Theological Review (1): Spiritual Ascent or Descent

The Meaning of Protestant Theology, a book written by Professor Phillip Cary and published by Baker Academic in 2019, is a good read for those looking for a perspicacious and concise account of the historical interaction between Western philosophy and Christian theology, with an emphasis on the Protestant viewpoint.  This is a timely topic during an epoch of pestilence and cultural revolution: If singing is medically suspect, and if the ramparts of the Star-Spangled Banner are under assault; then what fate awaits A Mighty Fortress besieged?  During the economic and cultural upheavals of the post-Augustan Roman Empire, which created the Age of Anxiety chronicled by E. R. Dodds, the Christian message and mindset attracted new believers.  Would such attraction be expected today in a new generation of citizens anxiously scrolling down lists of government benefits for entries such as “tranquility, spiritual”?

      In the Introduction to his 2019 book, the author observes that “Christians today are much less anxious about their own individual salvation or damnation than people in the sixteenth century, when Protestantism first arose” (p. 1).  This observation might lead one to the question (as phrased by the reviewer) “Is there now any other reason, beyond salvation, for one to be a Protestant rather than to be an indifferentist, a materialist, a generalized spiritualist, an adherent of some traditional but non-Christian religion, a follower of some non-Protestant branch of Christianity, or a post-Christian futurist?”

      The question about reasons for Protestantism can be transformed into the question (p. 2), “What is your faith about?”  Among the theistic alternatives, one possible answer is experiencing “God working in my life,” in which case God gets to audition for a part in the believer’s story.  A second possible answer is focusing on what Christ has done for us, “thus directing our attention away from our own works to Christ himself,” in which case the believer gets to be part of Christ’s story.  Cary inclines towards this second alternative, which is expressed both in sacramental worship and in the preaching of the Word of God.  These expressions are the source of the meaning of Protestant theology, which is the theme of Cary’s 371-page book.  

      Cary’s work aims “to show why Protestantism is best understood as a form of piety based on faith in the Gospel as the word of God that gives us Christ” (p. 4).  The book’s first two chapters are centered on the comparison of ancient philosophy and Biblical writings as jointly setting up dueling concepts of ascending and descending spiritualities: “In place of human [philosophical] spirituality bringing us to God in a kind of ascent of heart and mind, the Gospel tells the story of a divine carnality, a descent of God to us” (p.6). 

      In Chapter 1 Cary mentions the concept of intellectual vision, which originated in Plato’s allegory of the cave (Republic, 514a-521a): Socrates tells Glaucon that what passes for reality inside a shadowy cave as observed by a subterranean prisoner turns out to be - - after that prisoner is forced up a rough and steep ascent to the earth’s surface - - only the shadows of objects that now become clearly discernable to the erstwhile prisoner.  Moreover, the unshackled observer can now also contemplate the heavens, gaze upon the sun itself, and see true celestial nature.  Socrates says that “this ascent and contemplation of the things above is the soul’s ascension to the intelligible region.”  Socrates’ insight is that in this intelligible region (region of the known), the last thing to be perceived is the idea of the good (the sun), which is the cause of all that is right and beautiful.  The intelligible world is the authentic source of truth and reason.  Achieving this insight is a prerequisite for acting wisely in private or public capacities and for serving as a ruler in an ideal republic.  It is easy to see that someone of Augustinian disposition could use this account of intellectual vision as a parallel to the Matthew 5:8 account of beatific vision: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

      Nevertheless, Cary argues that “Platonists got many things right when it comes to abstract questions about the being of God, but not so many when it comes to our relation to God, and especially not when it comes to how we know God … ‘intellectual vision’ concerns a power of the soul that I think we so not actually have …”  (pp. 18-19).  In other words, Platonism is often right about some transcendent properties of God (philosophical spirituality), but wrong about how we know God as immanent in the world (divine carnality), and wrong about the importance of intellectual vision, if it exists.  Knowing the essence of God is less important than knowing who God is.  Knowing God requires believing in Jesus Christ.

      In Chapter 2 Cary maintains that Platonism remains necessary for rationalizing the background assumptions of orthodox Christian doctrine; nevertheless, Platonism overemphasizes the notion of an immortal soul ascending to heaven while awaiting the resurrection of the corruptible body.  On pages 52 – 56 Cary provides many Scriptural references for the eschatological descent to earth of heavenly tents (upgraded bodies) or dwellings (renewed cities).  The reviewer elaborates on three of these references as follows: First, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable … for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable [raised from the grave to the graveside, as it were] … for this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.  When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then … ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’” (1 Corinthians 15:50-54).  Second, the body is like an earthly tent with a heavenly replacement in reserve: “If the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens … while we are still in this tent, we groan … [to be] further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:1-4).  Third, the writer of Revelation “saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God … [and] heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.  He will dwell with them, and they will be his people’” (Rev 21:10-11).

      When Cary writes that “what was not so essential to Christian orthodoxy … was the Platonist spirituality of the soul’s ascent to God” (p. 53), the current reviewer believes that an unnecessary dichotomy is created: The presupposition seems to be that if the Biblical writers or the church fathers were under a Greek cultural influence, then that influence must have amounted to “baggage” that could only have detracted from the Biblical message.  If so, then perhaps the Christian message about life after death should emphasize “Plan on having plenty of time to perfect one’s virtue of patience while awaiting the general resurrection” and avoid any account of a soul’s ascent into heaven as an unnecessary distraction.  In fact, however, Revelation 6:9-10 presents an intriguing image of some souls fretfully waiting under a heavenly altar for the day of resurrection, crying out “How long, O Lord … until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?”  The present writer adopts the view that, counterfactually speaking, God could have rerouted Abram to a Promised Land in a different geographic location if it would have turned out to the subsequent advantage of the Biblical writers and church fathers.  As it is, the reviewer placidly accepts the Greek cultural viewpoint, as well as the existence of some distraught, seemingly Platonic souls temporarily warehoused under a heavenly altar, as parts of one integrated Christian revelation.

Celebrating 244 Years of the “1776 Project”

The publication of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America revealed a document that was on the historical cutting edge of the development of liberal democracy on July 4, 1776.  This American Declaration listed as royal usurpations many transgressions of the colonists’ rights as Englishmen.  An English Declaration of Rights had been promulgated in 1689 in order to secure parliamentary preeminence over the English Crown (from 1707, the Crown of Great Britain).  Thus, there was some correlation between the development of liberal democracy and of constitutional monarchy in the transatlantic world.

      The newly emerging government of the United States of America was liberal, in that it presupposed basic individual rights inviolable by any government diktat.  It was a democracy in that it took for granted the existence of a legislative body representative of the people, i.e., the citizens of the several states.  Some analysts substitute “republicanism” for “democracy,” basing their terminology on the ancient Roman res publica rather than on the ancient Athenian demos.  For many, however, “liberal republicanism” does not roll as trippingly from the tongue as does “liberal democracy.”  Whichever term is chosen, what is meant is the diametric opposite of monarchy or autocracy.

      The English Declaration had relied on the Lockean notion of natural and inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and property.”  In an apparent effort to demonstrate his own authorial independence, Jefferson rendered this notion in the American Declaration as Creator-endowed and unalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  The subsequent attainment of a high degree of such happiness in the U.S.A. has warranted a wide-spread national pride in the American Declaration and other founding documents. 

      Long before July 4, 1776 the entire project of liberty in the new American colonies had gotten off to a rocky start in a long chain of events: Portuguese slave traders in what is now Angola provided slaves to a Portuguese ship bound for Mexican mines in the summer of 1619.  English privateers captured the ship and its slaves, sailed to the vicinity of Jamestown, Virginia by the end of August 1619, and sold the slaves (the first of many) to English colonists for cultivating that new-fangled crop, tobacco.  (Ironically, Jamestown was named for the dual monarch, James VI of Scotland and James I of England, who had in 1604 condemned tobacco smoking in his “A Counterblast[e] to Tobacco.”)

      Twelve years after the American Declaration, the ninth state to ratify the new U.S. Constitution did so on June 21, 1788; promising a more felicitous route to future happiness and leading to Washington’s election as the first President later that year.  In order to secure ratification, however, compromises adversely affecting “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” had to be adopted.  For example, the existence of slavery was presupposed: Only 3/5 of the slave population counted as population for the purpose of apportioning federal representation and direct taxes.  Moreover, no federal law abolishing the slave trade with other nations could take effect until January 1, 1808.  Nevertheless, there was a determination among some of the Constitutional framers, dating from 1788, to find a way to stop the foreign slave trade in the United States.  Remarkably, during this very same time period, there were similar concerns in London regarding the possibility of abolishing the British slave trade as well, as ably summarized in William Hague’s book: William Wilberforce, The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner, (Harcourt, 2007). 

      The British Parliamentarian, William Wilberforce (1759 - 1833), was an outstanding anti-slavery orator.  Becoming a Member of Parliament at the precocious age of 21 in 1780, he had long, but unsuccessfully, proposed a humanitarian argument against the slave trade.  In 1805 the abolitionist James Stephen wrote a book, The War in Disguise, that recommended a government policy that was at once anti-slave-trade and anti-Napoleon.  Wilberforce saw in Stephen’s thesis a utilitarian argument that might actually succeed in Parliament (Hague, pp. 332-334): The Royal Navy should be authorized to interdict neutral shipping between France, Spain, and their colonies.  This policy would have the ostensible goal of defeating Napoleon; but its greatest effects would be the resulting inability of France and Spain to use neutral ships for slave trading in their overseas colonies; near destruction of those colonies’ economies; and drastic reduction in the market for slaves in those ravaged colonies.  Slave trading would no longer be profitable - - for ships from Great Britain or from any other country - - thereby eliminating the profit rationale for the slave trade.  Under this policy, Parliament might as well draw the ultimate conclusion and abolish the British slave trade outright.  Thus, patriotically anti-Napoleon policy implied the acceptability of an act abolishing the slave trade.

      In the autumn of 1806 Napoleon defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Jena, making anti-Napoleon policy and its implied slave-trade abolition all the more necessary.  A new British Parliament opened on December 15, 1806, passed the Slave-Trade Abolition Act early in 1807, and gained the King’s assent to this Act on March 24, 1807.  The Act took effect on May 1, 1807 (Hague, pp. 348 - 356).

      In December 1806 President Thomas Jefferson of the United States had attacked the “violations of human rights [that] have so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa.”  A bill to outlaw the foreign slave trade passed both Houses of Congress early in 1807, was signed into law by the President on March 2, 1807, and took effect on January 1, 1808 (Hague, p. 350).  Thus, the American Law was passed and signed twenty-two days before the analogous British Act; but the American Law took effect eight months after the British Act, because of a provision in the American Constitution.

      One notes that it does not matter now if both or either or neither of the pair, Jefferson and Wilberforce, were themselves slave owners - - what they accomplished legislatively in abolishing the foreign slave trade on both sides of the Atlantic was truly monumental.  Subsequently, in 1833 an Act of Parliament outlawed slavery throughout the entire British Empire.  In the U.S. a Civil War with an estimated 620,000 military deaths was required before slavery could be abolished via the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865.

      In stark contrast to the historical narrative just adumbrated, the so-called “1619 Project,” published on the New York Times’ website, does not indicate that much was accomplished against slavery in the Anglophone world of the nineteenth century.  The 1619 Project focuses on the slave importation of 1619 and neglects the fact, as formulated by the historian Gordon Wood and quoted by the Wall Street Journal columnist Jason L. Riley, that slavery “had existed for thousands of years without criticism, but it’s the American Revolution that makes it a problem for the world.  And the first real anti-slave movement takes place in North America.  So this is what’s missed by these essays in the 1619 Project.”  In response to the 1619 Project, Riley continues, “Robert Woodson, a black conservative and longtime community activist in Washington … held a press conference to announce his own ‘1776 Project,’ which is intended to counter what he called the ‘anti-American propaganda’ of the Times’s endeavor.”  (See also the “1776 Project” page on the Heritage Foundation website.)

      In summary, best wishes to all those celebrating the accomplishments of the authors of the American Declaration of Independence and other founding documents on this, the 244th anniversary of that Declaration.

The Coronavirus of 2020 (2): Reflections

      In the last posting to this blog we compared some of the pestilence statistics from 1347 – 1351 C.E. with those of 2020 C.E., and noted that existential crises tend naturally to lead to re-examination of the ultimate concerns (fundamental values) of individuals and of societies.  The analysis of ultimate concerns arising from the war against SARS CoV-2 in the year 2020 is reminiscent of the World War II era, in which nations’ survivals were also at stake.  Between 1942 and 1944 the BBC radio service broadcast three talks by C. S. Lewis regarding the moral, spiritual, and intellectual content of Christianity.  These talks, offering spiritual clarity and encouragement to a people under duress, were subsequently collected as the book, Mere Christianity, in 1952.

      Today, the fraction of the population tuning in to C. S. Lewis broadcasts might be smaller than before; but that is a sociological effect not dealt with here, except to note in passing: Modern secular societies presuppose as a major premise, “If any public or private problem is real, then there exists a government program for that problem.”  But there is manifestly no government program for attaining life eternal (salvation).  Hence, attaining life eternal is not a real problem.  Lewis would presumably reject the major premise.

      In his Preface in Mere Christianity, Lewis announced that it was not his present purpose to dispute divisive theological points, but to expound “mere” Christianity, which had a settled existence long before he was born and whether he liked it or not.  He was himself Anglican, but some other Christian groups endorsed his ideas as well.  Having peeled back the divisive theological husks, however, what Lewis soon found was - - not the harvest grain of pure belief - - but the first bitter kernels of divisive philosophical contention. 

      Lewis found that he could not even use the word Christian without entering into intellectual trench warfare.  He wanted to say that a Christian is a human person who accepts the common doctrines of Christianity; but his critics took umbrage from the mere suggestion that Lewis, or anyone else, could identify who is or is not a Christian on the basis of accepted doctrines.  By Christian his critics meant only “having the spirit of Christ.”  [The Bible (e.g., Romans 8:9) frequently mentions the spirit of Christ; however, the question at issue is “What are the criteria for having the spirit of Christ, here, today?”]  Lewis remarked that his critics had rendered the word Christian useless, albeit with a spiritual veneer, as could be seen in an analogy between the terms Christian and gentleman.  At one time, a gentleman was anyone who had a coat of arms and owned some land.  A clever critic, however, could signal his own moral superiority by saying that a true gentleman is “one who exhibits noble behavior of a certain sort,” thereby transcending the “mere” issues of coats of arms and of land.  In so doing, the critic limits and impairs language by maintaining that if a person, X, calls some other person, Y, a gentleman; then the analyst no longer receives information about Y (that he has a coat of arms and owns some land) but rather receives information about X (that X likes Y and praises Y’s behavior).  The word gentleman becomes thereby useless for describing Y. 

      Analogously, Lewis believed that in the critic’s world, if X calls Y a true Christian; then the analyst gains no knowledge about Y, but only that X approves of Y.  In stark contrast, Lewis believed that the word Christian, and its meaning, derive from the Bible in Acts 11:26: Some of Jesus’ followers, who had fled the persecution of the church following Stephen’s stoning, re-assembled at Antioch, presented orthodox teachings about Jesus to the Greeks, and were referred to as Christians for the very first time.  Calling someone Christian goes hand-in-hand with presenting orthodox teachings about Jesus to those outside of the church.  Being orthodox implies, in turn, being subject to philosophical and theological debate.  Lewis’ version of “mere” Christianity is not presented as an alternative to existing creeds, but as the first stage of an orthodox faith: Metaphorically, one might think of a “mere” public vestibule of a large building from which doors lead into alternative meeting rooms for adherents of particular variants of orthodox Christian belief.  The contemplated variations have a restricted range: Lewis seems to presuppose that are only a few such rooms, history having weeded out exotic doctrinal species that are beyond the pale of intellectual or spiritual interest.  One might embellish his metaphor by specifying that there are windows in each of the meeting rooms that overlook a heaven outside the building, as well as doors leading out of each room and into that heaven beyond.

      In Mere Christianity (Book II) Lewis, speaking to the “us” who have recognized common bonds and assembled in the aforementioned public vestibule, counsels against an infatuation with watered-down Christianity, which in British English is rendered as “Christianity-and-water.”  Lewis says that the very attempt to teach Christian doctrine at the level of an instructed adult sometimes causes some critics to formulate and to promulgate the bold theological principle, “If God exists, then He would have made ‘religion’ simple.”  Lewis counters that this principle seems to presuppose that “religion” is just one more thing that God thought up at the last moment and appended to his Creation.  But this is false, Lewis contends, because one part of God’s purpose is to let mankind know, via religion, the truth of “His statement to us of certain quite unalterable facts about His own nature.”  This statement to us is complex, not simple.  The corresponding, corrected theological principle, is “If God exists, then He makes ‘religion’ as complex and unexpected as He is to us.”

      For Lewis, God’s grace of faith to someone is typically an occasion for the recipient systematically to evaluate and to appreciate the historical, traditional evidence for God’s presence in the world.  Such evaluation plays a key role in forming Christian convictions and encouraging believers in extremis.  Lewis would consider this encouragement equally applicable to Britain besieged by Fascism and to the entire globe menaced by Covid-19.  

      Lewis does not deal with David Hume’s argument against traditional evidence in religion: Hume thinks that we form and adopt beliefs by evaluating probabilities.  The probability that any particular, ancient evidence is true is always less than the probability that some ancient, evil commentator or historian falsified the report of that evidence.  Our knowledge is thus limited to relationships between ideas (e.g., mathematics) and to matters of fact and existence (empirical impressions that we can receive and remember).  Contra Hume, Lewis might have replied that one does not acquire knowledge of other minds or assurance of religious faith by the calculation of probabilities but by the meeting of persons who leave us with impressions.  Lewis could say both that faith comes from hearing the Christian message (Romans 10:17), which is an empirical or subjective viewpoint; and that God’s grace can give even the dead, like Lazarus, ears to hear that message (John 11:38-44).  The gift of ears to hear is consistent with an objective view of God’s intervention in the ordinary course of history or nature - - whether playing out in wartime Britain or threatening the entire globe during the pestilence of 2020.

      The present writer has heard some pessimistic interpretations of 19th and 20th century existentialist philosophy: Being or Existence is said to reveal to us certain things, like the subject – object distinction, which philosophy then proceeds to obscure with inadequate language.  But even if some obscurity remains, it seems that we are left with some agreed-upon revelations, which can be appreciated if not fully comprehended.  Other proposed revelations, regarding ways of life or persons proclaiming religious insights, are not eo ipso irrational intrusions into an otherwise unitary, rational world; but are potential additions to a rational, burgeoning Zeitgeist.  C. S. Lewis tried to remain faithful to as many of the revelations of the Western Zeitgeist as possible while giving his account of “mere” Christianity.

The Coronavirus of 2020 (1): Background

Before turning to the planned blog for July, celebrating American Independence Day, it seems appropriate to celebrate having thus far survived the great global coronavirus pestilence of 2020.

      By way of contrast, the European pestilence of 1347 - 1351 C.E. was most likely an expression of bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis in fleas on rat-infested trade routes linking Asia and Europe.  After gaining entry into a human’s blood via a flea bite, this bacterium causes death via septic shock to the immune system.  Based on historical research long after the fact, this medieval plague is estimated to have killed between one-third and one-half of the European population.  This European pestilence, as well as today’s pandemic, caught their contemporary societies completely by surprise.  The Spanish flu of 1918 was deadly, but influenza outbreaks per se were not then unexpected.

      The pandemic of 2020 has been caused by the coronavirus, SARS CoV-2, which results in the disease, Covid-19.  After originating in bats and jumping species in Asia, SARS CoV-2 has spread globally; either directly from person to person via breathing; or indirectly from infected surfaces via hand-to-face contact.  Covid-19 can express itself in multiple ways, including, but not necessarily limited to, hyperactive immune response, pneumonia, breathing failure, stroke, excessive blood clotting, and system failure of multiple organs.

      According to the print edition of the Wall Street Journal, as of May 1, 2020 the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in 3,334,416 reported cases and 237,943 officially attributable deaths world-wide; while the corresponding U.S. data are 1,098,565 cases and 64,577 deaths.  Starting with these numbers and a total U.S. population of approximately 330,000,000, the U.S. Covid-19 mortality rate for 2020 will be co-determined by the cumulative number of daily Covid-19 deaths starting in May and running through December of 2020.

      According to initial U.S. federal reports, the upper bound on the estimate of U.S. deaths due to this outbreak of Covid-19 is 2.2 million; assuming that this outbreak will run its course during 2020, the implied upper bound on the U.S. mortality rate due to Covid-19 in 2020 is 0.67% (2.2 / 330).  In contrast, the plague of 1347 to 1351 could be associated with four consecutive years with an annual mortality rate of 12%, which would account for the death of 40% of the population.  (Note that 1 - 0.88^4 = 0.4, which is in a mid-range between the historical estimates of 0.33 and 0.50.)  Thus, the implied upper bound on the U.S. mortality rate due to Covid-19 in 2020 is about 18 times smaller than the historically estimated annual European mortality rate due to bubonic plague during the mid-fourteenth century (0.67% » 12% / 18).  On this metric, the bleakest U.S. outlook for 2020 would have to be multiplied by a horror-factor of 18 in order to capture the reality of the earlier bubonic plague. 

      The cultural memory of an epidemic with a very high mortality rate, like that in the mid-fourteenth century, has disappeared; leading less to thankfulness for the last 670 years of medical progress than to the overwhelming presumption that public health measures can now be taken that will swiftly eliminate coronavirus deaths without regard to economic consequences.  Without approved therapies or vaccines for Covid-19, however, this presumption implies that travel, trade, and commerce must be largely shut down; thereby magnifying the prospects for world-wide economic recession or depression; portending ruinous taxation, hyper-inflation, and expropriation; and auguring famine, civil chaos, and stark authoritarianism, if not indeed updated versions of the Committee of Public Safety and the Reign of Terror.  As examples, note that the U.S. Department of Labor’s March-to-April grocery inflation rate for 2020 was 2.6%, the highest monthly increase since the mid-1970’s and the “Arab oil embargo”; that a U.S. Presidential order was required to balance the needs of workers and consumers while keeping meat-packing plants open; and that one U.S. Senator has already been vilified as the “Marie Antoinette of the Senate” for opposing nationalization of state pension debts that long predate the pandemic.

      A time of existential crisis may lead to a re-examination, on the part of individuals and of societies alike, of fundamental values or ultimate concerns.  The theologian Paul Tillich believed that human attitudes towards objects of theistic, religious devotion are expressions of ultimate concern.  These objects are experienced as most holy, real, and valuable.  Tillich’s approach does not address non-theistic religions; and the frequently casual attitudes of ancient pagans towards their civic deities does not seem to indicate existential attachment.  Thus, Tillich’s analysis seems to be largely restricted to Western societies in the Common Era.

      Today’s Zeitgeist demands, however, that the criteria for “ultimate concern” be generalized so as to include globalism, environmentalism, and identity politics, etc.; as well as metaphysical interests in a personal God and in Being itself.  This generalization of Tillich’s original notion dilutes its significance while widening its application.  “Ultimate concern” may now pertain to traditional worship, praise, and prayer or to the quest for some ultimate good, such as the Holy Grail, Absolute Knowing, or (one presumes) the Minimal Carbon Footprint. 

      The analysis of “ultimate concern” - - on the occasion of the war against SARS CoV-2 - - is reminiscent of an earlier era in which national survivals were imperiled.  Between 1942 and 1944 the BBC radio service broadcast three talks by C. S. Lewis regarding the moral, spiritual, and intellectual content of Christianity.  These talks offered spiritual clarity and encouragement to a beleaguered people and were subsequently collected as the book, Mere Christianity, in 1952.  (Today, the fraction of the population tuning in to such broadcasts might be smaller, but that is a sociological effect not dealt with here.)  In the June posting to this blog we will examine some arguments from Mere Christianity.

Externalization (3): Philosophy of Religion

In a scene set in the London of the early 1920’s, the Academy Award winning 1981 film, Chariots of Fire, portrays a prominent, young, female opera singer going to a restaurant with a prominent, young, male Olympic-athlete-in-training.  At one point during dinner conversation she languidly, yet forcefully, expresses the spirit of their age toward religious differences: “People don’t care!”  This response would also seem to encapsulate a common Western attitude toward religious differences in the 2020’s: All legitimate religions are said to be aiming not only at the same truth but also at a therapeutic Zeitgeist (spirit of the age).  One thinks of Philip Rieff’s 1966 book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud, in which the psychological person is said to have replaced the religious person.  Rieff maintained that - - in the perceived race to provide consolation - - therapy and techniques of self-realization would rapidly replace religion.  More recently, the ascendency of the psychological person has also been seen in the Oprah television phenomenon.

      Among some Western opinion leaders of the 2020’s, nothing could be less therapeutic than Hegel’s fairly opaque writing on religion and Zeitgeist dating back to the 1820’s and even earlier; but yet his views on developing natural consciousness, Reason, Nature, Spirit, Religion, and Absolute Idea continue to find intellectual resonance.  The Absolute Idea is self-determining Reason externalizing itself as Nature and Spirit in order to entertain movements of thought (theses, antitheses, and syntheses) leading to enhanced knowledge.  Externalization amounts to “losing track of one’s self-consciousness while thinking about a topic.”  Spirit (both individual spirits and societal Zeitgeister) returns to the Absolute Idea with each synthesized increment of knowledge, consistent with the final cause of Absolute Knowing.  In Hegel’s terminology, “entäuβern” means “to externalize, renounce, relinquish, divest, dispose, or part with.”  Externalization (Entäuβerung) into Nature and Spirit is also called bifurcation (Entzweiung) or unfolding (Entfaltung).  [An introduction to Hegel has been given in the last two months’ blog posts, as well as in the Hegel chapter in my book, An Initial View of Final Causes.]

      Synthesis preserves whatever elements of truth are originally present in thesis and antithesis, even as apparent contradictions between them are cancelled (aufgehoben).  Hegel’s Axiom, “Thought is Being,” implies that Thought reaching higher levels of knowledge is the same as Being perfecting its essence and becoming self-aware.  Over time, Thought and Being each become more of what they truly are.  This spontaneous development of natural consciousness is the Absolute (virtually the same as the Absolute Idea).  The Absolute is not a freestanding power that thwarts the will of individuals and societies; it is the expression of the efforts of individuals and societies; and it does not exclude unintentional effects.

      The development of natural consciousness leads to Religion, or self-aware Absolute Being. The present writer reads Hegel as follows: Religion, immanent in a matrix of particular religions existing at any one time, has evolved from natural to aesthetic to revealed.  Over time, any particular religion has the possibility of asymptotically approaching the status of revealed, true Religion, in which Spirit knows itself as Spirit.  Which particular religion, if any, in today’s matrix has the best chance of asymptotically leading to true Religion is an enigma.  Until the end of time, Spirit is always evolving and updating the matrix of particular religions.  This evolution does not exclude unintended consequences and surprising discontinuities on its route towards unshakeable orthodoxy.  Thus, any current particular religion could turn out to be a dead end, superseded by the development of some other particular religion.  Hegel’s successors could not agree whether the final orthodoxy would be left-Hegelian (proto-Marxist) or right-Hegelian (orthodox Christian).  The present writer concludes that Hegelian theory presents the development of natural consciousness as the key to understanding the process of philosophy and theology, but does not guarantee the ultimate content of Religion.

      God, the ultimate condition for the possibility of religious experience, remains only an abstraction until the Absolute Idea externalizes itself as Nature and Spirit in pursuit of Absolute Knowing.  Hegel maintained that natural consciousness recognizes an immediate presence of God and does not rely on introspection of its thoughts in order to infer the existence of God as an external entity (¶ 758 in Phenomenology of Spirit).  Speculative knowledge (das spekulative Wissen) regards God as pure Thought, Essence, Being, Existence, and Self (¶ 761). Existing independently of any finite being, God is Being itself, i.e., Absolute Being or the highest degree of reality.  Finite beings are more or less real in proportion as they are more or less self-determining, which is to say, more or less rational.  Thus, one arrives at the familiar Hegelian principle, “the real is the rational, and the rational is the real.”  In view of Hegel’s Axiom, God is also Thought itself, possessed of Absolute Knowing, devoted to the recollection of its lived experiences, and “sunk in the night of self-consciousness” (¶ 808).  

      In the Introduction to his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel observes that “one could easily arrive at the view that a widespread, nearly universal indifference toward the doctrine of the faith formerly regarded as essential has entered into … public [consciousness, and] … the work of salvation has taken on a significance so strongly psychological … that only the semblance of the ancient doctrine of the church remains.”  Thus, even in the 1820’s Hegel was battling against the indifferentism expressed on the 1920’s film vignette previously cited.  The task of the philosophy of religion is, in Hegel’s view, to show that God can be known cognitively.  Hegel proposed a four-fold theory of religious knowledge: Faith, or immediate knowledge, is the certainty that God exists, albeit without insight into the necessity of that existence.  Feeling, or the subjective aspect of immediate knowledge, has the critical shortcoming that it cannot make judgments of true or false, or of good or evil, until it has been fortified by thought.  Representation (Vorstellung) is the content of faith in pre-rational form, as in Biblical stories that bear allegorical, metaphorical, or mystical senses.  Finally, thought is the content of faith in rational form, which provides context, relationships between ideas, and universality.  In a memorable passage, Hegel emphasizes the preeminence of thought in religious knowledge: “Animals have feelings, but only feelings.  Human beings think, and they alone have religion. 

      For Hegel, Christianity was, generally speaking and from all indications, the fullest expression of revealed, true Religion available in his time.  There were parallels between orthodox Christianity and his dialectical philosophy.  For example, in the Biblical text, Philippians 2:7-8, divine consciousness appears as Christ, who “emptied himself … obedient to the point of death …” (English Standard Version) or “entäuβerte sich selbst … gehorsam bis zum Tod …” (Schlachter 2000).  This emptying was an essential part of the process of God reconciling the world to himself in Christ (Second Corinthians 5:19).  This divine emptying and reconciling is an analog of self-consciousness externalizing itself while resolving contradictions in its understanding of the world and, thus reconciled, returning to itself. 

      In summary, and in the opinion of the present writer, the Hegelian dialectic proposes to specify the process by which on-going philosophical and theological developments occur and to facilitate an understanding of the religious past and present.  In Hegel’s philosophy of religion, God can be known cognitively via faith, feeling, representation, and thought, thereby increasing the chances of successfully “walking by faith and not by sight” (Second Corinthians 5:7).  The Hegelian dialectic does not, however, predict the relative future success of any particular religion (including the many branches of Christianity), because unintended consequences of rational actions jeopardize the future development of any particular religion: A promising and orthodox particular religion today may become a desiccated husk tomorrow. 

      (Unless the author is swept away by the rapidly evolving coronavirus pandemic, the next posting date for this blog will be July 1, 2020.)