Eyre Lines

What follows is a copy of an exchange between myself and Henry Neufeld (proprietor of Energion Publications, inter alia) in The Religion Forum. My original questions are paraphrased from “Living the Questions” and, I believe, emanate from John Dominic Crossan; these are in turquoise; Henry’s responses are in Magenta.

H>> Because I’m editing a book titled Philosophy for Believers, and the chapter I’m working on is titled “Aristotle’s Akrasia and Self-Deception” I figured that due to akrasia I would act against my better judgment and answer your questions.

1. What is the character of your God (when you think about God, what are you imagining)?

H>> Like you, I regard God as largely unknowable. If I’m tense about the definition of “knowledge” I would have to say “unknowable.” That which cannot be demonstrated cannot be properly said to be known.

I like to remember that “know” and “understand” are close to “comprehend”, which has a secondary meaning of “include”, and that underlines to us that both know and understand ultimately require us to observe from a larger framework that the thing being described (for example to compare and contrast). And there is no such framework…

H>> But more than this, I would take two different routes to imagining God. The first is more philosophical. It is to call God “the ground of all being.” This is the conviction, perhaps, that the sensible universe isn’t up to self existence, so there must be something else. I do not regard this as a proof or demonstration. It is quite possible to attribute the self-existence I attribute to God as ground of all being to the sensible universe as well. I’m not entirely sure that the difference between those two approaches actually matters. In addition, calling this the ground of all being does not necessarily lead to the Christian God or any other kind of defined God.

Which could merely be the principle I expressed previously being applied to the universe 😉 In describing “universe” we require an hypothetical framework larger than the universe, in which the universe is just one element. For the mathematical physicist, therefore, God could be a necessary but not necessarily real concept.

I’m currently playing with a possible description of God as “the ground of all meaningfulness” myself.

H>> The other way I think about God is through the view of spiritual experience. Here, of course, I cannot demonstrate that what I experience results from an external cause of any kind. Nonetheless I have my experience. I relate my experience to yours, and I view this experience through the tradition in which I was brought up, which I abandoned and then reappropriated. It’s language works for me. And yes, I treat Christian Scripture as the collected experience of God  by the people within that tradition.

As do I. Yes, the language works fairly well for those who are fluent in it (and better if they do not mistake the terms in it for scientific ones <g>). We are able better to communicate, to share this type of experience through the use of such language (including concept-structures) and, I think, to ascertain that there is essentially one experience which is shared, rather than different experiences which can be successfully contrasted and categorised. Further, this may enable us more fully to appreciate our own experiences by being better able to describe them to ourselves.

2. What is the content of your faith (what do you believe in – merely to say you have faith is not sufficient, as Al-Quaeda have faith…)?

H>> The content of my faith is, in fact, the God that I experience. I express this in Christian language. I know that I have the experience, but I cannot demonstrate this. The number of doctrines I believe about God is very small, because I am constantly noticing that there are others who disagree with me on many, many details, who also experience God. While they differ with me on many things, I can recognize (or believe) that we are talking about one thing in different words. One of the most profoundly spiritual people I ever met was a Muslim Imam. I spent time studying with him and was tremendously impressed. We were able to connect on many points. The single most profound extended spiritual experience of my life came from studying a commentary on Leviticus written by a conservative Rabbi, Jacob Milgrom.

Do I come to believe additional things based on this experience? Certainly I do. There is a certain non-rational realm of my existence and thinking. I am frequently told by atheist or agnostic friends that I am a very reasonable person, but that I have failed to go all the way, that my rationality breaks down at a certain point. They are indeed correct. Well, I’m not always that reasonable, but I do go beyond what is rationally demonstrable.

You may enjoy my recent blogpost on the Heresy of all Doctrines <g> Here, I agree with you pretty much completely; I can share experience with people of many different faith traditions and see them to be in essence one, but do need either to adopt the language and concept structure of one of us or to negotiate a common language and concept structure (and commonly the language of “scientific rationalist” is not a very conducive means of expression <g>).

Personally, I’m not convinced that I have in fact failed to go all the way; I’m confident that the language of “scientific rationalist” is not an adequately communicative, complete and clear way of describing the whole of my experience (or that of others), and the languages of mathematics and symbolic logic are subsets of that and less adequate, although more powerful in their allocated fields. I have, at least, gone as far as the current limitations of my language, concept structures and intellect allow. I think, subject to correction.

3. What is the function of your church (for which read any religious or spiritual organised group)? (What are you coming together for? “Worship” is not an adequate answer)

H>> Community in all its aspects. More specifically, for me the church is the vehicle through which I can serve. In choosing a church I will be looking for a community impact and how I can be a part of that. This is witnessing, in my view.

The commandments being to love God and to love your neighbour, both can be practiced by yourself, but both are in many ways more productively practiced in common with others (helping your neighbour clearly gains in all sorts of ways from being done communally).

Loving God, understanding and appreciating God, comes more readily from witnessing to and sharing with others, and through discussion, debate and the refining of concepts. To me, at least.

4. What is the purpose of your worship (or other spiritual practice)? (How does God want to be worshipped? Is prayer important, and why?)

H>> The purpose of worship, as in a worship service, in my view, is the connection with God. In other words, I want to experience God’s presence and get the encouragement and strength that gives me. In prayer, I am doing this apart from the broader community, but the purpose of prayer is communion with God, not getting God to do some things that I decide God ought to do.

Nonetheless, I don’t like the structure of the question, because I believe that for one connected with God, all right action and all seeking is worship. So I worship by thinking, I worship by sharing, I worship by writing, and I worship by serving in any way. The worship service in which I seek the experience of God is really a minor part of what I would call worship. My personal time of prayer is also a minor part. It is when I am no longer on my knees that I truly enter into the worship God intends.

I agree with you about prayer, though for me prayer is also about better knowing myself in the context of my relationship with God.

I particularly like you talking of worshipping by doing things which might not normally be regarded as worship; insofar as it is done conscious of a desire to do what is pleasing to God, what is not worship?

H>> Those are my imaginings. If I expressed them in a totally Christian context, you would hear much more Christian vocabulary. That’s our shared experience and symbolism. Here I try to distill the essence.

I did post it in Interfaith <g>

Sometimes, though, I think the use of Christian vocabulary conceals rather than elucidates; we use words without really considering what they mean.