by Kolbitar » January 3rd, 2007, 3:20 am
Hi again Rose.
::Yes and no. I tend to regard myth as much more important and much more real than mere facts. By using the term 'mythos,' I'm not trying to be insulting. After all, I think God is the source of these myths! I think these are stories He tells us about how things are, about how we relate to Him. These stories aren't facts in the way that the Battle of Trenton is a fact--they're infinitely more important.
I want to understand you, please bear with me. You say you tend to regard myths as more real than mere facts. But how does this apply to God himself? Is he not the primordial Fact? The ultimate Fact? Now, I see that you write, “I think God is the source of these myths,” so by implication I understand that you do not think He is a myth himself. If you don’t think He’s a myth then you must think that fact is first and foremost primary, at least in so far as it regards God and not “how we relate to him” -- how we relate to him is where you say myth is applicable. There’s a couple implicit points I’d like to explore here.
First, you say myths are more important than facts like the Battle of Trenton, but this is due to the idea that you believe they are referents to Fact -- God. So you cannot be saying that myth in and of itself is more real and important than facts, but it’s more real and important in so far as the Fact of God is infinitely more real and important than such facts. I think I’m with you here.
You continue:
::So, to sum up, when I talk about a mythos or a religious story, I'm talking about something infinitely more important than the fact that Washington led his army across the Delaware in the bitter cold and attacked the Hessians. I don't see it as 'reducing what you believe to be fact to mere myth.' I think the myth matters far more.
Alright, that works for certain historical battles, and only because myths as you understand them come from God. Now, here’s my second point: what if you said the existence of my daughter was a myth? That would certainly be a reduction, as reducing the Fact of God to a myth would be a reduction. Likewise, what I believe to be historical fact: Jesus Christ was God Incarnate in a way that no other person can be, and I have a relationship not with a myth, but with a real person who lived two thousand years ago; reducing that to a myth would be just as heart wrenching to me as reducing my daughter to a myth. I don’t mind saying that Jesus Christ (as I understand and relate to Him) and my daughter *also* work as myths, because I think they do communicate certain qualities of God-the-Fact to me. But it certainly would be a reduction, to me, to say that their existence and all I believe about them is not fact, to say that it’s all mental phenomena in my head which communicates things about God.
My third point concerns God. What do we mean by the term? How do we come to that meaning? Do our ideas and the means by which we come to them share any common ground upon which we can have a meaningful conversation?
You write:
::Who says that God doesn't suffer? He had the misfortune to fall in love with the people Israel, and we've been driving him crazy for millenia! Just read Hosea and Jeremiah, as starting points. …The God of the Torah and the Writings and the Prophets isn't a remote deity who sits around impressed with His own perferction--He's intimately involved with all of us, Jew and gentile alike. He was unimaginablely intimate with Abraham, who even had the audacity to argue with him! And I don't know if I'd say that God 'submitted' to Abraham, but Abraham more-or-less won the argument …This isn't to say that we don't feel the power of God's majesty--He's both our Father and our King, after all (Avinu Malkenu). But I've never viewed Him as somehow removed from suffering.
You seem to be speaking here as if God’s suffering is literal fact and not mythos. Here’s where the question of the term God is absolutely relevant. There’s four concepts I’d like to keep before our minds as I go on. First, there’s the term fact, of which we’ll consider God to be; the second is myth; the third, reason; the fourth, revelation. You understand God to be a God capable of suffering, a suffering God; from all that I understand of your position you believe this to be a fact which you derive from mythos. In a similar vein I believe Genesis is largely a mythos which communicates facts as well, facts like God’s creation out of nothing, and the fall of man through ancient parents. However, natural reason cannot determine any of these things; it can show contradiction, but it cannot positively affirm them as deductions from the physical world given to our senses (except, perhaps, original sin). We therefore give them, by default, the status of revelation. We are essentially saying that there’s a realm our human minds cannot penetrate, which God’s “mind” can, and thus he communicates, in various ways, their truths to us which otherwise we could not know.
Now, the essential question is this: is God’s existence and any of the other attributes we believe he has knowable by reason? Or are they entirely matters of revelation? You see, the trustworthiness of revealed propositions like God suffers, God created the world out of nothing, and the fall of our first parents effected all of creation are based in our trust in God’s existence. But what if God’s existence is a matter of revelation? What then do we base this trust upon? It cannot be God, for that’s the matter under consideration! What then? Our only hope is natural reason (examining creation, or nature, via our intellects), otherwise our concept of God is not determined by anything common to us all and is a completely arbitrary, groundless idea. Finding God through natural reason means God is at least as real as the world of our senses and the self-evident principle of contradiction (which is the very form of logic).
From here I’m simply going to say that the concept God, as derived from natural reason, includes the idea that God is completely self-sufficient (incidentally, a consequence of denying this produces a type of dualism which gives equal status and eternality to evil). This means that, as it stands, Lewis is correct: “Nothing in God's nature corresponds to th[e] process [we need]. God, in His own nature, never… surrender[s]… suffer[s]… submit[s]… [or] die[s]. Christians believe, as a proposition of revelations (not reason) that God is Trinitarian in nature, thus He creates out of a self-sufficient, overflowing, agape love. The logic of the Trinity allows us to say God suffers, but he does so through Christ. Without this understanding a contradiction arises between our concept of God derived through reason, and a suffering God claiming derivation via revelation.
::Here's a fact: Judah Maccabee led his army to a number of victories against the forces of Antiochus IV. There was a bitter war--that lasted 25 years, all told--for religious freedom.
But the facts are only one part of the story. To understand the significance of those facts, we enter the realm of myth (or mythos). To understand why Jews were willing to fight such a desperate battle in order to keep observing Shabbat, to keep kosher and to keep circumcising their sons, we have to look far beyond mere facts. We have to look at the whole religious story of Judaism.
You’re absolutely right, and this is a relevant observation to all religious endeavors, good and bad alike: there’s a subjective side that is too often neglected and from which we can learn a great deal.
::And that's how we come to realize the value of being a separate and distinct people. Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England, wrote a book called "The Dignity of Difference." As an Orthodox rabbi, I don't think he'd use the term 'myth' as I do, but the book is all about the necessity of differences between peoples, religions and cultures.
I would say there’s a “necessity of difference” to a degree, but there are certainly areas where pluralism is not and should not be personally desirable (this you admit by your belief that ethics are universal). The fact of racial diversity is a beautiful fact, but the beauty of diversity stems from the primary fact of our equality, which must not be overlooked.
Now, the differences between cultural cuisines are tastily wonderful. Differences in music -- I appreciate them. These are all matters of taste, of personal preference. When it comes to truth, however, we should be seeking unity, not diversity. Universal ethics is a truth to which all persons should seek to conform their intellects and desires. On the other hand, politics is a largely ambiguous realm, and, though we should tolerate plurality within this realm, it is again a limited plurality which must stem from and keep in tact a basic unity (such as the Bill of Rights).
Regarding religion, plurality should only be desired if one has resolved the question of whether or not the given religions among the choices of respectable world religions which claim to be factually true to the exclusion of all the others on a particular point is determined not to be factually true on that point (or points). Only when one determines that all religions are not factually true as regards their supernatural claims, but only poetically true, can one then consistently hold that plurality in religion is desirable. This has consequences, however. This means that if you have someone who believes His religion is factually revealed, and someone who believes it only has poetic truth, then the person who thinks it only has poetic truth thinks the other person is factually wrong. This means that you, Rose, and Rabbi Sacks believe that I am factually wrong. I am not offended, please don’t get me wrong, I just prefer that it be called like it is: religious plurality entails “saying that Christianity is wrong” where Christians believe it’s right.
::Here's another fact: Jesus of Nazereth was crucifed under Pontius Pilate. But to understand the significance of that fact--to understand why Paul would say, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me"--you have to enter into the Christian story, the Christian mythos. Again, this is much more important than mere fact.
But I, personally, don’t take that as a mythos, I believe it to be literally true and open for everyone to experience. If Jesus Christ was the Son of God who died so that we may have his life in us; if that is a fact, then to me it is wrong to say the mythos is much more important than the fact.
::There is only one place that I think Christianity is fundamentally wrong: the belief that Christianity is intended for everyone.
But, you see, that’s the central point of Christianity: Christ lived, suffered, and died for all of us: God became man so that man could become gods. We believe this is an actual, historical fact—not merely a myth. This is why I cannot accept the logic of this statement, “I'm not saying that Christainity is wrong--only that it's wrong for me.”
::And to be honest, when the Church emphasizes her inclusivist theology, I can tolerate the initial belief that Christ is meant for everyone.
I believe, on the one hand, that every Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish person, atheist, agnostic, etc., who enters heaven will enter it through the life of Christ in them, they will enter as implicit Christians. On the other hand I believe Christ is the way, the truth and the life, and that since he is the truth it is therefore desirable for all to seek unity with him. As a Christian I believe this balance should be kept in Christian theology (I’m just being open with you, I’m not trying to cause frustration. I know you disagree but at least you know where I stand :-).
Sincerely,
Jesse
The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. --Chesterton
Sober Inebriation:
http://soberinebriationblog.blogspot.com/
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