Part 4: That Art Thou pt.2

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Part Two:  Speculative Observations

So where does all of that leave my conception of God?  To reiterate, I am still sketching my thoughts in very light pencil, so please don’t mistake my speculation for personal belief just yet.  All of these ideas are still quite new to me and require time to settle and face skeptical inquiry. I can say my studies have led me to reject of the Dualistic conception of God (and reality).  I suspect that neither “matter” nor “spirit” are as imagined, and perhaps they are better understood as two aspects of the same underlying reality. How does that idea apply to the Christian conception of God?  In Part 3, I discussed some of the Biblical characterizations that mystify or trouble me, so here I won’t address scriptural quotation so much as the logical implications of Christian theological positions, as I see them.  

Perhaps the most striking contradiction that I encounter is the paradox of a Personal God that is simultaneously Infinite.  I think this is largely recognized as a mystery within Christianity, and it seems like a theological posture that is attempting to appease all sides; welding together the personal God of Judaism with the Infinite conception of God from Plotinus.  I find the marriage incongruent.  The word “infinite” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “extending indefinitely”, or “subject to no limitation.” He is Infinite everything: omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal.  Yet God is “personal,” and the term “personal” indicates identifiable traits, which we find in most every description of God in Christianity. God is Good. He is Just.  (He is a He). He is Mighty. He is Everlasting. He is Loving. So God is all the good and power and knowledge and love anyone could ever hope for. But aren’t all those distinctions also limitations?  How is a good God equally bad? How is a mighty God also weak? How can God have experiential omniscience if incapable of sin or error? I have heard the argument made that those negative traits may be considered the absence of God, as darkness is the absence of light.  I would suggest neither exists without the other; they are relational terms. Good means nothing without a contrasting characteristic. If bad does not exist, neither can good. One requires the other. Light is relative to dark. Hot is relative to cold. Large is relative to small.  So forth. By describing God as possessing only one side of characteristics that are defined in relation to their opposites, I think it logically invalidates the claim of an “Omni” God. Perhaps it’s just a semantic game and not such a big loss: God can be bigger than our universe and not be omnipresent, more powerful than anything in our universe and not omnipotent, more aware than anything in our universe and not omniscient.  It is just a matter of scale. Our universe may be the functional equivalent of an atom in a larger universe. Who knows. But I would contend that for God to be omnipresent and omniscient, God must by definition be pantheistic or panentheistic. It seems to me that there must be an equivalence within God for every gluon, boson, lepton, electromagnetic wave, rock, tree, and person. To be omnipresent and omniscient, at least a part of God must be identical with the Universe.  It seems to me that the Universe is a part of God, or God is not Omni. The personal and the infinite cannot coexist in my estimation. At least not as the terms are defined in English (though I recognize that language itself may be the root problem).

I think the most essential characteristic of God as defined in Western Monotheism and Christianity is moral perfection.  God is understood to be sinless, and even incapable of coexisting with sin. In Christianity, it is taught that God requires a sacrifice to atone for sin.  But why does God require a sacrifice to atone for sin?  And why a blood sacrifice? A variety of places in the Bible mention that blood is indeed required to atone for sin, but it seems to be given as an a priori truth in modern Christian theology.  Why? Is there a higher law to which God is accountable?   Is the atonement necessitated by the nature of God Himself and if so, how could an Infinite nature have necessary limitations? If not compelled by a higher order or a limitation in His nature, why would God choose to make blood the atonement?  Given that God proceeds to sacrifice His son/self to pay this requirement of blood as atonement, it is an idea that defies my understanding. “Judgement day”, once an object of genuine apprehension for me, now strikes me nonsensical, and an insult to the transcendency that is inherent to the idea of God.  It places God in the role of “the big guy upstairs”, looking down and keeping score. Placing God in the role of supreme judge seems to be an extension of assigning human roles to God. Of late, I have stumbled upon the writings of 20th century Christian theologian Paul Tillich, who gives voice to many of my intuitions in a most articulate manner.  In Dynamics of Faith, he writes, ““Holy” has become identified with moral perfection, especially in some Protestant groups. The historical causes of this distortion give a new insight into the nature of holiness and of faith. Originally, the holy has meant what is apart from the ordinary realm of things and experiences. It is separated from the world of finite relations.”  He continues later, “The holy can appear as creative and as destructive. Its fascinating element can be both creative and destructive.  This ambiguity, of which we still find traces in the Old Testament, is reflected in the ritual or quasi-ritual activities of religions and quasi religions (sacrifices of others or one’s bodily or mental self) which are strongly ambiguous. One can call this ambiguity divine-demonic, whereby the divine is characterized by the victory of the creative over the destructive possibility of the holy, and the demonic is characterized by the victory of the destructive over the creative possibility of the holy. In this situation, which is most profoundly understood in the prophetic religion of the Old Testament, a fight has been waged against the demonic-destructive element in the holy. And this fight was so successful that the concept of the holy was changed. Holiness becomes justice and truth. It is creative and not destructive. The true sacrifice is obedience to the law. This is the line of thought which finally led to the identification of holiness with moral perfection. But when this point is reached, holiness loses its meaning as the “separated,” the “transcending,” the “fascinating and terrifying,” the “entirely other.” All this is gone, and the holy has become the morally good and the logically true. It has ceased to be the holy in the genuine sense of the word.”  He continues, “Monotheism also falls under the criticism of the myth. It needs, as one says today, “demythologization.” This word has been used in connection with the elaboration of the mythical elements in stories and symbols of the Bible, both of the Old and the New Testaments—stories like those of the Paradise, of the fall of Adam, of the great Flood, of the Exodus from Egypt, of the virgin birth of the Messiah, of many of his miracles, of his resurrection and ascension, of his expected return as the judge of the universe. In short, all the stories in which divine-human interactions are told are considered as mythological in character, and objects of demythologization. …The resistance against demythologization expresses itself in “literalism.” The symbols and myths are understood in their immediate meaning. The material, taken from nature and history, is used in its proper sense. The character of the symbol to point beyond itself to something else is disregarded. Creation is taken as a magic act which happened once upon a time. The fall of Adam is localized on a special geographical point and attributed to a human individual. The virgin birth of the Messiah is understood in biological terms, resurrection and ascension as physical events, the second coming of the Christ as a telluric, or cosmic, catastrophe. The presupposition of such literalism is that God is a being, acting in time and space, dwelling in a special place, affecting the course of events and being affected by them like any other being in the universe. Literalism deprives God of his ultimacy and, religiously speaking, of his majesty.”  I cannot better express the incongruity I find between the transcendency of an infinite God and the characteristics ascribed to the personal God in much of evangelical Christian theology.

Much of what I have written to date has been skeptical in nature: what I disbelieve and why.  It is time for me to tentatively attempt to construct some ideas that I find useful. Hopefully it goes without saying that I don’t regard the views stated here as my own final position in any sense.  I hope and assume my insight and understanding will be more mature a year from now. I only know that I find these ideas more intellectually, emotionally and spiritually fulfilling than my previous views.  It is probably fairly apparent that I identify deeply with mystical writings found across religions. I find it interesting and appropriate that Eastern conceptions of God most often describe the Divine in terms of negation – what God is not – rather than affirmative terms of what God is.  This aligns with the transcendent concept of God as beyond particulars.  To be sure, this concept removes the “personal” aspect of God.  In what way is a picture of “nothingness” more useful than a picture of “everything”?  When I think of a God who is “everything”, I think of an infinite array of items and ideas, everything that exists.  Every distinct item is contained in this array, but it is still items distinctly conceived. I am essentially summing up particulars.  I would contend that a truly infinite God is perhaps better understood as completely transcending particulars. The Western conception of paradise or heaven reflects this preference for particulars, where heaven is imagined in tangible terms that involve conscious human perception: shapes, colors, textures, pleasure, so forth.  In stark contrast is the Buddhistic conception of “Nirvana”, which translates as “to blow out” or “extinguish.” It is the removal of attachments. Like the concept of a transcendent God, it paints a picture without particulars. Plotinus expressed it this way: “If we are to think positively of the One, there would be more truth in Silence.”  We cannot even say that it exists, since as Being itself, it is “not a thing but is distinct from all things.” Indeed, Plotinus explained, it “is Everything and Nothing; it can be none of the existing things, and yet it is all.” Such an idea suggests that the distinctions between particulars and apparent opposites are a product of human perspective and differentiation.    This conception of God as truly transcendent and without particulars brings within God both good and bad, light and dark, life and death, all of the dualities found in nature and experience and logical paradox. This idea is most clearly expressed in the Yin and Yang of Taoism, but the idea runs through all mystical writings. Once again I refer to Paul Tillich who addresses the concept from a Christian perspective.  He writes in Dynamics of Faith, “The interest of mystical faith is not to reject the concrete, sacramental ways of faith, but to go beyond them. Mystical faith is the end of a long way from the most concrete forms of faith to the point in which all concreteness disappears in the abyss of pure divinity. Mysticism is not irrational. Some of the greatest mystics in Europe and Asia were, at the same time, some of the greatest philosophers, outstanding in clarity, consistency and rationality. But they realized that the true content of faith in an ultimate concern can neither be identified with a piece of reality, as sacramental faith desires, nor be expressed in terms of a rational system. It is a matter of ecstatic experience, and one can only speak of the ultimate in a language which at the same time denies the possibility of speaking about it. This is the only way in which mystical faith can express itself.”

The great benefit of seeing God in the light of transcendence – above particular theological doctrine – is that the barriers collapse that so often prevent Christianity from joining hands with fellow seekers and lovers of God from other religions.  If God is in all and we are all in God, we are brothers and sisters already. We love our enemy and our neighbor as ourselves because we are partners in the same larger whole. In this light, the sense of “self” is seen as something of an illusion. I find this message in both the teachings of Jesus and those of the East.  Jesus teaches, “those who seek to save their life will lose it, but those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” The Katha Upanishad of Hinduism teaches, “Those wise ones who see that the consciousness within themselves is the same consciousness within all conscious beings, attain eternal peace.”  The teaching that “self” interest is not only misdirected but an altogether inaccurate perception of reality is most explicit in Zen Buddhism. Thomas Hoover succinctly sums up The Zen Experience by asserting, “in Zen the distinction between oneself and the world was the first thing to be dissolved. Consequently, mere self-love is impossible; it resolves naturally into a love of all things. Stated in this way, Zen teachings become, in a twinkling, a profound moral philosophy. Where there is no distinction between the universe and ourselves, the very concept of the ego is inappropriate. We cannot think of ourselves without simultaneously thinking of others. Zen is not, therefore, an obsession with the self, but rather an obsession with the universe, with all things—from nature to the social betterment of all. “

I think Christianity has been led away from universal love and into a paradigm of exclusive truth by dogmatic assertions like: our individual existences are eternal, and that the primary purpose of of Jesus Christ was sacrificial atonement for mankind’s sins.  Paul Tillich writes, “The exclusive monotheism of the prophets, the struggle against the limited gods of paganism, the message of universal justice in the Old and of universal grace in the New Testament—all this made Judaism, Islam and Christianity intolerant of any kind of idolatry. These religions of justice, history and the expectation of the end could not accept the mystical tolerance of India. They are intolerant and can become fanatical and idolatrous. This is the difference between the exclusive monotheism of the prophets and the transcendent monotheism of the mystics.”  To me, the primary Christian message as set forth by Christ is love, not salvation.  I believe the Church has made an ancillary description of our relation to God upon enlightenment – the sense of “salvation” – its primary objective, and done so at the expense of the primary command and example of Jesus – selfless love.  By dogmatically holding the Christian conception of God to be uniquely true, I believe Christianity has missed the broader message of Jesus. He loved sinners, cared for the sick, taught the ignorant. I do not believe he did this so they could reach a theological understanding and say a prayer.  I believe he sought to enlighten them about how to live, not necessarily what to believe (I will attempt to support this seemingly outlandish assertion in Part 5).  Jesus teaches, “whoever does the work of my Father is my brother and my sister.”  There are Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus who “do the work” of the Father by caring for the homeless, the helpless, the needy.  This is most simply expressed in “The Golden Rule”, which can be found in every religion and belief system.  Paul Tillich writes, “From this is derived the love of what is God’s, represented by both the neighbor and oneself. Therefore, it is the “fear of God” and the “love of Christ” which, in the whole Biblical literature, determines the behavior toward the other human beings. In Hinduism and Buddhism it is the faith in the ultimate One, from whom every being comes and to which it strives to return, that determines the participation in the other one. The consciousness of ultimate identity in the One makes identification with all beings possible and necessary. This is not the Biblical concept of love, which is person-centered, but it is love in the sense of the desire for reunion with that to which one belongs. In both types of faith, love and action are not commended as something external to faith (as it would be if faith were less than ultimate concern) but are elements of the concern itself. The separation of faith and love is always the consequence of a deterioration of religion.”  To me, salvation is synonymous with what Jesus called “the Kingdom of God.” I conceive of both as inner states of peace experienced in this earthly life as a byproduct of recognizing that the ego is an illusion, and attaining a state that the Apostle Paul described as “not I who lives, but Christ (God) who lives in me.”

In conceiving of God in a manner both transcendent and immanent, my current conception of God has lost the “personal” element that is essential to the mainstream Christian theology that I know of.  The “transcendent” conception of God seems more like “the Force” of Star Wars fame than the Father figure of traditional Christianity. To many Christians, such a conception is nothing short of heretical.  To many Christians, it may seem this impersonal conception of God is void of relationship, and perhaps ultimately void of meaning. However, I would suggest that the “non-personal” Transcendent conception of God can be experienced in a personal fashion as well.  In The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Mohandas Gandhi says,  “I write just as the Spirit moves me at the time of writing. I do not claim to know definitely that all conscious thought and action on my part is directed by the Spirit. But on an examination of the greatest steps that I have taken in my life, as also of those that may be regarded as the least, I think it will not be improper to say that all of them were directed by the Spirit.”  Here, the Hindu saint sounds no different than a Christian minister in describing a sense of relational guidance from the Holy Spirit. I suspect that a sense of relationship is inherent to the human perception of all interaction. I also think this sense of relationship with the Divine, this personal-feeling intimacy, is essential to all profound religious experience. William James writes in Varieties of Religious Experience, “A genuine first-hand religious experience… is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. The new church, in spite of whatever human goodness it may foster, can be henceforth counted on as a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious spirit, and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which in purer days it drew its own supply of inspiration. Unless, indeed, by adopting new movements of the spirit it can make capital out of them and use them for its selfish corporate designs.”  I believe God is found in the first-hand religious experience.  I suspect that experience is different for every person. To use the analogy of the multi-faceted crystal, we each see a different part of the same crystal.

In Part 5, I will attempt to construct a case for how I think the Transcendent view of God found in Eastern religions can be united with the teachings of Jesus and the Christian ethic, and why I think it is important and useful to do so.  From the perspective of an established Christian orthodoxy, what I am discussing may seem heretical.  I take solace in the words of theologian A.W. Tozer. My father expressed his high regard for The Pursuit of God, in which Tozer writes, “How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more seek Him.”  

It may well be that I am badly misguided.  If that is so, it will not be for a failure to earnestly seek.