Dialogue 3

Te’a: Oh, hey, Mick. How’ve you been?

Mick: I’m alright. I finally gave up my job at the restaurant. They kept wanting me to put in more hours and it was becoming too much. So, money’s tight, but at least I’m done with that.

Mick: So how is being a TA working out?

Te’a: It’s really good! I feel like I am learning more doing that than as a student.

Mick: Oh, interesting. I suppose it is a totally different experience to have to be prepared to explain and answer questions than it is to go into a class prepared to ask questions.

Te’a: Yeah, exactly.

Mick: I’m going to need to get my poop in a group before next semester. I haven’t been doing a great job staying on top of my readings.

Te’a: Oh, that reminds me that I’ve been meaning to ask if you still have that book you borrowed last term?

Mick: Oh, dang. Yeah, I do. I saw it on my shelf the other week and thought of you.

She shifts her own backpack to her other shoulder.

Te’a: I better catch the bus. Are you heading in to study?

Mick: Eh, well, actually no. It’s kind of funny, but yesterday I met these two older guys who hang out in the basement and were talking about religion. I invited myself to join them again today.

Te’a: Haha. Why do they meet in the basement? Is it some sort of secret club?

Mick: Nah. The one guy is an archivist. It’s his office. Oh! He’s the dude at the Lamplighter that is always sitting at the bar reading.

Te’a: Oh, yeah? I assumed he was a professor or something.

Mick: I told them I would bring a bottle of whiskey, but I realized I didn’t have enough cash. I hope they are satisfied with brownies.

She lifts the canvass bag, indicating that it contains the baked goods.

Te’a: You said you were talking about religion? In what way?

Mick: Hmm. It was sort of all over the place, which was what was interesting. The other guy is a priest, but he talking about different ways of thinking about gods.

Te’a: Huh. Sounds fun. I’ll be seeing you. Could you drop off the book tomorrow at some point?

Mick: Yup, will do. Have a good night.

Te’a: Enjoy your company!

They part and Mick heads into the library, making her way to the far stairwell. She descends and knocks gently on Doc’s door.

Doc: Come on in.

She pushes open the cracked door and finds Doc leaning back in his chair, feet propped up on his desk. His glasses are perched on the his nose, and he peers over the frame to greet Mick.

Doc: Howdy, Mick. Glad you came back. How are you?

Mick: I’m good, but I have some bad news: I didn’t have enough cash to get a bottle of whiskey. But I made brownies instead.

She sets the canvass bag on his desk.

Doc: How thoughtful. We have a bit of rye left and, truth be told, there is never a shortage of things to drink in my office. Also, it’s not like we collect taxes or require offerings.

Mick: What are you reading?

Doc: Jack gave me this copy of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure yesterday. It’s been decades since I read it, so I’m reacquainting myself.

Mick: I haven’t read it.

Doc: It’s good. Tragic, but good.

Mick: Hardy was a Victorian, right?

Doc: Yes, though a better way of putting it was that he found himself trapped in the Victorian period.

Mick: Didn’t they all?

Doc: Haha, indeed. (He closes the book and places it on the shelf behind him.) I had forgotten how much I identified with Jude when I was younger.

Mick: Oh, yeah?

Doc: I mean, I had nothing superficially in common with him at the time. But his ambition and desire to study, his sense of failure, feeling trapped and out of place—that all resonated with me.

They hear the door at the top of the stairwell open and close. Jack descends, and takes off his coat as he enters.

Jack: Good evening, comrades! I’d apologize for being late, but I don’t believe we settled on a time, which, in retrospect, was a stupid oversight.

Mick: If I’m being honest, I was tempted to camp out by the stairwell much earlier and see when you’d arrive. I was worried you would start without me!

Doc: Well, isn’t that flattering? I don’t believe either Jack or I have ever been the object of such enthusiasm.

Jack: Speak for yourself, old man.

Doc: You don’t get to count people fulfilling their religious obligation as evidence of any great desire on their part to listen to your homilies.

Jack: Haha. Harsh but true.

He drapes his coat over one of the chairs and plops down.

Jack: How was your day, Mick?

Mick: It’s been fine. Well, a bit weird, I guess. I got thoroughly confused in class and quit my job, so kind of a strange day.

Doc: What class?

Mick: It’s called Epistemologies and Ontologies of Gender.

Doc: Oh, damn! That sounds fascinating.

Mick: It is, but it is also leaving me feeling completely stupid. I am constantly behind and trying to figure out the context for theories that are being criticized. And I don’t think of questions to ask until well after we’ve moved on, so I just sit there and struggle to understand what’s going on.

Jack: I know it is of little consolation, but that is probably how most students in most programs feel. It was certainly how I felt.

Doc: Yes, me too.

Mick: I assume you studied theology, Jack?

Jack: Yes, but first philosophy. I got an MA in philosophy and then what is called an MDiv.

Mick: How about you, Doc?

Doc: Semiotics and then library science.

Mick: That’s the theory of meaning?

Doc: Sort of. It’s the study of signs and symbols.

Mick: I feel like it was a mistake for me to choose a “studies” discipline; it seems to require being an expert in multiple different disciplines.

Doc: Yes, gender studies is certainly interdisciplinary. You will probably need to identify a primary disciplinary orientation. The very concept of interdisciplinarity implies that one has a discipline and then goes out and works with others in different disciplines to learn and synthesize together.

Mick: Damn, Doc. No one has ever put it to me that way. (Pauses.) Now I need to think about that!

Jack: I know we only have one evening under our belts at this point, but that seems to be what we are good at: giving each other difficult things to think about.

Doc: Speaking of which: you have some explaining to do.

Jack: Indeed.

Mick: I believe you said you would return to the issue of what it means to pray to love.

Jack: Yes, but you will need to bear with me, because my thoughts aren’t terribly clear. I can’t seem to separate a number of intertwined concerns. Part of what I want to say is that prayer has less baggage than is typically assumed. But that leads me to a critical perspective on how prayer and the liturgy are often understood—or, rather, misunderstood.

Mick: What do you mean by “baggage”? Oh! The brownies!

She takes a container from the canvass bag and pops the lid. Doc and Jack both take one.

Jack: Why, thank you!

He eats his in three bites and brushes the crumbs from his lap, earning a friendly scowl from Doc.

Jack: Delicious! So, by “baggage,” I specifically mean complicated metaphysical beliefs. We like to think that religious practices are informed by such beliefs. We like to think that wedding ceremonies, making the sign of the cross, baptismal ceremonies, kneeling down in prayer, the Eucharist, praying the rosary, laying on of hands—that they are all belief-driven activities and that they are justified by a complex supernatural metaphysics.

Doc: Of course. The church often offers explanations for religious practices or provides an account of what effects will follow from such activities. Are you saying this is erroneous?

Jack: I suppose. (Pauses.) Let me approach it with a different example that it is a bit more removed. Think of so-called “primitive” magical practices — rain dances, for example. Somewhere, as I recall, Wittgenstein criticized those who said that “primitive” people engaged in rain dances in order to cause it rain. Do you know what I’m referring to?

Doc: I think so. Is that in Philosophical Occasions?

Jack: Yes, that’s it! I think it is titled, “Remarks on Frazer.”

Doc: Right. I think I have that somewhere.

He gets up and disappears between the rows of bookshelves behind him. After a moment—

Doc: Here we go!

He returns and hands the book to Jack who flips through it.

Jack: Okay, so Wittgenstein is commenting on Frazer’s book The Golden Bough.

He pauses flipping the pages and turns to Mick.

Jack: Are you familiar with Ludwig Wittgenstein, Mick?

Mick: No, but I read some excerpts from Frazer’s book in my first-year seminar. It is about magical practices, right?

Jack: Yes, exactly so. Wittgenstein was a philosopher of language and —

Doc: I think he would’ve objected to being called a philosopher.

Jack: Hah! Yes, that might very well be true. He thought most philosophical problems weren’t really problems at all. He said they arise when we get ourselves confused by language.

Mick: So, in other words, my sneaking suspicion that philosophy is all just semantics is spot-on?

Doc: Hey! Why the “just”? Semantics refers to meaning and meaning the correct thing is important. Confucius once said if he were a ruler he would “rectify” words so that they corresponded to reality.

Mick smiles.

Mick: So, what I hear you saying is that I’m right.

Jack: Well, you’re not wrong in recognizing that Wittgenstein shares your suspicious, at least in some sense. He was the odd kind of philosopher who was effectively an anti-philosopher. But whether he — and you — are correct is another matter! Anyways, I want to read this passage.

He taps the page he found.

Jack: He wrote, “the primitive man did not think that his dancing made it rain. That would be a kind of science, cause and effect. Actually the primitive man was not as stupid as Frazer. He understood perfectly well that it rained eventually whether he did the rain dance or not.”

Mick: That’s funny! I like him already.

Jack: It gets better! He remarked that if Frazer were right in thinking of magic as a quasi-scientific practice, we might as well expect primitive people to dance in the hope that their seeds will be planted.

Doc laughs and slaps his leg.

Jack: But of course they didn’t, because they weren’t stupid. They understood that they had to plant the seeds if they had any hope of yielding a crop.

Mick: Still, shouldn’t we say that people who engaged in rain dances believed in some sense that their practices would change things?

Doc: That seems right. And to return to your initial topic, Jack, people who pray have some belief that their prayers make a difference via some complicated process involving the saints and the petitioning of God.

Jack: I know that is how we talk. But it seems to me that faithful prayer and other religious practices ought to be undertaken out of need, not expectation. There is a sense in which the act of praying is not justified; it is not justified by moral reasons or by rational reasons or by pragmatic reasons.

Mick: Don’t people say that such things are justified by faith?

Jack: Yes, but I want to argue that to say that religious acts are “justified by faith” is merely to say that they are not justified in any recognizable sense. It means they are motivated by trust and hope.

Doc: But isn’t that a kind of justification?

Jack: It is a motivation for sure, but it isn’t a justification.

Doc: I am tempted to trot out my increasingly standard accusation that you are drawing a distinction without a difference, but in this case I would accept that there is a difference between being motivated to do something and being justified in doing it. So, consider me tentatively on board.

Jack: Think of some analogous practices, like tenderly touching the photo of a dying relative or scattering her ashes after her death. To put the matter rather baldly, these sorts of actions are not justified by any reasons whatsoever. We might say they are caused by a need, but any further attempt to classify and dissect the practices would rob them of their color and power.

Mick: Okay, that is really interesting. I, too, am tentatively on board. Maybe we could add that those actions are expressive in some way?

Jack: Yes, that’s what I have in mind. I want to say that prayer shouldn’t be thought of as being “justified” by appeal to some mysterious causal process. That seems more honest. It also seems more religious or spirit-full.

Mick: Hmm. You’ve lost me there. Wouldn’t the more spiritual — or what did you say? “Spirit-full”? — thing be to believe that God listens and intervenes?

Jack: I understand the temptation to think that way. Maybe I’m making an overly subtle distinction, but it seems to me that we pray because we cannot resist, cannot help but trust and hope that it will reorient us.

Doc: Ok, Father, but —

Jack: I swear, Doc —

Doc: Yeah, whatever. Anyways, Father, it seems to me you’re just providing a reductive psychological account of prayer. You want to rob folks of their superstitious tendencies.

Jack: What is wrong with that? I don’t think faith is superstitious! Or at least it shouldn’t be.

Doc: You are much more confident than I am that anything would be left after the theft.

Mick shifts and taps the top of Doc’s desk.

Mick: I was thinking today about our conversation last night. My concern is that religious belief is a sham. It distracts us from thinking about the really difficult things — climate change, racial justice, economic inequality — and it does so by leading people to believe that by engaging in rituals and accepting myths as the truth, they will escape this world and all of its problems.

Jack: Yes, I understand. To be fair, the better of them talk about the world being “glorified” and made whole.

Doc: By what means?

Jack: What do you mean, “by what means”?

Doc: I mean, how is the world going to become glorified and made whole? Don’t they think it is only through divine intervention?

Jack: Ah, right.

He reaches for a drink and realizes that the glasses are still empty.

Jack: We’ve gone too long without a drink!

Doc: On that you are correct. But go on, answer the question.

Doc uncorks the whiskey and pours a shot into each glass. He raises his in a silent toast and the others do so in kind. Jack takes a sip and continues.

Jack: I know that people talk as if God is going to come down out of heaven and set things right eventually. I confess, I don’t think of it that way. God was already incarnated — already fully entered reality — and we killed him. God has left us, but not alone. We are left to dwell in love, to let love dwell in us, and to love others. In that sense, God is fully present. If the world is to be set right, it will be through God — through love — but that is just to say it will be through us. We are the hands and feet of God in the world.

Mick shifts and tilts her head thoughtfully.

Mick: That is very beautiful and not at all what I associate with Christianity. (After a pause.) I’m thinking about something you said yesterday. You said that rituals and prayers are a way of orienting people to love and to renew their commitment to love others.

Jack: Right.

Mick: And Doc asked, “Why all the bells and whistles?” That’s what I am now wondering, and I think what you said a moment ago puts a finer point on it. As I understood it, you were saying that much prayer and ritual is superstitious and it’s inappropriate to think of it as being driven by belief. I think you’re suggesting that this quality leads people away from what you take to be the core of religious faith, which is being committed to love.

Jack: Yes, that was what I was driving at.

Mick: Doesn’t that imply that the “bells and whistles” are superfluous and, by your own admission, a distraction?

Doc: Not to pile on, but aren’t you also implying that there is a fundamental belief at the root of it all? Or that at least there should be? Namely, what you just so passionately stated?

Jack: Oh my. You two really give me a run for my money.

He takes another sip.

Jack: So, to answer Doc’s question first, yes, I do think that there is a belief at the root of Christian religious practice. It is the belief that Christ died, was resurrected, and that we participate in both the death and resurrection through baptism. You are right to remind me that these are fundamental beliefs and commitments. However, I don’t think these beliefs are justified. They are held in faith, by which I mean that we trust and hope in them. Now, to Mick’s question. I have to admit, you have probably got me, at least in some sense. Maybe the liturgy and rituals are not efficacious at orienting people to that fundamental truth.

Mick: So why maintain them? Why participate?

Jack: The rituals and liturgy are not chiefly a means by which to get people to understand something. They are a form of thanksgiving. That is what “eucharist” means.

Mick: I didn’t know that. Do you think people who participate in them feel as if that is what they are doing?

Jack: You know, I’m not sure. That’s what I have in mind when I worship — I mean, that is the intention I have. I hope it is the intention others have.

They sit in contemplative silence for a minute. Jack eventually lifts his glass but then pauses—

Jack: Here’s a line from seminary. At the most fundamental level, the liturgy is the sacramental recapitulation and memorial of the most concentrated agapeic action imaginable: incarnate love giving itself over to death for the sake of the beloved. And it is an act of thanksgiving for what we trust: that in giving itself over in this way, the love was not lost, but regained. In that sense, it is the means by which we continually regain that love and let it dwell within us and among us.

They resume their silent reflections.

Doc: (Softly) I was never really loved by the people of the church. They said they loved me and, for that reason, they said they couldn’t let me stay. They turned me out.

Jack: I know, Doc.

As she watches her companions commiserate, Mick finds herself reminded of the lyrics from a Paul Simon tune:

Old friends, memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears.

She repeats the lines to herself. Doc then returns the three of them to the conversation.

Doc: You know, despite all the crap that religious people have thrown my way over the years and despite leaving the church, I can’t quite shake belief in God. And if I’m being honest, when it creeps up on me it isn’t God as Love, as you would have it, Jack. Maybe it’s just a holdover from my childhood, but I sometimes find myself praying — petitioning, as you clarified — and, when I do, it is to a being, a being that might love and care about me and others.

Mick: My grandma used to quote, or probably paraphrase, a line from C.S. Lewis that was something about us having a god-sized whole in our hearts.

Jack: Hmm, I don’t know what specific quotation she had in mind, but Lewis did argue that we have a natural desire to become one with God. He thought that it was reasonable to suppose that there was a way to satisfy that desire, since all natural desires can be satisfied.

Mick: Yes, that’s what she was expressing. (Pauses.) But that’s a terrible argument, right?

Jack: In what way?

Mick: A few! First, we can’t assume that every natural desire has a means of satisfaction. That is precisely what is in question since he is assuming that the desire for God is a natural desire. He is just building his conclusion into his reasons in defense of the conclusion.

Doc: Good point. That’s what we call “begging the question.”

Jack True. I suppose he might have meant that since all other natural desires have a means of being satisfied, it is reasonable to suppose that the desire for God can be as well.

Doc: But there is a difference between a desire being in-principle capable of being satisfied and reality being able to provide that satisfaction. For example, I can desire to live on the moon and that is, in principle, possible. It is conceivable that we could establish a moon base. But my having that satisfiable desire doesn’t imply anything about the world being accommodating.

Jack: That’s true. That is why it is important for Lewis that the desire for God is a natural desire. He assumes that natural desires are attuned to the world in such a way that they can be accommodated. But Mick’s point stands: he can’t hold that all natural desires are so attuned if precisely the question is whether the natural desire for God lends itself to being satisfied.

Mick: That gets me to my second objection. It seems totally off-base to say that humans naturally desire union with God. That sort of desire is so obviously the result of how we are raised. People who are raised theists or are surrounded by theists usually do desire union with God, but not all people are raised in such conditions.

Jack: We should be careful about relying on what seems obvious, especially since I think that is what you are objecting to in Lewis’s argument. He presumably thought it was obvious that desiring union with God is natural whereas you think it is obviously cultural. What sort of argument or evidence could be brought to bear on the issue?

Mick: Well, Your Honor, I submit as evidence the vast numbers of Buddhists.

Doc laughs.

Jack: It seems to me that you two are keen to relegate me to some kind of official role! But, alas, I’ll allow it! Go on.

Mick: Buddhists aren’t theists. They don’t believe in a god, at least not in the Western sense.

Jack: If there even is a Western sense.

Mick: Right. Anyways, it seems implausible that, in devoting themselves to the Buddha’s spiritual discipline, billions of people over the centuries have actively quashed some innate natural desire to seek God, which was present in their consciousness.

Jack: Yes, that does seem implausible. (Pauses.) However, Buddhism does grant that we have a natural desire for permanence and that is one of the things that their spiritual discipline is intended to help them overcome.

Mick: Yes, but is that the same thing as having a desire for God?

Jack: Not necessarily, I grant. However, the desire for union with God is a form of the desire for permanence. People want wholeness, eternal life, and so on.

Mick: Hmm. That’s a good point.

Doc: We now face two issues: one is whether this desire is natural, the other is whether it ought to be satisfied, even if it is natural.

Mick: I suppose I come at this with a particular set of assumptions and a historical concern. In Gender Studies, we tend to look for social causes rather than natural causes. And this is because, throughout history, people have claimed that things which were social constructs, like race and gender, were natural. Appeals to human nature have often been a way of legitimizing or rationalizing categorizations, since it makes a social phenomenon appear necessary.

Jack: Yes, for sure. And sometimes this was done maliciously while in other cases, it was probably a matter of people failing to recognize social causes.

Doc: I’ve often thought about this issue. I think most of the people who said that I have “unnatural desires” were not consciously trying to maintain a contingent social construct. I imagine that they honestly believed that there was a “proper nature” and that I was, to use their term, perverting it.

Mick: That makes me so angry! We should expect more from ourselves. Sometimes I think we look for the easiest and most comfortable explanation and we lack the drive to think about what is really going on.

Jack: That frustration is the mark of a true philosopher.

Mick: I’m not a philosopher!

Doc: It sounds to me like you are. Philosophy means the love of wisdom. You just indicated that you seek —and you think others should seek —what is true or real. That is what it means to love wisdom.

Mick: Well, I feel like I never really understood what was going on in my philosophy classes.

Jack: There are all sorts of factors that could explain that. At the time, you might not have been in a position to understand, or be invested in, the motivating questions. Or your teachers might not have been very good! Maybe they didn’t explain things well or didn’t meet you where you were at. None of that would change the fact that you have a philosophical spirit. And that is the first step to developing a philosophical mind. You have to want the thing and then learn how to pursue it.

Mick: Well, I don’t think I’ll be calling myself a philosopher anytime soon.

Doc: Haha, yeah, don’t. That would probably come off sounding really pretentious anyways.

Mick: I want to return to what you said, Doc. I think it is understandable that you cannot shake your belief in God. It is comforting, and the idea that there is no God can seem scary. But I wonder whether you think of it as a natural desire or as having a social cause?

Doc: I certainly think of it as having a social cause. I was made to believe in God by being subjected to a program of indoctrination, both within my immediate family and in our broader community. I don’t think I would have developed the sort of picture I have of God were it but for these factors. Interestingly, one of the things that really solidified my prayer practices when I was younger was the recognition of a discrepancy between what the Good Book said about God and how his believers acted and talked. I would find myself praying to God because he was better than any of the actual people I lived with. I assumed he cared about me as I was and understood my heart in a way that even my parents did not.

He pauses for a moment, tapping his desk with the eraser of his pencil.

Doc: That might actually lead me to the opposite conclusion, though. Or at least a more nuanced conception of its social causes.

Mick: What do you mean?

Doc: Well, I think the discrepancy between the actual and ideal is generally operative in solidifying people’s hope, trust, and faith in God. Our fellow humans, even the one’s who love us dearly, will always fail to be perfect. They are, as we say, only human. Phillip Roth has suggested that “the human stain” is our imperfectability. We cannot help but recognize it in ourselves and others. Everyone will fail us, in some sense, either great or small. That not only serves to unite us—it is how we imprint ourselves on others and why we need others—but it also makes us desire a being that is better, one that is perfect.

Jack: That reminds me of Ludwig Feuerbach’s argument concerning why people are religious.

Mick: I’m not familiar.

Jack: He thought that our conceptions of god ultimately amount to ways of coming into relation with our human nature, but in an alienated or estranged form. In his terminology, we discern that we have a “species-essence” and understand ourselves to be beings of this kind, or members of a species. It is in virtue of this that we can judge that we are imperfect: the perfections that we conceive to belong to our species are not found perfectly within any individual member of the species. Since these qualities are not exemplified in us as individuals, we imagine them to be attributes of a perfect being, our god.

Doc: I believe he said, “God is the manifestation of our inner nature, our expressed self.”

Mick: That is interesting. What do you mean by “perfections”?

Jack: He has in mind three things: wisdom as the perfection of human intellect, right willing as the perfection of our volitional capacity, and love as perfection of human affections.

Mick: Okay, yeah, I can see that. (Pauses.) When you say it is our “alienated” essence, do you mean we don’t recognize it as our own?

Jack: Yes, we suppose we are meditating on the divine nature, but it’s really our own. God is our species essence reified as a mysterious and transcendent Other, and to that extent religious consciousness consists in alienating or estranging ourselves from our essence. That’s why religion is so often self-thwarting and contradictory. We come to view our god as more real than we are. Increasingly, we view ourselves as decrepit, sinful, unworthy, and deserving of damnation for our failure.

Mick: That is a really compelling theory.

Jack: I often find myself wondering if he is correct. (Pauses.) I should mention, that is only half of his story.

Mick: Do tell.

Jack: Well, he argues that, in the course of religious development, we discern means by which to come back into relation with our species essence. In Christianity, this is achieved through the doctrines of the Incarnation, the Death and Resurrection, and the Corpus Christi.

Mick: Those are all words I’ve heard, but I don’t really know what they refer to.

Jack: The Incarnation affirms that God became fully human. The Death and Resurrection of Christ affirms that God emptied Godself, or, out of love, Incarnate Love died and then rose to be in communion with us. The Corpus Christi is the doctrine that we have a place in God: we can be living members of the God that is love. Feuerbach indicates that all of this is, in a sense, very lovely and beautiful, but it does not ultimately constitute a full reappropriation of our nature. Rather, we are reunited with our nature in its alienated form, namely, as still being God’s. Significantly, the transcendent alterity, or otherness, of the divine remains in tact.

Doc: I know that Feuerbach thinks that is a bad thing, and maybe I do, too. However, I sometimes wonder if it is inescapable. Maybe we can’t adequately orient ourselves to our species-essence except under the form of a divine Other.

Mick: I don’t know. Aren’t we doing so right now?

Doc: Well, yes. I guess I have in mind people more generally. I grant that some of us might be able to, but it is difficult.

Mick: I don’t see what is so difficult about it. And doesn’t that seem a bit elitist?

Doc: I suppose it does. Though elitism sounds worse than it really is. In a case like this, I would say that there is a distinction between people who have had the time and resources to think about things critically and historically and those who have not. Education has an impact on us; it reveals things and leads us to conclusions we wouldn’t otherwise arrive at.

Mick: That’s a good point. If it didn’t, I couldn’t justify the exorbitant student loans I took out!

Doc: (Laughs.) To return to what I was saying, perhaps my concern is better expressed in this way: I wonder whether it is morally expedient for people to relate to their species-essence in a mediated way. “Mediated” sounds better than “alienated.”

Jack: Hah, yes it does. What do you have in mind? Why might it be morally expedient?

Doc: Well, I suppose I am concerned that if we don’t relate to an ideal we might not strive to be better. Although people often simply find what they are looking for in their god, some people find themselves in relation to a god that challenges them to be better, to grow, and so on.

Jack: Yes. I think Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” could be taken as expressing that point. On the one hand, you have the “white moderates,” whom King is addressing and who were largely quietistic about segregation, and then you have King, himself, who is seeking to challenge and reform the institutions. Both parties were animated by their faith, or at least thought of themselves in that way.

Jack taps his fingers on his leg and then continues.

Jack: Feuerbach’s own view is pretty nuanced. On the one hand, he does think that Christianity has a moral essence, which is good and right. This moral lesson is easily discerned but difficult to practice: it is the recognition of what he called the holiness of love—the acknowledgment that unconditioned love is the highest good and the desirable end, not only for the faithful but for all members of our species as such. On the other hand, as a religion or faith, he claims that Christianity induces us to withhold and condition their love. In short, when motivated by faith, we’re willing to set aside the good that is testified to in our very being and species-consciousness. That’s why religion is so dangerous.

Doc: Does faith necessarily have to do that?

Jack: Necessarily? Hmm. I think Feuerbach would say that it effectively does. Out of faith, we serve and prostrate ourselves before the mysterious and transcendent Other, and to preserve the alterity and sovereignty of this god, we posit that god is a pure subject, which cannot be identified with any of the humane qualities we attribute to it. So long as Christianity, or religion in general, consists in faith in a transcendent deity that is conceived as other than our species-essence and our highest good—that is, love—then its object of ultimate concern will be non-human and thus inhumane: it will direct its gaze to what Feuerbach called “God as God,” or “the evil being of religious fanaticism.” In service to God, so conceived, the demands of faith stand in a contradiction to the demands of love.

Mick: Yikes. I take it that he isn’t just a theorist of religion. On that basis, he presumably advocated atheism.

Jack: Sort of. He called his own position anthropotheism to draw attention to the fact that he claimed that human perfections were “holy,” by which he means they are ends in themselves or their goodness is internal to them.

Mick: In the sense we talked about before?

Jack: Yes, exactly so.

Mick: Does that mean he thought we should retain religious practices?

Jack: No, he specifically says that we should kill God. His way of putting it is very provocative and, I think, almost beautiful. He says that just as God gave himself over to death out of love, so we should, out of love, kill God.

Doc: My favorite line of his is also from that passage. He says, “I fear if we do not kill God for the sake of love, we will kill love for the sake of God.”

Mick: Oh, wow! That seems so right!

Doc: I simultaneously find his view compelling and also worrisome. I’ll say it again, I’m not terribly interested in defending religious belief; nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder if human beings would be worse off if we didn’t have a God-idea to relate to as a challenge and provocation to be better.

Jack: I think I know what you mean. John Caputo has said that the name ‘God’ harbors just such a provocation. It calls to us to be more just, more caring, more loving. Feuerbach’s view is that we need to kill off the idea of a divine subject but, in so doing, we absolutely should not kill off the idea of what he calls “divine predicates.”

Mick: You mean like love, wisdom, and so forth?

Jack: Yes. He steadfastly maintains that these are holy. Caputo could be understood as a Christian who is trying to do what Feuerbach suggested. He doesn’t concern himself with what he calls the “God of onto-theism,” meaning the God-subject; he focuses on the call or invitation that is harbored within the name of God.

Mick: That is very poetic.

Jack: Yes, and, indeed, Caputo’s kind of theology is called theopoetics.

Mick: Hmm. I would imagine that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for people to retain a purely poetic and moral relation to the notion of God and refrain from thinking of God as a being.

Jack: Yes, I think you are right.

Mick: And I don’t think Christians are prepared to think that God is dead, or that they ought to kill God.

Jack: It’s interesting that you say that. Earlier today, I was revisiting the letters of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Are you familiar with him?

Mick: Nope.

Jack: He was an anti-Nazis dissident and Lutheran minister. He was a committed pacifist on religious grounds, but he ultimately came to believe that it was necessary to assassinate Hitler. He thus became part of a conspiracy to do so, but he was arrested and hanged. In one of his letters that he wrote to a friend while he was awaiting execution, he addresses what we call the death of God. Do you mind if I read it?

Mick: No, of course not.

Jack reaches over and opens his satchel, pulling out a small red book. He flips through his dog-eared pages until he finds what he is looking for.

Jack: So, he writes, “we cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur,” which means even if God were not given. “And this is just what we do recognize—before God! God himself compels us to recognize it. So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.”

Doc: I think I understand. He is saying that Christians ought to recognize that, on their own theological terms, God is, in a sense, already absent.

Jack: Yes, though he would be quick to respond that God is present as what unites the disciples, as the spirit of love. That is the significance of the last line I read: “He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.”

Mick: That is really fascinating and compelling, but I don’t think it really addresses the problem. Doc said that he worries Christians aren’t able to accept the death of God. All this seems to imply is that they aren’t able to accept the implications of their own theology!

Jack: Oof. I suppose you might be right. In Bonhoeffer’s assessment, the temptation is to shirk away from the profound responsibility that attends the invitation to “come to age,” to resort back to a childish desire for a daddy figure to step in and take care of things for us. And yes, that is a temptation on the part of Christians themselves. Though, to return to and expand on a point that Doc made, it is probably a temptation endemic to humanity. As he put it, we sense a lack in ourselves and we thus often seek a divine Other which is not lacking. (He takes a drink.) As I understand Bonhoeffer, he is arguing, in effect, that we should grow the hell up.

Doc and Mick both laugh.

Jack: The divine Other—the daddy figure that is most people’s conception of God—is a childish wish. But God doesn’t want children. God wants disciples.

Mick: And for you, that means Love wants disciples.

Jack: Yes.

Doc: You know, most people think that without god—without the daddy figure, as you put it—there would be nothing to prevent us from acting however we please. In the Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky gives expression to this by suggesting that if there is no God, everything is permitted.

Jack: Yes, that’s an old saw. Along with the claim that “there are no atheists in foxholes,” it is one my coreligionists love to trot out. Both are equally false.

Mick: Father Jack the Atheist is back.

Jack: Neither —

Mick: Yeah, yeah, I know: “neither theist nor atheist.”

Jack: Haha, well, at least you understood me.

Mick: I can parrot you; I’m not sure I understand you.

Doc: Explain what you mean when you say both are false.

Jack: Well, the foxhole one is easy: the fact of the matter is that there have been atheists in foxholes. The threat of death doesn’t lead everyone to belief in God or an afterlife. It is an oversimplification, a bullshit platitude.

Mick laughs.

Jack: Concerning the other claim, I have two points. The first was made by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan who simply stated that the contradiction of Dostoyevsky’s view is equally as plausible: if there is no one to grant permission—if God is dead—then nothing is permitted.

Mick: Hmm. I never thought of it in that way. But in what sense does God grant permission? I think of God as commanding and prohibiting, but not as permitting.

Jack: Right, but key to Dostoevsky’s own assessment of Christianity, which is partially expressed through his character of Ivan—the atheist brother—is the idea that Christianity absolves us of sin. Are you familiar with the chapter titled, “The Grand Inquisitor”?

Mick: Yeah, but it was confusing.

Jack: Well, recall that Ivan depicts the Grand Inquisitor as explaining to Christ that the Church has freed people from the oppressive demand that Christ laid down, namely, to be perfect. He says that, through the forgiveness of sin, men are allowed to have their mistresses and so forth, and they take comfort in knowing that all is forgiven.

Doc: That’s not the same thing as saying that such things are permitted.

Jack: No, it’s not. You’re right. But it certainly has effectively amounted to the same thing, at least for some people.

Doc: I suppose so, but only to the extent that they have misunderstood the matter.

Jack: We can grant that. But that’s where my next point becomes relevant. Even for the most pious—indeed, perhaps especially for them—there is an important sense in which their faith permits them to violate communal moral norms.

Mick: I don’t understand.

Jack: It is a point that Søren Kierkegaard made in his book Fear and Trembling. Have you read it?

Mick: Yes, we read that in my philosophy course. But it was another one that I didn’t get!

Jack: It is a difficult one. I think one of the most important points that Kierkegaard makes is that faith involves what he calls “the teleological suspension of the ethical.” I’ll explain what I take him to mean. Do you recall how the book is structured around the story of Abraham and Isaac?

Mick: Yes, Abraham was prepared to sacrifice Isaac because he thought it was the right thing to do.

Jack: Well, sort of. That is one of the ways in which Kierkegaard’s point is misunderstood. He doesn’t claim that Abraham thinks killing Isaac is morally right, nor does he claim that Abraham has a different ethic than everyone else. Rather, he argues that Abraham has suspended the ethical.

Mick: Does that mean that Abraham thinks of what he is doing as unethical?

Jack: No.

Mick: Oh good grief, this is beginning to sound like another violation of the principle of noncontradiction!

Doc laughs.

Jack: Actually, precisely the contrary. Kierkegaard staunchly maintains that there are dichotomies that cannot be reconciled. In this way, he was objecting to the work of G.W.F. Hegel who argued that antitheses could be synthesized. But let’s not get too caught up in Hegel.

Doc: Good Lord, no. That is a quagmire from which we would never escape.

Jack: Haha. Anyways, Kierkegaard thinks there is a strict difference between an ethical life and a religious life. He calls people who embody the ethical life well “knights of infinite resignation.”

Mick: (rolling her eyes) That’s a lovely turn of phrase.

Jack: Well, Kierkegaard’s conception of ethics was deeply influenced by the work of Immanuel Kant who had argued that to have a good will, one must not only act in accordance with the moral law but must also act from a sense of duty. Put another way, an action that is simply motivated by a disposition or tendency to act rightly doesn’t really have moral worth; only actions that are motivated by the sense that one ought to act in a specific way have moral worth.

Mick: Hmm. Okay. I don’t think I agree with that, but I understand the view. There’s a difference between someone who tells the truth because they are just totally open and forthcoming and someone who tells the truth because they know they should.

Jack: Exactly. Now, Kierkegaard thinks the hallmark of the ethical life is a willingness to renounce any sort of personal claim on the satisfaction of desire. Take your example of the person who tells the truth because they know they ought to, not because they are inclined to. Suppose that they also know that in telling the truth, they will not get something they want. In other words, the satisfaction of their desire hinges on them lying.

Mick: Okay, that’s easy enough to imagine. Presumably, those are precisely the circumstances in which we are tempted to lie: when we could get something we want or avoid something we don’t want.

Jack: Right. So, what that suggests is that an ethical person is willing to subordinate their desires to the moral law. In Kierkegaard’s parlance, they “renounce” their freedom to pursue whatever they want with impunity.

Mick: Okay, that makes sense.

Jack: What distinguishes an ethical person from what Kierkegaard calls a “knight of faith,” like Abraham, is that the knight of faith is willing to exempt themselves from the moral law for the sake of God, the Absolute. This is precisely what Abraham does, for if anything is immoral, it is the killing of one’s innocent child.

Mick: Doesn’t that mean that Abraham was unethical?

Jack: Yes, in the sense that he has transcended the ethical. However, it is different than how people are normally unethical. Typically, if someone is unethical it is because they fail to renounce their proprietary claim on the satisfaction of their desires. That is to say, they ignore the moral law and act in their own self-interest.

Mick: Okay, I see. We wouldn’t say that Abraham acted out of self-interest. He didn’t really want to kill Isaac.

Jack: Right. But there are two really important and related additional points. The first is that Abraham doesn’t believe that Isaac will be required; in other words, he is willing to go through with God’s demand but he doesn’t think that God will actually require Isaac’s death. The second is that Kierkegaard thinks that faith involves making what he calls the “movement of infinite resignation,” but then it involves a second movement: in virtue of believing that in God all things are possible, one doesn’t really renounce the object of desire.

Mick: Hmm. You’ve lost me there. How can one renounce one’s desire but then not renounce it? And if I recall the story of Abraham and Isaac correctly, Abraham himself is the one who is going to kill Isaac. So how can he go forward with the action and yet believe Isaac won’t die?

Jack: That is the tricky thing. According to Kierkegaard, both are possible in virtue of what he calls “the absurd”: the non-rational, deeply passionate trust and confidence that in God all things are possible. From any objective, third-person perspective, what Abraham sets out to do is kill Isaac, and it would be insane for him to think that nothing bad would happen. But that is precisely what he does, or so Kierkegaard imagines. The idea is that Abraham makes an ethical move whereby he wills himself to act in a way that seems to involve giving up his hope and desire that Isaac will live and thrive. However, because he has a radical faith in God, he doesn’t believe that Isaac will ultimately be required.

Mick: So it’s like he was playing a game of chicken with God?

Jack: Perhaps! The issue is, he knows that he is violating the moral law, or the ethical norms of his community. For this reason, he cannot explain himself. But, again, he does so for the sake of something greater: namely, living and acting in relation to God. As a knight of faith, Abraham is above and beyond the ethical.

Mick: That just seems like another way of saying that he has a different ethic.

Jack: Right, I understand that objection. It seems as if Abraham is rejecting an earthly ethic that holds that killing one’s child is wrong but he does so because he accepts a divine ethic which says that the right thing to do is whatever God commands.

Mick: Exactly.

Jack: The reason Kierkegaard does not accept this is because it would misconstrue the internal psychology of the knight of faith. Recall, a knight of infinite resignation renounces their claim on the satisfaction of desire. A knight of faith, however, does not really do so. Or rather, they receive back their desire as mediated by their faith.

Mick: I don’t follow.

Jack: Kierkegaard gives an example. He compares the case of Agamemnon with Abraham.

Mick: I know that Agamemnon is from ancient Greek myth, but I don’t know much about him.

Jack: Well, what you need to know is that he had to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, in order to appease the god, Artemis. In doing so, Agamemnon gave up any expectation he had that she would live and thrive. By contrast, Abraham does not give up his expectation that Isaac will do so. Rather, Kierkegaard claims, again, by virtue of the absurd, that his expectation becomes greater. He believes that God will make good on his promise that he will be blessed. As a result, when the messenger from God tells him to substitute a ram for Isaac, Abraham isn’t confused or in doubt; he simply accepts Isaac back in joy, for now Isaac’s life has become a gift.

Mick: Hmm. Okay. That sounds really horrible to me.

Doc: It is horrible, but I think it’s important to recognize that the story was developed for a purpose, and the purpose was to convey that God is not a fickle and bizarre creator that commands that people sacrifice their children.

Mick: That’s precisely what God does!

Doc: Well, the character of God does so in the story, but the I think the real point of the story is that God ultimately doesn’t require the sacrifice.

Mick: Ugh, that makes it seem like God is psychologically abusive.

Doc: Again, the character might very well be thought of in such terms. But what I wanted to suggest is that what is really going in telling the story is that the ancient writers were putting a long-standing belief to rest: namely, the belief that the God of gods required human sacrifice. I think that’s true of a lot of the stories in the book of Genesis.

Mick: Hmm. You’ll need to say more about that at some point, but I want to get back to what Jack was saying. (Turning to Jack.) You said that Isaac became a gift? I’m not clear how that related to what we were talking about.

Jack: I’ll get to that. The last thing I want to say before I do is that, on Kierkegaard’s view, Abraham exemplifies one who only seems to renounce goods in this life—he seems to give up his son Isaac, since he intends to kill him—but precisely because he believes steadfastly in God’s promise, he never really gives up his belief that Isaac will go on to thrive, even as he draws the knife and places it to his son’s throat. And this, at long last, brings me to my point. This is the potentially monstrous and insane form of subjectivity that animates faith. At the root of all faithful action and being is an absurd confidence in something that is objectively uncertain—perhaps even impossible—and which is irrational to believe.

Doc: Now, be honest, Jack. Do you really believe that?

Jack: I think I do.

Doc: I once again wonder, then, how you persist in being a member of the clergy.

Jack: I, myself, sometimes wonder that. But here’s the thing: I think Kierkegaard is right about the basic psychology of genuine faith. Anything less than that is just being ethical. A faithful person is, in a certain sense, a fanatic. But here again, I will appeal to Martin Luther King, Jr. You might recall that in his letter, he explains that he is a fanatic: a fanatic for justice and love.

Mick: Isn’t that just a rhetorical maneuver on his part to anticipate and address the objections made by the white moderates?

Jack: Perhaps, but it expresses what I take to be the truth: a faithful person is willing to suspend the ethical for the sake of what they take to be the absolute.

Doc: That is genuinely terrifying in its implications.

Mick: Right. It seems like you are saying that people are justified by faith in doing all sorts of things.

Jack: An important caveat is needed: I am not saying they are justified; I am saying that this is what motivates them. In fact, both Kierkegaard and I would say that Abraham’s ordeal reveals the form, or subjective movements, of faith, but not its content or proper object. There is no sense in which we can speak approvingly of faith simpliciter: everything hinges on the content. As a Christian, I accept St. Paul’s claim that “faith comes from hearing the message.” The content of God’s will, as we might put it, was disclosed in Christ’s life and death, and it was summarized in his great command: to love. So, while Christian faith does involve a teleological suspension of the ethical, I trust that the true and proper telos for which the ethical can be faithfully suspended is the love of others. I think that is important because love is difficult, and one who sets about to love unconditionally will face trials that are formally and subjectively on par with Abraham’s: their actions will be inexplicable to the community precisely because they transcend the ethical.

Mick: I don’t see how that could be the case.

Jack: Well, I think that doing the loving thing can often require violating laws and norms. Doc, for example, does harm reduction work, which is illegal, but it is absolutely the loving thing to do.

Mick: Oh, really? Yeah, I agree. Providing sterile supplies to injection drug users is definitely important.

Doc: And effective. But as Jack said, it is illegal here.

Mick: True, but that is because the laws are not just.

Jack: Perhaps. But I don’t think any set of laws could ever include caveats for all the myriad ways in which love could call us to act. Laws, by their very nature, are general and universally applicable. But love is always a particular relation between persons.

Mick: I see what you mean. But if we turn back to Abraham, his act is horrendous! When someone acts like he does nowadays, we rightly lock them up.

Jack: That’s true. The point of Kierkegaard’s analysis of Abraham’s case isn’t to express an unambiguous moral. In fact, he suggests it would be downright calamitous for someone to treat the story or the character of Abraham as a straightforward model, for God does not demand human sacrifice. As Doc explained, that was probably the original point of the story: the biblical redactors were differentiating themselves and their god from other peoples and other gods who did require ritualistic human sacrifice. Again, the point is that Abraham’s case reveals the subjective nature of faith.

Doc: Okay, I now see how this connects up with what we were talking about before. You had said that even for the most pious person, there is an important sense in which their faith can lead them to violate communal moral norms.

Jack: Right. Their faith is what makes such violation permissible. Hence, if there is no Absolute or “God,” then nothing is permitted. That was Lacan’s point.

Mick: That’s a totally different way of looking at things, but I can see how that is operative in people’s lives and our society. Think back to what Doc mentioned: people who were awful to him and rejected him did so because they thought it was what was required by God.

Doc: Right. And even people who cared about me and said it was painful to do so nevertheless stood by the community when I was shunned.

Jack: And at least one way to describe what they were doing was acting contrary to what they thought was the right thing—namely, continuing to live in community with you—and they did so for the sake of what they took to be a command from the Absolute.

Doc: Yes, I think that is what at least some of them would say.

Jack: And my perspective is that they had it backwards. They really simply obeyed “the law” as they understood it, and they failed to heed the command of God, which is to love. Faith in love could have and should have motivated them to suspend what they took to be the ethical law.

Doc: Hmm.

Jack: And the broader point is that although people say that if there isn’t a God, everything is permitted, in fact it is the opposite: it is precisely to the extent that we believe that there is an Absolute, or a God, who commands us to act in violation of the law that we are willing to suspend the ethical.

Mick: I see your point, but it doesn’t provide a way out. After all, by your own admission, both the people of Doc’s church and you, yourself, act on the basis of faith, but the content of your faith is different.

Doc: Right. The people of my church would’ve said—in fact, they did say—that my way of being may very well have been acceptable within our “secular culture,” but it was contrary to God’s will. You are saying that the moral code within the bible is an ethic, which can be trumped by God’s will to love.

Jack: Yes, that’s true. Unfortunately, I think that is the way things are. There will always be people who misunderstand the good news, and there will always be people who think that folks like me have misunderstood it.

Mick: Does that suggest it will simply be a battle of wills to see who succeeds?

Jack: Hmm. I guess it might. I think on matters of how we ought to be, we’re free, and I don’t think we can reason our way to right living—at least not at the most fundamental level. There are simply incommensurable systems of value and ways of life. In some sense, adopting any system of value or form of life is an act of faith.

Mick: Man, that seems so— I  don’t know what to say. I guess ambiguous?

Jack: I think it is. And I think we hate that dimension of our existence, so we try really hard to ignore the ambiguity.

Mick looks at her phone.

Mick: Oh dang! Did you know the library already closed?

Doc: (Laughing.) It’s okay. They won’t make you sleep here. You can get out, you just can’t get back in after closing time.

Mick: Haha, right. I assumed so. I should probably get going anyways. See you two tomorrow?

Jack: Absolutely. Have a good night, Mick.