Eyre Lines

Week 2 of the Homebrewed Open & Relational Theology reading group involves two essays by Marjorie Suckocki, a very well known process theologian. The first of those is “The Trouble with Sin: Original Sin Revisited” from Sewanee Theological Review 35:1 (1991).

I have written myself on the subject; “The Fall and Rise of Original Sin” is my basic thesis, founded on a close (and nonstandard) reading of Genesis 1-3, in which I develop the idea that the real basis of sin is self-centeredness, and “Rather Different Answers in Genesis”, in which I riff off the parable of the Prodigal Son and end up with original kenosis and original incarnation. I’m a mystic, and (I would argue) therefore a panentheist. Where Suchocki sees existence as fundamentally relational (the process view), I see existence as fundamentally unitive (and so relational).

So, I agree with very much of what Suckocki writes. I actually think that sin is inborn rather than just imposed by the structures of consciousness with which we are inevitably indoctrinated from birth onwards (though I completely agree with her than we are so indoctrinated); Augustine had something right there, even as I disagree with most of his Original Sin concept; we have evolved so as to gain, at an early age, a keen sense of self. Peter Rollins suggests that this engenders a sense of lack in us which is illusory, as this Lacanian “mirror phase” constitutes a self which did not previously exist, so that self cannot be said to “lack” what it has never, as self, experienced.

That would be a fine way of looking at things were it not for the fact that mystical experiences typically involve the dissolution of the sense of self and actual experience of “oceanic oneness”, a radical immanence of the divine. In the way of such experiences, one is paradoxically at the same time a self tending to nothingness and a self which is one with the All. Once you have experienced that, the lack is very definitely a real one, and very many mystics (including myself) have gone to extreme lengths to get it back. Judaism talks of the “yetzer ha ra” and the “yetzer ha tov”, the good and evil inclinations, and considers both to be “original”; in my conception not only are both original, but they are constituted by the same psychological event, the “mirror phase”. Christianity in general has tended to underplay this “original blessing”, it seems to me.

Suchocki does write of the co-experiencing of all things by God, and uses that as a basis, inter alia, to suggest that indulging in behaviour harmful to the self (such as smoking, avoidance of exercise or overeating) are damaging to God as well as the individual, and that did bring me up short (as a smoker who doesn’t exercise nearly enough and is somewhat overweight). My focus in the “Genesis” piece was entirely on my relationships with others, and I’m grateful (in a rather grudging way, as I don’t like making changes to my habits any more than the next self) for her pointing this out. As I light another cigarette, it seems, I am really “making the baby Jesus cry.”

Am I really likely to change that? Well, Suchocki then goes into the “infinite regress” of reasons why people behave the way they do, which she puts down to their upbringing (and so their parents). Particularly in the case of parental abuse, it seems that the sins of the fathers actually are visited on the children not just unto the third and fourth generation, but more or less indefinitely. What she notably fails to do at this point is question the very concept of free will. Many people have skewered this concept, including Sam Harris. (The clip is a compendium, but manages to get his argument without listening to over an hour of video…) I must admit to being fairly convinced by this line of reasoning, and it has profound implications for any concept of sin – because it means there is a major problem in ascribing responsibility to anyone. (It actually starts looking attractive to blame it all on a mythical Adam and Eve!).

My own position is, I suppose, that if we regard people as systems whose behaviour is determined by their history and current influences, those current influences are going to include the idea of right and wrong, of sin, in other words. The very fact that we call something a sin is one of the factors which will determine their actions (as, of course, will be whether they regard themselves as a pure individual, a part of a large system in which some part of their sense of self is invested such as a family, a tribe or gang, a nation or, just perhaps, humanity as a whole). Perhaps they have had a mystical experience and have had their sense of self simultaneously annihilated and increased to all-that-is… All these things will be reasons why they do something in the future.

Suchocki adverts to such groups of interconnected individuals without taking the further step of saying that a part of the sense of self of the individual becomes invested in them. Mere connectedness relies, I think, on a well-developed compassion, whereas the realisation that you are damaging a part of yourself in some way is possibly a stronger motivation.

Of course, investing part of your sense of self in a group of people inevitably produces the evils of tribalism, of in-group and out-group thinking, and in particular of seeing other humans as just “things”. In many years experience representing people accused of crimes, the one thing which most strikes me is that the most appalling behaviour becomes easily conceivable as soon as someone stops thinking of another person as a person and starts thinking of them as a “thing” (a mindset typical of sociopaths, but unfortunately also of, for instance, soldiers to whom “the enemy” is not really human, a tendency made far easier to fall into when killing is possible at huge distances).

We can, I think, be cautiously optimistic that humanity is moving towards more inclusive ways of viewing the self, if only because surveys show a far greater proportion of people saying they had had some mystical experience than was the case 50 years ago, and I think that mysticism is a guaranteed way in which consciousness expands to greater inclusivity – at least, that’s one of the things it did for me!

Generally, I like everything Suckocki says, even if I feel moved to expand on some points (as above). But while her answers may solve the problem of theodicy for human-to-human interactions, they do nothing to deal with the problem of “natural evil”. If our problem is in squaring the declaration in Genesis 1 “and God saw that it was good” with the state of the world now, it is not just the deliberate or reckless actions of other humans which make it a place full of pain and suffering, it is also the fact that “nature red in tooth and claw” is a pretty good description of the natural world outside the small section of it which has a developed sense of self (and of guilt or shame), and beyond that, volcanoes erupt, tsunamis wipe out communities, weather fluctuations cause famine or flood even without any anthropogenic climate change, and on the widest possible scale, it appears that the universe as a whole is headed inexorably for heat-death, but that nothing on earth will get to anything near that time-frame as eventually the sun will explode.

Surely, I think, a Creator God could have so designed the universe in general and the earth in particular to be less inimical to the life-forms we know of? (I will flag up that I think the concept of a Creator-God is a problematic one, and one which Open and Relational theologies may need to rethink).

Well, I’m not sure that is the case. There has been a vogue in recent years of pointing out that the universe appears fine-tuned for producing life. Many people have advanced that as a reason to believe in a Creator God, in a form of Intelligent Design, if only at a vast scale; personally I treat those arguments with a huge pinch of salt, as I do all arguments which say that what is actually the case is incredibly improbable. In point of fact, the probability of anything which actually is the case being so is 1, i.e. completely certain.

However, it certainly is the case that if any of the physical constants were slightly different then we can see that, for instance, there would never have been a long-lived universe at all, or it would not have produced stars, or planets, or those planets would not have had the mix of elements necessary for life as we know it. If, therefore, God can be said in any real sense to have created, he did not have any other choice than to do it this way. (I’m on firmer ground with the cosmological than the evolutionary, having a Physics degree, but I can conceive that the process of evolution which has produced humanity similarly may not have had other alternatives).

So, to answer the question “can God be thought to have been able to produce an universe and an earth markedly different from the one we see”, I can tentatively borrow the title of Tom Oord’s latest book and say no, “God Can’t”.

Fow what we have, I thank God – because it actually exists. Could it be better? Yes, of course it could – and we have increasing power to realise how it could be and to make that happen. As Teresa de Avila said “Christ has no body now but yours”. Neither does God.