TOWARD A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY RELIGION
Part a, No More Dogma or Cherries and the Resurrection
This is the first of a series of essays on the theme of "Toward a Twenty-First Century Religion." The readers I am seeking are those who are completely estranged from religious dogma yet have a deep spiritual sense and are searching to give it content. Oh, and if you're an admirer or practitioner of science, don't worry, nothing in these essays will contradict science. My ideal reader is one who is a student of science and yet has a "still small voice" within that is convinced that what can be found without is not everything. The four parts of Toward a Twenty-First Century Religion are a, No More Dogma or Cherries and the Resurrection; b, Living with Ambiguity or The Grand Inquisitor; c, A Ray of Hope, Almost Nothing and d, Conclusion. This first essay deals with the fact that a literal belief in dogma is impossible for a rational person in the twenty-first century. Dogma might provide consolation for many, but it can also be very destructive--the danger of literal religious beliefs both to the individual and to society is also a theme of this essay. It will end with a ray of hope, which will be expanded on in subsequent parts of the essay.
1. Literal Religious Beliefs Can No Longer Be Maintained
We will use a quote of Luther's to illustrate the dangers of dogma. We could have chosen many other examples both in Christianity and in other dogmatic religions--examples abound. The quote follows:
It is truly a sin and a shame, indeed a miserable plague, that the time should come in Christendom, not only in these days of the world’s last dregs but even already in the time of the apostles, yes, even among those whom they had shortly before visited and taught, even where they had shortly before planted and founded Christianity, that such a calamity should befall so soon, that some of them dared to arise, such as the apostles’ disciples, and publicly proclaim that there was no resurrection and no future life, and that those who professed to be Christians should deny and ridicule this article, although they were baptized on it and had become Christians by reason of this, the article on which also all their hope and consolation should be based. Thus they had forfeited everything with this and had believed, acted, and suffered in vain. For where this article is surrendered, all the others are gone too; and the chief article and the entire Christ are lost or preached entirely in vain.
--Martin Luther
This is a lengthy quote, but an important one: in it Luther clearly states the position that if the resurrection of Christ did not literally occur, Christianity is unsalvageable and should be discarded. (If he were a Jew he might have replaced resurrection with a literal belief in the covenant; if he were Muslim, he might have replaced it with a belief that Mohammad literally received the Koran from Allah as mediated by the angel Gabriel. Which dogma one believes in is not of importance here; what is important is that dogma per se can no longer be justified.)
Jesus of Nazareth did not, of course, rise from the dead in any literal sense. For the modern mind, it is not even a possibility. Luther wrote at a time when the scientific view of life was not yet fully established, having written the above statement years before the showdown between science and the Church which centered around Gallileo--The battle between science-based evidence and dogmatic beliefs accepted as facts is long over; science has won decisevely.
In Luther's time--and for some time after-- one did not have to give up one's ability to critically reason to believe in dogma--after all, the great scientist Newton believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Religious beliefs at that time remained largely unquestioned; it was axiomatic to believe in revelations(s) since the culture at the time was a very religious one. It was quite possible to be a top scientist in the past and have a non-critical view of religion. Today it is virtually impossible. The vast majority of contemporary scientists know that dogmatic beliefs are completely unsupported by evidence, and therefore, invalid as being literally true.
Some reasons why the belief in the resurrection is unfounded:
.
1. The evidence in the Gospels for this is rather thin. Apparitions of the resurrected Jesus were allegedly seen by very few, the account of which was written decades after the so-called historical event. The "evidence" for it is a weak case of hearsay. Just because a book has been cannonized by a church; just because belief in the stories of this book have become an integral part of past civilization, does not lift such beliefs to the level of, say, the proof that the three angles of a triangle equal 180 degrees.
2. Scientific laws do not permit a physical return of an individual from the dead. There has never been a documented case of this in history.
3. The dogma that the resurrection was a revelation--God's intervention into human history--is completely unfounded. Anyone can claim something to be a revelation. Just because millions of people believe something doesn't make it true. For a reductio ad absurdum, I could believe that God intervened in human history by sending me a vision of Santa Claus. If I could convince others to believe this, a new religion might arise, albeit an absurd one. Christians believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead; Jews don't, Muslims don't. On a literal basis, it is no different from arguing whether Santa Claus is real or not. Christian kids give up the belief in Santa well before puberty; it's time the adults, way after puberty, give up a literal belief in the resurrection, and other dogmatic formulations.
4. A group of Christian scholars, the so-called Jesus Seminar, do not think that the resurrection of Jesus is, in fact, a fact.
5. There is a cultural arrogance in believing the myth of your culture consists of facts while denigrating the myths of other cultures as products of fantasy.
One could go on. The point here is that a literal belief in the resurrection is completely unsupported by evidence, both historical and scientific. (One should recall that the audience I am seeking consists of those who already know this.)
Luther, as is well known, was a very anxious, perhaps even disturbed man. He bravely went against a very powerful, corrupt institution. He knew it was right to do this, but he must have felt very vulnerable. He needed certainty; he could not tolerate the power vacuum once the divorce between him and the Mother Church had become final. He doubted many things but was unable to doubt everything. At least one thing had to be absolutely true for him: the resurrection. Without it, he thought, "all (our) hope and consolation" is in vain. The whole world would collapse around him--figuratively, of course! Life, which, despite all its sorrows, would become without this foundation hell overnight, with no hope of any morning to follow. He therefore fought against doubt all his life; one can see that he did in fact doubt this belief at times. If there was no doubt, he would not have written the above quote, which states that if this belief is denied, all is lost. That at least allows the possibility of denying the resurrection. For instance, a mathematician would never begin a sentence with the phrase, "If 2 and 2 do not equal four" --as if this were a real possibility.
To believe in dogma Luther had to overcome doubt, which is possible; for the educated modern person to accept a myth as a fact, one would have to suppress the rational faculty, which is also possible, but much more tragic. Luther undoubtedly found consolation in literal faith. And aside from offering consolation, dogmatic belief can be also very destructive as the following discussion of another quote by Luther makes clear.
2.
If I had to baptize a Jew, I would take him to the bridge of the Elbe, hang a stone around his neck and push him over with the words, "I baptize thee in the name of Abraham."
--Martin Luther
The bane of European civilization was for centuries anti-Semitism, from which it has only recently, to a large extent at least, recovered. (Unfortunately the world learned about the horrors of anti-Semitism in the worst way imaginable.) The above-quote shows a very dark, inhumane side of Luther; when he wrote it he was obviously virulently anti-Semitic. This, however, was not always the case. What caused this vicious view?
Luther, a rather anxious, perhaps even depressive, individual, needed security. His conscience removed for him and for millions the authority of the Catholic Church. As the first quote shows, he found this security in an unquestioned belief in the resurrection. Since he believed in it literally, he claimed this "truth" as a necessary belief for all people, Jews, of course, as the only significant non-Christian group in Europe, very much included.
He could understand why the Jews were not admirers of the Catholic Church; after all, he was very much in opposition to it also. This, he probably reasoned, was why they rejected Christ. Luther had, in his opinion, ushered in a new era and it was time to begin anew. All the Jews needed was to listen to an ardent believer like Luther to be convinced of the error of their ways. So he set out to convert them "in good faith." He might have won a few converts, but, as one might imagine, he was overwhelmingly rebuffed--mostly politely, I imagine, but rebuffed nevertheless.
There are two reasons I believe this rebuff made him furious. The first reason is that the Jews' response called the resurrection into question. The second reason is a variation of the first. He must have observed that the Jews, even under the duress of living among a hostile majority, were like anybody else. He probably came in contact with some good, wise Jews and probably also, with ones who were less wise and less good. They lived in law-abiding communities. The degree of literacy was considerably higher than among Christians, who were largely illiterate. How can the Jews be as good as Christians--How could they be good without a belief in the resurrection?
Luther then had two choices. He either had to conclude that a belief in the resurrection was not at all necessary to lead a deeply religious life, or he had to conclude that the Jews were nothing short of being devils in human clothing for calling this belief into question. The above quote shows which path he took. As stated previously, he would have gone mad without this belief. It is sad that he maintained his well-being by demonizing those who were living proof that the foundation of his sanity was built on sand.
This aspect of Luther is very important, since demonizing those with different beliefs is still widespread, and for the very same reason. Such demonization must have no part in a twenty-first century religion.
This is the dark side of literal belief. What about the good side? Literal beliefs inspired Bach to compose arguably the most profound music ever written. Dogma inspired Bonhoeffer and Dr. King to do good with vigor. This is undoubtedly true, but the destructive tendencies of literal belief--fanatacism--have scarred past and present history which has caused and causes unspeakable suffering. And, as mentioned earlier, literal belief is no longer possible for those informed by science, which makes the dark side of such beliefs all the more apparent.
3. Symbolic Resurrection
Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.
--Martin Luther
Here we have a beautiful quote by Luther, indicative of a symbolic interpretation of the resurrection. It was not necessary for Luther, due to ignorance of science, to separate the literal from the symbolic. We, however, can, and should. I will finish this first essay with a treatment of the resurrection in the spirit of the third Luther quote. (I am not implying that religion is only symmbolic however, as future sections of this essay will make clear.)
CHERRIES AND THE RESURRECTION
If we were repelled by their pits as by
those in ourselves, who’d eat them?
Ripe cherries, hanging from trees, falling
before hungry squirrels; how they sit
braced on hindfeet, holding lush globes
with their paws, nibbling till nothing is left
save the pits, which they drop without thought
as they rush to the next, till they fill--
What is hanging from full trees for us?
When a child needs bread, which father
gives stones? Ours? Cherry stones,
all the fruit eaten by animals; left
only pits; I pick some up off the ground...
If one had only these, could one deduce
that trees, heavy with fruit, existed
just above, every one’s source, a whole field?
Yet faith knows throughout winter that pits
become trees, now at the height of grace,
each grown from a stone, each a new body
after its old flesh was chewed up or rotted:
exposed to teeth, left to disintegrate,
like them, after a long, dark eclipse,
we, too, shall grow skyward again; spring:
life after death breaks you down to a seed.
--Thomas Dorsett
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