You know friends, I was initially reluctant to create this thread. A lot of people are bored mindless by the subject and I am much more interested in what I do believe that what I don’t. I am glad I did since it allows others to express their own thoughts which, believe it or not, interests me more than expressing my own. After all, I already know what I believe. For me the conclusions that people arrive at are seldom as interesting as the process by which they arrived at those conclusions.
So, for now, let me content myself with responding to some of the comments that have been made.
Robert wrote
But some of the channels I listened to on YouTube recently were worse than I ever could have imagined. Maybe we’re experiencing an apocalyptic moment? Have all of the liberal theologians been raptured?
In a sense. That form of “liberal” belief of which you speak has been the first casualty of the current “crisis”, however defined. We are in the throes of a sort of centrifugal force that hollows out any reasonable center in favor of extremes.
I consider it a badge of honor whenever someone considers my views indistinguishable from atheism, honoring the rigor and efficacy of my atheistic apophatic theology.
Robert, I forget if we’ve discussed this previously but nobody does apophatic theology better than the Hindus. Their speculations quickly absorbed this idea and it is much closer to a mainstream concept in Hindu theology than it is in the West. If you are not already familiar with them see the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and the Brahmasutras. In Brihadaranyaka, impersonal ultimate reality, Brahman, is described as Neti, Neti, meaning “neither this nor that”. In the Brahmasutras it is stated that to deny the Unreal is to affirm the Real.
For some reason not entirely clear to me I remain fascinated by arguments about “divine hiddenness” and I am also still interested in impersonal concepts of the Absolute. The latter is a little easier to understand since I think if any sort of deity does exist it is far more likely to tend towards the impersonal rather than our traditional western image of a prickly ancient near eastern potentate.
Porphyry wrote of
…my perennial quest to understand the internal logic of liberal Christianity.
I think its impetus is a desire to hold on to what are considered the foundational aspects of the faith while trying to accommodate oneself to the prevailing contemporary worldview. To translate eternal wisdom into the language of modernity. I can sort of respect the attempt while acknowledging its difficulty if not impossibility. Sometimes you have to just move on. But this is seldom a comfortable place to find oneself. Some move willingly but many are thrust away despite themselves. I think I was one of those latter. I spent many years trying to build a bridge but ultimately the span was just too far.
I think its impetus is a desire to hold on to what are considered the foundational aspects of the faith while trying to accommodate oneself to the prevailing contemporary worldview.
That certainly conforms with my own personal experience* and impressions, but given the number of genuinely smart people who seem to be (or to have been for some time) convinced of it, I am reluctant to write it off so easily. But it may be that that really is what is is at heart. I’m still digesting what Robert wrote.
* As I was losing my own faith, there was a period of about a week, wherein I genuinely thought I would land in some form of liberal Christianity: my basic thinking was, sure, the bible is a collection of fallible human documents, sure the Church is a fallible and human institution, sure, the orthodox got way out in front of their skiis and made a bunch of nonsense up, but surely there is a personal God who did something important in life of Jesus of Nazareth. I envisioned myself using my degrees to reboot my life as the vicar of some gorgeous, gothic, historic, stone Episcopalian church nestled in horse country. But once things started unraveling, I quickly found I had nothing left. Once I started questioning, the questions didn’t end: why exactly do I think there is a personal God who did something special in the life of Jesus of Nazareth? I never found anything I could dig into to stop my fall; I never found a sensible meaning for an entirely non-dogmatic faith.
So, for the record, even as a very orthodox Catholic, I rejected quaint biological understandings of virginitas in partu.
I suppose I could put my confusion thus. Even if you take “faith” in a fiduciary rather than dogmatic sense, still you are trusting in someone to do something, and presumably you believe something about the person that leads you to trust him to do those things. There will still be intellectual content in that faith, so to speak. And it will call for some justification (why, for example, do you believe there is such a person, who is worth trusting, who has made the promises you are relying on him to keep?). Maybe I just haven’t fully internalized apophaticism. I don’t know. Is it coherent simply to trust in The Unknowable, Unspeakable, Inconceivable? And if one does have such fiduciary trust in the Unknowable, what are you trusting It to do specifically? Does it just boil down to a generic sense of contentment and resignation–all will be well–as a sort of resignation to fate?
Welcome to the Club of Lapsed Liberal Catholics (CoLLiC)! You understand, of course, you will be starting off at the first, most fundamental level, but know that there are always opportunities to continually move up as you explore and investigate various doctrines and practices and decide what, if anything, you now think you should have previously sifted more judiciously to consider what, if anything, is worth retaining, what seems worthwhile for a time, and might even be even seem essential in a perennial fashion, so essential, in fact, that one might better decide to more critically sift through the inessentials that, if insisted upon, might risk the whole doctrine or practice becoming non-credible, even incredible, such that even the core essentials would be abandoned, ie, throwing out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak.
Well, perhaps I should add that, as I was lapsing, I did work out a very thorough justification of why I had not sinned against faith, understood in a Catholic sense.
It’s just that at a certain point it felt like an empty game. Like, why do I need to explain why I still have faith from the perspective of Catholic theology, once I walk away from the Catholic authorities–and the dogmas they taught–that say that faith is necessary for salvation?
I can understand how one can start from a position of faith and whittle the content down to nothing; I just don’t understand why you keep the game up, rather than at some point, giving it all up.
I’ve enjoyed this thread’s…what? resurrection? so much that I am open to whatever direction it takes. Follow your bliss, to coin a phrase.
The absolutism of the hardcore fundamentalist faith I was brought up in contained the seeds of its own destruction. You were presented with a choice. Follow the structures of the doctrine completely or reject the whole thing. This was their formulation. There was no safety valve. No way to release the pressure. When you have the absolute undiluted truth you don’t need such. As long as you could maintain a carefully isolated environment unbuffeted by outside forces you were protected. But the first crack that appeared caused the whole edifice to shatter. There was no middle ground, no wetland mediating water and earth. You were either wet or dry.
I tried though. I really did. Until it became impossible.
My problem with so-called “liberal” Christianity is that I was raised to expect Yahweh, Lord of Hosts, who spoke out of the world-wind. The Joseph Campbellian psychological/metaphorical approach was a gruel too thin. Much less talk of “highest concern” or “ground of being”.
Is it coherent simply to trust in The Unknowable, Unspeakable, Inconceivable?
Can one distinguish between the “Unknowable, Unspeakable, Inconceivable” and the non-existent?
Why should I give it all up?
As a disciple of Wittgenstein I can only offer the suggestion to treat religion like a “game”. Not a game in the trivial sense but as a shared consensus functionality, i.e., a mature form of “play”. For Wittgenstein religious language and practices are best understood through their function within a specific social context, rather than as claims about objective reality. Religion is freed from the burden of “truth” in the scientific sense. Ideas and meanings are derived from the way they are used in specific activities or practices. So go to Mass. But realize that any value you find in the Mass is created by participation in it. The question then becomes, “Is that enough?”
ps: Never could appreciate the Grateful Dead even in my stoner days. Too low an energy level. I was into YES and KING CRIMSON, all those english “art-rock” groups. Robert, do you think it might be time to move on to mushrooms? Your partner sounds like an interesting person!
Why should I give it all up?
Well, for me, because I realized I was playing a game by rules handed down from an authority I no longer had reason to accept. Why do I need to explain how I still have faith, when the only reason I thought faith was important is that a religious tradition I no longer regard as infallible insists it is necessary? I could play their game, but why should I?
Perhaps if we use faith in the way that Paul uses it in Rom 14 (something like “good faith” or “clear conscience”) then it has its own justification aside from the authority of that religious tradition. But that is playing semantic games.
Can one distinguish between the “Unknowable, Unspeakable, Inconceivable” and the non-existent?
Exactly. Particularly when we start talking about having trust in it, the concept’s hollowness manifests.
Robert, pot isn’t my substance of choice, but I’d smoke a joint and chill out listening to the Dead with you any day. Stephen can tag along and tell us about language games.
Is New Atheism being defined as a belief that God does not exist or as the disassociation away from organized denominations of religion that have now existed for hundreds and thousands of years.
I think historically at some point in time anyone who didn’t believe in the God worshipped by Abraham was considered an Atheist (those who were not Christian, Muslim, Jewish) during which time the religions causing detrimental deterioration of the mental faculties also called Paganism was illegal throughout the known world of Mesopotamia.
Is New Atheism being defined as a belief that God does not exist or as the disassociation away from organized denominations of religion that have now existed for hundreds and thousands of years.
I am astounded, Colin! For the first time you’ve asked a significant question. The New Atheist phenomenon was attached to spokespersons who espoused formal atheism. However polls show that people who formally identify as atheists in the USA are still a small minority. What is growing is the point of view that organized religion plays little if any role in people’s personal lives. This says nothing about their own personal beliefs. The majority of people still publically claim to be Christians although church attendance is very low. Our culture is undergoing a real sea-change. This frightens some people very much.
Robert, pot isn’t my substance of choice, but I’d smoke a joint and chill out listening to the Dead with you any day. Stephen can tag along and tell us about language games.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and infer that of all of us posting on this here thread currently, I am the only one who has actually been to a Grateful dead concert. I had some older friends who were confirmed card-carrying Deadheads. The Dead would come to Atlanta regularly and do three-day stints at the old (and since demolished) Omni Auditorium. It wasn’t my taste (meaning it wasn’t music I would sit around and listen to at home) but it seemed an experience worth having so I joined their group to attend one of the shows. (They went every night and had an extra ticket.) This was sometime in the 1980s and an amazing cultural study. The police had set up a perimeter (and I use that word advisedly) encircling the venue. Inside the perimeter it was still 1967, hippies, Haight-Asbury. Outside it was Reagan, War on Drugs, etc. I pity the naifs who confused the categories. Those were the ones the police landed on with two feet. Musically the part that interested me most was the electronic percussion set that Mickey Hart performed during the show. There was a little adventure to distinguish from the rest of the set which merrily chugged along. The whole thing was a time warp bubble. When Garcia died, the bubble burst.
I’m a bit young to have seen them live. I can only imagine the experience of being at their concerts.
I had a crazy dalliance with a French pothead in my early adulthood; she turned me on to them, and I have genuinely enjoyed their music (on the right occasions) ever since: the first warm day of spring, day-drinking while you grill–what else are you going to listen to? Garcia had some really good music aside form his work with the Dead–who doesn’t enjoy ** you do not have permission to see this link **?
Garcia had some really good music aside form his work with the Dead–who doesn’t enjoy Shady Grove?
Thanks for that, Porphyry. I’d never heard it before, not really knowing much of his work outside the Dead.
I love it and will spend the morning listening to the rest of the album.
My favorite songs of the Dead (e.g. Morning Dew, Cold Rain and Snow, I Know You Riders, etc.) tend to be ones they didn’t write, and usually traditional ones.
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