membrana sacra

We are separated from the ineffable by the thinnest of membranes. Several times I've stood and seen its shimmering surface moving as if in a silent wind. Though often seen as the passage to sacred experiences, this liminal surface itself is a hierophany. This, I think, is often overlooked in descriptions of religious experience, especially in the west, though here the Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches have already produced some important thinkers dealing with the metaphysical status of things like icons. 

The trouble with these approaches is that they're often too narrow in scope, theologically limiting their understanding of the holy/sacred to a particular tradition. The actual experience is more universal in nature. It allows for interpretation from multiple viewpoints, none of which ultimately represent the meaning of the experience. It is a very human tendency to claim that my particular experience must be the only correct one and all the others are merely derivative or false. This kind of claim has a very old and illustrious history in the Church, where the Fathers once claimed the worship, miracles, and signs of others were in fact demons at work. 

We, the seekers and lovers of the earth, have no need to take this approach. We recognize our experience of the ineffable in those liminal spaces is open to interpretation and that universality is one of its marks. Arrogance, self-assured aloofness or elitism, should not be its outcome. 

Thoughts on love and Jesus

Those who say love should be "properly oriented" know little about love or its potential.  Augustine thought love should be oriented to the one unchangeable being, ie God, for all other things are subject to change and therefore lacking in perfection.  But he failed to realize that love demonstrates its true power in being directed at the changeable. 

"He demonstrated his love in this: that while we were still sinners..."

But love was betrayed by those later writers who made a mockery of this demonstration by having Jesus "ascend into the clouds" while his disciples stood gaping at love raised to the level of an abstraction.  His followers were left to love Love. 

From love to Love

Those who say love should be "properly oriented" know little of love or love's potential.  Augustine believed those things which are subject to change must lack in perfection and therefore love should be oriented to the one unchangeable being: God.  But he failed to realize that love demonstrates its true power in being directed at and sustaining the changeable:

"God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

But the love the thirteenth apostle spoke of (a love that in order to count for anything in death, had to first live) was betrayed by those later writers who made a mockery of this "demonstration" by having Jesus "ascend into the clouds" while his disciples stood gaping at love raised to the level of an abstraction.  The whole world was left to love Love.

Against the Christian nihilist

Against the accusation that non-believers are inconsistent by enjoying life rather than despair that their lives are meaningless without God or an afterlife.

Recently a friend challenged me thus: "Do you not act inconsistently, or not understand the full implications of  atheism, when you fail to appreciate the import of a life that has no meaning, that will cease to be forever, whose works will all come to naught?  It seems to me that atheists should be a much more despairing group of people."

This, as I have mentioned elsewhere, is a very religious understanding of atheism.  It already takes God as its starting point, a ground from which to make comparisons.  For believers in God atheism is a negative, a subtraction.  For non-believers it is no such thing, for there is nothing to subtract their perspective from.  One must already have the existence of a God in order for his non-existence to draw the meaning of life away.  For this reason one should be careful to see through the supposed argument to its root, what the interrogator is really saying: "I can't imagine life without God.  My life would have no meaning without God, therefore yours shouldn't either."  But this says little more than for this one, God has meaning.  I can accept the first part of this argument, but not the second.  I find it strange that a Christian would try to convince me life is meaningless because I do not believe in eternal life or a deity.  In essence they are trying to convince me my hermeneutic of death is mistaken and that a proper atheist interpretation would see death as a meaning-vacuum, or a meaning-destroyer, and thus my life should consistently reflect the implications of this meaninglessness, i.e. I should hold a nihilistic attitude toward life.  Fundamentally then we see the idea of God simultaneously sets up the possibility of a thoroughgoing nihilism.

Regarding death, even a cursory glance at the writings of antiquity reveals alternative views to the one held by my skeptical friend.  For example, Lucretius: "Do you not know that in real death there will be no second you, living to lament your death and standing by your corpse?"  From Seneca: "Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them."  And from Montaigne (in the guise of Nature): "Truly imagine how much less bearable for Man, and how much more painful, would be a life which lasted for ever rather than the life which I have given you.  If you did not have death you would curse me, for ever, for depriving you of it."

Why must I view death in the morose and nihilistic way my friend was convinced I should see it?  Why not rather "eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" (St. Paul)?  What I know is that I live.  I have this life right before me.  My friend, however, does not have even this evidence in support of her beliefs and ideas.  If there is inconsistency, surely it lies with the notions of a God or eternal life, things that cannot be found anywhere in the world or nature, but merely as two of many ideas regarding supernatural matters. One might add, why are there not more Christians taking out full page ads in the paper, paying for multiple blocks of radio and television time, to warn people of eternal hell (no matter how the host of its cultured defenders would like to interpret it)?  Perhaps the charge of inconsistency could function here as a mirror into which my friend should gaze intently, and with care.

Ὁ θάνατος οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς· τὸ γὰρ διαλυθὲν ἀναισθητεῖ· τὸ δ’ ἀναισθητοῦν οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς

(Death is nothing to us.  For what has been dissolved feels nothing.  While what feels nothing is nothing to us.- Epicurus)

Aphorisms 2

5

 

Our basic starting point is the world. Previously we have been told our basic starting point is something other than this. The world is all we know. We are born, grow, and decline within it. By “world” one might think I mean the planet Earth. While it is true I shall never leave it, the planet itself would not be possible without those forces and spaces that exist outside it, act upon it, and situate it. For this reason our spiritual orientation should not be narrowly focussed on the Earth, but the COSMOS. By “focussed on” I do not mean in any way to seize upon something, but rather to open oneself up to possibility. 

 

6

 

Everything we need comes from the world. All sustenance, joys, meaning, truths, all revelations and visions, have always come from the world. If this were not so we would not know it. Even the gods must use the voice of Nature to speak: in visions perceived by brains, words, rumblings, lights, plants, fire, or even swirling tea leaves. All belong to Nature. Without the world we hear nothing.

 

7

To perceive we must direct ourselves to the world. The world speaks to us in a multitude of ways. Some ways of perceiving are direct while others are indirect. To see an oak tree is a more direct perception than to hear a description of it from a friend. But to hear of an oak tree from a friend is more direct than to learn of a general category such as “tree” from a textbook or lecture. The particular vision of a thing is always preferred to an abstraction.

 

8

 

Ninety-nine percent of religious doctrine is abstraction.

 

 

Aphorisms

1

When we start with the question, “Is there a God?” we already presume too much. It’s as if an answer has been given before the question was even asked. On what basis do we ask the question? Where did this idea come from: God? It was offered to us. It didn’t come from ourselves. It was ready-made. Have we not grown weary of believing, without reflection, in the ready-made? 

2

Kant opened his famous essay on the Enlightenment with these words: “Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstverschuldeten Unmündigkeit” (Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity). He continues: “Unmündigkeit ist das Unvermögen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen” (Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another). The religious, on the other hand, think that accepting the ready-made on faith is one of the greatest virtues: “Lean not on your own understanding, but trust in God with all your heart” (Proverbs 3:5). Religion is the antithesis of the Enlightenment i.e. the antithesis of human emergence.

3

The basic starting point of any spiritual investigation is human experience. To be even more clear: the basic starting point is individual experience. Neither my friend’s experience, nor the experience of a man living in the wilderness two thousand years ago teaches me anything about the shape my own experience should take. They are never prescriptive. At best they offer demonstrations of various possibilities. Even here these possibilities are often marked by some previous imposition of religious structure (which is by nature a delimitation).

4

The vast majority of religious adherents never have profound spiritual experiences. They go to mosque, synagogue, church, or temple and rehearse the same ritualistic motions day after day, week after week. This monotonous rehearsal often makes up the greatest part of religious life. The multitude is content to allow the true spiritual experience be the special privilege of the religious founder, the religious genius. They think he or she is exceptional by nature when in fact the religious genius has an exceptional will.

 

 

Meaning without God

As an atheist I've been asked how life can have ultimate meaning without God. This is quite a common question. For some of my nonfaith affiliated readers this will seem like a truly bizarre question. Does it suggest that people without faith lead meaningless lives, or at the very least, are simply fooling themselves about the things they find meaningful? The obvious answer is no, of course nonbelievers lead meaningful and fulfilling lives. Whether they're fooling themselves or not is really beside the point because you'd have to have a true ground of meaning outside the individual in order to compare.  The question secretly sneaks God back into the equation for that reason. The atheist believes we create and sustain our own meaning (or the cultural/social meaning we take as our own from our context or the contexts of others). This meaning is tested by experience and reason, shared and shaped by the vicissitudes of life and time.

If believers would take a moment to reflect they'd see they're in a similar situation. When they feel that God ultimately guarantees the meaning of life or whatever, they too are dealing with an idea (no less culturally/socially mediated in most cases). So when they say that God guarantees meaning, the hidden supplement (that indeed must remain hidden) is that the idea of God guarantees meaning. It must have this meaning because believers have no more access to this supposed ground than anyone else. Indeed they take it on faith. The difference between the believer and the unbeliever is that the believer insists his idea has the status of a real object-person whereas the unbeliever recognises her values for what they are, i.e idea(l)s, and may or may not choose to argue why such idea(l)s are reasonable considering X. The believer can also argue about the reasonableness of his position but he has already made the categorical error of confusing idea with object, potential with actual, when really he's in the same boat as the rest of us.

For this reason the question "How can you have ultimate meaning without God" is illegitimate. It's force is only felt by the one who has already made his idea a god.

On mystical experience

"Everything I have written seems like straw."  Thomas Aquinas

After a mystical experience while saying mass on or around 6 December 1273.

Merry Christmas, or What's in a Greeting?

It seems Christmas has become thoroughly.. multicultural. The debate over whether one should say "happy holidays" or not should finally come to an end. One should have no more difficulty saying "Merry Christmas" than Happy Thursday or Merry Wednesday, though hopefully with a greater twinkle in the eye.

A friendly detractor may say, yes but hasn't Christmas always been multicultural?  To this I must agree, but add that it was multicultural in a different kind of way.  Christmas has always been multicultural precisely because Christians have always been multicultural.  The multiculturalism I speak of today is different.  Now not only Christians celebrate Christmas, but non-Christians too, and these in far greater numbers than ever before.  It has led to the now common sighting of the little white and red signs in front of people's houses or on their cars which say "Keep Christ in Christmas".  There would be no need to make such declarations unless already Christmas was seen as existing outside the circle of Christianity.  How odd this is considering "Christ" is already in Christmas, literally forming part of the word.  

This marks a transition I have perhaps not so subtly referred to above when I use the greetings "Happy Thursday" and "Merry Wednesday".  For some time now these words have lost their religious connotations for us, except for a very few pagans perhaps.   Wednesday of course was named for the Norse god Odin or the Saxon Wodan, the All-Father.  Thursday was named for one of his sons, the god of thunder Thor:  Wodan's-day and Thor's-day respectively.  We may greet one another quite cheerfully with a "happy Thursday" and think nothing of it.  There are many cultural/religious artifacts that we use in this way.  So the term "Christmas" has slipped toward this usage, demonstrated by the insistence of Christians that we keep the "Christ" in Christmas, as a kind of resistance to the transition that is already taking place. 

The insistence in so many schools that we refrain from saying "Merry Christmas" or have Christmas concerts is a sign therefore of a number of things.  First, interestingly it is a sign that schools are colluding with Christians to keep Christmas a religious holiday (and thus not a celebration appropriate for all their students), this despite the availability of a number of Christmas symbols that are capable of carrying both religious and secular meaning almost entirely in either direction.  Think of Santa Claus, the Christmas tree, gift-giving... all of these can be thought of in terms completely unrelated to the Advent of Christ, and in fact are thought of this way by many many people.  Following this point, schools themselves therefore restrict our freedom to define Christmas in whatever way we choose, already naming for us the meaning of Christmas (i.e. it has religious meaning).  This is similar to arguing that Santa Claus can only be white or Canadian etc., failing to take into account the symbolic givenness of the season and the signs of its presence.  Christmas, unchained from a specific cultural interpretation, becomes not devoid of meaning, but free in its openness to us.  Instead of shying away from its celebration in schools, now may be the time to ask each beautiful little child what it means to them and their families.  It is precisely in that chorus of small voices that we might hear the melody and meaning of Christmas emerge. 

The Prophet Dead, He the Wretch

 Rest in peace Harold Camping.  You deluded old man.  You instigator of broken lives and hope.  Your guilty conscience will bother you no more...

Marion on silence before God

"Moreover, not keeping silent concerning God can be taken in several ways: (a) First, obviously, it can be taken in the sense of pious chattering, or supposedly such, since it often joins rampant heresy with invalidity; we simply mention this for the record."

Ha ha!  I'm still laughing...

Derrida on Negative Theology

"Negative theology-> to record the referential transcendence of language: to say God, such as he is, beyond his images, beyond this idol that being still can be, beyond what is said, seen, or known of him; to respond to the true name of God, to the name to which God corresponds beyond the name that we know him by or hear.  It is to this end that the negative procedure refuses, denies, rejects all the inadequate attributes.  It does so in the name of truth and in order to hear the name of a just voice."

Sauf le nom

The question

"The question whether we believe, and as believers truly know God, and know God truly, is far too radical and shattering for us to be able to direct it seriously to ourselves." 

Karl Barth, CD 2.1

On God

The starting point of our theological investigation is not whether there is a definitive proof for the existence of God (there can be no such empirical proof), but allowing that God exists, what can be definitively said about such a being.  We find, apart from the formal and thoroughly socialized subjective fantasies and wishful thinking of a great many people, that there isn't a hell of a lot.  We find the god of the churches almost undeniably does not exist.  This has been realized in the West for almost 300 years, and this by theologians themselves!  Where it hasn't been realized one continues to find the most powerful illusion at work, propagated by laypeople and theological upstarts, pastors and other parasitical people of "good intention" (at least initially), not to mention a programme of systemic indoctrination in the form of emotive collective music, sermons, and what amounts to religious self-help literature.

The strongest "proof" this God doesn't exist: He hasn't saved the Christians from Christianity.

On universal salvation

Note: the idea of universal salvation follows from a misunderstanding of God's love and grace. It is consistent in that it relates to a notion of God's infinite qualities, but it is not consistent with the teachings of Scripture.  The idea of universal salvation can only be found in obscure passages, and by following an interpretation already favourable to the assumption of infinite, unconditional, grace and love.  While one may argue humans do not merit this grace, this one nevertheless overlooks the fact that love and grace are conditional on God himself.  One's inability to earn grace does not equate to its being unconditioned.  It is still conditional on Divine will, and Scripture is clear that "who He wants to harden he hardens" and those he bears now with patience, so that later he may make his power and mercy known to the elect, he "prepares for destruction." 

How distasteful and horrifying some find this!  How shaped they are by a modern church culture that is itself shaped by a certain theory of parenting and school discipline, products of a liberalism now under attack.  To what lengths these Christians go to erase all hint of scandal from their faith in order to pay obeisance to their meek cultural god and season it with what they feel is more suitable to the delicate suburban palate. 

 

They don't see this for what it is:  a betrayal.

Looking-glass

Once more come, see if you can.  You certainly only love what is good, and the earth is good with its lofty mountains and its folded hills and its level plains, and a farm is good when its situation is pleasant and its land fertile, and a house is good with its harmonious symmetry of architecture so spacious and bright, and animals are good with their animated bodies, and the air is good when mild and salubrious, and food is good when tasty and health-giving, and health is good without pains or weariness, and a man's face is good when it has fine proportions and a cheerful expression and a fresh complexion, and the heart of a friend is good with its sweet accord and loving trust, and a just man is good, and riches are good because they are easily put to use, and the sky is good with its sun and moon and stars, and the angels are good with their holy obedience, and speech is good as it pleasantly instructs and suitably moves the hearer, and a song is good with its melodious notes and its noble sentiments.  Why go on and on?  This is good and that is good. Take away this and that and see good itself if you can.

Augustine, De Trinitate

Heidegger on Being and Faith

If I were to write a theology - to which I sometimes feel inclined - then the word Being would not occur in it.  Faith does not need the thought of Being.

Gay Marriage

What is the privileged status of male-female marriage?

I will say from the beginning that it has no intrinsically privileged status.  During the present gay marriage debate in the United States I've heard the phrase "sanctity of marriage" used by religious factions, without a single definition of what this means, other than the formula: "One man, one woman."  This formula doesn't give us the meaning of the term "sanctity" but it must be related to it.  I think when a Christian speaks about the sanctity of marriage what they must really mean is that in its founding moment (think Adam and Eve), God blessed the union of a man and a woman, i.e. his intention was that this fundamental relationship be comprised of male and female.  Furthermore, from the theology of the Christian scriptures one can derive a notion of marriage whereby the partners in a relationship have analogical significance, i.e. man=Christ, woman=Church etc.  Christian marriage is the sign of some greater spiritual reality.  Insofar as a Christian believes this it is sanctified, though a Christian will maintain that whether or not they believe it it is still sanctified.  This is their belief.

So a marriage that is sanctified is one that is pleasing to God (and therefore blessed by him).  What is pleasing to God?  What scriptures tell us is pleasing to God, what pattern one sees there, what tradition holds to be the case.  One who opposes gay marriage will not say love sanctifies a marriage, because obviously gay couples love one another, or one will qualify love by adding a "male-female" in front of it.  But we now know that gender is to a large extent socially-culturally constructed, and I don't know many Christians who would want to reduce the sanctity of marriage to the interaction of sexual organs (or at least admit to it).  No, marriage for these is about God, a qualified kind of love, and scripture.  I won't waste my time commenting on how a qualified love is a rather sad pretender to the real thing.   When you look into the eyes of your beloved, tell me, is the first thing that comes to mind "thank God you're the proper sexual orientation"? 

This still doesn't answer the question asked at the beginning.  "Sanctity of marriage" turns out to mean little more than "sanctity of my definition of marriage."  This can never be the ground for a universal determination or privileged status.

Signa

 

 

The icon and the idol determine two manners of being for beings, not two classes of being.  Jean-Luc Marion.

Transcendental

[The divine] is given to us only in the form of a distance that refers us to what is other than itself.  We never have direct access to it, nor can we grasp it immediately. It is given only by silently referring us to something other than itself, something finite that is the object of our direct intuition and action.  

Karl Rahner, Sheehan trans.