the alphabet as an act of humility.  In his words, “We must become as little children, learning our ABC’s of spirituality.” 

Osuna’s alphabet proceeds logically, describing the process one follows as one ascends from the lower stages of recollection to the higher.  One is to move through the three major forms of prayer, from lowest to highest:

  1. vocal prayer (active)
  2. prayer of the heart (active)
  3. mental or spiritual prayer (passive)

Realizing that distractions and run-away thoughts can plague even the most experienced re-collector, Osuna recommends disciplining the soul gently and lovingly.  The exercise of recollection, he says, ‘is not achieved by force but by skill’ and ‘nothing is more skillful than love, which should be like the whip used to start a top so it will spin again and always turn without falling over.”

Osuna also warned that, especially at first, we must be ready to dedicate lots of time and effort (he recommended 2 hours per day!) to practicing spiritual prayer.  If we persevered, he promised that the day would come when we would realize that the highest stage, spiritual prayer, “is most certainly worth more than an entire year in vocal prayer.” 

Recollection requires that we learn to calm and quiet the understanding.  Since God (or at least the God recollection is designed to reach) is beyond the capacity of ordinary thought to comprehend, we cannot approach God via ordinary thought.  Instead, we must achieve the nearly-impossible feat (especially for the novice) of directing all of our spiritual attention to God.  If we pull this off, then “In the darkness of unknowing the soul feels reassured by the light of spiritual consolations, when it feels the stirring of joy in the soul as a result.”

To critics of spiritual consolations or to those who practice them for no other reason than to tap into the happiness-center of the brain (the left frontal cortex), Osuna would have countered:  as “long as we do not desire them for our own sake but for the sake of loving God, then they are entirely appropriate.”

So, if you’re one of those lucky people with a couple of hours a day to spare, then by all means, try Osuna-style recollection. Whether your God is utterly transcendent or not, no one ever promised exercise would be easy, not even the spiritual kind.

Reference:  Francisco de Osuna, The Third Spiritual Alphabet, trans. by Mary Giles (New York:  Paulist Press, 1981), 7, 22-23, 386-7.

#19 Theology is to spirituality what honeycomb is to honey

20 Monday Apr 2009

Posted by in God, Philosophy of Religion, Religion, Spirituality, Theology

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For some, spirituality trumps theology any old day.  For those who call themselves ‘spiritual’, the word ‘theologian’ brings to mind self-styled intellectuals who have stepped into a self-made ivory tower from which they engage in a fruitless search for knowledge of God.  Too bad these theologians look for God in abstract commentaries written by other bookish-types rather than in the vibrant, pulsing life so obviously going on around them (if only they’d look up from their books!).  The stereotypical theologian has a clear preference for the subtleties of his or her own imagination (theory) rather than for doing useful works among ordinary folk (praxis).  He or she relies on reason and distrusts feelings.  A sad head-shake for these poor theologians is appropriate right now—if you’re ‘spiritual’ that is.

Unlike theology, spirituality (the ‘spirituals’ explain) is interested in love and personal experience.  The reasons of the heart are closer to God, they say, than the reasons of the head.  Spirituality trusts love and distrusts logical arguments.  And anyway, the best ideas are the ones that help people, the more directly the better.

Although the tug-of-war between theology and spirituality may seem like a contemporary phenomenon (the word spirituality is an 18th century invention), the same struggle took place in Western Europe as early as the Middle Ages.  Elected Chancellor of the University of Paris in 1395, Jean Gerson, criticized theologians for lacking in common sense and failing to base their study in love.  That didn’t stop him from also making the case that as long as they didn’t ignore the world, they had valuable contributions to make.  He summed up the situation with this helpful analogy:  Just like viscous honey needs a honeycomb, spirituality needs theology.  Just like honey needs the structure of the honeycomb, spirituality needs to be structured by a thoughtful and organized mind.  On the flip side, theology needs to be filled by spirituality because “the ideas of the mind must also warm the heart and lead to activity in the world.”  Gerson tried to unify spirituality with theology while preserving the integrity of both.

Gerson’s analogy illustrates the fact that spirituality without theology is a puddle of sweet goo; it can’t be handed over (except in extremely messy form) to other people or to the next generation.  Likewise, theology without spirituality is a lovely structure made of bland wax most people don’t want to eat.   

The Renaissance humanist, Pico della Mirandola, agreed, pointing out that although “we can live without language, although not well, but we cannot live at all without the mind. “  For him, the person who is untouched by poems and novels and other people’s stories may not be humane, but the person who is untouched by logical inquiry and understanding is no longer a human being.  Sounds harsh, maybe.  But Mirandola was on to something. 

We can’t be spiritual in a generic way.  Our spirituality is tied to our beliefs about the human being, about ethics, about meaning, about God.  To understand what those beliefs are takes more than a contemplative practice; it requires mindful reflection.  Questions like “does God care about me?,” and “what did God mean by the command to love one’s neighbor?” call out for our attention.  They call out for us to try to answer them, at least provisionally, by studying alone, or in groups, or in conversation with great thinkers through their books.  Theologians ponder the most fundamental of the fundamental questions about the human and the divine.  At times, these questions may appear overly subtle and specific but that’s going to the case any time answers are being pursued in the most serious way.  And besides, to learn to love, we need not give up logic; to lead a life of simplicity and good deeds, we need not trump every question put forth by the intellect . 

Spoken like a true theologian, don’t you think?   

HNFFT:  Must we choose between spirituality and theology?  Or can the two be integrated?  

Reference:  Steven Ozment, “The Spiritual Traditions” in The Age of Reform 1250-1550:  An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe, 73-134 (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1980). 

#18 God and the Devil duke it out in the john

14 Tuesday Apr 2009

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

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dreamstime_2557163WC.  Water Closet.  Privy.  Crapper.  Must stripped-down theology sink to the level of the toilet?  But this is precisely where the ‘father’ of Protestant Christianity, Martin Luther (1483-1546), claimed he had been given his most important of realizations. Luther didn’t stop at the marketplace when talking about the presence of God (and the Devil).  If God is present—everywhere—then God must be present in the privy! 

Medievals knew what we, in developed countries, have forgotten thanks to improvements in sanitation.  Because contemporary plumbing has created a near-perfect divide between us and our excrement, if we are to inhabit Luther’s mental space (okay, scatological space), we have to turn to the closest analogy most of us have—the so-called honey-pots at state fairs and fourth of July celebrations.  The state-fair WC isn’t just any old privy, but the most disgusting, degrading, and degraded places that many of us are likely to visit.  The state-fair WC is that space where we have no choice but to come ‘face to face’ (or nose to nose) with s–t, both as biological product and as existential condition.

So what’s with God and the Devil in the WC?  Here’s the scoop, as compactly as possible.  Martin Luther, the prophet of ‘salvation by faith alone’, wanted nothing less than to overturn our genteel, conscience-oriented morality.  Most of us trust our consciences to clue us in on what’s right and what’s wrong.  We rely on our inner voice to tell us what to do.  And then, if sacrifice is required, we struggle to satisfy that voice’s demands.  This describes the conventional morality in Luther’s day—and it remains the conventional morality in ours.

Following that line of thinking, we would conclude that if the God of conventional morality wanted to make us responsible for our wrongdoings in the after-life (a reasonable proposition), such a God would be something of a gentle, accountant type of God.  We would reach the pearly gates of heaven and stand quietly in front of a plain table while God checks a ledger for our name.  Once God finds the entry chronicling our lives, God would carefully weigh what, if any, punishments would be the best match for our bad choices and our lapses (if we’re lucky, God overlooks the majority of these).  Indeed, a liberal Unitarian Christian like William Ellery Channing taught ‘salvation through character,’ and although he believed God was too good to condemn human beings to eternal hell, he still believed that God required wrongdoers to do some kind of penance before they were admitted into God’s presence.  This is an eminently rational belief—God’s punishment will fit the crime, which is why so many people hold onto it.  Tenaciously.

But, for Luther, the issue was not a question of morality versus immorality, but of God versus the Devil.  Luther had concluded (based on his intensive study of Scripture) that God saves us whether we’ve made right choices or not.  All we need to do in order to be saved is have faith that God will save us.  Period.  No requirement for good behavior.  God has promised to save us; we need only believe in this promise and we are saved.  No ifs, ands or buts.  The devil is that voice in our heads (you’re hearing it, right now, aren’t you?) that says—nope.  I don’t believe God would give us such a sweet deal.  Saved no matter what?  Even child molesters who refuse to change?  Come on.  What kind of nonsense is that?  Only someone who is completely irrational could believe such a thing. 

You’ve got the picture though.  For Luther, when we’re sitting on the loo doing our thing, God stands on one side with a promise of salvation (saying all you have to do is believe in my promise), and the Devil stands on the other side (saying, don’t you believe God’s promise, it’s too good to be true).  The Devil is the one who sounds rational—he insists on what we already know–there’s some kind of hitch, some kind of small print God’s not telling us about. 

A contemporary of William Ellery Channing, the Universalist minister, Hosea Ballou, challenged the view of people like us.  In an article, “Salvation Irrespective of Character,” he argued that God was like a Father who loves all of His children whether they are saints or sinners:  “Your child has fallen into the mire, and its body and its garments are defiled.  You cleanse it and array it in clean robes.  The query is, Do you love your child because you have washed it?  Or, did you wash it because you loved it?

Most of us are adept at keeping our minds and hands busy but a visit to the crapper offers a chance to pause.  If, in the toilet, we reflect on our lives for just a few seconds, we come face to face with the degraded choices we’re being asked to make, and with the degrading choices we’ve already made.  And that’s when, if we’re honest, we call into question our ability to choose the right thing and our ability to do it.  We’ll wonder whether our consciences can reliably discern what’s right from wrong.  And we’ll wonder whether we have the self-discipline to do what’s right.  God overlooks all these difficulties, Luther teaches.  Sitting in the privy, this hard truth was revealed to him.  In the privy, he realized that, more often than not, he was powerless.  He also realized that, even here, in this disgusting, unsanitary place, God came to his aid. 

No bull.  For Luther, the crapper is a place of faith.  He insisted that God is there.  The devil too.  And God wins (and we win) if we trust in God’s promise. 

Can you?  And what about that promise?  Do you buy it?

Reference:  Heiko A. Oberman, “The Devil and the Cloaca,” in Luther:  Man between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1989), 151-7.

#17 Out with the old God, in with the new

06 Monday Apr 2009

Posted by in God, Philosophy of Religion, Religion, Religious Philosophy, Theological Ethics, Theology

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dreamstime_8393599For Jews, Passover is supposed to be historically real.  The Haggadah (the text that sets the order of the Passover meal) commands Jews to consider themselves to have gone forth in exodus from Egypt.  The Haggadah emphasizes this absolute demand lest Jews be tempted to reduce it to the level of a metaphor.  “The authority is clear,” writes the Jewish theologian, Arthur A. Cohen (1928-1986).  Each Jew is to tell him or herself, “I was really, even if not literally, present in Egypt and really, if not literally, present at Sinai.  God contemplated my virtual presence then, thirty-odd centuries ago.”

At the very least, Cohen’s description of Passover signals to non-Jews that even if they celebrate something they call Passover, set a table no Orthodox rabbi could fault, prepare a kosher and hametz-free meal, and say all the right prayers from a Jewish Haggadah, their Passover is NOT a Jewish Passover.  Only Jews can comply with the absolute demand to go forth in exodus from Egypt.  Jews remain the chosen people no less today then when they were the people chosen by the Nazis for termination.  Cohen tells us, “the death camps ended forever one argument of history—whether [the Jews] are the chosen people.”  Chosen for departure from Egypt or chosen for the death chambers, “they are chosen, unmistakably, extremely, utterly.”  Certainly, others are able to contemplate this history. For the Christian and for the non-Jewish secular opponent of racism, the exodus is a paradigm of liberation from slavery, and the death camps are a paradigm of human brutality.  But the simple fact remains that they cannot share these historical events with Jews.

In the post-holocaust era, many ask (and if they don’t, they should!) how God could have witnessed the holocaust and remained silent.  The question persists, and rightfully so:  why was God silent—here, silence means “inaction, passivity.” But silence can also mean, at its worst and most extreme, utter and absolute indifference. What kind of God, worthy of the name, God, remains indifferent?  What kind of God stays silent “when speech would terrify and stay the fall of the uplifted arm?”  As millions of Jews were murdered in Europe, where was the God who had not hesitated to use miracles to liberate them from Egypt?  Where was the “Interruptive miracle, that the sea open and the army of the enemy be consumed?”  Unacceptable, of course, are any claims that the holocaust figured in God’s providential plan. 

For Cohen, the “interruptive model” of God is an ancient model of God.  This ancient model treats God as a “respondent;” God responds to situations of extreme hardship.  Under this model, the greater our need for God, the greater the certainty God will assist us.  Under this model, we assume that “the world is never independent of God.”  While Cohen agrees that the interruptive model of God undermines our freedom to do evil, he worries that it also undermines our freedom to do good.  If we could count on God to intervene, what would prevent us from slipping into moral passivity and quietism?  If we could count on God to intervene, what would prevent us from abandoning the hard work of becoming more moral people?  What would prevent us from shirking the sacrifices we’re called to make to help others have better lives? 

What we need, Cohen concludes, is not the interruptive God who is “the strategist of our particularities or of our historical condition.”  What we need is a new model of God.

Not content just to call for a new model, Cohen proposes one.  For him, God is not the cause of historical events.  God does not alter history.  But neither is God “wholly other and indifferent to the historical.”  Cohen understands “divine life” to be a “filament within the historical”–a filament of something like tungsten (tungsten is the metal used in electric light bulbs; when heated by electricity, the tungsten filament becomes incandescent and causes the bulb to glow).  As a filament, the divine element of the historical is a fragile conductor always intimately linked to the historical—its presence secures the significance of events while remaining separate from them.  Although we know that the filament exists in history and that it’s in continuous community with us, we don’t know its exact location.  Because we don’t know its exact location, we can’t manipulate it for our own purposes.  Ever elusive, God remains God.  This elusiveness preserves the historical as the realm where human beings are free to act.  This elusiveness also means that, at all times, even in extreme situations, it’s up to human beings, not God, to provide the current to heat the tungsten—it is we who either make the filament incandescent or burn it out.

Yes, the Passover Haggadah commands the Jew to consider him or her-self to have gone forth in exodus, liberated by the interruptive God.  But Cohen argues that God is “not ever interruptive even were the sea to part and close or the earth of Auschwitz to open and the murderers to fall in.”  God is not the “strategist” of our particular situations or of the particular age in which we live.  Instead, God (for Cohen) is the mystery of our future possibilities.  If we begin to see God less as the God who interferes whenever interference is welcome (i.e. when it accords with our needs) and more as the immensity whose reality prefigured our existence and whose fullness and unfolding are the hope for the future, then, Cohen promises, “we shall have won a sense of God whom we may love and honor.”  We shall have won a sense of God whom “we no longer fear and from whom we no longer demand.”  We shall have won a sense of God who is, for Cohen, the actual God.

HNFFT:  Is your model of God an interruptive model?  If so, as someone living in the post-holocaust era, how do you make sense of God’s silence?  How does the interruptive model impact your freedom?  Does Cohen’s filament model work better for you?  If yes, why?  If no, why not?

Reference:  Arthur A. Cohen, The Tremendum:  A Theological Interpretation of the Holocaust (New York:  Crossroad, 1981), 11, 23, 92-7.