{"id":1625,"date":"2020-02-28T18:14:11","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T18:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/?p=1625"},"modified":"2020-02-28T18:14:11","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T18:14:11","slug":"pinning-god-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/?p=1625","title":{"rendered":"Pinning God down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Looking at Merold Westphal\u2019s writing on \u201cAtheism for Lent\u201d in his book \u201cSuspicion and Faith\u201d for Pete Rollins 2020 Atheism for Lent, I start by being put off by Westphal talking of Freud, Niezsche and Marx as the great modern theologians of original sin; original sin is not a term which I\u2019m fond of, particularly given that it\u2019s very Augustinian, and Augustine seems to have been the originator of the Church\u2019s preoccupation with sex, which these days seems to be just about all the Church really IS concerned with (given that \u201cpro-life\u201d, i.e. anti-abortion, is really anti-sex in its deepest motivation). I don\u2019t myself like to talk of the yetzer ha ra (evil inclination) without also talking of the yetzer ha tov (inclination toward good), thinking that the Jewish theologians did a much better job of interpreting their own scriptures, and that Christians should have left well alone \u2013 at least on that point. I do have an idea of something \u201coriginal\u201d<\/a>, but it\u2019s original self-consciousness (and so self-centeredness).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trouble is, just when I’d decided not to like his writing, Westphal then suggests that those three are useful as critics of Christianity, and with that I thoroughly agree. If \u201cthe unexamined life is not worth living\u201d, then probably the unexamined faith is not worth having \u2013 or, considering that the NT usage is of a verb form, not worth faithing. I\u2019m still comfortable when he points out that all three cast doubt on the utility of substance-dualism, and suggest that religion can be a very material, fleshly thing. What else, indeed, can it be, when metaphysics is relegated by Kant to the sphere of unfounded conjecture (as I interpret him as saying, but then, I don\u2019t claim to understand Kant).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, however, Westphal is straight back into \u201call our righteous deeds are but as dirty rags\u201d and \u201cthe heart is deceitful in all things, and desperately corrupt\u201d, and quoting Karl Barth stating that it was not the world which crucified Jesus, but the church. Forgive me, but it was not<\/em><\/strong> the church. It wasn\u2019t even the Jewish Temple hierarchy, which I imagine Barth considered to be place-holders for the church. It was the Romans, and they were most definitely the worldly power, and, if we believe Matthew, it was also the mob \u2013 empire and hoi polloi conjoined, which is pretty definitely the world. I will grant that in those days the concept of separating church and state was well over a millennium away, and would have meant almost nothing to any faction in the first century, and that one of the issues the Romans obviously had with Jesus was total incomprehension of \u201cmy kingdom is not of this world\u201d. Where else could it be? They had the same issue with later followers of Jesus proclaiming \u201cJesus is Lord\u201d, because, by implication, that meant that Caesar was not Lord. In that day and age, heresy was also treason \u2013 and continued to be through the history of the Empire and then of Christendom until at least the Reformation. Let’s be honest, it continues to this day – Catholics have only fairly recently started becoming more accepted because of their allegiance to the Pope, Jews are still attacked for the deeds of the Israeli Government and suspected of split loyalties, and Muslims have to carry the burden of a few of their more extreme adherents – in a way in which, I note, Christians don’t have to carry the burden of some of theirs (for example, the Lords Resistance Army).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, however, it becomes clear that Barth was laying the\nblame at the feet of the church at least in part to avoid it being cast on the\nRomans or the Jews (because we are not Romans or Jews), so we could accept the\nblame. In conscience, I think we can do that without this somewhat ahistorical\nexercise \u2013 Christians think of themselves as \u201cgrafted on\u201d to the stem of\nJudaism, so we cannot take the benefit without the burden there, and most Western\nChristians are the children of Empire, whether it be the English-speaking\nBritish and then American empires or the competing ones of the Spanish,\nPortuguese, French or Dutch. Even the Belgians had their stab at empire in the\nCongo, and the Italians in Eritrea; the Scandinavians need to look a little\nfurther back to Vasa and Vikings… though perhaps the Swiss are exempt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Westphal, however, then turns in a direction more congenial\nto me, in using Barth\u2019s criticism of Christianity as transactional, using the\nexample of Salieri from the play and film \u201cAmadeus\u201d; it is all about what God\ncan do for us, apparently. One might more profitably think in terms of \u201cask not\nwhat your God can do for you, but what you can do for your God\u201d. Jesus, after\nall, said \u201ctake up your cross and follow me\u201d; we are not looking there at a\ntransaction, but an exhortation, and one which leads to a death similar to that\nof Jesus (something which was familiar to several generations of early\nChristians, but entirely foreign to most today). Paul wrote \u201cI have been crucified\nwith Christ\u201d \u2013 he hadn\u2019t, in the strict sense, but in extra-scriptural writing,\nit seems he eventually achieved that. I think it right that, as Lent points us\ninevitably to the cross, so we should orient ourselves that way in advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One further thought came to me in contemplating this passage\nin a somewhat cruciform frame of mind, and that was that the stress on\nchallenging our notions of God is very appropriate. I\u2019m a mystic; I rest what\nfaith I can manage (what faithing I can achieve) on a number of powerful\nmystical experiences, and we\u2019ll come to that a couple of weeks hence. Pete\nrightly identifies the mystics as criticising any too-definite statement about\nGod, and I have to agree that that is a characteristic of mystics reporting\ntheir experience; the words we have, the concepts we have, are inadequate to\nconvey the fullness of that experience of God. The generality is to affirm\nsomething about God but immediately to negate it, the cataphatic way (way of\ndenial), and the image which comes to me is that every time we make a definite\nstatement about God, we are trying to pin God down to some specific definition\n(I wrote a whole post<\/a> about\nthis, the title of which \u201cThe heresy of all doctrines\u201d prompted someone to ask\nif I\u2019d encountered Pete Rollins work, as it was reminiscent of some of this\ntitles \u2013 I hadn\u2019t, but here I am embarking on a fourth dose of Atheism for\nLent).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pinning God down could be a description of the\ncrucifixion…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looking at Merold Westphal\u2019s writing on \u201cAtheism for Lent\u201d in his book \u201cSuspicion and Faith\u201d for Pete Rollins 2020 Atheism for Lent, I start by being put off by Westphal talking of Freud, Niezsche and Marx as the great modern theologians of original sin; original sin is not a term which I\u2019m fond of, particularly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1626,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions\/1626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}