i have been on a journey of late, a spiritual journey (a tired but effective analogy) which has led seemingly irrevocably toward a complete loss of faith in the god. at least, faith as i used to know it. yes, i went to uni. and, as you might imagine, i have been reading a spot of marx, a smattering of nietzsche, and, by a kind of osmosis, a drip-feed of freud. such writers have taken me, like many others, far beyond the elastic limit, if you like, of our unexamined faith, and have changed us for good - for better or worse. they prompted many other readings, chosen for their openness to the kind of criticisms that such masters levelled at faith and christianity in general. among these secondary authors who have been of particular help to me, are john caputo and peter rollins. their work builds upon the criticisms offered, and realises in them something, perhaps, divinely inspired. this something is the realisation that, down through the last two millenia, christian faith has been encumbered with various ideas that had more in common with specific cultural, historical contexts than with the original experience people had of christ. to generalise, the masters of suspicion, as they are now known, were often criticising the cultural encrustations of christian faith as they knew it, rather than christ, or god as such.
it is to this context that rollins and caputo now speak.
yes, god, in a certain evangelical sense is dead; but g_d, ineffable and transcendent, can never die. god, according to rollins and caputo, has been rediscovered as ultimately beyond the reach of any of the interpretations or ideas humans seek to colonize her/him/it with. in On Religion, caputo raises again the augustinian riddle of whether god is love, or love is god. argumentation aside, i find this question raises a tension with which i am very comfortable. it wonders whether the god/gods we worship are not in fact a kind of projection by human beings of their highest goal, that of love. however, it also thinks/hopes that god may well be a real intelligent being, 'out there', somewhere in space/time/spirit. it desires to keep this tension without faltering. for me personally (not to speak against others who may have an unmediated direct revelation), i am unable to make any definitive claims about the characteristics of the person of god; however, time and again i have experiences that point to the existence of such a being. i am also only too aware of the dangers of the 'dogmatists error', both within the churches i have attended, and in the outworking of religious beliefs on the societal level. the conundrum which caputo raises necessitates that all religious belief be held tentatively, and seen as provisional, failed attempts to interpret our experience of the divine adequately.
10 comments:
God is dead? Would it be fair to say that as we grow in our understanding of what we believe God/god to be (or indeed as we know less and less) that each transient point of newfound enlightenment, the old knowledge that has been replaced translates to God dying nd being rediscovered - or is it simply that our understanding tranforms?
hey dude. for me its probably more the latter - a transformation of understanding. by saying god is dead (quoting Nietzsche) i'm making reference to the death (or loss of faith in, particularly due to the critique of the 'masters of suspicion' - Nietzsche, Freud and Marx, but many others too) of the mainstream western paradigm of christian thought. for nietzsche, god really had ceased to exist - he felt he'd uncovered the reason religion developed in the first place, and he found it to be based, not on genuine divine revelation, but purely on ressentment owing to social inequity (long story!). for me, god has in reality been untouched by this critique, but my understanding of her has undergone a complete paradigm shift. however as a result, i now believe we cannot ever access god in any direct way. my understanding of god is framed by mystery, transcendence, unknowability and a kind of faith inspired doubt.
Great post!
Paul praised the Thessalonians for turning from idols to serve the living God. I think it's equally possible for "Christian" churches to have the same need to turn from idols. Too often, we've made "God" the apotheosis of our own longings and aspirations. An appeal to such a God in a debate is a way of saying that our own goals and self-interests cannot be compromised.
But the unnameable Yahweh consistently confounds such God-talkers by choosing to manifest himself in the presence (and in Jesus' case the person) of the other, the outcast - the individual whom the power agenda is often designed to isolate.
hi david, thanks for your comments. erudite as per usual!
the issue of religion as legitimation for various oppressive social relations seems to have been something the 'masters of suspicion' had particular problem with (marx esp). and i agree wholeheartedly that there is much at the heart of christianity that stands in complete opposition to this, stuff that perhaps has been overlooked/glossed over.
i read this today (i paraphrase):
Because of his itinerant lifestyle, Chist relied upon the hospitality of others. The Jesus Body (Jesus and his followers) constructed itself as a permanent stranger in a world where to be a stranger was to be at risk of social or physical rejection ... Jesus incarnated his ministry outside of and therefore against, the social system which created 'strangers', by becoming a stranger himself ... By accepting the hospitality of the wicked or outcast (eg. Women in general, Mary his mother, the troup of wondering female disciples (Lk8.1-3), the syrophoenician woman (mk7.24-30) etc etc) Jesus in his own body preaches the way that yahweh operates to save, to bring in his reign, namely through inclusion rather than exclusion, through extravagant, reckless generosity in which all debts are concelled.' (from Intro. Body theology, Isherwood and Stuart)
my feeling on religion at the minute (and i reserve the right to change my opinion!) is that we ought to cling to this sense of advocacy for the oppressed, a powerless discourse, that safegaurds religion from being used as a tool for exclusion, oppression, the negation of the full humanity of all people, and the abuse of the environment.
hence in a very real sense, i am actually more comfortable at the minute with being known as an atheist. define me as such if you like. however, truthfully, i am also a theist (as i think i show, above), and a christian one at that. peter rollins talks about this when he talks of theism and atheism as specific to local, contextual understandings of god. so i am an atheist in the sense marx was (i say tentatively, not being a marxian scholar!), but a theist in another, evolving kind of way, that is quite specific to who i am in the context in which i live and have my being.
hmmm. thanks for posting. its good to chat.
i welcome the mystery.
i welcome the ideas expressed of love and god being interchangeable and challenged to question if i have defined God by my longings and highest ideals..
i welcome in for a long engaged conversation the example of and expression of God in Christ..advocating for the oppressed because i cannot but, loving because it is all i can do, recognising and weeping over being the oppressed and the oppressor..
in appreciation
for your comments wendy. come back soon!
hey man, interesting! If we cannot access God in any direct way, then is there access and what is the point/neccessity?
hey Ian, sorry its taken me a while to respond.
Access to god. pete rollins has a very helpful analogy, which i may have actually written about in the original post: our relationship to god can be understood as similar to the relationship between a baby and its parent. the baby has no real grasp of the real world, as the parent understands it, nor can the baby know the mind of the parent. so it is with us and god. for me this seems useful, because I am really tired of hearing a load of BS about people knowing the mind of god, and speaking for "him". what we do with that attitude is reduce god to our subject - something can examine (and examine empirically at that - what with systematic theology, end times predictions from the biblical apocalyptic traditions etc). we reduce god to an idol - a set of ideas, or representations, which in reality are often no more than expressions of subcultural context, personal gripes/interests/biases.
having said all that, i still believe in the usefulness of theology, thinking, and speaking about god. however, it must all be done with an awareness of the provisionality of everything.
the point of trying to access god. for me its not so much about accessing god, but rather living with the reality of the world as i experience it. that includes an awareness of the unknowability of the universe, and its inherent openness; my spiritual side; the absolute proliferation of religion in western and non-western societies, and a thirst that many of us experience for something of more depth, substance and grandeur than we normally experience in life. these realities keep me 'religious'.
i really don't understand the world i live in. i really don't think i have any answers, but all of this - the blog, my degree, conversations etc etc - is part of a big effort to get to grips with, to try to discover and articulate something that scratches my itches.
thanks for reading.
you beautiful people. it's late at night and im lost. aaron, your post is food, and everyone, your responses are invigorating and liberating. some days i hesitate to use the word 'god', so unsatisfied and even disgusted i am by the thought of defining this mystery with a three letter word that spells 'dog' backwards. yet i must be patient with words. words unite us. there is a place for trying to define something, but i wish all conversations came with a sub clause 'please note, these words are superficial and only express the outer layer of my deepest thought/being'. words are frustratingly just that - words. some days they seem such a feeble tool. i guess thats where the 'whole' must make an entry. the whole of me, the whole of you, the whole of me and you together. the whole of me and you and that bird that just flew by the window and the kid that just screamed...we are integrely (sp?) connected...and all of our simply 'being', is 'god' or expresses god more than words ever can...
we find 'god' together i guess.
....love, love - shazza
hope its ok to contribute(feel free to delete ..won't be offended) .was just flicking around on various links to bloggs and came across your 'searchings'. My first thought was to write 'Nietzsche, Marx is dead' -God.............. and that dog is god backwards cos its an english word. It would be fun to find out what the Name for the Diety in other languages spelt backwards would be but that would assume I could read another language!!. Maybe I am missing the point or not understanding enough. I just want that relationship with the God that I understand from the Bible and to be like the Jesus I read in the Bible and find the power to do that thru the Holy Spirit cos I've not found any other way as yet. I get tired of religion and the way every one who has a faith gets all lumped to gether. I guess I learn more experientially than academically and always try to focus from a relational point of view may be this would help .............? thanks for your time
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