January 28, 2011 at 10:53 A.M. I had not reviewed this essay for a while. I noticed that several words emphasized in quotes had been altered. Rather than reintroducing the italics, I simply eliminated the emphasis in each quote. I have dealt with this inserted "error" several times in the past. Perhaps this alternative will finally resolve the issue for the person indulging in this amusing ploy.
June 26, 2010 at 1:14 P.M. New Jersey's hackers have denied my access to these essays in "Philosopher's Quest." Hence, I will repost them here until I can regain that access.
"A man once died upon the cross, but one must learn to die upon the cross every day."
Jose Marti, "Letter to Gonzalo de Quesada," in On Art and Literature: Critical Writings (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1982), p. 332.
Cornel West has said it best in a paragraph that I treasure:
"Despite the challenges presented by the widespread trivialization and dilution of the Christian Gospel, I remain committed to its fundamental claim: To follow Jesus [or to agree, even as an atheist, with the ethics of the Gospels,] is to love your way through the darkness of the world. This love appears absurd -- in fact pure folly in the face of much of the world’s misery -- and yet it yields indescribable levels of sorrow and joy, sadness and ecstasy. To be a Christian is to look at the world through the lens of the cross and thereby to keep one’s focus on human suffering and struggle."
The Cornel West Reader, p. 355.
One need not be a Christian, as I am not in any traditional sense, to accept the ethical wisdom in this message. ("Cornel West On Universality" and "Why I am not an ethical relativist.")
I can never accept the literal truth of the mythical aspects of religion, but there is so much truth of a different sort, beauty, and lasting importance in these great stories found in the New Testament. It was George Santayana’s moral admiration for a Catholicism in which he could no longer believe that led to Bertrand Russell’s quip:
“Santayana believes that there is no God and that Mary is His mother."
Perhaps the same may be said of me.
Much depends, I suppose, on what is meant by “being a Christian.” I can accept a great deal that seems obviously true in the moral message of the “gnostic” Gospel of Thomas, for example -- which I very much prefer to that of John, despite the latter’s historical victory. I say this as someone who does not believe in the supernatural, nor in an anthropomorphic God, nor (I repeat) in the literal truth of the Gospel stories, nor in the "factual" truth of any religious myth. (The reader who wishes to pursue this controversy further is directed to the works of Professor Elaine Pagels.)
A key source for this individualist perspective on the Christian message of love is Kierkegaard:
"The crowd is untruth. Therefore was Christ crucified, because, although he addressed himself to all, He would have no dealings with the crowd, because He would not permit the crowd to aid him in any way, because in this regard He repelled people absolutely, would not found a party, did not permit balloting, but would be what He is, the Truth which relates itself to the individual. -- And hence everyone who would truly serve the truth is eo ipso, in one way or another a martyr. ..."
Soren Kierkegaard, “That Individual,” Quoted and Translated by Walter Kaufman, in Existentialism From Dostoevsky to Sartre (New York & London: Penguin, 1956), pp. 96-97.
Professor Elaine Pagels’s views and those of Kierkegaard are in tension, however, when it comes to the thorny issue of free will and the degree to which “submission” is required of the Christian “knight of faith.”
Compare Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988), p. xxvii (“An act of religious affirmation is always, in some sense, a practical [or political?] and consequential act.") with Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (A. Hannay, trans.: London: Penguin, 1985), pp. 75-76. (“On this the knight of faith is just as clear: all that can save him is the absurd.”)
What is essential to the Christian commitment? Is it an unquestioning acceptance of the literal truth of the Gospel story? Is the essential gesture an act of defiant free will? Or is it infinite resignation and absolute belief that is required? Obedience to authority? Or moral rebellion in the cause of justice and love? Or is it the resignation itself that must be freely willed? May we reject belief in the literal truth of religious stories so as to benefit from their moral truth? ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")
Perhaps we can only hope, at best, for that faith that is a “gift of grace” which yields answers to such questions or makes them irrelevant. I am reminded also of William James and his idea of a “will to believe” and of the utility of faith. Pragmatism (New York: Prometheus, 1991), p. 128; (first published in 1907); see also, George Santayana, “William James,” in Character and Opinion in the United States (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1967), pp. 64-96.
Despite his somewhat (to my mind) pejorative terms “tough- and tender-minded,” James knew himself to have “religious yearnings and transcendental aspirations” that would not be denied. He was both tough- and tender-minded, as are most interesting thinkers. Like John Stuart Mill, whose own mental crisis was similar to the episode experienced by James in 1870, it was impossible for James to deny his need for poetry and beauty as well as this religious aspiration, what he called the “hope for the absolute,” in his own life. There are useful comparisons to draw between James and Kierkegaard in The Sickness Unto Death. It has been said that:
"It is ... possible to accept literally [Kierkegaard’s] designation of Christ as 'the historical, the existential' individual, without making this truth the major premise of existential investigation. The culmination of personal life in communion with God would then be intimated rather than laid down as first principle. Kierkegaard himself leaves his readers free to make their own reading of existence, since such freedom is the condition of acquiring individual selfhood."
James Collins, The Existentialists (Chicago: Gateway, 1952), p. 17. ("The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem" and "Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
In commenting on George Santayana’s theory of religion, Morton White suggests that Santayana “rejects the theology of Catholicism but rejoices in the poetry and ritual of its religious ceremony. For him religion is not a literal account of anything but an allegorical and metaphorical rendering of moral truth. It becomes almost a species of poetry and is therefore to be measured by aesthetic and moral standards rather than by scientific methods.”
The Age of Analysis (New York: New American Library, 1955), p. 54. ("Metaphor is Mystery" and "Conversation On a Train.")
This is to turn the Christian mass into a sort of spiritual Opera, which, I guess, it is. But there may be something in this idea, which is not Christian alone, of an "aesthetic of redemption." (Walter Benjamin) Santayana comes very close to Carl Jung's later view of religion as the "collective dream" of a people. The analogy to art should be obvious. W.T. Stace's brilliant Time and Eternity is a recent discovery for me. ("'The Da Vinci Code': A Movie Review.")
For the believer, there is also the issue of how to interpret the risen Christ's admonition to Mary Magdalene -- Noli me Tangere "Do not touch this." (Gospel of John)
Is the life-story of Christ an example to be emulated and discussed as opposed to a biography in which every detail is to be tested for historical accuracy? Was it not Christ's most important theological instruction to his followers to "interpret" his teaching freely in light of their own needs? I think so. (And please do not mention The Da Vinci Code.)
Why would Christ choose to speak, first -- as resurrected figure or divinity -- to a woman who had been a prostitute? Why was this Magdalen "the beloved apostle" who was to share with Peter responsibility for the creation of the Church and why was she so maligned later? ("The Gospel of Mary Magdalen" is fascinating.)
This questioning is to give new meaning to the "passion" of St. Mathew. Those attracted to these questions which are philosophical-theological-historical-hermeneutic are directed to the writings of scholars Elizabeth Johnson, Elaine Pagels, Marina Warner, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Peter Stanford (biography of Pope Joan) and John Boswell. (Again: "'The Da Vinci Code': A Movie Review" and "Duality in Christian Feminine Identity.")
Many theologians interpret Christ's instruction to his "beloved Apostle" as a caution against getting bogged down in the details of the Gospel story, in ritual and doctrine, as opposed to focusing on the fundamental message of the texts, which is certainly (for us) a communication of ethical wisdom and a reminder of our freedom to love one another no matter what. ("Is There a Gay Marriage Right?")
Santayana’s characteristically wry and worldly assessment of religion is worth quoting at length:
"Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of Bacon’s that 'a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds to religion.' ... Indeed, the enlightenment common to young wits and worm-eaten old satirists, who plume themselves on detecting the scientific ineptitude of religion -- something which the blindest half see -- is not nearly enlightened enough: it points to notorious facts incompatible with religious tenets literally taken, but it leaves unexplored the habits of thought from which those tenets sprang, their original meaning, and their true function. Such studies would bring the skeptic face to face with the mystery and pathos of mortal existence. They would make him understand why religion is so profoundly moving and in a sense so profoundly just. There must needs be something humane and necessary in an influence that has become the most general sanction of virtue, the chief occasion for art and philosophy, and the source, perhaps, of the best human happiness. If nothing, as Hooker said, is so 'malapert as a splenetic religion,' a sour irreligion is almost as perverse."
The Life of Reason: Reason in Religion (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons., 1933), Chapter I, quoted in The Age of Analysis, p. 57.
In light of this paragraph, it should be clear why I am unpersuaded by Professor David J. Bartholomew’s no doubt well-intentioned effort to establish the plausibility of religious belief on the basis of “probability theory and creative mathematics.” See David J. Bartholomew, Uncertain Belief: Is it Rational to be a Christian (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). You cannot argue someone into (or out of) religious belief, which exists at a deeper than a rational level. Both belief and skepticism are rational. ("Is it rational to believe in God?")
Sigmund Freud emphasizes the illusory character of religion and the need to get beyond it in, The Future of an Illusion (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1961). I disagree with Freud not in the details of his critique of religion, but in his lack of empathy and understanding for the human needs that give rise to spiritual yearnings. For a great psychoanalyst to display (as Freud often does in his undeniably brilliant writings) such a stunning lack of sensitivity, compassion and charity is enough to set one’s teeth on edge.
Freud simply misses the point of religious belief, which is not exactly an insignificant aspect of human life. It is with regard to art and religion that I find Carl Jung's "analytical psychology" superior -- or a much needed corrective -- to Freudian psychoanalysis. ("Is this atheism's moment?")
Much the same may be said of the notorious critiques of religion offered by Nietzsche and Marx. To quote Professor Pagels:
"When I found that I no longer believed everything I thought Christians were supposed to believe, I asked myself, Why not just leave Christianity? Yet I sometimes encountered, in churches and elsewhere -- in the presence of the venerable Buddhist monk, in the cantor’s singing at a bat mitzvah, and on mountain hikes -- something compelling, powerful, even terrifying that I could not ignore, and I had come to see that, besides belief, Christianity involves practice -- and paths towards transformation."
Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Vintage, 2003), p. 143.
The most important point about religion, including Christianity, is that it provides adherents with a sense of meaning and purpose at moments of crisis and an explanation for suffering. Religions can heal, this is part of what is meant by “practice," and religions can change people, even if they can sometimes also be harmful. The etymology of the word "religion" is instructive on this issue. It comes from the Latin, re and ligare, to "bind together." Religion, through love, can unite the fragments of the self, and of the self-with-others. (See the stories "Pieta" and "The Sleeping Prince.")
Is there some way to separate the good consequences of religious belief from the intolerance and dogmatism to which they can often lead? There must be. I have been quoting Santayana, the master of the epigram, so I will give him the final word on the definition of religion: “Religion is the love of life,” Santayana said, “in the consciousness of impotence.”
