I posted a link to a podcast of Peter Rollins here. My reply in the comments would be too long, and I feel that it is worth explaining here what I took the message to be. Incidentally, I agree with what is said:
We need to not look just at the manifest discourse, but what lies underneath the words – the implicit message. We are creatures that can suspend disbelief, like sexual fantasy, we can believe what we don’t believe. So someone may say that they believe because they have studied philosophy and intellectually it makes sense, but really the only reason they studied philosophy was because they wanted to find reasons to justify their beliefs. The real reason they believe is a fear of meaninglessness.
If we believe like this then we become aggressive if our beliefs are attacked. When we experience that resistance inside us it suggests that we get a psychological pleasure from those beliefs. We don’t want to know that there are issues in our belief system, so it makes us angry. Very often we don’t want to be told what we already know, like climate change – we have wilful ignorance, because the only alternatives are that we take action or we accept that we are not nice people. In addition, we may project onto others; it is important to us that our minister believes and doesn’t have doubts. We need them to believe fully what we don’t really believe.
New Atheism attacks the manifest beliefs, which is mainly a form of fundamentalist belief. However they need to go further and attack the psychological need to believe. They need to challenge why it is that believers get so offended if someone has a differing view than them.
In Christianity, Jesus cried out ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’, he was suffering not from intellectual doubt – because it is addressed to God, but he experienced the absence of God, there was no psychological benefit in believing in God, it is emotional doubt, if you like.
This is terrifying, mystics call it the “dark night of the soul”, the feeling of being utterly alone. Whether or not that is real is immaterial – that is the experience of the cross. In Christianity we are loosed from the need for psychological belief. In the resurrection God is incarnate in the material world. God is found in loving others, in demanding justice. Bonheoffer said that the transcendence of God is God in the midst of everything, in the suffering, in the joy, in the material world.
If Christianity isn’t changing you then it is just a lie. The Bible uses death and life in different ways to common language. Death is a mode of living, life, the eternal life, is living life in all its fullness, anything else is death.
32 comments:
Thank you for posting this; I did listen to the podcast but I often find the written word easier to refer back to.
Hi Lesley,
Clear as mud.
"We need to not look just at the manifest discourse..." - Does this mean 'not only explicit but also implicit' or does it mean 'just implicit, ignore explicit'? Rollins words are confusing as it is, so let's be clear.
So, if when a knowing theist like Rollins thinks that his explicit language is to be ignored, and his implicit meaning understood, and in fact the implicit is the opposite of the explicit, then as soon as he acknowledges that fact, then his implicit language is no longer implicit - it becomes explicit. So that then, his new implicit meaning is the opposite of his old implicit (now explicit) meaning. The logic of this is nonsense.
So, when he says, "Christianity is atheism", he means that to explicitly claim to be a Christian, you are in fact an atheist by denying God - that is your implicit message. But then, since he acknowledges this, he isn't an atheist after all. Isn't simpler just to go with the original belief. Christians spend a lot of time trying to convince people there's something to believe in, only to pull the rug from under their feet? Is that how it works?
It's also difficult to determine who Rollins is talking about, he rambles so much, with incomplete incoherent notions.
So, is he saying 'traditional' Christians should actually think this way; or is he saying they do think this way, but don't realise it?
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"We are creatures that can suspend disbelief" - Yes, we can. So, God is a fantasy all along? We suspend disbelief in order to believe the fantasy? For what purpose?
Or, is the explicit language false, and the implicit true? So, when a theist says, "I believe in God.", they mean "I don't believe in God." When a theist says, "I experience God.", it means, "I don't experience God." When a theist says, "God loves me.", it means "God doesn't love me."
"it is emotional doubt, if you like...This is terrifying" - This is a normal human reaction to some circumstances. It can include self-doubt. It is only associated with God if you want it to be (the fantasy again). But then, the emotional doubt is unnecessary for an atheist, since the intellectual doubt is leaves nothing to doubt emotionally. Do Christians get a perverse kick out of believing intellectually only to doubt emotionally? And, I thought intellectual belief wasn't necessary with faith.
"In the resurrection God is incarnate in the material world." - These are all spiffy sayings, but what do they mean? It might help if you could explain this one.
"God is found in loving others, in demanding justice." - Why isn't is sufficient to say that our human intellect allows us to see a natural animal expression as 'love', so that it's that which we see in others. Demanding justice is a human reaction to the experience of the suffering of others - again, another animal emotion intellectualized.
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"Bonheoffer said that the transcendence of God is God in the midst of everything" - Can you explain what this means?
"If Christianity isn't changing you then it is just a lie." - First, what has this got to do with Rollins and his theology? Isn't this the case for all Christianity - I'm often told it's a journey. And second, in what sense would Christianity be a lie if it isn't changing you? Can't much simpler language be used, such as, "If you find you are not changing for the better as a practicing Christian, then you're not practicing it right."
"Death is a mode of living, life, the eternal life, is living life in all its fullness, anything else is death." - This is sheer language bullshit....
"Death is a mode of living" is just an allusion to the after life, without actually saying it - or without having to own that thought. It's a way of burying that literal sentiment in more mysticism, so that it takes on some other shade of meaning that isn't quite so explicit.
"life, the eternal life, is living life in all its fullness, anything else is death" - There's a traditional philosophical sense in which one can say that if you don't lead a full and fruitful life (the good life) then you might as well not be living - but this too is bollocks. Ask my cat - doing sweet FA all day is just fine and dandy. It's a personal choice. But why the coded theological language? In order to baffle oneself into thinking it's mystical, when it isn't.
Ron,
I'm not going to respond to all your points here, but one stood out as something where I might contribute another viewpoint.
Do Christians get a perverse kick out of believing intellectually only to doubt emotionally? And, I thought intellectual belief wasn't necessary with faith.
For me, it's rather the other way around. Intellectually the furthest I can go is agnosticism: I cannot prove the existence or non-existence of God and I don't try to pretend that I can.
I have (as far as memory permits me to check) always had some belief that God exists; trying to ignore this belief or act as if I did not have it made me very unhappy, despite my intellectual understanding that it could be wrong. This sense of God's existence is quite separate from my feelings about God. It's almost a physical sense, like tinnitus. Crazy? Maybe. Maybe this physical sense that I describe as "God exists" is some other mechanism, maybe my upbringing and cultural background incline me to call this "God". But I'm rather stuck with it.
That in itself would not be enough for me to get involved with Christianity, and I actually walked away from Christianity for a number of years, seeking something that would be more active and less hypocritical.
My ideas or feelings about God are personal and based on my own experiences; in recent years they have been shaped by the faithful compassion I have seen in others (which in some cases resulted in those others helping me when they really, really didn't have to and when there was certain to be no extrinsic reward for doing so). Teresa d'Avila wrote "Christ has no body now on earth but ours" and people who have taken this seriously have been huge positive influences in my life relatively recently; it is because of them that I have found myself back in church in a fairly big way. I should point out that I was so prickly about any kind of proselytization that I would have rejected their help outright if they had made any attempt to pressure me into changing my beliefs or religious practice; indeed one of them repeatedly dodged my questions about theology and religion! Rather, their care and assistance and (dare I say it?) love was unconditional, and my curiosity and gratitude propelled me toward finding a faith community of sorts.
Atheists have also been huge positive influences in my life, and I would be wrong to discount or shun the unconditional love I have been offered by those who claim no faith. Yet their actions, too, seem to me to point to Incarnation. I'm not denying that there is a cultural or background bias to my interpretation, but as previously mentioned, I seem to be stuck with this.
The net result is that I now also have this hope I cannot ignore, that God not only exists but loves all creation with an unimaginable love, and bears all pain with/for us. That is a terrifying hope, because it means that all pains I inflict on people I also inflict on God, and I don't want to do that to the Beloved and yet I fail and fail again. But it's there and I cannot ignore it and the one salve is that our joy is also God's joy... When I talk like this to the atheists they shake their heads and think I'm nuts... so I mostly save it for church and bits of comments on other people's blogs.
I think Pete Rollins' point is that "Christ has no body now on earth but ours" and "There is no God, it's up to us" come to much the same thing: we must take responsibility for making the world better. But the latter statement -- that there is no God, no creator, no power greater than us that can be related to on some level, no help -- is not one that is in any way functional for someone like me who has a strong sense of God's existence. It isn't that I can't bear the thought of the loneliness, but that it requires tremendous effort for me to go around pretending God doesn't exist when I have always perceived the world as an ongoing creation and when I have always experienced something which I cannot describe as anything other than God. I'm not trying to baffle myself into thinking it's mystical: I'm trying to get along in a world that thinks it isn't mystical.
Have you ever suffered from tinnitus? Or chronic pain? My belief in God is less unremittingly negative than those experiences but it is no less relentless.
I can happily accept that others don't have my experience, don't have this belief in God, but frankly I am more concerned about whether they'll help me care for the world than whether they do it for the same reasons I do.
Hi Kathryn,
Thanks for such a detailed response.
"Crazy?...But I'm rather stuck with it." - Not crazy, probably. I appreciate this is a real experience, irrespective of what causes it. Though it could (and often is) labelled as a delusion, I don't think its one that classifies us as deficient or abnormal in any way - it may be that we atheists are the abnormal ones. What's normal in this respect? But it could still be normal and false.
"Christ has no body now on earth but ours" - On the surface this sounds like there is no God, or Christ in the divine sense; but rather that we are instantiations of some conceptually divine ideal that has been set up by Christianity. I can see how Rollins might construe this idea to be atheistic, but that is where I object to Rollins - it very clearly isn't atheistic, and the whole notion of Christian atheist is nonsense, unless you redefine either Christianity, or atheism, or both. Why, for such unfathomable notions of God and the divine is it felt necessary to obfuscate the discourse with waffle?
"Rather, their care and assistance and (dare I say it?) love..." - I see no issue with thinking other humans, even strangers or some new found community, can love us. That's what humans do.
"Yet their [atheists] actions, too, seem to me to point to Incarnation." - But that too would be your interpretation, your point of view, which is already influenced in that direction.
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"I'm not denying that there is a cultural or background bias to my interpretation, but as previously mentioned, I seem to be stuck with this." - This is the bit I find most interesting, in that Lesley too has expressed it in similar terms.
A typical atheist response to this, one I've made, is to ask how you tell the difference between this point of view, this rational understanding of your position that's at odds with your deep belief, compared to say a belief in astrology, fairies (not as ridiculous as it sounds, it was once common), or the FSM. These are usually used to illustrate that having a conviction for something one feels intellectually unrealistic is irrational, and that the only difference is that belief in God has a longer more establish tradition.
But as an alternative I was wondering if there is any other belief that is so strong yet which is equally unsupported. Some theists point to the fringes of science - cosmology, multiple dimensions, string theory, and so on, as having no foundation. But there are distinctions here. Some of these scientific ideas are backed by mathematics, and so have some credibility in this respect; but the main difference is that no personal claims are made of these ideas - there's no notion that the multi-verse loves us, or has an intelligence that communicates with us (much less created us). It's these very personal claims about God that are the real sticking point. And of course any further claims that some theists make, regarding morality and the divine prescriptions and proscriptions that follow.
So, is there anything else comparable? Is there anything we believe in, theist or atheist, that we can't shake off, but for which we have no evidence?
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"The net result is that I now also have this hope..." - I can understand hope. I don't see a problem with humans wanting something that they can't be sure they can have, or is even real.
"That is a terrifying hope, because it means that all pains I inflict on people I also inflict on God" - This I find to be odd, and a particularly catholic notion. There's a lot of stuff we don't know, and theists seem to be able to tell us an awful lot about what God wants from us, or expects of us, or how much he loves us, and so on - to which the question should be, "how do you know that?" Similar questions can be asked of cosmologists, to which they have to respond, "We don't, it's just one possibility we're exploring." So, in this context, how do you know that anything you do inflicts any pain whatsoever on God? I've heard responses to this, such as "He is love, and love feels pain." and many other trite expressions, which only beg more questions - such as, "To what extent have you experienced love in order to think there is associated pain, or know how God feels love?" - and so on. This all seems very presumptuous, to claim to know this of God at all. This is a point Rollins has made, but then goes on with his own presumptions about what God wants - a typical theme among theists.
"When I talk like this to the atheists they shake their heads and think I'm nuts" - That's probably the frustration of not being able to provide any convincing response for you, and in their terms they see it as irrational - as I do from my perspective. But I can only accept that this is truly how you feel, and unless we lock up all theists we have to get further than just calling you nuts.
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"I think Pete Rollins' point is, "There is no God, it's up to us" " - Then why doesn't he just say so? Why isn't he a real atheist? What is he hanging on to that is anything like a shred of traditional Christianity? Why the explicit (manifest) language about God, and why the need to interpret it and fathom out the implicit language?
Of course this is bogus. Rollins is doing pretty much what Spong does. Spong likes to tell us that God is not an external being, but is us, our humanity. But then goes on to deride atheism, secularism, humanism, because of their godlessness. It all boils down to playing with words. One is either a theist or not. You can be more or less literal in your interpretation of the Bible's depiction of God; and he can be a more or less interactive God; and you can more or less whistle God away, a Will-o'-the-wisp, a concept, a fantasy - but it always comes back to God nonetheless.
And theistic language always cloaks the issue in a mystery of it's own making with it's obtuse language.
For example, your statement that intellectually you don't know if there is a God, but you have some uncontrollable feeling that there is - this is as clear as a bell. There really is no need for the Rollins nonsense.
"Have you ever suffered from tinnitus" - Yes, on and off for periods - but not debilitating. But I can see your point. But I have a notion of what it is - it's biological stuff happening in my inner ear, or in my auditory cortex. Given that the feeling of God's presence can be turned on or off in the lab it seems this is something similar. But the knowledge of what tinnitus might be isn't in itself going to stop it - and so even if you convinced yourself that your experience of God was just brain stuff it wouldn't make the feeling go away. Do you have a further view on this aspect of belief? How do you deal with this possibility?
Ron,
I'll try to respond to some of this...
Not crazy, probably. I appreciate this is a real experience, irrespective of what causes it. Though it could (and often is) labelled as a delusion, I don't think its one that classifies us as deficient or abnormal in any way - it may be that we atheists are the abnormal ones. What's normal in this respect? But it could still be normal and false.
Yes, it could. But it hasn't been proven false (and my more philosophical atheist friends tell me it can't be proven false because of the annoying ineffability clause), and spending my entire life playing a what-if game about this is no more fruitful than pretending to myself and others that I don't have the experience or perceptions that I do. I could be wrong. So what?
On the surface this sounds like there is no God, or Christ in the divine sense; but rather that we are instantiations of some conceptually divine ideal that has been set up by Christianity.
I think free will comes into this; what "it's up to us" and "Christ has no body now on earth but ours" have in common is that they put our fate firmly in our hands. I think that to call this atheism may well be nonsense. But then, so is the (fairly common -- I've had to deal with it a lot from some pretty clever people) atheist accusation that theists believe the world doesn't matter because God will sort everything out in the end. I do believe God will "sort it out" in the end but not without our participation and cooperation.
I see no issue with thinking other humans, even strangers or some new found community, can love us. That's what humans do.
Why do you think this is something humans do? Do you think it is a genetic fluke, or is there some purpose?
ask how you tell the difference between this point of view, this rational understanding of your position that's at odds with your deep belief, compared to say a belief in astrology, fairies (not as ridiculous as it sounds, it was once common), or the FSM. These are usually used to illustrate that having a conviction for something one feels intellectually unrealistic is irrational, and that the only difference is that belief in God has a longer more establish tradition.
I have no personal experience of a sense of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, no personal experience of fairies, no personal experience that leads me to think astrology might be more than superstition.
I cannot remember ever believing in Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy, or similar... those were always games to be played with grown-ups and we all knew they were games and that one of the rules of the game was that you don't say "this doesn't exist".
So, is there anything else comparable? Is there anything we believe in, theist or atheist, that we can't shake off, but for which we have no evidence?
I'm not sure. This is an interesting question.
More when I've had some dinner...
"That is a terrifying hope, because it means that all pains I inflict on people I also inflict on God" - This I find to be odd, and a particularly catholic notion.
It is odd. It comes down to free will again.
There's a lot of stuff we don't know, and theists seem to be able to tell us an awful lot about what God wants from us, or expects of us, or how much he loves us, and so on - to which the question should be, "how do you know that?"
The short answer is that I don't know it but I do believe it on some level. I note that I didn't write of facts but of hope...
So, in this context, how do you know that anything you do inflicts any pain whatsoever on God? I've heard responses to this, such as "He is love, and love feels pain." and many other trite expressions, which only beg more questions - such as, "To what extent have you experienced love in order to think there is associated pain, or know how God feels love?
I don't believe that in this life I can know God, so all my theology is conjecture. But human beings live in a world of uncertainty and conjecture and make decisions on it all the time. I don't know for certain that the plastic in my computer isn't giving me cancer, or that I will still have paid work tomorrow, or that my partner really loves me. I can't prove any of these things. But they are likely enough that I will take the risk of acting on the basis that they are true.
I decide they are likely by a process of rough-and-ready reckoning, extrapolation, examining what my senses tell me about the world, comparing my perceptions with those of others. Sometimes I am wrong and have to re-adjust. Sometimes I am right even though many others think I am wrong or simply don't have the ability to distinguish between one thing and another (this happens fairly frequently with me in music -- training and practice have allowed me to hear things many people don't notice).
How have I come to hope that God loves us? The same process of examining my experiences and comparing notes with others. Can I know how God feels love, or even if God feels love? No. But I know how I feel love, and I know that when I love someone and they are in pain I want nothing more than to take that pain away, and when I can't, it still hurts. I know that when one I love is experiencing delight and joy, that delights me.
Christian tradition supposes that human beings are made in God's image and that God is personal, a person (or three persons, but let's not go there...). I'm willing to accept that we could all be wrong about this, but again -- my perceptions and experiences lead me to believe it is likely to have at least an element of truth. If there is any similarity of how I experience love and how God experiences love, and if God loves me and all other creatures, then any pain I cause to any of those creatures also causes pain to God.
"I think Pete Rollins' point is, "There is no God, it's up to us" " - Then why doesn't he just say so? Why isn't he a real atheist? What is he hanging on to that is anything like a shred of traditional Christianity? Why the explicit (manifest) language about God, and why the need to interpret it and fathom out the implicit language?
I didn't say Pete Rollins's point is that there's no God, though -- just that I think he thinks that that is equivalent to "Christ has no body now on earth but ours". The "it's up to us" is the same; the "There's no God" is different.
It takes some effort to get from a rather simplistic notion of God as an unpredictable parent to God as entering into some sort of co-creator relationship with human beings. It is always easy to fall into tit-for-tat thinking. I can't speak for Pete, but my impression is that his frustration with common garden-variety Christianity is that it is too easily either judgmental (anyone who isn't like us is wrong) or complacent (God will fix everything, so we don't have to do anything but please ourselves).
Spong likes to tell us that God is not an external being, but is us, our humanity. But then goes on to deride atheism, secularism, humanism, because of their godlessness.
I'm not familiar with Spong's work, though I've heard of him.
As I tried to make clear before, I have no problem with atheism, secularism or humanism in terms of their underlying beliefs; not everyone will have had my experiences, and people given different information will draw different conclusions. I do tend to think some of the secularists in the UK are a bit over the top, but then so are some of the theists. I am a theist, but I am not one who insists that everyone else must be theist too.
I would like people to be kind to one another, and my theist beliefs are part of that desire for me, but I don't ask that people are kind to each other because they have come to believe what I believe. I'd be perfectly satisfied if they'd be kind to one another for other reasons.
But I have a notion of what it is - it's biological stuff happening in my inner ear, or in my auditory cortex. Given that the feeling of God's presence can be turned on or off in the lab it seems this is something similar. But the knowledge of what tinnitus might be isn't in itself going to stop it - and so even if you convinced yourself that your experience of God was just brain stuff it wouldn't make the feeling go away. Do you have a further view on this aspect of belief? How do you deal with this possibility?
Well, all of it is just brain stuff, isn't it? Everything I perceive is mediated by my brain. Have they worked out how to turn off sight and hearing in a lab? If I blindfold myself, is a sunset any less true?
What would I do if I found out that about half of what I hear is imaginary? I would seek out others who hear things that are not there, find out how they cope with life, try various coping strategies myself. If ignoring the "extra" sounds made me happy I might do that, but if it took huge amounts of energy I would probably abandon that pretty fast, and instead try to integrate the extra sounds into my life such that I could live in a reasonably constructive manner. I would need skill at differentiating between things that only I hear and things that everyone hears. I probably wouldn't ask the advice of people who only hear what can be recorded on a cassette player and I probably would ask the advice of people who had experience of this augmented auditory world. I would want support to make sure that the experience didn't cause me to start taking actions that harm others or myself, and if possible I would try to use the experience for some sort of good. I would be very curious about any similarities between what I hear and what other "sufferers" hear, and especially any common meaning that might be derived from them, though of course if there were enough of us it would be impossible to completely separate that from a wider cultural context.
Which isn't all that different from going to church, really. I have this belief, this hope, that I cannot shake off. Pretending to myself and others that it isn't true was fruitless, tiring and painful. Participating in a community of people who have similar beliefs is challenging but I think, for me, ultimately constructive (though I have pretty high standards for community); through personal prayer and corporate worship and searching discussions I am challenged to be kinder, more truthful, more patient and gentle. Worship makes me more appreciative of what I have and is in many ways a great re-framer, and I wonder whether liturgy would be useful in those terms even if I had no underlying theist beliefs. It also innoculates me, I hope, against the "God wants me to kill someone" impulses that can happen when we see God-as-God but not God-in-humanity, or get frustrated at our powerlessness in the face of people doing things we think are wrong (I have not personally experienced these impulses, but I can sort of see how they come about).
Hi Kathryn,
Thanks again for the response.
We can't prove that God does not exists (in any of the common senses of God) simply because the logic to do so isn't available - and for the same reason there are no sound proofs that God exists. The ineffability clause may be part of a theology, but is irrelavent, and not a good excuse for atheistic frustration in my opinion. So, everything does come down to our experiences and our evalutation of them. From an atheistic point of view the experiences that are often claimed to be associated with God can be explained just as well by natural causes. Again, this isn't proof of those causes for those experiences, it's just weight of evidence. So, for example, when the God experience can be invoked or disabled at will in a lab, this suggests it's a natural cause. We could ask, for example, why would God provide such good evidence for a natural cause of belief, and yet be so unreliable at answering prayers?
I think the notion that "theists believe the world doesn't matter because God will sort everything out in the end" holds no water, because the evidence is plain to see, that plenty of theists care about the world in many ways. Similarly, attacks on atheists, such as, "atheists don't believe in anything, which leads to nihilism and a cold uncaring world", is equally nonsense.
"Why do you think this [love] is something humans do? Do you think it is a genetic fluke, or is there some purpose?"
Got carried away with my response to this...here.
"I have no personal experience of a sense of...(any number of things that some people claim to have experienced but you haven't)" - The point here is that other people are in exactly the same position as you; but they think their experience is real. Given that the religious experience is quite common, then Muslim's too have that same experience, as do Hinus and Buddhists, so we have to ask, how do all these faiths get something like this experience to be aligned with quite incompatible details of theology?
There's no reason to think a Muslim's internal experience of God is any different than a Christian's, which implies that all the theology is just made up stuff. The sense that there is some other (i.e. a person's particular God experience) is the common component - everything else is cultural baggage. This means virtually everything - the resurrection, Gabriel's appearance to Mohammed, all of it. I can see how one might have this experience of some other, that you call God, and depending on one's personality and religious practice it's a matter of convincing one's self that the rest is real. But it all seems a forced addition, a self indoctrination. (See 'liturgy' later)
I agree that conjecture is a significant part of our lives - because we don't have access to certainty. But we don't just rely on conjecture, we also rely on experience to confirm or falsify our conjectures. But our experiences can also be unreliable, and that's why we have developed some criteria for establishing the reliability of experience - and part of it is that subjective experience alone should be terated with suspicion if it can't be backed up by multi-mode methods of checking.
In the case of plastic-cancer, we haven't sufficient evidence to suppose there's a link - but we've been mistaken about materials before. But if there's no correlation that is obvious we have no reason to think there's a link.
There's a strong correlation between the claims and the effects in a loving relationship - but we know from experience that they are not specifically causal (or we can't yet demonstrate it), and they can change unexpectedly, so it's worth not taking love for granted. Nor can we rely on being paid tomorrow, depending on one's job and the economic climate, and a million other factors.
But, for love and salary the correlation is usually sufficient to work quite a lot of the time. If it wasn't we wouldn't commit to jobs, and we wouldn't form loving relationships - in other words, cultural and biological evolution made it this way, and we have learned that they work to some reliable degree. But of course we know how unreliable love is, because we see that many people go through many poor relationships thinking there is love when there isn't, or thinking the love will last and it doesn't.
In the case of religious experience, the only confirmation we have is that people have a particular experience. We have no confirmation that the content of that experience has anything to do with God whatsoever - and certainly no confirmation that it has anything to do with the details of the many theologies.
"Christian tradition supposes that human beings are made in God's image" - But that requires the presupposition that there is a God on which Chritianity, or Islam, could be based. The age and extent of the traditions of religions may give them some persuasive weight, but the theology is arbitrary. Had history been different we might all be Muslims right now. Britain could certainly have been a Roman Catholic country - and it seems a swing in that direction is possible over some very specific issues: women and gay bishops. The theology one believes seems to be a whim of history influenced by natural human perspectives, which are then repackages as if they are a consistent whole theology. The theology of one's religion dictates the general belief; then personal influences transform that into personal belief; and then the faith transforms the whole back into a personally adapted theology. But it still depends on the human tendency to create the concept of a God in the first place as a hook upon which to hang all this.
On this basis I think it's enough to suspect theology and particular religions so much that one could quite easily maintain the notion of a loving God, or a God that inspires love, or a Godless loving humanity (e.g. Humanism), depending upond the extent to which one's inner experience dictates some 'other' or not.
"But I know how I feel love, and I know that when I love someone and they are in pain I want nothing more than to take that pain away, and when I can't, it still hurts. I know that when one I love is experiencing delight and joy, that delights me." - Again, a common experience of theists and atheists alike. If God is so obviously unnecessary for these feelings it questions seriously what God has got to do with them.
"Christ has no body now on earth but ours" - Again, this is still a tricky statement. Does it mean that God, through Christ, was on earth, but now that he isn't on earth there is no further contact with God - we're on our own? Or is it a less significant statement, meaning that in leaving us here alone Christ left his 'love', his experience, but that we still need God? Why the reference to 'body'? Can't this be made clearer? If this is what Rollins is saying then he has made no difference whatsoever - this is the same old Christianity.
"my impression is that his frustration with common garden-variety Christianity" - Then isn't his solution simply to say, stop being judegmental and complacent? Why does he need this confusing language to support his ideas?
"...though of course if there were enough of us it would be impossible to completely separate that from a wider cultural context...Which isn't all that different from going to church, really." - Fair point.
"and is in many ways a great re-framer" - Yes, I think framing determines a lot of what we think and accept. But when does the framing fool us?
"I wonder whether liturgy would be useful in those terms even if I had no underlying theist beliefs." - Liturgy, which is related to praxis - in that some theists who doubt, or maybe who start out without faith but who want to belive, are able to come to belief through the practice and affirmation. But this is a well know way of conditioning oneself. If you say it loud enough and long enough you can come to believe it, whatever it is, whether it's real or not.
I think most of what you say toward the end can be explained and framed in quite natural ways related to human behaviour, without any need for the God framing. But I appreciate that it works for you.
But I can't help but see it like football. If we go along and chant loud enough, and will the team to win, and they do, we feel justified in claiming we knew they would win, or that our hope has been fulfilled and was worthwhile; they have affirmed our belief in the team. But if they lose we can either have doubt that they are the best team we thought they were, or we can find other excuses - like the refeeree (Satan?). Belief, affirmation, confirmation bias when things go right, doubt or excuses when things go wrong. I can see why football is considered a religion. But I can also see how a religion is just one team's support, and all the ritual and theology is there just to keep the supporters coming; and the banners and the scarf are the religion's iconography.
With football we can say it's just a game, and believe that fact most of the time, suspending our disbelif during the game. When our national side play we can even support players from what are normally opposing teams. Is this what inter-faith movements do when they demonise atheism?
Hi Ron and Kathryn
I am just emerging from a bit of a hectic time and so have lost the plot rather on this one. If there are specific things it would be helpful for me to comment on could you point me to them?
Ron, it may be confusing language for you, but it is clear to me. I have been puzzling about this, and I think the reason is that there are many concepts that Christians understand and he is playing with those. He is talking to a broadly churched audience and hence they will understand them.
The other thing is I think he is answering different questions to the ones you think he is answering. He is broadly using descriptive language rather than polemic. He is not generally saying 'believe in God because.....'
(As an aside Christians and Jews have been called atheists as an insult since ancient times because they had no idols in the Temples/churches, so this is a bit of a recurrent pun).
You must accept that people say and write things that you know mean something different to what is said.
People can suspend disbelief hence it is perfectly possible that people doubt and know they doubt and at the same time refuse to acknowledge it to themselves.
‘In the resurrection God is incarnate in the material world’ – the hope of the resurrection produced a band of people willing to be less fearful of the ruling powers and hence more willing to do things that Jesus would do, even if the penalties were severe.
"Bonheoffer said that the transcendence of God is God in the midst of everything"- This was a polemic between Bonheoffer and Karl Barth. (I think)Barth liked the idea that God was so transcendent that he wasn’t imminent – so far above and beyond little us that we can’t understand nor relate to God. Bonheoffer preferred the idea that God wasn’t transcendent in that sense at all, but God was available to be found in the midst of everything – in simple kindnesses, in the beauty around him etc
"If Christianity isn't changing you then it is just a lie." - First, what has this got to do with Rollins and his theology? Isn't this the case for all Christianity Yes, it should be, but some seem to feel they have arrived and have no need to change.
And second, in what sense would Christianity be a lie if it isn't changing you? Can't much simpler language be used, such as, "If you find you are not changing for the better as a practicing Christian, then you're not practicing it right." Rollins has quite a strong belief in this – he refuses to call himself a Christian because to do so would suggest that he is loving God with all his heart.. and loving his neighbour as himself. Hence he is using the strongest possible language.
"Death is a mode of living, life, the eternal life, is living life in all its fullness, anything else is death." - This is sheer language bullshit.... To you it might be, but not to me. John’s gospel does not talk about life after death at all. But it does use the words ‘eternal life’, which have nothing to do with life after death but about the life of the eternal God being with us. The understanding and experience of love in a new way, of not being afraid and of being part of something greater than ourselves.
Posted a long comment, internets ated it, and I have to go to work now. Will try to respond later this week.
That is so frustrating. Happens to me too. Taken to writing the comment in Word and then pasting it in!
Really enjoying your thoughts Kathryn - you explain things very well and seem undefended. Nice to read someone whose thoughts are similar to mine.
Hi Lesley,
"there are many concepts that Christians understand and he is playing with those" - I'm guessing, but I bet this is closer to the mark, "there are many concepts that baffle most Christians, but a few Christians understand, and he is playing with those"
"He is broadly using descriptive language" - It's encouraging to know he's trying to, as that shows signs that he wants to be understood.
Theist atheist as pun? An in-joke? OK, if that's what he really means by this that's fine, I can ignore that point. From what I recollect of the previous clip you posted some time back it seemed to be something more literal. But I'll have to listen again to that in this current context.
"You must accept that people say and write things that you know mean something different to what is said." - Yes, of course - politicians. When I'm being generous I assume they are being diplomatic, when not I think they are lying bastards. If Rollins is being descriptive with the intention of being informative, then I would expect him to be as clear as possible. When he's making this point about others he's basically saying they are fooling themselves? Is that it?
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"People can suspend disbelief hence it is perfectly possible that people doubt and know they doubt and at the same time refuse to acknowledge it to themselves." - So that is it, yes? Atheist have always thought theists were fooling themselves - what's Rollins doing purloining our line of argument? :)
OK, now we get to your explanations that actually start to make sense. Your translations are now quite clear (though I still may disagree with them). Why not speak in clear terms anyway? Why does theology have to be described in such vague, mystical terms? The impression atheists get is that it's the use of slightly hypnotic language, as I explained in my review of the Rob Bell clip.
"In the resurrection God is incarnate in the material world" - I sensible translation of this would be, "Even though God was already incarnate in the material world, in the body of Jesus, when it came round to the resurrection of Jesus God was just showing off to emphasise this point." Nowhere in the original or in my translation does it suggest the quite different statement you made, which I could also express as, "The resurrection was supposed to encourage the team to be as brave in the face of adversity as Jesus was" Well, I can see the crucifixion doing that, had Jesus been mortal, "If Jesus can give his life for the cause, so can I." But really the crucifixion ought to have caused this response, "It's OK for you, you're right on your way to join yourself in heaven - you are God. We're mere mortals and have to take on trust your claim that we will be saved. In the mean time you leave us here to deal with this crap" And the resurrection was just rubbing their noses in it, "Well that's ok for you Jesus, but I'm hardly going to be resurrected am I."
Transcend - to be above and independent of the universe, time, etc. - Seems a pretty clear definition. But let's face it, both Bonheoffer and Barth are just guessing here. Which has access to this degree of knowledge about God?
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"If you find you are not changing for the better as a practicing Christian, then you're not practicing it right." - This still seems like the simpler language. I thought Christianity was all about this striving, with Christ as the role model to which one is unlikely to match. Where does Rollins get off changing this, saying that to be Christian is to assume you've made it, so he's refusing to call himself a Christian? I think he's being specifically polemic here. Again, the simpler language is to say the opposite, that if you assume you've made it then you are not being a proper Christian?
"Hence he is using the strongest possible language." - If strong means wrong (which I wouldn't put past this topsy-turvy world).
"The understanding and experience of love in a new way, of not being afraid and of being part of something greater than ourselves." - This is a reasonable statement; clear and to the point - and 'part of something' could refer to humanity for a Humanist. Whereas this "Death is a mode of living" is obfuscation.
OK, Rollins may be trying to be controversial within the faith in order to stir up some fresh thought. But it seems particularly insulting to other Christians that take a more simplistic view of their faith. I'm surprised there are not as many claims of him being offensive as there are directed towards strident atheists. Maybe it's because many Christians don't realise they are being insulted because the language of Rollins goes right over their heads.
Tips:
1) Prepare post offline - always. Some will fail to post.
2) Break it down to chunks of 2000 words or less.
3) Quick comments, like this, type right in, but do Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C to copy to your clipboard just before posting - as a quick backup copy.
This seems to have occurred since you tried a different comment system some time ago. I've posted error details to google, as have many others, but no response.
Yeah – people fool themselves.. I fool myself..
Atheist have always thought theists were fooling themselves - what's Rollins doing purloining our line of argument? :) if you think this is polemic then you won’t understand – it isn’t apologetics.
Why not speak in clear terms anyway? Why does theology have to be described in such vague, mystical terms? I think because the terms have resonances with Biblical ideas and theological fist fights from the past. Hence there is the opportunity to convey quite a lot of questions in a single statement involving one of these terms – I think he is more interested in posing questions to make us all think than giving answers.
The Bible has the disciples afraid post crucifixion and prior to the resurrection, and then brave post resurrection. The words ‘resurrection’ and ‘hope’ often go together.
I dunno – does seem a bit abstract, the Bonhoeffer and Barth bit..
Ok.. I quite like the ‘it’s a lie’ language – stops me in my tracks.
I think people like Rollins do cause offense. I heard a gag once from a pastor that he could go into a book shop and buy a porn mag without worrying, but if he bought a Brian McLaren book then he would ask them to put it in a brown paper bag.
I thought that it was that he would hide his Brian MacLaren book underneath a porn mag - but same point :)
:) See the second comment
here
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