Eyre Lines

Still taking a break from Douglas Campbell, I’ve just finished “Why God Won’t Go Away” (Brain Science and the Biology of Belief) by Andrew Newberg, Eugene D’Aquili and Vince Rause.

I was expecting to find a fair bit in this, both from the title and the Amazon blurb, and from a mention by another blog (I can’t remember which, but wish I could). I didn’t expect to have a (to me) complete and satisfactory explanation in terms of supported scientific opinion of how mystical experience actually works, and I was enthralled. OK, I may be a very sad person, where a book on Neurotheology is the best page-turner I’ve read this year, but there you are!

However, “Why God…” doesn’t just deal with mystical, peak spiritual experiences of the kind which relatively few people seem to experience; the book is not important only to mystics and would-be mystics, it also speaks about the general religious experience of mankind, as less extreme manifestations of the same general neurological and psychological principles. It places religious experiences, experiences of the divine presence, experiences of spiritual uplift as entirely normal and natural mechanisms in terms of brain structure and cognitive psychology. Anyone who has ever wondered exactly what is going on when they feel (for example) a sense of presence on entering a church can find in these pages what is going on in their minds, and know that it is entirely normal.

That, of course, is why God won’t go away, despite the wishes of prominent public atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. The ability to be conscious of God is hard wired into our neurology, and Paul was at least to some extent right in saying “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20). Clearly this is correct taking people en masse. However I’m less satisfied that Paul was justified in going on to say that everyone was without excuse (if this is taken individually), as the authors quote reputable research indicating that less than 50% of people actually testify to this kind of experience (actually, around 35%). Allowing for a considerable proportion who have the experience but at so low a level as to be imperceptible, there are still going to be plenty of people for whom the perception of God just doesn’t happen. It didn’t happen to me until my mid teens. How is it reasonable to say that when no experience confirms the existence of God, then you are still without excuse for not accepting his existence? I don’t, therefore, blame Hitchens and Dawkins for their lack of belief, just for their assumption that everyone else is exactly like them – and that is an assumption I made myself at around the age of 9 and persisted with until I was 15, though I plead youth and ignorance…

Of course, as the authors admit, all their research does is show how religious experience is processed in neurological and psychological terms. It doesn’t demonstrate that there is anything more than signals in the nervous system to give rise to this experience. On the other hand, as they point out, the same can be said for any experience we have – it’s all reducible to signals in our nervous systems; in addition, it is somewhat challenging to think that evolution has, in this case, pre-wired us to be delusional (rather than perceive something useful, such as ultimate reality).

For those of us who have had more powerful experiences, however, this book opens up a much needed set of understandings. I am one of these – I’ve touched on my initial “zap” experience a few times, a peak spiritual experience which came “out of the blue” when I was in my mid teens.

Some reading this will have seen exchanges between myself and the recently deceased and much missed George Ashley on The Religion Forum in the late 90s regarding the mystical experience. George was an experimental psychologist and an atheist, and the to-and-fro with him helped me immeasurably in arriving at much the same kind of conclusions as the writers of this book reach, though entirely without the backing of large amounts of published research in psychology and neurology which they bring to bear here (and despite that, it’s an immensely readable and approachable book). I’ve been trying to get to grips with this since the very early days after my original “zap”, which turned me in the space of an afternoon from an evangelical atheist to a believer of sorts. This book would have been very helpful at that time – but as it wasn’t published until 12 years ago, it wasn’t available!

In a slightly different world, I might have diverted into the biological sciences and been doing this kind of research myself, but at 15, I’d already given up biology and was clearly better suited to physics. Nonetheless, I did view myself (with one part of my thinking) as an experimental subject, and as the experimental subject was myself, was able to pursue some experiments which I’d probably have been arrested for trying on anyone else! A sample size of 1 is not going to convince anyone, however, and in any event I never really “wrote things up” in those days. It was purely for my own information – and initially, some reassurance that, as Newburg et al determine, having a major mystical experience with no identifiable cause is not actually proof positive of mental disorder*. Indeed, it is far from that. Even if a minority perception, it is still massively widespread (something which was news to me, as I’ve had little success in finding others who will attest to this kind of peak experience outside the ranks of the serious religious, mostly of the monastic variety).

The writers usefully mention most if not all of the conclusions which I’d come to about methods of provoking and accentuating such experience as well, such as fasting, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, chants and ritual. They even incline towards thinking that drugs don’t produce the same experience (though there may be similarities), which was a conclusion I arrived at as well (many years ago, it must be said!) and that it was distinguishable from schizophrenic symptoms, which I also strongly suspected having compared notes with a couple of schizophrenics. I could, however, criticise their acceptance of Michael Persinger’s results with Extremely Low Frequency electromagnetic radiation, as subsequent research has failed to substantiate that, which is a pity, as it is the only “quick fix” route I’m aware of to something at least somewhat like my own peak experience. Indeed, the chief technique I can suggest as being likely to work is a very large amount of practice, and I’m not sure even that will work in the case of someone who hasn’t had some low-level experience of the same kind. I’d have liked to see some experimental data along those lines referred to, rather than just using very practiced meditators.

All in all, a book I would strongly recommend.

 

* If you’ve read through my blog, you’ll know that I have since suffered from a degree of mental disorder, particularly severe depression. However, this was not the case in my teens and 20s when I was investigating the phenomenon as best I could and developing a personal meditation practice.

 

 

 

I was expecting a flow of new posts as I started in with helping on the new Alpha course at the Belfrey, and various ideas again came up which I did not have time to explore or which it would not be helpful to mention in the discussion groups.

To date, that hasn’t happened, and this is largely because I’ve not been getting to the groups – indeed, the first week I didn’t get to the talk either! What proved to be most needed was helping to set up, to prepare and serve food, to wash up and to clear away.

OK, I know I can probably be most useful in discussions, and equally I know that some people are disappointed that I’m not there to give “different” slants on the topics; these activities play to my personal strengths and preferences. But this wasn’t nearly as necessary as making sure that tables and chairs were there and looked reasonably inviting, that people got fed and that everything returned to normal afterwards.

So that’s what I’ve been doing, mostly. OK, I did try discussing the range of atonement theories while trying to stack a dishwasher on Wednesday, but that wasn’t a wholehearted success. I can chew gum and walk, but this was a little more taxing than that!

I don’t consider it particularly self-sacrificing, just as what God is happening to call me to do on this occasion – and doing that is not a sacrifice, it’s a joy (or as my Jewish friends would put it, a mitzvah). Linking to my previous post and my slight regret at not having a set of rules that I could just perform and rest easy in having observed, this is an occasion where I can, indeed, say I have (a very little piece of) perfect obedience. I am grateful for this, as (since my depression vanished on 26th May this year) I can both feel God’s call to do it in the first place and feel a sense of satisfaction at something done adequately well. The contrast with six and a half years of no sense of direction and no sense of anything adequately done is very strong, and from this side of 26th May, very much appreciated!

I can also think that just as in Twelve Step, one day at a time eventually mounts up to years and (hopefully) a lifetime, so I can add more small pieces of obedience to make a larger whole, a life.

I recall John Milton’s words in “On His Blindness”, written in response to Miltons own failing eyesight:-

“When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide,

“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies: “God doth not need

Either man’s work or his own gifts: who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed

And post o’er land and ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.”

A friend (thank you, Anne) recently lent me Philip Yancey’s “The Jesus I Never Knew”, which I read as light relief from the current main event of Douglas Campbell’s “The Deliverance of God”.

A couple of chapters in, my reaction was “Was he not listening in Sunday School, or to many years of sermons?” as, in essence, this is mainly an exploration of the Synoptic Gospels from a very uncritically naive viewpoint (it introduces some bits of the Fourth Gospel later). In the churches I know reasonably well, this kind of reading would have been started by about age 10; it is the first level of reading comprehension of the gospels, before embarking on any exploration of (for instance) the difference in the pictures painted by the four gospel writers.

However, I paused and went back and reread Mr. Yancey’s short biography, and recalled the “suggested readings” put forward as a start point for reading the Bible in some evangelical circles. Fourth Gospel (highlights), Pauline Epistles (highlights), Genesis (highlights) more of the Fourth Gospel, Epistles and Genesis, then (and only then) carefully selected highlights from the synoptics (parables for the most part) and from the major prophets and psalms, by this time read entirely through the lens provided by the initial readings.

Then I thought about the direction of sermons and worship songs, banging out the basics of PSA and the exalted status of Christ-as-cosmic saviour to the exclusion of any consideration of his humanity. Yes, I thought, it could well be that people manage to remain quite a while in that kind of environment and never consider Jesus as really human.

Yancey does spend quite a bit of space on the Sermon on the Mount later in the book, as well. Aside from “be perfect”, this does not figure large in evangelical circles, it seems to me.

So, my conclusion is that while I am absolutely not Yancey’s target audience, for what I envision his target audience to be, the book is a helpful corrective for the overwhelming stress on Christ as atoning sacrifice and divine intermediary, which to me verges on docetism (a view of Christ which denies his humanity).

I just wish both that it wasn’t needed and that it went further – much further.

There has been some discussion in the blogosphere recently about good and evil (James McGrath’s facebook feed has more of it), generally along the lines of whether God can be regarded as entirely good, and if good can exist without evil, and if so whether there must perforce be an “evil” deity (I would assume “Satan”) and whether therefore this evil deity must necessarily be equal to as well as opposite to a good God. In the process there has been mention of Taoism, and how it regards “good” as being attained from a balancing of yin and yang, positive and negative aspects. Those positive and negative aspects are sometimes confused with “good and evil”. There is also discussion as to whether this Taoist viewpoint can possibly coexist with Christianity.

So far as Taoism is concerned, I don’t think the fact that Taoism is a religion means automatically that Christians need to reject the yin-yang concept; Taoism is also a philosophy (the religious aspects are not fundamental to the philosophy), and Christianity should, I think, be able to adapt itself to being seen in the light of more than one overarching philosophy (though I’m inclined to think that the adaptation to scientific-rationalist materialism is fraught with problems resolvable only via some species of post-modernism).

I am naturally tempted to quote Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things” (KJV – most other translations avoid “evil” but still have much of the same sense, and the Hebrew definitely has in part the sense of “evil” as well as “calamity” or “disaster”), and to point out that the “satan” of the Hebrew Scriptures is determinedly an agent of God, most notably in Job. I am inclined to think that the Satan of the New Testament represents an element of dualist thinking creeping into Judaism (via the intertestamentals, notably Sirach, Jubilees, Wisdom and overwhelmingly Enoch).

I don’t relate well to dualism. My own experience (the “zap”) pretty much precludes there being more than one deity or deity-like entity in existence (using “existence” in a very loose way indeed). The Jewish tradition which developed into Christianity became possibly the most ardently monotheist religious tradition of any (and no, I don’t think this is particularly dented in theory by trinitarianism, however much the practice may start looking like tritheism). I am therefore predisposed to see the dualist tendency of the intertestamentals as being an aberration which we could do to move beyond, rather than as an innovation to be adopted and incorporated. My recent post about fatted calves indicates pretty well how I am obliged to see the relationship of God with creation.

As such, the Taoist concept of balancing positive and negative to produce a “good” result (which nonetheless may not be “good” from the perspective of some part of it) has some attractions. It goes beyond the concept of thesis-antithesis-synthesis with which I am very comfortable (and which is a sound corrective to “either-of” thinking), and gives the possibility of thinking of things as inevitably both-one-and-the-other, rather than as eliding the opposites and thus losing any benefit of making a distinction in the first place. It also resonates well with the Isaiah 45 quotation.

However, I am inclined to think that there is a basic error in the whole “good -v- evil” dichotomy, and that is in using the terms without a referent. I start with evil; I cannot conceive of absolute evil, for many reasons including that it would be instantly self-destructive. If I can’t do that, it becomes difficult to think of absolute good.

Indeed, when I settle down to think of what “good” or “evil” is, I inevitably end up asking myself “relative to who or what?” The vast majority of things which occur can be seen to be “good” in relation to something while being “bad” in relation to something else, even without invoking any general principle of good relative to A must be bad relative to not A (which does not invariably work, as sometimes cooperative strategies function well). Indeed, I have yet to see some “good” effect on anything or anyone which I cannot see as “bad” in relation to something or someone else. There are, of course, quite independent of religion, concepts of morality and ethics which prefer the good of the many to the good of the one as being logically superior (though taking this to extremes results in extremely painful decisions which most people would balk at). However, I end up finding it very difficult to accept that any absolute good or absolute bad (or evil) can be said to exist, at least not in the real world.

It is, of course, clear that an absolute morality can be constructed by appealing to something independent of material reality. Certain philosophies (for example political philosophies) will do, for instance, and probably all religions will do. The first depend on some abstract principles which are “above” any effects on humans (or any lower form of existence), the second on God; that which is good in relation to God is an absolute good, as God (at least a monotheistic God) is absolute where everything else is relative. However, then to say “God is good” becomes a redundancy; of course God is good to God (and conversely, referring back to an earlier argument, Satan must be evil to Satan, and therefore cease to be). It seems to me that we have in the Hebrew scriptures at least a near approach to this position, which (to adjust a well known phrase) is basically “God commands it, I do it, that settles it”.

Despite Paul’s apparent attitude in Romans 3:10-18 (in which “all have sinned” and the Law is held up as impossible to follow adequately), in Phil. 3:6 he says he is “as to righteousness under the law, blameless”, and this rather confirms the position of some observant Jews of my acquaintance, who do not find strict adherence to all of the 613 mitzvot difficult (let alone impossible) even as massively extended by generations of rabbis “placing a fence around the Torah” and extending their scope to as not to come even vaguely close to actually contavening one of those. They don’t actually say “God commands it, I do it, that settles it”, but this is close to their position.

I can see the attraction of that; a detailed code rather smaller than the list of laws of most developed nations (which one is also expected to follow perfectly by the civil authorities!) which is all that God requires of you as a condition of being righteous, i.e. “good”. But I am not Jewish, I was not brought up Jewish, I am through and through a Jesus-follower with the sermon on the mount (Matt. 5-7 cf Lk. 6:12-49) prominent in my consciousness as a standard – and that asks that we be “perfect, as our father in heaven is perfect”, that we not even bear anger towards our fellow men (or call them “fool”), that omissions are as worthy of blame as commissions. And that, as was pointed out in the second Alpha talk last night, is impossible for everyone.

I therefore don’t have the “God commands it, I do it, that settles it” position, just a “God commands it through Jesus in his lifetime teachings, I get as close as I can to doing it, nothing is settled by it”. The talk (as I’ve adverted to previously) presented a straight PSA answer to why I should nonetheless feel secure; I can’t swallow PSA myself, and will be adverting to the reasons shortly (I hope, should I ever finish writing the relevant post series). In point of fact, I experience God (and Jesus), I love and trust God (and Jesus) and that is sufficient. Sure, I can never feel smug about being perfect and never will do, but that’s OK with me – and actually, for all their theoretical reliance on Torah observance, my Jewish friends tend also to feel they can always do more and better.

But really, this only tells me (or my Jewish friends) what I should do and not do, it does not give me any overarching concept of good and evil. As I outlined recently, my very existence is from the point of view of some organisms or entities a bad thing, a sin, an evil – and yet from the Godly point of view in Genesis 1, it is at least in principle good. My experience forces me to see God in everything, everything in God, and “everything” includes bad things, even evil things, includes “natural evil” in the form of natural disasters and accidents. Is this a Taoist yin and yang position after all? It certainly arrives at much the same position. Beyond that, I can really see no alternative to complete relativism.

My own balance is found in trying to tread lightly on the world (rather than any insects), in trying to treat my fellow humans as I would treat Jesus (mindful of Matt. 25) and in attempting to remember always that the earth and all that is in it is sacred, holy, in God, and to be treasured and taken care of.

Following my post about resurrection recently, I notice that another blogger who I generally find much fellow feeling with, Tony Jones, has written “Dear Marcus Borg; please reconsider the Resurrection”.

Now, I am, I think, singing from the same hymn sheet as Marcus Borg here. I see no problem if Christians believe that the resurrection was fully physical, involving the corpse of the deceased Jesus being in some way revivified and changed into something which could walk through walls and not be recognised by friends and which flitted between Jerusalem and Galilee with inhuman speed, but was nonetheless still “the physical body”. However, I personally think it extremely unlikely that this is what happened. I don’t think it’s the best fit for the scriptures we have, assuming them all to be entirely faithful records by eyewitnesses; a revivified corpse does not fit several of the accounts.

In fact, however, I don’t think any but Paul’s is an eyewitness account, and the experience he described wasn’t, by his admission, one of viewing a revivified corpse. I suspect, though cannot demonstrate, that the later accounts, building on oral tradition, may have been struggling with a particular current of Jewish thinking of the time which did not accept any spirit-body dichotomy and would therefore have considered that any resurrection would have to be fully physical, and the accounts may have adjusted what they understood to underline what they thought they knew must have been the case.

I am by no means the only person I know who thinks this way, though I may well be the only one among my face to face acquaintance who does and who self-identifies as a believing Christian.

And that is the problem here. I cannot stand before most of my friends and say “you have to believe in a physical resurrection, otherwise you cannot be a Christian” and get anything other than “fine, I’m therefore not going to listen to any other arguments you may have, any testimony you may give”. Tony Jones asking Marcus Borg to reconsider is, essentially telling him not to hold out the prospect to people that you can be a Christian without actually believing in a physical resurrection. The trouble is, from my point of view, it’s perfectly possible, and moreover it doesn’t place a potential stumbling block in the way of someone who may be edging towards faith.

In line with David Henson’s response to the Jones-Borg conversation, I don’t think there is an argument here worth pursuing, either. Whatever the actual historical fact, Christians everywhere experience the resurrected Jesus on a day to day basis; there really need be no more confirmation than that. As he says “So I do not believe the resurrection because it literally happened long ago. I believe the resurrection because it happens. It has happened to Christians for 2,000 years, and it has happened to me.”

In fact this is reminiscent of a lot of discussions I have had with Christians more conservative than me in the past; the fact that I work on the whole without any belief in miraculous events often troubles them hugely, but when it comes down to the matter of what we actually learn from scriptures which contain apparent supernatural events and apply that to our lives here and now, the difference often disappears. Take, for instance, the loaves and fishes. Did it happen or not? I think, on balance, if something happened it wasn’t supernatural, my conservative friends think there was a supernatural multiplication of material objects. What difference does it make to the message we derive from the story? None.

So I’m not disposed to say “you must believe it didn’t happen”, because that makes no difference in the here and now.

Both Jason Michaeli and Tony Jones (and some others less well known) have otherwise shown plenty of evidence of being more open about biblical interpretation than their recent reactions would indicate. I have to ask, therefore, what it is about the resurrection (as opposed, for instance, to inerrancy, the role of women in the church, treatment of sexual variance or the dreaded PSA) which makes it such a sticking point? Why is it that when this particular topic comes up, suddenly some attitudes seem to take a lurch to the right and something approaching the evangelical right’s condemnations of “liberals” seems to be on the horizon?

As a generality, if someone, against type, suddenly expresses a very strong opinion on a nonessential matter, I will usually look to see why that opinion matters to them more than would appear on the surface. Usually, such a strong reaction comes from some kind of fear, though occasionally just from anger. Generally in cases of doctrines, the fear is that some part of their own belief structure will be undermined. But how can this be when Marcus Borg, or David Henson, or John Spong (to name a very few) are not saying that belief in a supernatural explanation is wrong, just that they themselves adopt a somewhat less overtly supernatural explanation?

I have to wonder whether it’s a case of needing at least one instance of “having to believe an impossible thing” for faith to be so labelled. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 22-24: “For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (Bible Hub NIV) after all. Personally, that’s not how I see faith as the Biblical writers described it; what I see them talking of is more like unswerving personal commitment, faithfulness rather than faith.

If suddenly a slippery slope can be seen at the end of which is a perfectly rational faith which requires no “foolishness”, perhaps there is fear that they will end up there, and somehow their beliefs have to be based on a grossly supernatural theology? Perhaps the people saying this have such theological weight that people think they cannot argue against them and must follow? (This worry has never affected me personally, but intellectual arrogance is a character fault that I am working on… possibly I should work harder.)

Perhaps, too, there is some degree of resentment – it could be that supernatural belief of some kind has been difficult for them to accept themselves, but they have managed to do it – and now see a respected figure apparently managing to do without it?

I don’t know. What I do know is that I regret any moves to “circle the wagons” and establish fixed boundaries beyond which people must be thought of as “not Christians” or “heretics” or “false teachers” and so excluded from “us” and made “other”.  I see Jesus, and Paul (at least in the undisputed letters) establishing a trajectory of inclusion. OK, I don’t think Jesus got quite as far towards complete inclusion of gentiles and women as liberation or feminist theologians might like to see, I don’t think Paul got as far towards complete inclusion of women and slaves as feminist theologians and 18th and 19th century abolitionists might like (or have liked) to see, but I think they moved in a clear direction from where they started, and 2000 years later we should have continued moving in the direction they indicated faster and further than we have.

I don’t think, for instance, that we have remotely managed to take on board even the distance Jesus moved towards the inclusion of the sick, the disabled, the indigent, the poor and the criminal. To exclude from our own ranks for variant readings and understandings of our common scripture is very much a step, or rather a leap, in the wrong direction.

And I will again pray for understanding of how it is that Pat Robertson and myself can be considered as members of the same religion. But I have (just for today) faith that we are.

In a group on Thursday, we looked at the parable of the Prodigal Son. Now, I’d sat through the sermon on this twice on Sunday (I was sticking around to sell Alpha launch tickets) and I’ve heard sermons on it at least twice this year previously, so when the group leader turned to me and asked “What new inspiration do you get from this, Chris?” my first response was to say that my new inspirations were all played out for this year, please ask me again in twelve months or so.

However, what I did was blurt out an actual new thought which had come to me. The Prodigal is one of the parables where it’s a natural thing to look at it from the point of view of each of the characters, father and two sons. I like looking at stories from the point of view of the different characters, and in some cases it can throw up a really interesting line of thought. What had come to me was “What about the viewpoint of the fatted calf?”

There was hilarity. There was dumfounded silence. There was “Oh well, it’s Chris, trust him…”

However, there’s much more to that with me than just a joke. I posted recently about some aspects of the “zap” experience and the new viewpoint this gave, how the boundaries of “self” dissolved and everything was in some way “me” (and even more to everything was God). I found in the weeks and months following the experience that I was having difficulty maintaining a view of animals as being different, unconnected, something other, something not to be concerned about. Hey, I’m English, and that came really naturally to me anyhow – we’re inclined to value our neighbours pets more than we do our neighbour, after all. I now had, however, a really good reason for taking this bond, this sameness and in a way this identity really seriously.

Obviously there is a difference. I cannot see the fatted calf, for instance, dwelling on the transitory nature of all things and finding comfort in something like “The rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45) or the hope of heaven or resurrection. I can envisage something more like “Good grub, good grub, good grub, terror, pain, end” being about the sum of the calf’s reactions. But even if you don’t share my disindividuated viewpoint, the fatted calf is also one of God’s creatures, and an omnipresent God is present in the calf just as he/she/it is in you or me.

I went through a fairly extreme period of soul searching at that point. Should I be eating meat, and therefore complicit in the pain and killing of one of God’s creatures? I learned a little of Jainism around this time, and some very observant Jains go so far as sweeping the path in front of them lest they inadvertently step on an insect and kill it. Even an insect is, after all, one of God’s creatures as well.

This is already at the point where living in the real world becomes just about impossible, but I’m fond of “reductio ad absurdum” and kept up the thinking. What about bacteria? They’re also living creatures, and I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t had courses of antibiotics at one point of another, or if I didn’t kill off a few bugs before I started preparing food. I supposed I could lean on sentience as the governing factor, but it seemed to me that this was a continuum and that I’d eventually have to draw an arbitrary line without any justification other than practicality. Then there were vegetables, also living… and eventually there were rocks. In which God was also manifest.

I eventually arrived at the idea that, in order to exist, I must perforce do things which were (from the point of view of some part of existence) evil. A new conception of “original sin” perhaps, which didn’t need to get as far as Genesis 2 and 3. Countless decisions I make rest on thinking of myself as separate rather than as part, and this in and of itself is “separation from God”, which is one definition of sin. The end of self is the end of sin.

But then, I thought, there is the idea of the world and everything in it as God’s creation, and God rather consistently saying that it was good in Genesis 1. Indeed, that is something which was also forcefully imprinted on me in the initial “zap”. And so somehow, the fact of my being here, forced to sin against God’s creation (which I see as God’s very self) in order to exist, is also, somehow, good. It is, it would seem, good that I exist, just as it is good that everything else exists – and were I the fatted calf, that would be enough. Most of the fatted calf’s story is, after all “good grub”, and the terror, pain and end is a mere speck in its lifetime.

I am aided in being able to take the view of the whole rather than the part rather easily, and from the view of the whole, the existence or non-existence of a part, the pain or joy of a part is of relatively small import, being in any event fleeting in terms of the atemporality of God. Ups and downs are two sides of a coin, you cannot have just “up”; without pain, there is no goodness in lack of pain, without death there is no goodness in life, in existence.

This is, therefore, as it should be (it is “good”), but could it be better, could it be perfect? If it could be perfect, would not an omnipotent God make it so? Now, I am not a fan of omnipotence as a divine characteristic, and Charles Hartshorne has usefully written in “Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes” a philosophical argument indicating that it cannot actually be so. John Caputo, in “The Weakness of God” has written a fine rethinking of Christianity in terms of God as an essentially weak force. However, I don’t think I need to go as far as that; the easiest critique of omnipotence is to ask if God can make something which he cannot move (or destroy, or take some other action against), and this exposes the fact that omnipotence cannot really be “omni”; there always have to be boundaries. At the most, we could say that God could do anything which it was possible to do; is it therefore the case that in creating (which I am obliged to see, due to my “all things are God, all things are within God” experience, as a creation out of God’s own substance), God has limited the scope of what he is able to do, whether by actual limitation or limitation of will?

I end up seeing the creation as the original act of kenosis, of self-emptying, thinking of the words of Phil. 2:6-7 “⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,being born in the likeness of men.” (ESV from Bible Gateway); thus the kenosis attributed to Jesus is a symbol of the greater kenosis of God. In that act of pouring himself out into existence, which I interpret as God becoming creation (thus, perhaps, “Original Incarnation”), God has thus potentially created the best existence which could then be created, given the individuality, the separateness of its constituent elements (that is not to say that this existence is the best existence there could ever be in the future, though; the elements within creation develop and evolve, and I do not think that is a zero-sum game even had Jesus not pointed to the Kingdom of God on earth as a present and growing actuality).

Returning to the fatted calf, it does not, as far as we know, have the capacity to do much more than “live in the moment”; it will not be asking questions like those I am asking. The mental apparatus to weigh courses of action and decide which is good and which is evil are, with the fatted calf, instinctual, not subject to conscious control.

I therefore arrive at the story of Genesis 2-3 and the “Fall”; I don’t see this as an actual Fall, that having taken place at the point of creation and being only a descent (or ascent) from unity into individuality. It does, however, involve the eating of the fruit of the tree of Knowledge, specifically knowledge of good and evil.

The training evening for the next Alpha was last night; it starts in earnest next Thursday, so the volume of posts will probably increase as I get more ideas from the discussions and want to work through them here. I’m in the process of reading Douglas Campbell’s “The Deliverance of God” at the moment, so when the video of Nicky Gumbel describing the Alpha process was shown, I immediately noted that he (and Alpha) cleaves to the standard evangelical model of conversion.

And this is based very heavily on the theory of Justification, which is what Campbell’s book focuses on – it’s subtitled “An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul”. At just over 1200 pages, it’s going to keep me out of trouble for a while yet. I don’t intend to review what I’ve read of it to date, but Richard Beck has done a series on it recently. What I have read, however, mounts a very detailed and convincing assault on the concept of Justification generally and salvation via the “Justified through faith” route specifically (Romans 1-4 being the most significant text here).

Let me outline this paradigm. Mankind are all sinners. God cannot accept sin, and therefore sin in any measure whatsoever deserves death and/or hell. They have through two potential routes, “natural theology” (i.e. the obvious testimony of creation) or Mosaic Law, a conviction of this, but no way out of it; Paul specifies that the Law is inadequate to save anybody. Jesus’ death on the cross provides, via faith in Christ, justification by grace to all. The logic is inescapable; all are guilty, all are condemned but faith in Christ produces deemed justification and therefore saves. The standard model of conversion involves this; pray the “sinners prayer”, receive (be born again in) the Holy Spirit and faith, be saved.

It is worth mentioning that the 12 Step formula, admitting powerlessness over something and our lives having become unmanageable, becoming convinced that there existed a higher power which was capable of releiving us from this position and making a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of that higher power mirrors extremely well the evangelical standard model. And that works; I’ve seen it work in many people. The spiritual experience doesn’t always occur at any of those points (Steps 1-3), it can occur later. Some of them have gone on to find their relationship with their higher power in Christianity. OK, some have found that by another route, but they aren’t the subject of this post!

Justification theory is not quite entirely PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) in its full exposition, but is a major foundational part of that theory. I don’t intend to deal with the detail of my theoretical reaction to PSA in this post; I have another post (or possibly series) under construction at the moment in which I intend to do that. Here, I intend to talk about practice.

Now, if you’ve read my previous post, you may realise that I didn’t arrive at faith via this route. I didn’t have anything remotely like a conception of irretrievable, unforgiveable sin and of a stern judgmental God who could only accept perfection. I didn’t believe any god of any sort existed, for a start, and forgiveness appeared to be reasonably readily obtained (sometimes with a bit of pain and time) in every situation I’d come across. I just got a whole package which included an extremely lively consciousness of past sin and at the same time a consciousness of forgiveness and a compulsion to try very hard not to do any of that stuff again, all in one “zap”.

In fact, to my more or less complete consternation, the model of salvation which best fits me is Calvinist (about which I wrote a while ago). Full Calvinism doesn’t start with a conviction of sin and praying the sinners’ prayer (or something like it), it starts with divine intervention in changing you, and only after that do you get on to bits like considering past sins.

So, we have Nicky Gumbel and Alpha doing conversions one way, (with, apparently, very considerable success – I have multiple friends who have arrived at belief via Alpha or something very like it) and Calvin describing another way of getting converted of which I seem to have personal experience. The two are just not the same. Conviction of sin followed by a choice to give your life to Jesus demands a free will choice, and Calvin says that the totally depraved non-Christian (the “T” of “TULIP”) cannot make, has not the capacity to make, that decision.

Do we see a pattern emerging here? The Evangelistic paradigm is, basically, Luther on Justification, and Luther and Calvin are not all that far apart. The distinction may, therefore, be rather subtle.

So, let me add to that. Actually, only a few people who arrive at faith via Alpha have been able to say to me with conviction that they were, in fact, convicted of otherwise irredeemable sin and then made the decision. Most, it turns out, have been somewhat convinced by the talks, but much more influenced by one or more very powerful testimonies and the fact that they feel love and friendship from the people round them and want to be part of that. But in the process, they have arrived at something very like the spiritual experience testified to by people who have gone the Lutheran/Evangelical route or the Calvinist route. Significant numbers of them have then worked at it, much as twelve steppers work at the twelve steps, and maintained their “conscious contact with God”. Some have at a later time lost this again.

This, I should point out, doesn’t really conform very well to anyone’s theoretical soteriology.

Then again, there are those I know who have just made a decision that this is where they want to be and have started working at it, without any particular crushing consciousness of sin or appreciation that there is only one way out of this into God’s favour. Many of these are people who were just brought up to believe in the system and have never challenged it. And some of them do arrive at a conscious contact with God, sometimes in a blinding flash (or zap) after they have been working at it for months, years or sometimes decades, sometimes very gently and imperceptibly. (It’s worth mentioning, however, that many who tread this route never seem to attain this state, at least not in any form strong enough for them to testify to).

And this is, essentially, works-based soteriology of the kind which Luther and Calvin both considered theoretically impossible. It ought to work; the psychological establishment has long understood “act as if” techniques, and so have the twelve step fellowships. Eastern Orthodoxy, the Western Monastic tradition and observant Judaism are examples in practice, whatever their theory may be.

It may actually be that I have an element of this operational in my own experience, because a couple of years before my original zap, I started to try to improve myself. 20/20 hindsight reveals that what I actually did about this bore a significant resemblance to steps 1, 4-5, a God-free 6 and 8-10, starting with an appreciation of powerlessness and a searching moral inventory. It took the zap to insert the God-related steps, though. The motive had, of course, nothing to do with anything spiritual; it was a purely pragmatic approach to improving my ability to function in society, but it does seem possible that it could have had an unanticipated result!

I anticipate that some might say that actually there has to be only one way, and these might try to find the elements of their chosen one solution in the lives of others who did not seem at first appraisal to have fitted their template. I think they stretch to attempt this, and also have a tendency to reject the experience of some who, to a more objective eye, might well display all the characteristics of a “saved” person, notably Paul’s “fruits of the spirit” (Gal. 5:22-23) and attest to their own conviction of being “saved” (or otherwise justified, or “right with God”).

I was at one time guilty of this; I knew how it had happened with me, and assumed that this was the only way it could happen and be authentic. I could see the result in the writings of mystics (at least in places), so I assumed that the way to go was the way they had described (my own “out of the blue” was no help to anyone). Most of them used seclusion, privation and sometimes sensory deprivation, so 20 year old Chris would have said everyone had to do that, if, that was, they wanted to experience something like the zap; I had used bits and pieces of the praxis of some of the great mystics myself to try to re-experience the zap, and had duly had some recapitulations (though generally not with anything like the original force). It therefore seemed experimentally verified.

So, could it be that those originating these concepts of salvation had found a way themselves, and thought that it perforce had to be the only way? Not entirely – Paul’s writings spawned the standard Lutheran/Evangelical model, and Paul himself clearly had a “bolt from the blue” conversion which doesn’t fit the model. I could, however, empathise with a Paul who was asked “how do I get an experience like yours” thinking “well, I suppose it could go like this…”.

So, it seems to me that there are a number of ways in which faith is, in fact, arrived at. Surely any theory of salvation should take all of those into account? None I’ve yet come across do that, though. You could tack a set of them together and say “well, all of these seem to work”, but their mechanisms are theoretically incompatible to a large extent.

I wonder, however, whether that matters. Faith, as opposed to belief, is first and foremost an emotional thing, a commitment of trust and obedience. Emotions do not have to be held on rational grounds (the conflicts I talk of between SR (scientific rationalist Chris) and EC (emotional Chris) bear witness to this, even if no psychological studies convince. Often, there seems no rationality in emotions at all. If, therefore, we talk of something which is largely or partly emotional, is it surprising that it appears to arise from a set of mechanisms which are contradictory? Augustine, after all, once wrote “credo quia absurdum” (“I believe because it’s impossible”).

Me, I don’t understand why the teenaged Chris suddenly had a zap, a peak spiritual experience. I don’t need a theory, though, I have the experience.

But a theory would be nice…