(133) Comments in Reaction to Steve's and John's Pieces

Author:  Bob
To:  John and Steve

        I appreciate the positive feedback I received from both of you regarding the pieces about Views One, Two, and Three. Your comments were very encouraging. [For possible new readers, the spiritual perspective referred to here as View One might be generalized as a mysticism that leans toward but is not necessarily non-theist, View Two is basically fundamentalist/evangelical theism, and View Three is a non-fundamentalist, golden rule-emphasizing theism].
        In this posting, I will discuss various topics in reaction to points you both raised in your most recent pieces.

        Addressing John’s Questions About “The Views”. John asks in Post 132 who holds the views I’ve categorized and assembled and detailed as Views One, Two, and Three. He asks whether the various writers or ministers that I’ve read actually thought of themselves as part of a particular “view”. To discuss this, I’d like to set aside View One for the time being, and focus on Views Two and Three.
            There’s long been disagreement in this country and in England between fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist theists. Thus, to the extent that Views Two and Three reflect this divide, I think that the answer to John’s question is “yes”.
        However, what I’ve found is that while non-fundamentalist theists have often written inspiring and eloquent thoughts about what they believe, the thoughts have tended to be somewhat piecemeal and the whole picture may seem a bit obscure. (Moreover, the works of the defenders of orthodoxy, like C.S. Lewis, dominate the shelves of the popular bookstores, while works by writers like Fosdick, Hick, and Weatherhead are rarely seen).
        So what I tried to do in the series of pieces on View Three was to work through a version of what an alternative theology of non-fundamentalist theism looks like, at least to me. The particular structure and synthesis of thoughts into a single view is my responsibility. I’ve brought into the pieces on View Three numerous quotes from various sources that have appealed to me or influenced me or articulated ideas particularly well, and I’ve included thoughts of my own. So in this sense, View Three is a new construction that doesn’t exist elsewhere. I can’t say, then, that there is any single writer or minister I’ve read who holds the View I’ve put together in its entirety and would necessarily agree with every detail of what I’ve presented. On the other hand, I think that the overall spirit of the writers and ministers I admire corresponds well to the overall non-fundamentalist, golden rule-emphasizing theism of View Three.
        To the above I would also add the acknowledgement that the single writer whose work has been most helpful to me in seeing what non-fundamentalist theology looks like is John Hick. I would recommend his work to anyone interested in reading about spiritual issues from a non-fundamentalist perspective. Hick has done some outstanding writing on the theodicy issue which is such a critical issue for any theological framework (see especially Hick’s books Evil and the God of Love and Philosophy of Religion).   
        With regard to View One compared to View Three, I think that John makes some good points in his piece. He’s convinced me that it would be reasonable to create a little annex in View Three for what I’ve previously described as View One.

        More on Mr. Hick and the Subject of Sin and Evil. In Post 132, John says that Hick appears to state the proper answer to what John calls the mistaken idea of original sin. John expresses an interest in hearing more about what Hick says on this topic.
        Hick indicates that the response to the problem of evil which has “constituted the majority report of the Christian mind through the centuries” was developed by St. Augustine. (This theodicy is what Trialogue John calls “the mistaken idea of original sin”). Augustine held that there was an originally perfect creation which went wrong because the creatures who are part of it are free to fall from perfection. This theodicy, Hick states, “fulfills the intention lying behind it, which is to clear the creator of any responsibility for the existence of evil by loading that responsibility without remainder upon the creature.” However, Hick raises a couple of points which suggest flaws in the theodicy. For one thing, “the very idea of a perfect creation’s going wrong” amounts to “the self-creation of evil out of nothing.” Second, Hick says, “in light of modern knowledge… we cannot today realistically think of the human species as having been once morally and spiritually perfect and then falling from that state…” “All the evidence suggests that humanity gradually emerged out of lower forms of life with a very limited moral awareness and with very crude religious conceptions.” Also, “it is no longer possible to regard the natural evils of disease, earthquakes, and the like as consequences of the fall of humanity, for we now know that they existed long before human beings came upon the scene.”
        Hick identifies two alternatives to Augustine’s theodicy. One of these is “Process” theology or theodicy. The other has its basis in the thought of some early Fathers of the Church, most notably St. Irenaeus. Dubbed by Hick as “The Irenaean Theodicy”, this alternative view sees human beings brought into existence by God as “intelligent animals endowed with the capacity for immense moral and spiritual development’” and as “immature creatures, at the beginning of a long process of growth.” Sin among these immature creatures is missing the mark by failing to transcend self-centeredness. This theodicy, Hick writes, sees the human situation as:

"one of tension between the natural selfishness arising from our instinct for survival, and the calls of both morality and religion to transcend our self-centeredness. Whereas the Augustinian theology sees our perfection as lying in the distant past, in an original state long since forfeited by the primordial calamity of the fall, the Irenaean type of theology sees our perfection as lying before us in the future, at the end of a lengthy and arduous process of further creation through time."

        Afterlife Issue. In reacting to the “Three Views”, one of the issues that both Steve and John comment on is the afterlife issue. On this issue, it is helpful to consider where our thoughts are similar and where they differ.
        There are at least three areas of apparent agreement in our thinking that I’d like to call attention to.
        First, although it is for different reasons, all three of us optimistically believe in the possibility of an afterlife with positive experiences available that exceed what we have known in our earthly lifetimes.
        Second, all three of us reject the idea that one’s belief in a particular savior, religion, or set of doctrines is critical or determinative of the positive or negative nature of the afterlife. On this point, I have not been particularly clear during the trialogue as to Steve’s position. However, in Post 131, Steve sets forth two groups of persons who in his view will be eternally separated from God in the afterlife. The groups he identifies are those who think they don’t need God’s mercy because they believe they are good, and those who revel in wickedness and “deliberately disregard the commands to love God and their neighbors.” He does not, then, appear to claim that a lack of belief in a particular savior or religion is determinative of one’s eternal fate.
        Third, all three of us appear to reject the idea of eternal physical suffering, pain, and torment in the afterlife. Again, on this point I have not been particularly clear during the trialogue as to Steve’s position. However, in piece 131, Steve uses the term or concept of “eternal separation” from God six times to express the negative afterlife consequences which may befall certain groups of people. Is this just a euphemism used to soften what is actually an even harsher position? Or is it fully reflective of Steve’s view? I’m going to assume that Steve is using the phrase “eternal separation” because he believes that those who do not receive God’s mercy will be separated from God but also that God will not proactively inflict physical suffering, pain, and torment upon them. If this is an inaccurate assumption, then Steve can correct the record in a future piece.

And then there are several areas where our thoughts diverge:
        God’s use of punishment is the central idea that Steve says he finds missing in “View Three” thoughts related to the afterlife. Steve says that “God can and does use punishment and the threat of punishment to accomplish” the purpose of drawing mankind to God. So let’s talk a bit about some different punishment scenarios, such as actual punishment administered during our earthly lives, future punishment that is threatened during our earthly lives, and afterlife eternal punishment.
        With regard to actual earthly lifetime punishment, as I’ve indicated before, I do not believe that a divine being actively intervenes to protect or bless or punish people during their earthly lives. If that were indeed God’s role, the results we see suggest that God’s work in this area is pretty spotty and often ineffective. That is, we can see that deep wrongs and diseases and tragedies befall wonderful people, while ill-gotten gains and evil-doing goes uncorrected. As stated in Matthew 5, God makes the sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and unjust. God set things in motion, and may work within us or through us, but we can clearly observe from the real world that nothing, God included, actually ensures that “the good” are protected or that “the bad” are punished during earthly life.
        So, next, let’s take up the idea of using the threat of future punishment as an inducement to turning lives around… Steve notes that he’s worked with jail inmates who needed to fear God before they could be turned around and love God and neighbor. And, it is a great thing that these inmates have been able to interpret their experiences in a way that has led to a positive transformation for them. Given that fear can be a motivator, Steve suggests that a threat of future eternal punishment by God, as is conveyed in some scriptural passages, has the practical utility of bringing some people to God. And he suggests, but does not embrace, the possibility that perhaps God threatens eternal punishment, but does not actually carry it out. (I can’t embrace that idea either; are we to think that God uses falsehoods and fear to gain people’s love?)
        My reaction here again is that it seems to me that the use of threats of eternal punishment as an approach to turning lives around is too inefficient, too frequently counterproductive, and too morally questionable to ascribe to a divine being. There are countless numbers of human beings that have found the very notion of the infinite punishment of finite beings to be so offensive that it’s the primary reason they’ve sworn off religion and God. (Charles Darwin, for example, wrote once that he could “hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.”) Further, there have also been believers who, in fear that contaminating ideas of non-believers might jeopardize their own eternal afterlife fate or that of their loved ones, have consequently committed all sorts of heinous, ungodly acts against perceived heretics and infidels.
        Finally, with regard to whether there really IS a future of eternal punishment… Steve says that he “cannot abandon a host of Biblical teachings that suggest that there are eternal consequences for choices we can make during our life on earth.” Here again it is somewhat important for the sake of proper argument to be clear as to what Steve intends in using the phrase “eternal consequences”. As just noted earlier, from the general content of his piece, it appears that Steve is referring to the eternal consequence as being eternal separation from God, or separation from bliss, but not eternal suffering from inflicted torment.
        The notion of eternal separation from God does represent an apparent softening from the malicious doctrine of eternal suffering from inflicted torment. (See the excerpted sermon by Frederic Farrar, at the close of Post 115, for an extensive and in my opinion particularly eloquent and compelling criticism of the doctrine of eternal suffering).
        However, any punishment that is eternal in duration seems offensive to reason and conscience. Irreparably and eternally separating a being from bliss on the basis of attitudes and actions taken during a brief finite lifetime seems excessive. Also, consider the fact that those attitudes and actions which allegedly form the basis of this eternal judgment are of beings with tremendous differences in circumstances – for example, in terms of life spans, quality of childhoods, living environments, ideas exposed to, and reasoning capacity. How is it possible to give them all a “fair shake”? Further, consider that to be loving, punishment ought to allow for correction and second chances. Eternal banishment based on a one-time tryout is not loving, it’s pure retribution.
        In addition to those people who “revel in their wickedness” – presumably a relatively small group for which there may not be a great deal of sympathy – Steve sees those who think they deserve God’s favor due to their goodness as being the very ones who won’t get a joyful eternity with God, but instead will get eternal banishment.
        Now, I don’t think that I fall into either of Steve’s two main groups of candidates for permanent exile from God. I don’t see myself as part of the group that revels in wickedness. And, on the second count, I do not think that I personally deserve God’s favor based on goodness of behavior. So I’m probably okay.
        But… as I’ve said before, one of the central reasons I believe in God in the first place is this: while I see human beings as imperfect and sometimes engaging in evil actions, I also think that human beings are generally far too amazing and human life far too precious to think of ourselves as orphans in a purely mechanistic universe. I believe that we are the creations of a highly benevolent God; and as such, it seems reasonable to think that our existence should extend beyond a short and all too often brutish lifetime. Further, I do not think that we are on this planet to be resigned to our imperfection and resigned to evil and injustice, expecting God alone to ultimately make all things well. We are here for learning and character or soul-building, and not for resigned groveling for God’s future mercy. Through moral struggle and the exercise of empathy and conscience, I think that it is possible to become more fully human and improve the soul. Is this view dangerously close to the attitude of Steve’s second group of permanent exiles? In Steve’s eyes, it may be.
        In conclusion… I think it’s a bad idea to make an idol out of any collection of writings of human origin, which the Bible most certainly is. If we “followed a host of Biblical teachings”, as Steve puts it, today we’d be living with a “kindler, gentler” slavery, rather than having ended slavery. In fact, if the Bible writers really knew all that they thought they knew, then we wouldn’t even be here today to discuss these issues, because the apocalypse would have happened within the lifetime of Jesus’ early followers.
        Steve speaks of “the lush land” and the “gentle slopes” of View Three. Here, similar to atheists who suggest that religion is wishful thinking, Steve seems to be saying that View Three may be too good and too appealing to be true.
        But why shouldn’t we think that the reality of God and God’s mercy will exceed our highest expectations? Whatever we believe, it’s a choice made with our free will. I choose to believe optimistically. I believe that a supremely benevolent being exists who cares deeply about humankind and/or that there is at least a highly benevolent ultimate reality which brings forth positive meaning to earthly travail. This belief may or may not be true; it can’t be conclusively proved or disproved by anyone on our plane of reality. However, I see hope and no harm in believing it -- so long as this belief is not used to diminish our view of the value of life now, or diminish our striving non-violently for a better world now. And, as Frederic Farrar once wrote, “Oh, my brethren, I am not afraid, I never shall be afraid, of doing harm by asking you to ‘think noble things of God.’”

        With regard to John’s piece, Post 132… Like me, John rejects “nothingness” and eternal punishment in his thinking about afterlife issues. Also like me, John agrees that after death, and in the afterlife, “we” must retain something of ourselves, and there must be something there to retain it, or else “we” would not be.
        However, John envisions the retaining entity as being more radically different than ourselves than I do. John also sees what is retained as being much less than I do.
        John argues that in the afterlife, the personality we have now will seem like a prison, and the entity which will celebrate our release from that prison won’t be the same personality. “You may remember your personality’”, he writes, “you may be required to analyze it – but it won’t be you any longer.”
        I too expect that afterlife will bring major personal character transformations for the better. And, John speaks of a change in “our personhood”, and I also anticipate that, to a point. But John seems to take this position as far as saying that the earthly personality is remembered but that’s just about it. If that’s true – and who can say for sure if it is or isn’t – then it seems that there is a note of some sadness in the afterlife. For it would mean that our earthly relationships with others are only that, then – earthly only. For if personality is so transient and so radically altered in the afterlife, then for the earthly grieving, there will be no great longed-for day of reconciliation with lost loved ones, simply because there will be no personalities in the afterlife who are any longer much at all like the ones with which we enjoyed an earthly relationship.
        I think of the afterlife as a plane of reality which invests further meaning into the work and the relationships that we experience in this sphere. I envision it as joyful communion with God, like the celebration in the Return of the Prodigal Son to which both sons are invited to the banquet.
        My speculation is that in this other plane of reality, we do not have bodies that are anything like what we have on earth. However, we are souls or spirits that have a form or can be “seen” in that other plane of reality. John asks about gender in the afterlife. On this point, I really have no opinion or guess as to the extent, if at all, that our earthly gender has any continuing imprint upon our personality, or whether something that is remotely akin to “sex” is experienced in the afterlife.
        In fact, I don’t reflect much upon or spend time imagining what the afterlife might be like in any great detail. It’s truly piling speculation upon speculation. I’ve enjoyed reading various works that have tried to paint a picture, such as the work of Emanuel Swedenborg, or some of the Seth books. My own hypothesis is that the afterlife, particularly in the early stages, may have some parallels to what people have reported from near-death experiences (NDE’s).

        Now, as an aside… I understand, John, the various objections that are offered to investing afterlife meaning in NDEs -- for example, the points that near-death is not the same as death, that NDEs may be the tricks of minds starved for oxygen, or that NDEs may be shaped by culture and expectations of the death experience. My point here, though, is not to argue that NDEs are surely real reflections of the afterlife. My only point is that I consider it possible that NDE’s may point to what the afterlife MIGHT be like, at least in the early stages.
        In the NDE experiences that I’m talking about, there is the sensation of the mind / soul leaving and floating out of the body and hovering about that earthly scene for a bit. Then, there is an experience of passing through a tunnel to another plane of reality. In this other plane, the person goes through a rapid life review in which the good and the bad are seen, and mistakes are understood, with a desire for correction. The person experiences the sensation of being in the presence of a light that may be interpreted as God or ultimate reality. This presence brings a sense of enormous joy and peace to the person, such that the person does not wish to ever depart from being in the presence of that light (or being of light). At some point in this process, the person may have the opportunity and pleasure of meeting various recognizable souls who were meaningful during their earthly lifetime. At least in the material I’ve read, those going through this process have not indicated a loss of “personhood” or found it impossible to recognize loved ones. (And in recalling this material, I don’t recollect any discussion of whether the sense of one’s gender remained or disappeared.)

        God Within or Without? I agree with John’s statements on this subject. I agree that it is a mistake to look for God only outside; it needs to be both outside and inside. I believe that there is a piece of God in each of us.

        Reaction to John’s Comments on Religion and Politics. In an attachment to a piece I wrote on the Golden Rule as View Three’s moral compass, I addressed some contemporary issues that are the source of some abundant national political controversy (see Post 122). The point of this, however, was not at all to change the nature of the trialogue. What I wanted to do was to illustrate the point that many View Two types who may say that they believe in the golden rule in point of fact philosophically and ideologically reveal that they do not.
        These comments of mine had no “partisan” intent. Any administration, regardless of party, deserves condemnation if it’s eager to engage in war-making for selfish ends, willing to engage in deceit and misrepresentations to get us into and keep us in the desired war, and callous about civilian and troop casualties that stem from the resulting quagmire. We’ve seen D’s do this (Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the Vietnam war), and we’ve seen R’s do it now.
        But on the subject of religion and politics… The separation of church and State is a good idea that has served this country well. Sometimes, though, religious principles have served as a catalyst for waking people up from apathy and lethargy to take on great moral issues in the political arena, whether that be abolition, child labor, civil rights, war, or abortion. Passion about moral issues can be a good thing. However, there are at least two major qualifications upon this point. Religious passion should never be an excuse for violence. Also, scripture or religious faith should not be utilized in the public arena to call for societal persecution or discrimination against classes of people.
        John expresses some concern that my comments about the contemporary scene may put off View Two believers. However, contrary to what John says, “my whole point” is NOT trying to persuade View Two folks to consider View Three. To the extent that we have any View Two readers, I suspect that any gratification they find from the trialogue is when they feel that Steve has put you John, or me, in our place and given us heck for not finding our answers in “the book” that has all the answers. I think that View Two folks are virtually unreachable. You cannot reach folks who think that all truth resides in one source and distrust just about everything else. View Two folks are not generally interested in reasoning issues out together. They are interested in that which might “confirm” the one source in which they already believe and in whose truth they think their salvation depends. If logic, experience, or conscience lead in a different direction, they’re not interested. So, I’m not concerned about potentially alienating some View Two folks with some comments in this trialogue about how the current administration seems to constantly act in contradiction to the golden rule.
        I am interested in addressing non-believers and people who haven’t thought that much about spiritual issues but consider View Two to be very unappealing. “My whole point” is to say to this audience, “You may find View Two to be irrational and morally repugnant, with a repelling image of God. So do I. But don’t let View Two folks and their fundamentalism define God for you, or ruin the possibility for you of openness to God and spirituality. There are other possibilities besides unbelief, fundamentalist theism, or eastern-style pantheism. One such possibility is what I’ve called View Three in this trialogue.”