SERMONS 

Austere Gods, Indulgent Gods, and No Gods

Readings:

From Paul in First Corinthians:
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. 13:11-12.

From Job:
I call for thy help, but thou dost not answer;
I stand up to plead, but thou sittest aloof;
Thou has turned cruelly against me
And with thy strong hand pursuest me in hatred;
Thou does snatch me up and set me astride the wind,
And the tempest tosses me up and down.
I know that thou wilst hand we over to death,
To the place appointed for all mortal men. 30:20-23.

I swear by God, who has denied me justice,
and by the Almighty, who has filled me with bitterness;
So long as any life is left in me
And God’s breath is in my nostrils,
no untrue word shall pass my lips.
Till death, I will not abandon my claim to innocence.
I will maintain the righteousness of my cause, I will never give up;
so long as I live, I will not change. 27:1-6

In the perspective of time, the late, rarely lamented Twentieth Century will be remembered for two compelling and related developments. First was the terrible events from 1914 to 1945. Just as remarkable, and possibly even more momentous for the history of the earth, was the doubling of the world population, from three billion to six billion, between 1960 and 2000.

For Western Civilization, I would add a third, not generally recognized, but momentous cultural development over this century. This was the shift, for more and more people, from a providential to an ironic and tragic view of human history and human destiny. Ironic in the sense that our plans so often lead to almost the opposite of what we expect, and even when we achieve what we want we experience an emptiness worse than the frustration of failure. Tragic in the sense that even the most honorable and noble conduct often leads us into impossible dilemmas and traps, with no way out and no final justice. No gods come to our relief.

By gods I mean superhuman beings. Human in the sense that they are self-conscious, like us, able to select and pursue goals and purposes. Super in the sense that they are more powerful than humans, often have a much broader understanding, and are immortal. Such gods have been very important in human history. They will remain so, for most people find a belief in a purposeful universe, and thus gods, to be as sure and certain as a belief in their own existence.

In the three Semitic religions, a belief in a creator god has supported a belief in divine providence: That we live in a purposeful universe, one that moves toward certain ends and assures us that justice ultimately prevails. Today, large numbers of people, more so in Europe than in America, no longer believe in such a god, or in any god at all. Because of their experiences, or what they know, they simply find (it is never a choice) such older beliefs mistaken or unintelligible, at times with a great sense of loss, at others with a sense of liberation. Thus, they do not believe in any inherent purpose in the universe, any intelligent design, any cosmic grounding for truth claims, and any external support for moral preferences or values.

In my scholarship, I have tried to describe the god worshiped by Christians. This has proved an impossible task. Christians, even in the first centuries of the Church, varied immensely in how they conceived of a god. Today, if one looks at different denominations, the god affirmed in one is often almost the opposite of that affirmed in another. In this sense, there are dozens of Christian gods. And, if I push for precision, I find that almost no Christian can offer a fully coherent description of the one god they believe in. I have also come to realize that if the Church had been able to develop a fully coherent image of God, and had tried to make it normative for all Christians, the religion would never have grown as it did. The very ambiguity of god images, the leeway for many personal ascriptions of content, was one secret of the victory of Christianity over other religions in the Hellenistic world.

An additional source of its strength was a functional polytheism. It was early lay Christians, not priests, who wanted to make Jesus divine, and to pray to him. People needed three gods, a divine creator, a forgiving son, and an indwelling spirit Likewise, in the medieval church, lay people came very close to deifying Mary, the mother of God. They needed a feminine goddess to balance an almost insufferably masculine and patriarchal Jehovah. And, as a way to explain temptation and disobedience, many Christians, in this case without any support from the official church, have turned Satan into an evil god. Others pray to saints, or fear demons. But for intellectuals who craved unity, the old doctrine of one god lived on. The religion had something for everyone.

Despite this pluralism, I want to identify two broad currents in Christian theism, or what I will refer to as an austere theism and a humanistic or indulgent form of theism. Attached to each was a plan of salvation. The austere god and the humane god were both a part of Christianity all along. They coexisted, and few people consistently adhered to one or the other. The best early description of an austere god is in Paul’s epistle to the Romans. This was reinforced by Augustine, and in fact has remained the official position of both Roman Catholics and the churches that derive from Luther and Calvin.

In this austere view, Jehovah is coterminous with reality, or the only real and eternal being. All else is from him, created, contingent. He is omnipotent. All history reflects his will. And since only Jehovah is fully just and righteous, he has to be self-glorifying.

But this god, for reasons unclear, chose to create humans, alone with mind and intellect among all his creations. He also chose that they reflect this divine-like trait in self-serving or prideful ways, and thus that humans in a sense rebel against their creator, for by their nature they do not love and trust him and do all they can to glorify him. But this sovereign god, for reasons of his own, in order to manifest his glory, not only allowed the great drama of human rebellion but ultimately chose to effect the reconciliation of some humans. His chosen means to do this was through the incarnation, suffering, death, and resurrection of his son. Jesus, by his sacrificial death, fully atoned for the sinfulness of humans, in the sense that this sacrifice was sufficient to cancel or forgive all the false pride that humans exemplify. But the atonement was conditional. Only those Jehovah chose for salvation, only those who are able, through grace, to respond to him with trust and love, gained the benefits of the atonement. The flawed pots, which he also made, are doomed to eternal alienation from god, and thus to damnation. Good works are indeed integral to salvation, but no human without faith (belief, trust, and love) can really perform good works, that is, works fully dedicated to the glory of God.

Mixed in with this view of god and salvation was a more soft and indulgent view. It is present in some of the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the gospels, in the moralistic book of James, and even as an undertone in the more pastoral writings of Paul. Not that anyone denied divine omnipotence, in theory, but in a softer mood they often violated the logic of such a position. They then described a god that was open to humans, loved them at least for their potential for good, and was always ready to aid the penitent. Salvation was from this god, but humans could accept or reject his grace. Indeed, no one deserved salvation, but even the unsaved could at times do good, and could strive for perfection. Some early heretics even rejected limited atonement and complete human inability. They believed that Jesus’s death fully absolved humans of any inherent or innate guilt, and thus reconciled all to god. The condition of salvation was then in human hands, for humans had the ability to respond to Jehovah in love and in obedience. In the soft view, salvation, even though ultimately from god, still depends upon obedience and good works. This perspective involves a more governmental conception of god, and a more moralistic conception of Jesus and his ministry. It seems to allow more leeway to humans, or to make them more responsible for their own salvation. In the sacramental system developed in the Western Church, salvation became in effect, not theory, a matter of good works , of constant devotion, of a lifelong pilgrimage toward the kingdom.

Both Paul and Jesus talked of faith, at times, as if it were a choice, not an unmerited and irresistible gift. Jesus commanded people to love God and also their neighbors, as if love were an option, open to choice, something one could will. Illogical, but just as appealing as the present logically absurd belief that one can construct one’s own identity, choose not just that which is consistent with one’s beliefs and preferences, but even choose the preferences. This position has the same logical credentials as a belief that we make ourselves, or that we choose to be born, or to be born again.

In our religious tradition, the early New England Puritans tried, as much as any Christians in history, to live up to the austere view. In a world governed by an omnipotent and self-glorifying god, a god they both feared and loved, they knew, by close self-examination, the plentitude of pride and selfishness that accounted for the doctrine of human depravity. They did not presume upon God, as if he would change his mind to aid mere humans. When a child died, and so often they did, they worried that their love for the child had exceeded their love of God. When they prayed for rain in a drought, they tried to make clear that they were not asking God to bend to their will, but expressing the hope that God had willed, even before time began, that in the natural order of things the prayers of penitent Christians preceded rain. They knew their salvation was from God, not earned or deserved, and rejoiced in the assurance this brought in times of adversity, or when their zeal seemed to languish. But self-examination led to anxiety, and to their search for assurance of such love through adherence to the highest possible standard of personal purity, and the fullest possible commitment to a righteous society. The Puritans were incurably political. We still are.

But even the Puritans, at times, fell into the softer view, saw God as more bending and yielding, and adopted a devotional life that approached the sentimental. By the late eighteenth century, the softer view was becoming ascendent. Life was less harsh. Progress seemed more certain. Older doctrines about divine election, or human depravity, did not make sense. God moved closer to human standards. Humans, in their self-concept, moved closer to God. John Wesley broached a warmer and more humane religion. In Methodism, sentiment often replaced logic. And a softer, warmer, and much more indulgent form of Christianity became ascendent. And never more so than in the teachings of the early Unitarians, who saw God as the fullest expression of human virtues. In this perspective, God became a servant as much as a master, one who helped people achieve their goals, who comforted them in sickness and in death, who gave all a fair chance to gain (note the word) a life after death. This God, literally, walked and talked with one in the garden, and one knew that one was his own. And the heart of religion became good works. Do not knock it. Such a religion was very appealing, then and now. This is the most prevalent form of Christianity today, from a large share of evangelicals and Pentecostalists to mainstream liberals. In each case, God certifies people’s moral standards, assures them that justice will eventually prevail, and offers them a cosmic life insurance policy.

Austere gods. Humanistic gods. From the outside, as a matter of taste in gods, and consistent with good logic, I prefer the austere type. I sympathize with the mad man of Nietzsche, who shouted to the people in the public square that god was dead and that they had killed him. What he meant was that liberal theologians and idealistic philosophers had created new and indulgent gods in their own image, and in their blindness did not know that they had killed off the austere and prophetic gods of old. The new gods guaranteed inevitable human progress, rationalized German nationalism, and supported imperialistic adventures around the world. Their god was like the god that always blesses America, and will soon support President Bush’s war against Iraq. But I must be fair. He is also the god that inspired the passion of abolitionists and marched with Martin Luther King at Selma. He is the god that provided people, in Catholic high Masses to frontier revivals, a quality of experience that bordered on ecstasy and raised the human spirit at least to the suburbs of heaven. She is Sophia, the god that has inspired feminists. It is Gaia, the god that has motivated radical environmentalists. I could go on.

I submit that all these gods, however noble the causes they support, are indulgent. People have used them, or in some cases created them, to buttress often sublime but always in some sense parochial ideals, to console themselves in times of adversity, to cure diseases, to offer a life beyond death. Paul Tillich said that all such anthropomorphic gods are idols. They stand between humans and any prophetic religious understanding. I have at times suggested that such gods have no essential relationship to religion at all. But no doubt, humans have needed, at times desperately needed such gods. A vast majority of Americans still believe in one or another such gods.

What about a world without gods? A tragic world? For many formerly orthodox Christians, God has died, with the poignant loss this suggests. For many liberal Christians, the gods have just drifted away, or are in the process of drifting away. This shift, and a loss of cultural hegemony, has triggered a vast counterattack from still orthodox and evangelical Christians. And, to escape the tragic implications, some nontheists have embraced secular substitutes, such as Marxism, with its assurance that history itself moves inevitably toward a future heaven. Avowed humanists have sought, in scientific knowledge, a tool for the achievement of a near perfect society by human effort. They fail to note that no two communities of people would ever fully agree on what made a society perfect. And if any society should ever come close to achieving its most utopian dreams, pride would quickly lead to the arrogance that always follows in the wake of great power and great success. Look at the United States.

The apostle Paul noted that when we as mere humans try to see God we have the limitations of children. We look through a glass, darkly. But throughout western history people have thought they saw enough to construct dozens of great theological and metaphysical systems. Many of these have been beautiful works of the human imagination, none richer than the doctrines of Christianity. But all, to some extent, have reflected a false pride and a type of impiety. If we are honest, I believe we now have to admit that the glass is opaque, and what so many thought they saw through it were slightly blurred mirror images of themselves. We cannot see behind it, conceptualize more than selective and rhythmic bits and pieces of the world we bump into. The human mind, and our wonderful languages, which make us human, are inadequate to a larger task. The great systems, the purported views behind the glass, have not lacked proof (proofs of one type or another abound) but have all involved human assumptions and intuitions, and often culturally myopic intuitions. For example, why have so many gods been masculine?

I do not think truth and good are in jeopardy if no god ordered a universe to fit our latest scientific theories, or no god has endorsed our deepest ethical commitments. In our academic disciplines we have raised the problem solving of our forebears to a demanding art. In organized communities of inquiry, we have developed, and continue to develop, high standards for establishing verity. We judge truth claims by these rules and standards, which are in all ways a human, that is a cultural, construct. Those within such communities have pledged to observe certain rules, and to reflect a type of integrity, that makes up a solemn covenant. How justify the terms of the covenant? How insure that the members tell the real truth? The question is loaded, for I can find no meaningful content for the word “real.” But the community of inquirers can point to how their work empowers people on the moral battlefield. Their often abstract theories enable people to understand natural processes or themselves, to predict future eventualities, and at time effectively control and direct events toward ideal ends. Why want more? I would argue that the only meaningful truth about the world around us, and the only meaningful objectivity, has always involved the work of communities of inquiry united by a covenant.

Even more does the tradition of a covenant–the unique contribution of our New England churches–fit ethical affirmations. By ethics I refer to broad and encompassing commitments, such as to the preservation and enhancement of life itself. Such commitments require that we fit our actual conduct to context and situation. An absolute ethic requires a situational morality, and thus flexible rules. Absolute and inflexible rules preclude any higher or absolute ethic. Ethical commitments are essential parts of our identity, not chosen but felt and lived. They guide all else. The past, even millions of progenitors, are involved in great ethical principles.

Such ethical commitments mean that, should even a god command us to violate them, we cannot obey such a god without violating our integrity. The most tragic of human predicaments is that of Job, to live in a world governed by a powerful deity who is capricious and unjust. Note that indulgent gods, almost by definition, are never unjust, for I almost always find a perfect congruence between the ethical standards of such gods and the people who believe in them. My point: a god may provide moral support for people, possibly give them courage, but gods cannot be moral authorities. For in the area of taste and evaluations, authority does not fit. No one can tell me what tastes good. No one can tell me what I must see as honorable or just. But ethical systems are always communal. They, more than any aspect of our life, rest on a covenant among similarly committed people, living with a mutual pledge of support. This support often takes the form of judgment and punishment, when we fail to live up to our covenantal obligations. Social order itself depends upon such covenants and such judgment.

As a congregation, we have assumed the enormous task of joining, in common tasks and mutual respect, both theists and nontheists. The gap may not be as wide as it would seem. Practically, day by day, successful religious communities have always bonded because of similarities in experience, in developed preferences and tastes, and in the common need to deal with all the joys and frustrations of life itself.

I like to point out that those who do not believe in gods are often closer to our Puritan forebears than are most contemporary theists. Nontheists have a compelling reason to display some of the humility, and restraint, and possibly some of the courage that allowed the Puritans to live under a God who never indulged them. Who never relaxed a perhaps impossibly high standard for redemption, and who was so lofty that one never tried to fathom his nature or presume to understand his ultimate will. That is, nontheists may reflect a Puritan piety when they acknowledge that they exist, and have their being, in a reality that does not seem in any way to bend toward humans, and which is always beyond their understanding. Fortunately, unlike for Job, it does not seem to be allied against them. And for theists and nontheists alike, this reality is at times wonderful beyond description. At times it is frightening almost beyond endurance.