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As promised, I will be posting various quotes this week from what is called “negative or apophatic theology” which is the approach that something which is infinite cannot be thought by the human mind and so we draw closer to the sacred by negation than affirmation. I will show examples of negative theology from both great Christian theologians, but also from other faiths.

“Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.”
-Gregory of Nyssa

“We do not know what God is. Even God cannot say what God is because God is not anything.. Literally God is not, because God transcends being.”
-John Scotus Erigena

“We cannot say what God is, only what God is not.”
-Aquinas

When I first graduated from seminary and began to preach, I barely noticed the flag that stands by most pulpits in the U.S. If we see a flag on a ship at sea, or on the car of a diplomat, we understand those vehicles are set aside to represent the United States. It did not occur to me that the flag by the pulpit bore the same meaning.

If a Roman emperor required a statue of himself to be placed in an early church, everyone would understand what that statue really meant. The statue would be a reminder that people could worship however they wished, so long as their first loyalty was to the empire. The flag can also stand as a boundary that American preachers are not to cross. We may pray for our troops, but not for our enemy’s. We may pray for healing, but not for health care. We may pray for the poor, but we must never question the capitalist system that makes them poor.

What does it mean when we tell preachers not to be political, but place a flag by the pulpit as though the flag were not itself a political statement? Is the flag not a warning? Does the flag not bear a command? “You shall not speak of any other politics than that of the American Empire. You are not to worship a God who is bigger than your nation. You shall not hold the actions of your nation to a universal standard.”

The flag by the pulpit reminds us that the American Empire and the capitalism for which it now stands, lies in the background of everything the church can do, or even think, so long as nationalism is the context from within which we try to be ethical. Knowing this, who would not take the flag down? We should take down very cross itself, if it ever prevented us from showing the love of Christ to those who are not Christian. There is one universal love to which every other lesser loyalty must submit. We do not love America less, for loving humankind more.

For the church to continue to use sexist language and to teach patriarchy as cosmology when there are children in the room is nothing short of child abuse. It teaches young women to trim their sails, to silence any voice of prophecy burning in their breast. No wonder so many women rise from that religious foundation only to find themselves in abusive relationships, with an unsung song, and an un-lived life.

And it leaves young males seeing women as mere helpers in a universe designed for them. No wonder so many young men rise from that foundation to lives of frustration and anger when women cannot play the role of their personal property. It is hard to feel intimacy with a heart full of shrapnel.

THE QUOTABLE ATHEIST (PART 1)

INTRO

I love quotation books. I like to keep them by my bed in case I can’t sleep.  A few years ago I was working through a book called “The Quotable Atheist” by Jack Huberman.  I was stunned late one night to realize the book had a section of quotations by me.  It was one of the largest sections in the book, so I was quite flattered. Our church had gained noteriety for having an atheist join our congregation.   I was stunned that, in addition to religious fundamentalist who were indignate over our action, there were also some atheists who were upset. As I tried to defend our church’s reasons to reporters, a group of quotations were collected on the web. Jack Huberman collected some of those quotes by me, and then made rebuttals. I thought he was incredibly fair. For the next few days I will post a series of quotes taken from that book.   Feel free to comment.

RIGBY QUOTE:

“In my ministry, I have had to live in two worlds.  I have spiritual friends who are trying to celebrate the mystery of life, and activist friends who are trying to actually change the world.  Somehow these two enterprises have been separated.  I do not believe either option represents a complete life.  Apolitical spirituality runs the danger of giving charity instead of justice.  Atheistic humanism runs the danger of giving facts instead of meaning.  I believe this divide between spirituality and activism is a betrayal of the deeper roots of both.”

HUBERMAN’S REBUTTAL: “But spirituality runs other, worse dangers.  And meaning must ultimately be based on facts.  I’m just saying.”  

RESPONSE:
We agree that meaning must be based on facts, but are facts self organizing? The author does not define what he means by the word “spirituality,” but it appears he is using the word as a synonym for “superstition.”  Spirituality and religion can be superstitious, perhaps they usually are, but is that the only possibility? The scientific method requires us to set aside human purposes and values to seek out objectivity, but do we really want to live in a world denuded of any human meanings and values? What is the art of moving from facts to meaning? Even if we do not wish to call it “religion” some sort of first principles are necessary to organize our facts into a meaningful frame for living.

An important part of religion is the journey into our own subjective depths. Our personal consciousness is a vapor burning on a primordial sea. Religion contains the record of thousands of years of prior trips into that darkness. Religion often symbolizes this journey as going into a cave or being swallowed by an animal- of dying and being reborn. We cannot go far into our own liquid substrate by thinking about it. As Edward Abbey said, “You can’t study the darkness by flooding it with light.”

1. The four gospels present different resurrection stories with contradicting details. If the early church were trying to present prove of an historical event, it probably would have made more effort to get the stories straight. If they were presenting a symbolic truth about life, the differences in narrative wouldn’t be a problem. Mystical rabbic teaching stories would be a part of the early church’s heritage.

2. The stories are placed around the time of the Passover, which puts the whole narrative near the vernal equinox. Listeners would recognize the equinox as the time when other “saviors” had died, been taken underground and then rescued by a loving parent. Those stories were often understood as revelations about the life process, not merely magical events that happened to individuals.

3. The resurrection happens the day after the Sabbath which, in mystical lore, is the “eighth day,” which happens in consciousness rather than in fact. One way of understanding the “eighth day” is when we are struck by something beautiful and step out of time. In Jesus’ day, the eight day also represented the birth of the sun, or the renewal of all life.

4.The resurrection also happens on the third day after Jesus’ death, which is also the length of time before the moon is “reborn” after it has waned. The rebirth of the moon was a popular symbol of the circle of life. People of the time would have already heard the story of an empty tomb in the religion of Attis.

5. In the resurrection stories, people don’t recognize Jesus or mistake him for other people like the gardener. That is a strange detail to add if the point was to convince people that the resurrection was an historical event. It makes perfect sense to add the detail if one point of the symbol is to see Christ in others.

6. The earliest gospel, Mark, does not include actual resurrection appearances like the later gospels. In the earliest manuscripts, Mark ends with the empty tomb. It makes much more sense to assume that the later gospel writers would write mystical imaginative hymns to the resurrection event, than to assume that Mark would leave them out.

7. Paul and other writers insist on the resurrection being real, but that is not the same thing as it being literal. Some things are real but cannot be put into words. The laws of physics can only be deeply expressed in symbols. The depths of subjective human experience, the province of religion, are also beyond words.

8. If the symbol “God” is referring to something that is everywhere, it cannot be born and die. Something which is omnipresent cannot have a second coming because it is already here. It is our minds that need such images to lead us to the threshold of awareness, but none of them can capture the mystery to which they refer.

Well-meaning people can make matters worse by treating oppression as if it were a debate topic with two equally valid sides. Imagine a typical news program discussing the Holocaust. It would give the Jews and Nazi’s equal time. It would probably note that both sides were equally extreme, both equally intolerant, and then it might conclude that the mature solution would be meeting somewhere in the middle. If we do not wish to betray the vulnerable, we must first address the power imbalance in which the oppressed are being crushed. Only after both parties have equal power can a genuine dialogue happen. The hurt feelings of the oppressor when confronted, should never be put on the same scale as the actual pain of the oppressed.

Pagans celebrate the Vernal Equinox. In Christianity, the same time is celebrated as Easter. In Judaism this is the time of year to celebrate Passover. In Buddhism, this time of year is celebrated as Higan- passing over the river of existence to nirvana. In Zoroastrianism, it is called “Nowruz” and marks the new year. Baha i and Hinduism also note this time of year. Secular people celebrate Earth Day at this time of year.

The deeper we each go into the roots of our respective faiths, the more we should recognize each other. Our various approaches will create a symphony if we each remember to tune to a common chord.

There is no point in fighting for our freedom of speech after we have lost the capacity for critical thought. If we are not going to question capitalism, the American Empire or religious orthodoxy, then we will have no trouble speaking our minds. Laws are not needed to protect conformity, only resistance needs protection. When there is no resistance to the systems that dominate us and threaten our very humanity, our precious “freedoms” are the flight dreams of a caged bird.

During my seminary training, as part of my doctoral program, I took off a year for training as a hospital chaplain. I discovered that the formulas I was learning in seminary did not always speak to the real lives people were living. The theological formulas I had been taught were not really answering the questions people were asking. Instead they were getting people to forget what they had asked in the first place.

After seminary I began to pour over the teachings of the early church. I discovered the early writings of the church were, like the Sermon on the Mount itself, more about living than believing. Reason was not an enemy to faith but was more understood as what faith grows into.

Looking at scripture, I realized the Gospel of John begins with a philosophical essay on the logos (reason) and then proceeds to tell stories that may be illustrations of that essay. Was it possible that religion could be a complement to reason and science? Could it be that religion can build a bridge from scientific truth, to meaning in life?

I ran across passages in the early church like this statement by Justin Martyr written not seventy years after Jesus’ death. I was stunned to discover teachings that would probably get this early saint kicked out of most of the churches I know.

“Whatever is rational is Christian, and whatever is Christian is rational. The Logos endowed all people with reason and freedom, which are not lost by the fall. Christ scattered seeds of truth before his incarnation, not only among the Jews, but also among the Greeks and barbarians, especially among philosophers and poets, who are the prophets of the heathen. Those who lived reasonably and virtuously in obedience to this preparatory light were Christians in fact, though not in name; while those who lived unreasonably were Christless and enemies of Christ. Socrates was a Christian as well as Abraham, though he did not know it.” -Justin Martyr

I don’t think Justin should be heard saying that reasonable Jews and philosophers are really Christians but don’t know it. That would be arrogant. But he can be heard echoing a sentiment shared by the Jewish philosopher Philo, that all who are reasonable and loving are of one faith, even though we have different names.