Pope Francis declared to more
than 100 world leaders and diplomats at the United Nations in late September
2015 that a "right of the environment" exists and that our species
has no authority to abuse it or render it unfit for human habitation.[1] In stressing that urgent action is needed to
halt the destruction of God's creation, he made explicit reference to a
religious basis for his moral claim. He said the universe is the result of a
"loving decision by the creator, who permits man respectfully to use
creation for the good of his fellow men and for the glory of the creator: He is
not authorized to abuse it, much less destroy it."[2]
This statement may overplay both the religious nature of the basis and the
destruction. I turn now to parsing the statement in three parts, after which I
will supply the basis of the pope’s religious rationale, which is narrower than
he suggested in his speech.
Pope Francis admonishing the U.N. delegates not to injure themselves slipping on a banana outside after his address. "Gases from the exposed puss can warm the sidewalk," he explained as many delegates checked their earphones. (Bryan Thomas/Getty)
First, the claim that the
universe itself is the result of the creator—a divine decree creating the
material realm out of nothing (i.e., ex
nihilo)—goes beyond the Hebrew word, bara’,
which is translated as “to create” in the Bible. The Hebrew word’s definition
is “to shape, fashion, create (always with God as subject), . . . heaven and earth, individual man, new
conditions and circumstances, and transformations.[3]
Crucially, bara’ is not used in the
Hebrew Bible “with a preposition governing the material out of which God
created.”[4]
God’s creating does not include bringing the stuff of the universe into being,
at least in what the Book of Genesis covers. “When God began to create heaven
and earth—the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of
the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—God said, ‘Let there be
light.’”[5]
When God began to create heaven and
earth, the water already existed! So too, presumably, did the materials of
land. “God said, ‘Let the water below the sky be gathered into one area, that
the dry land may appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the
gathering of waters He called Seas.”[6]
The uncovering of land presupposes that the stuff of land (or land itself)
already exists. At least as genesis is described in the Bible, the material
making up the universe is not a result of God’s decision (or God’s creating,
more generally).
To be sure, the Hebrew
expression that translates into English as “before creation” is Tohu wa bohu (תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ). This typically translates as "waste and void," "formless
and empty," or "chaos and desolation.” [7]
Waste can be interpreted as a feature of a void, and formlessness of emptiness.
In this sense, the material of the universe is entailed in God’s decision to
create the cosmos. Alternatively, waste and chaos may refer to the formless stuff and the empty void is that which lies
outside of the soupy blob. Hence the expression can be translated to mean “a
formless waste or chaos.”[8]
Of these two interpretations, only the second is congruent with “the
surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water.” Were there
only an empty void, no water, or even surface, would exist. Also, the Septuagint uses the Greek, ἀόρατος καὶ
ἀκατα-σκεύαστος, which translates as "shapeless and formless” rather
than void and empty.[9] To
assert that a property of nothingness is a lack of shape or form strikes me as
a bizarre thing to say. Something is
formless—until God decides to create order for forming that something by
separating it into parts.
Therefore, we can conclude that God does not
create “chaos or formless pre-existent matter. . . . ‘God created’ means God
created order. . . . The problem of creatio
ex nihilo, creation out of nothing, is not a problem here.”[10]
I submit that we misunderstand the creating in God’s decision as meaning more
than one to order the stuff of Earth by forming (via separating) different
kinds of stuff. We assume the very existence of the stuff came about as part of
God’s creating; hence, Creation.“’The heavens and the earth’ are the
equivalent of the cosmos, for which Hebrew has no single word.”[11]
But “cosmos” in a religious sense or in the empirical sense as that which
astrophysicists study?
Treating the two senses as
identical or even just in assuming that one impacts the other involves a category mistake in treating myth as if it
were also natural science rather than recognizing that they refer to two
qualitatively different phenomena or categories. Merely in writing “God
created” rather than “God creates,” I imply that empirical history and the
story in the Book of Genesis match up or at least refer to the same thing.
Mythic time, in other words, is not in the past even if the past tense is used in the story-time. Such time may tend
to get reduced to empirical or historical time (rather than understood as time
within a story) when the past tense is used to describe both God’s act (i.e.,
decision) to create and the history of the Israelites.[12]
In his assertion that the universe, including all its material stuff, is the
result of a divine decree, the pope may have been “gilding the lily” (i.e.,
adorning it with gold edges) with respect to the religious basis of his moral claim (i.e., that we are not
authorized to extract more fossil fuels from the ground). Put another way, the
stuff that we use in our dominion, as well as any responsibility we might have
in our dominant usage from the religious standpoint, does not hinge on HWYH’s role
as Creator.
Responsibility is curiously
absent in the Biblical basis of our dominion over stuff (including animals) on
the planet. “And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the
whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.’ And God created
man in His image, in the image of God. He created him; male and female He
created them. God blessed them and God said to them, ‘Be fertile and increase,
fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky,
and all the living things that creep on earth.’”[13]
God formed, or separated us into two genders—and presumably hermaphrodites too
(i.e., having both male and female genitalia), and ordered or formed (i.e.,
created) us moreover in His own image. As a species, we are to be fruitful and
multiply, “fill the earth and master it,” even though over population can be
said to be the root cause of the increase in carbon-emissions that are trapping
heat in the atmosphere. In short, we have a responsibility to reproduce and
have dominion on Earth—two actions that have played a large role in the human
contribution to global warming.
Nevertheless, one scholar
asserts, “Dominion is not a license to caprice and tyranny but, in the best
sense, a challenge to responsibility and the duty to make right prevail.”[14]
The Anchor Dictionary assumes this
view, providing as support: “Ha’adam stands
over God’s ordered creation (Psalm 8), but with God, the creator of all, as
humankind’s point of reference.”[15]
Yet that Psalm has nothing in it about a challenge to responsibility. In fact,
human tyranny over other animals and even nature itself may be implied. “(W)hat
is man that You have been mindful of him, mortal man that you have taken note
of him, that You have made him little less than divine, and adorned him with
glory and majesty; You have made him master over Your handiwork, laying the
world at his feet.”[16]
We are “little less than divine,” invested with great power with the world at
our feet. This makes the species sound more like Hobbes’ Leviathan than God’s
dutiful steward.
Another
scholar points to Psalm 8 as stating that God gave mankind dominion because the
earth, and thus everything on it, because God is the Creator.[17] However, a close
reading of the Psalm does not support this inference.
“O LORD, our Lord, how glorious is Thy name in all the
earth!
whose majesty is rehearsed above the heavens.
whose majesty is rehearsed above the heavens.
When I behold Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which Thou hast established; . . .
the moon and the stars, which Thou hast established; . . .
When I behold Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon
and the stars, which Thou hast established;
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of
man, that Thou thinkest of him?
Yet Thou hast made him but little lower than the angels, and
hast crowned him with glory and honour.
Thou hast made him to have dominion over the works of Thy
hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet:”[18]
In fact, the Psalmist is surprised that God gives the species dominion, as well as honor and glory,
given God’s far greater majesty in forming the celestial orbs. Why should a god who formed
the cosmos pay so much attention to mankind? What is the big deal about
mankind? Why make the species just below angels, and give it dominion on the
planet? Next to God’s majesty in forming the materials of the universe, our
species pales in comparison. Therefore, we cannot infer that God gave our
species dominion over the planet because God
formed it. Rather than appointing us to administer for God the Earth that God
formed, the dominion is one of several things, which also include honor and
glory, that God gives mankind because God thinks so highly (and so much) of us.
Gratitude, rather than the recognition of a sense of duty, a right of nature,
and of not being authorized to extract more fossil fuels, seems the most
fitting reaction. Put another way, what God gives our species is not
characterized in the Psalm as conditional.
Why does God think so much of
our squabbling species? Going back to the Book of Genesis, the religious basis
of mankind’s dominion on Earth has to do God forming us in His image. I submit
that the likeness is narrower than we typically assume, and furthermore that it
is not conditional—meaning that it does not come with a responsibility on our
part and thus that it dissolves should we act irresponsibly.
I contend that the likeness
pertains rather narrowly to our ability to order (or form) things by reason and
physical force. If we exclude the possibility that God has a form and
furthermore that it’s shape is roughly the same as the human body—an
anthropomorphic claim to be sure—the human soul
is left to be formed, or ordered, in the likeness of God. It is by virtue of
how our souls are ordered—as being superior to our corporeal bodies, according
to Plato and Augustine—that our species has dominion on the planet from a
religious standpoint; other animals do not have such souls, and thus rightly
are to submit to human rule.
Having an ordered or formed
soul may simply mean that humans too can order things—having dominion being
necessary to being able to implement formations. Having a soul in the likeness
of God may also imply loving how God orders the world in the decision of
creation—meaning including our species. Furthermore, such a soul may imply
stewardship, or responsibility. These are inferences, however, at least in story
in the Book of Genesis at the point in which we are formed in the image of God.
To be sure, the Pope’s claim that we are obliged to use the stuff of Earth for
the good of people and the glory of God as stewards has a Biblical basis; my
point is merely that the duties of stewardship in our use of the environment so
as to protect rather than destroy it are not explicit in the pope’s religious
rationale—that God formed or ordered the world and gave us dominion because we
are formed in God’s image.
Another problem subtly
undermines the story in Genesis regarding Man being created in the image of
God. In Genesis 1:26, “God creates [Adam] ha’adam
‘in our image’ (Heb selem) and
‘according to our likeness’ (demut).”[19]
In Genesis 5:3 (also from the Priestly source), Adam begot a son “in his own
likeness” (bidemuto) and “after his
image” (kesalmo). Crucially, selem and kesalmo are the same word, as are demut and bidemuto. [20]
The Anchor Dictionary concludes from
these identities, “(J)ust as there is something of the father in the son, and
there can be communication and response between the two, so there is something
of God in ha’adam, and there can be
communication and response between them.”[21]
The likeness of God, the Father in heaven, to his human “sons” and “daughters”
is as though parallel to the likeness a man and women have to their offspring.
Augustine’s warning against thinking of the relation between the Father and Son
of the Trinity by summoning images of the prototypical relationship between a
human father and son is relevant. Thinking
of Jesus’ line, “As the Father has taught me,” in terms of a father teaching a
son, for example, would be to “fashion idols” in one’s heart.[22] To
borrow an expression from Nietzsche, such idols would be human, all too human
(i.e., self-idolatry). God being wholly other (i.e., transcendent rather
than merely immanent),[23]
Adam’s son is in Adam’s likeness not as
Adam is in God’s likeness; rather than
being parallel, Adam’s respective likenesses to his son and to God are
qualitatively different, and yet the image or likeness of God is in both Adam
and his son. It is important, therefore, to view being created (i.e., formed)
in God’s image in a (narrowly) distinctively religious sense.
Thirdly, the pope’s statement
that we are “not authorized to abuse [creation], much less destroy it” involves
over-reaching in including destruction. Should mankind eventually put enough
carbon in the atmosphere that the species itself goes extinct for want of a
habitable climate, the planet would still exist; it would still have order.
Ecosystems would doubtless regain equilibrium at some point, especially if the
maximizing species is zerstört. This
issue is not the destruction of the Earth; rather, the harm is much narrower,
albeit central to an egocentric species. The pope did say a "selfish and
boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads . . . to the misuse of
available natural resources.”[24]
Ironically, the religious figure may have been on more solid ground were he to
have used the selfish and boundless thirst for power and wealth as the basis of
his moral position on climate change.
The Pope’s insistence that a
"right of the environment" exists and that our species has no
authority to abuse it or render it unfit for human habitation has no basis in
the story of Creation. He is on more solid ground in asserting a specifically
Christian duty to use our dominion on Earth for the good of our species (i.e.,
each other) and for the glory of God. The sense of
responsibility, as in the expression, With
great power comes great responsibility (from the first in a series of
Spiderman movies), enters the picture with the Jesus of the Gospels, who
maintains that we exercise dominion as stewards acting on God’s behalf and thus
in God’s interest, rather than our own. The responsibility that comes with
having dominion is put in terms of loving God by caring for each other and the
species under our dominion. Hence we have no authority to abuse or destroy the
environment, yet the religious rationale here does not extend to a “right of
the environment.”
I
turn now to the religious rationale in the Gospels. In the ancient Middle East,
“steward” (oikonomos) most often applied to the position of household
manager, where the household essentially is a small business.[25] According to one scholar,
Jesus’ notion of stewardship is in line with this common usage.[26] Stewards in the New
Testament, especially in Jesus’s parables, “are associated with the qualities
of faithfulness, loyalty, business acumen, and the ability to provide for those
under them.”[27] Jesus
asks at the end of one of his parables, “Who then is the faithful and wise
servant, whom his master has put in charge of the servants in his household to
give them their portion of food at the proper time?”[28] The steward is God’s
servant, charged with using the dominion to care for the other servants and
ultimately for God. Such love, rather than God as Creator and mankind having
God’s likeness, is the basis for the pope’s assertion of an obligation to use
our power (and wealth) in caring for each other and in line with the glory of
God. “Our position is that of stewards, not absolute rulers. The earth is God’s
gracious provision to us as a dwelling-place, and should be treated with
respect.”[29]
The
virtues of humility and compassion are of course of great value in Jesus’ eyes,
and thus in how we are to properly use the delegated authority.[30] Jesus insists that to
care for the least among us—whether other people or species—we love God. In the
parable of the sheep and Goats, Jesus has the king say, “Truly I tell you,
whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine,
you did for me.[31] Efforts
to keep the atmosphere suitable for human habitation are ultimately based on
loving God by caring for the least among us—such as the people who are or will
be most detrimentally impacted by the changing climate. Hence, we have finally
found a religious duty and a limited authorization of dominion.
Concerning
a natural right of nature ordained by divine decree and manifesting in natural law, the best I think we can do is summon the now-extinct
Christian tradition of justice as love and benevolence, which ran from
Augustine to Leibniz. The latter theorized that we are all owed love and
benevolence from others because we exist. Leibniz characterizes God is perfect
being. God being love (from Augustine
and the New Testament), the extent that we have being, we are due love; the
extent that other people have being, they too have a just claim to being loved
in terms of benevolence. In other words, we have a natural right to be loved by
others, who are in turn duty bound to be benevolent universally (that is, to
anyone, since everyone has some being).
In
Latin, Leibniz’s phrase is caritas sapientis
seu benevolentia universalis. (“Love in so far as reason permits; that is,
universal benevolence”). Caritas,
from which we get the word “charity,” means love. More particularly, caritas is human love “from below”
rather than divine love (agape) “from
above.” Human love (Augustine), raised from lower to higher goods by reason (e.g.,
from garden-variety lust, or eros, to
love oriented to God, the highest good) (from Plato), is the same (or
manifests) as universal benevolence (i.e., “love thy neighbor”) ( from Augustine).
This love is distinct from God’s own self-emptying love (i.e., agape), as evinced in the Crucifixion.
In
his Codex Iuris Gentium (1693),
Leibniz writes, “Charity [i.e., caritas: so love, not “charity”] is a universal
benevolence, and benevolence the habit of loving or of willing the good. Love
then signifies rejoicing in the happiness of another.” Having a comfortable
habitat or environment that is at the very least habitable by humans is an
example of a good conducive to the happiness of others. Therefore, we justly
have a right to a world with adequate natural resources and an atmosphere that
is suitable to our survival and that of our progeny (i.e., be fruitful and
multiply). Yet we still haven’t reached a right of the environment, or nature,
itself.
Stretching
Leibniz’s theory of justice further, I suppose it can be said that the
environment has a right too—to be loved in a way that includes benevolence
directed to nature’s good—because nature also has being. Less than that of the
species formed in God’s image, to be sure, but the extent to which nature
exists, it can be said to have a right to be loved benevolently, which is to
say, with its good being willed by humans. Admittedly, the right justly enjoyed
by the environment is weaker than the right that we have to be treated
benevolently in furthering our good; we have more being, than does a tree, for
instance, because we are closer to
perfect being—being formed in God’s image. Nature, in other words, does not have
a soul. This religio-philosophical rationale is not explicit in Jesus’
rationale in the Gospels, however, so the pope’s religious rationale falls
short of justifying the existence of a right of the environment.
In short, the pope’s
speech at the U.N. may have included some hyperbole that plays on some common
misconceptions regarding Creation and us being created in God’s image, as well
as how these serve as a religious foundation for our species’ responsibility to
prevent global warming from worsening. Additionally, I contend that he undercut
his own religious rationale in that God urges our species to reproduce and have
dominion. Furthermore, the verses are mute on responsibility toward the
environment.
The pope might have also been
subtly undermined from a Christian standpoint more generally due to the
historical shift in the dominant theological attitude on whether wealth
necessarily involves or implies greed from “yes” to “no”—which is to say, from
anti- to pro-wealth.[32]
In going “up-stream” against the mandate of wealth from a Christian standpoint,
the pope doubtless had the heavy task of justifying his basis even to
Christians ensconced in the pro-wealth Christian
paradigm. For example, the Prosperity Gospel asserts that God rewards
people having true belief with material wealth, in addition to salvation. God
looks on the true belief that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior with such favor
as to bestow material blessings on the people who so believe. These Christians
may resist the prospect of the prosperity bestowed by God being subsequently
clipped back, even from a Christian rationale!
Moreover, I submit that the
use of a living myth (i.e., a religious narrative) as a rationale for changes
in the domains of government (i.e., public policy), business, and empirical
science (i.e., on the environment) is inherently problematic. Conflating the
Creation story with astrophysics is itself an instance of a category
mistake—treating two different categories as if they were the same, or at least
interpenetrable.
The larger issue here may thus be the propensity for our
species to over-reach when it is in the domain of religion, as if religion must
encompass everything or else be null and void. Even just within the religious
domain, we may be liable to make erroneous inferences without an operative
cognitive feedback loop of self-critique that could catch the over-reaches.
I have pointed in this essay to two scholars whose inferences regarding the Book of
Genesis and Psalm 8 are not supported by the respective texts. I also
highlighted the matter of category mistakes, wherein the religious domain is
conflated with another, qualitatively different (yet in some cases related)
domain. Myth, historical accounts, and natural science, for existence, can be
thought of as different languages with different purposes.
For instance, the
writers of the Gospels writing to record empirical history in writing their
respective faith narratives; this is
not to say that those writers could not have drawn on remembrances of
historical events and personages—but the writers would have felt at liberty to
invent or bend history to make a religious
point. To subject the resulting faith narratives to criteria for empirical
history would be erroneous. Nevertheless, the inference is commonly made—and
with the assumption of not being able to be wrong in making it. This presumed
entitlement tends to apply to religious beliefs, inferences, and assumptions in
general. This phenomenon utterly astounds me and perplexes my intellectual
curiosity into hyper-drive to explain it's sheer existence.
Even just within the religious
domain, we may be liable to make erroneous inferences without an operative
cognitive feedback loop of self-critique that could catch the over-reaches. In
this essay, I pointed to two scholars whose inferences regarding the Book of
Genesis and Psalm 8 are not supported by the respective texts. I also
highlighted the matter of category mistakes, wherein the religious domain is
conflated with another, qualitatively different (yet in some cases related)
domain. Myth, historical accounts, and natural science, for existence, can be
thought of as different languages with different purposes. For instance, the
writers of the Gospels were not intent on recording empirical history in
writing their respective faith narratives.
To subject these to historical criteria is therefore erroneous, and yet the
inference is commonly made—and with the assumption that the person cannot be
wrong in making it, or in regard to his or her religious beliefs, inferences,
and assumptions generally. This phenomenon utterly astounds me and perplexes my
intellectual curiosity.
In late September 2015, I read
that the Mormon Church’s hierarchy felt it necessary to put out a statement
warning their flock not to join the rising chorus of members who believed that
the “blood moon” lunar eclipse would signal the end of the world. Imagine
trying in exasperation to convince those members already convinced even just
that they may be wrong. The following
day, I spoke with a woman who believed firmly that her religious sect (or
denomination) in Christianity is not a religion (i.e., in the domain of
religion). I did not even try to suggest that a religious group is by
definition a religion or a subset thereof. I suspect that cognitive denial is
on overtime when it comes to the human brain applying itself to religion (or
spirituality). Faulty assumptions and inferences were also in the mix as she
presumed to know my religious faith and the related beliefs and experiences
only on the basis that I’m a scholar.
As a scholar, I endeavor
to go where the ideas lead me, rather than where I necessarily want to go
ideologically, politically, or theologically. For example, it might surprise
you to learn that I am very much in support of reducing carbon (and methane)
emissions, so I would welcome justifications. Staying on the fixed tracks of
logical reasoning and coupling idea to idea as if a theory were a train can
easily mean diverging from the relatively curvy tracks of ideological and religious
preferences, though of course not necessarily. Put another way, academic
arguments face some rigid constraints that distinguish theories from mere
opinions.
From my observations and study, I
hypothesize that the brain may be structurally deficient when it comes to handling
the phenomenon of religion (and perhaps only marginally better in entertaining
political beliefs). Like our propensity (and perhaps biological necessity) to
pollute, homo religiosis may be inherently vulnerable to going too far without realizing
it. Specifically, the human brain’s cognitive and judgmental means of
self-correction on religious matters may be seriously impaired, even as we
presume we cannot be wrong. We are, after all, created in God’s image—or so we
believe, perhaps all too conveniently.
In his bizarre existentialist
“novel of ideas,” The Unbearable
Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera pokes fun at our species' highly esteemed
status in the Book of Genesis.
“The very
beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him
dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written
by a man, not a horse. There is no certainty that God actually did grant man
dominion over other creatures. What seems more likely, in fact, is that man
invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the
cow and the horse. . . . But let a third party enter the game—a visitor from
another planet, for example, someone to whom God says, ‘Thou shalt have
dominion over creatures of all other stars”—and all at once taking Genesis for
granted becomes problematical.”[33]
If there be anyone suspecting
that a horse wrote the Book of Genesis, the cognitive impairment triggered as
the human brain partakes of the religious domain must be much more severe than even
I suspect. As an example of the impairment I have in mind, the type of certainty
implied by the word actually in the
passage above may be empirical (or even metaphysical) rather than that which
applies to religious myth. Kundera is questioning whether Yahweh is real
outside of being a character in religious writings that include narratives
(i.e., myth). In suggesting that the God in the Book of Genesis might not be
“real,” Kundera is treating religious myth as if it were interchangeable with
metaphysics and empirical science—the three domains being on the same “plane” and
thus potentially conflictual. In other words, the author goes beyond religion’s
native turf, overextending it into other domains, and thus commits category
mistakes. With such a propensity of looking into other yards, he may not even
recognize that which is native in religion’s own front yard. Nevertheless, his main
point in the passage is that convenience (and the tiny related matter of
self-interest) figures prominently in Genesis as it is written, and I would add
interpreted.
We can extend the point to
include how convenient it is for believers to swallow a faith narrative [i.e., mythic language] uncritically, even overreaching
in giving it dominion in other domains extrinsic to but related to religion, and
exaggerating the religious claims such that the embellishments become included
as truth, and thereby being consecrated as sacred presumably (though
problematically, according to Nietzsche) beyond the reach of reason.
Ironically,
the faulty inferences in religion are typically hidden under the religionist’s presumption
of infallibility (i.e., not being able to be wrong in matters of religious interpretation
and belief). These impairments in cognitive functioning may be the silent
killers of religion, and the most difficult obstacle for a religious rationale
as it seeks credibility in the public square. That is to say, as religious
discourse seeks credibility in the secular realm, in domains such as politics,
morality, metaphysics, astrophysics, and even economics. Treating such areas as
vassals and obsessing on them (e.g., on abortion and gay marriage in morality)
risks neglecting that which is in religion’s own domain.
Pruning religion back
may actually strengthen it, as its distinctive core will have room to breathe
and come to the fore. I submit that religious experience, whether in worship,
prayer, meditation, or communion with the divine via ritual preparation, is the
central plant in the domain of religion. Ironically, religious symbol, myth,
and even ritual can crowd out this sort of experience, which involves a
yearning for beyond the limits of human cognition and perception.
If the native fauna in
religion’s own back yard are indeed predominantly of the religious-experience
genus, and if such transcendent-oriented experience goes beyond the limits of
perception and cognition, then perhaps a focus on the experiencing itself—the
reference point lying beyond—might not be vulnerable to the cognitive
afflictions. Perhaps one of the self-defeating tendencies of religions has been
the tendency to load attributes onto the transcendent referent point—a point properly
having no area. In other words, transcendent experience may be more intense,
and free of the cognitive trappings, if the focus is on the yearning, or
transcending, itself rather than the nature of the object, which is by
definition beyond the limits of human perception and cognition anyway,
according to Plotinus. As Joseph Campbell said, the mask of eternity set in
front of a person may be the final obstruction to his or her full, or pure, religious experience.
Furthermore, an experience
that transcends our awareness of ourselves and our daily world may have as one
of its byproducts an increased sensitivity to experience of simply existing in
the world upon the person’s return to it. When the focus is on other people,
such automatic (rather than intentioned) enhanced sensitivity is, I submit,
none other than compassion—a desire to act to further another person’s good and
happiness out of empathy and caring. An enriched inclination to be
compassionate may be a natural result of regular “time outs” from even
experiencing being (in the world).
Jesus of the Gospels can be viewed as an example of the religious
experience/compassion relationship, as he prays a lot and is very
compassionate. The experience of distinctively religious yearning transcending the world is, I contend, a superior
source of compassion than any others that rely on intention. Ironically,
pruning the tree of religion back to within the domain of religion may be the
path less travelled back to justice as love manifesting as universal
benevolence for the good of each other as well as our species’ habitat on
planet Earth.
[1]
Nicole Winfield and Jennifer Peltz, “Pope
Beseeches World Leaders to Protect the Environment,” Associated Press,
September 25, 2015.
[2] Ibid.
[4] The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 2,
David N. Freedman, ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1992), p. 942.
[5]
Gen. 1:1-3. Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: The
Jewish Publication Society, 1985), p. 3.
[6]
Gen. 1:9-10. Tanakh, p. 3.
[7] Anchor Bible Dictionary, p. 943.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] In
the first volume of Old Testament
Theology, Gerhard von Rad distinguishes the attributions of divine
intervention from the empirical history. Reading the text, I had the sense of
the historical history being the bones and the faith history furnishing the
flesh. See Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament
Theology, Vol. 1 (New York: Harper, 1962).
[13]
Gen. 1:26-28. Tanakh.
[14]
Bruce Vawter, On Genesis: A new Reading
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), p. 59.
[15] Anchor Bible Dictionary, p. 944.
[16]
Psalm 8:5-7, in Tanakh, p. 1115.
[17] Richard Higginson, Transforming Leadership: A
Christian Approach to Management (SPEK: London, 1996), p. 7.
[18]
Psalm 8:2,4-7.
[19] Anchor Bible Dictionary, p. 943.
[20]
Ibid.
[21]
Ibid.
[22].
Augustine, Tractates on John: Books 28-54, 40.4, trans. John W. Rettig, Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 88 (Washington,
D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), p. 126.
[23]
From Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy:
An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its
Relation to the Rational, John W. Harvey, trans. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1958).
[25] Richard Higginson, Transforming Leadership,
p. 50.
[26]
Ibid.
[27]
Ibid.
[28] Matt 24:45.
[29] Higginson, Transforming
Leadership, p. 7.
[30]
Ibid. For a discussion of Jesus’ notion of stewardship applied to leadership
generally (and particularly in the business context), see Skip Worden, Christianized Ethical Leadership in
Business: The Servant, Shephard, and Steward (Seattle: Amazon, 2015).
It is a short booklet.
[31] Matt. 25:40.
[32]
Skip Worden, God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of
Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth (Seattle: Amazon, 2015).
This text is oriented to the general educated reader, including laypersons,
clergy, and business practitioners. The related book, Godliness and Greed, is an academic treatise oriented to scholars
and their students. Ironically, God’s
Gold is a better academic text as I had another chance to clear out errors
and re-think and clarify my points.
[33]
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness
of Being, Michael H. Heim, trans. (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), p.
286.
