The Afterlife Part 2: Justice

At the beginning, some other posts of mind on the afterlife:


The Afterlife 1: Sources for Our Speech : basically, where my ideas about the afterlife come from.

The Afterlife 3: Resurrection

The Afterlife 4: Vision

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We believe...he is seated at the right hand of the Father; he will come again to judge the living and the dead...
                               
                                 - the Nicene Creed

Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ...thou shalt come to be our judge...
                               
                                 - Te Deum


There are about a million ways to jump into a discussion on the afterlife, and I have been thinking for the past couple weeks how I would kickstart this series of posts. I kept circling back around to the idea of justice because I think it is absolutely pervasive  in the Scriptures and Christian tradition, despite widespread confusion, and a key to many of the other discussions we will get into over the next several weeks. One thing we need to do, though, is retool our thinking about God's justice. For the most part, when people think of the Final Judgement, they tend only to emphasize a wrathful God coming to wreak havoc on earth. I think this idea is a distortion of the actual Scriptural emphasis on God's judgment, and we will try to rehabilitate the concept of justice and judgment here, if I can be allowed such a phrase.

God's justice has many aspects to it in the Scriptures, but I would like to note several parts.

1. God is seen to have given commands which we are to obey in order to lead a life of prosperity and wholeness (cf. Deut. 30: "Choose life"). 
2. God preserves justice in a moral order, rewarding the just and punishing the wicked.
3. God's preservation of justice includes protecting the weak and overthrowing the arrogant rulers. 
4. God's preservation of justice also includes safeguarding the flourishing of all creation and human society. Justness includes the proper (think rectus, right, rectify, correct) functioning of all things. 

(The connection between sin, the moral order, and judgment on creation and human relationships occurs throughout the Bible in a huge theme I can't talk about with out creating a much larger post A couple quick examples. Adam's sin and that of his descendants leads to an ever-growing curse on creation and the degeneracy of human society, Gen. 3-7; the consequence of sin for Israel was the ruin of the land's fruitfulness Deut. 28; when an Israelite king reigned and ensured justice, all the land and society was meant to flourish Ps. 72; Isa. 32) 

At this point, I hope you've noticed something. The way I am describing things doesn't actually seem to reflect the way the world works. While our environment seems relatively orderly, all of us could probably point to any number of things in the world which appear to prevent life from flourishing on earth, whether it is disease or the ecological crisis. Likewise, most of us could probably note about a million ways in which injustice and evil seems to be running rampant. For the most part, it seems as if those who are unscrupulous are doing pretty well. The number of dictators inflicting genocides on various ethnic groups in the past century would also seem to belie God's promise to ensure justice and preserve any sort of moral order. So, despite what the I've outlined above as some Scriptural emphases, it appears that the good do not always flourish, and the prosperous and powerful wicked aren't dropping dead in the streets right after swindling and killing the poor.

Of course, this disjunction provokes a number of answers within the Bible itself. In many of the Psalms and in Proverbs, when the wicked flourish and attempt to grind other people under their boots, God's justice is supposed to mean that such a state will not continue forever. So, sometimes the flourishing of the wicked is seen as something temporary, but at times it is seen as God's way of testing his people, and at other times there is no clear answer. In some of the later prophetic  literature of the Old Testament (click here and here for examples) and into the intertestamental literature, we start to see something rather different. It is now thought that the righteous might be handed over to the wicked for a time, but God is going to intervene in a rather dramatic way in the future, inflicting judgment upon the wicked and rewarding the righteous in what we might call a global, visible way, rather than on an individual basis, making a new heavens and earth (or new kingdom) in which righteousness dwells. God will execute justice. Until that time, though, the earth is under the power of evil.

Like I said concerning resurrection in my previous post, we have a theme here which comes up mostly in the later literature of the Old Testament but which is everywhere assumed in the background thought of the New Testament (Oscar Cullmann's Christ and Time, called this thought an "eschatological dualism" which runs through the substructure of history).  In the New Testament, it is much more of a commonplace that the wicked have a leg-up on God's people and that the present time is characterized by suffering and evil.

I would like to discuss a couple specific texts from the New Testament in order to drive this point concerning justice and suffering home a little more. First, let's look at Jesus' birth. When Mary receives the news that she is to bear a child, she is told, "He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David" (Lk 1.32). Just a little later, when Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth, Mary says these words concerning what Jesus' birth means:

He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit. 
He has brought down the powerful and lifted up the lowly. 
He has filled the hungry with good things, but the rich he has sent away empty. (Lk 1.51-54)

Notice a couple things which are assumed here. Suffering is assumed to be a present reality. There are hungry people living on the bottom rung of society, and the proud are comfortably seated on their thrones. But, Jesus' coming as the king heralds the arrival of justice, in the fullest and greatest sense. I would like to focus on this sense of justice and God's judgment because, as I said above, we almost need to rehabilitate our conception of judgment. God coming to judge the world is not a situation in which God punishes a bunch of people who are just trying to live their lives and do the right thing. Rather, God comes to right the wrongs which are unendingly, visibly, and openly perpetrated on the earth; he comes to end the reign of terror and oppression, in which everyone uses their neighbor for their own purposes, rather than recognizing that all were created in God's image. This sort of vision of God's justice is what is at play in Jesus' own self-understanding and preaching, in which he proclaims that "the first shall be last and the last shall be first" or when he says "the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Lk. 4:18-19).

Well, you might be saying to yourself, "That sounds good!" Of course it does. Who doesn't want to imagine a world more characterized by equality and a lack of fear, by full stomachs for the hungry, by peace and prosperity? This is clearly what we might :) call the Gospel, the good news, the announcement of the Kingdom of God coming to earth. I would like us to hold this sort of vision in their mind when they try to think of the End and the Final Judgment. I also want to emphasize that this understanding of God's justice is precisely what ought to define our total understanding of the afterlife. The world is not "running" properly; things are not as they ought to be. The just, the poor, and the oppressed are not flourishing. The unscrupulous, the wealthy, and the proud are running things, rather than fading like "the flower of the field." Here is how we could rehabilitate our vision of God's justice.

However, I'm going to give you the bad news which is, ultimately, a large part of the good news. All of us want to stand up and cheer when we hear that God is going to come right all wrongs. But that's because we imagine ourselves to be on the side of the right, on the side of God. What if we aren't?  This is the sort of thing we have to consider when we come across something like Joel 2 or Amos 5, excerpted below:

Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! 
It is darkness and not light!
As if a man fled from a lion...and a bear met him!
Or, went into the house and set his hand on a wall...
and a serpent bit him!
Is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light? 
Gloom with no brightness in it?!


Take away from me the noise of your songs: 
to the melody of your harps I will not listen!
But let justice roll down like waters, 
and let righteousness flow like an unending stream!

This section of Amos follows the prophet's call for the people to repent: "Seek the Lord and live, lest he break out like fire!" You see, when we imagine the day of the Lord as a day of light and celebration, we only look at one side, and we imagine ourselves not to be part of the problem. We attempt to line ourselves up on the "winning" side (the poor, the righteous, those who have been "the last" in society) in a way that is rather arrogant and more than a little premature. As St. Paul would remind us, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and injustice of people who suppress the truth" and "there is no one righteous, no not even one" (Rom. 1:18, 3:10).

To put it crudely, God is coming to judge the earth, deliver the suffering, and right all wrongs, and, if we don't consider how we're living in light of his justice, most of us are screwed. For we (including this writer) have been the ones inflicting the suffering, colluding with injustice, and committing all the wrongs. We have to recognize that we've been part of the problem before we can dream of being included in the solution.

All of this may seem, at best, rather awkward and, at worst, utterly horrible.We don't like to talk about sin, particularly when it impinges upon our own self-definition. We would all rather imagine that: "Everyone is doing just fine, and maybe I'm doing even better than most." However, I am convinced that it's impossible to think that sort of thought and still read the Scriptures on a daily basis, unless we're willing to pull a Jefferson or a Marcion and just chuck all the books that say things we find convicting or that make us uncomfortable. So, what are we to do, and how does this relate to the afterlife, which is supposed to be our theme in these posts?

Well, as for the "what do we do," I think we must heed the prophet's call:

Seek good and not evil, 
that you may live: 
and in this way,
the LORD of Hosts will be with you, 
as you have claimed.
Hate evil and love good 
and establish justice in the gate; 
it may be that the LORD, the God of Hosts, 
will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.  (Amos 5:14-15)


We acknowledge, first of all, that God's justice impinges first upon us and that we, even we Christians, have reason to fear God's judgment if we have not amended our lives and we are colluding with evil (again, in the fullest sense of the term). Second, we have to find a way of talking about God, his rule, and his justice in a way that holds these images together. God's justice is not about either freedom for the oppressed or judgment on human sin (who's doing the oppressing, after all?). It is about both. To recover this way of talking, we have to start by reading all the Scriptures, rather than picking those that suit our purpose or taste. How we go beyond there is another question for another day.

I think, along with this commitment to reading all our Scriptures, is the commitment to celebrating God's justice, even if we have yet to figure out all the tensions involved in the type of view I've outlined above. The best way to do this, I believe, is the daily recitation or singing of the Psalter. It is hard to view God's judgment in a negative way, if you spend your days singing:

Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the whole earth...
Declare his glory among the nations
 and his wonders among all peoples...
Tell it out among the nations: "The LORD is King!
He has made the world so firm that it cannot be moved; 
he will judge the peoples with equity."


Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; 
let the sea thunder and all that is in it;
let the field be joyful and all that is therein.


For then shall all the trees of the wood shout for joy before the Lord
when he comes, when he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness 
and the peoples with his truth. (Psalm 96, excerpts)

I could go on with more psalms and hymns, but we have one more question to consider. How does all this directly impinge upon the afterlife, the putative topic of our series here? I suppose some of it ought to be rather obvious, so I will simply sum up my point and let you think about (or question me on) the specifics. Needless to say, we have not covered everything related to this topic, but that's why I'm doing a whole series of posts.

1. God's justice in the afterlife is about making a world and a people right again. This rectification implies both good news and bad news: the weak will no longer be abused by the strong, but the strong don't get a free pass, so to speak. 
2. God's justice in the afterlife is not about punishing those innocently living their lives. Now, who is innocent is another type of question, and we had all best do some reflection on how we collude with evil. 
3. God's justice in the afterlife is meant to be something to celebrate, even if we don't understand how it all works. I suspect that we will come to understand it more when we accept in faith what we do not understand (or, possibly, cannot understand) and attempt to work things out from there. 

The Afterlife, Part 1: Sources for Our Speech

Some other thoughts also: 



The Afterlife 2: Justice


The Afterlife 3: Resurrection 


The Afterlife 4: Vision

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I would like to begin this series of posts on the afterlife by noting the major difficulties we face in constructing a Christian theological understanding of what happens when we die. I hope to outline the issues with our sources, as well as the topics which are easy to consider and those which are not. Again, as I said in my last post, I'm going to attempt a fairly thorough and honest engagement with the issues involved (at least, as I see them) in order to begin the process of shedding my fear of speaking about such controversies in the open. I'm also counting on my readers to bring up those issues which they are concerned about, whether those issues are in my posts or not. My presentation will be necessarily idiosyncratic, particularly without any engagement from others. But, I can promise that any feedback I receive will shape my posts as this series goes on.

Now, there are any number of difficulties about articulating a theology of post-mortem existence. But I believe the primary problem we face involves the question of sources. How does one find out what the afterlife is like? Who's going to tell you that isn't dead? I'll deal with this in another post, but I'd like to point out another way that I hope will inform our way.

On a purely speculative level, I think one of the most obvious ways any of us can decide what we think about life after death is by asking ourselves what we think about human beings and the world in general. What is a human being? What are we made of? What is the world and its make-up? This approach can help when sources fail.

We see this approach coming up in various Greco-Roman philosophies in the ancient Mediterranean. The natural philosopher Heraclitus believed that all matter was in a state of constant change. The body is only composed of the elements surrounding it, and it, too, will change at the time of death. The body, therefore, did not require respect after death because it was no longer held by any personality. On the other hand, Heraclitus was less sure about what happened to the soul at death because he wasn't sure that human beings had anything like a soul. He wavered back and forth on what happened to the human personality after death. Yet, his views seemed to be largely based on his take on the entire universe.

This trend continues in other philosophers. Plato's concepts of post-mortem soul migration and (possible) ascent to Divine Life depend on his understanding of human nature and the make-up of the universe. Similarly, Aristotle's thoughts on the afterlife rest on his reasoning about the nature of the soul, derived from observations of plant, animal, and human life. For Aristotle, we can only speak about the soul in terms which rely on what we have observed about our life in the body. So, he believes it is to make any sort of conclusion about the soul existing independently of the death of the body. The list could go on.

I think this approach to questions about the afterlife is generally correct. Our understanding about life after death will always relate to our understanding of human beings and the whole world. After I lay some groundwork in my first couple posts, I will likely head in this direction in order to flesh out the discussion. However, there is something rather distinctive about Christian theological speech and affirmation. It doesn't depend on an understanding of human nature or the universe which lacks information. We have distinct sources, and we have ideas which are not wholly derivatives of theoretical speculation or bare observation. This statement is not to deny that our understanding of the afterlife is influenced by various ideas derived from philosophy or science. It is simply to note that we have other things to work with.

What I am saying is that a Christian theological anthropology and cosmology is first of all distinctive because it draws deep from the classic Christian sources. I consider the main sources of theology, at the least, to include the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, informed and bounded about by the normative theological tradition embodied in the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene creed, and the Chalcedonian definition, as well as the theological interpretations and writings of the Church Fathers and all later theologians throughout Christian history. There are, to be sure, other ways of framing a theological discussion of the afterlife, but I think what I have outlined here is a bare minimum for starting such a discussion.

The most primary of the sources is the Bible because theology is, essentially, considering matters as they have been revealed, i.e. in the perspective provided by Scripture (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.1). Now, that is all well and good, but the difficulties I mentioned at the beginning of this post are most acute here. There are major difficulties in using the Bible to talk about the afterlife because the Bible doesn't really talk about life after death as much as we think it does, and it tends not to answer the questions we want to hear answered.

The Old Testament is notoriously silent and mysterious when speaking on the afterlife. The direct witness to something like physical resurrection, for example, only occurs in Daniel 12:1-3:

At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. There shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation until that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above, and those who turn many to righteousness shall shine like the stars forever and ever.

Other than this passage, there are no clear references to the afterlife or resurrection which are not very vague or open to interpretation (see 2 Samuel 12:14-23, for instance).

The new Testament presents us with another problem entirely. Quite suddenly, the New Testament gives a clear witness to and proclamation of resurrection. Indeed, the central message of New Testament (the resurrection of Jesus) is entirely dependent on a prior belief in general resurrection. That is, the New Testament everywhere assumes that God will, at some unknown point in time judge the whole world "in righteousness" and raise the righteous from their graves (and, quite often, the NT also affirms the wicked shall be raised). Yet, what the New Testament rarely comments on is what happens after death but before resurrection. In the words of Tom Wright, the New Testament is concerned more with "life after life-after-death" than with "life-after-death."

The reason I bring up these difficulties is that many of the questions and assumptions current in our popular culture have little to do with either the Bible or the mainstream theological tradition. So, the average person seems to have a number of assumptions regarding the geography of Heaven (or Hell, for that matter). Yet, most will be hard-pressed to point out where or whether these ideas originate in the Bible or in Christian theology. It often seems to me, in conversation, that the most people cobble together what they believe about the afterlife (particularly about Hell) from some mix of Greek myths, Dante's Inferno, what they can remember of Jonathan Edwards's Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and some horror film.

Beyond hellish geography, we could list a number of other ideas which come up in discussion of the afterlife: what happens immediately after death, how God punishes the wicked or rewards the good, what role do angels have, do "All Dogs Go To Heaven," etc.

We all need to engage in an act of discipline, myself included. Let us purge some of these ideas from our minds before we start our main discussion. Don't assume that we know what the afterlife looks like. And, above all, be ready to be surprised by our reading and discussion of the sources. They don't look the way any of us would imagine them to look, and they aren't going to answer all of our questions. But, they will tell us what we need to know.

What happens when you die?

For those who may have come on this site from googling a specific phrase ("what happens when you die?"), here are some links to four posts where I discuss my thoughts on the afterlife more directly.

The Afterlife 1: Sources for Our Speech : basically, where my ideas about the afterlife come from.

The Afterlife 2: Justice

The Afterlife 3: Resurrection

The Afterlife 4: Vision

This below, the original post, mostly deals with the difficulty of talking about death in public when someone personally asks you the question: "What happens when (you, me, my aunt, my beloved mother, etc.) die?"

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There are several things I have noticed about being a budding scholar of religion and a developing minister in graduate school at Harvard Divinity School. One thing which happens frequently in conversation runs something like this:

"You're in school? Where at?"

"I'm at Harvard Divinity School?"

After this long pause, one of three responses will come quickly hurtling out of my new-found acquaintance's mouth.

• "Oh, that's nice!" (generally said in an overly cheerful tone, followed by a couple fleeting glances around me as they desperately look for another conversation partner, and, finally, a long awkward silence)
• "Oh....you know I used to attend/still attend/would like to attend...." This is the response where they let me know that they either consider themselves "a raging atheist," "spiritual, but not religious" or where they covertly inform me (in hushed tones, since it's Cambridge, Mass.) that they, too, are one of the devout few.
• "Oh! So what do you think about....."

I find these responses rather interesting because I've noticed that something about telling people you attend Divinity School seems to be the green light for them to let down their hair concerning religious identity and their level of comfort with faith issues. I bring all of this up, though, to lead into a rather interesting encounter I had recently which are related to my more general Divinity School generated conversations.

I recently met an individual who hit me up with a rather different religious question than I've received for some time. What I mean is that the types of questions I tend to get after I unveil myself as a Divinity School student are, in one sense, purely academic. They concern interesting religious issues in the news or in society, perhaps even a difficult theological problem. But, I rarely ever receive a question which is personal or of obvious, direct import to both myself and the person asking the question. This trend is what made my recent encounter so interesting.

He asked me something deceptively basic. "So, what do you think happens when you die?"

Now, for me, the afterlife is a rather tricky thing to talk about. It's not because I lack ideas or have some sort of doubtful angst in regards to my faith. Rather, the afterlife can be a difficult topic to speak about with someone you don't know because that person brings with them a great deal of ideas and, for lack of a better term, emotional and spiritual baggage. Whatever you say about the afterlife, they will directly apply to a family member or friend. For example, if I were an unabashed materialist and told them that I think we slip into an endless oblivion at death, I've just let them know I think Aunt Tilly isn't up walking on streets of gold, but I think she became worm food.

Further, when you are a rather traditional Christian like myself, some of your beliefs about the afterlife don't make for light conversation. For example, when we say the Nicene Creed every Sunday, we confess that Jesus "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead." This confession, as you may imagine, carries some rather strong implications. Again, dear Aunt Tilly's fate might be less than positive.

As a result, I often think that it has become fashionable or customary for Christians to distance themselves from traditional theological concepts in order to appear more palatable to others. One doesn't wish to offend, after all. I've seen this trend particularly in this part of the country and at the school I attend, Harvard. But should we accept the category of "offense" when honestly queried concerning our beliefs?

I don't think so. One thing I had to come to terms with several years ago is the fact that my faith is offensive to others. In our culture, it often seems as if any genuine faith position will be offensive to someone, even if it is a fairly "inclusive" vision of the world or lacks that bedeviling and irritating "certainty" which is supposed to be so terrible about traditional forms of Christian faith. It seems clear, then, one's desire to be inclusive and non-judgmental doesn't seem to preclude the ability of others to find offense. Much more then, do we draw the ire of others when our faith is, in some sense, exclusive or even when we carry the barest amount of conviction in our beliefs.

So, if offense is not the category we should worry about (because we will always offend), what should we be concerned with when answering questions about our faith? I think telling the truth is the important category. An attempt to hide the actual details of our faith when honestly queried is simply an attempt to avoid the difficulty of being honest in the public square. Now, I do recognize the difficulties in speaking about this sort of thing (i.e. the afterlife) in public. You might look crazy, like someone who believes in elves or fairies. You might look like an angry, judgmental person (hardly the first impression anyone desires to give). But, what I think is more important is that avoiding the profession of your actual beliefs may make you "look" more palatable, but it will also make you dishonest, while you remain, in reality, unpalatable.

I think the actual issue we have with such topics is that we fear what it would mean to say them in public. In other words, we don't want to say something which will lead to our personal rejection on the part of our acquaintances, friends, or even our family.

I may be missing the point, and I would be interested to hear some people chime in who read this blog, particularly if they don't share my beliefs (for the sake of brevity, we'll just refer to the Nicene Creed). So, I'm inviting some commentary here. I'm looking for comments which deal with these questions:

1. When you ask someone about their faith, do you actually want to hear it? Or do you simply want to hear something palatable or attractive? Perhaps something unchallenging?
2. When you are queried concerning your beliefs (or lack thereof), do you edit yourself to avoid offending people? (e.g. do you give them the Disney version of the story?)
3. Is there some larger point we're missing here?

Finally, I would just like to signal that I notice I've hardly made a properly theological post on this site, despite my love for studying theology. So, I'm going to head in the direction signaled in this post by making a series of statements on the afterlife, that topic I most hate bringing up. View it as a type of spiritual discipline on my part, an attempt at putting to death that fear of rejection which I think underlies most hesitation to speak on religious issues with new acquaintances. For, I recognize that fear in myself, and I find it unacceptable.

That Brief Hiatus

Well, as you may have noticed, I haven't posted a thing for over a month. Now, lest you think that last post and storm of comments left me too fatigued to continue on, let me explain briefly what happened.

First, that last post and storm of comments did leave me a bit weary, and I decided to leave off blogging for about a week.

Second, that most terrible event, indeed, the event all bloggers fear occurred. My computer crashed. I was then left without Internet access for a little over two weeks. Yes, my world was turned upside down; no, I'm not going to spend a whole post talking about how much we depend on computers and the Internet (though, really, I never would have imagined I ever would be this dependent).

Third, once I finally did get a new computer, I had a nice little backlog of work to catch up on, all of which required Internet time. I've been slogging through all that for a bit, and I'm just about to emerge. As a result, I'm glad to announce that I've been simmering on another post and will publish that soon. To continue the metaphor, it's simply had to sit on the backburner for a while.

So, please keep tuned in, and I will be posting again in the next day or so.

Secularism, Unbelief, and Rationality Part 2

I'd like to start out by saying that I think my previous post rambled a bit more than it ought, for which I apologize to my readers. This issue (why is God's existence not obvious?) is a rather difficult question, and I struggled my way through that last post. I did mention, though, that I would attempt to provide my own answer to this question: how is it that the existence of God is so 'non-obvious' when God is the Creator of the world and the world was created to reveal God to humanity?

Well, here is my first stab at explaining this phenomenon. In line with my last post, I will be keeping "in-house" Christian language to a minimum.

To begin, we have to spend some time clearing a little conceptual ground which relates to whether Christianity is a natural or obvious belief structure. Charles Taylor notes in ch. 14 of A Secular Age that it took some time for unbelief/atheism to become an intellectually viable position. Taylor's point is an important one: it is hard to disbelieve when such a conceptual option is culturally unavailable. Not impossible, perhaps, but rare. Again, we ought to keep this idea in mind when we try to understand the decline of faith in our age. However, setting our discussion up in these terms may be misleading. For many in Western culture, Christendom or the Western medieval model of a totally pervasive Christian culture is what they think of when they think of the default position of Christianity. I think, however, that we need to remember that Christendom was not and is not the default position. That is, Christianity has not operated always and everywhere as a totally pervasive, solitary conceptual option for its adherents.

Rather, Christianity began in the Roman Mediterranean as one seriously implausible account of the world among other accounts. Early Christians did not proclaim a message of truth which won converts due to the clarity or, for lack of a better term, "obviousness" of its message. What I mean to say is that Christian proclamation did not result in a bunch of people slapping their foreheads and responding with an, "Of course, that's how the world works! Why, I knew that all along!"

You might be wondering why I bring this point up or if I'm even addressing the original question. What I'm trying to do is start out by saying that, from a Christian perspective, the Christian perspective has not historically been the only conceptual option for those who hear it, and it is admittedly not an immediately obvious position. In other words, though we Christians think the Christian perspective is the true perspective, we are (or ought to be) quite aware of its difficulties, and, historically, we have been since the beginning. The New Testament speaks of Christian proclamation as a "mystery," as something "offensive" and "veiled." This emphasis is not isolated simply in the beginning, either. Even in the High Middle Ages, during Christendom par excellence, Thomas Aquinas could note that reason would never establish or arrive at the conclusion of Christian truth in the events of redemption. Reason could only defend the possibility of its truth-value and defend against charges of irrationality.

To continue my answer, I believe our problem lies in a fairly specific area. We tend to think that the truth of God's existence ought to be obvious, mostly because we often think of truth as something obvious or immediately apparent. We rely on the idea that we understand truth with our minds in the same way that we see objects with our eyes. In this model, "facts" are discovered in a manner not unlike noticing the color of the sky or the proximity of some obstacle. So, we think a truth statement like "God exists" is epistemologically equivalent to "The sky is blue."

However, I think, upon further reflection, that we could admit that the truth is not always obvious, even if it is a "determinative" or "high-impact" truth which affects all our other ideas. There are many examples I could use, but let me point out one fairly easy one. We all agree that the earth rotates around the sun. Why? Is that an obvious truth? If one were to step outside and observe the sun with the naked eye for years, would the conclusion that the earth rotates around the sun be reached? I think we can all admit that, in most cases, this conclusion would not be reached by anyone who watches the "sunrise" and the "sunset" every day. However, I doubt that any of us finds it necessary to object against this truth.

I use this example to demonstrate that something can be clearly true in one sense, i.e. we all accept the idea, and it helps to organize a whole load of other ideas. At the same time, it is not manifestly true, i.e. most of us could not prove it, it took years upon years for this view to pervade our culture, and it does not match up to all of our direct experiences.

I hope this example shows you where I am heading. Namely, I want this illustration to point out that ideas which are true do not need to be obvious or easily reached in order to be true. We accept this idea when it comes to our example above. So, the next question has to be: why do we expect truth concerning God to be more easily reached? That is, why should we discover that God exists in a manner simpler than that involved in discovering an observable fact about the physical universe?

Now, I could make another point in this direction, and I will note it briefly before continuing on to my next main point. First, we should note that observable facts about the universe like knowing the earth rotates around the sun or noticing the someone's hair is red are actually facts which require a great deal of training to notice. For example, one must be taught that "red" denotes a particular observable phenomenon which occurs on the surface of various objects and then realize that the type of "red" which we apply to red brick is somehow related to the "redness" of someone's hair. For the other example, we can see that observable facts of a scientific kind actually require particular theories and methods to be internalized before they can be reached. Once reached, though, they can be disseminated to a more general population rather easily, despite the fact that the general population could not arrive at such conclusions on their own. Follow this line of thought and then ask why the existence of God should be something easy to discover without the internalization of a particular framework.

What I would like to note at this point is the objection that I would imagine many of you are now harboring in your mind. It is likely offensive to you that God's existence should be difficult to ascertain, that it should be as difficult as the discovery that the earth rotates around the sun. Isn't that a little curious? Why should you think that unless you are engaged in speculation concerning the characteristics which God ought to have and how he ought to behave? I have to note something that Pascal also noted so many years ago. He noted, similarly to what I stated above, that ascertaining God's existence is difficult. There is enough evidence to lead the religious seeker eventually to discover the truth of God's existence but there is not enough evidence to guarantee that outcome. When he faced objections from those who did not believe, Pascal pointed out that their objections were rather ridiculous. How could they, who ostensibly do not believe in God, wish to dictate the terms under which God would reveal himself to human beings? By engaging in such debate, the unbeliever has now become one who asks religious questions, i.e. a religious seeker.

But perhaps I am now simply being clever? Please object if I am, for I will admit that I am trying to be somewhat provocative. I am arguing that the existence of God need not be more obvious to any of us than any other truth. It is capable of being denied or affirmed in many of the same ways. It could not be a truth apprehended by human beings if it were any different.

This specter of difficulty, though, can be handled in a couple ways. First of all, if knowledge of God's existence is analogous to other types of knowledge, then people actually can discover it. That discovery of the truth might be difficult, take time and patience, and test our devotion to the question to the uttermost leads us in a rather different direction. Second, though, knowledge of God need not be difficult. Rather like our example above, once something is known and disseminated throughout society, it is no longer necessary for every person to go through the same arduous process to discover it. Clearly, not very many of us need to rediscover the heliocentric model. So, truth can now be apprehended through much easier channels, which deal more with the issues of warrant for belief, trust in sources, and faith in the truthfulness of other person's testimony.

Now, of course, we have opened the door to all sorts of different questions which I have not addressed here in order to keep the discussion from becoming merely "in-house." Yet these questions are actually theological or metaphysical questions. By considering this issue concerning how human beings discover truth, using terms which are common to both Christians and others, we can arrive at a place where we are not simply discussing whether it is difficult to believe in God, but whether it is appropriate that belief in God is so difficult and whether God ought to have behaved differently. We are in a different realm altogether from where we started.

Secularism, Unbelief, and Rationality

Here's a rather amusing statement I found as I was considering how to start writing this evening: "God’s truth will not come to your front doorstep like an unordered Domino’s pizza" (http://www.scottmsullivan.com/courses/Pascal.pdf).

What Mr. Sullivan brings to our attention is the concept of the "hidden God," that God's truth is not immediately evident to the believer or unbeliever. For some reason, conceiving of God is not an immediate idea. I was drawn to discuss this problem because of a recent chapter from Charles Taylor's A Secular Age sent to me by my good friend, one Mr. Alfredo Garcia. At one point, Taylor notes, "In the seventeenth century, you had to be a Pascal" to appreciate the concept of a hidden God (532). Yet, I would note that at another point in Western society, it was almost impossible to be an atheist; it was held to be rationally inconceivable or at least rarely conceivable. I was drawn by Taylor's statement to an earlier example of the discussion on the possibility or rationality of unbelief, that famous discussion of Anselm and Gaunilo which highlighted what was later labelled the ontological argument for God's existence.

Perhaps my gentle readers are familiar with the argument? There are various ways to phrase it succinctly, but it goes something like this:

1. Everyone can conceive of God.
2. Therefore, God exists in the understanding.
3. When God is conceived/exists in the understanding, he is conceived of as that than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-conceived.
4. If that than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-conceived exists in the understanding, but does not exist in reality, then a greater being can be conceived.
5. Hence, that than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-conveived exists (i.e. God exists).

What is often not mentioned in connection with this argument is that the discussion in Anselm's Proslogion and Gaunilo's Response in Defense of the Fool is, shall we say, purely academic or "in-house!" We have an abbot (later bishop) and a monk from another monastery, both believing in God, who are discussing whether it might be rational not to believe in God. Anselm says no. Gaunilo emphatically responds with a yes. Yet it remains an in-house argument, a consideration to be puzzled over in a society largely Christian.

Whatever we think of the ontological argument, the discussion between Anselm and Gaunilo gives a starting point for a rather interesting development. In the eleventh century, we have two persons discussing whether it might be rational not to believe in God. We might posit alongside this in-house example a more common occurrence in the twentieth century, i.e., a coffee-house discussion of whether it might be rational to believe in God. Somewhere in between we have Pascal and the intellectual elites of the seventeenth century, who were displaying the beginnings of trend towards viewing belief as difficult to attain. At some point, though, it become possible, even more easily defensible, to be take up a position of unbelief. How is this possible, and is it acceptable for the Christian?

Now, Taylor gives a variety of possible explanations as to why this might have developed and why the "secular" option is so prevalent today. He believes it took some time for a position of atheism to be intellectually viable in the most basic sense. Also, Christianity was so intertwined with society, it took a little while to develop a relatively coherent account of society and the world which did not require the explanation of God. However, it is fairly easy to see that, once it settled in our society, secularism became not only the dominant model for atheists, but also the model for Christians.

I'm sure you can imagine why I might have wanted to discuss this question. But I also find myself wanting to address this theme because a blog I follow recently noted "the utterly dominant success of the secular model," and how "the believer and non-believer experience the world in much the same manner" (see http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/the-crisis-of-religion/). Fr. Stephen goes on to say several things in response to these ideas, some of which I will repeat here. For the Christian, the whole of creation must be considered an Epiphany of the glory of God. No neutral ground, no inert matter exists which can be considered apart from this role. The secular model, which takes the non-existence of God (or His irrelevance to most questions) as a starting principle, does not work for a Christian looking out upon the world.

To use an analogous concept and to move from an Orthodox voice to a Protestant systematic voice, we might say that there is no man who can be considered in himself ; there is only man for whom Christ died and rose again (see Barth, Church Dogmatics I. 2; and, yes, I realize I "masculinized" the human race in that paraphrase, my HDS comrades).

Yet, I imagine it seems problematic to make this statement. After all, did we not just concede that, for many people, the existence of God can barely be admitted as a rational possibility? How then can we make a mere possibility into the determining factor for the rest of our conceptions? I know that this move appears problematic to me, and I am the one making it! I will begin by noting some popular answers we might give.

For Fr. Stephen and for Pascal, the hiddenness or apparent absence of God from the world actually creates the space wherein we might trust and love God. God is not so immediately present to us that we are forced to love and trust in Him. Yet, in some way, God draws us to Himself through the hiddenness; God brings to birth within us the faith and love with which we trust and obey Him.

This is a fine "in-house" answer, a simple one, a theological one which I might give in a discussion with other Christians. Some would say that this statement is as far as we can go and that we have no burden to demonstrate to those outside the rationality or coherence of our faith in God and the perpspective which follows from faith.

For others, they might point to something like spiritual blindness. Actually, God is visible through the created order, and the only reason that unbelievers cannot see this point is because they engage in a variety of self-delusional strategies, some simple and some complex, some conscious and others unconscious, all because they actually don't want to believe in God. Various reasons might be given: perhaps some unbelievers dislike the ethical demands of the Christian life, perhaps they dislike the ethical slovenliness of Christians in meeting those demands, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. This also, is fairly "in-house," though it can be better shown to cohere with certain contemporary philosophical and psychological discussions (see Kevin Kinghorn's The Decision of Faith). But how might I actually explain in common terms to one outside the Christian faith, why it is that God is hidden or appears absent?

I know that I have a couple ways I might try to answer the question myself, which I will post in a few days. But I'm curious what my readers might think. How do they conceive of the problem? Is it possible for a believer and an unbeliever to explain this problem in terms the other would accept?

The Celebrated Difference of East and West

It is a common assertion in academic discussions of Church History that the Eastern Church and the Western Church have developed rather different theologies. Particularly, it is said that the West has an understanding of redemption which ought to be understood primarily as forensic and moral, i.e. the forgiveness of sins. In contrast, the East is said to have a more cosmic emphasis, i.e., the transfer of man from death to life. This difference can hardly be denied, and it has often been a prime obstacle for both the Orthodox, as well as those in the Western tradition, when they have come together to discuss doctrine.

Yet I wonder whether this assertion is somewhat overstated and does not do justice to many ancient theologians in the West or the East. Now, a full investigation of this assertion would require volumes of work. A preliminary reference to the thought of two respected theologians, though, one from the Christian West and one from the Christian East might reveal more similarities than we would expect. I am going to attempt a quick reference to some of the similarities in theological method and understanding between Anselm of Canterbury and Maximus the Confessor, which is based on some independent work I have recently begun.

But, first, let us engage in a quick discussion to set the context for the comparison. Why should we pick Anselm and Maximus, and who are they?

We pick Anselm of Canterbury (ca 1033-1109) as one of the clearest examples of the Western tradition. He is now notorious for his formulation of the "satisfaction theory" of the atonement, a theory which has undergone a great deal of criticism in the modern period, despite its seminal importance. Anselm is often considered to be an epitome of the Western obsession with forensic categories which only work in particular Western cultures. For example, Anselm construes sin at some points in his work as an offense against Divine Justice, for which God must have satisfaction in order to maintain his dignity or honor. This formulation has struck many as a an attempt at mapping the power relationships of medieval Europe onto the divine/human relationship, and the "satisfaction theory" is often trotted out in contemporary theology as an example of everything that is wrong with the Western theological tradition.

Maximus the Confessor, on the other hand, is clearly a representative of Eastern Christianity in late antiquity. He was born in Constantinople ca. 580 (or Palestine, there is some disagreement in the sources) and spent most of his time in Asia Minor, Palestine, and Africa, before spending a few years working for the Pope in Rome, after which he experienced condemnation, several exiles, punishment, and death from suffering. His thoughts were later reconsidered, and he was accepted as a saint by both East and West, being dubbed "the Confessor." Maximus left behind more than ninety works, the majority of which are marked by his concern with the controversy of Monothelistism. While he did spend a little time in the West, Maximus is a good representative of the Eastern tradition due to his affinities with the Alexandrians, Cappadocians, and Pseudo-Dionysius (church historians feel free to pick this apart). Also, Maximus has an emphasis on the gradual ascent of the human being towards God through "struggling" on the path of virtue opened by Christ.

Now, I have been less than convinced of the relative difference between East and West for some time. In particular, I first moved along this line of thought rather freely as I began reading Alister McGrath's Iustitia Dei. He lists some details in that book about how Anselm's discussion of redemption (and that of other Western thinkers) cannot be understood without grasping that Anselm puts forward a rather interesting theory of justification. Anselm's understanding of justification is not "purely forensic," as various critics claim. He does not think that "iustifactio hominis" has only to do with a legal fiction. Rather, Anselm understands iustitia and ius, to refer not only to "justice" or legal standing before the law, but also to cosmic "rightness." Humanity must be restored to the right place in the created order in order for there to be redemption. Already, this emphasis on the restoration of humanity to its proper place in the universe starts to sound more "cosmic" or Eastern. Anselm, the epitome of the so-called forensic preoccupation of the West, does not seem to fall into the trap of viewing redemption in purely legal terms.

What this may show us is that the tendency towards the forensic understanding of redemption was actually a later model, exemplified best in formulations of the Reformation and later Protestant Scholasticism. The legal preoccupation, then, is not characteristically Western but definitively Protestant. Inasmuch as Protestants (like many others) have wanted to read their theology back into earlier sources, they tended to find antecedents for themselves, and others readers approaching the same texts came to them with understandings influenced by the newly traditional Protestant understandings of redemption and justification. Protestant understandings of informed Western academic readings.

My re-investigation of this issue in the primary sources has only started in earnest recently, but I am beginning a comparison of Maximus the Confessor's Logos Asketikos and Anselm's Cur Deus Homo. Both of the works are worthy of comparison because both of them are trying to answer a particular question. Anselm- why did God become Man? Maximus- what was the point (skopos) of the Lord's incarnation?

Another reason I imagine that this comparison will be fruitful springs from the several similarities between the works. First, and most superficially, I've found it rather striking that both Anselm and Maximus write in the traditional format of dialogue to discuss the question. The dialogues take rather different shapes, and they have different goals in mind, but they begin with a similar method of inquiry and response. There is one who is unlearned, who comes to a more learned teacher of theology, who attempts to proceed in an intentionally humble manner as both approach something mysterious. This detail may initially seem rather unimportant, but it reveals a certain humility in Eastern and Western Christian discourse: approaching the mystery of the Incarnation and its significance for human redemption requires a level of humility. Both of the "teachers" in the dialogues express concerns about their ability to understand the issue.

Second, both Maximus and Anselm appeal to a rather specific set of ideas. Namely, they refer to the locus classicus of atonement theology, Paul's discussion in Romans 5:12-21, and particularly to his statement that it was necessary for redemption to come through a Man (that is, a human) because sin had come through a Man. Both Maximus and Anselm appeal to other fairly similar ideas which I won't rehearse here. I will simply sum it up by noting that they have a common base of models for understanding the redemption of humanity, which is significant when we compare the deeper structure of their theology (e.g. death must be overturned by death, one under the Law must redeem those under the Law, his obedience is the substitute for our disobedience and that of Adam, etc.).

These are two brief examples of similarities between these two theologians, but they are only samples of the beginning of my discovery of deep congruence between many of the traditional Eastern and Western understandings of redemption. I will, of course, post more on this topic as I continue to work my way through the Logos Asketikos and Cur Deus Homo.

I suppose now I have to draw out my reason for even including this discussion. Who cares? Does this issue have any real significance for scholarship in general? I believe so. I had a recent discussion with a friend in which we briefly considered a major issue in the study of religion. Namely, few seem to have read closely the primary sources which they are ostensibly supposed to know backwards and forwards. Instead, they have ingested a steady diet of secondary works which fill them with the academic equivalent of the pious platitudes of folk theology. So, you hear statements like, "The Platonic view of the soul has resulted in a lack of emphasis on the physical and bodily in Western thought." Really now? The Platonic view? Considering that Plato's view of the soul is not consistent in the records we have of his thought and is often considered to be, in some sense, physical, it is rather astonishing that anyone can come to this conclusion (I will leave aside at this time the diversities of the 'Platonic tradition' in Western thought). Needless to say, I think we need to reconsider where the lack of emphasis on the body comes from in Western thought, as well as consider whether there really is such a lack of emphasis.

Similarly to our example above, scholars repeat statements like, "Eastern theology is focused on cosmic redemption, and Western theology tends towards legal metaphors." They repeat these statements while only rarely returning to the sources of their scholarship and seeing whether it is the case. Again, why is this significant? It is significant because I think that we tend to read "Western" theology through the eyes of the Reformers and their heirs, whether or not we identify with the Protestant/Reformed traditions. The academy has often been unduly influenced by Protestant readings of theological and historical sources, which has led to the perception of such a sharp divide.

Now, it is evident that we cannot go back and examine every thought which fits in our overall conceptual framework. But we should recognize how many of our thoughts are actually placeholders formulated by other thinkers and accepted rather uncritically on our part. I don't doubt this sort of action is necessary for us to function in the world. I simply think that we might want to continue doing this sort of re-examination of concepts before we go making a career out of them.

I wonder, though, what other sorts of misconceptions do we have? Is it the fate of every generation to cannibalize the works of the previous generation, by saying that they were blind, foolish, and didn't examine their presuppositions?