Ship of Fools: Non-theistic Christianity

Thread: Non-theistic Christianity Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

One of my interlocutors have been promoting "non-theistic Christianity" lately. This type of Christianity grounded in the ideas of John Shelby Spong, Paul Tillich and others basically says that Christianity should dispense with the idea of God being a supernatural deity who intervenes in the world.

What they propose is seeing God as a "ground of being"?

In my view, they interpret negative and apophatic theology in rationalist terms. As I wrote in a response, negative theology in my view, suggests that our understanding of God is partial and limited. This is not the same thing as stating that we know nothing about God.

So can one be a Christian and not believe in "Supernaturalism"?

Posted by WearyPilgrim (# 14593) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
So can one be a Christian and not believe in "Supernaturalism"?

Somehow I don't think Jesus would have said so ,..

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

quote:
So can one be a Christian and not believe in "Supernaturalism"?

If one cannot believe in Christianity, one can hardly lecture it into conforming to what one already believes. The Christian Faith is handed down by the Apostles. Take it or leave it.

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

This is an old thought school. Thomas Jefferson produced a book which was the Gospel of Luke with anything "supernatural" edited out.

[Disappointed]

No, it's religion. Take it, embrace it, warts and all.

This set (there are so many of this set around the UCCan, I call them the Rads) don't like Sin, and idea's like humanity's innately sinful nature. I've seen just a little to much of the world to deny that there is sin and we are sinful.

Don't be a Rad, be a Trad. It's much more fun. We have better liturgy and sermons.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Wouldn't it be honester to just say, "We don't believe in Christianity," than to try to pretend Christianity is something it isn't, or make it into something it has never been?

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

What is radical about denying Sin, SPK?

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
One of my interlocutors have been promoting "non-theistic Christianity" lately. This type of Christianity grounded in the ideas of John Shelby Spong, Paul Tillich and others basically says that Christianity should dispense with the idea of God being a supernatural deity who intervenes in the world.

What they propose is seeing God as a "ground of being"?

In my view, they interpret negative and apophatic theology in rationalist terms. As I wrote in a response, negative theology in my view, suggests that our understanding of God is partial and limited. This is not the same thing as stating that we know nothing about God.

So can one be a Christian and not believe in "Supernaturalism"?

Uh. I'm no expert on Paul Tillich, but what you say above about him doesn't sound right.

I wouldn't call him a non-theist. I"d call him an existentialist.

As for "ground of being" it's kind of a modern understanding of medieval theology in that God is all in all and the world would not exist without enervation from God at all times. Kind of like Aquinas.

The idea that God is a being in the sky that occasionally points his finger and alters things on the earth only really developed in the early modern period IMO.

[ 23. September 2012, 07:21: Message edited by: Evensong ]

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

p.s. What do you mean by Supernaturalism?

God is beyond nature as well as in nature? (i.e. transcendent as well as immanent?)

Posted by Demas (# 24) on :

The map is not the territory; God is a symbol pointing to God.

If theism as a symbol implies a tinkering God interfering in the universe by breaking otherwise beautiful and universal patterns of behaviour, and if we can find no evidence of those patterns being broken, then theism as a symbol may be broken.

Just as conceiving God as male may distort the symbol so that it does not point to God, so conceiving God as theistic may distort the symbol so that it misdirects our vision.

If we are not atheists then we look for other narratives which we can use to talk about God and point to God. Those symbols will not be 'theistic' in the sense of theism referred to above, but will not be atheistic because they do not deny the existence of the reality being symbolised, only the validity of the symbol. Several people use the term 'non-theistic' to cover that territory.

Personally I'm more inclined to try to expand the meaning of theism, but in the end it is the same thing.

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

What Evensong said. [eta: Cross-posted with Demas - very well said. I especially agree with your recommendation to expand the concept of theism.]

People who run with Tillich (and Macquarrie, I'd add, although no one's running with him) and claim to have done away with theism are missing the point.

But I have to admit I sometimes mix up Tillich and Macquarrie (both are existentialists), so I can't remember which one of them put it this way, but basically their (as I see it) shared idea is that God is super-personal: negative theology requires us to recognize that God is not "merely" personal in the way we understand persons, but we also don't want to say God is anything less than personal.

Or maybe Pike or Spong said that. I've been working in aesthetics lately. I need an existentialist theologian cheat sheet.

I think there's also a bit of Bultmannian demythologizing in these non-theistic Christian enterprises. (That's so mid-20th century...)

In all seriousness, I think to some degree the demythologizers and existentialists gave in a bit too much to despair, but there's a reason those theologies and philosophies really blossomed or emerged right after WW2. But a non-theistic Christianity loses so much of the mystery that makes any religion compelling in the first place.

I would ask anyone who promotes a non-theistic Christianity to clarify what they mean. Buddhism is non-theistic, and I suspect many current non-theist Christians essentially just see Jesus as a Buddha-figure.

There are many people who are rejecting the idea that a person can just switch religions (a very Western idea, though probably not uniquely Western), and prefer to re-think the religion they're culturally bound to. Many white Americans, and I suspect British and other Europeans, rightly feel a twinge of colonialism if they try to adopt another religion, like Buddhism, but adapt it to their cultural sensibilities. Or they get accused of it - a classmate of mine, of Ethiopian descent (and Ethiopian Orthodox, IIRC), expressed anger at another fellow student, a white-as-white-can-be kid who had converted to Islam. She felt it was wrong for a white person to claim for themselves a religion that is (still) quite culturally bound and associated with non-whites who are at risk of hate crimes in this country. I sympathize with, but don't quite share, her opinion, but I think it's important for people to consider the strong cultural elements to religion, and how people might (a) not want to part with the religion of their childhood and family and communities; and (b) not want to colonize someone else's religion.

That said, when they go mucking about with their native religion, their coreligionists might take offense.

[ 23. September 2012, 07:53: Message edited by: churchgeek ]

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Surely, ground of being ideas are not non-theistic.

This goes to the whole distinction between theistic personalism and classical theism. For some reason, the former is often taken as the basic template in Christian history - not so.

Somebody like Dionysius the Areopagite has ideas about God which seem distinctly non-personalistic, but then so does Aristotle.

[ 23. September 2012, 07:56: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Churchgeek wrote:

quote:
Or they get accused of it - a classmate of mine, of Ethiopian descent (and Ethiopian Orthodox, IIRC), expressed anger at another fellow student, a white-as-white-can-be kid who had converted to Islam. She felt it was wrong for a white person to claim for themselves a religion that is (still) quite culturally bound and associated with non-whites who are at risk of hate crimes in this country.

I wonder if this woman's views are shared by a majority of Muslims(on whose behalf she presumably claims to be speak). I don't have a lot of experience interacting with Muslims, but from what I've been able to glean, a lot of them think it's a good thing for anyone to convert.

[ 23. September 2012, 10:02: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by WearyPilgrim (# 14593) on :

I agree with Evensong that to call Tillich a non-theist is a bit of a stretch. And I certainly wouldn't deny the panentheism of the great medieval mystics and their successors, that God is present in the creation and that all subsists in God. (I don't think the word "enervations" fits. "Emanations," maybe?) What we're speaking of here, however, is fundamentally the assertion that God has two "sides", the transcendent and the immanent, the former of which Bishop Spong seems to deny altogether, in his books taking rather obvious delight in eviscerating orthodox Christianity.

Some run with Tillich, some run with Macquarrie, some run with scissors.

[Big Grin]

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

Tillich also spoke about "the God that is beyond God", which to me fitly describes the reality that our conceptions and ideas about God, our holy scriptures and dogmatic formulations, are all mere approximations - oftentimes crude and primitive ones - to a Deity that is rationally unknowable for us. Our concepts merely point - or not - to the Reality that is beyond the symbol.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
a non-theistic Christianity loses so much of the mystery that makes any religion compelling in the first place.

Taking non-theistic in the expanded sense Evensong and Demas refer to, I think this highlights a fundamental fault-line within Christianity.

Some people want religion as a "compelling framework" to believe in. The power brokers, the institutional churches, support and promote this because they get to define and control it. Others of us see religion more in terms of an almost accidental historical context within which we contruct our own framework for making sense of life. We don't accept either the authority or the competence of church institutions to determine how we should live. Instead we value the stories and history of our tradition as resources for synthesising a framework appropriate to our individual and community situation.

Which is right? Not a useful question, I suspect.

Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :

My own theology embraces God as both immanent and transcendent, natural and supernatural. My observations gleaned from listening to 'non-theistic' Christians follows, but I'm ready to stand corrected on any aspect:

It's derived from the intellectual, rational entry point of faith. It often accepts the numinous and embraces the aesthetical aspects of traditional Christianity. It applies logic and historical criticism to the existing religion so that much of the authority of the scriptures and accumulated theological thinking is dismissed along with recorded supernatural activity which is termed 'symbolic'.

It accepts the instance of finding 'the divine' within a human being, the light of goodness which results in love. Some keep the lower case 'd', while others will go as far as to capitalise it and accept it as the Holy Spirit, something or someone 'other' than themselves.

The 'ground of all being' connects the 'other' with nature, the nature which runs through humanity and all of creation and which continues to evolve.

I don't have any more issue with people who have these views as I have with any other primary angle of faith. As ever, I object if my theology is declared invalid by those who hold different views. In all of us, hopefully, our views will continue to evolve. Who knows, we may meet somewhere in the centre.

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

*waves furiously at Davo*

Hi Davo! Long time no see! [Big Grin]

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

Panentheism: God is in all and through all. Less need to be supernatural then.

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

I always thought it was in all and beyond all . A bit different.

Immanent and transcendent.

But yes, if you have both, the whole "supernatural" thing is a load of bollocks.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

This is a lot to do with dualism I suppose, and the traditional separation in Christianity of God and nature; whereas some of the mystics seem to collapse them, or at any rate, collapse the self/other distinction as a whole. Hence, Angelus Silesius:

God is a pure no-thing,
concealed in now and here:
the less you reach for him,
the more he will appear.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

I appreciate that this won't resonate with some shipmates.

I have to admit that I can't really see the point of a non-theistic Christianity. If a person doesn't believe in anything, or would prefer to believe it isn't, and doesn't need to be, true, why bother. Why not stay in bed on a Sunday morning, have a leisurely breakfast and read the papers, or take the dog for a walk?

If maintaining a non-theistic approach holds a person within the Christian faith while they are re-formed in a fuller and more adult version of the real thing, then it is doing a service. If it inoculates them against realising they have gradually drifted into infidelity and apostasy, then it is a very bad thing.

So for Anglican Brat's interlocutor, the question he or she probably needs to ask themselves is, which category do they fall in? Are they trying to hold on, or are they looking for an excuse to retain the comfort of form, with the absence of substance?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Enoch: [Overused]

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
*waves furiously at Davo*

* waves back * [Smile]

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I have to admit that I can't really see the point of a non-theistic Christianity.

If you think Christianity is a set of beliefs then I can see that would make sense.

quote:
If maintaining a non-theistic approach holds a person within the Christian faith while they are re-formed in a fuller and more adult version of the real thing, then it is doing a service.

Alternatively, if you've found the simplistic adoption of a set of beliefs a childish approach to religion, you only encounter the real thing when you move past that.

[ 23. September 2012, 15:26: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I have to admit that I can't really see the point of a non-theistic Christianity.
If you think Christianity is a set of beliefs then I can see that would make sense.

No, it's because I see Christianity as a certain kind of relationship with God, the kind of relationship that one has with a person, not a force or a ground-of-being.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

But surely you can't define a version of Christianity as non-theistic, because it doesn't adhere to theistic personalism. That seems absurd, as if only one definition of God counts as theism, or only one kind of relation with God counts as theism. Well, it's just incoherent.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
No, it's because I see Christianity as a certain kind of relationship with God, the kind of relationship that one has with a person, not a force or a ground-of-being.

I don't think anyone's suggested God is a force, but it's easy for the personal relationship angle to morph into "God is a person like us but bigger" belief. As far as non-theistic is a useful term it seems essentially shorthand for avoiding that.

[ 23. September 2012, 15:53: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
But surely you can't define a version of Christianity as non-theistic, because it doesn't adhere to theistic personalism. That seems absurd, as if only one definition of God counts as theism, or only one kind of relation with God counts as theism. Well, it's just incoherent.

It is my understanding of the words that a religion of an impersonal God is deism, not theism strictly speaking. I admit I'm no theologian and may be misunderstanding the words.

And surely calling it "incoherent" is absurd. You understood what I meant.

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
it's easy for the personal relationship angle to morph into "God is a person like us but bigger" belief. As far as non-theistic is a useful term it seems essentially shorthand for avoiding that.

Should we avoid doing something because of what it might morph into? Marriage might morph into an abusive power relationship but that doesn't mean marriage should be avoided.

[ 23. September 2012, 17:09: Message edited by: mousethief ]

Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I appreciate that this won't resonate with some shipmates.

I have to admit that I can't really see the point of a non-theistic Christianity. If a person doesn't believe in anything, or would prefer to believe it isn't, and doesn't need to be, true, why bother. Why not stay in bed on a Sunday morning, have a leisurely breakfast and read the papers, or take the dog for a walk?

If maintaining a non-theistic approach holds a person within the Christian faith while they are re-formed in a fuller and more adult version of the real thing, then it is doing a service. If it inoculates them against realising they have gradually drifted into infidelity and apostasy, then it is a very bad thing.

So for Anglican Brat's interlocutor, the question he or she probably needs to ask themselves is, which category do they fall in? Are they trying to hold on, or are they looking for an excuse to retain the comfort of form, with the absence of substance?

Well I suspect he or others would say that they take inspiration from Jesus' teachings and believe that he actually lived and taught the way to live.

But the notion that Jesus is still alive in an objective way, for some of them is problematic.

So I think the real question is whether or not Christianity can simply be about the teachings of a dead first century Jewish prophet, or does it require belief in a Resurrection?

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Should we avoid doing something because of what it might morph into?

Of course not. The question seems to have become whether Christianity is necessarily any more "a certain kind of relationship with God" than the adoption of a set of beliefs. My point was that it is not. I was objecting to Enoch's characterisation of a "non-theistic" approach as a less than adult alternative.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
So I think the real question is whether or not Christianity can simply be about the teachings of a dead first century Jewish prophet, or does it require belief in a Resurrection?

Recall that the Athenians thought Paul was preaching about TWO gods, Jesus and Resurrection:

Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him. And some said, “What will this babbler say?” And some others said, “He seemeth to be a proclaimer of strange gods,” because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. (Acts 17:18).

Unless Paul was very off base, it seems that "resurrection" was essential to the gospel from the start. So that to drop it is to change Christianity into something it isn't and has never before been. For which reason to continue to call it "Christianity" is misleading at best.

Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

More to the point, I suspect the real problem is that such Christians who adhere to a non-theistic paradigm are going to have a difficult time in the Church. Unless we are willing to specifically cater to this group of people and toss out prayer, the hymns of the church, the creeds, and pretty much most of Scripture, they are going to be in a corporate setting where the "theistic" version of Christianity is going to hold sway.

For me, a typical Anglican answer would say, "We continue to say the Creeds and sing the hymns in continuity with the Catholic Church of the past, how you individually interpret these beliefs is up to your conscience."

In my view, that is the best we can do for people who really have a difficult time with Christian beliefs.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

I have thought the point of the Spongian type of approach is that there is a lot that doesn't reconcile well within traditional, often scriptural, understandings with (1) life experiences, and (2) understandings from science. I've seen this approach as trying to mesh ideas from one area of understanding with those from another. It is trying to fit things together that don't fit very well. It ends up producing something that doesn't represent Christianity properly by watering it down into a flavourless distilled nothing. And it doesn't represent the things it is trying to incorporate properly either, like science and human life experience. The general idea is seductive, with the specifics empty and disappointing.

I'm no expert on such matters, but I've found the positive ideas of the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy] more interesting and potentially satisfying than the negation approach of the non-theistic.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
I suspect the real problem is that such Christians who adhere to a non-theistic paradigm are going to have a difficult time in the Church.

Not really. Most of us eventually learn to work around the Church's institutional foibles. If it becomes more effort than it's worth the institution simply loses our contribution. We'll express our faith in other contexts like the rest of humanity.

quote:
For me, a typical Anglican answer would say, "We continue to say the Creeds and sing the hymns in continuity with the Catholic Church of the past, how you individually interpret these beliefs is up to your conscience." In my view, that is the best we can do for people who really have a difficult time with Christian beliefs.

People who have a difficult time without an institution to regulate what they believe are probably not best placed to judge those of us who enjoy that freedom. Like it (or admit it) or not, Christianity is a very broad tradition.

[ 23. September 2012, 17:55: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
People who have a difficult time without an institution to regulate what they believe

Ah, now the insults start. Four hours and 39 minutes since you "came back" this time. Not bad.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

Hmm. Four hours and 42 minutes before you retreat into your old don't have an answer so I'll take offence ways. It's like I never had a posting break.

[ 23. September 2012, 18:03: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

I really don't have an answer to insults, it's true. What's to say?

Posted by hatless (# 3365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:

I'm no expert on such matters, but I've found the positive ideas of the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy] more interesting and potentially satisfying than the negation approach of the non-theistic.

That looks interesting. I think that a challenge for non-supernatural belief is to articulate how God is active today, otherwise, as Mousethief said, you end up with some version of deism. You need to point to a life that certain ideas and patterns have, a sort of grain in human history that we can live in line with. A converse challenge for conventional belief is to explain the high level of convergence between faiths.

The Wikipedia article on Perennial philosophy has a nice quote from, of all people, Augustine:
The very thing that is now called the Christian religion was not wanting among the ancients from the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the flesh, after which the true religion, which had already existed, began to be called “Christian."

[ 23. September 2012, 19:35: Message edited by: hatless ]

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
I always thought it was in all and beyond all . A bit different.

Immanent and transcendent.

But yes, if you have both, the whole "supernatural" thing is a load of bollocks.

Yes. I've also heard panentheism described as "everything is in God" (v. pantheism's "everything is God"). But the point is that when you add up everything that exists, God exceeds it.

Tillich et al. do make a good point that God isn't a being alongside other beings. That's where the "ground of all being" talk comes from. You can't add up all the things or beings that exist, and count God as one more.

But once you get into that kind of talk, the doctrine of the Trinity gets even more important, IMO. As Charles Peirce points out, undifferentiated being is really the same as nothing. I suspect people who object to the ground-of-being talk are intuiting that. If you're not careful, God as "being itself" can create the impression that God is less than a person, an impersonal force. The Judeo-Christian tradition rejects that and bears witness to a different truth.

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Churchgeek wrote:

quote:
Or they get accused of it - a classmate of mine, of Ethiopian descent (and Ethiopian Orthodox, IIRC), expressed anger at another fellow student, a white-as-white-can-be kid who had converted to Islam. She felt it was wrong for a white person to claim for themselves a religion that is (still) quite culturally bound and associated with non-whites who are at risk of hate crimes in this country.
I wonder if this woman's views are shared by a majority of Muslims(on whose behalf she presumably claims to be speak). I don't have a lot of experience interacting with Muslims, but from what I've been able to glean, a lot of them think it's a good thing for anyone to convert.

IME I think you're right about what a typical Muslim would think, but my experience is with American Muslims, mostly.

There is a tendency for monotheistic religions to break through the cultural blocks to conversion. After all, if there's only one God, you're going to want to go with the religion that seems to you to best approach the one God.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
once you get into [ground of being] talk, the doctrine of the Trinity gets even more important, IMO. As Charles Peirce points out, undifferentiated being is really the same as nothing.

Doesn't that miss the point, though? It doesn't commit to understanding God as the ground of being because it still also refers to God as a being. God as an eternal being is inherently contradictory anyway because being implies continuity, and that only has meaning within time. The Trinity is merely a means of finessing this kind of contradiction to justify the claim that Jesus is God.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

Instead of the word "supernaturalism" why not try "supranaturalism"?

It offers possibilities.

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
once you get into [ground of being] talk, the doctrine of the Trinity gets even more important, IMO. As Charles Peirce points out, undifferentiated being is really the same as nothing.
Doesn't that miss the point, though? It doesn't commit to understanding God as the ground of being because it still also refers to God as a being. God as an eternal being is inherently contradictory anyway because being implies continuity, and that only has meaning within time. The Trinity is merely a means of finessing this kind of contradiction to justify the claim that Jesus is God.

By "it" do you mean the doctrine of the Trinity? If so, I don't see how that refers to God as a being. Especially when you retain the mystery and the apophatic tradition and affirm that whatever we say about God can only inadequately point to God. The doctrine of the Trinity is mind-boggling precisely because it's a human attempt to square up our experiences of God, that God is one, and that God is known in the person of Christ and in the Holy Spirit. As long as you're careful that you don't just mean "triad" when you say "Trinity," you can maintain that tension. It's when you misunderstand the Trinity to be three distinct gods that you've rendered God a being (or three) among/alongside other beings.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
By "it" do you mean the doctrine of the Trinity?

No, I meant the link you were making between ground of being talk and undifferentiated being resolving to nothing. The former doesn't imply or even relate to the latter.

[ 23. September 2012, 21:21: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

You have clearly all read theologians, I haven't.

I need a God that is more than extra-special elephant with a magic wand, and easier to relate to than gravity.

Posted by Demas (# 24) on :

It's interesting how hard we find it in these discussions to talk about the ideas and not the people who hold them.

Doublethink: Nice! I like.

[ 23. September 2012, 21:28: Message edited by: Demas ]

Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on :

I first came across this "Ground of our being" idea in J. T. Robinson's book "Honest to God". I didn't really understand what he was on about. What exactly does "ground of our being" mean? Was he saying that God is really just an expression of our humanity? So I don't really know if he was non-theistic or not.

Someone who was certainly non-theistic was Don Cupitt. I don't know what he believes (if anything) now, but I argued with someone that he was an atheist masquerading as a Priest, but the other person insisted he was not an atheist.

All that's long behind me now, but I can't help wondering if (at least in the Anglican world) the word "Heretic" has fallen into disuse?

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

No bad thing if it does. The truest thing anyone can say about any theological proposition is "who knows, eh?"

Working hypotheses that seem true to us, that's all we really have. Heresy is just the theology of the people who didn't get to write the creeds.

[ 23. September 2012, 21:46: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]

Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :

quote:
originally posted by Evensong:
Uh. I'm no expert on Paul Tillich, but what you say above about him doesn't sound right.

I wouldn't call him a non-theist. I"d call him an existentialist.

As for "ground of being" it's kind of a modern understanding of medieval theology in that God is all in all and the world would not exist without enervation from God at all times. Kind of like Aquinas.

The idea that God is a being in the sky that occasionally points his finger and alters things on the earth only really developed in the early modern period IMO.

Very good, Evensong!

Tell your theology prof Beeswax Altar says you get 5 extra points on your next exam. [Biased]

Posted by hatless (# 3365) on :

Somewhere in hi Systematic Theology Tillich says that to say God exists is atheistic. In other words he objects to saying God exists, a particular form of theism, because it is atheistic - which is a criticism because he regards himself as theistic, but in a different way from those who believe in God as a being that exists.

Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :

quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Somewhere in hi Systematic Theology Tillich says that to say God exists is atheistic. In other words he objects to saying God exists, a particular form of theism, because it is atheistic - which is a criticism because he regards himself as theistic, but in a different way from those who believe in God as a being that exists.

The objection to saying that God exists is of course a very ancient and orthodox one. But it is posited on the understanding that to say something exists is to import the idea of that thing being part of created order of things. Which would of course be nonsense for trad. theism.

Tillich I'm not so sure. I've had trouble with Tillich's whole project. There was a very long and fruitful exchange on the subject yeras ago here, and I drew the conclusion that in Tillich's scheme of things, both transcendence and immanence had been redefined. It explained why some of Tillich seems clear and some hopelessly opaque, as mentally I had been trying to fit his writings into my understanding of those terms, which doesn't work.

Jack Spong follows Tillich largely on this I think. As best I can understand it, he is certainly not an atheist, but his definition of God would appear to be somewhat of an emergent property of the cosmos (hence his panentheism). But if you were to conduct a thought-experiment whereby all creation were to implode tomorrow, God would consequently vanish too.

I've no idea if this emergent property idea is in Tillich though.

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
What is radical about denying Sin, SPK?

The idea there there is no sin, or that we are not sinful is highly unorthodox.

At risk of bringing in MT's Sinfulness thread, I go for classic Calvinism here, maybe a touch of Arminianism, but fully Prot all the way. I don't do Universalism.

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Wouldn't it be honester to just say, "We don't believe in Christianity," than to try to pretend Christianity is something it isn't, or make it into something it has never been?

Such is the war cry of the Trads in the UCCan against the Rads. It comes out a lot of the discussions I have.

You'd have fun at my Presbytery meeting. [Snigger]

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:

quote:
originally posted by Evensong:
Uh. I'm no expert on Paul Tillich, but what you say above about him doesn't sound right.

I wouldn't call him a non-theist. I"d call him an existentialist.

As for "ground of being" it's kind of a modern understanding of medieval theology in that God is all in all and the world would not exist without enervation from God at all times. Kind of like Aquinas.

The idea that God is a being in the sky that occasionally points his finger and alters things on the earth only really developed in the early modern period IMO.

Very good, Evensong!

Tell your theology prof Beeswax Altar says you get 5 extra points on your next exam.

Are you taking the piss? [Paranoid]

Just remember, I'm a few years older than you and our God teaches us to respect our elders. [Razz]

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

quote:
Originally posted by hatless:

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:

I'm no expert on such matters, but I've found the positive ideas of the Perennial Philosophy more interesting and potentially satisfying than the negation approach of the non-theistic.
That looks interesting. I think that a challenge for non-supernatural belief is to articulate how God is active today, otherwise, as Mousethief said, you end up with some version of deism. You need to point to a life that certain ideas and patterns have, a sort of grain in human history that we can live in line with. A converse challenge for conventional belief is to explain the high level of convergence between faiths.

The Wikipedia article on Perennial philosophy has a nice quote from, of all people, Augustine:
The very thing that is now called the Christian religion was not wanting among the ancients from the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the flesh, after which the true religion, which had already existed, began to be called “Christian."

And I think that's the point. You get something that ties into a lot of what humans have been muddling through and trying to figure out, and you can understand it via understanding the life of one guy named Jesus. Though it is likely that there is more to the story and to the understanding than we can grasp. I don't know how someone can turn that completely non-theistic, but it certainly can be turned into a disinterested god.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
You have clearly all read theologians

Nah. What do they know? Mostly only what other people have written.

quote:
I need a God that is more than extra-special elephant with a magic wand, and easier to relate to than gravity.

That's an interesting use of "need". I initially reacted against it, but it made me think about what humans do in general need.

Not necessarily a God, I don't think, but enough conceptual tools to construct a viable world view. At least for those of us able to afford to think beyond our immediate needs, I would have thought that must include some ground of being equivalent. Unfortunately the obvious sources for these ideas are religions, and they have little incentive to impartially present accumulated wisdom without their mostly spurious religious practices and beliefs.

Non-theistic only invites confusion. If making sense is the need, and religious practice tied to unsubstantiable truth claims gets in the way for many people, I suspect secular Christianity would be a better description of a more widely useful alternative.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

I think there are very old forms of Christianity which reject theistic personalism, but I don't think that equates to non-theism nor to deism.

Some theologians and philosophers trace these ideas back to Aristotle, and the idea of Pure Act, and so on. One of the interesting guys today is Prof. Ed Feser, whose blog contains a considerable amount of such arguments.

Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
You have clearly all read theologians
Nah. What do they know? Mostly only what other people have written.

quote:
I need a God that is more than extra-special elephant with a magic wand, and easier to relate to than gravity.
That's an interesting use of "need". I initially reacted against it, but it made me think about what humans do in general need.

Not necessarily a God, I don't think, but enough conceptual tools to construct a viable world view. At least for those of us able to afford to think beyond our immediate needs, I would have thought that must include some ground of being equivalent. Unfortunately the obvious sources for these ideas are religions, and they have little incentive to impartially present accumulated wisdom without their mostly spurious religious practices and beliefs.

Non-theistic only invites confusion. If making sense is the need, and religious practice tied to unsubstantiable truth claims gets in the way for many people, I suspect secular Christianity would be a better description of a more widely useful alternative.

What exactly is the point of constructing a worldview if there is no actual truth content behind it? Plenty of people eat, drink, and sleep without needing a worldview or an ideology to justify their existence.

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
What exactly is the point of constructing a worldview if there is no actual truth content behind it?

There is no way you can prove an actual truth content behind much of anything.

We all believe. We all have faith in our worldviews (whether they are religious or secular).

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Plenty of people eat, drink, and sleep without needing a worldview or an ideology to justify their existence.

Oh they'll have one.

Whether they realise it or not.

Only animals do not require a worldview or an ideology in which to exist.

Even a worldview of "fuck knows" is a worldview - because it understands it does not know.

Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
What exactly is the point of constructing a worldview if there is no actual truth content behind it?
There is no way you can prove an actual truth content behind much of anything.

We all believe. We all have faith in our worldviews (whether they are religious or secular).

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Plenty of people eat, drink, and sleep without needing a worldview or an ideology to justify their existence.
Oh they'll have one.

Whether they realise it or not.

Only animals do not require a worldview or an ideology in which to exist.

Even a worldview of "fuck knows" is a worldview - because it understands it does not know.

I think my point is that the term "constructing a worldview" indicates that is artificial.

Christianity does premise that there is something real behind the concept of God, that is hidden by those multiple interpretations. Non-theistic/secular Christianity has always struck me as a tad solipsistic as in "We know that this is BS, but let's play along."

Yes, religion is human-constructed and human-interpreted. But I do think at the end of the day, Christianity needs something "real" behind all the humanness.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
What exactly is the point of constructing a worldview if there is no actual truth content behind it?
There is no way you can prove an actual truth content behind much of anything.

We all believe. We all have faith in our worldviews (whether they are religious or secular).

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Plenty of people eat, drink, and sleep without needing a worldview or an ideology to justify their existence.
Oh they'll have one.

Whether they realise it or not.

Only animals do not require a worldview or an ideology in which to exist.

Even a worldview of "fuck knows" is a worldview - because it understands it does not know.
I think my point is that the term "constructing a worldview" indicates that is artificial.

Christianity does premise that there is something real behind the concept of God, that is hidden by those multiple interpretations. Non-theistic/secular Christianity has always struck me as a tad solipsistic as in "We know that this is BS, but let's play along."

Yes, religion is human-constructed and human-interpreted. But I do think at the end of the day, Christianity needs something "real" behind all the humanness.

Indeed it does, but the knowledge of whether there is something "real", and what that something is, and therefore whether Christianity in those terms is "true" is always going to be provisional at best. Hence my conclusion long ago that the only honest position I can take is agnosticism with a provisional position that it is true and the reality behind it, whilst unknowable, approximates to something we'd recognise as what from this side, if you will, we experience as Christianity.

The only thing I'm convinced of is that the fundamentalists are wrong. Most of them have to be anyway, because there are hundreds of different varieties and if any of them is right the others aren't.

I suppose I should blog my reasoning here.

[ 24. September 2012, 13:01: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Somewhere in hi Systematic Theology Tillich says that to say God exists is atheistic. In other words he objects to saying God exists, a particular form of theism, because it is atheistic - which is a criticism because he regards himself as theistic, but in a different way from those who believe in God as a being that exists.

It is atheistic to say that 'God exists' because God is not one object among many.

It is more 'correct to say' that 'God is existence'. - or 'the source of all that exists.'

In other (Tillich's) words, 'The Ground of Being.'

[ 24. September 2012, 13:25: Message edited by: leo ]

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
I think my point is that the term "constructing a worldview" indicates that is artificial.

You can "construct" a worldview because you understand all inherited constructions are precisely that - constructions (even if based on a "truth').

Or you can inherit a worldview based on an inherited construction (Tradition in the case of Christianity) and not criticize or deconstruct it at all.

Or you can kind of go for a middle ground: deconstruct the inherited tradition - but only to an extent. Only to the extent that deconstruction is permitted. Otherwise people will call it "artificial".

Even those that consciously construct, do so on the basis that what they are constructing is "A Good Thing" and therefore "True" to the best extent they can conceivably live with it. They glean "Truth" from the other worldviews they have come in contact with.

Whether any of it is really "true" is still a matter of faith.

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:

Christianity does premise that there is something real behind the concept of God, that is hidden by those multiple interpretations. Non-theistic/secular Christianity has always struck me as a tad solipsistic as in "We know that this is BS, but let's play along."

I don't really know what non-theistic or secular Christianity is, but I'd guess they would argue that their understanding was more "real" than yours.

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:

Yes, religion is human-constructed and human-interpreted. But I do think at the end of the day, Christianity needs something "real" behind all the humanness.

Which bits are you defining as "real"? The supposed "miraculous" bits? [Confused]

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

The only thing I'm convinced of is that the fundamentalists are wrong. Most of them have to be anyway, because there are hundreds of different varieties and if any of them is right the others aren't.

But their version is right, everyone else's is wrong - regardless of whether they claim to be right or not.

So by saying you're convinced fundamentalists are wrong, you are expressing a fundamentalist position.

But don't stress, that's the bane of liberalism; tolerant of everything but intolerance.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think there are very old forms of Christianity which reject theistic personalism, but I don't think that equates to non-theism nor to deism.

That's my impression too. But there will also be any number of very new personal forms that cover the same ground, all reinventing the wheel and being implicity written off as heretical by the institutions of Christianity.

quote:
One of the interesting guys today is Prof. Ed Feser

He looks good if you're happy to inhabit a Roman Catholic universe.

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
the term "constructing a worldview" indicates that is artificial.

I'm not sure why you think that.

quote:
Christianity does premise that there is something real behind the concept of God

Christianity doesn't premise anything beyond attaching some positive value to Jesus the Christ of the Bible. It's a broad tradition. What you keep referring to as Christianity is your own personal take on a particular orthodoxy within that.

quote:
Non-theistic/secular Christianity has always struck me as a tad solipsistic as in "We know that this is BS, but let's play along."

Only because you talk of Christianity as if it were merely your own little corner of it. It's ironic that you settle on solipsistic to criticise a broader point of view. We don't play along, we argue for change. That's the freedom a broader understanding of Christianity provides.

[ 24. September 2012, 14:45: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

The only thing I'm convinced of is that the fundamentalists are wrong. Most of them have to be anyway, because there are hundreds of different varieties and if any of them is right the others aren't.
But their version is right, everyone else's is wrong - regardless of whether they claim to be right or not.

So by saying you're convinced fundamentalists are wrong, you are expressing a fundamentalist position.

But don't stress, that's the bane of liberalism; tolerant of everything but intolerance.

Well, it's a matter of definitions. To my mind a distinctive feature of religious fundamentalism is that it looks to an authority - the Bible - and takes its pronouncements from there. My "fundamentalism" - if you will - is at least based on logical deduction; specifically the reasoning I present here:

http://agnosticchristian.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/first-content-post-why-i-think-fundamentalists-are-wrong/

Essentially, it seems to me that the reality we perceive is not consistent with the model religious fundamentalism in any of its guises presents.

The "tolerant of everything except intolerance" thing is old hat. Everyone who's ever seen fit to criticise lberalism has pointed that one out. It's a bit of a "so what" really.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
the term "constructing a worldview" indicates that is artificial.
I'm not sure why you think that.

Because "artificial" means "man-made" and "constructing" means "making."

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Jack Spong follows Tillich largely on this I think. As best I can understand it, he is certainly not an atheist, but his definition of God would appear to be somewhat of an emergent property of the cosmos (hence his panentheism). But if you were to conduct a thought-experiment whereby all creation were to implode tomorrow, God would consequently vanish too.

Going back to this I missed, I'm not familiar with either Tillich's or Spong's positions but the other way round works for me: the cosmos as an emergent property of God. I can imagine the objection from orthodox theists - they'll claim God doesn't need to create - but it would be consistent with a non-theistic Christianity.

[ 25. September 2012, 08:38: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Wouldn't it be honester to just say, "We don't believe in Christianity," than to try to pretend Christianity is something it isn't, or make it into something it has never been?

Yes, I agree. This is why I had to part ways with John Shelby Spong. He wrote a lot of really good books that exposed the problems with sexism, homophobia, racism in the Bible but then he veered so far to the left that he fell off and got really strange. Now he says he's still a Christian but doesn't believe Jesus is God, doesn't believe there is such a thing as sin, and many other ideas I just find a bit too much. He threw the Jesus baby out with the bathwater, poor dear man*

*"Poor, dear man" is a phrase that Father Andrew Greeley had his female characters saying quite a bit in his various novels. I think it's sweet, so I threw it in.
[Biased]

Posted by daronmedway (# 3012) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Somewhere in hi Systematic Theology Tillich says that to say God exists is atheistic. In other words he objects to saying God exists, a particular form of theism, because it is atheistic - which is a criticism because he regards himself as theistic, but in a different way from those who believe in God as a being that exists.
It is atheistic to say that 'God exists' because God is not one object among many.

Nah.

quote:
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6

The book what this quote cums from ain't writ by an atheist.

[ 26. September 2012, 16:53: Message edited by: daronmedway ]

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by daronmedway:

quote:
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6
The book what this quote cums from ain't writ by an atheist.

No, but it probably wasn't written by a philosopher either.

Posted by Demas (# 24) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Non-theistic/secular Christianity has always struck me as a tad solipsistic as in "We know that this is BS, but let's play along."

To the extent a worldview is a set of propositional statements, the explicit individual factuality of those statement is definitely important. But I think that non-theistic/secular Christianity in the sense you are referring to sees worldviews as discursive meta-narratives - that is a shared language rather than a set of propositional assertions.

If we want to be able to talk to each other about real things - like love, life, meaning, existence - then we need a language, in the broadest possible sense of that word. Some languages may be better than others. How can we talk about love within the framework of Nazism? How can we discuss the morality of slavery, or the beauty of a flower within a framework of pure empiricism?

It is not unreasonable to then say that a discursive meta-narrative which empowers and enables discussion of true, real things like love and life is itself true in a real sense.

From this perspective, trying to limit your language/worldview to only those individual elements/propositions which you know to be true will impoverish your language to the point where you cannot anymore talk about real, true things - by grasping too tightly the truth slips from your fingers.

We cannot know that a God of Love as revealed in Jesus exists. But it is more real and true to talk as if he exists than to remain silent.

I'm not putting this forward necessarily as my personal belief but am trying to explain it as positively as I am able because I can see its attraction.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
I'm not putting this forward necessarily as my personal belief but am trying to explain it as positively as I am able because I can see its attraction.

I can see its attraction too, but only if there is some ultimate world view "out there" that either we think is beyond us or that we're not interested in discovering. It implies that because we have limitations, we should avoid building ideas based on what we can reasonably believe we know and what we can reasonably reject.

Then there's the problem that any talk of "Christianity" is going to be limited to generalities and vagueness, however hard some people try to make it about their particular version. But looking at specifics, for example how an institution within Christianity is constituted, changes that. Then the real issues emerge: where does the power to influence language and perceptions lie, and what are the real interests that define the forms within which Christian faith can be publicly expressed within that institution.

[ 27. September 2012, 12:55: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by daronmedway (# 3012) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:

quote:
Originally posted by daronmedway:

quote:
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6
The book what this quote cums from ain't writ by an atheist.
No, but it probably wasn't written by a philosopher either.

Hmm, Tillich or the Author of Hebrews? Tillich or the Author of Hebrews? Whose writings have had and will go on having the greatest impact on the life of the church? Not Tillich, that's for sure...

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by daronmedway:
Whose writings have had and will go on having the greatest impact on the life of the church?

How much impact does a church that takes Hebrews (and the rest of the Bible) as the literal word of God have on life in general these days? Give or take a bit of literary obscurity, I suspect Tillich's ideas may have more to offer.

[ 27. September 2012, 14:58: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by daronmedway:

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Somewhere in hi Systematic Theology Tillich says that to say God exists is atheistic. In other words he objects to saying God exists, a particular form of theism, because it is atheistic - which is a criticism because he regards himself as theistic, but in a different way from those who believe in God as a being that exists.
It is atheistic to say that 'God exists' because God is not one object among many.
Nah.
quote:
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6
The book what this quote cums from ain't writ by an atheist.

Bad translation - the word 'exists' does not appear in the Greek, which has οτι εστιν = he is.

The fact that some translators use the word 'exists' shows how their worldview and their lack of philosophical training influences their work and why we should've prooftext from what are basically paraphrases.

Posted by The Revolutionist (# 4578) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
But surely you can't define a version of Christianity as non-theistic, because it doesn't adhere to theistic personalism. That seems absurd, as if only one definition of God counts as theism, or only one kind of relation with God counts as theism. Well, it's just incoherent.

Non-personal theism might still be theistic, but I don't see how it's still Christian. That the God revealed in the Bible is irreducibly personal is basic to many of the distinctive beliefs of Christianity, such as trinity and incarnation.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

This guy opposes classical theism to theistic personalism. I don't know enough about it to really pronounce on it, but some of his arguments seem quite persuasive.

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=theistic+personalism

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

That first article (the only one I've read) is excellent. It illustrates the hole that "classical theism" as Feser describes it is in. It has become a niche that only apologists for "classical religion" are really aware of. Whether they acknowledge it or not, their commitment to the classical religion effectively prevents them from challenging the traditional forms of expression that no longer convey sense to most contemporary minds. I don't know how that can be resolved.

[ 29. September 2012, 11:10: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by daronmedway (# 3012) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by daronmedway:

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Somewhere in hi Systematic Theology Tillich says that to say God exists is atheistic. In other words he objects to saying God exists, a particular form of theism, because it is atheistic - which is a criticism because he regards himself as theistic, but in a different way from those who believe in God as a being that exists.
It is atheistic to say that 'God exists' because God is not one object among many.
Nah.
quote:
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6
The book what this quote cums from ain't writ by an atheist.
Bad translation - the word 'exists' does not appear in the Greek, which has οτι εστιν = he is.

The fact that some translators use the word 'exists' shows how their worldview and their lack of philosophical training influences their work and why we should've prooftext from what are basically paraphrases.

That's interesting. Thank you. Although the subtle distinction between 'God is' and 'God exists' is not something I'd die on a hill for.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

Well, much ink has been spelt and many have been martyred for being orthodox.

To say that 'God exists' is to posit a god as one among many things, another creature.

To say that 'God is' is the orthodox belief that God is the ground and source of all that is, that he sustains it and that, without Him, nothing would exist.

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