I have just been reading an exposition of mainstream Christian theology - the theology common to Western and Eastern Catholics and the major Protestant denominations; and I am struck by how it nowadays strikes me as utterly unsatisfactory - being over-inclusive; and consequently incoherent, and evasive.
It would really have repelled me from becoming a Christian, had I realized that I was signing-up to commit-to believe in such stuff.
From my current understanding, the deep problem seems to be at least twofold:
One is recurrently trying to fit Christianity into oneness philosophy - which leads to a recurrent compulsion to talk of unity as our aspiration and ultimate goal; and thereby to dissolve away individuality, freedom, evil, and indeed Time.
The other is trying to make Christianity into a this-worldly religion, suitable for incorporation in a church, a method for improving human behaviour, and to serve as the basis for a nation.
Part of this was making Christianity into an historical religion, provided with an arc either of spiritual decline or spiritual progress. And a this-worldly end-point - including a "second coming" of Jesus.
By trying to provide for too much, Christian theology ends-up making itself into a species of abstract nonsense.
Whereas Jesus's teaching (as seen in the IV Gospel) is actually very simple and clear; but it is next-worldly.
The reality of Jesus's "religion" was neither about making better-people nor a better-world - either immediately or in the long term - so the fact that this evidently did not happen, and shows no sign of happening, is not a refutation.
Jesus offered individual people the chance to follow him to resurrected eternal life in Heaven.
It is by resurrection (by being born again) that better people are made, and it is post-mortal Heaven that is the better world - the world which Jesus actually promised.
So really, the Christianity of Jesus Christ was next-worldly, and its societal effects on this world, are derivative from the individual consequences of personal confidence in Jesus's promises about the next world.
But, unsurprisingly, most people want palliation and happiness now, they demand that their religion promises a better mortal life, an improved society and civilization, they want justice on earth far more than the promise of Heaven.
And (apparently) from soon after Jesus ascended; the theologians and philosophers have made valiant attempts to construct a "Christianity" that provides what various people, at various times, have demanded of a this-worldly religion.
By passing itself off as this-worldly when it actually is not; and by trying to satisfy people's demands for a better mortal life and a more congenial social situation - official Christianity became bloated, distorted, and non-sensical.
Which is a terrible shame indeed, because all this is a significant obstacle to the intellectually honest.
I was only able to become a Christian by persuading myself that I was not thereby committed to believing everything that people officially told me - any more than in my life as a scientist and academic I was bound to believe everything written in textbooks, or indeed everything said or written by even the best in the field.
Eventually, I did find the truth in Christianity, and only in Christianity; but the real truth is of a different kind - than the this-worldly promises which I - like most people - were seeking and hoping for...
Not that there is anything wrong with wanting to live a better life in a better world; but we need to be clear that at best this can only be a temporary and local palliation of the fundamental human condition.
The lesson of Jesus Christ is that we really can have what our hearts most desire; but only on the other side of death, and only in Heaven but not on Earth.
5 comments:
i chuckled at the title. i have had this thought quite a few times in the last three years, and in fact said this precisely to not one, but two people today. it really is amazing. a miracle almost.
@Laeth - The strange thing is that I was very keen on the social side of Christianity when I converted - I thought it was the only hope for motivating people enough to stop and reverse civilizational decline.
This was probably why I just could not "get my head around" what was being said - over and again - in the IV Gospel (which I had always regarded as, in theory, the only primary and most authoritative source) that contradicted my expectations.
Also, I had a strong prejudice (maybe influenced by CS Lewis) against emphasizing, or even talking about, life beyond death and Heaven.
Much has changed in 18 years.
i always had the sense that there was no saving civilization even as a little kid, perhaps because i grew up in the nineties and early noughties. there was no mistaking it then, so that part of world-building christianity never appealed to me. it just seemed like a historical thing that would never happen again. but i very much wanted a 'system' of understanding, an all encompassing thing, and when i somehow found Jesus to be true, and it was a feeling more than intellectual reasoning, i was happy that there was such a wealth of philosophy and theology, and it could all be connected to Jesus. except it wasn't. not really. for me what killed it was pursuing oneness to its logical conclusion. there is no Jesus and there is no me or anyone else. i pursued it until i realized, with your help, that it all means, more or less, nothing at all. it was quite freeing because i had forced myself to believe those things, to say them and repeat them and write about them. i thought i understood them and then eventually found there really was nothing to understand. it's mostly meaningless gibberish, it may even be logically constructed, but it has no connection to reality as anyone knows it. and now i'm mostly baffled by how other people don't reach the same conclusion, how they keep saying these things and don't see the implications. how do they live like this, believing this. i still don't get it.
@Laeth - "how they keep saying these things and don't see the implications. how do they live like this, believing this"
This is a very important aspect of the situation. I think I may have some insight, having been there myself (I mean, saying these kinds of things and not seeing or denying the implications), and more than once in different contexts.
There is a fundamental unseriousness and disconnectedness about the arguments; when judged by the standards of honest reasoning.
For instance, the implications of arguing ultimate and primal unity of reality - but failing to see, and denying, that this assumption undermines almost everything.
I think this tells us that the person is not pursuing the argument towards a conclusion; but has predicated the conclusion - and the argument is merely trying to persuade other people to adopt the same conclusion. When that pre-decided conclusion is the unique rightness and necessity of some church; then incompatible assumptions and false logic will hardly be noticed, or simply denied; so long as the argument seems to have some persuasive power.
There are not many people who will argue from a conviction of their own ultimate responsibility for the conclusions - and these are far outnumbered by those who are determined that ultimate responsibility must be located elsewhere - e.g. an institution.
Loyalty and obedience to an institution is usually the primary motivation; and everything else must make-way to ensure that is the conclusion reached.
But this is not a trivial matter, and indeed is typically impossible to overcome; which is why so many people are immune to experience, evidence, common sense, persuasion; and indifferent to implications and coherence - when it comes to matters in which they have invested their assumptions.
Such matters are typically protected ("immunized against") arguments or checks of any kind; by inbuilt assumptions concerning the necessarily-wrong-motivations of those who challenge them.
i guess i resist the idea that it's all about belonging to a club and trying to feel righteous and badgering people with 'the truth', and i try to find some other explanation. i specifically have a hard time believing this was the case with you. the world-building aspect makes more sense.
if it really is only belonging and self righteousness in the end, it is very disappointing and depressing. but still i don't know, because at least a few people devote a lot of energy to it, and it's not like there is a lot of money either in it, i don't think, though that would be perhaps an even worse motivation.
i suppose we all have to live with a certain amount of blindness most of the time, otherwise we could not function. but if you are the sort of man who lives in ideas, as i suppose people who write about it must be, then this arrival at a static point beyond which they cease to ask questions seems even more sad than gregariousness and self aggrandizement.
Post a Comment