[todaysdate]
By Thomas Schmidt
In several recent conversations on this website, there has been much quoting from the Bible. I’m impressed with our ability to use the Bible, yet I’m at the same time dismayed that the way we use it often seems self-serving. The major uses, or misuses if you will, center around picking out passages from the post-Easter stories and theorizing from the Bible’s many writers, and the lack of a thorough use of the pre-Easter parables and words attributed to Jesus. This selectivity has the effect of framing the discussion in the orthodox language of “the Christ,” a divine figure involved with issues that seem to be rather distant from the human problems of day to day relationships and lives of the man, Jesus, and the people he was addressing.
Looked at in another way, we can find this lopsided presentation in both the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds. The Nicene Creed’s description of Jesus reads: “… who for us men (sic) and for our salvation came down from heaven,/ and was made man;/ and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried, …” The Apostles’ Creed describes Jesus as one “who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,/ born of the virgin Mary,/ suffered under Pontius Pilate, / was crucified, dead, and buried; …” The life of Jesus and the message he had is relegated to a semicolon in one and a comma in the other. In other words, Jesus’s life is ignored, the discussion is focused instead on what a few writers thought he became after his death. For 2,000 years, this has been the focus of the institutionalized orthodoxy of the church. Jesus’s life and message disappear, and we get caught up in arguing about the divine personage that has replaced the man in our religion. We worship the Christ and ignore the message.
By accepting the orthodox church’s framing of Christianity, we unfortunately accept the limits put on our creative understanding. With these limits, we do not pursue a responsible use of scientific historiography and linguistic analysis to understand Jesus’s message. We may remain Christians, but we cease to be followers of Jesus. We follow, instead, church leaders and what their political masters wish us to follow. We risk ceasing to grow spiritually and often end up with irrelevant, outmoded beliefs. One can say we cease to grow as humans. Others may say we fail to become good stewards of God’s creation.
I have been reading the recent works of Lloyd Geering, a New Zealand professor of religious studies who, several years ago, faced a church trial in which his opponents in the church’s hierarchy tried to defrock him for suggesting that there was no God, and that we could still be Christians without believing in the resurrection of a divine Christ. His latest work is “Reimagining God: The Faith Journey of a Modern Heretic,” and was published this year by Polebridge Press. It is a valuable work, for it presents briefly, clearly, and usually convincingly many of the topics that we have been considering at SFAVs. He traces the development of the concept of God through the development of language. Not getting sidetracked in the rather unproductive argument over the real existence of God, or any spiritual matter, he instead presents the clarifying idea that we are talking about concepts, and need to evaluate these concepts in terms of their social and moral productivity, as well as their ability to increase the meaningfulness of our ideas for humanity and the creation. He calls for a responsible discussion of ideas, admitting the support our concepts have for being of various categories of veracity: are we talking of physical categories, or categories that express our highest values? What are their limits, especially in terms of their explanatory powers and their powers to suggest moral obligations to behave in certain ways? I’d add, what are their fruits?
Through these questions, he touches on many other topics. He presents, for instance, a simple and convincing suggestion that the reduction in people who participate in organized religion is greatly due to the rise of literalism and fundamentalism in churches. He argues that these have grown in reaction to the physical and social sciences, and that both literalism and fundamentalism receive great support from the central institutionalized churches. He would expand this trend to all religions: it can be seen in much of Islam, as well as more extreme Christianity and Jewish conservatism. Literalism imposes great limitations on our religious imaginations and drives off many sincere seekers of religious experience. This short-changes us all. Literalism and fundamentalism also encourage us to impose religious absolutes on others, accenting the exclusiveness of one’s own views. Thus, religion is seen as an institution that limits our thinking, our social contacts, and the possibility of finding peaceful, respectful, and reasonable solutions to many of the problems we face. In fact, the fundamentalist/literalist matrix has difficulty even recognizing many problems, such as those of climate change or patriarchy. Few free intellectuals care to engage in discussion for long with anyone who believes that their interpretations are infallible.
Geering reviews the development of our understanding of the historical Jesus over the past 200 years, presenting the ideas of Schleiermacher, Feuerbach, Kant, Darwin, Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and 20th century theology. He is a late participant in the works of the 300 or so Jesus seminarians, and gives Bob Funk his due. He even finds intellectual commonality with Donald Cupitt, who suggests we can remain Christian while also rejecting the concepts of Christ or God. (See Cupitt’s “The New Religion of Life in Everyday Speech” or “Taking Leave of God.”) He also distinguishes himself from the hardcore atheists, such as Dawkins, and admits that he is at least what I’d call an agnostic about God. He does not discuss a separate “real” physical entity, but rather a very beautiful and meaningful concept that can clarify our development of highest values, thereby showing his debt to Tillich as well as Bultmann.
This book is an excellent introduction to the contemporary history of spiritual growth, clearly presenting the major concepts that have been employed since the enlightenment forced us to take control of our own thoughts, rather than leaving them in the suffocating pantries of those who had the approval of the powers and principalities. In future postings I hope to address, while using many of Geering’s ideas, questions of resurrection, blood and substitutionary sacrifice, and the meanings of the communion table, all leading toward what I am realizing are my major concerns. Those concerns are: 1) how I can describe the God of evolution using images that fit our current understanding of the cosmos; and 2) how I can use the Bible and other religious writings to support what I hope is my contribution, albeit minimal, to the revitalization of religious thought as we face the problems of our real world.
