A New Christianity

Section Internet Links	Wayne's Notes	Jock's Notes
Wayne. Ch 3 - Self-Consciousness and Theism Spong quotes Tillich on the subject of human self-awareness and uses his term: ²the shock of non-being.² He then quotes Freud who speaks of: ²the trauma of self-consciousness² The Bible Said It First It may come as a surprise, but thousands of years before either Tillich or Freud, the Bible speaks of what it means for humans to grow past infantile, dependent existence to a place of new knowledge and freedom. In Genesis 3:1-13 we read of the disobedience, or perhaps more appropriately, the emergence of humanity. The real issue in the story of the Garden of Eden may not be human disobedience at all, but rather human emergence. Recall these words: ²You shall be like God² (or a paraphrase) ²You shall understand reality like God does.² (Read this passage and reflect on the traditional way it has been interpreted - original sin, the serpent as the evil deceiver, Eve as the one to blame for the sin of Adam, the eviction of humans from Eden, etc.) Not only women, but snakes get a bad wrap according to the way we have been taught to understand this myth. But the fact of the matter is, while the myth stands, the way humans interpret that myth varies. We have been taught one particular way of understanding the Garden of Eden story. Yet, there are other ways of interpreting it from the biblical record and we need to look at Eden again, it seems to me. When God says ²no², the snake says ²who told you not to eat of that tree?² Could it not be that the snake did us a favour in making us think about old prohibitions, and opened the door to new awareness on our part? When Eve gave the fruit of the tree to Adam, might that not have been a wonderful gift? Do we not want to give the best to those we care about? Perhaps we have blamed Eve, when in fact we should rejoice that she shared the enlightenment she had found, with Adam, after the snake revealed it to her. I have one question to ask of those who might disagree with this interpretation. If God has given us the capacity for enlightenment and understanding equal to Godself, why should he punish us if we use it? In other words, I would argue for what might be called Christian humanism. History of Humanistic Development The whole of human history has been a story of the evolution of human awareness and the expansion of science. In the past 500-600 years this humanistic development has been extended greatly as a result of two major movements - the Renaissance at the end of the Middle Ages, and the Enlightenment of the 18th century. The first focused on a rebirth of the arts and sciences and the second saw reason as that special capacity that makes humans human and special (Descartes: Cogito ergo sum - I think, therefore I am). The overall result of these two developments was that, while previously God was considered to be the measure of all things and theology was the queen of the sciences, it is now more likely that people see humanity as the measure of all things, and theology has been bumped off its previous unquestioned position of supreme authority in explaining reality. Spong Quotes (Reflect and Discuss) 1. It is that human capacity to be fully self-conscious that makes Homo sapiens (humans) as different from any other form of life in the natural world. (38) 2. To be human is to experience self-consciousness, to know separation, to be made aware of limits and to contemplate ends (38). 3. The thing that makes human beings anxious is identical to that which makes these same creatures human (38). 4. As the realization of mortality grew in humans, a dreadful sense of anxiety gripped them. 5. Sigmund Freud tried to re-create this dawning of a God-consciousness in a little monograph published in 1927, entitled ²The Future of an Illusion.² The fact that God was, for Freud, nothing more than an illusion should not blind us to the accuracy of his insights (43). 6. Theism... was the earliest definition of the meaning of the power that was behind all that was now defined as ²other² by those first self-conscious (human) creatures... theism was created by frightened, self aware humans, to assist them in the task of banking the fires of hysteria brought on by the trauma of self-consciousness, the shock of non-being. God, understood theistically, is thus quite clearly a human construct... the theistic definition of God is a human creation. Thus, theism is not the same as God. Neither is it any more eternal than any other human definition (45). 7. Theism would take many forms over many centuries before it began to die in our generation (46). 8. There was animism (the belief in the existence of many gods and goddesses, by primal peoples). But among nomadic, non-agricultural people such as the ancient Hebrews, theism evolved into a form of tribal monotheism (or a belief in One God) (47). 9. Christianity became monotheismOs Western form (49). 10. Theism is thus a definition of God that has journeyed with self-conscious human beings from primitive animism to complex modern monotheism. (49). 11. Our ancient forebearers created theism to enable themselves... to curry the favour of these supernatural powers... to tame and manipulate the presumed supernatural powers to serve human needs (50). 12. We have created forms of worship in which ²we groveled² as ²miserable offenders.² I quote from the Common Service Book (1958) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church within which I was raised. It was a book with a red cover, and the words were spoken as part of a confession of sins that anticipated every service of worship: ²Almighty God our Maker and Redeemer, we poor sinners confess unto Thee that we are, by nature, sinful and unclean; that we have sinned against Thee in thought, word and deed. Therefore, we flee for refuge to Thine infinite mercy, seeking and imploring Thy grace through the merits of Jesus Christ, Thine only Son, our Lord.² I assume that most churches had a similar kind of confession at the time. 13. Somehow, we humans seemed to believe that the power of our deity was enhanced by the contrasting recognition of our weakness (51). 14. Almost every religious system asserted that its particular deity was the only true and real divine being... and that there was no salvation outside a particular church or denomination (52). 15. Now, theism is dying... Every new discovery about how the natural world operates cuts into the arena once reserved for God alone. The theistic God became a gap-filler (God was inserted where we had no explanation, but as new explanations came from science, God became sidelined into a smaller and smaller place). It seems that the time will come when ²God no longer has any work to do.² (53). 16. Self-consciousness and theism appear to be Siamese twins, joined at birth... If theism dies, does God die? Are we really alone in a vast and hostile universe? (53). 17. In the place of groveling, are we now able to open ourselves in new ways to discover the Ground of Being (Tillich) that is met and known in the self that is emerging as expanded consciousness? These are the profoundly religious questions of a new millennium (54). Wayne's Comments: 1. I believe that the scriptures themselves offer us new and adequate ways of understanding God today. What we need is not a new Bible, but new ways of interpreting the Bible we have. (The technical term for that is: hermeneutical principle). 2. Go back to Genesis 3:1-13. Re-read that passage with some of the new forms of interpretation we have been discussing here as Spong has been prompting us to do.
Jock's. Ch 4 - Beyond Theism but Not Beyond God - I have mixed feelings about this theism business. As Harvey Cox pointed out in Secular City, the problem in modern times is not about meanings of God between people who have different understandings of God and are seeking common ground, but rather that much of the modern world simply considers the subject of religion irrelevant, and God as part of the religious package. Consider how many times one hears the objection raised when someone aspires to a religious sentiment, "Oh but I am not a religious person, I am a spiritual person!" And for many, the theology of our concerns is irrelevant because they heard Neitche's madman announce the Death of God. This short short parable from The Gay Science is where the notion of "the death of god" first appeared. Some say western philosophy is bracketed between 2 stories: Plato's Cave Allegory ad this parable of Nietzche. Joseph Campbell goes much deeper in his series The Masks of God. In Creative Mythology he devotes the next to last chapter to "The Death of God" and there discloses a well worn path from mediaeval times to the present. Campbell suggests that the freedom of individuals in society over the last thousand years have resulted in us coming to our present place not all of a sudden, but steadily and based on the work of the many not the few. He quotes Erasmus as saying "There are none more silly, or nearer their wits' end, than those too superstitiously religious." A quote that seems still true today. Convoluted theological arguments aren't particularly helpful if no one cares, if no one listens, if no one responds. This theism thing in such a context is rather a modern equivalent of the old debate "how many angels dance on the head of a pin" - a totally irrelevant question. I think Spong is pointing out a useful thing about what a false idol this Theistic God is, but only in the sense of our own understandings. It is we ourselves that must come to new understandings, we ourselves that need a way to transition from the theology of our childhood. The job before us is to find the mystery of the nameless god for our own generation. Perhaps in that exercise we might discover a language to communicate more meaningfully to those who have ignored or forsworn religion. But if new theological response and changing the image of God was enough, then we should certainly have arrived by now at a place that would win back the world. Bishop Spong's optimism is one of the reasons we are in in this present study. It is on the larger scale of our Western society in North American and Europe that the influence and membership of the church is in the decline. But we should note in passing that the traditional format accused of irrelevance is in fact winning the world at large back to religion - in both the conservative part of our own society and in the new third world that is now coming into modernism. All sorts, all kinds of religion. Our concerns are not those of most of the world. That being said it seems to be our part to answer the issues that Bishop Spong raises for our Western society, and for us to take our new part. It may be enough to find how we can with integrity reshape our traditions in this New Reformation. The Bishop begins with the question "If theism must be abandoned, is God also at risk?" For this is the fear. This is the objection. This is the unexpected place we have arrived at. We see that "theism" has meant an understanding of a God that is too small. We have understood humanity to be at "Childhood's End" to use Arthur Clarke's phrase, and that theism described the God of that childhood. That he says is now seen as an opiate, a delusion. And in that sense theism is clearly dead. So he says let us consider what "the God of Tomorrow" might be like. On a most positive note he says there is: ",,. something deeply invigorating about discovering a new maturity and realizing that God can be approached, experienced, and entered in a radically different way. I refer here not to a deity who is "a being," not even if we claim for God the status of the highest being. I speak rather of the God I experience as the Ground and Source of All Being and therefore the presence that calls me to step beyond every boundary, inside which I vainly seek dependent security into the fullness of life with all of its exhilarating insecurities." This is an understanding that stems from Paul Tillich. Click HERE to read the last chapter in his The Courage To Be, and experience the vitality of Tillich's words these 50 years later. Spong looks to the Hebrew tradition and observes that 3000 years ago they recognized that every human image of God would be inadequate, that God could have no image and no name. Since this is where it started, it is not so hard to recognize our idolatry in creating images and names. That is rather the essence of this theism exercise. All our inquisitions and our religious wars have forgotten what the Hebrews first recognized so long ago. We should note in passing that this is a deep part of the Islamic faith as well - Allah is quite beyond human words that might try to contain him. Even their daily prayer naming the 100 names of Allah is an exercise pointing out no name is sufficient.. Harvey Cox in Secular City quotes a most illuminating passage Exodus 6:2-3. In this one sentence are contained the 3 names of God which had been inherited from neighbouring peoples. It illustrates Spong's point about that first grand insight that the true God was beyond words and we could not, should not name him. And God [Elohim] said to Moses, "I am the Lord [yahweh]. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as God Almighty [El Shaddai], but by my name the Lord [Yahweh] I did not make myself known to them." Spong recounts with some delight the story of Moses demanding to see God and being permitted only a view of his "hindquarters". His most interesting take on this is that we mortals can "never see who God is but only where God has been. We see God's tracks." A further aspect of this story is it makes pompous and irrelevant the centuries of theological debate about God. And so Spong sees a leaping off place in this ancient story. Using a new and possibly more useful anthropomorphic image, he says from such a place we can perhaps discover "God's footprints". His next question is equally penetrating. "Can I experience God without being able to define God. Is there anything to the sense of transcendence; is there an experience of otherness that is not a delusion born out of fear?" Of course we can. Consider the insight of the mystics. When Julian of Norwich had a vision of God as a Mother, religious people with clear definitions of God were busy with their inquisitions and holy wars. Spong's first answers to this came not from considerations of the theological thinkers, but from the thoughts of ordinary people. In New Jersey, he recounts how the words that people used to describe their experience of God were exactly the sort of thing he was looking for. They first gave words like: energy, wind, nature, love, center, connection, living, present, enveloping, creative, strength. These are words of community and of relationship. Then out of habit they remembered familiar old images that were more consistent with the theistic understanding: powerful, demanding, angry, busy, forgiving, tender, having a sense of humor, listening. A women in the group explained this to Spong in terms that Joseph Cambell, the mythology expert ,would understand. "When we speak of God as a person, what we're really doing is personalizeing the values by which we live as a community. To live together as a family demands a combination of love, structure, and discipline. The values that make community possible are invested with Godlike dimensions." Spong's new definition of God then includes these 3 things: 1. "God is the ultimate source of life. One worships this God by living fully, by sharing deeply. ... as the circles widen, we begin to see that we have to love for love's sake, not for our sake." 2. "God is the ultimate source of love. This love is something like the footprints of God in which I seek to walk, even as I discover that to walk in these footprints is to go places that I fear to go. But when I look up, I can see ahead of me, ducking around the edges of the unknown, what one might call the hindquarters of the divine. Then I discover that the reson I cannot see God but only where God has been is that God is clearly in me, just as God is before me. God is part of who I am and part of who you are. God is love, and so love is God." 3. "God is Being - the reality underlying everything that is. To worship this God you must be willing to reisk all, abandoning your defenses and your self-imposed or culturally constructed security systems. ... by having the courage to be all that you can be - your deepest, fullest self. ... by walking into the unknown, by giving your being away, by valuing the being of others as equal to and even more precious than your own. ... to live for another." Spong shows us "... the rediscovery that the ancient formulas were open ended. That God can never be captured in words or made to serve our power-needs. That the God beyond theism is everything. That ... only our description of God changes. That ,,, the death of the parent-God of theism is ... a call to religious maturity .. a call to be ... the community of people through whom God is experienced."

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