One of the most troubling things about reading Clark Williamson’s A Guest in the House of Israel is realizing that anti-Judaism isn’t just some anomalous bug of Christianity that can easily be tossed out. It’s more or less a constitutive feature of the patristic-medieval-Reformation-modern Christian consensus. As Christianity gradually emerged as a separate religion, the church defined itself, in myriad ways, as the anti-Judaism. Jews were, according to this line of thinking, “carnal,” legalistic, hypocritical, particularistic, ethnocentric, unfaithful, etc., while the church was “spiritual,” grace-full, upright, universal, faithful, etc. This stuff is all over Tertullian, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine, the medievals, Luther, Calvin (although, according to Williamson, Calvin actually comes off better than nearly anyone else in the tradition on this score), the anabaptists, liberal theologians, neo-orthodox theologians, liberation theologians–pretty much everybody. It infects the church’s view of covenant, its doctrine of the authority and interpretation of scripture, its Christology, its doctrine of God, its view of the sacraments, and its approach to mission. This is why Williamson thinks that a more radical re-thinking of the church’s theology is necessary in a post-Holocaust (or post-Shoah) context than most Christians have been willing to countenance.
Category: Interfaith
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Anti-Judaism as works-righteousness
The claim that Jews lost the covenant because they were not worthy of it is simply works-righteousness. Works-righteousness takes a gift provided by the free and unconditional grace of God and turns it into a condition apart from which God is not free to be gracious. Works-righteousness has nothing to do with an entirely different matter, the question of whether we are to do works of love toward the neighbor. With regard to the covenant, works-righteousness contends that God is not free to covenant with whomever God pleases but only with those who deserve to receive it. It claims that we deserve it, Jews do not. Christian anti-Judaism reflects a reward and punishment mind-set. Jews are punished by losing the covenant; we are rewarded with receiving it because we deserve it.
That’s from Clark Williamson’s A Guest in the House of Israel (pp. 113-114), tracing the development of Christian anti-Judaism. I plan to write more about this very challenging book soon.
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Why do Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin (and the American people) hate our freedom?
William Saletan has a good round-up and rebuttal of the campaign on the Right to prevent the construction of a Muslim community center and mosque in lower Manhattan, not far from the World Trade Center site. Maybe I’m naive, but it’s actually kind of shocking to hear high-profile pols like Gingrinch and Palin all but explicitly come out for the abrogation of First Amendment freedoms. The poll numbers on this issue aren’t encouraging either–it seems that a majority of Americans think that it’s okay to restirct someone’s religious freedom if it’s not your religion.
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Aldous Huxley, Huston Smith, and the perennial philosophy
In the previous post I mentioned Aldous Huxley’s embrace of the “perennial philosophy” and his influence on the scholar of religion Huston Smith. Smith’s work had a big influence on me during my undergraduate years. When I was a callow 20-year-old atheist, Smith’s writings, as well as a series of interviews he did with Bill Moyers for PBS, helped show me that my understanding of religion–including the Christianity that I had so confidently rejected–was extremely shallow.
Moreover, Smith’s argument that the religions of the world were culturally mediated expressions of a “primordial tradition” (what Huxley referred to as the “perennial philosophy”) was very appealing to me. He combined a robust ontology with an ecumenical spirit that seemed superior–intellectually, morally, and spiritually–to both conservative “orthodoxy” and watered-down liberalism or materialistic atheism.
Huxley defined the philosophia perennis like this:
the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being (Huxley, “The Philosophy of the Saints,” Huxley and God, p. 61)
Huxley characterizes the perennial philosophy as a “working hypothesis” about the nature of reality that goes beyond “humanism and nature-worship” but is wary of the over-developed dogmas of organized religion. This working hypothesis can provide the basis, Huxley thinks, for experiential “research” into spiritual Reality.
Smith, being a scholar of religion, takes a more positive view of the developed traditions of the world’s religions. Like the Swiss philosopher Frithjof Schuon, who Smith has also been influenced by, he sees each tradition as an expression or revelation of the divine Mind that is complete in itself as a vehicle for salvation. Unlike some forms of pluralism, which see the various religions as gropings toward an ultimately unknowable Reality (e.g., John Hick’s), Smith’s view is that the divine Reality makes him/her/itself known by means of the various religions.
Embracing a perennial-philosophy perspective is pretty unfashionable these days. Both the scholarly study of religion and Christian theology tend now to emphasize the differences among traditions. Some Christians attack perennialism as an import of pagan metaphysics into the biblical tradition. However, others–like the Anglican theologian Owen Thomas–argue that Christianity is a synthesis of “biblical religion” and a Neoplatonist-influenced version of the perennial philosophy.
Despite its problems, I think the perennial philosophy continues to have appeal because it seems to address the problem of religious pluralism without falling into either exclusivism or relativism.
You can see at least some of the Moyers interviews with Smith on YouTube here.
The works of Huston Smith that had the biggest impact on me:
The World’s ReligionsForgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World’s Religions
See also his Soul of Christianity for an interpretation of the Christian tradition that is heavily influenced by his perennialist outlook.
Huxley edited an anthology of mystical writings, interspersed with his own commentary, called–appropriately–The Perennial Philosophy.
Frithjof Schuon makes the case for perennialism in religion in his book The Transcendent Unity of Religions.
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Lectionary irony
In an earlier post I mentioned that our church was hosting a gathering of the “Network of Spiritual Progressives” this past weekend. As part of that event, Rabbi Michael Lerner–one of the chief movers of the network and the publisher of Tikkun magazine–preached at our church this Sunday.
Ironically, perhaps, this passage from Galatians was one of the lectionary readings:
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justifiednot by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law. But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have been found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! But if I build up again the very things that I once tore down, then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing. (Gal. 2:15-21)
The good rabbi didn’t comment directly on the reading, but instead gave a stirring talk on the need for believers in the Bible/Gospel (by which he meant, I take it, both Jews and Christians) to commit to a vision of caring for the world that isn’t hemmed in by the supposed “realism” of the political status quo. It would’ve been interesting to hear his take on the Galatians passage, though.
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Buddhist emptiness and Christian salvation
Kristin Johnston Largen, a professor of theology at the Lutheran seminary at Gettysburg, has written a stimulating little book: What Christians Can Learn from Buddhism: Rethinking Salvation. In it she offers a summary of the key points of what Christianity and Buddhism mean by salvation and reflects on how Buddhist notions of salvation can shed light on–and even change–the way Christians think about what it means to be saved.
Recognizing that Buddhism is as multi-faceted a tradition as Christianity, Professor Largen focuses her discussion on the Mahayana school of Buddhism, particularly as represented by the 2nd-century Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna has been described as something of a philosophical skeptic, using the tools of logical analysis to deconstruct some of the elaborate metaphysical claims made by the Vedic and Buddhist philosophers of his day. He is particularly well known for his arguments against the idea that the world is made up of enduring metaphysical substances with fixed essences and for collapsing the distinction between nirvana (the state of being free from suffering) and samsara (the cycle of karmic birth and death which it is Buddhism’s goal to escape from). The upshot is a view of reality as a pulsating, ever-changing, relational nexus, rather than being composed of fixed, externally related entities
For Nagarjuna, salvation is realizing–experientially, not just intellectually–the fundamental “emptiness” of all things. This isn’t nihilism; it’s the view that nothing that is has a fixed essence or has its reason for being in itself. Rather, everything is dependent for its existence on relations with everything else. As human selves, we are constituted by our relations with others, and with the rest of the world. Emptiness just is, according to Largen, the fact of interdependence and impermanence. Which is why the distinction between nirvana and samsara vanishes when one attains englightenment: nirvana is not a realm beyond the empirical world; it’s the realization of the “emptiness,” the impermanence and interrelatedness, of all that is.
So what does this have to do with the Christian idea of salvation? Largen provides a helpful overview of various theories, or motifs, of the Atonement, including the Christus Victor, satisfaction, and exemplarist views. Each of these, she says, preserve important aspects of the truth. She also identifies certain other themes associated with salvation in the Christian tradition, such as the tension between the already/not-yet, individual/communal aspects, as well as between the emphasis on divine initiative and human response.
What Buddhism can do, Largen argues, is provide a new vantage point on some of these tensions. For instance, a Buddhist metaphysics of emptiness (if we can call it a metaphysics) undermines the sharp distinction between the individual and the communal (or social) that much Christian tradition takes for granted. Likewise, Buddhism might help us to learn to see the Kingdom as already present, or at least as closer to the present moment than some Christian eschatologies have portrayed it. These insights can affect our practice in encouraging us to live more compassionately and ecologically.
Largen even offers an, admittedly speculative, argument for universal salvation on the grounds that God, in becoming incarnate, became intimately related to all people, precisely becuase of the irreducible interrelatedness of all things. Christians have often intuited something like this, but they haven’t always had the metaphysics to back it up. The early fathers, with their strong Platonist leanings, could argue that Human Nature itself was transformed when the Word became flesh, but a more individualistic and less participatory metaphysics has trouble making sense of that notion. Thus we end up with a lot of talk about imputation and substitution, replacing ontological language with the language of contracts and debts. A quasi-Buddhist view of reality (which is surprisingly similar in some ways to the view of reality portrayed in contemporary physics) could provide a more hospitable environement for a more participatory understanding of salvation.
Of course, there are a whose of other issus to be considered. For instance, the Buddhist view that Largen describes doesn’t seem to require a creator God who is the unchanging ground of the flux of temporal being. It’s not immediately apparent how compatible Buddhist “emptiness” is with the doctrine of creation as Christians conceive it. On the other hand, creation ex nihilo does seem to have at least some affinities with Nagarjuna’s doctrine of “dependent origination.” According to the Christian view of reality, none of us has our reason for being in ourselves; we are all radically dependent on God at every moment of our existence. Moreover, some contemporary theologians have tried to articulate a “relational” ontology that views relationship as a fundamental consituent of being. Whether this ends up being compatible with what a Buddhist might say about the nature of being is an open question, but it at least indicates that some Christians are pointing in that direction.
Regardless, Largen’s book is a valuable example of genuine inter-religious dialogue where the convictions of the other party are taken seriously–neither rejected out of hand nor assimilated to one’s own. She has also demonstrated that Christians have a lot to learn from Buddhists in particular.
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Non sequitur of the day
Theologian Paul Griffiths has an interesting post about how Christians should think about Muslims, but then ends with this:
I hope, that is, that we Christians will increasingly choose to see Muslims as allies and affines against the deadening and bloody weight of late-capitalist democracy. It would be better, I think, for the Church to live under the constraints and difficulties of an Islamic state, violent and restrictive though these can be (as they are, for instance, in Saudi Arabia), than to return with ever more passion, as it is increasingly doing, the bodysnatching embrace of late-capitalist democracy.
Well, um, okay…are those our only choices?
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In and out
Christopher has a post on universalism that pretty closely approximates my own view. In short: we believe salvation is through Christ, but we don’t know how far that salvation extends. We can hope–but not know–that it extends to everyone.
One other point I’d add is that Christians usually presume we’re on the “inside,” and the question is whether non-Christians get “in” too. But an Augustinian account of grace would remind us that we don’t know, definitively, who’s “in” or “out” in this life. The line between the city of God and the city of man isn’t given to us to discern. In the Bible, it’s often the outsiders who demonstrate, in surprising ways, their closeness to God, and the insiders their blindness.
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One more (at least) on pluralism
Another thought occurred to me about John Hick’s pluralism hypothesis: that it risks introducing a moralistic distortion into religion. Since, for Hick, religion is primarily a practical rather than a cognitive enterprise (because the Real in itself eludes our cognitive abilities), the criteria by which he judges religion are primarily moral ones. Religions are vehicles for moving from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness, where that largely means being more compassionate, etc.
But Christianity, at least, isn’t primarily about “being moral.” It’s primarily about a loving, personal God that longs to be in relationship with his creation. Because human sin disrupts that relationship, morality has a role, but it’s a subordinate one (and, in itself, insufficient for restoring the divine-human relationship). The primary story is that of God’s self-bestowal on creation–in creating all that is and calling it good, in the calling of the patriarchs, in the liberation of Israel, and in the conjoining of the divine and the creaturely in Jesus–not human efforts to be more moral.
Because Hick has prescinded from the particulars of the Christian story, though, he is left with little choice but to make the subordinate theme of morality central to religion. He’s hardly alone in this, since many people seem to think that the purpose of religion is to make people “good.” But, from a Christian perspective at least, that is really to miss the point–which is the overflowing love and grace of God. Ironically, then, Hick’s position ends up being more human-centered than Reality-centered, since the focus is on our moral self-improvement instead of on God.
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Further thoughts on pluralism
Thinking a bit more about John Hick’s pluralism, spurred on by some of the excellent comments on the last post, it does seem that my original worry about Hick’s position could be stated in a stronger form.
My question was whether it’s necessary to believe in a tradition in a non-pluralist way (i.e., to believe that my tradition gets it right about the divine, at least in essentials) in order for it to be “soteriologically efficacious.” For if I come to view my tradition as simply a culturally conditioned response to the divine, that may prevent me from fully immersing myself in it, or committing to it, in the way necessary to move from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness (to use Hick’s terms).
But an even stronger form of the objection, it seems to me, is that, on the Hickian hypothesis, it’s not clear what justification I have for believing that my tradition is soteriologically efficacious in the first place. Since the Real is, ex hypothesi, unknowable in itself, what reason do I have to believe that my tradition constitutes a reliable guide for relating to it?
The more traditional Christian view is that, while God remains incomprehensible, we can know certain truths about God (both through the use of natural reason and because God has revealed Godself to us). Because of this, we believe certain ways of relating to God are appropriate and others not. If we didn’t believe that such knowledge was possible, what grounds would we have for affirming the appropriateness of our (or any) traditition as a way of relating to the divine?
This doesn’t, however, commit us to a strong form of exclusivism. For it’s possible to hold that God is known/revealed in other tradtions and also to recognize that there is no tradition-independent (or subject-independent) way of establishing the truth of a single tradition. My reasons for being a Christian, for example, depend in part on my social and cultural context, personal experiences, and evaluative judgments–which means that there is an irreducible element of personal commitment in adhering to a particular tradition. This doesn’t make it irrational, but should humble us a bit in making overly strong claims for our own tradition. It also, however, doesn’t require us to give up its truth claims.
A Thinking Reed 