December 7, 2003
By Jim Weller
Just what is God, after all? What can we say about God to represent an apprehension of divine nature? What can we know of God qua God, as distinguished from our knowledge of God’s effects – what the ancient philosophers called the “sensible” and the “intelligible” aspects of reality? What in the world can we attribute to God’s essence – what God is, in the way that we give “names,” or attributive terms, to signify what an existing thing essentially is? These are some of the puzzling questions the medieval philosophers of theology asked themselves. Our contemporaries are still asking them. The questions asked in terms of any other object of knowledge, or philosophical apprehension, remain, when asked of God (in an oft-used phrase), “an enigma inside a puzzle wrapped in a mystery.”
I know no better way of answering than this: All we can truly say, or know, or understand concerning what God is, is that God is. That is just how God answers the Biblical Moses’ question asking God’s name: Eyeh-Asher-Eyeh – “I am that I am.” These are the words of the oldest text in the Hebrew Scriptures, dating from around 950 BCE. In other words, God’s essence and existence are one. As St. Thomas Aquinas put it, according to University of Notre Dame professor of theology and philosophy David B. Burrell, Deus est esse – God is “to-be,” in the infinitive, i.e., “existence,” or “being.” Alternatively, as in Paul Tillich’s twentieth-century formulation of the Biblical answer, God is “Being-itself.” Tillich finds that the basis – what he calls the "prius" – of all philosophy of religion, as affirmed by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, is the Deus est esse. God is being, a unity of essence and existence.
Just so, for Moses Maimonides, writing in his twelfth-century didactic on the meaning of Torah and Talmud, The Guide of the Perplexed, nothing that can be said of the human experience of reality can be properly said of God as God, “there being nothing in what exists besides God . . . and the totality of the things He has made. There is, moreover, no way to apprehend Him except it be through the things He has made; for they are indicative of his existence and of what ought to be believed about Him, I mean to say, of what should be affirmed and denied with regard to Him.”
Maimonides’ doctrine is that we can only speak of God’s attributes, or “names,” by analogy, as though, like anything in existence, something might be predicated of it – what its formal features, or substantial properties or qualities are, or even what it is, essentially, its “quiddity.” Because, unlike something in existence that can be made the object of thought, God is existence essentially.
Maimonides enunciated the public doctrine that he maintained ought to be believed by the multitudes “on traditional authority,” as follows: “that God is not a body; that there is absolutely no likeness in any respect whatsoever between Him and the things created by Him; [and] that His existence has no likeness to theirs.” He explained further, concerning the Names of God,
"Everything that can be ascribed to God . . . differs in every respect from our attributes, so that no definition can comprehend the one thing and the other. Similarly, the term ‘existence’ can only be applied equivocally [differently] to His existence and to that of things other than Him. As for the discussion concerning attributes and the way they should be negated with regard to Him; and as to the meaning of the attributes that may be ascribed to Him . . . and the notion of His names, though they are many, being indicative of one and the same thing – it should be considered that all of these are obscure matters. In fact, they are truly the mysteries of the Torah and the secrets [of the Talmud.]"
Therefore, in a declaration of the absolute limits to human understanding given as a preface to his discussion of the knowable aspects of God, Maimonides warned against intellectual hubris, writing,
"Know that the human intellect has objects of apprehension that it is within its power and according to its nature to apprehend. On the other hand, in the totality of that which exists, there also are existents and matters that . . . [the human intellect] is not capable of apprehending in any way; the gates of . . . apprehension are shut before it. There are also in that which exist things of which the intellect may apprehend one state while not being cognizant of other states. The fact that it apprehends does not entail the conclusion that it can apprehend all things."
Maimonides emphasized that the incomprehensibility of divine or metaphysical realities (he equates the two adjectives), “for the apprehension of which [humankind] . . . has a great longing,” has been recognized by philosophers of all times and cultures, and this is not “a statement made [just] in order to conform to Law [Torah].” He recounts the Greek philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias’ dictum that there are three causes of differences of human opinion concerning speculative truth, one of which is plain ignorance. The others are human contentiousness, and “the obscurity of the object of apprehension in itself and the difficulty of apprehending it” – the ultimate incomprehensibility just mentioned. To these, Maimonides adds another cause of perplexity. “It is habit and upbringing. For [humankind] has in his nature a love of, and an inclination for, that to which he is habituated.” By this, he means the mistake of flat, literal interpretation of the sacred texts, “whose external meaning is indicative of the corporeality of God and other imaginings with no truth in them, for these have been set forth as parables and riddles.”
Because of the fundamentally incomprehensible Eyeh-Asher-Eyeh, there is profound virtue and sense in the Holy Scriptures’ use of parabolic and metaphoric language, “in such a manner as the mind is led toward the existence of the objects of these opinions and representations but not toward grasping their essence as it truly is.” The central enigma must be approached only with the utmost circumspection, awe, and humility. It is “beyond the domain of things that [humankind] is able to grasp,” and yet it is the truth of ultimate reality. In this regard, Maimonides teaches by allusion to Proverbs 25:16, rendering: “Hast thou found honey? Eat [only] so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith and vomit it.”
As for the Names of God and the other “mysteries of the Torah,” Maimonides explained, “When people have received this doctrine [of the incorporeality and unity of God], are habituated to and educated and grown up in it, and subsequently become perplexed . . . they should be elevated to the knowledge of the interpretation of [the books of the prophets], and their attention should be drawn to the equivocality and figurative sense of the various terms.”
Thus, Maimonides explains at length, every affect, act, feature, and quality ascribed to God is meant in figuratively humanistic terms. Citing the Babylonian Talmud, he reminds the reader, “The Torah speaketh in the language of the sons of man.” He asserts thus that scripture attributing to God such human affects as wrath, anger, and jealousy express the attitudes of the faithful toward idolaters and infidels, the willfully ignorant and blasphemous people of the society amongst whom they lived and worshipped. Anthropomorphisms in scripture, i.e., terms used of God such as “face,” “back,” “heart,” “air [breath],” “soul,” “living,” “wing,” “eye [or sight, seeing],” and “hear [hearing],” are in each instance “an equivocal term, its equivocality being mostly with respect to its figurative use.” Furthermore, he avers, “When we . . . begin to expound the negation of the attributes, we shall make clear how all this is reducible to one notion, which is exclusively that of the essence of God . . . who produces everything other than He, and in addition apprehends His own act.” Maimonides presages for his reader, “When . . . the true reality is investigated it will be found . . . that He has no essential attribute existing in true reality, such as would be superadded to his essence [esse].” Then, he gives his well-known expostulation of antitheses concerning the divine essence:
"On the attributes . . . it is known that existence . . . is superadded to the quiddity [essence] of what exists. This is clear and necessary with regard to everything the existence of which has a cause. As for that which has no cause for its existence, there is only God. For this is the meaning of our saying . . . that His existence is necessary. Accordingly, His existence is identical with His essence and his true reality, and His essence is His existence. He exists, but not through an existence other than His essence; . . . He lives, but not through life; . . . He is powerful, but not through power; . . . He knows, but not through knowledge. He is one not through oneness."
Regarding these, Maimonides’ famous “negative attributions,” the fundamentals are the dogmatic attributions he prescribes, of the in-corporeality and un-likeness of God to any other existent. These negations derive from the primal credos of Jew, Muslim, and Christian: “Hear, O Israel, God our God is one;” “There is no God but Allah;” and “I believe in one God.” Thus, his summary teaching is the admonition to “Know that the description of God by means of negations is the correct description – negations are in a certain respect attributes and . . . we have no way of describing Him unless it be through negations and not otherwise.”
The sole affirmative attribution proper to God, according to Maimonides’ treatise, is the one I began with here. Maimonides makes of this a demonstration founded in the scriptural revelation “made known to Moses and through which they [the Israelites] would acquire a true notion of the existence of God, this knowledge being: I am that I am.”
"This is a name deriving from the verb to be, which signifies existence. The whole secret consists in the repetition in a predicative position of the very word indicative of existence. For the word that requires the mention of an attribute immediately connected with it. Accordingly, the first word is I am, considered as a term to which a predicate is attached; the second word that is predicated of the first is also I am, that is, identical with the first. Scripture makes, as it were, a clear statement . . . that He is existent not through existence . . . [i.e.] the existent that is the existent, or the necessarily existent. This is what demonstration necessarily leads to, namely, to the view that there is a necessarily existent thing that has never been, or ever will be, nonexistent.”
Maimonides has a very great deal more to say to the perplexed reader concerning his “divine science.” For myself though, dear reader, I say at this juncture, “Further, plaintiff alleges not,” as it were in a legal complaint; or – not to put too fine a point on it – in the words of the Biblical sage Qoholeth, “God is in heaven and you are on earth; that is why your words should be few.”
Jim Weller is a graduate of Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. He is currently a member of Peace United Church of Christ, formerly called First Congregational Church of Santa Cruz.
Saturday, August 07, 2004
Thursday, August 05, 2004
What Is The Soul?
4 August 2004
By Jim Weller
Let’s say that the soul is the I at the center of personal being. I might have said, at the center of the experience of personal being, but that would entail consciousness – experience is not usually thought of as non-conscious. But sometimes personal being is non-conscious, or not self-aware, as when dreamlessly sleeping, for instance. Experience goes with self-awareness; but persons in being are not always self-aware, as in various states of non-consciousness. Deep meditative states and comatose states are other instances of this, aren’t they? In all those instances, though, the I is still there, or at least it is potentially, isn’t it? If it isn’t, where did it go? Whence does it return when we return to self-aware, conscious experience? No, I think what I mean by the I, the soul, is there as long as the whole person is alive – “brain-dead” persons notwithstanding.
Many people, usually children and simple-minded folk, want to believe that the I exists independently from the living body. With my definition, this would mean that personal being is distinct and separable from the living organism. Thus, the soul existed, in some sense, before the organism came into being, will continue after its death, and is potentially apart from it while it lives. This is the idea of the immortal, incorporeal soul popularized by Plato and his followers, which became standard in many quarters of Western civilization afterward until the late modern era, and is still firmly ensconced, as I’ve said, in many people’s minds.
I don’t think so. I think that personal being, and the I at its center, the soul if you will, is a consequence, an incident, a feature, or a function of the living organism, with its brain and mind, and that it is nonsensical to imagine it existing otherwise, especially before the person’s life or after death. The soul is coterminous with personal being, and the life of the person. It probably begins at some point in prenatal development, is certainly present neonatally, and ends with death. (I don’t limit the application of this discussion to human beings, incidentally, because it is obvious that some other species exhibit many characteristics of personality, whether or not we refer to them as “persons,” which I occasionally do.)
There is something else to consider, though, and that is the fact that no one is “an island.” All persons exist in society, in communities, in ecosystems involving a multitude of other living beings. No person – no self, no I – can come into being and continue to live, except interdependently, as a reflection of, and in relation with other selves, other persons, other beings. We are biologically and socially constructed and conditioned.
Thus, in a very real sense you might say, with Emerson, that there is an “oversoul” analogous with the individual soul, correlative with all of life itself – the entire biosphere in which all souls are situate – which extends physically and temporally beyond the limits of individual persons’ lives, and includes all of them, along with all their ancestors and descendants. This is what has sometimes been called the “collective unconscious.” I think that’s what Jung meant, and I think it would not be mistaken to regard it also as a collective consciousness. This is still in the realm of ecology, social psychology, and anthropology.
That is not God, though. It is a feature of life on earth. You might say it is an aspect of God’s consciousness, if you want to get metaphysical. But you can’t really talk about God in these terms. God and the soul are different subjects, in my opinion. Metaphysics is philosophy. God-talk is theology. Soul-talk is in the realm of biology, social science and the humanities.
By Jim Weller
Let’s say that the soul is the I at the center of personal being. I might have said, at the center of the experience of personal being, but that would entail consciousness – experience is not usually thought of as non-conscious. But sometimes personal being is non-conscious, or not self-aware, as when dreamlessly sleeping, for instance. Experience goes with self-awareness; but persons in being are not always self-aware, as in various states of non-consciousness. Deep meditative states and comatose states are other instances of this, aren’t they? In all those instances, though, the I is still there, or at least it is potentially, isn’t it? If it isn’t, where did it go? Whence does it return when we return to self-aware, conscious experience? No, I think what I mean by the I, the soul, is there as long as the whole person is alive – “brain-dead” persons notwithstanding.
Many people, usually children and simple-minded folk, want to believe that the I exists independently from the living body. With my definition, this would mean that personal being is distinct and separable from the living organism. Thus, the soul existed, in some sense, before the organism came into being, will continue after its death, and is potentially apart from it while it lives. This is the idea of the immortal, incorporeal soul popularized by Plato and his followers, which became standard in many quarters of Western civilization afterward until the late modern era, and is still firmly ensconced, as I’ve said, in many people’s minds.
I don’t think so. I think that personal being, and the I at its center, the soul if you will, is a consequence, an incident, a feature, or a function of the living organism, with its brain and mind, and that it is nonsensical to imagine it existing otherwise, especially before the person’s life or after death. The soul is coterminous with personal being, and the life of the person. It probably begins at some point in prenatal development, is certainly present neonatally, and ends with death. (I don’t limit the application of this discussion to human beings, incidentally, because it is obvious that some other species exhibit many characteristics of personality, whether or not we refer to them as “persons,” which I occasionally do.)
There is something else to consider, though, and that is the fact that no one is “an island.” All persons exist in society, in communities, in ecosystems involving a multitude of other living beings. No person – no self, no I – can come into being and continue to live, except interdependently, as a reflection of, and in relation with other selves, other persons, other beings. We are biologically and socially constructed and conditioned.
Thus, in a very real sense you might say, with Emerson, that there is an “oversoul” analogous with the individual soul, correlative with all of life itself – the entire biosphere in which all souls are situate – which extends physically and temporally beyond the limits of individual persons’ lives, and includes all of them, along with all their ancestors and descendants. This is what has sometimes been called the “collective unconscious.” I think that’s what Jung meant, and I think it would not be mistaken to regard it also as a collective consciousness. This is still in the realm of ecology, social psychology, and anthropology.
That is not God, though. It is a feature of life on earth. You might say it is an aspect of God’s consciousness, if you want to get metaphysical. But you can’t really talk about God in these terms. God and the soul are different subjects, in my opinion. Metaphysics is philosophy. God-talk is theology. Soul-talk is in the realm of biology, social science and the humanities.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Will They Do It Again?
3 August 2004
By Jim Weller
Tuesday, September 11, 2001 was a day off work for me. I woke up and, as usual, turned on the local public radio news. When I had listened long enough that morning to get a full picture of what was happening, the really big question for me was this: How could this incredible, horrible attack have happened, entirely unbeknownst to the most powerful national security establishment in world history? It took me awhile to accept the cognitively dissonant but obvious answer: It didn’t. I think Bush knew. It was all part of the big White House plan, which would unfold in due course.
“Nah,” you think. “You must be crazy. The President of the United States would never sacrifice thousands of American lives in some gigantic political power game.” Is that what you think? Well, I don’t. The man-on-the-street Bush apologist says, “Well, we had to do something after 9/11, didn’t we?” Yes, of course. That’s the point. The Bushites wanted to be in that position. And the best their cadre of policy wonks could come up with to do about it was to knock over a couple of weak, impoverished Muslim countries?
Look what Bush has done since then. Well in excess of a thousand U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many more thousands have been maimed and injured. Increase those numbers at least thirty-fold if you want to estimate how many foreign people are dead and dismembered, and tortured – don’t forget that, as the result of the U.S. military adventures there. Dozens more of us and them fall every day. And it’s getting worse, not better. All for what? The people and the national institutions of Iraq and Afghanistan, such as they were – even the worst of them, were never a threat to the United States. Never. Not in 1991, not in 2001, not in 2003.
So what’s it all about? What’s the big aim of all this fighting and fear and loathing? November 2, 2004, that’s what. It’s about political power in America, Republican power. Bush wants to be the War President. National Super-Hero, Defender of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Who do you trust more to defend the security of the nation? George W. Bush or John Kerry? That’s it. “We are a nation in danger,” Bush said Sunday, as he raised the terror color code from yellow to orange. “This is a solemn reminder of the threat we continue to face.” Terror is the key factor in the Republican campaign strategy. Bush plans to consolidate political power by terrorizing the U.S. electorate.
I think the Bushites are going to do it again. Stage another terrorist attack in the United States. In the next ten weeks or so, before the election. Maybe it won't have to be such a big production this time. Maybe it'll be a foiled attempt. Maybe they'll catch a few Muslim extremists in the act and kill or capture them. Or maybe they'll only kill a few of us, say a few dozen victims instead of 3,000 as in the 9/11 attacks. Still, it'll scare the living shinola out of the swing voters; make them rally ‘round the flag in a big way. The more ground the Kerry/Edwards campaign gains, the more likely it is that Bush/Cheney will play their ace in the hole. They seem to be preparing the stage now, putting on the Homeland Security high alert. Jack-booted, black-jacketed thugs with assault rifles ready, guarding every financial district street corner.
Go ahead; tell me I’m a conspiracy nut. Yes, I do think the political progenitors of Bush and Cheney snuffed the Kennedys and Malcolm X and Rev. King in the 60’s. It’s the same power elite pulling the wires, now as then. These people will stop at nothing to stay in power –the 9/11 Commission and the Warren Commission reports notwithstanding. As the electoral tide turns against them, they're getting ready to roll out the Terror Factor, and the Big Lie - the sequel.
On the day this fall when we all wake up and say, “My God, how could this happen – again?” Bush will say, "We warned you." And I’ll say, “I told you so.”
By Jim Weller
Tuesday, September 11, 2001 was a day off work for me. I woke up and, as usual, turned on the local public radio news. When I had listened long enough that morning to get a full picture of what was happening, the really big question for me was this: How could this incredible, horrible attack have happened, entirely unbeknownst to the most powerful national security establishment in world history? It took me awhile to accept the cognitively dissonant but obvious answer: It didn’t. I think Bush knew. It was all part of the big White House plan, which would unfold in due course.
“Nah,” you think. “You must be crazy. The President of the United States would never sacrifice thousands of American lives in some gigantic political power game.” Is that what you think? Well, I don’t. The man-on-the-street Bush apologist says, “Well, we had to do something after 9/11, didn’t we?” Yes, of course. That’s the point. The Bushites wanted to be in that position. And the best their cadre of policy wonks could come up with to do about it was to knock over a couple of weak, impoverished Muslim countries?
Look what Bush has done since then. Well in excess of a thousand U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many more thousands have been maimed and injured. Increase those numbers at least thirty-fold if you want to estimate how many foreign people are dead and dismembered, and tortured – don’t forget that, as the result of the U.S. military adventures there. Dozens more of us and them fall every day. And it’s getting worse, not better. All for what? The people and the national institutions of Iraq and Afghanistan, such as they were – even the worst of them, were never a threat to the United States. Never. Not in 1991, not in 2001, not in 2003.
So what’s it all about? What’s the big aim of all this fighting and fear and loathing? November 2, 2004, that’s what. It’s about political power in America, Republican power. Bush wants to be the War President. National Super-Hero, Defender of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Who do you trust more to defend the security of the nation? George W. Bush or John Kerry? That’s it. “We are a nation in danger,” Bush said Sunday, as he raised the terror color code from yellow to orange. “This is a solemn reminder of the threat we continue to face.” Terror is the key factor in the Republican campaign strategy. Bush plans to consolidate political power by terrorizing the U.S. electorate.
I think the Bushites are going to do it again. Stage another terrorist attack in the United States. In the next ten weeks or so, before the election. Maybe it won't have to be such a big production this time. Maybe it'll be a foiled attempt. Maybe they'll catch a few Muslim extremists in the act and kill or capture them. Or maybe they'll only kill a few of us, say a few dozen victims instead of 3,000 as in the 9/11 attacks. Still, it'll scare the living shinola out of the swing voters; make them rally ‘round the flag in a big way. The more ground the Kerry/Edwards campaign gains, the more likely it is that Bush/Cheney will play their ace in the hole. They seem to be preparing the stage now, putting on the Homeland Security high alert. Jack-booted, black-jacketed thugs with assault rifles ready, guarding every financial district street corner.
Go ahead; tell me I’m a conspiracy nut. Yes, I do think the political progenitors of Bush and Cheney snuffed the Kennedys and Malcolm X and Rev. King in the 60’s. It’s the same power elite pulling the wires, now as then. These people will stop at nothing to stay in power –the 9/11 Commission and the Warren Commission reports notwithstanding. As the electoral tide turns against them, they're getting ready to roll out the Terror Factor, and the Big Lie - the sequel.
On the day this fall when we all wake up and say, “My God, how could this happen – again?” Bush will say, "We warned you." And I’ll say, “I told you so.”
Saturday, July 31, 2004
On The Ethical Significance of Liberation Theology for Unitarian Universalists
May 15, 2004
By Jim Weller
We liberal religionists really enjoy having our cake and eating it, too. (I trust I may be permitted this metaphoric generalization, if only for rhetorical purposes – I think it points to an elephantine general truth about us.) Unitarian Universalist congregations rightly regard themselves as the radical and revisionist avant garde of Protestant Congregationalism in North America. In lieu of any religious creed, we mutually covenant to affirm and promote a set of theological/ethical principles which are fully consistent with the liberation ethics articulated in the most progressive theologies of our time.
Most of us in the Unitarian Universalist religious movement (we avoid the term, “denomination” since any hierarchical authority is anathema to our traditions of congregational polity) would agree that the dominant social, economic, cultural, and political power structures of the United States and much of the world are fundamentally unjust and evil, and that these systems must be transformed radically in order to promote the ideals of peace, liberty and justice for all, which we so publicly affirm. We see as well that our times demand an inclusive humanistic revision of the socio-religious ethos of the dominant Judeo-Christian traditions, for the same reasons.
Yet it is uncomfortably clear to some of us that we are the oppressors the prophetic voices we recognize in our Covenant warned us against – or, at least, we are among the relatively privileged minority by and through whom their oppressive powers are derived. As welcoming of psycho-social and cultural diversity, as willing to incorporate into our fellowships all souls of every sort of identity or ethnicity as we profess to be, we are nonetheless still predominantly WASP religious groups. The center of gravity of our association of congregations remains where it was established some three centuries ago – on Beacon Hill in Boston.
We advocate publicly for social justice on behalf of the poor and oppressed, and our socially oriented institutions have made significant contributions toward those ends. Our religious identity and group self-esteem are based upon this ethic, and though we don’t use the Catholic term, “preferential option for the poor” in our congregational discourse, it is the same. This is the justice cake we celebrate. Yet exceedingly few of our members live in conditions of material poverty or socioeconomic oppression. We take full part in the social class once called the Bourgeoisie, now perhaps better described as a “meritocracy,” in appropriating for ourselves much more than our share of the common wealth. Thus we gladly eat the justice cake the poor lack.
We UUs, and typically, WASP church members in general, tend not to relate easily to the concerns of practical theology, per se. Such a one might very likely ask, “What has theology got to do with social and political reality?” Asked by UUs, the question reflects the fact that most have rejected and become alienated from the “straight and narrow” religious orthodoxies of the social milieux in which we came of age, and therefore, many are chary of “God-talk” of any sort. Asked by other more or less liberal Protestants, it reflects the belief that the realm of religious observance is to be strictly maintained within the community of the church and one’s separate, personal “spirituality.” In either case, it is not at all clear how the articles of one’s faith and the methods of theology can or should be integrated with one’s way of living in the secular sphere of economic, social, and political life, and especially in relation with people of different religious affiliations.
So-called liberation theologies began to be explicated, first among Latin American Catholics, and then others, at about the time of the merger of the Universalist and Unitarian congregational associations in the early 1960’s. As I have said, the social ethics of Christian liberation theologies and ours are completely coherent, and the fundamental religious witness to human equality in God’s image (though the Imago Dei metaphor is off-putting to some) is the same as well. Since so many of us have difficulty relating to the language of theology (probably simply because of having become unaccustomed to it), we might as well speak, instead, of “liberation ethics.” I think we can manage to recognize these as generically religious ethics, despite our aversion to conventional piety, since even we rationalists will assent that our common ethics are grounded in fundamental non-empirical beliefs about human morality.
Thus wrote the ancient Hebrew prophet Jeremiah of God’s “new covenant” in the socio-religious reform of his time: “I have put my truth in your innermost mind, and I have written it in your heart. No longer need you teach your fellows about God. For all of you know Me, from the most ignorant to the most learned, from the poorest to the most powerful.” Or, as the eighteenth-century Japanese poet Ryōkan, put it, “In all ten directions of the universe, there is only one truth. When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same.”
What then, explicitly, are these UU liberation ethics, and what is their significance for us? They are, precisely, the same as the terms of our Covenant. The ethics of our “creedless faith” were articulated by a series of consultative assemblies of our congregations’ ordained ministers and lay leaders – themselves deeply religious theologians – to translate into summary postmodern terms the substantive practical theological legacy of our religious forebears:
"The living tradition we share draws from . . . Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love; Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves."
The significance of this Covenantal ethos of ours for the ways and means by which we ought to live our private and public lives, as congregants, as congregations, and as an association of congregations – our religious praxis - will become clear with a review of the subject of contemporary Christian liberation theology.
The editors of Orbis Books’ “Theology and Liberation Series” introduce the topic saying, “Its proponents have insisted that liberation theology is not a subtopic of theology but really a new way of doing theology.” The approach of this theology involves the oft-mentioned “preferential option” for the poor and oppressed. The theological “starting point” of the liberation ethic is in the lived experience of the dispossessed, disadvantaged, and disenfranchised peoples of the earth. Contrasted with orthodox, liberal, and neo-orthodox Christian ethics, this is a radical way of “doing theology,” in that its central concern is identical with the root themes of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Gospels: the universal moral imperative of justice for the liberation of the oppressed.
The alternatives to beginning this way, in situ, with the religiosity of the contemporary human person-in-society, are more conventional approaches which mainly serve the interests of the dominant social order, oppressively attempting to impose the fixed interpretations of established ecclesial doctrine upon people’s living religious experience in their actual social situations. The responses of today’s liberation theologies involve not only a radical focus on social, political, psychological, and cultural liberation, but also a far-reaching theological revisionism, sometimes antagonistically disparaged as religious “syncretism.”
The radical aspect of this approach is well described by Gustavo Gutierrez, one of the first to articulate the concerns of a liberation theology, who writes, “The product of a profound historical movement, this aspiration to liberation is beginning to be accepted by the Christian community as a sign of the times, as a call to commitment and interpretation. The Biblical message, which presents the work of Christ as . . . liberation, provides the framework for this interpretation.” He explains that “the word ‘liberation’ allows for another approach leading to the Biblical sources which inspire the presence and action of man in history.”
James Cone expresses the revisionist imperative of a liberation theology, declaring, “Although I am a Christian theologian, I contend that a just social order must be accountable to not one but many religious communities. If we are going to create a society that is responsive to the humanity of all, then we must not view one religious faith as absolute. Ultimate reality, to which all things are subject, is too mysterious to be limited to one people’s view of God.” Peter Paris states the case even more pointedly, writing “The prophetic aim of liberation theologies is for ecclesiastical change both in thought and action.”
Cone describes the common standpoint of liberation theologies succinctly, stating that “our primary theological question and problem arise from the encounter of God in the experience and misery of the poor. The chief issue of our theologies is the problem of the non-person, the poor person.” He also expresses the “preferential option” of liberation theologians for empowerment for social and political action, viz: “To be a Christian is to love one’s neighbor and that means making a political commitment to make the world a habitable place . . . [and] not only to pray for justice but also to become actively involved in establishing it.” This is an option for activism made clear in the frequent use in liberation theologies of the term praxis. As Paris writes, “liberation theologies view themselves as practical throughout – praxis designating its origin, agency, form, and end . . . [and, further] liberation theologies argue that every theology is political in a similar way; none is transcendent of its sociopolitical context.”
Contemporary liberation theologies have arisen among Christian communities along with people’s liberation movements in the twentieth century, as responses to social, political, economic, and cultural oppression throughout the world. Wherever Western European colonialism and neo-colonial capitalism has extended its dominion, investing superior privilege and supreme power in a predominantly white male ruling class, it has gone hand in hand with co-opted ecclesiastical authority and “establishment” theology. In these places, liberation theologies have developed among people in churches claiming their ethnic and sexual identities, demanding justice in their struggles against oppression, and insisting upon recognition of their inherent worth and dignity on religious grounds.
Diverse though the subjects of liberation ethics are, chief among their commonalities, as Paris identifies it, “is their vigorous denial that theology can ever be culturally transcendent and epistemologically universal. Rather, liberationists argue that sociopolitical values inhere in the basic suppositions underlying all theologies. More specifically . . . the presuppositions underlying the Western theological tradition reveal [its] solidarity with the . . . societal values of their ruling elites . . . which by definition [have] always stood in opposition to the struggles of oppressed peoples for liberation.” Thus, we witness the motivation for radical, revisionist theologies of liberation embodying the values of oppressed humanity.
The various forms of liberation theology which have been developed reflect the identities of the distinct classes of humanity of whom they are representative. Thus, there are liberation theologies enunciated on behalf of Latin American people, Black American people, Black African people, and Asian people. In addition, women’s liberation movements have given rise to feminist critiques in North America and elsewhere, identified among Latina women as "Mujerista" theology, among Black women as “Womanist” theology, and among Asian women as Asian Women’s theology. Similarly, people of GLBT identities and orientations have contributed from their own experience of injustice, as people also marginalized and discriminated against by established social and ecclesial tradition.
Thus, there are the “Womanist” perspective of Professor Katie Cannon and the "Mujerista" perspective of Professor Ada Maria Isazi-Diaz. Both advocate a revision of principles for the practice of Christian moral theology, or religious ethics, so as to integrate the marginalized feminist consciousness with the androcentric approaches of the first enunciations of liberation theology.
Cannon adopts the definitions of the term “Womanist” introduced in 1983 by the acclaimed novelist Alice Walker. Isazi-Diaz and her Hispanic feminist colleagues adopted the cognate term "Mujerista" for their theological perspectives in 1988. Both demand recognition of the fully equal worth and dignity of women’s moral agency, among their different, but equally oppressed, ethnic groups, amidst the dominant WASP society of the United States. The thrust of their work is to express and honor the significant differences that their differences make, for the goal of empowerment and redemption of their afflicted, abused, aggrieved communities, for the triply oppressed women of those communities, and for their just reconciliation with the larger society.
Isazi-Diaz’ approach elucidates the dialectic of traditional Catholic moral reasoning with the “lived-experience” of individual Hispanic women of distinct social and ethnic backgrounds in the United States, through conversational interviews with them concerning their struggles to effectuate their moral agency despite variously oppressive social, cultural, political, and economic circumstances. She explores how each of these women’s ways of living cohere in the hopeful and faithful future orientation she describes as their "Projecto Historico" – the movement toward redemption for the people of the "Mestizaje diaspora."
Cannon engages the “real-lived” historical experience of African-American women from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth centuries in segregated and slave communities, as represented in the literature of Black women authors. The context for her ethical exploration of women’s moral agency is backward-looking in order to reconcile our understanding of who we are with how we have been, as contrasted with Isazi-Diaz’ contemporary sociological context, examining how we will be in society, given the way we are. Both ultimately orient themselves toward the project of becoming the more just and blessed society we can be.
Both scholars uphold and celebrate a communitarian ethic, which is a consequence of the special integrative role of women as mothers having to cope with the vital needs of children and families in distressed situations. The two contrast the ways in which the popular religiosities of marginalized Black women and Hispanic women, in their respective communities, have assimilatated and accommodated the dominant ecclesiologies of the Protestant Evangelical and Roman Catholic social milieux in which they are situated.
In contrasting particularities, but similarly in spirit, Cannon and Isazi-Diaz demonstrate that the religious liberation ethic, for these women, is a moral struggle for survival as fully-human persons against inimical social structures. Both confront oppressive and enervating forces with the courage of faith, in the theological establishments where they are situated professionally, as well as in the common social predicaments of the sisterhoods with whom they identify ethnically.
Our UU social ethics affirm that justice is to be found in equitable sharing of life’s blessings. We say, “From each according to one’s means, to each according to one’s need,” in countervailing against the dominant ethos which says, “More for me is always better; enough is never enough.” Contrary to the ideal of individualistic self-interest though it is, it is nonetheless true that at any given stage, political economy is a zero-sum game. At the end of the day, “them what has gets and them what ain’t don’t” – and we say that just ain’t right. For those of us nearer the top of the unjust socio-economic pyramid than most, righteousness calls us not only to lend those below a hand up, but to roll down the stones on which we stand, bringing down those on top and leveling out the structure for all.
We see that it is unjust for the few to enjoy superabundance, having much more than is needed by the many who have much too little. But what are we to do, give away our hard-won surplus? Let others take the gains that are ours? As a matter of fact, yes. As M.K. Gandhi urged us, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” There are many in need, who are prevented from having by those who do have, and don’t need it. Give away what you have and don’t need; and don’t take any more than you need. This is what it means to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Since we, the privileged, recognize the injustice of the social, political, and economic systems by which the few benefit excessively at the expense of the many, and we ourselves are benefited more than most, it is up to us to use our relative empowerment not only to modify these systems, to help liberate the oppressed, and to oppose the excesses of the willfully unjust among us, but to liberate ourselves from the spiritual oppression of unjust enrichment by renouncing it.
It is written that, when Jesus was teaching, a righteous and pious man, who yet despaired of redeeming grace, came to him and asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life? I have observed the law and honored the conventions of church and society all my life, but I fear that I am still not saved.” Jesus loved him in his anxiety, and said, “You know not what you lack. Go, sell all that you own; give the proceeds of it to the poor, and follow me.” The man was aggrieved by this, and went away despairing more than ever, for his estate was large. “How difficult it is,” Jesus said, “for the wealthy ones to enter the kingdom of God; it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”
The rich man in this story was a good man, but he was oppressed by his privilege, and remained spiritually unliberated. He missed the point of Jesus’ hyperbole, which was not that he needed to be abjectly impoverished to enter the kingdom of God, but only to become “poor in spirit,” for eternal life is here and now, on earth as it is in heaven, within us, not in worldly riches. We are called to enter into a state of solidarity with the poor, in communion with the oppressed, to be blessed in the spirit of the meek, not in the power and glory of the mighty.
By Jim Weller
We liberal religionists really enjoy having our cake and eating it, too. (I trust I may be permitted this metaphoric generalization, if only for rhetorical purposes – I think it points to an elephantine general truth about us.) Unitarian Universalist congregations rightly regard themselves as the radical and revisionist avant garde of Protestant Congregationalism in North America. In lieu of any religious creed, we mutually covenant to affirm and promote a set of theological/ethical principles which are fully consistent with the liberation ethics articulated in the most progressive theologies of our time.
Most of us in the Unitarian Universalist religious movement (we avoid the term, “denomination” since any hierarchical authority is anathema to our traditions of congregational polity) would agree that the dominant social, economic, cultural, and political power structures of the United States and much of the world are fundamentally unjust and evil, and that these systems must be transformed radically in order to promote the ideals of peace, liberty and justice for all, which we so publicly affirm. We see as well that our times demand an inclusive humanistic revision of the socio-religious ethos of the dominant Judeo-Christian traditions, for the same reasons.
Yet it is uncomfortably clear to some of us that we are the oppressors the prophetic voices we recognize in our Covenant warned us against – or, at least, we are among the relatively privileged minority by and through whom their oppressive powers are derived. As welcoming of psycho-social and cultural diversity, as willing to incorporate into our fellowships all souls of every sort of identity or ethnicity as we profess to be, we are nonetheless still predominantly WASP religious groups. The center of gravity of our association of congregations remains where it was established some three centuries ago – on Beacon Hill in Boston.
We advocate publicly for social justice on behalf of the poor and oppressed, and our socially oriented institutions have made significant contributions toward those ends. Our religious identity and group self-esteem are based upon this ethic, and though we don’t use the Catholic term, “preferential option for the poor” in our congregational discourse, it is the same. This is the justice cake we celebrate. Yet exceedingly few of our members live in conditions of material poverty or socioeconomic oppression. We take full part in the social class once called the Bourgeoisie, now perhaps better described as a “meritocracy,” in appropriating for ourselves much more than our share of the common wealth. Thus we gladly eat the justice cake the poor lack.
We UUs, and typically, WASP church members in general, tend not to relate easily to the concerns of practical theology, per se. Such a one might very likely ask, “What has theology got to do with social and political reality?” Asked by UUs, the question reflects the fact that most have rejected and become alienated from the “straight and narrow” religious orthodoxies of the social milieux in which we came of age, and therefore, many are chary of “God-talk” of any sort. Asked by other more or less liberal Protestants, it reflects the belief that the realm of religious observance is to be strictly maintained within the community of the church and one’s separate, personal “spirituality.” In either case, it is not at all clear how the articles of one’s faith and the methods of theology can or should be integrated with one’s way of living in the secular sphere of economic, social, and political life, and especially in relation with people of different religious affiliations.
So-called liberation theologies began to be explicated, first among Latin American Catholics, and then others, at about the time of the merger of the Universalist and Unitarian congregational associations in the early 1960’s. As I have said, the social ethics of Christian liberation theologies and ours are completely coherent, and the fundamental religious witness to human equality in God’s image (though the Imago Dei metaphor is off-putting to some) is the same as well. Since so many of us have difficulty relating to the language of theology (probably simply because of having become unaccustomed to it), we might as well speak, instead, of “liberation ethics.” I think we can manage to recognize these as generically religious ethics, despite our aversion to conventional piety, since even we rationalists will assent that our common ethics are grounded in fundamental non-empirical beliefs about human morality.
Thus wrote the ancient Hebrew prophet Jeremiah of God’s “new covenant” in the socio-religious reform of his time: “I have put my truth in your innermost mind, and I have written it in your heart. No longer need you teach your fellows about God. For all of you know Me, from the most ignorant to the most learned, from the poorest to the most powerful.” Or, as the eighteenth-century Japanese poet Ryōkan, put it, “In all ten directions of the universe, there is only one truth. When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same.”
What then, explicitly, are these UU liberation ethics, and what is their significance for us? They are, precisely, the same as the terms of our Covenant. The ethics of our “creedless faith” were articulated by a series of consultative assemblies of our congregations’ ordained ministers and lay leaders – themselves deeply religious theologians – to translate into summary postmodern terms the substantive practical theological legacy of our religious forebears:
"The living tradition we share draws from . . . Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love; Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves."
The significance of this Covenantal ethos of ours for the ways and means by which we ought to live our private and public lives, as congregants, as congregations, and as an association of congregations – our religious praxis - will become clear with a review of the subject of contemporary Christian liberation theology.
The editors of Orbis Books’ “Theology and Liberation Series” introduce the topic saying, “Its proponents have insisted that liberation theology is not a subtopic of theology but really a new way of doing theology.” The approach of this theology involves the oft-mentioned “preferential option” for the poor and oppressed. The theological “starting point” of the liberation ethic is in the lived experience of the dispossessed, disadvantaged, and disenfranchised peoples of the earth. Contrasted with orthodox, liberal, and neo-orthodox Christian ethics, this is a radical way of “doing theology,” in that its central concern is identical with the root themes of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Gospels: the universal moral imperative of justice for the liberation of the oppressed.
The alternatives to beginning this way, in situ, with the religiosity of the contemporary human person-in-society, are more conventional approaches which mainly serve the interests of the dominant social order, oppressively attempting to impose the fixed interpretations of established ecclesial doctrine upon people’s living religious experience in their actual social situations. The responses of today’s liberation theologies involve not only a radical focus on social, political, psychological, and cultural liberation, but also a far-reaching theological revisionism, sometimes antagonistically disparaged as religious “syncretism.”
The radical aspect of this approach is well described by Gustavo Gutierrez, one of the first to articulate the concerns of a liberation theology, who writes, “The product of a profound historical movement, this aspiration to liberation is beginning to be accepted by the Christian community as a sign of the times, as a call to commitment and interpretation. The Biblical message, which presents the work of Christ as . . . liberation, provides the framework for this interpretation.” He explains that “the word ‘liberation’ allows for another approach leading to the Biblical sources which inspire the presence and action of man in history.”
James Cone expresses the revisionist imperative of a liberation theology, declaring, “Although I am a Christian theologian, I contend that a just social order must be accountable to not one but many religious communities. If we are going to create a society that is responsive to the humanity of all, then we must not view one religious faith as absolute. Ultimate reality, to which all things are subject, is too mysterious to be limited to one people’s view of God.” Peter Paris states the case even more pointedly, writing “The prophetic aim of liberation theologies is for ecclesiastical change both in thought and action.”
Cone describes the common standpoint of liberation theologies succinctly, stating that “our primary theological question and problem arise from the encounter of God in the experience and misery of the poor. The chief issue of our theologies is the problem of the non-person, the poor person.” He also expresses the “preferential option” of liberation theologians for empowerment for social and political action, viz: “To be a Christian is to love one’s neighbor and that means making a political commitment to make the world a habitable place . . . [and] not only to pray for justice but also to become actively involved in establishing it.” This is an option for activism made clear in the frequent use in liberation theologies of the term praxis. As Paris writes, “liberation theologies view themselves as practical throughout – praxis designating its origin, agency, form, and end . . . [and, further] liberation theologies argue that every theology is political in a similar way; none is transcendent of its sociopolitical context.”
Contemporary liberation theologies have arisen among Christian communities along with people’s liberation movements in the twentieth century, as responses to social, political, economic, and cultural oppression throughout the world. Wherever Western European colonialism and neo-colonial capitalism has extended its dominion, investing superior privilege and supreme power in a predominantly white male ruling class, it has gone hand in hand with co-opted ecclesiastical authority and “establishment” theology. In these places, liberation theologies have developed among people in churches claiming their ethnic and sexual identities, demanding justice in their struggles against oppression, and insisting upon recognition of their inherent worth and dignity on religious grounds.
Diverse though the subjects of liberation ethics are, chief among their commonalities, as Paris identifies it, “is their vigorous denial that theology can ever be culturally transcendent and epistemologically universal. Rather, liberationists argue that sociopolitical values inhere in the basic suppositions underlying all theologies. More specifically . . . the presuppositions underlying the Western theological tradition reveal [its] solidarity with the . . . societal values of their ruling elites . . . which by definition [have] always stood in opposition to the struggles of oppressed peoples for liberation.” Thus, we witness the motivation for radical, revisionist theologies of liberation embodying the values of oppressed humanity.
The various forms of liberation theology which have been developed reflect the identities of the distinct classes of humanity of whom they are representative. Thus, there are liberation theologies enunciated on behalf of Latin American people, Black American people, Black African people, and Asian people. In addition, women’s liberation movements have given rise to feminist critiques in North America and elsewhere, identified among Latina women as "Mujerista" theology, among Black women as “Womanist” theology, and among Asian women as Asian Women’s theology. Similarly, people of GLBT identities and orientations have contributed from their own experience of injustice, as people also marginalized and discriminated against by established social and ecclesial tradition.
Thus, there are the “Womanist” perspective of Professor Katie Cannon and the "Mujerista" perspective of Professor Ada Maria Isazi-Diaz. Both advocate a revision of principles for the practice of Christian moral theology, or religious ethics, so as to integrate the marginalized feminist consciousness with the androcentric approaches of the first enunciations of liberation theology.
Cannon adopts the definitions of the term “Womanist” introduced in 1983 by the acclaimed novelist Alice Walker. Isazi-Diaz and her Hispanic feminist colleagues adopted the cognate term "Mujerista" for their theological perspectives in 1988. Both demand recognition of the fully equal worth and dignity of women’s moral agency, among their different, but equally oppressed, ethnic groups, amidst the dominant WASP society of the United States. The thrust of their work is to express and honor the significant differences that their differences make, for the goal of empowerment and redemption of their afflicted, abused, aggrieved communities, for the triply oppressed women of those communities, and for their just reconciliation with the larger society.
Isazi-Diaz’ approach elucidates the dialectic of traditional Catholic moral reasoning with the “lived-experience” of individual Hispanic women of distinct social and ethnic backgrounds in the United States, through conversational interviews with them concerning their struggles to effectuate their moral agency despite variously oppressive social, cultural, political, and economic circumstances. She explores how each of these women’s ways of living cohere in the hopeful and faithful future orientation she describes as their "Projecto Historico" – the movement toward redemption for the people of the "Mestizaje diaspora."
Cannon engages the “real-lived” historical experience of African-American women from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth centuries in segregated and slave communities, as represented in the literature of Black women authors. The context for her ethical exploration of women’s moral agency is backward-looking in order to reconcile our understanding of who we are with how we have been, as contrasted with Isazi-Diaz’ contemporary sociological context, examining how we will be in society, given the way we are. Both ultimately orient themselves toward the project of becoming the more just and blessed society we can be.
Both scholars uphold and celebrate a communitarian ethic, which is a consequence of the special integrative role of women as mothers having to cope with the vital needs of children and families in distressed situations. The two contrast the ways in which the popular religiosities of marginalized Black women and Hispanic women, in their respective communities, have assimilatated and accommodated the dominant ecclesiologies of the Protestant Evangelical and Roman Catholic social milieux in which they are situated.
In contrasting particularities, but similarly in spirit, Cannon and Isazi-Diaz demonstrate that the religious liberation ethic, for these women, is a moral struggle for survival as fully-human persons against inimical social structures. Both confront oppressive and enervating forces with the courage of faith, in the theological establishments where they are situated professionally, as well as in the common social predicaments of the sisterhoods with whom they identify ethnically.
Our UU social ethics affirm that justice is to be found in equitable sharing of life’s blessings. We say, “From each according to one’s means, to each according to one’s need,” in countervailing against the dominant ethos which says, “More for me is always better; enough is never enough.” Contrary to the ideal of individualistic self-interest though it is, it is nonetheless true that at any given stage, political economy is a zero-sum game. At the end of the day, “them what has gets and them what ain’t don’t” – and we say that just ain’t right. For those of us nearer the top of the unjust socio-economic pyramid than most, righteousness calls us not only to lend those below a hand up, but to roll down the stones on which we stand, bringing down those on top and leveling out the structure for all.
We see that it is unjust for the few to enjoy superabundance, having much more than is needed by the many who have much too little. But what are we to do, give away our hard-won surplus? Let others take the gains that are ours? As a matter of fact, yes. As M.K. Gandhi urged us, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” There are many in need, who are prevented from having by those who do have, and don’t need it. Give away what you have and don’t need; and don’t take any more than you need. This is what it means to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Since we, the privileged, recognize the injustice of the social, political, and economic systems by which the few benefit excessively at the expense of the many, and we ourselves are benefited more than most, it is up to us to use our relative empowerment not only to modify these systems, to help liberate the oppressed, and to oppose the excesses of the willfully unjust among us, but to liberate ourselves from the spiritual oppression of unjust enrichment by renouncing it.
It is written that, when Jesus was teaching, a righteous and pious man, who yet despaired of redeeming grace, came to him and asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life? I have observed the law and honored the conventions of church and society all my life, but I fear that I am still not saved.” Jesus loved him in his anxiety, and said, “You know not what you lack. Go, sell all that you own; give the proceeds of it to the poor, and follow me.” The man was aggrieved by this, and went away despairing more than ever, for his estate was large. “How difficult it is,” Jesus said, “for the wealthy ones to enter the kingdom of God; it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”
The rich man in this story was a good man, but he was oppressed by his privilege, and remained spiritually unliberated. He missed the point of Jesus’ hyperbole, which was not that he needed to be abjectly impoverished to enter the kingdom of God, but only to become “poor in spirit,” for eternal life is here and now, on earth as it is in heaven, within us, not in worldly riches. We are called to enter into a state of solidarity with the poor, in communion with the oppressed, to be blessed in the spirit of the meek, not in the power and glory of the mighty.
Being Ultimately Concerned With Being Itself: Paul Tillich's Theology of Culture
December 6, 2003
By Jim Weller
More than once, I have heard a friend say, “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.” Paul Tillich’s work pointed out the self-contradiction of such a statement, and showed how the contradiction itself points toward the universality of the “religious question” for humankind. In a 1958 article for the popular magazine The Saturday Evening Post, Tillich wrote:
"Is there an answer? There is always an answer, but the answer may not be available to us. We may be too deeply steeped in the predicament out of which the question arises to be able to answer it. To acknowledge this is certainly a better way toward a real answer than to bar the way to it by deceptive answers. And it may be that in this attitude the real answer (within available limits) is given."
One answer is in an apothegm produced early in Tillich’s theological career, which may well be located near the center of all his theology. According to his biographer and confidante Wilhelm Pauck – himself a leading figure in twentieth-century theology – in Paul Tillich’s “first public presentation of his own creative thought,” a 1919 lecture at the University of Berlin, he proposed, “Religion is the substance of culture, and culture is the form of religion.”
Using his form-and-substance dialectic, I think Tillich would say that my friend, whose artwork and her reverent way of living is ‘in-formed’ by her deep spirituality, is engaged in genuine religious practice. Her formative concern with that which is essential to her being, he would call a religious concern. “Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt,” he wrote. This is the posture of Tillich’s “religious question.”
The son of a distinguished Lutheran pastor, Paul Tillich was educated in the formal orthodoxy of 19th century German Protestantism, attained the degree of Licentiate of Theology at the University of Halle as well as PhD at the University of Breslau, and was ordained a minister of the Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union in Berlin in 1912. He eventually became a professor of philosophical theology, though – not a churchman per se.
Paul Tillich was indeed a dialectician. His life’s work involved using words and ideas as tools, and as structural elements, in the project of creating a system of thought and imagination with which to approach a more useful apprehension of religious truth. His biographers Wilhelm and Marion Pauck wrote of him, “he preferred to be an architect, using ideas as a builder uses bricks to make a new edifice. It was a bold ambition, and it came to him naturally to think in a systematic way.” The Paucks recount that Tillich was thoroughly educated in classical languages, and he employed this learning liberally; “he . . . frequently built his lectures and sermons around the Latin or Greek etymology of a word or phrase.” By this account as well, on the occasion of Tillich’s confirmation, his “father presented him with a motto for his future life, and he felt, he says, that these words were just what he was looking for. They were, ‘The truth will make you free.’ (John 8:32)” He sought liberation from the bondage of error, sin, and despair not only for the salvation of his own soul, but for the benefit of humanity, by the orientation of his great gift of intellect, and application of the methods of philosophy, toward creative answers to the religious question.
Throughout his work, Tillich embraced existential doubt as an essential element of the human condition. During his education at Halle, his biography explains, “Tillich gained the insight that man is justified by grace through faith, not only as a sinner but even as a doubter. The discovery of this idea brought him great relief.” Additionally, despite “his father’s effort to keep him from anything but orthodox Christianity, he found himself attracted to the liberal theologians . . . who were influenced by historical criticism.”
In 1911, in Berlin, as he labored to complete his theological dissertation, “he began to realize that many Christians did not understand the language in which he had been taught to communicate the gospel.” For most of his nonclerical contemporaries, the orthodox religious idiom was of little or no avail, and thus “he confronted the harsh fact which later inspired him to use non-traditional language to communicate the meaning of biblical revelation.” This realization “determined his way of being a theologian: early in his process of development he cast his lot with the apologetic theologians, namely those who attempt to interpret the Christian faith by means of reasonable explanation, [that is, in Tillich’s words], with ‘a common criterion in view.’”
Tillich’s experience of the First World War, in front-line service as a Prussian Army chaplain, was harrowing and deconstructive. Like countless others, the Paucks say, “he grappled with the awareness that the concept of God that had crumbled on the battlefield – namely, of a God who would make everything turn out for the best – needed to be replaced. In early December [1917] he wrote, ‘I have long since come to the paradox of faith without God, by thinking through the idea of justification by faith to its logical conclusion.’” Tillich, and the remnants of European culture, emerged from the war and its aftermath shattered. His biographers summarized the effects of his experience of this era on his later thought thus:
Caught between the conservative Christian traditions of the nineteenth century and the bold radical creativity marking the new style of the twentieth, he could not side with either one or the other. He sought to combine the two. Freud’s psychoanalysis, Cezanne’s Expressionist Impressionism, Marx’s socialism, all became material for his Christian apologetic theology. He said neither yes nor no; he said both. The split did indeed remain, despite his great efforts to heal or hide it – much later he called it “the boundary.” His great gift for synthesis, analogous to Proustian recollection, gradually produced a written work marked by bright clarity on one hand and dark obfuscation on the other. He made endless distinctions, relied on his excellent grasp of the history of philosophy and Christian doctrine, and finally caught all of his ideas in the net of philosophical presuppositions worked out during his lifetime.
In this manner, Tillich approached his “theology of culture.” The startling note he sounded was that religion was not, after all, a special sphere and function in the social and cultural lives of humankind, but “the dimension of depth,” as he put it, in all of life’s functions. In an essay entitled, “Aspects of a Religious Analysis of Culture,” collected with fourteen other selections from his oeuvre in his 1959 book, Theology of Culture, Tillich formulated several of his key terms with regard to religion in this way:
"If we abstract the concept of religion from the great commandment, we can say that religion is being ultimately concerned about that which is and should be our ultimate concern. This means that faith is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, and God is the name for the content of the concern. Such a concept of religion has little in common with the description of religion as the belief in the existence of a highest being called God, and the theoretical and practical consequences of such a belief. Instead, we are pointing to an existential, not a theoretical, understanding of religion."
Tillich’s starting point, which he identified with Augustine’s, is that the basis – what he calls the prius – of all philosophy of religion, is the Deus est esse. God is being, a unity of essence and existence. He regarded this “content” of “ultimate concern” as “Being itself,” as primum esse, the “Unconditioned.” Of this “ontological principle” of religion, he wrote that “Man is immediately aware of something unconditional which is the prius of the separation and interaction of subject and object [being and becoming; essence and existence; knower and known], theoretically as well as practically.” Thus, “the certainty of God is identical with the certainty of Being itself. God is the presupposition of the question of God.” Moreover, “the Unconditioned cannot be conditioned by a difference between its essence and its existence. In all finite beings, on the other hand, this difference is present; in them existence as something separated from essence is the mark of finitude.”
Tillich redefined religion “in its innermost nature” as “the state of being concerned about one’s own being and being universally” – that is, ultimately concerned, about Being itself and one’s own existential participation in it. It is not to be missed that he correlated this definition of religion with the great commandment as enunciated by Jesus: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Nor does Tillich’s correlation ignore the second commandment that is inseparable from it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
The human experience of being is irreducibly relational. Human culture is the expression of the collective experience of being, in relationship with other human beings and with Being itself, i.e., God – the content, rightly considered, of humankind’s ultimate concern. Thus, there are many people, Tillich observed, like my ‘spiritual’ friend, “who are ultimately concerned in this way who feel far removed, however, from religion in the narrower sense, and therefore from every historical religion. They are religious while rejecting the religions.”
Before proceeding further with a discussion of Tillich’s “theology of culture,” it will be useful to digress more regarding his idiosyncratic terms. As it was in the understanding of the long line of theologians and philosophers of theology before him (from Augustine to Anselm, Aquinas, and Nicholas of Cusa, among others), for Tillich, on the “basis of the ontological approach,” God was ultimate reality. Yet, in the “predicament out of which the [religious] question arises” in our time, the meaning of religion as ultimate concern with the “dimension of depth” in human existence has been lost. In consequence, Tillich wrote, “God becomes a being among others whose existence or nonexistence is a matter of inquiry [of opinionated belief or non-belief]. Nothing, perhaps, is more symptomatic of the loss . . . than the permanent discussion about the existence or nonexistence of God – a discussion in which both sides are equally wrong, because the discussion itself is wrong and possible only after the loss of the dimension of depth.” Thus, with regard to the “content” of this ultimate concern, he wrote,
"God is the answer to the question implied in man’s finitude; [God] is the name for that which concerns man ultimately. This does not mean that first there is a being called God and then the demand that man should be ultimately concerned about him. Ultimate concern must transcend every preliminary finite and concrete concern. It must transcend the whole realm of finitude in order to be the answer to the question implied in finitude. This is the inescapable inner tension in the idea of God. The conflict between the concreteness and the ultimacy of the religious concern is actual wherever God is experienced and this experience is expressed, from primitive prayer to the most elaborate theological system."
Ultimate concern is the human capacity that seeks answers for the religious question. The religious question arises out of the existential human condition, our "predicament." It seeks to reconcile humankind’s transcendent spiritual essence, ‘what I am,’ with the immanent condition of finite existence, ‘that I am.’ Tillich wrote, “The relation between man’s essential nature and his existential predicament is the first and basic question that theology has asked.”
I think Tillich would say that this existential condition and ultimate concern are common in the experience of all peoples, in all times and in all cultural milieux. Tillich’s thesis is that our ultimate concern, our religious question and the answers implied, are expressed in both sacred and secular cultural forms. Religion is not exclusively ecclesial; the spirituality of secular cultural forms has the same substance. Thus, “a . . . consequence of the existential concept of religion is the disappearance of the gap between the sacred and the secular realm. If religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, this state cannot be restricted to a special realm.”
Are all forms of human culture religious in substance? If in some sense they are, are they all equally so? I think Tillich would say that all cultural expressions, sacred and profane, are ultimately informed and arise out of the existential predicament of the human soul, or consciousness, whether or not this is recognized by the persons expressing it. However, there are positive forms, which affirm the great commandment and are oriented toward reconciliation with Being itself; and there are negative forms that deny this or point toward our alienation from it. Moreover, there are conditional, proximate concerns, which pervert the religious question, claiming ultimacy but serving rather to further alienate us from our essential being, and from the Unconditional or Being itself.
In contemporary society, the perversions of the religious question are the multifarious forms of mass culture, the forms of economic and political exploitation of post-industrial society that have largely displaced the forms once referred to as popular culture in earlier industrial society, and as folk culture in pre-industrial society. Mass culture is mistakenly called ‘popular’ but it is not that at all – not in the sense of being created out of the communal life of the populace. Instead, it is superimposed upon the lives and collective consciousness of the people through the ubiquity of mass media, for purposes of dominion by the ruling class, while pretending to reflect social reality.
For Tillich, the forms of cultural expression that genuinely reflect the religious substance are those that can be included in the broadly defined category of creative art. It is the purpose and meaning of the expression, not just its form and medium, by which the distinction is made. Thus, the commoditized artifacts of what I have described as mass culture, the primary purposes and meanings of which are instrumental and commercial, are beyond the pale of Tillich’s theological analysis of culture. His dialectic applies to them only by way of what he calls the “protest . . . against . . . the predominant movement [which] is the spirit of industrial society.”
Tillich wrote that the forms of culture that are to be seen as genuinely religious in substance, that is, the “cultural forms in which religion actualizes itself,” both affirmatively and negatively, are “the great works of the visual arts, of music, of poetry, of literature, or architecture, of dance, of philosophy, [and] including therapeutic psychology.” Tillich’s examples of revelatory cultural forms all seem to be within the realm of Kultur, the early 20th century German conception of ‘high’ culture. However, I do not think that he meant thereby to exclude from consideration less exalted, but genuinely artistic or aesthetic forms of expression within the realm of ‘folk’ or ‘popular’ culture, not purposely created as instruments of commercial or political exploitation.
To the contrary, Kelton Cobb, a research scholar at the University of Tübingen, criticizes Tillich’s method on just that ground, writing that, “He avoids popular culture to such an extent that it is questionable whether he carries through on his promise, which is to look into culture as ‘the totality of human self-interpretation.’ While Tillich, in principle, directs us to all cultural artifacts . . . in practice he privileges the self-interpretation of the cultural elite – with a special status reserved for the avant-garde.”
I do not disagree with Cobb’s introductory statement that “It is time to reexamine it [Tillich’s theology of culture] and reflect on its viability.” I do note, however, that Cobb’s beginning proposition about the totalistic scope of Tillich’s view of culture is set up in the words of another reviewer, John P. Clayton, in 1980 – and not in Tillich’s own words; it does not seem to me, as I’ve indicated, that this is what Tillich meant.
Cobb’s conclusion is this:
"The material in culture that is worthy of attention in theology of culture should not be limited to that produced by or of interest to the cultural elite. The range of sources for theology of culture should be opened up to include any vortex of valuation that functions to attract and repel and otherwise activate or alter the way people value reality. A case could be made that popular culture discloses more of this than high culture. The images and stories that make the evening news or that claim sustained attention from movie makers, and the further use to which they are put by their audiences, for instance, represent potent cultural texts which promise fruitful interpretation to a theologian of culture.”
I think Cobb has missed Tillich’s point, which is that a theological analysis of culture in his terms can show clearly the perversion or misdirection of mass culture’s ‘ultimate concern’ that has “helped to transfer the powerful expressions of the dimension of depth into objects or happenings on the horizontal plane.” Tillich explained, “man, in contrast to other living beings, has spiritual concerns – cognitive, aesthetic, social, political. Some of them are urgent, often extremely urgent, and each of them as well as the vital concerns can claim ultimacy for a human life or the life of a social group." An example, he wrote, “is the ultimate concern with ‘success’ and with social standing and economic power. It is the god of many people in the highly competitive Western culture and it demands what every ultimate concern must do: it demands unconditional surrender to its laws even if the price is the sacrifice of genuine human relations, personal conviction and creative eros.”
I think Tillich’s work is a call to theology for continued and strengthened protest against such forms of idolatry that divert people’s attention from humankind’s real ultimate concern and distort it. His is a call to discern in genuinely creative cultural expressions the universal religious question: "What is the meaning of my existence? Why am I given the gift of apprehension of the Infinite, of the Unconditioned; yet I must die, and while I live, I must suffer?" It is a question that cannot answer itself, and that is its revelatory power. The answer to the question of finitude is beyond finitude. Quoting Psalm 90, Tillich wrote, “‘Relent, O Thou Eternal!’ – this prayer is the prayer of mankind through all eons, and the hidden prayer in the depths of every human soul.”
By Jim Weller
More than once, I have heard a friend say, “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.” Paul Tillich’s work pointed out the self-contradiction of such a statement, and showed how the contradiction itself points toward the universality of the “religious question” for humankind. In a 1958 article for the popular magazine The Saturday Evening Post, Tillich wrote:
"Is there an answer? There is always an answer, but the answer may not be available to us. We may be too deeply steeped in the predicament out of which the question arises to be able to answer it. To acknowledge this is certainly a better way toward a real answer than to bar the way to it by deceptive answers. And it may be that in this attitude the real answer (within available limits) is given."
One answer is in an apothegm produced early in Tillich’s theological career, which may well be located near the center of all his theology. According to his biographer and confidante Wilhelm Pauck – himself a leading figure in twentieth-century theology – in Paul Tillich’s “first public presentation of his own creative thought,” a 1919 lecture at the University of Berlin, he proposed, “Religion is the substance of culture, and culture is the form of religion.”
Using his form-and-substance dialectic, I think Tillich would say that my friend, whose artwork and her reverent way of living is ‘in-formed’ by her deep spirituality, is engaged in genuine religious practice. Her formative concern with that which is essential to her being, he would call a religious concern. “Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt,” he wrote. This is the posture of Tillich’s “religious question.”
The son of a distinguished Lutheran pastor, Paul Tillich was educated in the formal orthodoxy of 19th century German Protestantism, attained the degree of Licentiate of Theology at the University of Halle as well as PhD at the University of Breslau, and was ordained a minister of the Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union in Berlin in 1912. He eventually became a professor of philosophical theology, though – not a churchman per se.
Paul Tillich was indeed a dialectician. His life’s work involved using words and ideas as tools, and as structural elements, in the project of creating a system of thought and imagination with which to approach a more useful apprehension of religious truth. His biographers Wilhelm and Marion Pauck wrote of him, “he preferred to be an architect, using ideas as a builder uses bricks to make a new edifice. It was a bold ambition, and it came to him naturally to think in a systematic way.” The Paucks recount that Tillich was thoroughly educated in classical languages, and he employed this learning liberally; “he . . . frequently built his lectures and sermons around the Latin or Greek etymology of a word or phrase.” By this account as well, on the occasion of Tillich’s confirmation, his “father presented him with a motto for his future life, and he felt, he says, that these words were just what he was looking for. They were, ‘The truth will make you free.’ (John 8:32)” He sought liberation from the bondage of error, sin, and despair not only for the salvation of his own soul, but for the benefit of humanity, by the orientation of his great gift of intellect, and application of the methods of philosophy, toward creative answers to the religious question.
Throughout his work, Tillich embraced existential doubt as an essential element of the human condition. During his education at Halle, his biography explains, “Tillich gained the insight that man is justified by grace through faith, not only as a sinner but even as a doubter. The discovery of this idea brought him great relief.” Additionally, despite “his father’s effort to keep him from anything but orthodox Christianity, he found himself attracted to the liberal theologians . . . who were influenced by historical criticism.”
In 1911, in Berlin, as he labored to complete his theological dissertation, “he began to realize that many Christians did not understand the language in which he had been taught to communicate the gospel.” For most of his nonclerical contemporaries, the orthodox religious idiom was of little or no avail, and thus “he confronted the harsh fact which later inspired him to use non-traditional language to communicate the meaning of biblical revelation.” This realization “determined his way of being a theologian: early in his process of development he cast his lot with the apologetic theologians, namely those who attempt to interpret the Christian faith by means of reasonable explanation, [that is, in Tillich’s words], with ‘a common criterion in view.’”
Tillich’s experience of the First World War, in front-line service as a Prussian Army chaplain, was harrowing and deconstructive. Like countless others, the Paucks say, “he grappled with the awareness that the concept of God that had crumbled on the battlefield – namely, of a God who would make everything turn out for the best – needed to be replaced. In early December [1917] he wrote, ‘I have long since come to the paradox of faith without God, by thinking through the idea of justification by faith to its logical conclusion.’” Tillich, and the remnants of European culture, emerged from the war and its aftermath shattered. His biographers summarized the effects of his experience of this era on his later thought thus:
Caught between the conservative Christian traditions of the nineteenth century and the bold radical creativity marking the new style of the twentieth, he could not side with either one or the other. He sought to combine the two. Freud’s psychoanalysis, Cezanne’s Expressionist Impressionism, Marx’s socialism, all became material for his Christian apologetic theology. He said neither yes nor no; he said both. The split did indeed remain, despite his great efforts to heal or hide it – much later he called it “the boundary.” His great gift for synthesis, analogous to Proustian recollection, gradually produced a written work marked by bright clarity on one hand and dark obfuscation on the other. He made endless distinctions, relied on his excellent grasp of the history of philosophy and Christian doctrine, and finally caught all of his ideas in the net of philosophical presuppositions worked out during his lifetime.
In this manner, Tillich approached his “theology of culture.” The startling note he sounded was that religion was not, after all, a special sphere and function in the social and cultural lives of humankind, but “the dimension of depth,” as he put it, in all of life’s functions. In an essay entitled, “Aspects of a Religious Analysis of Culture,” collected with fourteen other selections from his oeuvre in his 1959 book, Theology of Culture, Tillich formulated several of his key terms with regard to religion in this way:
"If we abstract the concept of religion from the great commandment, we can say that religion is being ultimately concerned about that which is and should be our ultimate concern. This means that faith is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, and God is the name for the content of the concern. Such a concept of religion has little in common with the description of religion as the belief in the existence of a highest being called God, and the theoretical and practical consequences of such a belief. Instead, we are pointing to an existential, not a theoretical, understanding of religion."
Tillich’s starting point, which he identified with Augustine’s, is that the basis – what he calls the prius – of all philosophy of religion, is the Deus est esse. God is being, a unity of essence and existence. He regarded this “content” of “ultimate concern” as “Being itself,” as primum esse, the “Unconditioned.” Of this “ontological principle” of religion, he wrote that “Man is immediately aware of something unconditional which is the prius of the separation and interaction of subject and object [being and becoming; essence and existence; knower and known], theoretically as well as practically.” Thus, “the certainty of God is identical with the certainty of Being itself. God is the presupposition of the question of God.” Moreover, “the Unconditioned cannot be conditioned by a difference between its essence and its existence. In all finite beings, on the other hand, this difference is present; in them existence as something separated from essence is the mark of finitude.”
Tillich redefined religion “in its innermost nature” as “the state of being concerned about one’s own being and being universally” – that is, ultimately concerned, about Being itself and one’s own existential participation in it. It is not to be missed that he correlated this definition of religion with the great commandment as enunciated by Jesus: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Nor does Tillich’s correlation ignore the second commandment that is inseparable from it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
The human experience of being is irreducibly relational. Human culture is the expression of the collective experience of being, in relationship with other human beings and with Being itself, i.e., God – the content, rightly considered, of humankind’s ultimate concern. Thus, there are many people, Tillich observed, like my ‘spiritual’ friend, “who are ultimately concerned in this way who feel far removed, however, from religion in the narrower sense, and therefore from every historical religion. They are religious while rejecting the religions.”
Before proceeding further with a discussion of Tillich’s “theology of culture,” it will be useful to digress more regarding his idiosyncratic terms. As it was in the understanding of the long line of theologians and philosophers of theology before him (from Augustine to Anselm, Aquinas, and Nicholas of Cusa, among others), for Tillich, on the “basis of the ontological approach,” God was ultimate reality. Yet, in the “predicament out of which the [religious] question arises” in our time, the meaning of religion as ultimate concern with the “dimension of depth” in human existence has been lost. In consequence, Tillich wrote, “God becomes a being among others whose existence or nonexistence is a matter of inquiry [of opinionated belief or non-belief]. Nothing, perhaps, is more symptomatic of the loss . . . than the permanent discussion about the existence or nonexistence of God – a discussion in which both sides are equally wrong, because the discussion itself is wrong and possible only after the loss of the dimension of depth.” Thus, with regard to the “content” of this ultimate concern, he wrote,
"God is the answer to the question implied in man’s finitude; [God] is the name for that which concerns man ultimately. This does not mean that first there is a being called God and then the demand that man should be ultimately concerned about him. Ultimate concern must transcend every preliminary finite and concrete concern. It must transcend the whole realm of finitude in order to be the answer to the question implied in finitude. This is the inescapable inner tension in the idea of God. The conflict between the concreteness and the ultimacy of the religious concern is actual wherever God is experienced and this experience is expressed, from primitive prayer to the most elaborate theological system."
Ultimate concern is the human capacity that seeks answers for the religious question. The religious question arises out of the existential human condition, our "predicament." It seeks to reconcile humankind’s transcendent spiritual essence, ‘what I am,’ with the immanent condition of finite existence, ‘that I am.’ Tillich wrote, “The relation between man’s essential nature and his existential predicament is the first and basic question that theology has asked.”
I think Tillich would say that this existential condition and ultimate concern are common in the experience of all peoples, in all times and in all cultural milieux. Tillich’s thesis is that our ultimate concern, our religious question and the answers implied, are expressed in both sacred and secular cultural forms. Religion is not exclusively ecclesial; the spirituality of secular cultural forms has the same substance. Thus, “a . . . consequence of the existential concept of religion is the disappearance of the gap between the sacred and the secular realm. If religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, this state cannot be restricted to a special realm.”
Are all forms of human culture religious in substance? If in some sense they are, are they all equally so? I think Tillich would say that all cultural expressions, sacred and profane, are ultimately informed and arise out of the existential predicament of the human soul, or consciousness, whether or not this is recognized by the persons expressing it. However, there are positive forms, which affirm the great commandment and are oriented toward reconciliation with Being itself; and there are negative forms that deny this or point toward our alienation from it. Moreover, there are conditional, proximate concerns, which pervert the religious question, claiming ultimacy but serving rather to further alienate us from our essential being, and from the Unconditional or Being itself.
In contemporary society, the perversions of the religious question are the multifarious forms of mass culture, the forms of economic and political exploitation of post-industrial society that have largely displaced the forms once referred to as popular culture in earlier industrial society, and as folk culture in pre-industrial society. Mass culture is mistakenly called ‘popular’ but it is not that at all – not in the sense of being created out of the communal life of the populace. Instead, it is superimposed upon the lives and collective consciousness of the people through the ubiquity of mass media, for purposes of dominion by the ruling class, while pretending to reflect social reality.
For Tillich, the forms of cultural expression that genuinely reflect the religious substance are those that can be included in the broadly defined category of creative art. It is the purpose and meaning of the expression, not just its form and medium, by which the distinction is made. Thus, the commoditized artifacts of what I have described as mass culture, the primary purposes and meanings of which are instrumental and commercial, are beyond the pale of Tillich’s theological analysis of culture. His dialectic applies to them only by way of what he calls the “protest . . . against . . . the predominant movement [which] is the spirit of industrial society.”
Tillich wrote that the forms of culture that are to be seen as genuinely religious in substance, that is, the “cultural forms in which religion actualizes itself,” both affirmatively and negatively, are “the great works of the visual arts, of music, of poetry, of literature, or architecture, of dance, of philosophy, [and] including therapeutic psychology.” Tillich’s examples of revelatory cultural forms all seem to be within the realm of Kultur, the early 20th century German conception of ‘high’ culture. However, I do not think that he meant thereby to exclude from consideration less exalted, but genuinely artistic or aesthetic forms of expression within the realm of ‘folk’ or ‘popular’ culture, not purposely created as instruments of commercial or political exploitation.
To the contrary, Kelton Cobb, a research scholar at the University of Tübingen, criticizes Tillich’s method on just that ground, writing that, “He avoids popular culture to such an extent that it is questionable whether he carries through on his promise, which is to look into culture as ‘the totality of human self-interpretation.’ While Tillich, in principle, directs us to all cultural artifacts . . . in practice he privileges the self-interpretation of the cultural elite – with a special status reserved for the avant-garde.”
I do not disagree with Cobb’s introductory statement that “It is time to reexamine it [Tillich’s theology of culture] and reflect on its viability.” I do note, however, that Cobb’s beginning proposition about the totalistic scope of Tillich’s view of culture is set up in the words of another reviewer, John P. Clayton, in 1980 – and not in Tillich’s own words; it does not seem to me, as I’ve indicated, that this is what Tillich meant.
Cobb’s conclusion is this:
"The material in culture that is worthy of attention in theology of culture should not be limited to that produced by or of interest to the cultural elite. The range of sources for theology of culture should be opened up to include any vortex of valuation that functions to attract and repel and otherwise activate or alter the way people value reality. A case could be made that popular culture discloses more of this than high culture. The images and stories that make the evening news or that claim sustained attention from movie makers, and the further use to which they are put by their audiences, for instance, represent potent cultural texts which promise fruitful interpretation to a theologian of culture.”
I think Cobb has missed Tillich’s point, which is that a theological analysis of culture in his terms can show clearly the perversion or misdirection of mass culture’s ‘ultimate concern’ that has “helped to transfer the powerful expressions of the dimension of depth into objects or happenings on the horizontal plane.” Tillich explained, “man, in contrast to other living beings, has spiritual concerns – cognitive, aesthetic, social, political. Some of them are urgent, often extremely urgent, and each of them as well as the vital concerns can claim ultimacy for a human life or the life of a social group." An example, he wrote, “is the ultimate concern with ‘success’ and with social standing and economic power. It is the god of many people in the highly competitive Western culture and it demands what every ultimate concern must do: it demands unconditional surrender to its laws even if the price is the sacrifice of genuine human relations, personal conviction and creative eros.”
I think Tillich’s work is a call to theology for continued and strengthened protest against such forms of idolatry that divert people’s attention from humankind’s real ultimate concern and distort it. His is a call to discern in genuinely creative cultural expressions the universal religious question: "What is the meaning of my existence? Why am I given the gift of apprehension of the Infinite, of the Unconditioned; yet I must die, and while I live, I must suffer?" It is a question that cannot answer itself, and that is its revelatory power. The answer to the question of finitude is beyond finitude. Quoting Psalm 90, Tillich wrote, “‘Relent, O Thou Eternal!’ – this prayer is the prayer of mankind through all eons, and the hidden prayer in the depths of every human soul.”
Concerning the Levite Massacres
27 April 2004
By Jim Weller
While reading through the five books of the Torah in their entireties for the first time, several episodes of extreme retributive violence by early Israelites troubled me deeply, and I have wondered what to make of them ever since.
The first of these is found in Genesis, chapter 34. Here, sometime in the 19th century BCE, Jacob, who is destined to be the progenitor of the nation of Israel, has arrived with his semi-nomadic family group at the city of Shechem, en route from his long sojourn in the land of Laban to his father Isaac’s home territory in Canaan. Shechem, the son of the ruler of this place, meets a daughter of Jacob, Dinah, and desires her, abducts and rapes her. Shechem’s father Hamor the Hivite, on his son’s behalf, pleads with Jacob to give Dinah in marriage, and for a treaty of intermarriage, kinship, and alliance among the two peoples.
Jacob’s sons (who will become the patriarchs of the tribes of Israel), outraged at the defilement of their sister Dinah, agree duplicitously to this treaty, on condition that Hamor and Shechem and every male of their city should be circumcised, like the males of Jacob’s tribe. Then, after Shechem’s people have complied and their men and boys are defenseless, recuperating from their wounds, Jacob’s sons Levi and Simeon attack them, murder all the males of the city, and retreat, taking Dinah with them. Following this, Jacob’s other sons plunder and pillage the place, taking all the women and children captive.
Jacob later chastises his sons Levi and Simeon for their savagery, but they are unrepentant, protesting, “Should our sister be treated like a whore?” Finally, on his deathbed, Jacob curses the lawlessness and relentless wrath of Levi and Simeon and condemns them to territorial disinheritance, vowing, “I will divide them in Jacob, Scatter them in Israel.”
Many generations later in the Hebrew Scriptures’ historical narrative, the brothers Moses and Aaron, descendants of Jacob’s son Levi, led the tribes of Israel out of enslavement in Egypt. Aaron and his progeny were divinely ordained to become the priests of the nation of Israel, and the other Levites (Levi’s descendants), similarly elected, became the functionaries, protectors, and preservers of the Aaronid priesthood. The Levites did not receive divinely granted apportionments of the Promised Land, as the other tribes did. Instead, they were assigned to “forty-eight towns, with their pasture” to occupy, “from the holdings of the Israelites.” Thus, they were indeed scattered throughout Israel forevermore.
I encountered the second story of mass murder and mayhem, one even more disturbing than the first, in the book of Exodus. It is part of the story of the “golden calf.” Here, in the 13th century BCE, some three months after having gone forth from the land of Egypt, the emigrating multitudes of the people of Israel had arrived in the wilderness of Sinai, and encamped below the mountain of God. God had appeared with thunder and lightning, in a cloud of smoke and fire before all the assembled people, and had commanded Moses at length, announcing the Covenant and giving them the Law including the “Ten Commandments.” Moses had ceremonially read aloud all that God had said, and the people had promised to observe it all faithfully. Moses had been summoned by God to ascend the mountain to receive on behalf of the Israelites “the stone tablets with the teachings and commandments which I have inscribed to instruct them.” He remained gone on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
In chapter 32, toward the end of Moses’ absence while meeting with God on the mountain, Moses’ second in command, his brother Aaron, was confronted with restive popular sentiment and discontented demands for “a god who shall go before us” – in other words, a religious object to be celebrated and to which sacrifices might be made. In response, Aaron collected gold rings from them, melted them and cast them in a mold in the form of a calf. The people exclaimed, “This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” Aaron built an altar before the golden idol, declaring, “Tomorrow shall be a festival of the LORD!” On the morning of the forty-first day of Moses’ absence, “the people offered up burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being;” then they feasted and danced.
Observing this idolatry, God was offended. He said to Moses, “I see that this is a stiffnecked people,” and declared his angry intention to destroy them all. But Moses pleaded to God for mercy, and God “renounced the punishment He had planned to bring upon His people.” Upon his return down the mountain bearing the two tablets of the Covenant inscribed with God’s writing, Moses, enraged, smashed the tablets, destroyed the golden calf, ground it into powder, dissolved it in water, and made the Israelites drink it. At this point in the narrative, the truly horrifying episode ensued:
"Moses saw that the people were out of control – since Aaron had let them get out of control – so that they were a menace to any who might oppose them. Moses stood up in the gate of the camp and said, 'Whoever is for the LORD, come here!' And all the Levites rallied to him. He said to them, 'Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Each of you put sword on thigh, go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay brother, neighbor and kin.' The Levites did as Moses had bidden; and some three thousand of the people fell that day. And Moses said, 'Dedicate yourselves to the LORD this day – for each of you has been against son and brother – that He may bestow a blessing upon you today.'"
I must say that reading this second instance, I experienced a strong sense of cognitive dissonance; and, even though I have discovered some scholarly explanations for the existence of this passage in the Hebrew Scriptures, I still wonder at its incongruity with what I think of as the generally humanitarian ethos of the Mosaic Law.
In the first instance, though I was uncomfortable with it, I accepted provisionally the Genesis story of Simeon’s and Levi’s slaughter at Shechem, and the sacking of the city by Jacob’s sons, as another of the innumerable instances of intertribal atrocity in the ancient world – and the rest of world history, for that matter. Moreover, in the context of the Hebrew traditions, that crime against humanity was condemned righteously by Jacob (though inconsistently, since he only penalized Levi and Simeon); and, perhaps significantly, it precedes historically God’s Commandments proscribing murder and prescribing justice toward strangers. On the other hand, since God later commanded the Israelites, under Moses’ leadership, to attack, destroy, and dispossess all the settlements of the people living in the “Promised Land,” which included Shechem, I supposed the precedent massacre could have been seen retrospectively as justified according to Scripture.
The most striking difference between the former episode of wanton killing and the later one at Mount Sinai, therefore, is that the Levitical massacre in Exodus 32 is carried out for purposes of political domination among the Israelites, not for filial vengeance against strangers. It is an internecine mass murder, a willful and indiscriminate act of domestic terrorism by a cadre of armed zealots on the part of a repressive, autocratic leader. Worse, the terrorists are lionized and blessed by their dictator for their bloody, relentless dedication to the letter of the Law, against “son and brother.”
It has been suggested that a political justification of this incident may be made on the principle that times of extreme social peril require extreme countermeasures, reasoning that the gory purge by Moses and the Levites prevented God’s even more destructive punishment. In the narrative context, this is plainly not so. God had already relented in deference to Moses’ argument for the preservation of Israel; and he reserved a penance for the people’s sacramental inconstancy anyway, keeping them wandering desolately in the wilderness forty years in consequence of it before finally delivering them to the Promised Land. Moreover, God imposed immediate punishment upon the Israelites as something of a logical consequence according to Exodus 32:35, which I shall mention shortly.
What are the explanations I found? The first is that chapters 32 and 33 of Exodus are attributed to a Levitical scribe known as E, a distinctively different source than that of the preceding chapters 25-31, and also distinct from that containing the Ten Commandments, chapter 20, the source of both of which is called P. The “Covenant Code,” chapters 21-23, is also due to E. Most of chapter 34, including another version of the Ten Commandments (as well as Genesis 34, the story of the Shechem massacre and plunder) are from a source known as J. Only the P source, in its version of the Ten Commandments (an historically later text than J and E), contains the familiar injunction, “You shall not murder” and the language of humanitarian mercy and relational honor.
The dominant scholarly paradigm regarding the primary source texts of which the five books of the Torah are comprised is referred to as the “Documentary Hypothesis.” I found extensive explanations of its application to my concerns in two books having to do with Biblical source criticism by Richard Elliott Friedman and Anthony R. Ceresko. According to these scholars, four primary textual sources have been distinguished, all of which contain separate written accounts and compilations, made at distinct times and locations and for diverse purposes, of older, mainly oral, communal traditions. It is to be recognized that, like all legendary material, these narratives and customs must certainly have been extensively “morphed” in retelling down through the generations, and adapted and exaggerated for literary purposes when finally set in sacred text. Nevertheless, it is an acknowledged truism that legends generally have some basis in historical experience as well.
The Yahwist or J source is considered the first written, dating from about 960-930 BCE. The author was most likely a Levitical functionary of the administration of King Solomon, second ruler of the monarchy of the House of David, of the tribe of Judah in its capital city of Jerusalem. In his age, the territory of the united tribes of Israel had its greatest extent and the power of the nation was at its height. The Yahwist text preserved the account of the devastation six to eight centuries earlier by the sons of Jacob, of Shechem, the city which became the original seat of the Davidic monarchy in about 1000 BCE.
The Elohist or E source is dated around 900-850 BCE. and is regarded as having been created as a parallel religious text for the northern kingdom of Israel, perhaps in Shechem, re-established as its capital following Israel’s separation from the southern kingdom of Judah after Solomon’s death and the dissolution of the Davidic union. The author of E may have been a prophetic Levite, alienated from the Aaronid priesthood of Jerusalem by the previous accession to power of Solomon’s chief priest Zadok, and the concomitant expulsion of Abiathar, chief of the priests of the northern holy city of Shiloh.
The episode of the golden calf seems to have been included in the E text in order to prefigure events in the history of the northern kingdom of Israel around 900 BCE, when its first king, Jeroboam, erected symbolic figures of two golden bulls in his new religious sanctuaries at the cities of Dan and Beth-El. Jeroboam then spoke (according to a later recounting of the event in the Deuteronomic history 1 Kings) the same words E later put in the mouths of Aaron’s impatient followers who idolized the golden calf at Sinai: “This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” According to the history, Jeroboam further “made cult places and appointed priests from the ranks of the people who were not of Levite descent,” which “proved to be a cause of guilt, for the people went to worship” at these new shrines.
The consequence of the “golden calf” offense, as alluded in the E text, is divine retribution, and a promise of unspecified future penance. Moses again pleads with God for forgiveness, and offers himself as a penitential sacrifice for the waywardness of his people. God again forbears, but warns, “When I make an accounting, I will bring them to account for their sins,” and delivers his immediate punishment (though perhaps it was a result of Moses having polluted the Israelite’s drinking water with heavy metals): “the LORD sent a plague upon the people, for what they did with the calf that Aaron made.”
Thus, we have a plausible explanation for the inclusion in this text of the Levite’s murderous rampage at Sinai. It may well have preserved a traditional account of an ancient historical or legendary incident, but E’s use of it here seems didactic. It seems intended as a contemporary prophetic assertion of the prerogatives of Levitical authority in the northern kingdom of Israel, directed against both the Aaronid priesthood of Judah and the upstart non-Levite priests appointed by King Jeroboam. This is Friedman’s sense of the matter, and several Bible commentaries tend to concur.
The Levites evidently had attained power, privilege, and perhaps despotic authority among the Israelites even before Moses’ time, in Egypt. The Encyclopaedia Judaica explains as well, “The story of the golden calf emphasizes the loyalty of the tribe to Moses. In this affair, too, as in that of Dinah, the Levites stand out as men of zeal who do not spare brother, friend or kin.”
As Ceresko illustrates, the J and E sources, respectively, represented the southern (Judean) and northern (Israelite) versions of the religious and historical narratives of their related peoples, in which ancient oral traditions were retold, revised, and reinterpreted. The P and D sources were subsequent, chiefly juridical formulations embodying competing sectarian ideologies and belonging, respectively, to 7th century BCE Judean priesthoods of the Aaronid lineage and the Mushites (Levites anciently of Shiloh claiming descent from Moses.) It appears that the originally separate J and E texts had been combined in a process of intercalation under the auspices of the Aaronid priests of Jerusalem, after the conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel and the dispersion of its Hebrew tribes by the Assyrian empire in 722 BCE. In the ensuing period, under Aaronid hegemony in the time of King Hezekiah, P was written as an alternative to JE. D, in turn, was introduced by Mushite partisans three generations later, during their brief ascendancy in the time of King Josiah, to displace P.
Very little in the field of cultural anthropology can be known with much certainty, especially concerning a prehistoric people (the time of Jacob, Simeon, and Levi would have been around 1800 BCE; the earliest Hebrew texts probably weren’t written until well after Moses’ time, circa 1300 BCE), but I am inclined to adduce that the tribal culture of Moses’ Levite group and its antecedents was particularly aggressive, hostile to foreigners and repeatedly murderous. In her book A History of God, Karen Armstrong writes that the deity introduced into Canaan with the emigrants Moses and his successor Joshua led was “a brutal, partial, and murderous God, a god of war who would be known as Yahweh Sabaoth, the God of Armies.”
The Levite priests of Shiloh who, according to Friedman, produced the E text in the 9th century BCE, with its old account of the massacre Moses ordered at Sinai, were the predecessors of the 7th century BCE author of the Deuteronomistic historical narrative (the fourth, or D source), in which Joshua lead the migrating people of the Exodus into Canaan, to slaughter, destroy, and utterly dispossess its natives. The D source is not alone in the 7th century in glorifying the Israelites’ massacres of the 13th century BCE Canaanites. The book of Numbers, Chapters 31 and 32, which are portions of the P text, recount the same story in equally horrendous detail, for instance:
"Moses dispatched . . . a thousand from each tribe . . . against Midian, as the LORD had commanded Moses, and slew every male. Along with their other victims, they slew the kings of Midian . . . The Israelites took the women and children of the Midianites captive, and seized as booty all their beasts, all their herds, and all their wealth. And they destroyed by fire all the towns in which they were settled, and their encampments."
Perhaps those disturbing tales of Israelite mass murder and mayhem were made by their Levitical authors, as it were, from whole cloth, literary inventions designed to serve as horror stories for the purpose of establishing and reinforcing priestly authority in their respective socio-cultural milieux. Perhaps they were legendary reflections of a brutal, nomadic tribal past reconstituted in monarchic times for socio-religious purposes to meet with contemporary historic exigencies.
I suppose I must conclude that, along with the ethic of merciful justice and temperance attributed to the Yahwist God in J’s account of a theophany to Moses (“a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness”) , there is also in the Hebrew Scriptures a violent, implacable, obdurate religious tradition as well, particularly but not only exemplified in the D and E texts (which contain no recital of the Ten Commandments’ prohibition of murder.)
This conclusion comes as no surprise, of course, humankind’s unending capacity for inhumanity toward its own kind having been amply demonstrated in every generation and in every religion, coexisting salvific ethical traditions notwithstanding. As Walter Cronkite used to sign off his nightly television news program, “And that’s the way it is.”
But then still, there is hope, for as the Scottish religious leader Mary Webb (1881-1927) observed wryly, “The well of Providence is deep. It’s the buckets we bring to it that are small.”
By Jim Weller
While reading through the five books of the Torah in their entireties for the first time, several episodes of extreme retributive violence by early Israelites troubled me deeply, and I have wondered what to make of them ever since.
The first of these is found in Genesis, chapter 34. Here, sometime in the 19th century BCE, Jacob, who is destined to be the progenitor of the nation of Israel, has arrived with his semi-nomadic family group at the city of Shechem, en route from his long sojourn in the land of Laban to his father Isaac’s home territory in Canaan. Shechem, the son of the ruler of this place, meets a daughter of Jacob, Dinah, and desires her, abducts and rapes her. Shechem’s father Hamor the Hivite, on his son’s behalf, pleads with Jacob to give Dinah in marriage, and for a treaty of intermarriage, kinship, and alliance among the two peoples.
Jacob’s sons (who will become the patriarchs of the tribes of Israel), outraged at the defilement of their sister Dinah, agree duplicitously to this treaty, on condition that Hamor and Shechem and every male of their city should be circumcised, like the males of Jacob’s tribe. Then, after Shechem’s people have complied and their men and boys are defenseless, recuperating from their wounds, Jacob’s sons Levi and Simeon attack them, murder all the males of the city, and retreat, taking Dinah with them. Following this, Jacob’s other sons plunder and pillage the place, taking all the women and children captive.
Jacob later chastises his sons Levi and Simeon for their savagery, but they are unrepentant, protesting, “Should our sister be treated like a whore?” Finally, on his deathbed, Jacob curses the lawlessness and relentless wrath of Levi and Simeon and condemns them to territorial disinheritance, vowing, “I will divide them in Jacob, Scatter them in Israel.”
Many generations later in the Hebrew Scriptures’ historical narrative, the brothers Moses and Aaron, descendants of Jacob’s son Levi, led the tribes of Israel out of enslavement in Egypt. Aaron and his progeny were divinely ordained to become the priests of the nation of Israel, and the other Levites (Levi’s descendants), similarly elected, became the functionaries, protectors, and preservers of the Aaronid priesthood. The Levites did not receive divinely granted apportionments of the Promised Land, as the other tribes did. Instead, they were assigned to “forty-eight towns, with their pasture” to occupy, “from the holdings of the Israelites.” Thus, they were indeed scattered throughout Israel forevermore.
I encountered the second story of mass murder and mayhem, one even more disturbing than the first, in the book of Exodus. It is part of the story of the “golden calf.” Here, in the 13th century BCE, some three months after having gone forth from the land of Egypt, the emigrating multitudes of the people of Israel had arrived in the wilderness of Sinai, and encamped below the mountain of God. God had appeared with thunder and lightning, in a cloud of smoke and fire before all the assembled people, and had commanded Moses at length, announcing the Covenant and giving them the Law including the “Ten Commandments.” Moses had ceremonially read aloud all that God had said, and the people had promised to observe it all faithfully. Moses had been summoned by God to ascend the mountain to receive on behalf of the Israelites “the stone tablets with the teachings and commandments which I have inscribed to instruct them.” He remained gone on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
In chapter 32, toward the end of Moses’ absence while meeting with God on the mountain, Moses’ second in command, his brother Aaron, was confronted with restive popular sentiment and discontented demands for “a god who shall go before us” – in other words, a religious object to be celebrated and to which sacrifices might be made. In response, Aaron collected gold rings from them, melted them and cast them in a mold in the form of a calf. The people exclaimed, “This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” Aaron built an altar before the golden idol, declaring, “Tomorrow shall be a festival of the LORD!” On the morning of the forty-first day of Moses’ absence, “the people offered up burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being;” then they feasted and danced.
Observing this idolatry, God was offended. He said to Moses, “I see that this is a stiffnecked people,” and declared his angry intention to destroy them all. But Moses pleaded to God for mercy, and God “renounced the punishment He had planned to bring upon His people.” Upon his return down the mountain bearing the two tablets of the Covenant inscribed with God’s writing, Moses, enraged, smashed the tablets, destroyed the golden calf, ground it into powder, dissolved it in water, and made the Israelites drink it. At this point in the narrative, the truly horrifying episode ensued:
"Moses saw that the people were out of control – since Aaron had let them get out of control – so that they were a menace to any who might oppose them. Moses stood up in the gate of the camp and said, 'Whoever is for the LORD, come here!' And all the Levites rallied to him. He said to them, 'Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Each of you put sword on thigh, go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay brother, neighbor and kin.' The Levites did as Moses had bidden; and some three thousand of the people fell that day. And Moses said, 'Dedicate yourselves to the LORD this day – for each of you has been against son and brother – that He may bestow a blessing upon you today.'"
I must say that reading this second instance, I experienced a strong sense of cognitive dissonance; and, even though I have discovered some scholarly explanations for the existence of this passage in the Hebrew Scriptures, I still wonder at its incongruity with what I think of as the generally humanitarian ethos of the Mosaic Law.
In the first instance, though I was uncomfortable with it, I accepted provisionally the Genesis story of Simeon’s and Levi’s slaughter at Shechem, and the sacking of the city by Jacob’s sons, as another of the innumerable instances of intertribal atrocity in the ancient world – and the rest of world history, for that matter. Moreover, in the context of the Hebrew traditions, that crime against humanity was condemned righteously by Jacob (though inconsistently, since he only penalized Levi and Simeon); and, perhaps significantly, it precedes historically God’s Commandments proscribing murder and prescribing justice toward strangers. On the other hand, since God later commanded the Israelites, under Moses’ leadership, to attack, destroy, and dispossess all the settlements of the people living in the “Promised Land,” which included Shechem, I supposed the precedent massacre could have been seen retrospectively as justified according to Scripture.
The most striking difference between the former episode of wanton killing and the later one at Mount Sinai, therefore, is that the Levitical massacre in Exodus 32 is carried out for purposes of political domination among the Israelites, not for filial vengeance against strangers. It is an internecine mass murder, a willful and indiscriminate act of domestic terrorism by a cadre of armed zealots on the part of a repressive, autocratic leader. Worse, the terrorists are lionized and blessed by their dictator for their bloody, relentless dedication to the letter of the Law, against “son and brother.”
It has been suggested that a political justification of this incident may be made on the principle that times of extreme social peril require extreme countermeasures, reasoning that the gory purge by Moses and the Levites prevented God’s even more destructive punishment. In the narrative context, this is plainly not so. God had already relented in deference to Moses’ argument for the preservation of Israel; and he reserved a penance for the people’s sacramental inconstancy anyway, keeping them wandering desolately in the wilderness forty years in consequence of it before finally delivering them to the Promised Land. Moreover, God imposed immediate punishment upon the Israelites as something of a logical consequence according to Exodus 32:35, which I shall mention shortly.
What are the explanations I found? The first is that chapters 32 and 33 of Exodus are attributed to a Levitical scribe known as E, a distinctively different source than that of the preceding chapters 25-31, and also distinct from that containing the Ten Commandments, chapter 20, the source of both of which is called P. The “Covenant Code,” chapters 21-23, is also due to E. Most of chapter 34, including another version of the Ten Commandments (as well as Genesis 34, the story of the Shechem massacre and plunder) are from a source known as J. Only the P source, in its version of the Ten Commandments (an historically later text than J and E), contains the familiar injunction, “You shall not murder” and the language of humanitarian mercy and relational honor.
The dominant scholarly paradigm regarding the primary source texts of which the five books of the Torah are comprised is referred to as the “Documentary Hypothesis.” I found extensive explanations of its application to my concerns in two books having to do with Biblical source criticism by Richard Elliott Friedman and Anthony R. Ceresko. According to these scholars, four primary textual sources have been distinguished, all of which contain separate written accounts and compilations, made at distinct times and locations and for diverse purposes, of older, mainly oral, communal traditions. It is to be recognized that, like all legendary material, these narratives and customs must certainly have been extensively “morphed” in retelling down through the generations, and adapted and exaggerated for literary purposes when finally set in sacred text. Nevertheless, it is an acknowledged truism that legends generally have some basis in historical experience as well.
The Yahwist or J source is considered the first written, dating from about 960-930 BCE. The author was most likely a Levitical functionary of the administration of King Solomon, second ruler of the monarchy of the House of David, of the tribe of Judah in its capital city of Jerusalem. In his age, the territory of the united tribes of Israel had its greatest extent and the power of the nation was at its height. The Yahwist text preserved the account of the devastation six to eight centuries earlier by the sons of Jacob, of Shechem, the city which became the original seat of the Davidic monarchy in about 1000 BCE.
The Elohist or E source is dated around 900-850 BCE. and is regarded as having been created as a parallel religious text for the northern kingdom of Israel, perhaps in Shechem, re-established as its capital following Israel’s separation from the southern kingdom of Judah after Solomon’s death and the dissolution of the Davidic union. The author of E may have been a prophetic Levite, alienated from the Aaronid priesthood of Jerusalem by the previous accession to power of Solomon’s chief priest Zadok, and the concomitant expulsion of Abiathar, chief of the priests of the northern holy city of Shiloh.
The episode of the golden calf seems to have been included in the E text in order to prefigure events in the history of the northern kingdom of Israel around 900 BCE, when its first king, Jeroboam, erected symbolic figures of two golden bulls in his new religious sanctuaries at the cities of Dan and Beth-El. Jeroboam then spoke (according to a later recounting of the event in the Deuteronomic history 1 Kings) the same words E later put in the mouths of Aaron’s impatient followers who idolized the golden calf at Sinai: “This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” According to the history, Jeroboam further “made cult places and appointed priests from the ranks of the people who were not of Levite descent,” which “proved to be a cause of guilt, for the people went to worship” at these new shrines.
The consequence of the “golden calf” offense, as alluded in the E text, is divine retribution, and a promise of unspecified future penance. Moses again pleads with God for forgiveness, and offers himself as a penitential sacrifice for the waywardness of his people. God again forbears, but warns, “When I make an accounting, I will bring them to account for their sins,” and delivers his immediate punishment (though perhaps it was a result of Moses having polluted the Israelite’s drinking water with heavy metals): “the LORD sent a plague upon the people, for what they did with the calf that Aaron made.”
Thus, we have a plausible explanation for the inclusion in this text of the Levite’s murderous rampage at Sinai. It may well have preserved a traditional account of an ancient historical or legendary incident, but E’s use of it here seems didactic. It seems intended as a contemporary prophetic assertion of the prerogatives of Levitical authority in the northern kingdom of Israel, directed against both the Aaronid priesthood of Judah and the upstart non-Levite priests appointed by King Jeroboam. This is Friedman’s sense of the matter, and several Bible commentaries tend to concur.
The Levites evidently had attained power, privilege, and perhaps despotic authority among the Israelites even before Moses’ time, in Egypt. The Encyclopaedia Judaica explains as well, “The story of the golden calf emphasizes the loyalty of the tribe to Moses. In this affair, too, as in that of Dinah, the Levites stand out as men of zeal who do not spare brother, friend or kin.”
As Ceresko illustrates, the J and E sources, respectively, represented the southern (Judean) and northern (Israelite) versions of the religious and historical narratives of their related peoples, in which ancient oral traditions were retold, revised, and reinterpreted. The P and D sources were subsequent, chiefly juridical formulations embodying competing sectarian ideologies and belonging, respectively, to 7th century BCE Judean priesthoods of the Aaronid lineage and the Mushites (Levites anciently of Shiloh claiming descent from Moses.) It appears that the originally separate J and E texts had been combined in a process of intercalation under the auspices of the Aaronid priests of Jerusalem, after the conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel and the dispersion of its Hebrew tribes by the Assyrian empire in 722 BCE. In the ensuing period, under Aaronid hegemony in the time of King Hezekiah, P was written as an alternative to JE. D, in turn, was introduced by Mushite partisans three generations later, during their brief ascendancy in the time of King Josiah, to displace P.
Very little in the field of cultural anthropology can be known with much certainty, especially concerning a prehistoric people (the time of Jacob, Simeon, and Levi would have been around 1800 BCE; the earliest Hebrew texts probably weren’t written until well after Moses’ time, circa 1300 BCE), but I am inclined to adduce that the tribal culture of Moses’ Levite group and its antecedents was particularly aggressive, hostile to foreigners and repeatedly murderous. In her book A History of God, Karen Armstrong writes that the deity introduced into Canaan with the emigrants Moses and his successor Joshua led was “a brutal, partial, and murderous God, a god of war who would be known as Yahweh Sabaoth, the God of Armies.”
The Levite priests of Shiloh who, according to Friedman, produced the E text in the 9th century BCE, with its old account of the massacre Moses ordered at Sinai, were the predecessors of the 7th century BCE author of the Deuteronomistic historical narrative (the fourth, or D source), in which Joshua lead the migrating people of the Exodus into Canaan, to slaughter, destroy, and utterly dispossess its natives. The D source is not alone in the 7th century in glorifying the Israelites’ massacres of the 13th century BCE Canaanites. The book of Numbers, Chapters 31 and 32, which are portions of the P text, recount the same story in equally horrendous detail, for instance:
"Moses dispatched . . . a thousand from each tribe . . . against Midian, as the LORD had commanded Moses, and slew every male. Along with their other victims, they slew the kings of Midian . . . The Israelites took the women and children of the Midianites captive, and seized as booty all their beasts, all their herds, and all their wealth. And they destroyed by fire all the towns in which they were settled, and their encampments."
Perhaps those disturbing tales of Israelite mass murder and mayhem were made by their Levitical authors, as it were, from whole cloth, literary inventions designed to serve as horror stories for the purpose of establishing and reinforcing priestly authority in their respective socio-cultural milieux. Perhaps they were legendary reflections of a brutal, nomadic tribal past reconstituted in monarchic times for socio-religious purposes to meet with contemporary historic exigencies.
I suppose I must conclude that, along with the ethic of merciful justice and temperance attributed to the Yahwist God in J’s account of a theophany to Moses (“a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness”) , there is also in the Hebrew Scriptures a violent, implacable, obdurate religious tradition as well, particularly but not only exemplified in the D and E texts (which contain no recital of the Ten Commandments’ prohibition of murder.)
This conclusion comes as no surprise, of course, humankind’s unending capacity for inhumanity toward its own kind having been amply demonstrated in every generation and in every religion, coexisting salvific ethical traditions notwithstanding. As Walter Cronkite used to sign off his nightly television news program, “And that’s the way it is.”
But then still, there is hope, for as the Scottish religious leader Mary Webb (1881-1927) observed wryly, “The well of Providence is deep. It’s the buckets we bring to it that are small.”
Friday, July 30, 2004
Alfie and the Meek
2 December 1997
By Jim Weller
The day after Thanksgiving, I listened to the National Public Radio program, Fresh Air, on KQED-FM. The host, Terry Gross, was interviewing the lyricist, Hal David, well known for his popular songs, especially those written for movies and with composer Burt Bacharach. When asked what song his own favorite might be, Mr. David unhesitatingly answered that it was the song, Alfie, set to music composed by Bacharach, for the 1966 movie of the same name.
I remembered especially liking this song myself, for its beautiful melody and touching lyrics. I can still hear it in its originally recorded version by Dionne Warwick - just as though it were playing aloud, in my head. I never saw the movie, but I gather it was the story of a callous and hedonistic playboy who, in his benightedness and irresponsibility, breaks young women’s hearts and otherwise variously does emotional harm in his daily affairs.
The song goes like this:
What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about, when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give?
Or are we meant to be kind?
And, if only fools are kind, Alfie,
Then I guess it is wise to be cruel.
And if life belongs only to the strong, Alfie,
What will you lend on an old golden rule?
As sure as I believe, there’s a heaven above, Alfie.
I know there’s something much more,
Something even non-believers can believe in.
I believe in love, Alfie.
Without true love, we just exist, Alfie.
Until we find the love we’ve missed, we’re nothing, Alfie.
Where you walk, let your heart lead the way,
And you’ll find love every day, Alfie.
There is a deeply meaningful message of right relation to be made of this: Let us be willing to lend our loving-kindness on the collateral of hope and faith, without exacting a price in return. Let us seek to give more than we take, and to take but what we need. Let us seek to know the love that reunifies humanity with its Divine source and nature.
I am reminded of certain Biblical passages I first encountered long ago, as a boy in a children’s Bible study group.
Faith, hope, love; these three abide. But the greatest of these is love. II Cor. 13:13
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Mt. 5:3, 5
I didn’t suspect it when I was a youth first hearing his heartfelt lyrics, nor even at all later until I heard the reverence in his own commentary, but I think Hal David, in composing the lyrics for Alfie, must have had such pastoral meanings in mind, all along.
Scriptural teachings require considerable interpretation in order to be very meaningful for most of us living at this time, the beginning of the third millennium of the Common Era. The gospels and epistles of the New Testament as we know them now are couched in the archaic English of King James, having been translated at that time from the Latin Vulgate in which the original Koine Greek writings, set down ninety or so human generations ago, were preserved.
The important ethical and religious messages we have from the Christian and Hebrew Bibles have been held up as beacons of enlightenment for all times in Western civilization, but the standard texts call for plenty of semantic analysis and reformulation, particularly for those who approach them from a secular or non-sectarian viewpoint.
In Hal David’s words, there is “something much more” to be known than contemporary contrivance and artifice, “something even non-believers can believe in”. Something more essen¬tial, unconditional, eternal. Something, if you will, based in wisdom, as contrasted with craftiness and cunning. And where better to find wisdom, as latter-day heirs of Western civilization’s tree of knowledge, than in the testaments of the saints and apostles and prophets?
Blessed are the poor in spirit. What does this mean? Abject poverty is hardly a blessing, not by anybody’s standards, and dispiritedness, despair, and depression seem just the antithesis of anyone’s idea of beneficence. How can the first Beatitude be any kind of benediction?
I take poor in spirit to mean something like ‘in the spirit of humility,’ or ‘of simple spirit’ – in the sense that it is more blessed to forego or to share the excess wealth one might create, than to gain riches oneself, and that non-attachment to worldly goods is a worthier spiritual orientation than its alternative.
And who are the blessed “meek” of the third Beatitude? They are the harmless and defenseless souls, those who seek to demonstrate the human capacity for kindness and cooperation, instead of competition and dominion. They shall inherit the earth because it is their ways that promote reconciliation and renewal, instead of decadence, disintegration, and depletion.
The theological virtues of faith, hope, and love are the spiritual gifts characteristic of the truly “meek” and “poor in spirit” among us; and, as an overarching virtue, love is the greatest of these.
I believe in love, too, and that, by simply accepting the Divine grace that is forever offered to us, we shall know the spiritual blessings of faith, hope, and love, in living here and now – and truly inherit the earth, as it has been given us by the miracle of life, and enter the kingdom of heaven while we live, in reverence for the “wholiness” of life and being.
May it be so.
Amen.
By Jim Weller
The day after Thanksgiving, I listened to the National Public Radio program, Fresh Air, on KQED-FM. The host, Terry Gross, was interviewing the lyricist, Hal David, well known for his popular songs, especially those written for movies and with composer Burt Bacharach. When asked what song his own favorite might be, Mr. David unhesitatingly answered that it was the song, Alfie, set to music composed by Bacharach, for the 1966 movie of the same name.
I remembered especially liking this song myself, for its beautiful melody and touching lyrics. I can still hear it in its originally recorded version by Dionne Warwick - just as though it were playing aloud, in my head. I never saw the movie, but I gather it was the story of a callous and hedonistic playboy who, in his benightedness and irresponsibility, breaks young women’s hearts and otherwise variously does emotional harm in his daily affairs.
The song goes like this:
What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about, when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give?
Or are we meant to be kind?
And, if only fools are kind, Alfie,
Then I guess it is wise to be cruel.
And if life belongs only to the strong, Alfie,
What will you lend on an old golden rule?
As sure as I believe, there’s a heaven above, Alfie.
I know there’s something much more,
Something even non-believers can believe in.
I believe in love, Alfie.
Without true love, we just exist, Alfie.
Until we find the love we’ve missed, we’re nothing, Alfie.
Where you walk, let your heart lead the way,
And you’ll find love every day, Alfie.
There is a deeply meaningful message of right relation to be made of this: Let us be willing to lend our loving-kindness on the collateral of hope and faith, without exacting a price in return. Let us seek to give more than we take, and to take but what we need. Let us seek to know the love that reunifies humanity with its Divine source and nature.
I am reminded of certain Biblical passages I first encountered long ago, as a boy in a children’s Bible study group.
Faith, hope, love; these three abide. But the greatest of these is love. II Cor. 13:13
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Mt. 5:3, 5
I didn’t suspect it when I was a youth first hearing his heartfelt lyrics, nor even at all later until I heard the reverence in his own commentary, but I think Hal David, in composing the lyrics for Alfie, must have had such pastoral meanings in mind, all along.
Scriptural teachings require considerable interpretation in order to be very meaningful for most of us living at this time, the beginning of the third millennium of the Common Era. The gospels and epistles of the New Testament as we know them now are couched in the archaic English of King James, having been translated at that time from the Latin Vulgate in which the original Koine Greek writings, set down ninety or so human generations ago, were preserved.
The important ethical and religious messages we have from the Christian and Hebrew Bibles have been held up as beacons of enlightenment for all times in Western civilization, but the standard texts call for plenty of semantic analysis and reformulation, particularly for those who approach them from a secular or non-sectarian viewpoint.
In Hal David’s words, there is “something much more” to be known than contemporary contrivance and artifice, “something even non-believers can believe in”. Something more essen¬tial, unconditional, eternal. Something, if you will, based in wisdom, as contrasted with craftiness and cunning. And where better to find wisdom, as latter-day heirs of Western civilization’s tree of knowledge, than in the testaments of the saints and apostles and prophets?
Blessed are the poor in spirit. What does this mean? Abject poverty is hardly a blessing, not by anybody’s standards, and dispiritedness, despair, and depression seem just the antithesis of anyone’s idea of beneficence. How can the first Beatitude be any kind of benediction?
I take poor in spirit to mean something like ‘in the spirit of humility,’ or ‘of simple spirit’ – in the sense that it is more blessed to forego or to share the excess wealth one might create, than to gain riches oneself, and that non-attachment to worldly goods is a worthier spiritual orientation than its alternative.
And who are the blessed “meek” of the third Beatitude? They are the harmless and defenseless souls, those who seek to demonstrate the human capacity for kindness and cooperation, instead of competition and dominion. They shall inherit the earth because it is their ways that promote reconciliation and renewal, instead of decadence, disintegration, and depletion.
The theological virtues of faith, hope, and love are the spiritual gifts characteristic of the truly “meek” and “poor in spirit” among us; and, as an overarching virtue, love is the greatest of these.
I believe in love, too, and that, by simply accepting the Divine grace that is forever offered to us, we shall know the spiritual blessings of faith, hope, and love, in living here and now – and truly inherit the earth, as it has been given us by the miracle of life, and enter the kingdom of heaven while we live, in reverence for the “wholiness” of life and being.
May it be so.
Amen.
Personal Being and Being Itself
6 July 2004
By Jim Weller
What people call God is the self-conscious relation of personal being with Being itself; and vice-versa, if you prefer – the relation of Being itself with conscious, personal being. One key to this understanding is relatedness, but not just in the usual inter-personal sense. God is self-relatedness; it is relatedness itself.
God is not a Supreme Being of a higher order above, or among other beings; nor is it very helpful to say that God is Being itself. The God experience arises in the contemplation of mind upon the relation of its essence and its existence. The ultimate realization of God is that God's essence is existence. Answering my daughter Maggie’s question, “How big is God’s mind, Daddy?” I once replied, perhaps cryptically, “About as big as your mind, I suppose. If there were no minds to know God, there’d be no God to know.”
Adyashanti says, “Because of an innocent misunderstanding, you think that you are a human being in the relative world seeking the experience of Oneness, but actually you are the One expressing itself as the experience of being a human being.” As Alan Watts put it, “Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.” I have put it this way: “We are Being itself experiencing itself being experienced.” Experienced by whom? By itself, of course.
Watts explained further, “God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that’s the whole fun of it – just what he wanted to do.”
In the ancient Hebrew mythos, the presence of God astonishes Moses, appearing as though in a burning bush that is nevertheless not consumed. Moses asks God’s name. God replies, Eyeh-Asher-Eyeh (written YHWH, in translation pronounced, “Yahweh”) – “I am that I am.” In God, essence and existence are One, and it is significant that this realization is made by a human being. It could not be otherwise. It is said we are made in God’s image, because it is in human reflection that God recognizes himself, or herself, or itself, and remembers that existence itself was all no accident, after all. “Peek-a-boo! I see you!”
Sometimes this realization occurs to us when we recognize ourselves in other beings, other people. The Beatles sang, “I am He as you are He, and you are me, and we are all together.” This can be heard as a sort of koan – with startling, silly, ecstatic names of God: “I am the Eggman; they are the Eggmen; I am the Walrus! Goo goo g’joob!”
For me, a metaphor of raindrops is apt. We, living beings, are like raindrops falling from on high. We are formed, mind and body, in incomprehensible complexity like drops of water, as though from diffuse, disintegrated water molecules suspended in clouds of being. We are separate droplets, distinct from one another, only for the short time we are falling to our destiny. We take form as precipitating raindrops do; we grow, experience individuality, take on elements present in our environment and incorporate them, and are buffeted by the forces of nature as we fall inexorably to earth, eventually to merge into oneness, in pools and streams that flow into oceans of being. Thence the molecules that once were contained in falling drops rise again, evaporating into the atmosphere, moving over the face of the earth in great cumulonimbus clouds where, formed in chaos, droplets fall again in countless numbers, again and over again, for aeons.
The numberless elemental atoms and molecules of which we are formed once existed in other forms, in other entities, mineral, vegetable, and animal. Once, before the world and life began, we were interstellar particles, stardust forged in the centers of brilliant suns. In the fullness of time the form and substance that is us, body and mind, will dissolve and these elemental particles will then participate in the forms of other bodies, other minds, again and over again, ever changing, forever. Is all this accidental? Is it meaningless? Remember who you are!
Amen.
By Jim Weller
What people call God is the self-conscious relation of personal being with Being itself; and vice-versa, if you prefer – the relation of Being itself with conscious, personal being. One key to this understanding is relatedness, but not just in the usual inter-personal sense. God is self-relatedness; it is relatedness itself.
God is not a Supreme Being of a higher order above, or among other beings; nor is it very helpful to say that God is Being itself. The God experience arises in the contemplation of mind upon the relation of its essence and its existence. The ultimate realization of God is that God's essence is existence. Answering my daughter Maggie’s question, “How big is God’s mind, Daddy?” I once replied, perhaps cryptically, “About as big as your mind, I suppose. If there were no minds to know God, there’d be no God to know.”
Adyashanti says, “Because of an innocent misunderstanding, you think that you are a human being in the relative world seeking the experience of Oneness, but actually you are the One expressing itself as the experience of being a human being.” As Alan Watts put it, “Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.” I have put it this way: “We are Being itself experiencing itself being experienced.” Experienced by whom? By itself, of course.
Watts explained further, “God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that’s the whole fun of it – just what he wanted to do.”
In the ancient Hebrew mythos, the presence of God astonishes Moses, appearing as though in a burning bush that is nevertheless not consumed. Moses asks God’s name. God replies, Eyeh-Asher-Eyeh (written YHWH, in translation pronounced, “Yahweh”) – “I am that I am.” In God, essence and existence are One, and it is significant that this realization is made by a human being. It could not be otherwise. It is said we are made in God’s image, because it is in human reflection that God recognizes himself, or herself, or itself, and remembers that existence itself was all no accident, after all. “Peek-a-boo! I see you!”
Sometimes this realization occurs to us when we recognize ourselves in other beings, other people. The Beatles sang, “I am He as you are He, and you are me, and we are all together.” This can be heard as a sort of koan – with startling, silly, ecstatic names of God: “I am the Eggman; they are the Eggmen; I am the Walrus! Goo goo g’joob!”
For me, a metaphor of raindrops is apt. We, living beings, are like raindrops falling from on high. We are formed, mind and body, in incomprehensible complexity like drops of water, as though from diffuse, disintegrated water molecules suspended in clouds of being. We are separate droplets, distinct from one another, only for the short time we are falling to our destiny. We take form as precipitating raindrops do; we grow, experience individuality, take on elements present in our environment and incorporate them, and are buffeted by the forces of nature as we fall inexorably to earth, eventually to merge into oneness, in pools and streams that flow into oceans of being. Thence the molecules that once were contained in falling drops rise again, evaporating into the atmosphere, moving over the face of the earth in great cumulonimbus clouds where, formed in chaos, droplets fall again in countless numbers, again and over again, for aeons.
The numberless elemental atoms and molecules of which we are formed once existed in other forms, in other entities, mineral, vegetable, and animal. Once, before the world and life began, we were interstellar particles, stardust forged in the centers of brilliant suns. In the fullness of time the form and substance that is us, body and mind, will dissolve and these elemental particles will then participate in the forms of other bodies, other minds, again and over again, ever changing, forever. Is all this accidental? Is it meaningless? Remember who you are!
Amen.
What Is God?
August 19, 2002
By Jim Weller
What is God? We cannot prove that God is – not objectively, because God is not an object. You may say, ergo, there is no God. But I say, God is the subject.
We know God only subjectively. We experience God in our selves. To pray to an objective God is idolatry. God is the soul, in you, and in me.
God is the holy spirit, the spirit of life that we know as our uttermost selves. God is your innermost being. God is being itself, and you are in being – that you know by your own experience. You are in God. You are of God. God is nothing other. There is no other than God.
This you can only know by your own experience. And faith is the state of knowing that comes of this experience, gnosis. Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned with knowing being itself. Being itself is divine being, and is known by your own incontrovertible being. In this, you can have faith. In this, you can be truly ultimately concerned.
Now, you may deny God. You may deny the idea of God. You may deny the existence of God. But you cannot deny existence itself. You do exist. And you must believe that all that you can know by your own experience does exist. And you probably believe, as I do, that much, much more – ever so much more than you or I can ever experience, more than any one can ever know, does indeed exist.
So what? So, while you may very well think of all of existence as an incomprehensibly vast, endless collection of objects, that could, in principle, all be objectively known and proven to exist, it may not have occurred to you that all of existence could not be, without you.
All of being – all that ever was, is now, ever shall be – had to be, in order for you to be. Otherwise, you would not be you, just so. And you, certainly, are. You are in being. You are being itself. In order for being itself to be known, you – and I – must be. And, indeed, we jolly well are, aren’t we?
In our knowing, we are the consciousness, and the conscience, of being itself. God is the subject. God is that which experiences in us, and God is the experience. God is that which experiences itself experiencing being.
We are it. It is us. When you come to know the truth of this, you know the ultimate truth. And the truth shall set you free.
I’m not sure whether this is a sermon, or a philosophy lecture. It is a transcription of wee hours musings. In any case, it seems meant to be like a Zen koan - a riddle that, in its non-sense or circularity, breaks a mental block, allowing understanding to flow through.
By Jim Weller
What is God? We cannot prove that God is – not objectively, because God is not an object. You may say, ergo, there is no God. But I say, God is the subject.
We know God only subjectively. We experience God in our selves. To pray to an objective God is idolatry. God is the soul, in you, and in me.
God is the holy spirit, the spirit of life that we know as our uttermost selves. God is your innermost being. God is being itself, and you are in being – that you know by your own experience. You are in God. You are of God. God is nothing other. There is no other than God.
This you can only know by your own experience. And faith is the state of knowing that comes of this experience, gnosis. Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned with knowing being itself. Being itself is divine being, and is known by your own incontrovertible being. In this, you can have faith. In this, you can be truly ultimately concerned.
Now, you may deny God. You may deny the idea of God. You may deny the existence of God. But you cannot deny existence itself. You do exist. And you must believe that all that you can know by your own experience does exist. And you probably believe, as I do, that much, much more – ever so much more than you or I can ever experience, more than any one can ever know, does indeed exist.
So what? So, while you may very well think of all of existence as an incomprehensibly vast, endless collection of objects, that could, in principle, all be objectively known and proven to exist, it may not have occurred to you that all of existence could not be, without you.
All of being – all that ever was, is now, ever shall be – had to be, in order for you to be. Otherwise, you would not be you, just so. And you, certainly, are. You are in being. You are being itself. In order for being itself to be known, you – and I – must be. And, indeed, we jolly well are, aren’t we?
In our knowing, we are the consciousness, and the conscience, of being itself. God is the subject. God is that which experiences in us, and God is the experience. God is that which experiences itself experiencing being.
We are it. It is us. When you come to know the truth of this, you know the ultimate truth. And the truth shall set you free.
I’m not sure whether this is a sermon, or a philosophy lecture. It is a transcription of wee hours musings. In any case, it seems meant to be like a Zen koan - a riddle that, in its non-sense or circularity, breaks a mental block, allowing understanding to flow through.
How Big Is God?
21 June 1994
By Jim Weller
“How big is God, Daddy? Is he bigger than a house?”, asked Anna, my firstborn and the more pensive of my two little girls, one afternoon while we sat together on the front porch railing after their preschool day.
“God is not a person, or a thing you can see, or touch, or hear,” I answered her, quite as thoughtfully. “God is . . . a feeling inside you. God is how you feel when you know you are alive. God is what you feel when you love someone. When you say, ‘I love you,’ you feel God in you.”
Anna sat quietly for half a minute, enjoying her ice cream cone. “I love you, Daddy”, she said.
“I know, sweetie. I love you, too. Listen. Do you remember the day we were at the beach, when you were kneeling in the wet sand, with your back to the waves, and you’d laugh as each wave surprised you, splashing over your shoulders? Maggie was playing by herself, near us on the big rocks, and you and I were there in the surf, and I’d laugh when you laughed, and you looked up at me then and yelled, ‘I’m haaaap-py!’ Do you remember how good you felt then? That was God, laughing inside you.”
By Jim Weller
“How big is God, Daddy? Is he bigger than a house?”, asked Anna, my firstborn and the more pensive of my two little girls, one afternoon while we sat together on the front porch railing after their preschool day.
“God is not a person, or a thing you can see, or touch, or hear,” I answered her, quite as thoughtfully. “God is . . . a feeling inside you. God is how you feel when you know you are alive. God is what you feel when you love someone. When you say, ‘I love you,’ you feel God in you.”
Anna sat quietly for half a minute, enjoying her ice cream cone. “I love you, Daddy”, she said.
“I know, sweetie. I love you, too. Listen. Do you remember the day we were at the beach, when you were kneeling in the wet sand, with your back to the waves, and you’d laugh as each wave surprised you, splashing over your shoulders? Maggie was playing by herself, near us on the big rocks, and you and I were there in the surf, and I’d laugh when you laughed, and you looked up at me then and yelled, ‘I’m haaaap-py!’ Do you remember how good you felt then? That was God, laughing inside you.”
Thursday, July 29, 2004
It’s Just War – Oxymoron or Moral Criteria?
21 March 2004
By Jim Weller
Two score and twelve weeks ago, our moral forfeiture brought forth upon this continent a new nationalism, conceived in infamy and dedicated to the proposition that all men, all women, and all nations, are created equal under the supremacy of the armed forces of the United States of America. Now we are engaged in a great war against any and all insurgencies, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met in a fragile sanctuary on this anniversary, reflecting together upon the implications of our present state of interminable war.
I’ve used the term, “Wehrmacht,” to refer to the United States military-industrial complex, particularly under our present political leadership, with reference to the Nazi war machine of the last century. “Wehrmacht” was the name of the German armed forces during the Third Reich, 1933 to 1945. The direct translation is “defense forces.” I think there are deeply disturbing parallels between that and the 21st century militarism of the United States, which has now committed itself to the most egregious campaign of international aggression since the time of the Second World War. I am reminded, too, that history is an assiduous teacher – when we have forgotten its lessons, it repeats them.
I know my use of this language has deeply affronted at least one of my friends, who spent much of his life in the service of the U.S. military. Perhaps it offends others as well. I don’t mean to impugn your honor, or your personal worth and dignity. I do mean to confront the evil that is done when we justify war as an instrument of political power. Our nation’s present and past uses of its overwhelming military force are an abominable affront to human morality, by which all humanity is profoundly aggrieved.
I will try to avoid confusing abstract issues with concrete human conditions. War and peace, in the final analysis, are not abstractions. They are matters of life and death. They are brought about, in every instance, not by abstract causes, but by the intentional agency of free will.
I assert, in concrete terms, that war is inherently evil. To willfully engage in war is to justify concrete evil. To disavow war – and that is what I call each and every one of us to do – is to proclaim the moral imperative of “just peace.” To theorize “just war” is not only to abstract, but to falsify the truth. It is no less false than to aver, as in George Orwell’s doublespeak, that “War Is Peace.” War and peace are dichotomous. One cannot conclude logically from the other. The one can arise only in negation of the other. To negate the common good of peace, as our government has done, is to make a shameless mockery of the moral value of justice.
A growing number of people today believe that war is always wrong; that no circumstances ever justify one nation’s taking up arms against another. Is this view ethically sound?
To attempt a final analysis of terms in justification of war, for all times and all circumstances, would be more than futile; it would be useless. The premise here is rather that the present era is circumstantially different from other times when nations have engaged in war. For that reason, moral rationales that may have pertained in the past are no longer fitting. The view is that present day conditions of international warfare are such that no real-world war can be conducted under the kind of circumstances that once might have allowed so-called “just war” theory to stand to reason.
Traditional justifications, in this view, are no longer deemed reasonable, because the primary standards of “just war” theory, those of “just cause,” “non-combatant immunity,” and “proportionality of means and ends,” can no longer be upheld.
Traditionally, the only justifiable “causes,” that is the reasons and purposes, for war, are (1) national defense against foreign aggression, and (2) intervention in behalf of a nation subjected to foreign aggression (or counter-intervention against an unjust international intervention, or international intervention in warfare between mutual aggressors.) Under any circumstances other than these instances of justifiable defense, the entry into warfare, for any of a multitude of conceivable “reasons of state,” has been regarded as constituting the crime of international aggression.
In traditional moral reasoning, “just cause” is a necessary condition, but is not itself sufficient, to justify warfare. Additionally, the ways and means of waging war must not violate the rights of non-combatants to life, liberty, and property. The fighting – the damage, destruction, and killing – is to be limited to the persons and properties of the embattled armies. Only military personnel and war materiel are supposed to be put in harm’s way.
Further, the extent of the violence engaged in and the severity of the damage done is to be constrained by a sense of just proportion, such that, in meeting the requirements of defense, the force employed does not exceed that which is reasonably necessary to counter aggression. Escalation of warfare into excessive or disproportionate violence, though begun in justifiable defense, itself becomes criminal aggression.
Traditional proportionality in “just war” theory also includes the idea of a “reasonable expectation of success.” When violent means resorted to in defense, resistance, or retaliation cannot reasonably be expected to bring about an end to the aggression defended against, the defensive warfare cannot be justified as “proportionate” in its violence. In other words, defense would be futile, senseless, reckless, and wrongful – just as wrong as the aggression itself. Indiscriminate violence in defense against aggression would be just as wrong.
Since the advent of mechanized warfare and especially with the predominance of hugely destructive means of long-range bombardment, wars waged by national armies and armadas cannot be engaged in without the unconscionable harm to non-combatants now euphemistically called “collateral damage.” The recent development of so-called “smart weapons” notwithstanding, all warfare now entails much more damage and destruction of “civilian infrastructure,” and killing and injury of “innocent civilians” – often deliberate and intentional – than it does strictly military casualties. Moreover, the technical facility with which modern military attacks and counterattacks are carried out, with relative impunity, by far-away commanders and war equipment operators, make conventions in restraint of violence problematic, if not meaningless.
Furthermore, the complex world we live in is so interconnected economically and politically, and so thoroughly militarized, that it is virtually impossible for a “just cause” for war to be clearly distinguished. When, even in case of response against open aggression or atrocity, are the supposedly just motives of the rulers of powerful nations unmixed with avarice, ambition, or obdurate ideology?
These are some of the reasons why people have come to believe that international warfare is categorically unjustifiable and immoral, and I am not hesitant to identify myself as one of them. Let’s examine the obligations, ideals, and consequences involved in this moral analysis.
Ideologues intent upon war invariably argue that the first obligation of a national government is to defend its citizens against attack by potential enemies. This presumes, of course, the condition of enmity, of clear and present danger of attack by armed adversaries. Such conditions undoubtedly do exist in today’s world. And the duty to resist aggression is a traditionally recognized element in “just war” theory.
Nevertheless, these conditions of enmity do not exist for no reason. Threatening nations always perceive themselves, usually correctly, as being threatened, and actually aggrieved, by the enemies armed against them. War is the actualization of mutual enmity between armed forces prepared for war. Thus, as Albert Einstein is said to have commented, “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
A state of constantly potential warfare can only be ended, and war prevented, by ceasing the aggravations that create international enmity. A powerful nation’s conversion to waging peace would entail its discontinuation of the cultural and economic antagonisms that prevail among human societies, and, contrary to prevailing policies of state, its voluntary national disarmament. Only the powerful nation that would dare to be first to beat its swords into ploughshares, and then give them to the poor of the world, can lead the community of nations toward peaceful coexistence.
In contradiction of the conventional obligation to “protect and defend” the nation by military preparedness, it is the truer obligation to humanity to prepare for peace by ceasing to threaten, aggrieve, and oppress. “National security” would be better attained through conversion to an ethic of cooperation and reconciliation, instead of competition and conflict, that is, to “love thine enemies,” and “love thy neighbor as thyself.”
When it comes to supposedly moral “justifications” of war in concrete practice, rather than abstract principle, two diametrically opposing ideals, war and peace, are conflated. Lasting peace is never achieved by means of war. The assertion that peaceful ends can be brought about by warlike means is a tragic lie. War accomplishes only death and destruction; winning a war can bring about only a temporary remission of armed conflict.
The waging of war begets more war. The nation that commits itself to readiness for war upholds war as its ideal. Only a nation that is committed to no war, and which actively seeks the good of others, instead of pursuing its own gain at the expense of others, can promote the ideal of peace. The powerful nation which is ready, willing, and able to wage overwhelmingly destructive warfare cannot serve as a peacemaker. Its defining ideal is war, not peace.
Demagogues exhorting populations to accept and support war invoke other oft-supposed obligations and ideals, but these are never more than cynical misuses of common human aspirations. Their traducements assert putative obligations in support of universal ideals, such as defending human rights against abuses, preserving individual freedom and prosperity, and promoting democracy. These are cruel charades.
The consequences of war in the 21st century can entail no such ideals, but only their opposites. These inevitable outcomes are central to the conviction that war, in any circumstances, is no longer a moral option. The potential harm to humans and their habitations, and to other living things, in any war carried out by a major military power today, ranges from catastrophic to apocalyptic. It can only result in enormous human grief and suffering, and a certainty of future violent conflict. The effects of war today are unmitigated evil. No good can come of it. Assertions to the contrary, that beneficial ends can come of the terrible means of modern warfare, are damned lies.
Among the obligations, ideals, and consequences involved in these considerations, the consequences are of the greatest concern. The consequences of war negate the positive obligations of national defense and national security, and the ideal of peace. The consequences of war obviate the falsely invoked ideals of the demagogue. Only the monstrous ideal of war itself, of military domination, which is concomitantly held paramount and denied by its greatest promoters, is met with in the consequences of war.
Is it ever really the case that no alternative to war is available to powerful modern nations? I think not. There are always a myriad of policy choices for resolution of international grievances. A will to peace is the only way to prevent war. Peace is the way. War, in reality, is no more the moral last resort reserved in “just war” theorization. It is the proximate resort of the will to coercive political power.
The end of a moral analysis is to decide which choice is most ethical. The answer is plain and simple. It is “to be or not to be,” that is, to be a warlike nation employing evil means for inhumane purposes, or not. A “just” war is no longer possible, if indeed it ever was.
By Jim Weller
Two score and twelve weeks ago, our moral forfeiture brought forth upon this continent a new nationalism, conceived in infamy and dedicated to the proposition that all men, all women, and all nations, are created equal under the supremacy of the armed forces of the United States of America. Now we are engaged in a great war against any and all insurgencies, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met in a fragile sanctuary on this anniversary, reflecting together upon the implications of our present state of interminable war.
I’ve used the term, “Wehrmacht,” to refer to the United States military-industrial complex, particularly under our present political leadership, with reference to the Nazi war machine of the last century. “Wehrmacht” was the name of the German armed forces during the Third Reich, 1933 to 1945. The direct translation is “defense forces.” I think there are deeply disturbing parallels between that and the 21st century militarism of the United States, which has now committed itself to the most egregious campaign of international aggression since the time of the Second World War. I am reminded, too, that history is an assiduous teacher – when we have forgotten its lessons, it repeats them.
I know my use of this language has deeply affronted at least one of my friends, who spent much of his life in the service of the U.S. military. Perhaps it offends others as well. I don’t mean to impugn your honor, or your personal worth and dignity. I do mean to confront the evil that is done when we justify war as an instrument of political power. Our nation’s present and past uses of its overwhelming military force are an abominable affront to human morality, by which all humanity is profoundly aggrieved.
I will try to avoid confusing abstract issues with concrete human conditions. War and peace, in the final analysis, are not abstractions. They are matters of life and death. They are brought about, in every instance, not by abstract causes, but by the intentional agency of free will.
I assert, in concrete terms, that war is inherently evil. To willfully engage in war is to justify concrete evil. To disavow war – and that is what I call each and every one of us to do – is to proclaim the moral imperative of “just peace.” To theorize “just war” is not only to abstract, but to falsify the truth. It is no less false than to aver, as in George Orwell’s doublespeak, that “War Is Peace.” War and peace are dichotomous. One cannot conclude logically from the other. The one can arise only in negation of the other. To negate the common good of peace, as our government has done, is to make a shameless mockery of the moral value of justice.
A growing number of people today believe that war is always wrong; that no circumstances ever justify one nation’s taking up arms against another. Is this view ethically sound?
To attempt a final analysis of terms in justification of war, for all times and all circumstances, would be more than futile; it would be useless. The premise here is rather that the present era is circumstantially different from other times when nations have engaged in war. For that reason, moral rationales that may have pertained in the past are no longer fitting. The view is that present day conditions of international warfare are such that no real-world war can be conducted under the kind of circumstances that once might have allowed so-called “just war” theory to stand to reason.
Traditional justifications, in this view, are no longer deemed reasonable, because the primary standards of “just war” theory, those of “just cause,” “non-combatant immunity,” and “proportionality of means and ends,” can no longer be upheld.
Traditionally, the only justifiable “causes,” that is the reasons and purposes, for war, are (1) national defense against foreign aggression, and (2) intervention in behalf of a nation subjected to foreign aggression (or counter-intervention against an unjust international intervention, or international intervention in warfare between mutual aggressors.) Under any circumstances other than these instances of justifiable defense, the entry into warfare, for any of a multitude of conceivable “reasons of state,” has been regarded as constituting the crime of international aggression.
In traditional moral reasoning, “just cause” is a necessary condition, but is not itself sufficient, to justify warfare. Additionally, the ways and means of waging war must not violate the rights of non-combatants to life, liberty, and property. The fighting – the damage, destruction, and killing – is to be limited to the persons and properties of the embattled armies. Only military personnel and war materiel are supposed to be put in harm’s way.
Further, the extent of the violence engaged in and the severity of the damage done is to be constrained by a sense of just proportion, such that, in meeting the requirements of defense, the force employed does not exceed that which is reasonably necessary to counter aggression. Escalation of warfare into excessive or disproportionate violence, though begun in justifiable defense, itself becomes criminal aggression.
Traditional proportionality in “just war” theory also includes the idea of a “reasonable expectation of success.” When violent means resorted to in defense, resistance, or retaliation cannot reasonably be expected to bring about an end to the aggression defended against, the defensive warfare cannot be justified as “proportionate” in its violence. In other words, defense would be futile, senseless, reckless, and wrongful – just as wrong as the aggression itself. Indiscriminate violence in defense against aggression would be just as wrong.
Since the advent of mechanized warfare and especially with the predominance of hugely destructive means of long-range bombardment, wars waged by national armies and armadas cannot be engaged in without the unconscionable harm to non-combatants now euphemistically called “collateral damage.” The recent development of so-called “smart weapons” notwithstanding, all warfare now entails much more damage and destruction of “civilian infrastructure,” and killing and injury of “innocent civilians” – often deliberate and intentional – than it does strictly military casualties. Moreover, the technical facility with which modern military attacks and counterattacks are carried out, with relative impunity, by far-away commanders and war equipment operators, make conventions in restraint of violence problematic, if not meaningless.
Furthermore, the complex world we live in is so interconnected economically and politically, and so thoroughly militarized, that it is virtually impossible for a “just cause” for war to be clearly distinguished. When, even in case of response against open aggression or atrocity, are the supposedly just motives of the rulers of powerful nations unmixed with avarice, ambition, or obdurate ideology?
These are some of the reasons why people have come to believe that international warfare is categorically unjustifiable and immoral, and I am not hesitant to identify myself as one of them. Let’s examine the obligations, ideals, and consequences involved in this moral analysis.
Ideologues intent upon war invariably argue that the first obligation of a national government is to defend its citizens against attack by potential enemies. This presumes, of course, the condition of enmity, of clear and present danger of attack by armed adversaries. Such conditions undoubtedly do exist in today’s world. And the duty to resist aggression is a traditionally recognized element in “just war” theory.
Nevertheless, these conditions of enmity do not exist for no reason. Threatening nations always perceive themselves, usually correctly, as being threatened, and actually aggrieved, by the enemies armed against them. War is the actualization of mutual enmity between armed forces prepared for war. Thus, as Albert Einstein is said to have commented, “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
A state of constantly potential warfare can only be ended, and war prevented, by ceasing the aggravations that create international enmity. A powerful nation’s conversion to waging peace would entail its discontinuation of the cultural and economic antagonisms that prevail among human societies, and, contrary to prevailing policies of state, its voluntary national disarmament. Only the powerful nation that would dare to be first to beat its swords into ploughshares, and then give them to the poor of the world, can lead the community of nations toward peaceful coexistence.
In contradiction of the conventional obligation to “protect and defend” the nation by military preparedness, it is the truer obligation to humanity to prepare for peace by ceasing to threaten, aggrieve, and oppress. “National security” would be better attained through conversion to an ethic of cooperation and reconciliation, instead of competition and conflict, that is, to “love thine enemies,” and “love thy neighbor as thyself.”
When it comes to supposedly moral “justifications” of war in concrete practice, rather than abstract principle, two diametrically opposing ideals, war and peace, are conflated. Lasting peace is never achieved by means of war. The assertion that peaceful ends can be brought about by warlike means is a tragic lie. War accomplishes only death and destruction; winning a war can bring about only a temporary remission of armed conflict.
The waging of war begets more war. The nation that commits itself to readiness for war upholds war as its ideal. Only a nation that is committed to no war, and which actively seeks the good of others, instead of pursuing its own gain at the expense of others, can promote the ideal of peace. The powerful nation which is ready, willing, and able to wage overwhelmingly destructive warfare cannot serve as a peacemaker. Its defining ideal is war, not peace.
Demagogues exhorting populations to accept and support war invoke other oft-supposed obligations and ideals, but these are never more than cynical misuses of common human aspirations. Their traducements assert putative obligations in support of universal ideals, such as defending human rights against abuses, preserving individual freedom and prosperity, and promoting democracy. These are cruel charades.
The consequences of war in the 21st century can entail no such ideals, but only their opposites. These inevitable outcomes are central to the conviction that war, in any circumstances, is no longer a moral option. The potential harm to humans and their habitations, and to other living things, in any war carried out by a major military power today, ranges from catastrophic to apocalyptic. It can only result in enormous human grief and suffering, and a certainty of future violent conflict. The effects of war today are unmitigated evil. No good can come of it. Assertions to the contrary, that beneficial ends can come of the terrible means of modern warfare, are damned lies.
Among the obligations, ideals, and consequences involved in these considerations, the consequences are of the greatest concern. The consequences of war negate the positive obligations of national defense and national security, and the ideal of peace. The consequences of war obviate the falsely invoked ideals of the demagogue. Only the monstrous ideal of war itself, of military domination, which is concomitantly held paramount and denied by its greatest promoters, is met with in the consequences of war.
Is it ever really the case that no alternative to war is available to powerful modern nations? I think not. There are always a myriad of policy choices for resolution of international grievances. A will to peace is the only way to prevent war. Peace is the way. War, in reality, is no more the moral last resort reserved in “just war” theorization. It is the proximate resort of the will to coercive political power.
The end of a moral analysis is to decide which choice is most ethical. The answer is plain and simple. It is “to be or not to be,” that is, to be a warlike nation employing evil means for inhumane purposes, or not. A “just” war is no longer possible, if indeed it ever was.
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