Will Humanity Survive Religion?. W. Royce Clark
real question seems to be how anything can be (relative) and there still be that which is Absolute. This is not merely a difference between the “ontic” and “ontological,” but the difference between what is limited and the idea of there being that which is completely unlimited. Either term wants to dissolve the other, just as to speak of things as “finite” does not in any way imply that something is actually “infinite.” Most theologians realized that centuries ago. If Paul Tillich was correct in saying there is no way ordinary reason can evaluate anything allegedly derived from an experience of “revelation,” and that “infinite” is not reality but a mere “limiting concept,” what credibility could a religion’s claims have? When the answer is that “revelation” is not information, but rather an event in which that which is beyond the polarity of being/nonbeing still is, even though it is revealed only in something which negates itself (as Tillich claimed), then no religion could ever assert anything nor have any appeal at all.9
While such mysterious, ontological, theological, mythological talk may have assisted the driving presuppositions of three or more of the most significant Protestant and Catholic theologians of the twentieth century—Paul Tillich, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Hans Küng—as their systems were built around the assumption that the destiny of relative humans is to become divine, somehow transformed or being incorporated into the Absolute or Infinite, surely the whole issue is not merely how one can cloud the real question with a greater mystification and obfuscation. This juxtaposition of Absolute/relative is not merely a problem of Christian faith, but is fairly common to many of the major religions.
It is relevant because the religion itself, in its institutional representations and guidance of all those professing the religion, has utilized this authority of the Absolute throughout its later history, gradually increasing the boundaries and ramifications of the claim of its Absolute, I believe, to the detriment of human autonomy. This is what becomes dehumanizing. The more science and culture raise questions about the religions, the more religions reply with intensified authoritarianism, with Christianity finally claiming biblical inerrancy and papal infallibility in the nineteenth century, as will be evident in later chapters. We are living in days of increasing defensiveness among religions because they fear being marginalized by a religious pluralism or secular domination. With the political and national retrenchments occurring while a political populism sweeps the globe with extreme authoritarian undertones, while various forms of ethnic, sexual, and economic divisiveness plague many nations, religions’ Absolute claims appear only to exacerbate the social problems,10 often used as crutches of legitimacy by their antiquity.
Our initial question is whether humanity will survive religion with the latter’s divisive Absolute. But that is to ask whether humanization can survive heteronomy and authoritarianism’s stifling people’s autonomy as well as deny common reason’s dependence upon modern sciences. In the process we will (1) attempt to see what future religion has with its Absolute mythology, by which it professes not only a connection with the Absolute but an appointment by such, and (2) then try to determine how the human who wants and needs to be autonomous can deal with the religion’s heteronomous claims of authoritative guidance by its connection with the Absolute, if at all.
There are any number of ways one can approach the question of religion’s absolutes, which are unique, naturally exclusive, therefore divisive and against autonomy. Obviously, when many of the existing religions today have a long history, from well over a millennium to closer to four millennia, this study cannot be definitive, but only suggestive. I had to choose between possibilities. I selected Christianity as the primary religion for examination, but I will often refer to other religions to show the parallels in those other groups, or to stimulate readers who belong to other religions to begin to formulate their own questions, since the divisiveness of an Absolute is not unique to Christianity. I will utilize Christian theologians and philosophers as well as strident critics of Christianity and even novelists to flesh out the possible problems, with no particular hidden agenda.
Nothing demanded that I have to refer to any scholars or brilliant thinkers. I could have acted like every idea I put forward originated only in my mind. But honest scholarship is also a grateful scholarship and does not work that way. I decided, given my professional involvement, research, undergraduate, and graduate classes I taught over nearly four decades, to choose certain people to use, to quote, and to argue the issues. Often, my selection was based upon the width of the influence and longevity or consistency of an author’s position, as it would be if I were critiquing a history of classical music in which to understand a present style and its particular problems, one has to understand the preceding style upon which it was built or which it cast aside. For every scholar I include, there are another dozen or so that might have been used instead. However, I had specific reasons for using each one. But to have to justify the inclusion of every thinker as well as the exclusion of another dozen or more would destroy the coherence of the book. By the end of this book, the reader will see that there is one central burden within Christian theology that is the very heart of the religion, and, in this sense the focus narrows down considerably since if that burden cannot be resolved, there is no sense in even thinking about all the other burdens articulated prior to it. But they are all possible burdens.
Further, if autonomy, especially mutual autonomy, is possibly essential to the process of humanization, it seemed apropos to me to utilize Nietzsche’s symbols of one’s spirit progressing through metamorphoses toward autonomy, which became such a concern of the Enlightenment. That is not to say the idea of the Enlightenment is totally clear, as Foucault has illustrated.11 These are only possible symbols that hopefully elucidate stages in one’s capturing one’s own voice or autonomy. He symbolized the stages as the “camel,” “lion,” and “child.” But I also selected Nietzsche’s symbols because of the typical oversimplified and antagonistic caricatures by which both Nietzsche and Jesus have been portrayed. Finally, I find fruitful and provoking the graphic and startling irony of the symbol of “child” as Nietzsche’s metaphorical goal or final stage in the quest for autonomy, as actually being an integrated and responsible person, but also because “child” stands for innocence and unpresumptuousness even in the teachings of Jesus.
These “stages” of “camel,” “lion,” and “child” will be explained a bit more in chapter 1. In this book, however, my focus is only on the “camel” stage of bearing and attempting to transcend the “burdens” of a religion’s Absolute. If there actually are no burdens, then it would be fruitless to examine the other two stages Nietzsche anticipated. If there turn out to be real burdens, then the other “stages” of one’s maturing spirit can be addressed in other volumes.
Some religious readers may feel that they experience no burdens at all from their religion. Instead, it all makes sense and is an unambiguous blessing. I certainly am not trying to create problems where they do not exist. And I am not desiring to make people doubt their own judgments to the point of losing confidence in themselves. One must simply try to figure out what it is that one believes or trusts and why. That comes not simply as a single question to be solved for all time by a short inquiry, but probably rears itself up at least to one’s conscious level quite often in life. I am personally aware of many religious laypeople and even ministers, priests, and monks who have felt terrific burdens in different intensities and varied issues because of religious heteronomy and a divisive Absolute and/or outdated metaphysical and ethical stances. Christian churches continue to splinter over these manifold burdens.
Religious leaders and institutions themselves will need to continue to explore those elements of belief and practice that they feel can become terrible burdens in order to serve as they promised. For some people, this may require a de-absolutizing for religion to become more credible and more humanizing. Since I am not persuaded that such a de-absolutizing in favor of a humanizing would be undesirable, I present only a few of the many burdens that I see as the most obvious. I claim no authority nor exhaustive scope or perfection of knowledge and analysis. I am interested in ideas and reality, in an author’s argument and persuasiveness rather than his or her reputation. I have no interest in trying to categorize scholars, which usually results in oversimplifying their views. I have no patience for using language that the educated non-specialist cannot understand. Where I analyze an author who does use such terms, I will explain his or her meaning if the author has not,