The Case for God

by Karen Armstrong

  This too is part of our democratic heritage, and in practical matters it may be the fairest way of getting things done. This was the kind of discussion that was going on in the Athenian assemblies from which Socrates carefully dissociated his own dialogic technique. Unfortunately, much of the current debate about faith is conducted in this antagonistic spirit and it is not helpful. We badly need to consider the nature of religion and discover where and how it goes wrong. But if dialogue lacks either compassion or kenosis, it cannot lead to truly creative insight or enlightenment. Religious truth has always developed communally and orally; in the past, when two or three sat down together and reached out toward the “other,” they experienced transcendence as a “presence” among them. But it was essential that religious debates be conducted “in the most kindly manner,” to quote the Qur’an. A vicious polemic is likely to exacerbate already existing tensions. We have seen that when they feel under attack, fundamentalists almost invariably become more extreme. Hitherto Muslims had little problem with Darwin, but a new hostility toward evolutionary theory is now developing in the Muslim world as a direct response to Dawkins’s attack. In a world that is already so dangerously polarized, can we really afford yet another divisive discourse?

  In the past, theologians found that extended dialogue with atheists helped them to refine their own ideas. An informed atheistic critique should be welcomed, because it can draw our attention to inadequate or idolatrous theological thinking. The written discussion of the atheistic philosopher J. J. C. Smart and his theist colleague J. J. Haldane is a model of courtesy, intellectual acumen, and integrity and shows how valuable such a debate can be—not least in making it clear that it is impossible to settle either the existence or nonexistence of God by rational arguments alone.2 A scientific critique of conventional “beliefs” can also be helpful in revealing the limitations of the literalistic mind-set that is currently blocking understanding. Instead of arguing that an ancient mythos is factual, perhaps it would be better to study the original meaning of the ancient cosmologies and apply it analogically to our own situation. Instead of clinging to a literal reading of the first chapter of Genesis, it could be helpful to face up to the implications of the Darwinian vision of nature “red in tooth and claw.” This could become a meditation on the inescapable suffering of life, make us aware of the inadequacy of any neat theological solution, and give us a new appreciation of the First Noble Truth of Buddhism, “Existence is suffering (dukkha)”—an insight that in nearly all faiths is indispensable for enlightenment.

  There is much to be learned from older ways of thinking about religion. We have seen that far from regarding revelation as static, fixed, and unchanging, Jews, Christians, and Muslims all knew that revealed truth was symbolic, that scripture could not be interpreted literally, and that sacred texts had multiple meaning, and could lead to entirely fresh insights. Revelation was not an event that had happened once in the distant past but was an ongoing, creative process that required human ingenuity. They understood that revelation did not provide us with infallible information about the divine, because this would always remain beyond our ken. We have seen that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo made it clear to Christians that the natural world could tell us nothing about God, and that the Trinity taught them that they could not think of God as a simple personality. Even the supreme revelation of Christ, the incarnate Word, showed that the reality that we call “God” was as elusive as ever. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars all insisted on the paramount importance of intellectual integrity and thinking for oneself. Instead of clinging nervously to the insights of the past, they expected people to be inventive, fearless, and confident in their interpretation of faith. Religion must not be allowed to impede progress but should help people embrace the uncertainties of the future. There could be no question of a clash between science and theology, because these disciplines had different spheres of competence; science, Calvin insisted, must not be obstructed by the fears of a few ignorant and “frantic persons.” If a biblical text appeared to contradict current scientific discoveries, the exegete must interpret it differently.

  We must not idealize the past. Every age has its bigots, and there have always been people who were less theologically skilled than others and interpreted the truths of religion in a prosaic, factual manner. When as a young nun I was being especially obtuse, my superior used to tell me that I was “a literal-minded blockhead.” There have always been such. But the theologians who promoted a more apophatic approach to God were not marginal thinkers. The Cappadocians, Denys, and Thomas; the rabbis, the Kabbalists, and Maimonides; al-Ghazzali, Ibn Sina, and Mulla Sadra were all major carriers of tradition. Before the modern period, this was the orthodox position. We now have such a different view of faith that this may be difficult to accept, because it is always hard to transcend the limitations of our own time. We cannot, perhaps, ever become fully aware of our own cultural mood precisely because we are in that mood, and as a result we tend to absolutize it. Today we assume that because we rationalize faith and regard its truths as factual, this is how it was always done. But this involves a double standard. “The past is relativised, in terms of this or that socio-historical analysis. The present, however, remains strangely immune to relativisation,” the American scholar Peter Berger has explained. “The New Testament writers are seen as afflicted with a false consciousness rooted in their time, but the analyst takes the consciousness of his time as an unmixed intellectual blessing.”3 We tend to assume that “modern” means “superior,” and while this is certainly true in such fields as mathematics, science, and technology, it is not necessarily true of the more intuitive disciplines—especially, perhaps, theology.

  We now understand basic religious terms differently and in a way that has made faith problematic. “Belief” no longer means “trust, commitment, and engagement” but has become an intellectual assent to a somewhat dubious proposition. Religious leaders often spend more time enforcing doctrinal conformity than devising spiritual exercises that will make these official “beliefs” a living reality in the daily lives of the faithful. Instead of using scripture to help people to move forward and embrace new attitudes, people quote ancient scriptural texts to prevent any such progress. The words “myth” and “mythical” are now often synonymous with untruth. “Mystery” no longer refers to a ritualized initiation but has been routinely decried as mental laziness and incomprehensible mumbo jumbo. The Greek fathers used the word dogma to describe a truth that could not be put readily into words, could be understood only after long immersion in ritual, and, as the understanding of the community deepened, changed from one generation to another. Today in the West “dogma” is defined as “a body of opinion formulated and authoritatively stated,” while a “dogmatic” person is one who “asserts opinions in an arrogant and authoritative manner.”4 We no longer understand Greek theoria as the activity of “contemplation” but as a “theory,” an idea in our heads that has to be proved. This neatly demonstrates our modern understanding of religion as something that we think rather than something that we do.

  In the past, religious people were open to all manner of different truths. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars were ready to learn from pagan Greeks who had sacrificed to idols, as well as from one another. It is simply not true that science and religion were always at daggers drawn: in England, the Protestant and Puritan ethos were felt to be congenial to early modern science and helped its advance and acceptance.5 Mersenne, who belonged to a particularly austere branch of the Franciscan order, took time off from his prayers to conduct scientific experiments, and his mathematical ideas are still discussed today. The Jesuits encouraged the young Descartes to read Galileo and were fascinated by early modern science. Indeed, it has been said that the first scientific collective was not the Royal Society but the Society of Jesus.6 But as modernity advanced, confidence dimmed and attitudes hardened. Thomas Aquinas had taught Aristotelian science when it was controversial to do so and ha
d studied Jewish and Muslim philosophers while most of his contemporaries reflexively supported the Crusades. But the defensive post-Tridentine Church interpreted his theology with a rigidity that he would have found repugnant. The modern Protestant doctrine of the literal infallibility of scripture was first formulated by Hodge and Warfield in the 1870s, when scientific methods of biblical criticism were undermining “beliefs” held to be factually true. Like the new and highly controversial Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility, defined in 1870, it expressed a yearning for absolute certainty at a time when this was proving to be a chimera.

  Today, when science itself is becoming less determinate, it is perhaps time to return to a theology that asserts less and is more open to silence and unknowing. Here, perhaps, dialogue with the more thoughtful Socratic forms of atheism can help to dismantle ideas that have become idolatrous. In the past, people were often called “atheists” when society was in transition from one religious perspective to another: Euripides and Protagoras were accused of “atheism” when they denied the Olympian gods in favor of a more transcendent theology; the first Christians and Muslims, who were moving away from traditional paganism, were persecuted as “atheists” by their contemporaries. When we have eaten a strong-tasting dish in a restaurant, we are often offered a sorbet to cleanse our palate so that we can taste the next course properly. An intelligent atheistic critique could help us to rinse our minds of the more facile theology that is impeding our understanding of the divine. We may find that for a while we have to go into what mystics called the dark night of the soul or the cloud of unknowing. This will not be easy for people used to getting instant information at the click of a mouse. But the novelty and strangeness of this negative capability could surprise us into awareness that stringent ratiocination is not the only means of acquiring knowledge. It is not only a poet like Keats who must, while waiting for new inspiration, learn to be “capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”

  But is there no way of grounding commitment to the unknown and indefinable God? Are we doomed to the perpetual regression of postmodern thought? Perhaps the only viable “natural theology” lies in religious experience. By this, of course, I do not mean fervid emotional piety. We have seen that in the past scholars and spiritual directors had little time for this religious positivism. Instead of seeking out exotic raptures, Schleiermacher, Bultmann, Rahner, and Lonergan have all suggested that we should explore the normal workings of our minds and notice how frequently these propel us quite naturally into transcendence. Instead of looking for what we call God “outside ourselves” (foris) in the cosmos, we should, like Augustine, turn within and become aware of the way quite ordinary responses segue into “otherness.” We have seen how the inherent finitude of language was regularly exploited by teachers like Denys to make the faithful aware of the silence we encounter on the other side of speech. It has been well said that music, which, as we saw at the beginning of this book, is a “definitively” rational activity, is itself a “natural theology.”7 In music the mind experiences a pure, direct emotion that transcends ego and fuses subjectivity and objectivity.

  As Basil explained, we can never know the ineffable ousia of God but can glimpse only its traces or effects (energeiai) in our time-bound, sense-bound world. It is clear that the meditation, yoga, and rituals that work aesthetically on a congregation have, when practiced assiduously over a lifetime, a marked effect on the personality—an effect that is another form of natural theology. There is no dramatic “born-again” conversion but a slow, incremental, and imperceptible transformation. Above all, the habitual practice of compassion and the Golden Rule “all day and every day” demands perpetual kenosis. The constant “stepping outside” of our own preferences, convictions, and prejudices is an ekstasis that is not a glamorous rapture but, as Confucius’s pupil Yan Hui explained, is itself the transcendence we seek. The effect of these practices cannot give us concrete information about God; it is certainly not a scientific “proof.” But something indefinable happens to people who involve themselves in these disciplines with commitment and talent. This “something” remains opaque to those who do not undergo these disciplines, however, just as the Eleusinian “mystery” sounded trivial and absurd to somebody who remained obstinately outside the cult hall and refused to undergo the initiation.

  Like the ancient Sky Gods, the remote God of the philosophers tends to fade from people’s minds and hearts. The domineering God of modern “scientific religion” overexternalized the divine and pushed it away from humanity, confining it, like Blake’s Tyger, to “distant deeps and skies.” But premodern religion deliberately humanized the sacred. The Brahman was not a distant reality but was identical with the atman of every single creature. Confucius refused to define ren (later identified with “benevolence”) because it was incomprehensible to a person who had not yet achieved it. But the ordinary meaning of ren in Confucius’s time was “human being.” Ren is sometimes translated into English as “human-heartedness.” Holiness was not “supernatural,” therefore, but a carefully crafted attitude that, as a later Confucian explained, refined humanity and elevated it to a “godlike” (shen) plane.8 When Buddhists contemplated the tranquillity, poise, and selflessness of the Buddha, they saw him as the avatar of the otherwise incomprehensible Nirvana; this was what Nirvana looked like in human terms. They also knew that this state was natural to human beings and that if they put the Buddhist method into practice they too could achieve it. Christians had a similar experience when their imitation of Christ brought them intimations of theosis (“deification”).

  Certain individuals became icons of this enhanced, refined humanity. We think of Socrates approaching his execution without recrimination but with openhearted kindness, cheerfulness, and serenity. The gospels show Jesus undergoing an agonizing death and experiencing the extremity of despair while forgiving his executioners, making provision for his mother, and having a kindly word for one of his fellow victims. Instead of becoming stridently virtuous, aggressively orthodox, and contemptuous of the ungodly, these paradigmatic personalities became more humane. The rabbis were revered as avatars of the Torah, because their learning and practice enabled them to become living, breathing, and human embodiments of the divine imperative that sustained the world. Muslims venerate the Prophet Muhammad as the “Perfect Man,” whose life symbolizes the total receptivity to the divine that characterizes the archetypal, ideal human being. Just as the feats of a dancer or an athlete are impossible for an untrained body and seem superhuman to most of us, these people all developed a spiritual capacity that took them beyond the norm and revealed to their followers the untapped “divine” or “enlightened” potential that exists in any man or woman.

  From almost the very beginning, men and women have repeatedly engaged in strenuous and committed religious activity. They evolved mythologies, rituals, and ethical disciplines that brought them intimations of holiness that seemed in some indescribable way to enhance and fulfill their humanity. They were not religious simply because their myths and doctrines were scientifically or historically sound, because they sought information about the origins of the cosmos, or merely because they wanted a better life in the hereafter. They were not bludgeoned into faith by power-hungry priests or kings: indeed, religion often helped people to oppose tyranny and oppression of this kind. The point of religion was to live intensely and richly here and now. Truly religious people are ambitious. They want lives overflowing with significance. They have always desired to integrate with their daily lives the moments of rapture and insight that came to them in dreams, in their contemplation of nature, and in their intercourse with one another and with the animal world. Instead of being crushed and embittered by the sorrow of life, they sought to retain their peace and serenity in the midst of their pain. They yearned for the courage to overcome their terror of mortality; instead of being grasping and mean-spirited, they aspired to live generously, large-heartedl
y, and justly, and to inhabit every single part of their humanity. Instead of being a mere workaday cup, they wanted, as Confucius suggested, to transform themselves into a beautiful ritual vessel brimful of the sanctity that they were learning to see in life. They tried to honor the ineffable mystery they sensed in each human being and create societies that protected and welcomed the stranger, the alien, the poor, and the oppressed. Of course, they often failed, sometimes abysmally. But overall they found that the disciplines of religion helped them to do all this. Those who applied themselves most assiduously showed that it was possible for mortal men and women to live on a higher, divine, or godlike plane and thus wake up to their true selves.

  One day a Brahmin priest came across the Buddha sitting in contemplation under a tree and was astonished by his serenity, stillness, and self-discipline. The impression of immense strength channeled creatively into an extraordinary peace reminded him of a great tusker elephant. “Are you a god, sir?” the priest asked. “Are you an angel … or a spirit?” No, the Buddha replied. He explained that he had simply revealed a new potential in human nature. It was possible to live in this world of conflict and pain at peace and in harmony with one’s fellow creatures. There was no point in merely believing it; you would discover its truth only if you practiced his method, systematically cutting off egotism at the root. You would then live at the peak of your capacity, activate parts of the psyche that normally lie dormant, and become a fully enlightened human being. “Remember me,” the Buddha told the curious priest, “as one who is awake.”9