Loving what a motley crew we all are

Admittedly, my scope of reference here includes mainly those who are devout in some sense, and also hopelessly intellectual. I enjoy how even those who are brilliant and/or perhaps in the category of saintly can see things very differently. I am not a member of either set, but let's just say that there's enough of an element of 'longing from afar' to make me love the diversity of God's human creation when I see how we vary in approach.

I shall ask my readers to bear with me, because, since I so cherish creativity (not a common property, since conformity is more profitable in many senses), I've been rather staggered by what I consider unwise use of same. My studies take up much time, and I've tried to unwind with watching such films as I can see on the television. Now, isn't trying to improve on Shakespeare a bit much? I was not exactly thrilled by a version of As You Like It (one of my favourite plays), which I turned off after ten minutes of seeing it begin with violence in 19th century Japan. (Huh?) But my just finding a film advertised which embellished on Othello (another favourite) by creating a version where the main character is a black basketball player in an all-white US school that I had to turn from television to blog.

Anyway, back to our merry Church situation. I've always enjoyed seeing how those, well grounded in theology and dedicated to the faith into the bargain, can have totally different perspective on details. For example, a liturgical scholar will applaud common themes in a lectionary, where the specialist in scripture will protest (often quite correctly) that the set of readings has no exegetical basis in common. A sociologist and a moralist, though their pastoral practise may be the same, will express very different bases for their versions of 'family values.' Those whose lives have been devoted to educating children will often see the very liturgy which I'd consider to be an aesthetic and intellectual wasteland as what would bring families into the church.

I believe I've mentioned that I'm avidly preparing for my exam in Philosophy of Religion. (It is not till next May - but, since it's an area I find rather difficult, I cannot store up my avidity until later.) I naturally am hopeless, since my own emphasis (however accidentally) has so been either cultural (doctor of humanities, after all) or in ascetic theology. I realise, of course, that no theist thinks he can prove divine existence or describe the godly essence - and no atheist philosopher can show there is no god. (Don't be offended - atheist philosophers are speaking of a 'god,' not the Christian God. And no theist worth his salt would presume to explain all the attributes of the Christian image of God.) It is mainly a matter of asserting or challenging that an attribute, or worldly condition, whatever, is or is not logically feasible.

I am no lover of Anselm - his 'atonement' makes me cringe, even if he wrote some very lovely words about prayer - but I'm afraid I'm a little too far removed from Greek thought of Anselm's day to think that what one can imagine has to be true - much less that the ultimate in what we can imagine is divine. (As one with a passion for the medieval, I have seen Hildegard of Bingen, in her noted work on medicine, describe the humours of the unicorn and gryphon. Hildegard may be forgiven for lack of scientific method, having lived in a day when zoology was studied in libraries, and she presumably had it on some testimony that the gryphon's feathers alleviated hay fever or something along those lines. But let us say that I have some reservations about how what we can imagine points to its being true.)

I'm growing a little bored with all the readings about whether God could create a stone too hard for him to lift. My all too practical side (yes, it's there under the romanticism) wonders why a being who is pure spirit would be lifting rocks in the first place. I also doubt that Jesus of Nazareth, even if he had to fall into certain feats such as walking on water to get his message through the thick skulls of the apostles, would have been lifting Gibraltar.

Today, I devoted hours to study of the 'problem of evil,' the particular unit which I've been pursuing this week. (I'm not referring to the massive pastoral problem of evil, but entirely to the philosophical problem of whether the existence of evil means there can be no omnipotent, all loving God.)

Of course, no one has the answer to evil, but the efforts to show it is compatible with theism yield interesting results in the works of many authors, ancient, medieval, or modern. I did enjoy John Hick's "Irenaean theodicy," which he develops on the concepts Irenaeus had of our being an immature creation with glory in the future. (I'm drastically over simplifying, of course, but, coming from a western Christian tradition so focussed on 'the fall,' punishment, and salvation as the end of punishment - even if one must either roast in purgatory for a time if one is Catholic or be obliterated till the last Judgement if Calvinist - I love the Eastern emphasis on constant creation, growth in this life and beyond, deification, and, ultimately - how we cannot imagine - sanctification of the cosmos.)

Yet something occurred to me when I was reading some of the philosophers who are theists, including Hick. They are working not only from the assumptions that a Creator God remains active in his creation, but, seemingly, from a perspective which assumes that spiritual considerations are foremost in people's thoughts and actions. Had I spent my life in the anchorhold, without my long exposure to parish work and the like (not to mention 'the world,' but I cite parish and diocesan work specifically because it involves people who are both believers and seeking to practise Christianity), I might not have grasped that, for example, many people are 'moral' because a lack of the appearance of respectability could damage them socially or financially.

Hick, in speaking of natural evils as opposed to those rising from moral choices, gives a detailed presentation of how living in a world with its own laws, and one which is no paradise, fosters responsibility, maturity, and compassion. (Not necessarily... but he makes a good point overall. I'm not going to go on in great detail, but it was superbly presented.) He notes that there would be no morality if no evil action could cause harm. I need to step out of my normal mode to understand and discuss philosophy! My immediate thought (which is pastoral, not philosophical - Hick is not addressing pastoral cases, but showing that evil does not make theism implausible) is that no real virtue exists if one's concern is avoiding consequences alone.

Perhaps I'm just refreshing my weary memory, but, in the same unit on the Problem of Evil, David Pailin, whose approach is highly scientific rather than what might be termed the more mystical approach of Hick, made an excellent point. The problem of evil makes moral evil seem as if God were manufacturing humans as one might make a drinking cup, or is fostered by a non scientific approach where everything is as we find it because God fashioned it precisely that way. (God could not have made dinosaurs, or they would have survived...) Pailin's fine point was that we cannot understand fully what "God is Creator" even means! How can we say that an omnipotent, all good, God would have done things differently, when we cannot begin to understand what creation fully entails? (Though Pailin dislikes Hick's idea of the earth as a proving ground for maturity, Hick actually is not beyond the scientific - because he depicts a God who is always creating, not one who created a perfect world, had his plans botched by a fallen angel and two humans, and then had to go to plan B.)

Here's a quote from David Pailin that I found interesting. It was presented in acontext of showing that evil does not make a god logically impossible, and that speculations (by atheists) about what God 'might have done' were the will to do it there imply "a transcendental understanding which it is hard to render credible". (One of the amusing parts of my study of philosophy, Lord forgive me, is noticing how atheists implicitly seem to believe they have the greatest knowledge of what omnipotence, beneficence, goodness, whatever, would be if only there were a god.) He notes first, and aptly, that atheists who go on about how a god who permits evil is not omnipotent, all good, and so forth, ignore that "It is far from certain that we are sufficiently clear in our apprehension of the nature of divine power to be able to warrant the implications of 'omnipotence'".

"Theism sees God as deeply involved, as One who experiences all suffering produced by human evil... and seeks, by love, to draw us from perverted conduct arising from our sense of unimportance into acts of creative love made possible by the self-respect that comes from knowing their total acceptance by God."

I'll never be a philosopher, and, unlike my co-contributors, all I know or understand about science is that I love dinosaurs, the DNA molecule, and the planets. (Pailin is superb on showing how images of God which present faulty theistic arguments often are based on "certainly pre-Darwinian, perhaps pre-Copernican" images of creation.) Yet that last paragraph I quoted was as powerful a meditation for me as anything I've read at my orisons.