Today’s Post

Last week we looked at ‘principles’ which can be applied to a process of ‘reinterpretation’ of traditional religious teachings in our goal of finding the nuggets of relevancy in these teachings.

This week we will move on to applying these principles to the fundamental concept around which all religions revolve, the concept of ‘God’.

Today’s post summarizes the four posts from 21 July 2016 to 1 September 2016 on this subject.

A Starting Place

The concept of God as found in the many often contradicting expressions of Western religion can be very confusing. Given the duality which occurs in both the Old and New Testament (such as punishment-forgiveness), layered with the many further dualities introduced by Greek influences in the early Christian church (such as body-soul), and topped by many contemporary messages that distort the original texts (such as the “Prosperity Gospel”) this is not surprising. Finding a thread which meets our principles of interpretation without violating the basic findings of science but staying consistent with the basic Western teachings can be difficult. Many believe it to be impossible.

A perhaps surprising starting place might come from the writings of one of the more well-known atheists, Richard Dawkins.   Professor Dawkins strongly dislikes organized religion, but in his book, “The God Delusion”, he casually remarks

“There must have been a first cause of everything, and we might as well give it the name God. Yes, I said, but it must have been simple and therefore whatever else we call it, God is not an appropriate name (unless we very explicitly divest it of all the baggage that the word ‘God’ carries in the minds of most religious believers). The first cause that we seek must have been the process which eventually raised the world as we know it into its present complex existence.”

   Here we find a succinct outline of the nature of the ‘fundamental principle of existence’ as well as an excellent place to begin a ‘reinterpretation’ of the concept of God:

• It must be the first cause of everything
• It must work within natural processes
• It must be an ongoing active agent (a “process”) in all phases of evolution from the Big Bang to the appearance of humans
• It must be an agent for increasing complexity (“the raising of the world as we know it into its present complex existence”)
• It must be divested of “all the baggage” (such as magic and superstition) of the many traditional religions
• Once so divested, “God” is an appropriate name for this first cause

Dawkins goes on to claim that such a God cannot possibly be reconciled with traditional religion. Paradoxically, in this simple statement he offers an excellent place to begin just such a reconciliation.

Western religion also sees the potential for ‘reconciliation’. An example is Pope John Paul II’s statement on science’s relation to religion:

“Science can purify religion from error and superstition.”

   So in this starting place we can begin to see a view of God that is antithetical to neither science nor religion, but one in which John Paul II echoes Teilhard when he sees it as one in which:

“Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.”

Is God A Person?

The concept of the ‘person’ is somewhat unique to the West. It is related to the fundamental Jewish concept of time is seen as flowing from a beginning to an end, unlike the cyclical concept of time as found in the East. It also sees the person as constantly growing to ‘uniqueness’ as opposed to the Eastern concept of human destiny fulfilled in the loss of identity as merged into the ‘cosmic all’.

The idea of the human person emerging from the evolutionary phenomenon of neurological development is also unique to the West. While there is still much disagreement on the subject of how (or even whether) the person, with his unique mind, is separate from random neurological firings in the brain, the idea of the ‘person’ is well accepted.

Therefore, Western society has proceeded along the path that however the neurons work, the effect is still a ‘person’, and recognized as such in the laws which govern the societies which have emerged in the West.

This concept of the person as unique provides a strong benefit to Western civilization. While perhaps rooted in the Jewish beliefs which underpin those of Christianity, the Western concept of ‘the person’ nonetheless underpins the other unique Western development: that of Science. The uniqueness of the person (and the associated concepts of freedom) and the power of empirical thinking clearly contribute to the unique successes of the West. As Teilhard asserts:

“…from one end of the world to the other, all the peoples, to remain human or to become more so, are inexorably led to formulate the hopes and problems of the modern earth in the very same terms in which the West has formulated them.”

Not surprisingly, the uniqueness of the person is reflected in Western religion. Further, while the many different expressions of the three major monotheistic religions might disagree on the specifics, they all agree that persons are somehow uniquely connected to God, and therefore God is in some way a ‘person’ who saves and damns, rewards and punishes, and provides guidance for life.

The approach that we have taken, however, does not explicitly reflect such an aspect of the Ground of Being.
Does this mean that from our point of view God is not a person?

The Personal Side of God

From our point of view, God is not understood as a person, but as the ground or the principle

of person-ness. Just as the forces of atomic reaction, gravity and biology in the theories of Physics and Biology address the principles of matter and life, the overarching force of ‘increasing complexity’ addresses the increase in complexity which powers evolution and thus leads to the appearance of the person.

Teilhard offers an insight on this issue

“From this point of view man is nothing but the point of emergence in nature, at which this deep cosmic evolution culminates and declares itself. From this point onwards man ceases to be a spark fallen by chance on earth and coming from another place. He is the flame of a general fermentation of the universe which breaks out suddenly on the earth.” (Italics mine)

   He goes on to underscore the profound meaning of such of such insight:

“I doubt that whether there is a more decisive moment for a thinking being than when the scales fall from his eyes and he discovers that he is not an isolated unit lost in the cosmic solitudes and realizes that a universal will to live converges and is hominized (becomes human) in him.”

   Thus, as Teilhard sees it, evolution requires complexification, which results in personization.

But, With All That, Is God ‘A Person’?

Dawkins, while he might admit to a process by which the universe evolves, holds out on this subject, quoting Carl Sagan:

“If by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying…it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.”

Dawkins and Sagan are correct about our approach to God, in that our definition so far does not point to a God suitable for a personal relationship. While recognizing Teilhard’s ‘axis of evolution’ which fosters increasing complexity leading to increased ‘personness’, how can it apply to our personal life?

From Teilhard’s vantage point, the starting place for a personal approach to God, a ‘relationship’, is the recognition that this ‘axis of evolution’ which has been an agent of ‘complexification’ for some 14 billion years is not only still active in the human, but is the same axis that accounts for our ‘personization’. Humans are not only products of evolution who have become ‘aware of their consciousness’, but specific products, persons, who are capable of not only recognizing but more importantly cooperating with this inner source of energy that can carry them onto a more complete possession of themselves.

From Blondel’s perspective,

“The statement that “God Exists” can therefore be reinterpreted to say that “Man is alive by a principle that transcends him, over which he has no power, which summons him to surpass himself and frees him to be creative. That God is person means that man’s relationship to the deepest dimension of his life is personal”. (Italics mine)

So, in answer to the question, Baum goes on to state:

“God is not a super-person, not even three super-persons; he is in no way a being, however supreme, of which man can aspire to have a spectator knowledge. That God is person reveals that man is related to the deepest dimension of his life in a personal and never-to-be reified way.”

   Teilhard echoes Blondel when he says:

“It is through that which is most incommunicably personal in us that we make contact with the universal. “

“Those who spread their sails in the right way to the winds of the earth will always find themselves borne by a current towards the open seas.”

The Next Post

This week we made a first cut at applying our ‘principles of reinterpretation’ to the basic idea of ‘God’ as the ‘Ground of Being’, which belief underpins all religions.

Having seen this, the next question that can be asked is , “so what”? What difference does it make if our concept of God agrees with Teilhard, Luther or the Budda?

Next week we will move on to using these principles to address the idea of ‘relating’ to God. How can we find God in our lives, in our world, and more importantly, connect to ‘him’?