“Following Jesus: The Heart of Faith and Practice”* A Review
Reviewed by George Amoss Jr.
Paul Anderson is Professor of Biblical and Quaker Studies at George Fox University). His Following Jesus: The Heart of Faith and Practice is a collection of 36 essays, some of which had appeared in earlier forms in Evangelical Friend, a periodical that Anderson edited for a time. The book reflects the contradiction inherent in the name of that periodical and in the religion it represents. On even a generous critical reading, it demonstrates, although obviously against the author’s intent, the impossibility of melding two incompatible religions: Evangelical Christianity, which insists on submission to scripture as primary source of truth, and early Quakerism, which subsisted in submission to the present, immediate guidance of the Spirit of Christ.
Evidently unaware of his predicament, Anderson writes with the assurance of one who knows the truth. Having promised, in the book’s subtitle, to illuminate the heart, the essential core, of religious/spiritual life, he defines that heart, if vaguely and arbitrarily, in the Prologue:
Indeed, there can be no authentic religion, no effective spirituality, without a pervasive and ongoing stance of openness and receptivity to the divine presence and will.[1]
Despite that and similar assertions, however, the religion promoted in Following Jesus is centered on openness not to “the divine presence and will” but to particular readings of certain texts. Anderson, while giving abundant lip-service to the guiding presence of Christ the living Word (Logos), tacitly accepts the Evangelical conflation of Word and words, in effect substituting the Bible for Christ – as if a scriptural veil were needed to cover a divine absence.
The essays, marred by imprecise writing, poor editing and proofreading, and the frequent and telling use of rhetorical qualifiers such as “authentic” and “true,” are arranged in seven sections, as if to cover all aspects of spiritual life. But the book’s displacement of the living Spirit by the dead letter is evident already in the first section, and the remainder of the book only further illustrates Anderson’s failure to meet his own criterion for “authentic religion.”
A look at an early essay called “The Present Leadership of the Resurrected Lord” will bring that failure into focus. The essay begins as follows.
While Christians believe in the resurrection of Christ, too few have taken seriously what it means to live under his present leadership. In fact, the implications of believing in the resurrected Lord may be among the most neglected aspects of the Christian faith[2]
In the tone of spiritual superiority that infects much of the book, Anderson in that passage gives unintentional acknowledgment of the absence of a resurrected Christ. The passage implies that if we believe that Jesus was raised and still lives in divine form, then we will deduce that he is able to lead us in the present time. The implication is, then, that “authentic” spiritual/moral life is grounded not in encounter with the living Christ but in inference from scripture-derived belief, as if early Friends’ experience that “Christ is come to teach his people himself” were merely a text-based supposition.
A little later in the essay, the inferential logic is more explicit:
If Christ is alive, he seeks to lead us, and if he seeks to lead us, we can discern and obey his will.
Believing this is one thing; doing it effectively is another. Fortunately, throughout the history of the church, learnings from the past inform our approaches today, and several principles have been found to be trustworthy.[3]
Having deduced Christ’s implied “present leadership,” we find ourselves, according to Anderson, with the problem of knowing when and what Christ might be speaking to us. Anderson will attempt to help us with that problem by enumerating five queries – criteria phrased as questions – for the individual’s use in testing his or her “leadings.”[4]
But should a person have a discernment problem if Almighty God is actually talking to her? Did Moses convene a committee to decide the legitimacy of the burning bush? Did Paul on the Damascus road require, “But how do I know it’s really you?” Did George Fox assess Christ’s inward revelation against texts?
Whereas Fox advised unwavering trust in the Spirit, an attitude that does not separate one from the divine power working within – “If you sit still in the patience which overcomes in the power of God, there will be no flying” [5] – Paul Anderson (and he has many brethren, even among non-Evangelical Quakers[6]) breaks faith with the Spirit by reifying its work and subjecting the objectified “leading” to trial by text and tradition. The real-life consequences – such as schisms over acknowledging the human rights of homosexual people – are all too predictable.[7]
Anderson’s five criteria, which we’ll examine in a moment, contravene Fox’s advice, thereby implying that those who require them lack or reject Fox’s experience – a result, early Friends might say, of lack of faith in the living Spirit of Christ. They contradict as well, therefore, the presumed “Amen” to Anderson’s if-statements (which, again, indicate logical deduction rather than immediate encounter): if we cannot be led directly by Christ, then, by Anderson’s logic, Christ is not alive. In effect, the criteria undermine a central conceit of the book, and the very heart of early Quakerism, by denying the immediate guidance of Christ.
The first Friends found the leading of the living Christ, the inner light and Logos of God, to be clear and sufficient. Isaac Penington, one of the important Quaker apostles whose words are conspicuously absent from Following Jesus, eloquently expressed the early Quaker experience:
Shall the living Word be in the heart, and not the rule of the heart? Shall he speak in the heart, and the man or woman in whom he speaks run to the words of scripture formerly spoken, to know whether these be his words or no? Nay, nay, his sheep know his voice better than so.[8]
Compare that to the first of Anderson’s aptly named “Questions for Testing One’s Leadings.”
1. “Is this leading in keeping with the teachings of the Scriptures?” The Spirit who inspired the Scriptures will not contradict the truths contained in the Bible. The Bible serves as an objective referent [sic] to check subjective leadings.
The doctrine there declared is not new to Friends; it was taught by such Quakers as the 19th-century evangelical reformer Joseph John Gurney,[9] who is quoted in Following Jesus and whose influence pervades the book. But in present-day context it betrays a needlessly naïve view of reading/interpretation. By this point in history, we should be acutely aware that, as John D. Caputo put it,
As soon as something … is committed to words, an argument breaks out about the right interpretation – about the syntax, the etymology of the words, the usage, the context, the intention of the author, what the original audience would have been assuming, what the common presuppositions of everyone involved were, etc.[10]
(The first criterion itself is a case in point: did Anderson really intend “referent,” with its connotation that Christ’s guidance must point to the Bible, or did he erroneously write “referent” for “reference”? And if the latter, might the slip nonetheless reveal a bias?)
Yet Anderson would constrain the Holy Spirit by “the truths contained in the Bible.” “What,” we justifiably ask, “is truth?” When Pontius Pilate asks that question, there is irony in the fact that “the way, the truth, and the life” stands physically before him,[11] but there is no such irony in our asking, precisely because the “truth” presented to us is not Christ but a collection of ancient texts about which arguments have raged for thousands of years. What are those objective truths in the Bible, and how would we know them?
Friends such as Fox and Penington insisted that we discern the truth of scripture only if and when we are reading it in the same Spirit in which it was written. As he did on the road to Emmaus, but inwardly as the Light enlightening everyone,[12] Christ the Word opens the meaning of scripture; thus opened, scripture can be “beneficial for teaching, exposing, correcting, and learning in justice” (2 Tim. 3:16). But, as Paul implies in 2 Cor. 3:16, scriptures read without the Spirit’s hermeneutic are words of death. Penington:
But he that is come to the true Shepherd, and knows his voice, he cannot be deceived. Yea, he can read the scripture safely, and taste the true sweetness of the words that came from the life; but man who is out of the life feeds on the husks, and can receive no more. He hath gathered a dead, dry, literal, husky knowledge out of the scripture, and that he can relish; but should the life of the words and things there spoken of be opened to him, he could not receive them, he himself being out of that wherein they were written, and wherein alone they can be understood. [The Way of Life and Death…][13]
Living in the Word, the life from which the words come and to which they point, we know how to understand scripture. But the hybrid religion of Following Jesus exchanges that Spirit-led hermeneutical circle for a vicious one. If, as Fox’s Quakerism asserts, we cannot read scripture correctly without the immediate leading of the Spirit, and if, as Evangelical Quakerism would have it, we cannot discern leadings of the Spirit unless we can read scripture correctly, then both Spirit and scripture are useless as guides.
If that undesirable conclusion is to be dodged, then one of the two must supplant the other. The Bible, having physical – objective? – existence and being amenable (“Can I get an ‘Amen’?”) to authoritative interpretation, is the obvious choice. In practice if not in presentation, the Sun of Righteousness is eclipsed by mediated and interpreted scriptures – making professors of biblical studies indispensable mediators of revelation, a situation that greatly exercised the first Friends.
In the twenty-first century, such naïveté – or sleight of hand – as the criterion expresses is no longer excusable. Given our hard-won sophistication about texts and hermeneutics, and after millennia of often violent disagreement about interpretation of scripture – and oppressive, even murderous, imposition of various interpretations by religious, political, and social powers – a claim that the Bible can serve as objective touchstone is unsupportable and irresponsible.
Anderson’s subsequent criteria are no better.
2. “Are there examples from the past that might provide direction for the present?” We, the body of Christ, can often evaluate Christ’s leadership more clearly by hindsight, and such observations may provide parallels that inform present issues.
In other words, given that Christ is unable to provide clear guidance in the present, what rules can we extract from the past – in a text – that we can apply in the name of his “present” leadership? The body of Christ, it seems, lacks a living head.
3. “Is a leading self-serving, or is it motivated by one’s love for God and others?” … as we release our needs to God, we find that we open ourselves to God meeting our needs in ways pleasing to him.
The query’s “or” should separate a self-centric perspective from an other- or love-centric one, but it does not: both questions are about me. A self-focused I is probably in no condition to judge its own motives, for its motive for judging is already self-serving. In such a situation, to “release our needs to God” is only to seek to have them better met: what is released is not the need (which the Spirit’s scrutiny may reveal as not being a need at all), but the attempt to control how it will be satisfied. Although Following Jesus speaks of transformation, the fundamental self-orientation that is, arguably, the root of injustice – i.e., sin – is not challenged. The query is a rhetorical tautology.
4. “Does it matter who gets the credit?” …
That one restates the previous query.
5. “Is the ministry of Jesus being continued in what we do?” …
Even allowing the “we” in a query expressly addressed to individuals, one wonders: what does the question mean? Who determines, and by which criteria, what the ministry of Jesus was or is? In his expansion of the query, Anderson explains that we must “[take] the time to seek out and know [Christ’s] desires,” an explanation that begs the question the query was supposed to help answer; namely, how can I distinguish Christ’s desires from my own? At best, this query restates the first.
The five queries, then, reduce to two, both of which direct us to discernment under the guidance of (someone’s interpretations of selected) texts from the past. But if the living Christ were objectively present as head of the body, there would be no need to search the scriptures or imitate others: his sheep would know his voice, for, being “in Christ” (as Paul would say), their regenerate hearts and minds would be, as George Fox put it, “not distinct” from his.[14] Penington expressed it succinctly:
Quest. But how may men know that these are true commands of the Lord, and not imaginations or opinions of their own?
Ans. When the principle of life is known and that which God hath begotten is felt in the heart, the distinction between what God opens and requires there and what springs up in man’s wisdom, reason and imagination, is very manifest.[15]
Or, as Paul said in Romans 12:2,
Do not be configured to this age, but be transformed by the reshaping of your mind that you may discern what is the will of God, the good and well-pleasing and perfect.
But if “that which God hath begotten” is not felt in the heart – if, perhaps, one remains “configured to this age,” or one’s only-begotten Lord is only begotten by interpretations of a text – then the tradition must provide the criteria for decision-making. And that substitution is the message implicit in Following Jesus: that, despite the talk of divine presence, “faith and practice” is not life in a Christ-Spirit that both opens and transcends the letter, but the imitation of a Jesus-image and the application of moral norms based on particular readings of scripture. That approach, as is amply demonstrated in this book, rests on assumptions and arguments about which biblical texts take priority, what they say, who Jesus was and is, and what he and others taught. Unless, perhaps, one’s vision is blurred by an ideological lens, the difference between that and primitive Quakerism is stark.
The question of pacifism, addressed toward the end of the book, exemplifies that difference. Anderson espouses non-violence, but his justification differs radically from that of a Quaker such as George Fox. When Fox explained why he would not join the army, he referred to scripture indirectly, using the epistle of James not as proof but as background. “I told them,” he reports in the Journal, “that I lived in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars.”[16] In other words, Fox’s reason for refusing to use violence was not that the Bible told him so, but that the spiritual power and wisdom in and by which he lived – i.e., the living Christ within[17] – was leading him to respond to violence in peaceful love. Fox’s reference to James, whom he read as attributing war to human “lusts,” was explanatory: one who lives in that Christ-power is free of the inordinate desires that lead to violence.
Anderson pretends to know Fox’s thoughts at the time, yet he (mis)interprets Fox’s statement as expressing determination to live by a “moral principle,” again confusing “submission to the way of the Holy Spirit” with obedience to Bible-derived norms.[18] Consistent with that, he argues for pacifism by proof-texting, endorsing Walter Wink’s view that Jesus taught a particular form of nonviolent resistance. That approach assumes that to live the gospel is to live out the implications of certain texts: as Anderson put it in a 2002 Quaker Religious Thought article, “Based upon one’s impression of Jesus’ teachings [in the gospel books,] a host of ethical responses to violence and injustice follow.”[19]
Against such views, George Fox would insist that the apostle Paul meant “the gospel is the power of God” (Rom. 1:16) not metaphorically but literally; for Fox, the text announces the gospel, but the gospel itself is spiritual power, not words. The gospel, he wrote, is “a living way, which is revealed within, ‘the power of God unto salvation.’”[20] As such, it both illuminates the way of justice and empowers us to walk in that way. Failing to so distinguish that inward light and power from external imperatives, Anderson would mire us in tired and inconclusive arguments about the import of selected Bible passages.
Following Jesus thus fails to go beyond posturing about “authentic” Christianity and “truths” of scripture, theology, and history. I expect that it will have difficulty convincing anyone not already in sympathy with the author’s opinions, and indeed there is little effort to address the critical reader: the book’s lack of notes, citations, and index is consistent with that.
More importantly, the book undermines the Evangelical Quaker syncretism it espouses. Following Jesus impresses as an unwitting revelation of the true nature of such Quakerism: it strongly suggests that while believing themselves to be in a master-disciple relationship with a living Spirit who guides them, so to speak, in real time, these Friends are actually accepting beliefs and norms from a particular scriptural tradition. The more such Friends develop their ability to do that, so that the praxis of scriptural-traditional memes comes to feel almost automatic, the more convinced they may become that they are hearing and responding to a living Jesus. Following Jesus seems intended to assist in that process, but that is ultimately a work of self-deception and self-programming, unworthy of “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4).
It is ironic that Anderson’s book, which wants to help us submit to “the present leadership of the resurrected Lord,” instead confronts us with his absence. But Following Jesus reflects the reality of a religion that represses the contradiction at its heart. Traces of that repression are evident even in passages such as the following, in which the personified scriptures take precedence over Jesus in a statement that seems to argue against that very thing:
Some might even assume that God does not, or cannot, communicate directly with humanity, but the Scriptures and Jesus say otherwise. Indeed, humans fall short in our attempts to attend and ascertain God’s presence and direction, but the remedy is to affirm the reality of God’s active workings rather than resorting [sic] to secondhand attempts to represent or effect the real thing.[21]
Indeed. Yet “secondhand attempts to represent or effect the real thing” are Following Jesus’ stock-in-trade. The book presents “following” as obeying imperatives gleaned from, or read into, certain ancient texts, but, as a George Fox might point out, that’s not the only possible perspective. If “Christ is not distinct from his saints,” then to follow Jesus is to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and born as child of God, as sharer in the divine nature agapē; that is, it is to surrender to the inner working of the Spirit such that one lives in and as “Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). It is not at all what George Fox, evincing a relatively sophisticated understanding of exegesis, called to “follow their own spirits” by asserting “the spirit’s dwelling in the letter”:
And the spirit that was in [those who] gave forth the scriptures was received [from] God, the Father of spirits, and dwells in God. [But] they that are [out of] the spirit of God within, which gave forth the scriptures, are such as follow their own spirits, and use their tongues, and get the good words, the sheep’s clothing, deceive the hearts of the simple, and tell them “the spirit is in the letter,” which never did any of the experienced saints say; but [those saints] did conclude the spirit dwelt in their hearts, the faith in their hearts, the light in their hearts, the word in their hearts, the anointing within them, God dwelt within them, Christ within them, the law in their hearts, the witness within them, “the ingrafted word that saved their souls,” the gift within, the hidden man in the heart, strength in the inward man; the holy ghost moved them, the spirit of the Father spoke in them; this led them to speak forth scriptures. These [saints] never said the spirit was in the letter, as all the filthy dreamers say …. [22]
Anderson’s book expresses agreement with Fox and others that we can live “under [Christ’s] present leadership,” but it points us instead to prescriptions from the past. Although written in a magisterial tone, Following Jesus: The Heart of Faith and Practice is a work of confusion, a muddle of Spirit and letter, that proclaims the absence of its God by supplanting him with scripture. As such, it is a betrayal, if presumably an unintentional one, of the religion of such Friends as him whose name was appropriated by Paul Anderson’s employer, a religion that was consistent and clear in its faith in and faithfulness to the immediate, inwardly-known inspiration and power of God-who-is-agapē, the light that shines in our darkness.
NOTES
1. Paul Anderson, Following Jesus, p. 1.
2. Following Jesus, p. 18.
3. Following Jesus, pp. 21-22.
4. Following Jesus, p. 22.
5. George Fox, A Journal (Vol. I of The Works of George Fox, 1831 edition), p. 312. See also Hugh Barbour, “Five Tests for Discerning a True Leading,” at:
http://www.tractassociation.org/tracts/tests-discerning-true-leading/.
6. Liberal Quakers as well tend to speak of individual “leadings.” The phrase “many brethren” is used ironically here in memory of the early Quaker James Nayler, who when on trial for blasphemy, said, “I am the Son of God, but I have many brethren” – see Leonard Williams Levy, Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred, from Moses to Salman Rushdie, p. 185.
7. See reports on Indiana YM at Quaker Theology, Issues #18 through #24.
8. Isaac Penington, “The Way of Life and Death Made manifest and Set Before Men,” on line at: http://www.qhpress.org/texts/penington/way.html.
9. Gurney asserted that “it is utterly impossible that the work of God can contradict the word of God; it is utterly impossible that the Spirit of his Truth should say one thing on one occasion, and another on another occasion; opposite to one another; this would confuse all morals, and all religion, and principle, and reduce the moral world to a chaos, like that which was formerly reduced to order, when the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters; and I own I am ashamed, I am afflicted, I am astonished, when I hear anyone under the profession of Quakerism, refusing to test his doctrines by the holy scripture ….” (“Prove All Things, Hold Fast to That Which Is Good,” an 1833 sermon available online at:
http://www.qhpress.org/quakerpages/qhoa/jjgprove.htm.) That sort of naïveté about hermeneutics and contextuality is easier to forgive in a 19th-century writer.
10. John D. Caputo, More Radical Hermeneutics, p. 198.
11. Jn. 14:6a.
12. Jn. 1:9.
13. Isaac Penington, “The Way of Life and Death Made manifest and Set Before Men”
14. See, for example, George Fox’s The Great Mystery (Vol. 3 of Works), page 340.
15. Isaac Penington, “Some Questions and Answers Showing Mankind His Duty,” on line at:
http://www.qhpress.org/texts/penington/duty.html.
16. George Fox, A Journal (Vol. 1 of the 1831 edition of Works), p. 113.
17. See 1 Cor. 1:24 and Col 1:27b.
18. See Following Jesus, pp. 145-146.
19. Paul Anderson, “Jesus Matters: A Response to Professors Borg, Powell and Kinkel,” Quaker Religious Thought #98 (Vol. 30, No. 4), p. 52.
20. George Fox, The Great Mystery, (Vol. III of the 1831 edition of Works). On “the gospel is the power of God” as “plain speech” rather than metaphor, see p. 437. On the gospel as “a living way, which is revealed within,” see p. 21.
21. Following Jesus, p. 130.
22. George Fox, The Great Mystery, p. 281.
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*Following Jesus: The Heart of Faith and Practice, by Paul Anderson. Barclay Press, 2013. 212 pages. $17.00
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“The Trouble with God: Building the Republic of Heaven”* A Review
Reviewed by Chuck Fager
I’ve been trying to lose my religion for years now, but it refuses to go away. Just when I think I’ve shaken it — put it firmly behind me, a piece of my obscurantist past no longer suited to the faithless life I now lead — it turns up again, dogging me. You’d think it would be easy . . . . But as the world becomes a more bewildering place almost by the week, I find myself longing for what I thought I’d never long for again: a sense of community in the midst of the impersonal vastness, a tribe to call my own . . . .
– Daphne Merkin, the New Yorker, September 11, 2000
Merkin’s very American and very Jewish, comment kept coming back to me as I read David Boulton’s very interesting, and very post-Christian book. He too has been trying to lose his religion, or at least his theology, and he thought he’d done quite a thorough job of it – “God had to go,” he writes. But, as it turned out, “his absence was almost as problematical as his presence.” (p. 222)
Certainly, Boulton has shaken off his original religion, that of the Plymouth Brethren, a British sect that was strict, fundamentalist, and more than a little loopy; it had some Quaker connections at its genesis too. He begins by telling us his own story of growing up in this group, and growing out of it to become an intrepid investigative reporter, traveling the world’s hot spots for Britain’s Independent Television equivalent of our “60 Minutes.” (Though one must say his work sounds much more daring than the usual fare on the venerable CBS warhorse.)
This is a fascinating tale, but as he assures us, it is not really about him, David Boulton; it is about God and the “trouble” that Boulton and numerous other more or less like-minded non-theists have had, and evidently keep having, with the divinity.
As a result, where Boulton has ended up is among Friends, and in the camp of something he calls “radical religious humanism.” To oversimplify for purposes of brevity, this movement’s position is something like this: gods and religions are human-made myths, stories that help us organize the world and our lives in it. Indeed, just about everything “human” about us is a story, or a narrative, a “fiction” created by language.
None of this fictional stuff is “real” out there, especially the god bits. As a result, many once concluded that we can’t, mustn’t believe in this fictional “God” (or gods) as people used to do. As Boulton puts it, ” . . .we decided to manage without him. We pronounced him dead. Deceased. De trop. The late. The new hymns we sang . . .simply left him out.” (P. 70)
However, Boulton has found that neither he nor, he thinks, societies can get along without such stories and myths. Including, dash it all, the story-myth of God; he admits that ” . . . we had trouble with this God too – this absent God, this no-God. He wouldn’t stay dead. He continued to haunt us, a holy ghost who wouldn’t let us alone.” (Ibid.) Yes, even many of the radical religious humanists among whom Boulton moves. As a result, somewhat to his amazement, chagrin, and relief, God has despite all, been “born again” (p. 71).
How so? It goes back to language and stories. Boulton notes how humans have the capacity to get very involved in stories: we care, often deeply, about (pick your fictional preference) whether Harry Potter will survive the final encounter with Voldemort, Frodo will ever get back to the shire – or if Jane Austen’s heroines will make the proper and satisfying match. Anyone who has ever dabbed at an eye in a movie, or been unable to put down a novel, knows what Boulton is getting at. In this experience, “fictional” characters and stories become somehow “real” to us, even as we still “know” they are wholly imaginary, that they only “exist” on the page or the screen.
So it shall be with Boulton’s new-old God. In the unfolding saga of the construction of the “Republic of Heaven” (Boulton, it turns out, coined the term before it was used by novelist Philip Pullman for the popular fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials), this born-again God will be the protagonist of a fictional, yet–Boulton is confident–compelling story enacted not only in theatres but in our communal life. “God is a fiction,” he affirms, “but a necessary, instrumental fiction.” (P. 159) This is God as
our incarnation of mercy, pity, peace, and love, as the sum of our values embodied as a being with whom we can have a relationship–that God tosses away his crown and joins us in the messiness and absurdities of our human lives. Nor is this some domesticated caricature of a God in heaven who would be of no earthly use to anyone. This is the God who plants his footstep in the sea and rides upon the storm, the ancient of days, no less: the most powerful of all the symbols ever created by the symbol-making species called humans. (P. 250)
Moreover, Boulton believes he has found a paradigm and paragon of this republic-building enterprise, in the very real and historical figure of Gerrard Winstanley. Winstanley was the more radical contemporary of George Fox, and a key figure among the Levellers and Diggers during England’s revolutionary years (and he ended his life as a Quaker).
Winstanley was also, it turns out, the archetypal (and perhaps first) non-theist Friend: “For Winstanley, both God and the devil were internalized,” (p.128) and he preferred to call God “the power of reason” (p.129). Boulton has embarked on a long-term project to bring Winstanley’s several books back from historical obscurity into print, as key resources for the larger rehabilitation of theology as necessary fiction.
Boulton’s presentation moves deftly from autobiography to religious history, lucidly through the twists of theology since the Enlightenment, and amusingly to the quirky debates among religious humanists, writing with flair throughout. His account was clear enough, indeed, that I could see just where I parted company with him. It’s when he gets into the matter of God, fiction, and story:
If [God] is a fiction, we are his author as well as reader. Human communities fashioned him, imagined him into being by story telling . . . .We said, “let us now make God in our own image and likeness,” and we breathed into his nostrils the breath of story telling, and God became a living fiction. . . . But it is a story, and God is no more, but no less, than what we have made him.” (P. 164)
Now, this model doubtless works to explain many stories; but not all. Nor does it explain the testimonies of many authors, old and new, that their stories in large measure wrote themselves. They are written down or told by their human “authors,” but not created by them.
One of the oldest such testimonies comes from perhaps 2500 years ago, and was recorded by a man who did not want to begin telling stories, or once begun, to continue. But, lamented the prophet Jeremiah: “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” (Jeremiah 20:9)
And one of the newest such testimonies comes from this writer, even if I tremble to mention myself in the same paragraph with Jeremiah. I have written many stories. Some were indeed constructed fictions, pieces of craft which fit Boulton’s description quite well. But not all: others were given to me, not created by me, and I merely wrote them down and polished them a bit. Of course, I don’t claim these stories are grand prophecies such as Jeremiah delivered; only that I did not create them.
But if I did not make those stories, who did? And if (again, the trembling) Jeremiah refused to tell stories until he literally could not do otherwise, where was that fire in his bones coming from?
So, not to put too fine a point on it, there are stories we write, and stories which write us. Boulton comes within shouting distance of this notion when he says that
. . . just as we are what we eat, so too are we what we read . . . .Every one of the stories we read, hear, see, changes us a little . . . .but the stories that most clearly make us what we are are the great foundation stories of our culture: the origin myths, redemption stories and epic tales of love and death. . . . .Every Arab has been shaped by the Koran, every Jew by the Torah. . . . These are our very foundations, their themes, their inflections and their nuances forming the bedrock of the culture–both “high” and popular–in which we live and move and have our being.” (P. 200)
For him, all this is still a human construct. But Jeremiah’s experience points to another option: if some stories write themselves, and write us, maybe there’s a Story Teller, shaping the world thereby, who is not a human invention, but is really “out there” in some ineffably mysterious fashion.
That may not be much of a theology, but it is what the drift of my own experience leads me to affirm, even in the midst of acknowledging the truth of much of Boulton’s account of the changing god-images and stories.
I don’t state this alternative to argue or to insist Boulton is mistaken; our own stories simply come to different conclusions. For some–even alas, some among Friends–such differences are the mandate for heresy hunts. But those stories in my reading (and experience) all have unhappy endings, and are unnecessary to boot. Instead, I see the difference as the basis for some very fruitful conversations.
Or to put it another way, my Story Teller must be content to have many different storylines in play; else why make so many of them? Including the ones so memorably described in The Trouble with God.
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*The Trouble with God: Building the Republic of Heaven. David Boulton. O Books, Winchester UK & New York. 270 pages, paperback.
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“Godless For God’s Sake: Nontheism In Contemporary Quakerism”* — A Review
Reviewed By Chuck Fager
What have we come to in Friends religious thought, when the most exciting book of Quaker theology I’ve read in years is produced by a bunch of Quaker non-theists, twenty-seven in all?
Well, there will be no hand-wringing about that here: I’ll take thoughtful, articulate, and challenging religious thought wherever I can find it – and there’s plenty of that in this compact volume. By contrast, the sad fact is that precious little of what passes for “religious thought” that dribbles out of the Quaker “mainstream” and into my mailboxes (snail and e-) is worth the paper it’s printed on or the bandwidth it takes up. Maybe it takes being a nontheist for a modern Quaker to get past our ingrained aversion to serious theologizing. If so, that’s reason enough to welcome them in the Society.
Indeed, if I never have to read another muddled and half-baked paean to the murky glories of Quaker mysticism, it will be too soon. And spare me any more stale re-hashes of Handbasket Theology, pronouncing us all perdition-bound via the express lane unless we get right with Somebody’s version of Christ. Get a life, Somebody.
My complaints come, moreover, from one who definitely considers himself a Quaker theist. Or perhaps more accurately, a failed non-theist. This qualification is important here because it bespeaks a respect for clear and careful thought – and a parallel respectful recognition that when it comes to arguments, the atheists have all – or at least most – of the best ones.
This fact is one of the most ancient yet most open secrets of Judeo-Christian theological history. It is as old as the Book of Job – perhaps the earliest biblical theological treatise. In it Jehovah has to pull rank and hide behind a trumped-up tornado to disguise the divine inability to answer the astringent questioning of his loyal servant from the land of Uz. And down the centuries, how many of His other non-divine defenders have done any better, really? (Perhaps that’s why, at the end of Job’s book, Jehovah commends the challenger and rebukes the “friends” who had so long-windedly attempted to defend the divine honor, probity – and, between the lines – existence.)
Thus, far from being shocked or scandalized by Godless For God’s Sake, I looked forward to reading it. Moreover, besides the long pedigree of religious non-theism, I also know that humanism and non-theist-in-all-but-name religious thought is nothing new in American Quakerism. My own studies have traced our humanist-nontheist strand as far back as Lucretia Mott, in the 1840s – that is, more than 160 years. And if space permitted, an essentially unbroken “apostolic succession” could be filled in from her down to the present.
(The fact that this succession has been largely ignored by our historians is only a sign of their bias, not an indication of any lack of material. For some initial explorations in this field, see the essay, “Flowers of Quaker non-theism” by Os Cresson, online at: http://www.nontheistfriends.org/article/flowers-of-quaker-nontheism/ ; or my book, Shaggy Locks & Birkenstocks, Kimo Press 2003; and the essay, “Lucretia Mott: Liberal Quaker Theologian,” in Quaker Theology #10).
In light of this long history, it is distressing, even a bit shocking to see reviewers like the one in Friends Journal (November 2006, p. 25) wringing hands and reeling aghast at the infiltration of infidels into their orthodox sanctuary, and calling for a purge to clear up the Society’s ranks.
It is similarly distressing, but perhaps not surprising, to find the review blatantly distorting and falsifying the book, wrongly accusing its writers with mindless scientism, epistemological narrowness, existential joylessness – just about everything but halitosis, all in the face of plentiful evidence to the contrary. This tells little about Godless for God’s Sake, but shows unmistakably that Friends Journal needs some new, more observant, and even-handed book reviewers.
The reality of the book is quite different. For instance, there is much joy in it. As one writer declares, “I woke one morning with an overwhelming delight at being alive.” (p. 20) Others speak of deep experiences in worship that are mystical in all but name (pp. 57. 139) – and for that matter, mysticism without God is hardly a new phenomenon either; think Zen.
Nor is their religious thinking confined to a shrunken soulless scientism: there is meditation, metaphor, depth, even revelation here: “For artists,” one writer affirms, “making isn’t making up; in whatever terms you choose, it is relationship. If I say God is a metaphor, I don’t mean a figure in an allegory, made to stand for the things we know it stands for. I mean an image, found or ‘given,’ with a deep life of its own, with resonances as yet undisclosed, maybe inexhaustible.” (P. 32; emphasis in original.)
Which points to the matter of thinking about how God does or does not “exist.” Some of the writers could indeed be considered materialist naturalists in their outlook: what you see (or feel, or count) is what you get, and that’s that.
But not all. One author is an accomplished mathematician who writes tellingly about how those in her profession struggle over whether, and how, numbers “exist” or are “real,” with various schools of thought but no final resolution:
“Must the existence of numbers,” she muses, “be either totally independent of human thought or totally dependent on it? Or might the relationship be more complex? I face a similar dilemma with respect to the theist/nontheist question: am I constrained either to accept the idea of God as an eternal transcendent reality or to reject it along with all religious experience I seem to have? Or might there be another alternative? In both cases, total acceptance and total denial feel equally wrong . . . . (T)here are many ways of being real and concrete physical reality is not necessarily the most compelling of these.” (P.39)
The self-appointed guardians of some Quaker Orthodoxy may scoff, but the only prejudice thereby revealed is theirs: this is good stuff.
For that matter, like any worthwhile theological tome, the book includes at least one flash of striking, satori-like insight:
“Much of what we tend to regard as the achievement of Friends as a whole was, in fact, the work of individual Friends, or small groups of Friends, often in the face of opposition or neglect of their monthly meetings. (One of the most positive – if often tedious – aspects of Quaker culture may be its capacity to produce or attract individuals who are willing to stand up to it)” (p. 75)
This observation also manifests another pervasive feature of the collection, namely the authors’ devotion to the Religious Society of Friends. Should meetings be so foolish as to follow the call to attempt a purge – as one, in fact, did (pp. 23-25) – they would be depriving themselves of some of their most devoted and productive members.
What was it that The Man said? “By their fruits ye shall know them.” If that’s so, then as a group, nontheist Friends have as much claim to a legitimate place in contemporary Quakerism as many who feel they are defending the last true redoubt against the invading forces of unbelief. The proper response to the testimonies in these pages is not scorn or witchhunts, but an invitation to further conversation. And in my case, gratitude that these nontheists have taken the theology they don’t accept seriously enough to think and write about it as thoughtfully and engagingly as they have here.
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*Godless For God’s Sake: Nontheism In Contemporary Quakerism. Edited by David Boulton. Cumbria, United Kingdom, Dales Historical Monographs. 146 pages, paperback. US$18.50.
I have no trouble with your definition of nontheist. Nontheist, however, excludes only one type of God. As an atheist, I am a nontheist, but my nonbelief covers more than just a theist God. I wish there were a term with fewer negative connotations than atheist.
Since the dawn of time, we’ve fought the bifurcated extremes of religion vs. logic/atheism. Now, for people with open minds and hearts, there’s an emerging third cosmos… Come take a look… http://www.wheretonowstpaul.com/brad/
Like many born Jewish, I’m an atheist. I became a formal and very regular attender in more or less thirty years ago, and joined twenty years ago. For the past few years, I’ve stopped going to Meeting because the discussion of searching for God just doesn’t speak to me.
Ministry speaking to the human condition appeals to me, but figuring out where God is, seems as distant to me as discussing how many angels could stand on the head of a pin. I just don’t care.
Jim, Yes! exactly! I DON’T CARE!!! It’s not so much that I’ve figured it out and God doesn’t exist, it’s just that there is so much richness and plenty to worry about simply among the visible living things on earth, I have no need to look for something else. For me it’s more like that jumble of aliveness IS God, rather than that I embrace it and turn my back on God, but whether it makes sense to call it God or not isn’t even much of a concern for me.
Ah, well
Hmm. This atheist Jewish Quaker does care about others’ ministry about God, mainly because a lot of Friends couch some genuine and extraordinary messages relating to the human condition in God language. I can easily separate my notions of what is good and real and important from God language, but for many others it seems the two are inseparable. And so, I have no wish for them to separate the two, as that would do violence to the ministry.
Of course, there are some God-related messages that don’t touch me at all, often because the language sounds like parrot-talk rather than the speaker’s genuine struggle to express experience that is hard to find words for.
I just “discovered” this site. Thanks, all, for previous comments. I was fully aware myself being rather “nontheistic” even before I sought membership in the Society of Friends back in early 90’s. I was quite relieved when a weighty Friend (ah, she was “Jewish” Quaker too!) in my membership clearness meeting told us that the reason she became Quaker was nothing to do with God, but rather to do with Quaker testimonies and social action. I was studying the Hebrew scripture in grad school at the time, and I became increasingly aware that God in the Hebrew Bible (or Christians call it “Old Testament”) is more or less like humanity’s collective disire for peace and justice; thus just because historical people (Jesus of Nazareth or George Fox) used the word “God” doesn’t mean we have to follow the practice. They just used the word God because that was the word universally understood at the time. Early Quakers were called “Seekers of Truth” not “Seekers of God”. Quakers often use the phrase “That of God in everyone”: it’s not “God in everyone”. The “That” in the phrase, as I understand, is the characteristics of God, which to me is “pease and justice”. As Pam says, “I don’t care” if someone believes in God or not; what I care is to work towards peace and justice, and I see there’s no connection between the belief in God and actions for peace and justice in real world.
For the record, this post-Christian Quaker nontheist is an atheist too, though I’ve decided to use that word less often. Not because I’m afraid of the negative connotations (any more than those attached to “anarchy”), but because I find that some people find it emotionally disturbing. I’m more than willing to disturb people intellectually, but not emotionally without good reason, and I find “nontheism” still does the one without doing the other as much.
Responding to the end of your post James, I think this is a provocative way to frame the issue — nontheism as a “big tent” that includes “theists” who have “nontheistic” (perhaps “nontraditional” is clearer) conceptions of God, along with people who don’t believe in or talk about God. Part of me thinks this is a more fruitful way of continuing the dialogue, yet it also seems inherently unstable: the phrase “nontheistic theism” sounds either like confused thinking, or a mere stopping-point on the road to “nontheistic atheism.”
Zach.
These are fuzzy words and tricky targets to hit. But I didn’t mean to frame things in such a way that there is such a thing as a “nontheist theist.” Spong, I think, claims a faith in God but would not describe himself as a theist — not in the way that he uses the word.
What I think I’m edging toward, is that there seem to be some for whom God is an experiential reality but perhaps not an objective reality. More imminent, less transcendent. Definitely not a being with a distinct consciousness.
This is not my own view; in fact I’m not sure it is an entirely coherent position. In some ways it seems to betray a conflict between intellectual integrity and an emotionally based nostalgia for images and conceptions that no longer function. For me the word God only serves as a metaphor, and a rather flawed metaphor at that. But it does seem to me that these folks are doing important work in moving religion away from superstition and magical thinking.
Moving religion away from “superstition” and “magical thinking”, in my way of thinking, is done by helping all parties, atheist and theist, to drop the “supernatural” expectations. The scope of nature is absolutely sufficient.
To stop talking about “gods” and contemplate “God” with a discipline not unlike that of science.
For instance, the idea of a god that is not all inclusive to infinity is sophomoric and prone to anthropomorphic projections.
So, infinity is the reasonable starting point. It is ever-present as the dimensionlessness of Now.
For a discussion of the term nontheist see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheist
I do not want to be called an atheist because of the “fundamentism” of many atheists. I reject their dogmatic position in the same manner as I reject organized religion. It seems to me that what is called god or gods is a projection of our own being. Carl Jung provides, for me, the best understanding of the nature of god:
“Experiences of the self possess a numinosity characteristic of religious revelations. Hence Jung believed there was no essential difference between the self as an experiential, psychological reality and the traditional concept of a supreme deity.
It might equally be called the “God within us.”[The Mana-Personality,” CW 7, par. 399.”
This is from the definition of the “Self” found in the Jung Lexicon: http://www.psychceu.com/Jung/sharplexicon.html
John,
I didn’t mean to call you an atheist. People have the right to describe themselves with the words they choose, or to choose to not describe themselves. When many of us use these words in different ways, this causes some confusion, but that’s OK. It’s mostly honest confusion about questions that are hard to get a grip on.
However, some God-believers describe themselves as not believing in a theistic God (for me the essential meaning of “nontheist”). Bishop Spong is one of these. I also know some folks associated with nontheist Friends who stop a little short of saying “I believe there is no God.” I am making a case for a definition of nontheist which is broader than atheist, and can accommodate these positions as well as my own. I think there is some precedent for this, and some communicative value.
The word atheist is another story. I reserve this for people who, like me, hold NO belief in God, and do not find it fruitful to redefine the word God until they can be included in the circle of people who “believe in God,” who believe that “God exists.” I might actually have more of a problem embracing the words “believe” or “exists” here, than I have with the word “God.”
It has been a decade or more since I last read Jung, but in my memory he made more of a distinction than you are acknowledging here. Indeed, he spoke of his own personal “knowledge” of God in the manner you describe, but he also took some care to distinguish between this direct, personal reality of God which cannot be legitimately denied, and the assertion that there is an objective God outside the self, who created the universe. While he held a tentative belief in the second, objective conception of God, he explicitly stated that his inner experience could not be accepted as legitimate evidence for the existence of an external, objective God. He was a scientist as well as a poet.
One more point: having had many conversations with unbelievers and believers on the progressive edges of religion, I can say that there is often a hair’s breadth between what one cals belief and the other calls unbelief. And yet they feel reluctant to let go of the conceptions of themselves as believers or unbelievers. This is certainly true of me.
James,
To the best of my knowledge you never called me an atheist. The point that I want to make is, that many people who lose their faith, or never had it in the first place feel they must, by default, be atheist or agnostic. I wish merely to point out that there is a lesser known alternative. And your definition of nontheist does indeed need to be, as you acknowledge later, considered in light of the term “believe.” That is the troubling term. My somewhat simple analogy is unicorns. Do unicorns exist(that other troubling term)? In one sense they do. I can Google the term unicorn and find 17,700,000 links. I can find books about unicorns, I find pictures of unicorns. The issue for me is not whether I “beieve” in unicorns, but, rather, can I find a correlation in the physical world. And, the same is true for god.
Jung considered that humans are endowed with a natural “religous function” that has nothing to do with god. Do you Karen Armstrong’s “A History of God?”
Kind regards,
JF
John, I think you make good points, and one can find legitimate meaning in something one calls God, without going so far as to affirm belief or existence, with the sometimes troubling implications of those words.
And yet, it feels important for me to make those distinctions, to clarify that I do not hold any *belief* in God, though the word God does sometimes help me to talk about some subtle and meaningful aspects of the reality of being alive. “There but for the grace of God, go I.” “That of God in every one.” And some more personal understandings of my own, along the lines of “take care of each other, and leave God to take care of herself.” Yet it feels dishonest to me to talk about God, without pointing out my extreme skepticism about any of the traditional understandings of the word.
Yes, I’ve read Armstrong’s History of God, and liked most of it a great deal. I actually preferred her more personal works, Through the Narrow Gate and more recently, The Spiral Staircase.
The one significant problem I have with Armstrong’s theological ideas, and those of a number of progressive theological writers, is their notion that literalist perspectives are late developments in religion, emerging from the scientific perspective. On the contrary, I see massive evidence that literalist, superstitious understandings of religion have been dominant throughout the ages, and are only now starting to fall apart in the modern, scientific age. Of course, there have always been those in religious traditions trying to undermine the silly, superstitious, literalist, magical thinking of the religious masses. But they have rarely if ever represented the mainstream.
Hi American Friends,
The word “nontheist” doesn’t exist in my native language, French. Though it perfectly describes what I feel. A pity! Because, on one hand, I can’t use the word “God” anymore, intellectually speaking, and, on the other hand, I will miss it whenever I won’t, emotionally speaking.
So I try and look for the church that could understand and accept the way I feel.
I’ve been theoretically Presbyterian for the last twenty years. Practically too, because there’re so few Protestants in France that attending a Presbyterian service is the best available way to live according to the kind of “faith” I’ve described.
I’ve been meeting French Unitarians too, from time to time. You’ve got the Christian ones and the non-Christian ones. The first ones don’t understand me because I don’t want to be considered a Christian anymore, neither do the latter because I’m not fond of neo-paganism (to put it euphemistically!). I don’t like walking around naked by equinoctial night in a deep forest with a flaming torch in my hand!
So, in the last time, I’ve been contemplating getting to the Friends’ Meeting in Paris, France. I’ve gotten in contact with them. I just wonder whether they will accept me as I am. But I’m glad to hear about American Quakers who are in the same mood as me.
“Faith-fully” yours.
Fabrice
Hello Fabrice ,
Most likely, they will in my experience — especially so if they are programmed Friends. I have also know programmed Friends who are equally accepting.
I am an atheist Friend who was seriously questioning the integrity of continuing my formal association with Friends when I stumbled across a book entitled, Godless for God’s Sake – Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism by David Boulton.
My best regards to you,
Bob
Hi Fabrice,
I’ve been an attender of unprogrammed meetings in New York, Delaware and Maryland over the last 8 years and I’ve found everyone to be really open and friendly as I’ve been trying to figure out quite exactly what I am. Nontheist seems to be the word that fits best.
I hope that the folks in France are accepting of and helpful to you too.
In the last 7 years, I’ve come to a point where if someone asks me whether I believe in God, I don’t just ask “What’s your definition of God?” Now I feel that I must say “No” in order to be completely honest.
Yet, I find a lot of resonance with concepts such as “There, but for the grace of God, go I” and with ideas that there is more going on than I can presently measure scientifically. For example, when my Mom gives me reiki, it feels good even when her hands are too far from me to register temperature or magnetic fields. As another example, I heard the gunshot that killed my Uncle, yet he was hundreds of miles away.
I can’t explain these, many other events, and why I care about the people dying in Iraq. However, I don’t think I need to explain them to myself via belief in God or any organized religion. Also, I don’t mind if other people are believers, as long as it doesn’t drastically impact my life.
On a silly note, the mention of unicorns reminded me that my brother had a dream recently that I was a unicorn and that I went around purifying water and leaving hoofprints that became sacred ground where a profusion of flowers sprang up. What a lovely vision to try to live up to!
🙂
Crystal
I too consider myself a nontheist, and am moving towards the more narrow category of atheist. I grew up in an evangelical Christian home, and all of my family both intermediate and extended (both sides) are active Christians, so it’s difficult for me to take such a radically different path belief-wise from them, and for the time being its sort of something I keep to myself mostly, until my thoughts have solidified. Radicalism is what first challenged my faith (it first led to a redfinition of my faith, and I find that its now eroding away altogether). I went from being a Republican evangelical Christian, to a Christian anarchist, moved towards Marxism, and now I consider myself a post-Christian nontheist, libertarian socialist. I wanted to comment to you guys searching for a description of “God” in a non-theistic sense, that French sociologist Emile Durkheim said that religion “was an expression of social cohesion…He thought that the function of religion was to make people willing to put the interests of society ahead of their own desires…One of the major functions of religion according to Durkheim was to prepare people for social life…Durkheim thought that the model for relationships between people and the supernatural was the relationship between individuals and the community. He is famous for suggesting that ‘God is society, writ large.'” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Durkheim )
Sorry for the long quote. I think Durkheim’s theory on religion is very interesting and definitely seems to hold some validity. He also was the first to develop a theory that effectively explained differing suicide rates in countries and to this day his theory holds solid.
– Josiah
Personally I am delighted with James’ description of a nontheist as “someone who does not accept a theistic understanding of God.” As this statement has occasioned the question of whether there can be a nontheistic understanding of God (nontheistic or non-traditional theism), let me weigh in on that subject.
I am a nontheist because I can get along quite well without using the word “God.” Here I make common cause with atheists. I can also appreciate God-language when it is used poetically and metaphorically (as it is used by many Friends who consider themselves theists). But saying I can get along without God-language isn’t to say that I have no appreciation of an aesthetic dimension which poetic Friends might consider theistic.
“I affirm (1)a wider order of being to which humankind is indebted and to and for which it is responsible; and (2)a creative power to that being which is the source and substance of all existence.”
This has been my credo for some years now. I do not feel that it is theistic, nor do I feel obligated to defend it or speak on it (if at all in theistic terms). So can there be a nontheistic theism? I couldn’t say, but it is possible to be a nontheistic mystic!
Hi Peter,
In an essay called “Une philosophie du bonheur” (“Another Philosophy of Happiness”), unfortunately written in French (unless you can read French…), I suggested to equate God with the Universe, so a Quaker meeting for worship for instance could be considered by nontheist Friends simply a time for worshipping life or the Universe itself and feeling deeply rooted in it, in a mystical communion with it and with the other human beings surrounding us. A French thinker, Pierre Hadot, called this feeling “oceanic feeling” and said this was the real descent of every religion beyond poly- or monotheism. This is the real significance of pantheism as well, I guess.
Oceanically yours
Fabrice
I suppose this is to all whom have replied before this… I feel comfortable with defining the word nontheist as “What makes sense in the absence of a Deity or Deities.” I doubt we will be able to return to pre-Theism, or prior to when the concept of Theism originated in someone’s imagination somewhere, sometime, perhaps an original free thought gone wild. I have met only one Atheist that avoided ever attending a religious institution, and he is one proud Atheist, and proud of that fact. Perhaps the essence/ideal of a True Atheist. And perhaps thats what a nontheist is eventually. So there are those who wonder what makes sense in the beleived presence of a Deity and or Deities and, those whom wonder what makes sense in the absence of a Deity or Deities, and those whom make sense out of it all being unable to prove it one way or another. The characteristic of abrasiveness in regard to Atheistic fundamentalism does turn people off, but the transition from addictive beleif to going non-religiously straight can be an abrasive personal experience. Fundamentalism in any shape and or form is often accompanied with noticable abrasiveness. Fortunaely there are 3rd generation moderates and of course the progressives whom have finally figured it all out. But, mostly I see nontheism as a fourth alternaive. Sort of like when we say there is one thing that Theists, Atheists and Agnostics all agree upon. If we ever enter into a state of ablivion, only a Deity could hopefully entervene on our behalf. The nontheist comes from a fourth alternative… we invision avoiding going there in the first place. Hope this made sense.
You claim to agree with Bishop Spong that “God” as a “a personal being with expanded supernatural, human, and parental qualities” does not exist. You are actually in agreement with the theologians and informed laypeople of all authentic religions. With your ringing endorsement of ‘nontheism’, you are attempting to make distinctions and create differences where there are none.
You seem to believe that many people who call themselves theists believe in an individualized God. Nothing could be farther from the truth. With the exception of the crude beliefs of the fundamentalists of all religions, no one else believes in such a concept of God. Fundamentalists of whatever religion have only a crude capacity of spiritual understanding and so must invent concrete notions to characterize that which they aspire to know more intimately.As their fears subside and their capacity for spiritual awareness becomes more subtle and wider ranging, these so-called fundamentalists will embrace other avenues of their chosen religion perhaps even ending up in the more mystical approaches of their religion as they mature in spiritual understanding.
There is, for example, not one Christian theologian of repute who believes in a individualized “God” floating around on a cloud hurling thunderbolts and dispensing justice. Most have beliefs in God that center around the ‘ground of all being’ concept or the ‘cosmic consciousness’ concept. That you cannot understand what is meant by these terms does not mean that they have no meaning. It only means that you do not yet have the capacity to access their meaning.
The problems with creating a theist-nontheist dichotomy are that the distinction is based on false premise and that you polarize and politicize a non-existent issue with the effect of preventing communication between theists and non-theists and, even more importantly, placing more obstacles in your own ability to ever know the subtle, cosmic expansiveness and Joy of that which is God.
Albert Einstein recognized the difference between God and man’s ability to know and manipulate the universe when he said, “I want to know God’s mind. The rest is just detail.”
I am a Unitarian. I also have a belief that might be described as “non theist.”
A mathematical description will suffice concerning my “God Belief”: The set of all Gods may be empty. The set of all actions of all Gods effecting our lives appears empty.
The position of an atheist is illogical. The proof of the non existence of something that doesn’t exist is impossible.
The position of a theist remains without any proof.
As physics gains more insight into the basic nature of matter, we may arrive with evidence supporting the deist (the belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation). However, this remains to be seen and, since the God(s) seem to exert no influence on us, this is barren and needs no further consideration.
The pantheist belief (belief that God(s) and the universe are the same) is also barren since it still leaves us on our own.
The bottom line? We are on our own and we must define our own purpose for “being.” I accept that I am “my brother’s keeper.” I should, to the best of my ability, take great care to secure the well being and safety of all that I can, alive and inanimate.
Ronald,
Thanks for your comments. I agree with much of what you say here, but I think you misstate the position of atheism, or at least of many atheists. Certainly of this atheist.
I have met very few atheists–in fact, only one I can recall–who are willing to assert that the absence of God has been or can be proven. An atheist is simply a person who believes there is no God.
Peter,
I think you divide the religious world far too cleanly between “the fundamentalists” and “all authentic religions.” There is a far greater spread of religionists out there than you seem to acknowledge, and the beliefs of most are far more supernaturalistic than the beliefs of myself, or of the most liberal theologians.
Indeed, there are theologically liberal Christians who see the Christian myth as a metaphor for a god they acknowledge to be unknowable, and the supernatural stories about Jesus/God as poetical, and made up by people. But there are far, far more Christians who do not, who in fact subscribe to the various creeds and catechisms that completely fly in the face of the more sophisticated, metaphorical conceptions of God put forth by Spong, Tillich, and others. Tillich’s notion of God as the ground of being, yet most decidedly not a being, in fact not even existing as we generally use that word, has never been mainstream theology. It has always existed on the edges of Judeo-Christian religion, but never at the center.
I will also admit that many (not all) mainstream seminaries are wrestling with and teaching religious problems that most of them would not dream of unveiling on Sunday morning before the pews. For instance, a great many seminaries are willing to admit the unavoidable fact that the Gospels are contradictory on factual matters, and therefore all cannot be true accounts of Jesus’s life and teachings. But, again, very few pastors share these insights with their congregations. Many of them would lose their posts if they did.
So, for all your claims, it is still very much a radical and minority religious claim to say that there is no conscious entity that created the universe, and no conscious entity that can answer prayers, that prayer has no effect on the outside world other than the psychological effect it might have on our actions in that world.
I also need to call attention to your statement that “There is, for example, not one Christian theologian of repute who believes in a individualized “God” floating around on a cloud hurling thunderbolts and dispensing justice.” If you remove the purely rhetorical part of that statement, “floating around on a cloud hurling thunderbolts,” it is no longer true. Many Christian theologians believe God exists distinct from the world and dispenses justice. Some do not.
Definition of Nontheist Friends
I agree with this characterization of nontheist friends in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheist_Friends
A nontheist Friend or nontheist Quaker is someone who identifies with, engages in and/or affirms Quaker practices and processes, but who does not accept a belief in a theistic understanding of God, a Supreme Being, the divine or the supernatural. Like theistic friends, nontheist friends are actively interested in realizing centered peace, love and happiness in the Society of Friends and beyond.
Friends have recently begun to examine actively the significance of nontheistic beliefs in the Society of Friends, in the tradition of seeking truth among friends. Explicit nontheism among Quakers probably dates to the 1930s, when some Quakers in California branched off to form the Humanist Society of Friends (today part of the American Humanist Association), and when Henry Cadbury professed agnosticism in a 1936 lecture to Harvard Divinity School students. In 1976, the first workshop on nontheism at Friends General Conference was held.
The main nontheist friends’ website [1] is one significant site for this conversation, as are nontheist Quaker study groups. Os Cresson began a recent consideration of this issue from behaviorist, natural history, materialist and environmentalist perspectives. See Roots and Flowers of Quaker Nontheism [2] for one history. Friendly nontheism also draws on Quaker humanist and universalist traditions. The book Godless for God’s Sake: Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism (2006) offers recent, critical contributions by Quakers. Some friends are actively engaging the implications of human evolution, cognitive anthropology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary history, evolutionary biology and biology in terms of Quaker nontheism.
Nontheist friends are a small group of individuals, many of whom loosely relate to the unprogrammed tradition in Quakerism. Friendly nontheists are attempting sympathetically to generate conversation with others who are more comfortable with the traditional and often reiterated language of Quakerism. Questioning theism, they wish to examine whether the experience of the reality of direct and ongoing inspiration from God (the inner light) – “So wait upon God in that which is pure. …” (George Fox in Royce 1913:54) – which some Quaker traditions see as informing Silent Meeting and Meeting for Business, for example, might be understood and embraced with different language and discourse.
I like the term nontheist. I have trouble with the word atheist becasue to me asserting no belief is in itself a belief system akin to putting all of the anarchists on one island to be together and share their belief in absence of government.
I think it is that we don’t want fundamentalism
nor fundamentailitic concept like “god”
some biology goes to wheather one belives or
dosn’t belive (a study in minnisotta showed this)
so the opposite genes of reality and no -god are
also exist.
One must not get tied up in knotts about the
religisoty people
those that are against materialism and facts
find freedom in albert ellis book
the case against religiosity and this relates that
the sane kind of person dosn’t practice religion.
but there are subtitutes about there
for closer reality the nature poems
of japanese hiqu
then for ethics the 14 teachable virtues
and for examples such as no slavery and other ethics
aseops fables.
and aristotle
nomoekan ethics.
you have ayn rand virtue of selfishness.
and [ kung fucius –anelects…who is into
harmony of nature no mention of god]
john locke -essay concerning
human understanding..
with this possilbly a virtual reality
of what an atheist government would be
in its ethics
unlike the usa constitution
but a capitalist -atheist one …
where persons would be co-operative
that is openly able to be trusting
and continueing on in the free market
unlike the market shut down we seem to be heading to.
no more domestic disputes
better psychology
no chistain polution
more learning and no-put down indoctrination
forced into class rooms.
a lot closer to utopia.
thanks kindly,
RicH-w
Sign me up. Apparently, I am a non theist.
That explains a lot, thank you!
Jeanne
To my understanding the word also implies us Deists, who may believe in a higher transcendental being but not necessary a being as described by the major theistic religions
Maybe, Omar. The deist image of God is not the same as the theist image of God, though unlike *most* nontheists it seems to posit the literal existence of a distinct being understood as God.
My understanding of deism comes mostly from what I’ve read about some of the founding fathers, like Jefferson. The essential idea, I think, was a god of some sort who created the universe, but is not involved in history or human affairs on an ongoing basis. It makes few to no assertions about the nature of that god, which I like, but does seem to see an action of will behind the creation of the universe. If I had come of age before the cosmological, geological and evolutionary findings of the last hundred years, finding impersonal explanations for countless things that once seemed unexplainable, I might be a deist myself. But given our current scientific knowledge I don’t see any need to posit a god who created things. I’m still ultimately baffled by the mystery of it all, but the idea of a creator god doesn’t really help to dispel that bafflement.
But, yes, if you don’t believe in a theistic god, I think you can honestly call yourself a nontheist, if the idea appeals to you.
To my mind , the issue isn’t on the question of god at all , whether it exists or not, or even on a definition of non theism : there are as much ‘non-theisms’ as there are people on earth. The real quest stands in making others look at things as they are , without any kind of deity or supranatural forces.
This will be the main problem concerning atheists (materialists, humanists, all non theists generally speaking) and their relation with the rest of humanity in the future centuries.
If we want to open people’s eyes, there has to be more and more humanist teaching and objective programs in schools and universities, specially regarding religions and beliefs.
Waldorf schools and such humanistic scholar approach are already acting in some countries (nearly a housand waldorf schools around the world); but the challenge is to convey our reason in state funded school establishments.
James, I really liked the post.
I recently came to the same conclusion many in this forum have come to when I watched a documentary about the diversity of world belief systems. As I watched, I felt myself become slightly irritated as each person interviewed revealed their belief in what god was, was not, and whether he existed. I found that atheists and theists are all trying to answer the same question, but the question itself is bulls%@* (pardon the intended language, please). I realized that I did not need to ask myself that question: “What is God?” or “Does God exist?” I called it non-theism, and thought I coined the term (this thread proves me wrong). I am involved in religious based organizations, and do not feel like a hypocrite praying, but I simply refuse to talk about god or beliefs in any way. If some people I associate with in these groups knew my true non-theist beliefs, I would surely be kicked out of the club, so I just keep my mouth shut.
I would extend your definition of non-theism only to further differentiate it from atheism. Atheism and theism are reactions to the question of Does God Exist, but nontheism does not even acknowledge the question. Life goes on without it. Thanks again for the post. Best. CG
‘God’ a creative imagination of a mind looking for a way to purloin some of the economic surplus in the culture. Continues to this day, thousands of years later, as it is one of the best scams going. ‘God’ has the advantage for the Believer in that there is no need to take personal responsibility for decisions made by others.
I do not like scams, I stand on my own merits and decisions; therefore I am a non-theist.
Hey, Charles, welcome to the site. I’m sorry I didn’t see and approved your comment when you made it.
I can’t agree with what you say here, though. You are certainly right that God and religious ideas, and more to the point religious institutions, have been used countless times by countless people to exploit people. However, this is true of any powerful institution or ideology. Patriotism, love of country, has been at least as effective as religion.
In my view, however, the vast majority of believers are quite sincere in their beliefs, scamming no one, and are not particularly more pliant to the scams of others than unbelievers. In Quakerism in particular, ideas about God are far too diverse and unfocused to work as a coherent scam. And there are millions of thoughtful, educated Catholics who are quite clear in their minds about rejecting some of the more absurd elements of Catholic dogma and doctrine: they pick and choose. I would still say they believe some things that are probably not true, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve been scammed. All we can say with confidence is, they see things differently from you and me.
Thanks for the article. 🙂
The way I found out that I was a “nontheist” was by coming to a general conclusion on my spiritual, religious, and supernatural beliefs. You see, for me, believing in God, is, sort of, like believing the sky is not blue. I just can’t accept it. It’s not that I came to that conclusion through “rational thinking,” as an anitheist-atheist might say, but it’s just, sort of, my default belief, you could say, that I’ve had. And, I’ve had faith in this opinion ever since I was a child.
When I look at the Eucharist, I don’t see Jesus Christ. I recognize the strong symbolism, and how important it is for the human condition..etc….but the existence of the deity of Abraham just isn’t there for me. It’s just a very symbolic piece of bread, to me. And, since I don’t believe in “the real presence of JC in the Eucharist,” I don’t take it, out of respect to the religion; since I am baptized a Roman Catholic.
That being said, I do have to say, though, that I do believe in a lot of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, according to its catechism. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the beautiful teachings of the social gospel, I don’t think I’d still actually consider myself someone who likens/tries-to-follow the Catholic canon. I just dig Catholic social teaching. But, I will honestly say that I’m not a true Catholic, or would identify as a “Catholic.”
If one was to ask me what are my spiritual beliefs and/or religious affiliations, I would tell them that I’m an “Agnostic Nontheist Cafeteria-Roman Catholic,” then place emphasis in explaining that “I am NOT a true Catholic,” and why that is true…
That being said, I am considering becoming an Agnostic Nontheist Cafeteria-Anglican; rather than an Agn…..teria-RC because of bad image I’ve been acquiring of the Roman Catholic Church, lately. :p
Anyway…now you might be wondering, or not, would you also consider yourself an atheist? No, at least not in the modern sense, I would not; and, for several reasons, really. Even though this word does have its exact definition, it has rather turned to have a differently unique definition, according to mainline public opinion. When people generally think of an atheist these days, their mind conjures up images of radical antitheists who believe in no supernatural what so ever; strict materialists, with sometimes strong secular dogmas themselves. And, I don’t want to be associated with that, what so ever. I am not an antitheist. I do have my own personal beliefs, though not many, in the supernatural/spiritualness-of-humanity. In addition to many other things that do not quite fit it in with the common stereotype of the “modern atheist.”
I mean, I guess I could consider myself an atheist, just in the classical sense, that I don’t believe in the existence of a deity; whether it exists materialistically and/or spiritually; and that this description of me would ONLY describe my belief of a deity, and not entail anything else; like my religious affiliations or my other spiritual beliefs. But, unfortunately, we live in a world where atheism is no longer looked upon as such. :p
So, that’s the tip of the iceberg as to why I consider myself a “Nontheist” rather than an “atheist.
I’ve been trying to figure out what I do/dont believe in. I think I consider myself as agnostic. I’m just confused. Always have been. I really don’t believe in God himself, but there must be something. I semi believe the scientific theory which makes more sense to me.Idk…help me out here.
A Friend for over 50 years. Member of Cork Society of Friends:
My knowing of my Maker is very simple:
A Vibration beyond my understanding.
I am given the Vibration of Thanfulness
I am given the Vibration of Peace within.
I am given the Vibration of Contentment.
I am given (when needed) the Vibration of Knowing.
The finer vibrations exceed beyond me.
I will be given what is needed when required.
The rest , for me, is belief.
(All of which is ‘second hand’