"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already, but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point -- and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologize in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in the terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.
-- G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
-- G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
posted by Kate Marie | 1:58 AM | Permalink
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18 comments
18 Comments:
The bible contains a number of statements which are difficult to reconcile with the divinity of jesus (for example: jesus's apparent lack of knowledge of the future when he prays on gethsemane, asking whether it is possible that his crucifixion is avoided). Reconciling these statement with the belief that jesus is god is difficult, to say the least. It produces a fairly incoherent theology.
Here chesterton takes an aspect of this same incoherence - that God as jesus doubts his own decisions - and revels in it. Incoherent statements of this sort are in fact present throughout the bible - for example, god repents of having created mankind in genesis 6 - and they seem quite incompatible with a view of god as omniscient and omnipotent. Modern christianity is certainly unique in having to reconcile this set of incoherent beliefs. I'm not so sure, though, that this uniqueness is a good thing. The kid who gets the lowest grade in the class is also unique, but he should hardly be commended for it.
Alternatively, these beliefs are not incoherent at all if you think the biblical god as subject to emotional fits. Why else would he create the world, despite knowing in advance that he will regret it; why else would he change his mind at the intercession of mortals, as he did many times with moses? Moreover, its now easy to see why God doubted himself: he was just having an emotional fit. Maybe it also explains why he is feeling a lot less inclined to create miracles these days (where is the joshua who will freeze the sun in the sky or the elijah who will call forth fire from the heavens? modern miracle makers seem to be much more humble in their miracles, avoiding the cosmic scale). He's just in a bad mood.
Alex,
You're slightly misstating the Christian belief about Jesus. Catholics/most Christians do believe in Jesus's divinity, but they don't simply believe it's God in a "Jesus suit." They believe Jesus is fully human and fully divine. The "incoherence" you seem to despise arises from that paradoxical belief (see Cheterton's chapter on "The Paradoxes of Christianity" in Orthodoxy). Indeed, I'm not sure I'd call Jesus's doubt and suffering in Gethsemane or on the cross inconsistent either with God's omniscience or His omnipotence. Paradox and incoherence/inconsistency are not exactly synonymous.
I would hardly equate the history of Christian theology and apologetics with the kid who gets the lowest grade in the class. I wouldn't make that claim about any of the world's great religions, and I'm likewise not bothered by any serious "spokesman" for one of the world's great religions who makes claims for the uniqueness of their theology.
The Biblical God that you describe as having "emotional fits" is not the same person as the Jesus on the cross, according to Catholic teaching. I don't think of Jesus's cry from the Cross as an "emotional fit" or a "bad mood," but as a profoundly human expression of suffering. Jesus was not *only* human, certainly, but He was fully human, and to my mind, the idea that He experienced His death, at certain moments, in the same way that any of us might, seems consistent with Catholic belief about Jesus's nature.
As I've pointed out above, the belief in Jesus's full divinity and full humanity is indeed paradoxical. If you want to criticize those beliefs, you're welcome to do so, but I don't really see the point. I believe. You (as far as I know) don't.
In the end, when I'm coming at it from a less "religious" perspective, I think it's human to believe. It's also human to doubt. Chesterton would point out that Christianity fits those two opposed aspects of human nature.
Chesterton also says, in Orthodoxy, that it's often said that an insane person is one who has lost his reason, but that, on the contrary, an insane person is someone who has lost everything *but* his reason. It's sort of like Whittaker Chambers's idea that "man without mysticism is a monster" or that without God "man is only the most intelligent of the beasts." I agree with those ideas. I'm far from dismissing the importance of reason, but I believe that reason must be subordinate to, or in the service of, something higher than itself.
Are some of my beliefs paradoxical? Of course. But I can live with it -- that's generally what human beings do.
Kate Marie,
1. It sounds to me that what I wrote is actually an OK summary of what you wrote correcting me. But let's forget about it - it is in the nature of believers to quibble over what they see as misrepresentations, and it is in the nature of nonbelievers to be flippant about what they see as irrelevant details (i.e. my referring to both jesus and the biblical god as "god" without bothering to make distinctions).
2. My point was, though, that jesus' doubt follows a long line of incidents in the bible where god sees fit to change his mind, or to regret his previous decision. Yes, yes, different part of the trinity, but what difference does that make? For this reason, attributing jesus' doubt to his paradoxical divine and human nature does not have much explanatory value. Sure, it gives you an explanation for this incident, but it gives you no explanations for all the other similar incidents (see my previous comment for examples).
Dear Alex,
I'm not an Old Testament scholar - or a New Testament scholar, for that matter -- but I don't take the other examples you cited as literally as I take the Gospel stories. And as far as I understand Catholic teaching, I'm not required to.
Fair enough, Kate Marie.
Thanks, Alex, and for what it's worth, I certainly understand your objections and challenges to some of the "inconsistencies" of religious belief.
I will never be able to "reason" you into belief. In lieu of that, I offer you Alyosha's response to Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov -- a silent (cyber) embrace.
Alex missed Chesterton's point. Chesterton admits that what he is writing about is so incoherent that it is "unthinkable" and "too difficult for human speech." Chesterton is making no attempt to "reconcile [statements] with the belief that Jesus is divine," quite the opposite. The deeper import of Chesterton's words precludes such a "reconciliation."
Chesterton is asserting that Christianity anticipated existentialism by almost 2000 years. If Jesus' experience embodies God's knowledge of the human condition, it demonstrates that God knows firsthand that to be human is to experienc an anguished sense of alienation from God. Though this is not logically "coherent" it is nonetheless very profound.
Very well said, Madman (I was going to say that your comment left me with thoughts at once bleakly despairing and sanguinely violent, but then I decided you were being serious here).
It is fair to say, I think, that that's the import of Chesterton's passage here, though -- from what little I know of Chesterton thus far -- he would never have considered himself a religious existentialist, since he takes an extra step and says the way to live with the paradox/absurdity (in the Kierkegaardian sense) is to embrace a liberating orthodoxy.
I also think that, as between the religious existentialists and the atheist existentialists, the religious existentialists had the better of the argument. I may regret even hinting at opening that can of worms, though.
Dear Kate Marie,
I'll leave the field to the religious existentialists. Sadeeq should have some small consolation after "Chaconnegate" (as its being called in the classical music media). Of course, tragically for Sadeeq, the Vegans were always the "picked on baby siblings" of the religious existentialist set.
Alex missed Chesterton's point.
Not missed it but ignored it. Chesterton reads a great deal into a "paradoxical" set of beliefs, and the import of my comment is that part of those beliefs were created by people who thought jesus was human, and part by those who thought jesus was divine. Such a viewpoint, accepted by most historians, entirely removes the paradox and all meaning that Chesterton derives from it.
Sigh.
Dear Alex,
I hestitate to wade into this again, since I was feeling all warm and cuddly -- not to mention grandiose and self-important --thinking of you as Ivan Karamazov and me as Alyosha, and I'd like to leave things with the embrace of human fellowship, etc.
But . . .
Maybe I'm just being dense, but I'm not understanding this statement:
"Chesterton reads a great deal into a 'paradoxical' set of beliefs, and the import of my comment is that part of those beliefs were created by people who thought jesus was human, and part by those who thought jesus was divine."
First of all, it seems to me that Chesterton really isn't "reading" all that much into Christian belief. He's riffing -- quite beautifully, in my opinion -- on a particular, and a particularly mysterious, part of the Passion story.
Second, I'm just not sure what you mean when you say that part of Christian belief was created by those who thought Jesus was human and part was created by those who thought He was divine. If you're referring to early church debates about the nature of Jesus, perhaps you're right (I don't know enough about the controversies of the early church to say). But it seems to me that the belief in Jesus as both fully human/fully divine had been established doctrine for at least fifteen hundred years by the time Chesterton got around to writing about it.
I guess I'm confused about why the way that particular belief coalesced as it did should have any bearing on Chesterton's experience of it in 1908.
But maybe you could clarify your comment.
Dear Alex,
Kate Marie started this fight, so I should probably just let the two of you slug it out, but I won't. You are right that historians generally agree that there was a historical process by which the Catholic Church came to the doctrinal position that Jesus was both wholly human and wholly divine. Dan Brown would be out a lot of money if this were not so. However,
1)Kate Marie is right (and this is why you should continue to critique her) that whatever process the Church came to its position through, it is ungenerous of you to hold Chesterton responsible for it. I don't see anything in this Chesterton passage to suggest that he is trying to patch up a leaky doctrinal seam left exposed by an old dispute between Gnostic and Orthodox Church founders. He is interpreting the content of his tradition of faith as it comes to him.
2)The historical analysis to which you refer as much an "advocacy position" as the doctrine of the Church itself. There is as much evidence in the historical record to "prove" that the Church came to its doctrinal position not because of an institutional struggle between Gnostics and non-Gnostics, but because Jesus was both wholly human and wholly divine. Historians don't draw that conclusion from the evidence because they are committed to certain epistemological and materialist principles that preclude such a reading of the evidence.
3)Even if one cleaves to the historical explanation of why Church doctrine evolved the way it did,this does not undermine the profundity of Chesterton's interpretation. The easy path in the kinds of institutional struggles historians describe in early Christianity would have been to jettison one part of the docrtinal paradox. The Church chose (felt compelled) to live with the paradox because its leaders and lay people found both halves of the paradox compelling. Chesterton's exegesis helps explain the profound appeal of this article of faith, however paradoxical it may be.
Perhaps my comment was indeed unclear, since both of you seem to have misread it in exactly the same way, suggesting that the fault is mine. In particular, both of you interpret my comments as a critique of chesterton. But they are not. chesterton starts out with a certain set of assumptions - a set of christian beliefs which have been around long before him. I start out with entirely different assumptions, having been convinced by a large amount of literture dedicated to an analysis of the texts based on linguistics and history. My point is that under my assumptions, the biblical passages which chesterton reflects on here are actually easily and very naturally explainable.
This does not fault chesterton for anything at all - he had his beliefs and he proceeded from them. In fact, it says essentially nothing about chesterton, and only addresses the subject matter he is discussing. Nor does it suggest that his meditation on the bible is without value. Nor does it suggest that my assumptions can be in any sense "proved."
Dear Alex,
I don't know...as I read over your comments it looks like you were critiquing Chesterton to me, dude. I don't think either Kate Marie or I got that wrong. You basically said that Chesterton's exegesis of this passage doesn't reveal anything moving or profound in the Christian tradition because there is a cynical explanation for why the passage exists at all. Kate Marie and I are basically saying that that is only persuasive if you totally ignore the greater import of Chesterton's words, which I guess you've admitted to doing.
Madman,
Everything you say is correct; I've certainly admitted to ignoring the greater import of chesterton's words. I guess we are quibbling over what can be called a critique. If you want, say that I'm critiquing chesterton, with the caveat that I'm not doing so on his own terms, but rather on my own terms which I saw fit to introduce.
I suppose what interests me is that chesterton's meditation does not quite work either if you adopt a linguistic/historic approach to the bible, OR if you adopt a literal approach typical of modern day evangelicals (as then you have an omniscient god going through a variety of human actions, like repentance, anger, regret throughout the old testament, so that the humanity of jesus cannot be the fundamental reason why god has human experiences ). One has to adopt a very particular attitude, taking one set of passages in the bible seriously and finding metaphorical interpretation of others, to agree with chesterton. I wrote my original comment because I did not know that this is the perspective taken by Kate Marie.
Yes, I'm ignoring the greater import of his words again.
Dear Alex,
All right, I guess which reached that point of amicable discord where we agree to disagree. My only regret is that you let Kate Marie off too easy.
Alex,
Just a couple of quick points:
1.As I understand it, not all modern-day evangelicals take the Bible literally. In any event, I'm Catholic, not evangelical (but I presume you already knew that).
2. "One has to adopt a very particular attitude, taking one set of passages in the bible seriously and finding metaphorical interpretation of others, to agree with chesterton."
-- The way you set up this sentence, it appears you are suggesting that failing to take the Old Testament literally is also a failure to take it *seriously.* I don't know whether that was your intention, but anyway, it doesn't necessarily follow.
3. Certainly you can see why it the "particular attitude" you describe would make sense for Christians.
Madman,
Get thee to a traffic island.
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