Misconceptions About Religion

Andy Wright makes comments in response to "More on Extraordinary claims," I will answer his comments here because they are typical of certain atheist misconceptions that I have been trying to correct since I started on internet apologetics boards. The average atheist on the net seems to believe that religion is for feeble minded dullards who can't think, that's its effects are clearly proven to be very bad for both the individual and society, and that belief is receding into he mists of history. Not only are these ideas totally wrong, but they are the exact opposite of truth. Not only so, but that these things are totally false is clearly demonstrably provable with the best scientific evidence. Religion is actually very good for you, religious people are much better adjusted, by and large, than most atheists. Religious people are happier, they are less likely to commit crimes, if you except fundamentalists their marriages are better.

Wright was reacting to my statement that religion is normative for human experince, and the point of saying that was to show that belief is not an extraordinary claim. So let us keep that in mind, because most of Wrights arguments lose sight of this poin.

Andy Wright:

you say "religious belief is normative for human behavior. It is not merely "normal" but "normative" meaning it sets the standard. Belief is basic to human psyche, to our understanding of the good, of meaning in life, the ultimate limits of reality, the grounding of nature and being itself,"
this is not true. there have been and continue to be successful human societies where religion is not part of the society, where simply not knowing was acceptable.

This is clearly disproved by history. There has never been a single non religious society anyone where on earth. There have only been a handful of attempts to make societies that were non religious, and in not only did those cases fail, but they were the imposition of an ideology by an elite who imposed its will upon the masses.There has never been a single organic culture where the masses were just naturally not religious. Even in the Soviet union and china, where the only attempts to destroy the faith of the masses was imposed, it failed miserably. At the height of the cultural revolution in China when the government was the most anti-religious, the people were still 51% religious and Christianity made up a huge portion.

Wright again:

you seem to define religion as belief in a single higher power, yet among the societies that have religion, there have been as many societies that beleived in multiple spirits in a range from every single thing having a spirit to there being many extra powerful beings that you would call gods.

This is my true definition of religion, I've given it hundreds of times on message board all over the net and it is on my website in my credo where I clearly go over the all the beliefs I hold. I got this definition from Dr. Neil McFarlane in his lecture notes in his class on "religion in a Global perspective" at Perkins School of Theology (SMU). I think it was influenced by Dr Fredrick Strung ("string").


My definition of religion:

In my view Religion is an attept to identify a human problemic, that is the basic problematic nature at the heart of being human. Having identified it, reilgious traditions seek to resolve the problematic nature of human life by offering a transformative experince which allows one to transcend the difficulty and to be fulfilled or feel more human or be "saved." Religious traditions also usually seek to mediate this transformation through cerimony or some sort of theological orientation. These three things make up the nature of religion:

(a) identification of the problematic

(b) Transformative power to overcome the nature of the problematic

(c) a means of mediating this transformative power.

All religions offer these things, weather the problematic be seen as separation from nature, or imbalance with cosmic forces, re-birth through desire which leads to suffering, or moral sin in rebellion against God.

Transformations come in all sorts of packages too, they can be the big experince of born again Christianity (mediated through the "sinners prayer") or they can be the mystical experince, mediated through the mass, or enlightenment, mediated through mediation, mandala, mantra and other mediation aids, or what have you.

The reason for identifying with a particular religious tradition is because one feels that this particular tradition identifies the problematic better than others, and offers mediation in a more sure or certain or compelte way. One must go with the tradition with which one feels the strongest connection.


For me that is the Christian Tradition, primarily because I feel that the historical connection to Jesus of Nazareth, and the unique concept of Grace mark the Christian tradition as the best mediation of the Ultimate Transformative Experience. But more on that latter.

So your statement is quite false. I do not limit by view of religion to belief in a single "powerful being." In fact that view of what I believe is so far off, you clearly know nothing about my views. Obviously you are merely reacting to the label "Christian" and have not bothered to find out that Christianity is very diverse. I do not believe that God is a single powerful being! I do not believe that God is "A being." I believe that God is "being itself." That means God is the basis of what being is, the foundation of all being, not a being, but the basic ground of all being. I further believe that differing religions and concepts of God and gods are merely sign posts that point to this foundation of being. The are metaphors and analogies that point to something beyond themselves, something beyond our ability to understand. I have written many pages on this on my website. The major such pages can be found here: The Ground of Being

Wright goes on:

the range and differences among them are so great as to make lumping them all under 'religion' is almost ridiculous.

That is indicative misunderstanding the nature of religion is. Religion is so much bigger, better, and more important than you are willing to accept, or even than you suspect.

there have been many societies around the world where a human was thought of as the current incarnation of god. this differs so much from Christianity as to again, be almost impossible to be considered the same thing.

That's a misconception. It doesn't really matter, it's a meaningless point anyway, because I'm sure I know much more about world religion than you do. Remember the class I mention, above, "religion in a global perspective?" Neil McFarland who taught that class lived in Japan for 30 years. He was the leading expert on the New Religions of Japan (his book was Rush House of the Gods--I love that title!). He was very sympathetic to Eastern religions and he studied them with major Shinto and Buddhists priests in Japan. That class focussed on religions of Asia, especially Japan. There are not other societies or religions which have exactly the same understanding of deity as Christianity. There are none where a human being was thought of as God in the way that Christian theology came to regard Christ after the second century or so. But to say that these religions can't be regarded as the same thing is just poppy cock. They all fit with the definition given above and they all fit with the concept of mystical union which I have clearly espoused for years.

Wright:

and in all of those societies, there were a wide range of level of belief in the locally accepted 'religion'. some were vigorous hyper believers and most belived some of it but had doubts about a little of it and some believed very little or none at all of it. societies varied a great deal in how much they tolerated the non-beleivers, from none at all to total tolerance, and still, even when there was no tolerance, there were non-beleivers who kept silent about it. your claim that religion is 'normative' lacks anthropological basis for societies and is lacking even more when applied to individuals.

Notice that you don't give a single example. Prior to the eighteenth century true atheists who really believed there was no God at all of any kind were very rare, and mostly they were uneducated. They had no scientific basis for their claims, merely anger toward religious people and institutions.No actually your misconceptions lack anthropological backing. I am quoting anthropologists. I'm quoting major social scientists such as Abraham Maslow who did studies on the nature of religious experience and found that its one of the greatest things or people. Maslow's book was Peak Experience and there is a copy online. A vast body of social sciences data shows that religion is far better for you than unbelief.


Wright:

Atheists today have all that stuff you claim belief is basic to and they have it without . . . guess what . . . belief in any god or religion. you might not want to admit there are well adjusted atheists making positive contributions to the world, and i am not sure why you are so intolerant of atheism or why it threatens you so, but you claim about belief being essential to a person or a society is . . . bogus.

Saying that religion is normative is not at all the same as saying that there are no well adjusted atheists. That's not the issue at all. In fact the data does show that believers are much better "adjusted" and less mental illness and less depression than unbelievers.

again from my website:


Religioius belief indicative of good mental health

a)Religous Pepole are More Self Actualized

Dr. Michale Nielson,Ph.D. Psychology and religion.
"http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/ukraine/index.htm"

Quote:

"What makes someone psychologically healthy? This was the question that guided Maslow's work. He saw too much emphasis in psychology on negative behavior and thought, and wanted to supplant it with a psychology of mental health. To this end, he developed a hierarchy of needs, ranging from lower level physiological needs, through love and belonging, to self- actualization. Self-actualized people are those who have reached their potential for self-development. Maslow claimed that mystics are more likely to be self-actualized than are other people. Mystics also are more likely to have had "peak experiences," experiences in which the person feels a sense of ecstasy and oneness with the universe. Although his hierarchy of needs sounds appealing, researchers have had difficulty finding support for his theory."

Gagenback

Quote:

In terms of psychological correlates, well-being and happiness has been associated with mystical experiences,(Mathes, Zevon, Roter, Joerger, 1982; Hay & Morisy, 1978; Greeley, 1975; Alexander, Boyer, & Alexander, 1987) as well as self-actualization (Hood, 1977; Alexander, 1992). Regarding the latter, the developer of self-actualization believed that even one spontaneous peak or transcendental experience could promote self-actualization. Correlational research has supported this relationship. In a recent statistical meta-analysis of causal designs with Transcendental Meditation (TM) controlling for length of treatment and strength of study design, it was found that: TM enhances self-actualization on standard inventories significantly more than recent clinically devised relaxation/meditation procedures not explicitly directed toward transcendence [mystical experience] (p. 1; Alexander, 1992)

b) Christian Repentence Promotes Healthy Mindedness

william James
Gilford lectures

Quote:

"Within the Christian body, for which repentance of sins has from the beginning been the critical religious act, healthy-mindedness has always come forward with its milder interpretation. Repentance according to such healthy-minded Christians means getting away from the sin, not groaning and writhing over its commission. The Catholic practice of confession and absolution is in one of its aspects little more than a systematic method of keeping healthy-mindedness on top. By it a man's accounts with evil are periodically squared and audited, so that he may start the clean page with no old debts inscribed. Any Catholicwill tell us how clean and fresh and free he feels after the purging operation. Martin Luther by no means belonged to the healthy-minded type in the radical sense in which we have discussed it, and be repudiated priestly absolution for sin. Yet in this matter of repentance he had some very healthy-minded ideas, due in the main to the largeness of his conception of God. -..."

e. Recent Empirical Studies Prove Religious Believers have less depression, mental illness lower Divorce rate, ect.

J. Gartner, D.B. Allen, The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3090

Quote:

"The Reviews identified 10 areas of clinical staus in whihc research has demonstrated benefits of religious commitment: (1) Depression, (2) Suicide, (3) Delinquency, (4) Mortality, (5) Alchohol use (6) Drug use, (7) Well-being, (8) Divorce and martital satisfaction, (9) Physical Health Status, and (10) Mental health outcome studies....The authors underscored the need for additional longitudinal studies featuring health outcomes. Although there were few, such studies tended to show mental health benefit. Similarly, in the case of teh few longevity or mortality outcome studies, the benefit was in favor of those who attended chruch...at least 70% of the time, increased religious commitment was associated with improved coping and protection from problems."

[The authors conducted a literature search of over 2000 publications to glean the current state of empirical study data in areas of Spirituality and health]


This part is very important becasue it speaks diretly to what you said about atheists being well adjusted.


2) Shrinks assume religious experience Normative.
Dr. Jorge W.F. Amaro, Ph.D., Head psychology dept. Sao Paulo

[ http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/amaro.html]

a) Unbeliever is the Sick Soul

"A non spiritualized person is a sick person, even if she doesn't show any symptom described by traditional medicine. The supernatural and the sacredness result from an elaboration on the function of omnipotence by the mind and can be found both in atheist and religious people. It is an existential function in humankind and the uses each one makes of it will be the measure for one's understanding."

I know you are going to get angry about that because people usually do. but this is a scientific fact. It comes from many studies that compare those who have reilgious experiences to those who do not. They find constantly that those who are are better ad musted, less depression and mental illness. It's not just anyone says "I am a Christian" but those who have religious experinces.


b. psychotherapeutic discipline re-evalutes Frued's criticism of religion
Quote:

Amaro--

"Nowadays there are many who do not agree with the notion that religious behavior a priori implies a neurotic state to be decoded and eliminated by analysis (exorcism). That reductionism based on the first works by Freud is currently under review. The psychotherapist should be limited to observing the uses their clients make of the representations of the image of God in their subjective world, that is, the uses of the function of omnipotence. Among the several authors that subscribe to this position are Odilon de Mello Franco (12), .... W. R. Bion (2), one of the most notable contemporary psychoanalysts, ..."

[sources sited by Amaro BION, W. R. Atenção e interpretação (Attention and interpretation). Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1973.

MELLO FRANCO, O. de. Religious experience and psychoanalysis: from man-as-god to man-with-god. Int. J. of Psychoanalysis (1998) 79,]



c) This relationship is so strong it led to the creation of a whole discipline in psychology; transactionalism
Neilson on Maslow

Quote:

"One outgrowth of Maslow's work is what has become known as Transpersonal Psychology, in which the focus is on the spiritual well-being of individuals, and values are advocated steadfastly. Transpersonal psychologists seek to blend Eastern religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) or Western (Christian, Jewish or Moslem) mysticism with a form of modern psychology. Frequently, the transpersonal psychologist rejects psychology's adoption of various scientific methods used in the natural sciences."
"The influence of the transpersonal movement remains small, but there is evidence that it is growing. I suspect that most psychologists would agree with Maslow that much of psychology -- including the psychology of religion -- needs an improved theoretical foundation."

3) Religion is positive factor in physical health.

"Doctrors find Power of faith hard to ignore
By Usha Lee McFarling
Knight Ridder News Service
(Dec. 23, 1998)
Http://www.tennessean.com/health/stories/98/trends1223.htm

Quote:

"Some suspect that the benefits of faith and churchgoing largely boil down to having social support — a factor that, by itself, has been shown to improve health. But the health effects of religion can't wholly be explained by social support. If, for example, you compare people who aren't religious with people who gather regularly for more secular reasons, the religious group is healthier. In Israel, studies comparing religious with secular kibbutzim showed the religious communes were healthier."Is this all a social effect you could get from going to the bridge club? It doesn't seem that way," said Koenig, who directs Duke's Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health .Another popular explanation for the link between religion and health is sin avoidance."

"The religious might be healthier because they are less likely to smoke, drink and engage in risky sex and more likely to wear seat belts.But when studies control for those factors, say by comparing religious nonsmokers with nonreligious nonsmokers, the religious factors still stand out. Compare smokers who are religious with those who are not and the churchgoing smokers have blood pressure as low as nonsmokers. "If you're a smoker, make sure you get your butt in church," said Larson, who conducted the smoking study."


see also: he Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993 For data on a many studies which support this conclusion.

4) Religion is the most powerful Factor in well being.

Poloma and Pendelton The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3290.

Quote:

"The authors found that religious satisfaction was the most powerful predicter of existential well being. The degree to which an individual felt close to God was the most important factor in terms of existential well-being. While frequency of prayer contributed to general life satisfaction and personal happiness. As a result of their study the authors concluded that it would be important to look at a combindation of religious items, including prayer, religionship with God, and other measures of religious experince to begin to adequately clearlify the associations of religious committment with general well-being."

(5) Greater happiness


Religion and Happiness

by Michael E. Nielsen, PhD


Many people expect religion to bring them happiness. Does this actually seem to be the case? Are religious people happier than nonreligious people? And if so, why might this be?

Researchers have been intrigued by such questions. Most studies have simply asked people how happy they are, although studies also may use scales that try to measure happiness more subtly than that. In general, researchers who have a large sample of people in their study tend to limit their measurement of happiness to just one or two questions, and researchers who have fewer numbers of people use several items or scales to measure happiness.

What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness



Argyle, M., and Hills, P. (2000). Religious experiences and their relations with happiness and personality. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10, 157-172.

Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Nielsen, M. E. (1998). An assessment of religious conflicts and their resolutions. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37, 181-190.

Nielsen again:

In the days before research boards reviewed research proposals before the studies were conducted, Pahnke devised an experiment to induce people to have a religious experience. On a Good Friday, when they were to meditate in a chapel for 2.5 hours, twenty theology students were given either psilocybin or a placebo. The students who were given the psilocybin reported intense religious experiences, as you might imagine. Their levels of happiness also were significantly greater than the control group reported. But what is especially interesting is that these effects remained 6 months after the experiment, as the psilocybin group reported more "persistent and positive changes" in their attitudes to life than did the placebo group.



Pahnke, W. H. (1966). Drugs and mysticism. International Journal of Parapsychology, 8, 295-314.


Now finally let's not forget the context of the original issue. I was showing that belief in God cannot be an "extraordinary claim" because it's normative for human experince. That means it sets the standard. I have proven that it does. This has nothing to do with proving that it's true, it is merely a matter of proving that it is standard for human experince. The vast majority of all humans who have ever lived have believed in some form of God, we are fit to be religious, it's better for our minds and our bodies. We were religious 65,000 years ago, our distant ancestors, our cousins the Neanderthals, were religious. Humanity has been religious longer than it has been human! Obviously then it is normative. IT doesn't matter that there are few exceptions, that's not the point. It doesn't make you a bad person, to not be religious. Nor does it make you abnormal or somehow lacking. But is the standard human experience to be religious. that is simply a fact.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Being itself, and the Personal God.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905-1988)

I feel like I talk too much about Tillich and not enough other theologians who agreed that God is being itself. Balthasar is not as well know but is as deeply respected as Tillich in Catholic circles. He believe God is being itself and personal.

Balthasar one of the most interesting and brilliant figures of the twentieth century, yet hardly anyone has heard of him outside the confines of academic theology. Even most theological students in the Proestant world are not very familiar with his works. He was a friend of John Paul II, called “the most cultured man of our time by Henri de Lubac. His achievements are called ‘breathtaking’ my one of the major catholic theologians of the century, Carl Rahner.[1] He wrote over a thousand books and articles. He was born in Lucerne Switzerland, 1905, and Grew up a Catholic, son of a pious mother.[2] He took his doctorate from the Liberal Protestant University of Zurich, having grown up educated by Benedictines and Jesuits. He became a Jesuit priest. He worked as a student Chaplin in the 30s. He became good friends with Protestant theologian Karl Barth, one of the greats of the century.

Balthasar was unable to work as a full fledged Jesuit priest due to the war years and the arrangement the government had between Protestants and Catholics, he was seen as belonging to the area of south Germany. He made a living as a translator and lecturer and editor. He ran publications and started a spiritual community. He spent most of his adult life this way, in association with a woman named Speyr who was never recognized as a mystic by the church. He had miracles and visions but being unrecognized, Balthasar’s community was not accepted and he was unable to gain a post. This situation dominated his life in the 40s,50’s, and 60s. He had to leave the Jesuits. He also lectured in these years on spiritual topics and made a living that way, but his health deteriorated as a result. In the 60s he began to be recognized as a theologian and was given honors and doctorates. In 1988 John Paul II made him a cardinal. That was also the year of his death. His community of st. John was a publishing house and he ran a journal called Communio. These eventually found great success in the 70s and were recognized by the Vatican. The major avenue to his success was his books and his lectures.[3]

Balthasar’s overall theological project centers upon the dualities between human conflict with ourselves and our place in being. Examples of the dualities that fascinate Balthasar include: our own contingency and that of the world around us in contrast to the sense of being itself.[4] Balthasar openly and obvious equates being with God. In his work about Balthasar’s live, David L. Schindler includes a short article by Balthasar himself called “a Resume of my Thought.”[5] He begins this “resume” by talking about the dilemma between human contingency and limitation in contrast to the infinite nature of being. This does not necessitate asserting God up fornt although he’s not concerned with a “proof.” His thesis is that all human philosophy either explicitly or tacitly concerns itself with this topic and by implication tacitly affirms the infinite and the absolute.[6] He comes to the conclusion that the duality is inescapable. The finite is not the infinite. Even the monism of the east is seen through nuanced dualities. Thus he asks the question “why are we not God?” The basis of the question is that we are aspects of being. We are products of being, yet we are contingent being, Why are we contingent and not necessary? The solutions that he ponders seem to end in one way or another with an indignant God creating a finite world out of need or alienation from his own infinity. He finds that only the God of the Bible offers a satisfactory answer, and that answer is in a sense the opposite of what we would think.

The common human tendency is to think God created because he needed something. Balthasar is hinting, I think, that God creates because its his nature as being to foment more being, in other words, its creative and God is Creative. It is not for God’s need that he creates but for what will become our need once we are created. In other words, God created us so that we can enjoy being, not because he needed us because once a part of being we would need and would be fulfilled in the need by love.

No Philosophy could give a satisfactory response to that question [why did infinte create finite?] St Paul would say to philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to obtain the Divine. That is why all pre Christian philosophy is theological at its summit. But, in fact, the true response to philosophy could only be given by Being himself, revealing himself from himself. Will man be capable of understanding this revelation? The affirmative response will be given only by the God of the Bible. On the one hand this God, creator of the world and of man, knows his creature. “I who have created the eye do not see? I who have created the ear do not hear?” And we add who who have created language, could not speak and make myself heard?” This posits a counterpart: to be able to hear and understand the auto-revelation of God man must in himself be a search for God, a question posed to him. Thus there is Biblical theology without a religious philosophy. Human reason must be open to the infinite.[7]

Notice how he capitalizes “B” in being and refers to being as “himself.” He personifies being and clearly speaks of it as the creator.

Balthasar sees the understanding of the revelation of “being himself” (my phrase based upon his) to humanity as rooted in the most fundamental human relationship. He says, “the infant is brought to consciousness of himself only by love, by the smile of his mother. In that encounter the horizon of all unlimited opens unto him.”[8] What he means by that is it is only through being por soir, for itself, in other words, consciousness, that we are able to comprehend the infinite and that only in contrast to the finite. Before we can do that, however, we have to become aware of ourselves so we can know we are finite. I think he’s making an implication that love is a link to being itself, and that through our encounter with love, the mother, we encounter the father, so to speak—by way of encountering love. We can see this in four truths that Balthasar finds rooted in this encounter:

(1) realizing that he Is other to the mother, the only way the child realizes he loves the mother; (2) love is good, therefore, being is good; (3) love is true, therefore, being is true; (4) love evokes joy therefore being is beautiful.[9] Notice the link between being and love. He is one of the rare theologians to point out this curial link.

The one, the true, the good, the Beautiful, these are what we call the transcendental attributes of being, because they surpass all the limits of essence, and are coextensive with Being. If there is an insurmountable distance between God and his creature, but if there is also an analogy between them which cannot be resolved in any form of identity, there must also exist an analogy between the transcendentals—between those of the creature and those in God.[10]

In this quotation he as much as equates being and God, since he speaks of the attributes of being then connects the understanding of these to the link between God and the creature. There is more to be said about Balthasar based upon this observation and it will figure importantly in two more chapters, including the last one, and the over all conclusion.

Balthasar confirms for me so many things I thought but didn't have the courage to say, or that I "sort of thought" but didn't have the intellect to formulate. I think he boldly and unabashedly resoled the problem of paradox between personal God and being itself. He was the first to show me the link bewteen being and love (although Tillich does mention it but I saw it in Balthasar first). He capitalizes "B" in "Being" and speak of Being a "he." The idea that God created not becasue he "needed to" but becasue his nature is creative.

---

[1] Joel Graver, “a Short Biography,” website:Hans Urs Von Balthasar, an Internet Archieve. URL sighted: http://www.lasalle.edu/~garver/bio.htm (visited 12/3/10).

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid, “overview of Balthasar’s project: URL: http://www.joelgarver.com/writ/theo/balt/overview.htm

[5] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “A Resume of my Thought,” in David L. Schindler, Hans Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work. San Francisco:Ignatious Press, 1991, on like version p1-2 URL:

http://books.google.com/books?id=LLhBuwGFEugC&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=Hans+Urs+Von+Balthasar+connection+between+Love+and+Being&source=bl&ots=E6-L_5GF4p&sig=A-MzjMjMmqjBqRmAaUOWGYiOUww&hl=en&ei=xrTSSdLiJdqJnAe4tNTgBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#v=onepage&q=Hans%20Urs%20Von%20Balthasar%20connection%20between%20Love%20and%20Being&f=true

[6] Ibid, 1

[7] Ibid., 3

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

What is Panentheism? Does it require an impersoanl God?

Panenthism* is the idea that God is both in creation and beyond it (emphasis mine) The Westminster dicitionary of Christian theology defines it thus:

panenthism, the doctrine that all is in God. It is distinguished from pantheism which identifies God with the totality or as the unity of the totality, for it holds that God's inclusion of the world does not exhaust the reality of God.Panentheism understands itself as a form of theism, but it criticizes traditional theism for seeing the world as external to God. [1]

Charles Hartshorne is one of the most famous panentheists. He juxtaposes the monopolar God of much of the theistic tradition with his from of mulit-polar (di-polar) theism (process theology). God is inclusive of the world God is also changing in his consequent or concrete structure, yet unchanging in his absolute or potential structure, thus "God is in process" and is di polar. [2] "Hartshorne argues that this conforms better than traditional theism or pantheism to the Biblical understanding of the living God who loves and knows, the world, acts within it and shares the joys and sorrows of the creatures."[3] Hartshorne takes the mono-polar view of God as based upon the Greek prejudice agaisnt time and change.[4] Cobbs articles only with Harshorne's view of panentheism but Paul Tillich is also Known as a Panentheist. David H. Nikkel provides an indepth comparision between the views of Hartshorne and those of Tillich on panentheism. Tillich is understood as arguing that God is not a thing in creatin or along side other thing in creation but is the basis of all that is. To that extent God is not a being but is being itself. That means that God is manifest in the beings. God is part of creation but also goes beyond it. That doesn't mean creation is divine it doesn't mean we are Gods or any such nonsense. Hydrogen is part of water but it's not indistinguishable form water.[5] 

Some charge that this makes Tillich sound pantheistic. It's the pantheistic aspects that sound pantheistic. They are not the same. Tillich gives three caveats about pantheism that must be remembered.There are three negative side affirmations that pertain to pantheism (in terms of Tillichian theology: “Not Universal essence,” “Not found in totality of beings,” “Not Pantheistic.” There are two kinds of pantheism in general, the first kind I will discuss is daubed by Tillich as “not true pantheism” but I can tell you most message board opponents of Christianity calling themselves “pantheistic” will disagree. That is the version that says God is the essence of all things, the abstracted amalgam of everything that is; God the collection of the world as a whole. Weather true pantheism or not, this is not the concept Tillich has of God and he repudiates it specifically. This is what he means by “not universal essence” or “not found in the totality of beings.” When he says “not pantheistic” he means the other kind, because he’s already nixed the first kind, the “other kind” (what he calls “true pantheism”) is sort of a personification or deification of nature. There’s a power of nature, a collection of laws of nature and that collection is revered in the way a god is revered. Though Tillich describes God as “the power of being” he does not mean the power of nature alone. Tillich rejects both forms of pantheism.

 
 Jergen Motlmann


Smith contrasts Tillich with Moltmann and protrays Molatmann and much more orthodox in terms of Trinity and Chrsitoloogy.

Chris Smith's Carrel
Readings on religion, Politics, and...
Jan 14, 2008
http://chriscarrollsmith.blogspot.com/2008/01/two-very-different-panentheisms-of.html

Moltmann’s panentheism is considerably different than Tillich’s. Although I think Moltmann would technically agree with Tillich’s statement that God is the Ground of Being, he prefers tospeaks of God in more personal, redemptive terms. For Moltmann, God “created” space and time within himself in order to make room for the universe. He withdrew from this space, and it became the Godforsaken place. Thus while the universe remains contingent upon God (meaning that its existence depends upon him), it is not as ontologically identical with him as in Tillich’s thought.[6]

I question smith's understanding of these theologians. He wants to go beyond Panentheism and tack Trintiaian and Christilogical doctrines on to laud Moltmann and chide Tillich.

Where Tillich would likely agree with Aquinas that God only appears to suffer, love, or have any emotion at all, Moltmann declares that God actually feels emotion. He is its creator, but all the same he chooses to subject himself to it. This likely would not be possible for Paul Tillich’s Ground of Being. The difference between the two in this regard is best demonstrated by a comparison of their Christologies: Tillich denies any real incarnation of God in order, presumably, to maintain his transcendence. Moltmann, however, believes that Jesus Christ was actually God.[7]

He's just reducing the issues to Chrsitology and Trinity as a red flag on Orhtodoxy rather than confronting the issues about the intrinsically Christian nature of the concept of panentheism itself. I don't know what Smith's view point is. I don't know that he is evangelical. There are evangelicals who are highly critical of panentheism.


Evangelicals are so deeply afraid of pantheism they keep trying to force penentheism into a mold of pantheist likeness. It's almost as though they are hedges their own saftey, they wont be mistaken for patheists themselves, if they  accuse panentheism of being pantheism and reject it. One such example is that of Roger E. Olson.[8] He points out being panentheist is the kiss of death for teaching at an evangelical seminary. I have a easy remedy for that one. Don't teach at one. This is especially good if you are a panenthist. He also points out the the meaning has changed to the extent that one can't be sure what is meant by it. The same things happens with all view points that become popular. People always enlarge upon terms and change various nuances about them until you can't know what they really mean. This happened with existentialism it happened with Postmodernism, and so on. It's going keep happening. it's just the way it works when one is overly concenred with labeling everything. I am opposed to labeling. I'm not concerned with doctrinal labels people put on ideas, that's becuase I'm a existentialist. Want to know what kind? The kind that doesn't like labels. Also the kind whose witting style is too cute and who labors to make obvious jokes.

Olsen does a good job in mentioning the historical background of the term. Apparently "it was coined by German philosophical theologian Karl Friedrich Krause (1781-1832) who invented the German word Allingottlehre which literally means 'the doctrine that all is in God.'" [9] Olsen comes to the real meat of the matter. In bring Hegel in to understand God and his relationship to the world in a dialectical fashion some assert as Hegel said "without the world God would not be God." That gives it a sort of pantheistic cast. It makes it seem that God is dependent upon the world. Or perhaps God is the world.

A consensus used to exist that panentheism is any view of the God-world relationship that portrays God and the world as essentially interdependent although God’s essence is not contributed by the world. One of the first whole books exploring the concept was Philosophers Speak of God by Charles Hartshorne and William Reese (University of Chicago Press, 1953). They defined panentheism as any view in which “To be himself [God] does not this universe, but only a universe.” (22) They asserted that, at the very least, panentheism denies creation ex nihilo (23).[10]

Olsen states that he can accept a view that asserts the world is in God in the sense that Paul said it in Acts, (in him we live and move and have our being) but the real issue is creation ex nihilo.[11] The I have a problem there. I agree with Olsen on that concern. I think Moltmann is right that the world as creation is distinct form God, I doubt that Tillich would have disagreed.

The problem is exnihilo means that God didn't use a pre existing material to create the world. But does it mean that he just zapped it out of true absolute nothing? I'm willing to believe that he could have, but it makes more sense to thin that he somehow created a sort of inanimate material out of his own thoughts. The doctrine doesn't really specify. If my view of the world as a thought in the mind of God is true that problem would be side stepped or resolved in the latter idea, since it would require that the world is a thought in the mind, thus God's actually thoughts provide the ground for matter. Does that satisfy the orthodox? If we dont' worship inanimate matter as part of God what difference does it make? Yet I do agree with the concern of honoring and staying in as par as possible the bounds of orthodoxy. Color in the lines.

That leaves the final issue as the one about the personal nature of God. Panentheism is often castigated as the belief that God is impersonal. Tillich does deny the notion of a personal God yet in so doing he is not choosing an inanimate God. He's just being aware of the term personal and how it reflects human personality and ego involvement. My views on this have been set down in this very blog numerous times. See "Paul Tillich and the Personal God." [12] (part 2).Tillich himself seems to refute this idea in Systematic Theology no. One where he says HE CARRIES WITHIN HIMSELF THE ONTOLOGICAL POWER OF PERSONALITY.he is not a person BUT HE IS NOT LESS THAN PERSONAL." [13] I've always thought of process theology has an impersonal view of God but the things Cobb (who is a major process theologian) says about Hartshorne's view in the article mentioned above, that doesn't sound too impersonal. Certainly Moltmann seems to be cast in the role of a panentheist yet one with a personal sort of view of God.[14]





*I put in the red "en" and balded and italicized it to distinguish it from pantheism at a glace becuase it is hard to see that "en" in there. It makes it easier to know at a glance which is being discussed. No one else does that it's my own idiosyncrasy.

Sources:


[1] John Cobb, "Panentheism," Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. Alan Richardson, John Bowden, ed., 1983, 423.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] David H. Nikkel, "Panenthism in Hartshorne and Tillich" Pdf Dissertation published by Lang Publishing 1995. pdf http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncp/f/Panentheism%20in%20Hartshorne%20and%20Tillich.pdf  (accessed 3/9/14).
[6]Chris Smith's Carrel,  Readings on religion, Politics, and...Jan 14, 2008
 http://chriscarrollsmith.blogspot.com/2008/01/two-very-different-panentheisms-of.html
[7] Ibid.
[8] Roger E. Olson. "What's Wrong with Panenthism," My Evangelical Arminmitian Mustings, August 7, 2012. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/08/whats-wrong-with-panentheism/
[9]Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11]
[12] Metacrock, "Paul Tillich and the Personal God: was Tillich's ground of being an Impersonal Force part 1," Metacrock's Blog,  March 14, 2011.
http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2011/03/paul-tillich-and-personal-god-was.html
see also part 2
http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2011/03/paul-tillich-and-personal-god-part-2.html
[13] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951. 245
[14] Smith, op cit.

Norman Foster and Brighty of the Grand Canyon (film fest friday)

 

Norman Foster (December 13, 1903-July 7, 1976)

  I love it when I discover a new director. It's frustrating when I can't get to see the new director's stuff. This case is very odd becuase I've already seen a dozen of his films and didn't know, yet I can't get at the two that might well be valid great arts films. Norman Foster, even though I didn't it before recently, directly most of the Charlie Chan movies, most of the Mr. Motto movies, and the most Schlocky thing of all time, Batman tv show! So even though I've seen a lot of his work until recently I had only seen his shlock, although fun shlock. I love the Motto movies I love the chan movies, but they are not great art. There's a good chance that Journey into fear and Navajo are great art films. I can't get them. He was hand picked by Orson Wells to direct Journey into fear (1943).

 Foster supported independent film and directed them at a time (50s and 60s) then they were not popular, at a time when "indie" meant "cheap" not "chick" not "cool" not "intellectual."  Yet his 1952 film Navajo  sounds like a great art film. It's about  Navajo boy who is forced into a white man's school were they seek to eradicate his culture from his thinking to press him into a mold, and his struggle to learn more about his culture and to remain Navajo. Those works are hard to find and I can't get them.I would love to see them.

Foster was born John Hoeffer December 13, 1903 (died July 7, 1976 (aged 72). He began his professional career as an actor. He was married to actress Claudette Colbert a major box office draw at the time. They had a violent breakup and for some reason after that he turned director. That married was from 1928 50 1935. He began directing the Motto films (he was not the first to direct them) his films were enormously popular. He was on the only B movie director to always finnished on time and under budget. He had a reputation for getting the job done, which may be why Wells selected him. The Charlie Chan movies were very popular too.

 The only one of his independent films I've been able to find is "Brighty of the Grand Canyon." A story about a Donkey.

 

 

Cast

Cast overview:
	Jiggs the Donkey	...	Brighty
	Joseph Cotten	...	Jim Owen
	Pat Conway	...	Jake Irons
	Dick Foran	...	Old Timer, the Prospector
	Karl Swenson	...	Theodore Roosevelt
	Dandy Curran	...	Homer Hobbs

See full cast » 

 (from the IMBd page)


 Based upon Marguerite Henry's 1953 novel of the same title. The story is set in 1905, Teddy Roosevelt is a character in the film. He makes a speech about the great canyon needs to be preserved. The high profile star (the only one) in the film is Joseph Cotton, the same who co-starred in The Third Man with Orson Wells. Cotton was a major star in the 30s and 40s, he was old and by Hollywood standards of the time forgotten by the time he made Brighty. The best actor in the film by far he turns out to steal the show in the end. Pat Conway who played the murderer also does an excellent job. Both are so good and effortless I never even though about their acting. It never occurred to me "hey they can act" I just watched them. The boy I boy I said "He's not a professional actor." Teddy Roosevelt I said 'He's not doing a bad job. With those two I just watched the film. The old Timer was not too corny. He's a corn ball character in the first place (the crusty old timer prospector), the actor did a good job of trying to pull off an uncorny corn ball character.

This is not a  great art film. It's nice, it's better than a Disney movie but not far above the Swiss Family Robinson or something. I would rate it "a fine film." Not a great film but very nice to watch.

The old timer is Brighty's Human companion. Every review says he is only known by that name and the IMBD only lists him as such but the scrip clearly referees to him more an once as Hezekiah Appleyeard. You can't really say he "owns" the Donkey, the system was not for prospectors at the Canyon to own their own donkey and keep them in a pen at their house. The Old Timer just grabs whatever Donkey is near and uses him as a pack mule for a wile then let's him go. When he needs another he gets which one is handy. The Old Timer always tells Brighty "you can go run and play now, just come when I need you." He always did. They met when the young Donkey got his face full of cactus needles trying to eat a cactus. The old man pulled the needles out and they were fast friends and stayed together.

The Joseph Cotton character  know as "uncle Jim" ran a trading post and acted as tour guide to this hunting mountain lions. He guides TR in a hunt in the film, and listens to him say "bully" and make speeches about the Canyon around the camp fire. the President gives him a rifle with a name plate on the stock saying "from President Teddy Roosevelt to Jim Whatever.. blah blah."

The Old Timer discovered a major gold strike. He is working the claim as an escaped criminal (Jake Irons played by Pat Conway) who accepted his hospitality around the fire one night, follows him to see where the strike is. He murders the old man and begins to work the claim himself.  The Donkey is heart broken. He wanders about with the old man's hat in his mouth, which he found lying around, and seeks the old man's body braying terribly as if  crying. He knows he crook did it and he will not near him even though the crook keeps drafting him to work as a pack animal and beating him to make him work. At one point Brighty jumps out of a ferry cages to an icy river 30 feet below. The boy who works at Uncle Jim's story and Uncle Jim begin to suspect the old man is murdered. He never shows up, they find his camp deserted. They see Brighty alone with the old man's hat. They alert the sheriff and the word goes out to look for a murderer although they do not know who to look for.

Eventually the murderer turns up at the store. The boy truges in the snow as it's coming down to the store to warn Uncle Jim that the murderer is has been spotted (an escaped convict). Jim returns form hunting to find the convict ransacking is store and stealing his TR rifle. The boy, the convict and the Uncle are all snow bound in the store with the Donkey who is sick. They see that the convict has the old man's watch, his Donkey, other things that belonged to him and they coax him into saying incriminating things. Jim slips the Donlkey's medicine to the convict in his tea and he get's sick they force him to reveal that he did kill the old man. The convict hits Jim and knocks him out and escapes. Jim hunts him down in the snow and finds him hanging off a cliff. He saves him but he also takes him back to face trail for murder. I wont tell the reader about the Donkey being shot at the end so as to leave some surprise.

All in all it's a movie made for 12 year old boy in the 1950s. It's not a bad little movie. I'm anxious to see Navajo that's the one I really wont to find. Until then I'm happy for having seen Brighty.

Is American Politics ran by "Dog Whistles?"

Dog Whitle is a term, not sure who coined it but it's taken on and used by Ian Heney Lopez (His book is Dog Whistle Politics)[1] to describe coded messages that politicians send to their target audiences. It's a racist message, it's a means of using the "N word" without using the "N word." A prime example is the classic story of Ronald Reagan's early primary campaign in 1980. He said something to the effect "don't you hate to see a big strong buck buying steak with food stamps." Bring and strong means he could be working, why does he have food stamps? "Buck" is a racial epithet, what southern bigots called young black men, especially strong ones. That statement took a lot of flack so he began saying "don't you hate seeing strong able bodied young fellow buying steak on food stamps." So he's telling them this is a guy doesn't derves food stamps becuase he's in good shape, they all know the color. He's saying 'I don't like black people getting help either." But he doesn't have to say that.

Lopez was on Bill Moyers the other night. (See the Video)[2] Lopez says that white middle class Americans no longer understand government as a tool to make life better, they see it as an obstacle to their own wealth. They don't accept people of color worthy of aid, so they are unfairly privileged. “It comes out of a desire to win votes. And in that sense… It’s racism as a strategy. It’s cold, it’s calculating, it’s considered,” Haney López tells Bill, “it’s the decision to achieve one’s own ends, here winning votes, by stirring racial animosity.”[3] This is hardly earth shattering news. My friends and I have been pointing this out to each other since the primaries of 2008. All we can do is keep watching it.

This tendency is also known as "The Republican Southern Strategy." 

In American politics, the Southern strategy refers to a Republican Party strategy of gaining political support for certain candidates in the Southern United States by appealing to racism against African Americans.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}
Though the "Solid South" had been a longtime Democratic Party stronghold due to the Democratic Party's defense of slavery before the American Civil War and segregation for a century thereafter, many white Southern Democrats stopped supporting the party following the civil rights plank of the Democratic campaign in 1948 (triggering the Dixiecrats), the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, and desegregation.[4]

 The beginnings of the southern strategy were seen in the Johnson/Goldwater Election of 1964. Johnson feared that endorsing civil rights would drive the solid south into the Republican camp and it did.It really emerged in the election of 1980 when Regan was elected that the solid south really turned republican. We saw the dog whistle effects thick and fast in the last two elections, of course with a Black Preident.

The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.”

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The code also extends to attacks on legal immigrants, always carefully lumped in with illegal immigrants, as people seeking “amnesty” and taking jobs from Americans. [5]

Rick Santorum made some of the most flagerant exmaples, of course he wasn't even trying to encode his speech.

“I never refer to Obama as President Obama because legally he is not [president]. He constantly says that our Constitution is passé and he ignores it. … He is an avowed Muslim and my question is, why isn’t something being done to get him out of government? He has no legal right to be calling himself president.”[6]

Even if he was Muslim which he is not, what would that have to do with him not being legally qualified to be President? No legal right to call himself President, well there was that that election ting, that's just a technicality.

 The man who recently said he meant “blah people” — when the world heard him say “black people” — as  he spoke about parasitic Americans who get better lives by taking “somebody else’s money,” did not correct the assault on the truth. Instead he agreed that Obama is attacking the Constitution and said: “Well, look, I’m trying my best to get him out of office.”[7]

At that same time Presidential candidate Rich Perry began pushing in South Carolina (with a history of Jim Crow) for voter identification laws.

While it may seem obvious to people in other states, try living in Texas. Political time in Texas is always dicier but this year it's worse than ever. The Republican ads for their primary reek with dogwhitles and stupid statements and all sorts of things. It's obvious but that doesn't mean you can keep from commenting. A certain republican running for Agriculture commissioner promises to "reform school lunches." He doesn't explain what that means, but what about school lunches need reforming? Since poor kids get them he probably wants to take them away form the children of illegal aliens. In fact most of his ad is about how "those people who come illegally must stand at the back of the line." Last night all the extremes won. The more extreme candidates won in every race. Every race featured a tag phrase about fighting Obama, stop Obama's attack on Texas. As though Federal troops are amassed on the Red River just waiting to attack. One of them said congress votes pay raises for itself and does nothing to earn them, "so stop Obama." As though Obama is the reason congress get's unjustified pay raises!

Lopez argues that Republicans are destroying the social safety net by using the southern strategy and dog whistles to procure specific policy goals. The Solan makes the argument that

But the central point here is that race is being used to wreck the middle class. This has been the way conservatives have found that they can attack commitments to education, commitments to a social safety net, commitments to infrastructure, commitments to job programs, commitments to progressive taxation that taxes the most wealthy to help the rest of society. This is about all of us, and if we continue to think, “race is the way they go after poor minorities, and yeah, that’s bad, and I’ll get to that next, but I don’t have a job and my unemployment insurance has just been cut and my kids don’t have good public schools to go to and I can’t afford private schools,” we’ve missed the point, and we’ve missed the way that race has been used to destroy a society that promotes the middle class.[8]

The further argue that one can't interject race into the issue not even to talk about it positively. The person who mentions race is the racist or is using race unfairly but the one speaking in code is accepted because he has plausible deniable.[9]

The strategy is rational and calculating. It's a clear understanding of the racial gap faced by the democratic party. It exploits the mentality that still thinks only white people deserve privilege in America. In Matt 7:16 Jesus says "by their fruits you shall know them." But how many middle class white Chrsitians understand that their refusal to accept people of color as valid people is a bad fruit and that passage doesn't just refer to minorities on welfare?

The Republicans try to claim that the Dems are using their own dog whistles when we say they are racist or we talk about the 1%. That's not even the same thing. Saying that 1% of the population controls 90% of the wealth and rules the country is hardly a secret code. That's pretty plain. Saying the right wing is racist is not a secret codes. It's not something something other than what it proportions to. Its' saying they are racist not using the term "racist" to mean something worse.The problem is not the Republicans have issues but that they wont present them honestly: they hate Obama becuase he's black. Vailed references to allowing "the minorities privilege" is not honest.

We are just working ourselves into a hole by allowing this course of action to be followed. Studies show that socieities that concetnrate wealth in the hands of few and allow privilage to be horded for the rich dont' last. Its' only when society creates instituions that spread power and opportunity about and create a level palying field that nations thrive.MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and the Harvard political scientist James A. Robinson, “Why Nations Fail” [10] Political and economic institutions, and they fail when those institutions become “extractive” and concentrate power and opportunity in the hands of only a few. “Inclusive economic institutions that enforce property rights, create a level playing field, and encourage investments in new technologies and skills are more conducive to economic growth than extractive economic institutions that are structured to extract resources from the many by the few,” they write. “Inclusive economic institutions, are in turn supported by, and support, inclusive political institutions,” which “distribute political power widely in a pluralistic manner and are able to achieve some amount of political centralization so as to establish law and order, the foundations of secure property rights, and an inclusive market economy.” Conversely, extractive political institutions that concentrate power in the hands of a few reinforce extractive economic institutions to hold power. Thanks to miles Simpson on message board for showing me this study.


_________________________
Sources:


(all online sources accessed 3/4/14)

[1] Ian Haney Lopez, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014.
 Lopez, the John H. Boalt Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, is the recipient of the Fletcher Foundation’s Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellowship and is a leading thinker on issues of racial justice and the legal system. (He’s also a senior fellow at Demos, where I am a research intern.) quoting Salon, see below.
[2] Billy Moyers,"Ian Haney Lopez On Dogwhistle Politics of Race," Moyer's and Company Blog for Bill Moyers tv show, Feb 20 (2014). 
http://billmoyers.com/episode/ian-haney-lopez-on-the-dog-whistle-politics-of-race/
[3] Ibid.
[4] "Southern Strategy," Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
[5] Julian Williams, "Racial Code Words Obscure Real Issues," The Hill, (Jan 30, 2012). Blog
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/207295-2012-racial-code-words-obscure-real-issue
[6] Rick Santorum quoted Ibid
[7] Ibid.
[8]"The Right's Dog Whistle Trick: how it Exploits Racism to Rip Apart The Social Welfare Net," Salon, Jan 20, (2014). blog
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/20/the_rights_dog_whistle_trick_how_it_exploits_racism_to_rip_apart_the_social_safety_net/
[9] Ibid.
[10] Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why National Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, New York: Crown Business publishing group, division of Random House, 2012.
on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719219

Are Atheists Trying to Steal Paul Tilich?

 
 Tillich


I've been aware for some time that atheists began trying to sell Tillich as an atheist. I have commented on it before on the blog. This time I got into a protracted discussion with atheists on a message board (not CARM--but not different from it atheist wise) they are trying to argue that Tillich was an atheist or that he was at least not a christian and trying to cut Christian belief out. They quote an article by Daniel Fincke from his blog Camels with Hamers,* see note on authorship below (I have done something on that blogger on Atheist Watch a long time ago) entitled "The Impossible God of Paul Tillich." (Dec 21, 2011).

His writing is highly abstract, so you’ll have to forgive me for using abstract language here.  He is perhaps best known for his idea that God is the ground of being; that is, God is being-itself.  For atheists, Tillich says some interesting things.  Like this: “God does not exist.  He is being-itself beyond essence and existence.  Therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him.” (1951: 205)  And this: “It is as atheistic to affirm the existence of God as it is to deny it.  God is being-itself, not a being.” (1951: 237)

Tillich says he’s a Christian.  But here it’s worth pointing out that Tillich’s “God” is so far from the God of the Bible (and traditional Christian theology) that it’s hard to take his claim of being Christian very seriously.  And Tillich has widely been criticized by Christians as offering a strange new theory of the divine.  Some might say that Tillich was a Christian atheist.  Anyway, here are some relevant points from Tillich:

 That really sounds to me like they are trying to separate out and cut off Tillich and all sophisticated views of God from Christian theology. It's a wrong-headed thing. Tillich said clearly that one cannot understand the God is the depth of being and be an atheist.

The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means....For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not."--Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations.

 Fincke is saying more than just that Tillich is not a Christian. As we might gather from the title he's saying that his idea of God is self contradictory. To do that he's going to play off of not understanding the deep hard to get issues of Tillich's scholarship. He starts by listing off the things Tillich says that differ from what ordinary Christians say:

 (1) Being itself: not merely the highest thing (which of course they take to be what Christianity is saying).

(2) God is the power of being: That sounds pantheistic to them because they don't really understand pantheism anyway.

(3) Transcendent: how he thinks that the God is not transcendent is beyond me.


He argues that Tillich leads to paganism and asserts (with no support) taht "Tillich is constantly pulling himself back from the brink of paganism." "If God is understood as universal essence, as the form of all forms, he is identified with the unity and totality of finite potentialities, and therefore he has ceased to transcend them.  He has poured all his creative power into a system of forms, and he is bound to these forms.  This is what pantheism means.” (1951: 236)." What we have here is just the ignorance of an atheist who has not studied theology to understand what Christian theology is about. The notion of God as being itself is endorsed by Vatican II. It's even part of the Catechism and that quotes Aquinas to prove it."The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality 'that everyone calls God'."[1]



 it's been endorsed by the Greek Orthodox chruch  and forms the basis of Orthodox Theology since the early centuries of the chruch.


Atheists tend to think that Christianity is just the Bible. But the Christian tradition is living and active. It is not confined to just following Bible verses by wrote like robots following programming, but formulating ideas and explaining and re-explaining as each new generation finds is own seminal problems that confront human experience in their own era. Showing how contemporary problems and their solutions relate to the ancient tradition is the task of the theologian. Theologians relate the timeless metaphors of scripture and ancient tradition to the constructs of their own age and in so doing their theology becomes part of the tradition. The Christian tradition is living and active, it is still growing and God as being itself has became as much a part of Christian theology as some  of the ancient concepts. Theologians throughout history have discussed being itself and they forms a continuity between the ancient Biblical tradition and the growing theological tradition stretching into the contemporary scene.

Eastern Orthodox Church. Timothy Ware wrote a fine book, The Orthodox Church that does a good job of introducing Western Christians to the Eastern Church.[2]

            Ware explains the great schism and how the gulf between east and west continued to grow. He wants to explain the ways in which the east contributed to the gulf. He says that nothing was so radical as the scholastic “revolution” but he lists as the eastern counterpart the Hesychast controversy (pg2). 14^th century Byzantium. This involved God’s nature and the method of prayer. To explain the controversy he goes back to history of eastern mystical theology, back to Clement of Alexandria (early third century) and Origen (mid 3d). The Cappadocians, especially Gregory of Nyssa and also Evagrius, a monk in the Egyptian desert (d399) developed the ideas of Clement and Origen. This entire tradition depended upon an apophatic approach, especially as developed by Clement and Gregory. God is beyond our understanding. We cannot speak accurately about God because we can’t understand God and we don’t know if our experiences of God are so very encompassing or just fragmentary. Therefore, the mystics of the Eastern Church use negative language of God rather than positive. That is to say they concern themselves with what God is not, rather than what God is.[3] (63)

“The true knowledge and vision of God consists in this—in seeing that he is invisible, because what we seek lies beyond all knowledge, being wholly separated by the darkness of incomprehensibility.” –Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, 11, 163 (377A).

The Height of Negative theology is reached in the works of Dionysius the Areopagite. (unknown writer lived in Syria toward the end of the fifth century). Saint Maximus the Confessor (662) compassed a commentary on these writings and assured their place in the Eastern Church. [4]

He is also an influence on the west, as Ware points out, as Aquinas quotes him heavily in Summa Theologica.  The concept of God as Being itself is ratified by Vatican II and is a major premise of modern Catholic doctrine.[5]

A long list of great theologians from the early centuries of sub apostolic fathers, the period just after the controversies, right up in to modern times, demonstrate a continuity of usage between the Christian tradition as a whole, and the concept of God as being itself. Here's a list of great theologians from Clement of Alexandria to Paul Tillich who embrace God as being itself. All of these guys are bread and butter of Christian theology. This is the heart of the suburbs.

                         Great Theologians

Clement of Alexandria (150-215)

Origen (185-253)

Gregory of Nyssa (335-394)

St.Augustine (13 November 354-28 August 430)

Dionysus The Areopogite ( w/500)

John of Scythopolis (536-550)

Maximus The Confessor (580?-662?)

John of Damascus (676-749)

St.Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Paul Tillich

Hans Kung

Wolfhart Panennberg

Hans Urs Von Balthasar

John Macquarie (1919-2007)

---

Two key paragraphs here that must be understood becuase they contain the burnt of Fincke's error. The first one:

Tillich has to pull himself back from this pantheism, and he does it by appealing to God’s transcendence: “It is as wrong to speak of God as the universal essence as it is to speak of him as existing.  If God is understood as universal essence, as the form of all forms, he is identified with the unity and totality of finite potentialities, and therefore he has ceased to transcend them.  He has poured all his creative power into a system of forms, and he is bound to these forms.  This is what pantheism means.” (1951: 236)

the second, the final paragraph of the article:

For Tillich, God is both “the power of being in everything and above everything”.  I’d say that’s absurd – for Tillich, God is both immanent and transcendent.  But it’s impossible to be both immanent and transcendent.   To be sure, if Tillich wants to claim to remain within Christianity, then he’s got to affirm the transcendence of being-itself.  But it makes very little sense to do so.  Much of Tillich’s first volume of Systematic Theology looks like a pantheistic or pagan theology onto which a superficial layer of exhausted Christian ideology is painted.  That paint peels off easily.

In the first paragraph he quotes  Tillich saying God is not universal essence that would mean he's not transcendent, he would just be part of the world and that's it. That would be pantheism. In fact that's one definition of Pantheism. The fact that Tillich doesn't go in for that doesn't mean anything to this guy, he asserts that he's just tearing himself away from the edge but in fact he's telling us why Tillich is not a pantheist. He dubs System 1 pantheism, but what does he have to compere it to? Has he studied Pantheism? Has he ever studied theology. Would he know a Christan theologian if he saw one? Seems pretty clear he doesn't know one when he sees one. So It's the transcendent aspect of God that prevents him from being pantheistic. Then our atheist guide asserts (with no basis in logic or precedent) that it's impossible to be both. How does he know this? Apparently he doesn't know that it's standard classic doctrine of the chruch that God is both.[6]

In the second paragraph, the actual argument of the whole article turns upon the unfounded supposition that something can't be both immanent and transcendent (both in creation and beyond it). That's not a matter of Tillich's theology being un Christain, that's just a matter of nothing having faith to think deeply about the nature of God. So in the final analysis his overall argument is nto about the Christian nature of Tillich's ideas but his lack of acceptance of Christian ideas. Moreover, he says, "To be sure, if Tillich wants to claim to remain within Christianity, then he’s got to affirm the transcendence of being-itself." Not exactly. It's not that being is transcending being but that being transcends just our dimension or contingent temporal aspect of being. What's so hard to believe about that? That would have to be case for the big bang theory to be true. That would have to be the case for the multiverse to be true. These are stock in trade for atheism. God is not transcending being, being (ie God) is transcending (going beyond not contradicting) our area of being (the temporal the contingent). God must do that anyway just to be the creator.

 Moreover, The Greek Orthodox notion of God's energies and essence might also help shed light on the problem. For them God's immanence in the world is God's energies, in other words his power, his actions. So God is acting in the world but the essence of God, the thing that God truly is, is beyond the world. God is not cliamed to be immanent wholly and of himself. He is immanent in the extension of his power.

Typical of atheists to take their own straw God as the true acid test of being a Christian. They forget their understanding of the Christan God is just a dummies made up to look the Christian God so they can attack it. Any time the run into a Christian with a sophisticated concept (they can't answer because it's off script) the first thing they have to do is insist that it's not Christian. That's the only way they can deal with. They can't answer it logically because it doesn't fit their stereotype.



____________________
End Notes

*I've been told in private email by a mutual friend that it was actually a guest editorial by Eric Steinhart, but the credits didn't transfer when it was moved to Pathos.



[1] "ways of coming to know God," 34, "part one the Profession of faith," "section one I bleieve, we believe," "chapter one Man's capacity for God,"Catechsim of the Catholic Church, on line (from official Vatican archives).
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c1.htm
on this point the catechism quotes Aqinas: 10 St. Thomas Aquinas, STh I,2,3.

[2] Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, New York: Penguin books, 1963 (1993 edition).

[3]  Ibid. 63

[4]  Ibid. quotes John of Damascus from On the Orthodox Faith 1,4 (P.G. Xciv, 800b

[6] Jean-Luc Marion, God without Being. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, Thomas A. Carlson Trans. 1991 (original language publication 1982). xxii.
[6]Eugene R. Fairweather, “Christianity and the Supernatural,” in New Theology no.1.  New York: Macmillian, Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman ed. 1964. 235-256. Also published in New Theology No one, edited Martian E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman, NY: Macmillan 1964.,235-256