Skepticism within Religion: A Prescription for Epistemological Humility

We tend to separate religion from skepticism, and we associate science with evidence even though of religion and science, only science is open to revision. Kierkegaard remarked that there is something absurd about religious belief, and yet a religionist should believe, and even without any evidence to back up the absurd. In fact, in the early-modern period in the West, religious belief was often assumed to have a higher epistemological status than philosophy and science even though the latter two are supported by the strictures of reason and the support of empirical evidence, respectively. I submit that it is precisely to the extent that religious beliefs are held to be certain that we should be modest about them in terms of what we can know. According to Peter Adamson, religions were once very open to skepticism, whereas the Aristotelian philosophers were certain of their epistemological certainty. Considering that varied assumptions have been applied by philosophers to their craft, they should be weary of their own claims of having achieved epistemological certainty. I contend that religionists should get back to being more tolerant of, and even invite skepticism, even within their own minds. Being humbly aware of falling short, both as an individual and as a species, of grasping true religious knowledge as it is, undeluded by our own limitations (e.g., opinions), is rarely the case as religionists make declarations as if with epistemological certainty.

In a talk, Peter Adamson asked, why does God allow us to be so ignorant? Why does God make us subject to error? It must be for some reason, Descartes thought. The problem of ignorance is akin to the problem of evil. Is the former just a sub-case of the latter? They may be the same problem. I submit that even if the two problems are related or relatable as being similar, the hatred that is endemic to evil is absent from ignorance. Stated on a more secular basis, ignorance does not necessarily come with, or spring from a bad attitude.

Nevertheless, Adamson viewed ignorance in religious terms. To Augustine, ignorance is due to free-will amid original sin. Also, the limited nature of creation is why knowledge is limited, hence ignorance exists. A religious basis exists for ignorance in terms of people tending to latch on to just some knowledge. Augustine’s Free Choice of the Will does not insist on grace because Augustine had not yet encountered Palagianism. In the text, Augustine is in dialogue with Evodius, a convert to Christianity. Adam and Eve were created in a state “between wisdom and foolishness.” In our fallen state, we are “born into ignorance, difficulty, and mortality.” “Evil is turning away eternal things, . . . and instead pursuing temporal things, which are perceived by means of the body.” Also, when desires rule over the mind, “the mind is dragged by inordinate desire into ruin and poverty . . .” This characterizes infants, according to Augustine. In short, ignorance, which is synonymous with foolishness, exists due to free-will in the state of original sin. But why then are Adam and Eve ignorant? To Augustine, this is like complaining about the world because it is not as good as heaven. Descartes wrote, “it is in the nature of a finite intellect to lack understanding of many things, and it is in the nature of a created intellect to be finite.” God certainly is not obligated to do more, and we are able to obtain knowledge. According to Adamson, Stoics and neo-Platonists, including Plotinus, have contended that individual evils are part of a good whole. According to Leibniz, the best of all possible worlds reflects this philosophy. The upshot is that human ignorance is just part of the best of all possible worlds that God could create, so we should not blame God for our own ignorance. I contend that it is important even when looking at scripture in a revealed religion to keep in mind that human ignorance is not exempted on our end. Therefore, humility in making religious claims, as if declarations, could greatly reduce the typical impious air of infallibility on our end. Even if revelation does in fact come from an intelligent being that transcends the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion, such news must travel through our fallible atmosphere before we can make sense of the distinctively religious truth.

It follows that religious accounting for human ignorance is not exhausted by one religion, or at least that in humility human epistemology should be open to alternative accounts. Even if one religion holds a monopoly on truth, the truth of this truth is not contained within our purview. Accordingly, in his talk, Peter Adamson discussed the religious account of Jainism, which is native to South Asia, with respect to ignorance. Umasvati (4^th to 5^th century), for example, author of the Tattvartha Sutra, was a Jain, so he was not a Brahmanic thinker. On the topic of the human self, Jain thought is that the Brahmanic and Buddhist philosophies are in part right and in part wrong. The Jains claim that there is an eternal, changing self. Liberation means freedom from the cycle of samsara and comes through “enlightened worldview, knowledge, and conduct,” so one is not trapped in a one-sided view. Being non-violent, Jains didn’t want to disagree too strenuously with others, but this explanation doesn’t fit with the polemics in some Jain texts. Also, the Jains criticize a person having one-sided knowledge. In addition to assertability, there is the notion of unassertability. Omniscience refers to knowledge of all substances in all their modes, past present, and future.” The path to knowledge is about elimination of karmic bondage. Growth in knowledge involves the steady falling away of one-sided thinking. Seeing the world from every perspective rather than from only one is thus to be sought.  Delusion is at the root of ignorance, and is associated with having a one-sided view; both are associated with karmic bondage, which keeps a person from liberation.

So rather than original sin from a Fall, which itself is premised on Creation, Adamson’s account of Jainism is that delusion is part of the unenlightened human condition, wherein we may tend to have one-sided views. Our knowledge and perspectives tend to be one-sided, and we are susceptible to being in bondage to them—even to being deluded that they are wholistic rather than partial. Both Augustine and Umasvati were skeptical concerning the pretensions of human knowledge. In his talk, Adamson added in Francis Bacon’s view, which is that Adam has perfectly functional cognitive faculties, whereas we, the fallen, do not. True knowledge is the province of divinity. I submit that religionists would greatly enhance their own credibility as purveyors of truth that is inherently sourced beyond our reach by humbly keeping in mind their own fallibility even and especially with regard to what is actually religious belief rather than knowledge, for if the content of religion were known, what place would faith have when the human mind enters into the religious domain?

The Scarlet and the Black

In the film, The Scarlet and the Black (1983), Gregory Peck and Christopher Plummer face off as Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty and Col. Herbert Kapper at the end of the film when the Nazi head of police in Rome abruptly changes his tune in challenging the Catholic priest no longer by threats, but by appealing to the priest’s faith of humble compassion applied even to one’s enemies so O’Flaherty will extend mercy to Kapper’s wife and children, who would otherwise fall into the hands of the Allied troops advancing into Rome. Before that dialogue, O’Flaherty and Pope Pius XII subtly debate whether the pope had been right in compromising with Hitler in order to keep the Catholic Church intact in Nazi Germany. The film can thus be viewed in light of the potential of the medium of film to convey and even thrash out contending theological ideas.

The full essay is at "The Scarlet and the Black."

Divine Presence in Liturgy and Compassion

The medium of film can treat organizational, societal, and global ethical problems either from one standpoint, which is appropriate if the assignment of blame for immoral conduct is clear (e.g., the Nazis), or by presenting both sides of an argument so to prompt the viewers to think about the ethically complex problem. This second approach is useful if it is not clear whether a character or a given conduct is unethical. When it is obvious which characters or actions are unethical, a film can still stimulate ethical reasoning and judgment by drawing attention to unethical systems as distinct from individuals and their respective conduct in the film. The film, Spotlight (2015), which is a true story, takes the position that Roman Catholic priests who molested and raped children in the Boston Archdiocese in Massachusetts behaved ethically. The dramatic tension in the film is set up when the chief editor of the Boston Globe, Liev Schreiber, tells the paper’s investigative “spotlight” managers that the story will not go to press until the system that enabled Cardinal Law and others to cover up many child-rapist priests by transferring them to other parishes is investigated. “We’re going after the system,” Liev says in keeping the story under wraps until the entire informal system that has enabled the rapists to continue to lead parishes.  

The full essay is at "Spotlight."

Mary

The film, Mary (2024), is pregnant with intimations of the theological implications of her unborn and then newly born son, Jesus. That story is of course well-known grace á the Gospels, and the theology of agape love associated with that faith narrative is at least available through the writings of Paul and many later Christian theologians. What we know of Mary is much less, given that her role in the Gospels is not central even though the heavy title, Mother of God, has been applied to her without of course implying that she is the source of God. The film, like the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church has done, endeavors to “evolve the myth” by adding to Mary’s story even though the additions are not meant to be taken as seriously as, for example, the Catholic doctrine that Mary is assumed bodily into heaven. The movie comes closest to the magisterium in suggesting that Mary’s birth is miraculous; the magisterium holds that Mary is born without sin, and that Jesus inherited this because of the Incarnation (i.e. God, rather than Joseph, impregnates Mary). Suffice it to say that the perception of myth as static is the exception rather than rule; it is natural for the human mind to work with myths such that they can evolve rather than take them as given in a final form or extent. This is not to say that we should focus on the faith narratives as if they were ends in themselves and thus unalterable; rather, as the film demonstrates, religious transcendence is of greater value.

The full essay is at "Mary."

Faith Seeking Understanding: On Religious Experience

On October 24, 2024, Pope Francis released his encyclical, Dilexit Nos (“He Loved Us), on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the letter, he recounts “Saint Gertrude of Helfta, a Cisterian nun, tells of a time in prayer when she reclined her head on the heart of Christ and heard it beating.”[1] She wondered why the Gospel of John does not describe a similar spiritual experience, and concluded that “the sweet sound of those heartbeats has been reserved for modern times, so that, hearing them, our aging and lukewarm world may be renewed in the love of Christ.”[2] The pope concludes in the letter that this might hold for our times too. I contend that Gertrud’s spirituality can speak to the current modern age, in which that of Gertrud—the thirteenth century—hardly seems modern, but not in terms of focusing on Jesus’ resurrected heart; instead, Gertrud can point us beyond the limits of marital-union imagery with Jesus to experience that transcends the use of imagery that may say more about us and our world than that which transcends even the limits of the human imagination. Turning to the criticisms of Gertrud’s spirituality (and intelligence) by Thomas Merton and William James, I intend to salvage Gertrud in order to uncover her spiritual maturity.

According to Thomas Merton, Jesus said to Gertrud of Helfta, a nun in thirteenth century Europe, “I wish your writings to be an irrefutable testimonial of my Divine Love in these latter days in which I plan to do good to many souls!”[3] Jesus even dictated to her the title for her book: Herald of Divine Love. His rationale was that, as he told the nun, “souls will find in [the book] a foretaste of the super-abundance of my divine love.”[4] The inclusion of latter days flags the nun’s claim that it was actually Jesus who was talking with her, rather than her hallucinating, for in no sense can we say in hindsight that the thirteenth century could be characterized as the latter days of Christianity. This objection is only relevant, however, to the metaphysician (i.e., is Jesus a real entity?), the psychologist (i.e., was Gertrud hallucinating?), and historian (i.e., was Gertrud speaking to the resurrected historical Jesus of the Gospels?). The cost in making these category mistakes—taking religion to reduce to another domain and thus its criteria—is the missed opportunity (hence opportunity cost) to study the nature or essence of divine love, for that is the distinctly religious content in Merton’s report. Although academic study is obviously not necessary for a person to be religious, I, unlike Merton, applaud Gertrud’s intellectual forays into “secular” knowledge because intelligence plus knowledge can facilitate a person’s religious development.

Merton wrote of Gertrud as having been “an intelligent child with a taste for secular literature. Unfortunately, however, this taste became too absorbing. Although in itself it was harmless, or even good, it grew to such proportions and came to occupy such an inordinate place in her life that it choked the development of grace in her soul. . . . She was completely devoured by this one passion for the pleasure she found in reading the literature of the world. Psychologically speaking, what had happened was a completely unhealthy exteriorization of her whole self. She had developed a habit of pouring herself out, wasting her energies in the pursuit of her own satisfaction.”[5] But after some visions of Jesus, she “passed from tepidity to the closest mystical intimacy with the Sacred Heart,” which, being Jesus’s “infinitely perfect love for us,” became “the one big reality of her life.”[6]

Merton’s jejune and petty characterization of the intellectual life is hardly fair. At Yale’s divinity school, where I studied theology (while studying philosophy, history, film and education in the liberal arts college), faith seeking understanding was the mantra for both the students and the “scholarly priests” on the faculty. Of course, no Yale student could ever be accused of being an over-achiever, but this does not necessarily mean that God is thereby slighted by taking studying seriously, for God can be reckoned as the ultimate source even of the sliver of potential knowledge that a human being can learn in a lifetime. In fact, academic study can lead to a more mature religiosity.

William James criticizes Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690), a European nun and mystic who emphasized the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as being “so feeble of intellectual outlook that it would be too much to ask of us, with our Protestant and modern education, to feel anything but indulgent pity for the kind of saintship which she embodies.”[7] So who is right on the religious verdict on intelligence—Merton or James? Surely it is not necessary to religiosity, and intelligence and accumulated knowledge can bolster arrogance if devoid of benevolentia universalis, or simple kindness, as is all too common at Yale and Harvard in New England—far indeed from the Midwest. Even so, to love ideas is not in itself to hate God or reckon oneself to be a deity among mere, stupid mortals. It may be said of intelligence applied to religion that Satan is cleaver and yet God is omniscient (i.e., all-knowing). For us mere mortals stuck in between, ideas about the world and especially about God and even religion as a distinct domain can facilitate our religious development toward maturation. As Paul wrote, “When I became a man, I put away childish things.”[8]

William James had no patience for stymied, or jejune spirituality. He contrasts Gertrud’s “proofs of Christ’s partiality for her undeserving person” through assurances “of his love, intimacy, and caresses and compliments of the most absurd and puerile sort” with the capability of the modern religious person to get past the idea of God as a dispenser of “personal favors.”[9] I don’t believe James was being fair to the pious nun, for she was very mature in terms of religious development.

Gertrud’s use of partiality in describing her relationship with Jesus does not mean that she felt superior or better off with respect to other people; rather, the favoring she perceived from Jesus allowing his “visible presence” to show to her has to do with her own unworthiness, given “such disorder and confusion” within her that “was no fitting dwelling for [Jesus].[10] Given her self-knowledge of her “stiff-necked obstinacy” and her “tower of vanity and worldiness,” favor had to do with the sheer grace that afforded her the privilege of having visions of Christ.[11] “I must confess in very truth that this was a grace given freely and in no way deserve,” she wrote before noting that “severe punishments” were what she deserved.[12] Her sense of being favored was that by grace alone such punishments were obviated and even replaced by visions of Jesus. This had nothing to do with being favored over other people, and as a self-declared wretch, she surely would not have presumed to be favored over anyone. James comes off as a cold and resentful or at least biased member of the faculty at Harvard, and thus hardly alone there, but very far indeed from Gertrud and other mature religious folk whose humility warrants partiality.

Secondly, James neglects Gertrud’s goal being to see God’s face and paradoxically to be in God and thus in God’s love, understood as agape, or self-emptying (divine) love, which goes beyond marital connotations associated with her yearning for Jesus. Circling back to Merton, we can say that Gertrud used her God-given intellect polished by years of study at the monastery, to transcend the bridal language she uses to describe the anthropomorphic marital love between her and Jesus by going on to characterize her goal of blissful union with God, which is mystically higher than merely being married to a manifestation of God.

Although Gertrud antedates David Hume’s seventeenth-century warning of the human mind’s inherent susceptibility to remaking God in our own image by anthropomorphizing familiar ornaments onto the pure idea of divine simplicity, I suspect Gertrud was able to use her studies and her innate intelligence to figure out the limitations of human analogies such as marriage and even erotic language, which compromise God being wholly other, and thus not even a being in the sense that we think of beings.[13]

Describing the liturgically-oriented fifth spiritual exercise in Gertrud’s program, two scholars distinguish Gertrud’s marital (and erotic) analogy wherein a nun “in a wedding dress [and] with a spousal dowry”[14] has is spiritually (and liturgically) married to Jesus, “the immortal spouse,”[15] from the telos, or ultimate goal in the following passage: “Having concluded the nuptial contract with the Lord, the mystic is burning for the kiss of her immortal spouse, for the wedding embrace in the innermost bedchamber of the heart. With the Lord as husband, the offspring of this marital union will be perfect love; it will mean becoming one spirit with God.”[16] I contend that the offspring transcends the marriage union as well as the marital and sexual language.

Gertrud was able to conceptualize her telos as an indwelling union in the divine, which is a closer and less humanlike union than is implicit in her vision of Jesus “leaning towards her like a sweet lover, and giving to her soul the softest kiss.”[17] It is important not to take even such sensual language too literally. According to two scholars, “When Gertrud thus focuses on Christ’s glorified human nature, she does not emphasize the belief that human nature in general is restored through the incarnation of Christ. She often distinguished between the ‘rotten body’ and the spirit. The body-soul dichotomy remains unreconciled in the Spiritual Exercises.”[18] This is only a relative or temporary problem, however, as Gertrud believed that at death, a person can flow back into God,”[19] which obviates even any relationship basis of union by transcending into God as love. Being in God transcends having a relationship with God, and it is precisely by one’s intellect and learning that a person can figure this out. Circling back to James, it can be said that whereas wanting to be married to Jesus can involve a desire for preferential treatment, though there is no evidence that Gertrud thought she alone could be Jesus’s spouse, indwelling in divine, pure (i.e., selfless) love transcends wanting preferential treatment.

With regard to the domain of religion as sui generis (i.e., distinct and of its own type of domain), although God by definition in being omniscient and transcendent is not limited to human systems of logic, it doesn’t hurt to be able to prune off wayward, human, all too human branches of even theological ratiocination as incoherent or really of another domain; otherwise, the human mind’s susceptibility to superstition and emotional enthusiasm in matters of religion could take over. As a prime candidate for pruning, Merton insists that the suddenness of Gertrud’s profound change “only emphasizes the fact that it was utterly beyond her own powers and was a pure gift of God.”[20] His assumption that a sudden change in a person cannot happen or has never happened before in a person without grace, or that sudden, momentous change is somehow contrary to human nature, is specious reasoning. It is similar to concluding that because a sick person prayed to John Paul II after his death and then gotten well without a medical reason (as if medicine were complete), the former pope must be a saint even though he did not act sufficiently on reports of child-rapes by priests and coverups by their respective bishops. Positive correlation is not sufficient to attest to causation. This logical point is often lost to the fervor of religious ideology.

It is also by intellect that we can come to realize the need to uproot the exogenous plants from the religious garden so we can see, understand, and experience the innately religious fauna that has been quietly growing underneath. Ignorance, superstition, and enthusiastic fervor can otherwise lead a person to claim to know rather than believe something that is a matter of faith. This fallacy, which involves reducing religion to some other domain (e.g., empirical science), involves an epistemological category mistake regarding what can be known. Subjecting a faith-claim to the verdict of what can be known from a historical account, or inferred from the result of an “arm chair” psychological analysis, for example, can be thwarted by previous study in logic and philosophy in general. Ironically, such “secular” studies protect the domain of religion from the encroachments of other domains as well as from overstepping onto other domains with an overriding arrogance of superiority based on a religious-domain-only belief claim.

From another shore, Merton saw fit to psychoanalyze Gertrud’s voracious appetite for knowledge, and William James claimed that “the revelations of Christ’s sacred heart” were Margaret Mary’s “hallucinations of sight, touch, and hearing.”[21] The modern mind will doubtless give credence to the rendering of religious experience into psychological terms. In 2023, I attended some lectures of a class at Yale on the results of empirical studies in psychology on religious beliefs. Generally speaking, empirical social-science tests can contribute to philosophy and the subject-matter of religious studies, though it is important to remember that the faith claims themselves do not suffer a consequent loss of validity in terms of religious meaning.

In the 1980s, in reaction to the historical critical method that had emerged in nineteenth-century Europe, Han Frei, a Yale professor of theology, claimed in his text, Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative, that historical questions of, and, one could add doing psychologically analysis on, characters and events in faith narratives such as the four Gospels comes at the cost of grasping the religious meaning in the stories. In other words, let the stories speak to you; don’t interrupt them to get behind the stories.

Just as Donald Trump was deemed an easy target by American psychologists when he was running for U.S. president in 2024 even though none of those “educated” psychologists had subjected him to psychological tests, let alone even met him in person, so too it must be easy as well as tempting to analyze the religious experiences of people whose religious sensitivity enables even elaborate descriptions of such experiences. Applying psychological analyses to nuns who lived many centuries back and claiming that the results trump their respective religious experiences is not only fraught with difficulties that could render the results invalid, but also superimposes another domain onto that of religion without justification. A good education in the liberal arts and a sharp intellect can critically examine such unsubstantiated assumptions in what has become known as critical thinking.

Religion, I submit, should be treated as a distinct domain, and thus with its own sort of meaning, experience, and criteria. This is not to say that the domain cannot intersect or has never intersected with other domains, such as history and psychology; James may be right about the specious ontological basis of visions; Jesus referring to the thirteen century as “latter days” belies Gertrud’s claim that an entity outside of Gertrud’s mind was speaking to her in her vision. Even so, for people interested in the religious domain, whether in regard to faith or a resulting experience or practice, religious meaning is the gold to be dug up, whether or not it is attached to a historical event has come out of a psychological state wherein the contents of a vision are not themselves empirical; the religious meaning is still real in its own sense, and thus such meaning can be related to religious creeds, doctrines, and systemic theologies by criteria innate to the religious domain rather than superimposed by another domain. Not only is it the case that secular knowledge and an analytical and logical intelligence need not be a threat to religion; a good liberal-arts and sciences education can actually facilitate a person’s religious maturation and prune off the dead wood in the religious domain as well as overhanging branches from trees growing in other domains. 

---

1. Pope Francis, Dilexit Nos, October 24, 2024, para. 98.
2. Ibid.
3.  Thomas Merton, “Saint Gertrude, Nun of Helfta, Germany,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 38.4 (2003): 452. Merton cites  Héraut 2.10.5.
4. Ibid.  Merton cites Héraut, Prologue.
5. Ibid., p. 453.
6. Ibid., pp. 454, 457, 456.
7. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1902), p. 262.
8. 1 Cor. 13:11. Paul writing about spiritual growth.
9. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 262.
10. Gertrude of Helfta, The Herald of Divine Love, Margaret Winkworth, ed. and trans. (New York: Paulist Press), p. 96.
11. Ibid., pp. 95-6.
12. Ibid., p. 97.
13. Pseudo-Dionysius makes this point in his sixth-century writings. Moreover, he wrote that God goes beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and sensibility (i.e., emotions). God, in other words, goes beyond the erotic language that Augustine applies to his yearning for God in Confessions.
14. Gertrud of Helfta, Gertrud the Great of Helfta: Spiritual Exercises, Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis, trans. Cistercian Fathers Series, No. 49 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publication, 1989), verse 227.
15. Ibid.
16. Gertrud Lewis and Jack Lewis, “Introduction,” in Gertrud of Helfta, Gertrud the Great of Helfta: Spiritual Exercises, Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis, trans. Cistercian Fathers Series, No. 49 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publication, 1989), p. 15.
17. Gertrud of Helfta, Gertrud the Great of Helfta: Spiritual Exercises, Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis, trans. Cistercian Fathers Series, No. 49 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publication, 1989), p. 263.
18. Gertrud Lewis and Jack Lewis, “Introduction,” in Gertrud of Helfta, Gertrud the Great of Helfta: Spiritual Exercises, Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis, trans. Cistercian Fathers Series, No. 49 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publication, 1989), p. 8.
19. Gertrud of Helfta, Gertrud the Great of Helfta: Spiritual Exercises, Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis, trans. Cistercian Fathers Series, No. 49 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publication, 1989), verse 285.
20. Thomas Merton, “Saint Gertrude, Nun of Helfta, Germany,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 38.4 (2003): 454.
21. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 261.

Living Ritual

I contend that for a religious ritual to be “alive” is for it to be responsive to spiritual truths as they are played out by or among the people who have gathered even just as spectators rather than participants. In liturgy, the readings and the ritual itself can stimulate a spiritual state of mind (un état de l’esprit—this last word alone signifying the connection), which in turn can even unconsciously prompt conduct that can be observed to be religious (or spiritual) in nature. For a ritual to be alive is for it to incorporate such conduct in order to draw attention to the underlying religious truth manifesting in one or more persons. The antagonist in this drama is the strict literalist who goes inflexibly by the letter of the ritual’s laws rather than the spirit thereof, ignoring that only the spirit rises and thus is capable of lifting humans in general and in a liturgical context in particular.

The full essay is at "Living Ritual."

Turning a Church into an Ideological Billboard

By lapsing headlong into partisan politics, especially on controversial matters such as “social issues,” otherwise known as “culture wars,” a congregation unwittingly, and, from a religious standpoint, arbitrarily (i.e., dogmatically) constrains (i.e., limits) its potential membership unnecessarily because people who would be open to and even relish the religious dimension but are opposed ideologically to the partisan stance on a political, or social, issue would not be likely to attend the ostensibly religious services. No one likes to feel ideologically uncomfortable or, even worse, despised. This is particularly likely when a congregation turns its building into an ideological billboard. I suspect that this is a distinctly American phenomenon (i.e., taking things too far). Behind the extravagance lies the sin of pride, wherein a person erroneously believes that he or she cannot be wrong ideologically. This presumption of ideological (or political) infallibility carries with it the erroneous perspective of one’s partisan stance representing a whole (i.e., truth) rather than being partial, as with respect certain values being privileged above others.

A Unitarian-Universalist "Church" wherein a few causes of political activism take pride of place, replacing religious faith and choking off tolerance. 

Perhaps it is only natural to prefer that other people line up with one’s own beliefs, whether religious or political/ideological. The presumptions of inerrancy and completeness, or truth, typically undergird this self-centered perspective. It is easy to conflate one’s own ideological stance on partisan “social issues,” such as abortion, gay marriage, and even stem-cell research, with religious truth even though the latter transcends human ideology. In other words, whereas truth has the property of wholeness, ideological positions are partial, hence partisan politically. Conflating the two, a congregation can even usurp its distinctly religious message by focusing on political issues of the so-called American “culture wars.” Beyond taking up space in sermons, ideological positions can become totalitarian, even in turning a church building into a billboard advertising the partisan stance on a privileged social issue.

A Methodist church smothered in ideological political causes that punctuate even the liturgy and constrain church membership. The photos below are of the same church.

In Christian churches, the emphasis on partisan stances can bring with it a certain intolerance, and even hostility if resentment of an opposing partisan position is fueling the importance being placed on the favored stance. Sometimes the hostility can be quite simple, as the partisans often are so fine-tuned to picking up on subtle cues on whether another person is in the same ideological camp. Even the words a person uses can be picked up by others who are bent on judging for themselves. By 2023, the politically-correct camp had been dubbed “woke,” and an “anti-woke” opposition had become more vocal in some American cultures. This in turn may have intensified efforts by “woke” congregations to go so far as to turn their church buildings into billboards.

In visiting one church, of the Methodist sect (or denomination) of Christianity, that had so many gay flags in the social hall that their sheer number seemed to imply an ideological vehemence: You had better agree with us! The excessiveness itself sent a message. The rainbow colors were literally wrapped around stone pillars on the exterior of the building, and during June several gay flags were flying on the church grounds. Again, the excessiveness itself sent a message, but at this level the message was as much psychological as it was ideological and partisan. The liturgy was not exempt, as the prospect of building up to a religious experience was broken up by commercials. One announced, “We are all in favor of reparations” going to a church of an unmentioned denomination whose members were Black Americans. How does the speaker know that everyone in the sanctuary agreed on that controversial, political issue? I was not surprised that most of the seats were empty. This is the true religious cost, which economists would call an opportunity cost: the benefit foregone by making a choice.

The choice to privilege partisan political issues comes at a cost in religious terms. People who might otherwise visit or even regularly attend a church whose liturgy, rooms, and building are placed in the service of particular political stances on “social issues” will bypass the church if those stances are not ideologically palatable, especially if the sense is that they are being “shoved down their throats.”

Presumably a faith message is important at Christian churches, and it does not reach those people who happen to hold the contrary partisan stance on a privileged social issue. Congregations that succumb to the hegemony (i.e., dominance) of partisan political issues unwittingly self-weaken faith-outreach. To believe that people must have the “correct” partisan stance on ideological issues to be saved by Jesus Christ is to use an exogenous litmus test, or “gate,” to arbitrarily (i.e., dogmatically) limit the saving of souls because in the Gospels Jesus does not specify that people must have certain ideological stances to be saved. In fact, Jesus distances himself from the zealots, who incorrectly interpret Jesus’ version of the Kingdom of God as coming forth externally, through conflict, rather than in individual transformations of the heart.

Because an orientation to contentious ideological issues tends to involve hostility towards people who disagree, and even anger simply because some people do disagree, a congregation oriented to partisan positions may not be conducive to the spread of the Kingdom of God. At most, the kindness or compassion of a partisan is usually limited to ideological compatriots, whereas Jesus preaches that kindness, and even love, be extended to a person’s detractors and even enemies. This is the true cost when a Christian congregation becomes unduly and overwhelmingly partisan, whether on the “right” or “left” of the ideological political spectrum. Partisan “love” is partial, whereas neighbor love is wholistic, as is truth itself.

Sure enough, after a month of being in the choir of a very ideological Methodist church, I ceased my association with that church. I had found that there were too many bosses in that choir, one of which apparently didn’t like me, for he said before we were to sing on a Palm Sunday, “Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” I countered that perhaps someone should tell me that I don’t talk enough when something needs to be said. He then ordered me to “line up” even though the choir was not yet lining up at the back of the sanctuary. That that member of the choir literally had keys to the building—but not to the Kingdom!—meant that I would be facing an uphill battle, and are Christian churches really the place for battles anyway? So I kicked the “dirt off my sandals,” upzipped my robe, and went grocery shopping rather than sang that Sunday. I had previously picked up on hostility from some other members, including two in the choir who had scolded me for not standing on a certain step during a practice. “You stand there!” one pointed. It was barely a step. That congregation was not fertile ground for a mustard seed to take root—too much stone draped in ideological flags.

At least for the Methodists the claim can be made that matters of faith can be distinguished from a social ideology, so there is hope that the adoption of a transcendent reference point could be used from which to view the dominant ideology and the related political activism as partial, and even as human, all too human. The litmus test for inclusion could therefore be based in religious faith rather than on a position on a “social issue.” One of the benefits of a faith-perspective is that human artifacts cannot be placed that the center of our existence. Humility can thus replace arrogance. This is not possible where the transcendent nature of distinctly religious faith has been vacated and replaced with the ideological content of political activism.

The Unitarian Universalist “religion” accomplished such a transition in the twentieth century. Originally, Unitarianism, as preached by Emerson, was a rejection of the Christian Trinity from within that religion. By 1980, humanism had become the dominant strain in Unitarian-Universalist societies. My parents were such humanists, and my limited exposure to a UU congregation as a teenager left me with the perplexing question of how a religious organization could survive without being religious. My mother later told me that I used to protest the hypocrisy as a young teenager. Later in life, when visiting UU congregations, I found that the rejection of religion had taken hold, and in its place, the human ideology of political correctness (or “woke”) had pride of place. One UU minister insisted that religious Unitarianism was in vogue. Unfortunately, he mistook the term religious. For example, he insisted that egalitarian economic systems are sacred. He quickly closed himself off from being open-minded when I suggested that to regard a human construction as sacred is self-idolatrous. This is the message of Moses when in returning from the mount he discovers the worship of a golden calf. So too, a person who “knows” that one’s political ideology on social issues is nothing short of truth is essentially engaging in self-worship. The evisceration of a transcendent dimension cuts off a means by which such a person can be humble with respect to one’s own ideology and thus open to the possibility that a person can be wrong, and is at most partial and fallible. In succumbing to temptation, the UU organization closed down a place for Christians who believe in Jesus’ preaching yet do not accept that he is the Son of God.

By 2023, much had been written about the ideological polarization of the American people. That divide had reached congregations on the “right” and “left,” just as segregation had taken hold. Religious faith is not reduceable to an ideological position; rather, the former transcends the latter. To the extent that ideological advocacy is salient in religious congregations, especially spread across their respective buildings, a dearth of religious faith can be assumed. In the most extreme cases, the ideological positions masquerade as the proper content of religious faith. The “faithful” become like gods on Earth, and the societal bipolarity becomes even more difficult to smooth over in reconciliation. 

False Christians as the Power-Elite of a Church: A Case of Human Arrogance

In what begins as a story about Bess, a mentally-ill (or cognitively challenged) woman who marries Jan, an oilman, Breaking the Waves (1996) is a film that ends on a distinctively religious note that is nothing short of miraculous. The viewer is meant to be skeptical concerning the authenticity of Bess's spirituality, especially as seems delusional in having two-way conversations with God. Even as one of her prayerful petitions seems perhaps of having been granted when Jan returns from the oil rig to Bess, albeit with Jan paralyzed from an accident, the overwhelming view of the characters in the story, including Jan, is that, as Bess's physician asks Bess, "Do you really think you have so much power?" Bess is blaming herself for Jan's serious medical condition. She could reply, "It's God's power, not mine," but she is slow. Yet she can love, unconditionally. When Jan urges Bess to sleep with other men then tell him about the experiences so he will have the will to live, Bess complies and is summarily kicked out of her church. Even Bess's mother, with whom Bess lives, locks the door. The church elders and the minister are judgmental hypocrites who presume that they can consign a person to hell. Even so, Bess's trust in God as a matter of faith continues, and she sacrifices her life by willingly submitting herself to a sadistic sailor so that God might then heal Jan. Meanwhile, the unbelievers are trying to get Bess to a mental hospital, given her "delusion." On the morning after Jan and his friends on the rig drop Bess's body into the sea, one of the friends wakes Jan to come outside and hear bells ringing even as radar shows nothing out there. The viewer now knows not only that God performed a miracle on Jan, for he is walking around and even back on the rig, but also that Bess's faith is vindicated as heaven's bells miraculously are chiming. The burial followed by bells ringing at sunrise reflects the story of Jesus' passion. The overall message seems to be that we mortals don't know as much as we think we do about God's ways, even if we do happen to have power in the governance of a church.

The full essay is at "Breaking the Waves."

Church Services during the Coronavirus Pandemic: Defying the State as Anti-Christian

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic during the Christian Holy Week in 2020 brought up the contentious relationship between church and state in at least the United States. Some of the American governments banned any in-person worship services even on the festival of Easter, while other governments merely discouraged such gatherings. Most churches had already stopped their weekly services, but a few outliers insisted even on having large gatherings on Easter Sunday. Those clerics tended to view themselves as defending their faith as if in an epic battle against a tyrannical state. I contend that such clerics were over-reacting—acting as if they were fighting a battle in which martyrdom might be required. The sheer entrenchment was excessive. Next, I provide some background on the Christian position on government authority, after which I will look at two cases.

In the Gospel of John (19:11), Jesus says to Pilote, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above.” In the synoptic Gospels, Jesus tells Pharisees and Herodians, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”[1] Jesus recognizes the purview of the state, and thus in following governmental law, yet he considers the only authority bearing on him to be from God. The authority over him comes only from on high because he is the Son of God, and yet he does not take on the Roman authorities by being a political zealot, for instance, even though such a role could be expected from someone with only heavenly authority over him. Yet give to Caesar the things that are his.

Caesar can have Jesus’ body, but not his soul. The latter is what counts to him, so although earthly authorities can take his body, real authority pertains to his soul as it endures after the death of the body. Easter proclaims that even the body, transformed, can survive death. In going to the Upper Room after his resurrection, Jesus walks through a door but is hungry and asks for fish. The nature of the transformed body transcends the limits of human concepts and perception.  Faith thus suggests that civil authorities do not really have power over bodies that survive death. A firm belief in an afterlife thus supports Jesus’ claims on authority. Jesus does not deny Caesar’s authority, but simply regards it as not really mattering.

Paul’s view is in sync. “Every person is to be in subjection to the government authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.”[2] Obey the government, for its authority ultimately comes from the only real authority, God. This does not of course imply that government authorities are semi-divine beings, hence the objection can arise as to tyrannical uses of power. Namely, is such power also from God? Clearly not. Henry VIII of England was wrong, which I submit demonstrates just how flawed the doctrine of the divine right of kings is even in theory. Facing a tyrannical use of government authority, Jesus submits his body to Caesar anyway. Jesus is a religious rather than a political reformer, and his task was soteriological (i.e., salvation) rather than to make a political protest. His job is thus not to take on governments.

Therefore, the refusal of many early Christians to sacrifice to Roman deities, albeit from religious motivation, defied Jesus’ preachment to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Being forced to sacrifice as a political act in the Roman Empire was based on authority that really doesn’t matter (as only God’s authority matters), so making the sacrifices would not have made those Christians worshippers of idols. So their martyrdoms were unlike that of Jesus, and were not based on his teachings or example. Similarly, the Japanese Christians (and western priests) tortured until they stepped on a metal or stone engraving of Jesus were not renouncing their faith. Woe that such a trifle act could destroy a faith, even if they had stepped on the engravings in free will (which they did not).

I submit that pastors motivated to defy government orders or guidelines prohibiting religious gatherings, including worship services, during the coronavirus pandemic could not look to Jesus as their role model. “If Caesar says close down, then close down,” might be Jesus’ reply to those pastors. “It doesn’t change anything in your relationship to God.” Besides, Jesus might add that alternatives exist, such as online services, which many churches had gone to before the government guidelines and prohibitions on groups of over so many people meeting in person. It is easy to become excited in fighting for a firmly held belief or faith and to perceive government as attacking, but I submit that setting up such a dynamic says more about the pastor than Christianity.

Kentucky’s chief executive Andy Beshear said on Good Friday, “I think we’re down to seven churches statewide that are thinking about having an in-person service.”  He announced that any “residents attending a mass-gathering—including church services—will be forced to self-quarantine for 14 days.”[3] Acting on behalf of public health in Kentucky, Beshear was hardly attacking the Christian faith. In fact, he was a deacon at his church, and he frequently talked about his own faith while promoting guidelines on physical distancing. “I have never been as sure of anything in my faith as I am in this,” he said, “We must protect each other.”[4] Brotherly and sisterly love, or neighbor love. According to Leibniz, such wise love, manifesting as universal benevolence, is justice. Caritas sapientis seu benevolentia universalis. Such benevolence reaches even strangers, unlike Cicero’s brand of concentric circles of ethical duty.

On the week before the Christian Holy Week, a Florida sheriff arrested Pastor Rodney Brown for continuing to hold in-person worship services at his megachurch in Tampa. Brown claimed that he would not close his church until the End Times begin. In keeping with his theological timeline, he was violating a government order “directing residents to remain at home effective March 27 except for ‘essential services’—including trips to the grocery store, the doctor’s office and the pharmacy.”[5] Attending church was not listed as an essential service. Indeed, Jesus of the Gospels says, “when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret.”[6] So the pastor did not have to put people’s lives at risk in order for them to continue their relations with Jesus. Furthermore, the state’s strong interest in public health during the pandemic justified the government in keeping open only essential services. As Christians could pray in their homes, consistent with the state's stay-at-home order, means that attending church services was not essential to their religious lives. Besides, the Christians would have already believed that they had been saved theologically due to the vicarious, self-emptying sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross. Brown's religious-persecution complex even to the point of contemplating martyrdom by incorrectly viewing it as following Jesus was overdone, perhaps for attention-deriving effect.

Pastor Tony Spell in Louisiana also mistakenly believed that it was necessary for his congregants to worship even at close range in his church in order to get back to Jesus. "I've just got to get to Jesus. . . . Come on America, let's get back to Jesus," Brown said in his church on April 26, 2020 in defiance of the government's stay-at-home order that barred such gatherings and his own house-arrest.[7] Flouting even his own arrest points to a criminal mindset that refuses to recognize, not to mention respect, laws as a constraint. Jesus of the Gospels is a religious reformer, not a criminal zealot seeking to defy the Roman Empire in order to bring it down or at least out of Judea. Give unto Caesar what is his, for he cannot have power over souls. He can, however, has power over bodies, and Jesus does not contest this in the Passion story. Jesus is quite obviously oriented to the after-life, whereas the defying pastors seemed more oriented to this world and particularly in its squabbles. 

---

[1] Mark 12:16-17; Luke 20:25; Matthew 22: 21. All passages quotes here are from the King James Bible.

[2] Romans 13:1.

[3] Samuel Chamberlain, “Kentucky Governor Threatens 14-Day Quarantine for Going to Mass Gatherings, including Church Services,” FoxNews.com, April 10, 2020 (accessed April 11, 2020).

[4] Ibid.

[5] Daniel Burke, “Police Arrest Florida Pastor for Holding Church Services Despite Stay-at-Home Order,” CNN.com, March 30, 2020.

[6] Matthew 6:6
[7] Danielle Wallace, "Louisiana Pastor Breaks House Arrest to Hold Sunday Service amid Coronavirus Stay-at-Home Orders," Foxnews.com, April 26, 2020 (accessed same day).

The Essence of Leadership

In The Essence of Leadership, leadership itself is reformulated in such a way that what emerges—the essence of leadership—is distinct from related phenomena, including management, presiding, and mentoring. This is not to say, however, that leadership bears no relation to strategy—hence the complex concept of strategic leadership, which is not without risks. Leadership itself contains risks, which a focus on the essence of leadership, rather than, for instance, taking leadership as simply about having influence, can arguably minimize. Such risks include the cult of the leader, to which charisma and attributions of heroism are especially susceptible, and the distorting impact of ideology, such as in Burns’ version of transformational leadership. Shaking out the risks and distinguishing leadership as a unique phenomenon are ways of pointing back to the essence of leadership, which applies in virtually any culture. That is, the essence is cross-cultural. Taking comparative religion as a stand-in for cultures, I demonstrate that the essence of leadership can be informed by Taoist, Buddhist, and Judeo-Christian principles.

Source: The Essence of Leadership

Politically Partisan Clergy: A Cleft in the Bright Side of Faith

Citing religious liberty, President Trump signed an executive order on May 4, 2017, the National Day of Prayer, “directing the Internal Revenue Service to avoid cracking down on political activity by religious organizations.”[1] In particular, clergy could then endorse political candidates without fear that their respective churches would lose their tax-exempt status. It is a bit extreme that such status would be lost simply because a pastor mentions a preference for a political candidate or a particular public policy, for such references are not integral or central to a clergy’s message, which is religious in nature. Nevertheless, the risk of religious faith being usurped by the political merits an attentive watchfulness, at the very least.

Outwardly, religious content can unwittingly, and without notice even to the religionist oneself, give way to political agendas, especially during an election season. In fact, such agendas—in particular, the ideologies—can “rebrand” themselves into religious garb such that even the endorsement of a political candidate can be presumed to be religious in nature. When the U.S. president signed the order, for example, he said, “For too long, the federal government has used the power of the state as a weapon against people for faith, bullying and even punishing Americans for following their religious beliefs.”[2] The implication is that endorsing a candidate is such a belief. With the distended notion of religious belief comes less room for, or a proportionate decrease in the genuine article.

 A more subtle downside—one that is actually even more likely—has to do with the impact of even occasional politically-partisan statements on the still-dominant religious ethos and message. The overlay of a cross-cutting partisanship compromises the coherence in the primary partisan axis. Don’t despair; this statement needs some unpacking.

Feuerbach (1804-1872), a European philosopher, uncovered a seldom-recognized side of faith by analyzing Christianity. Within the faithful, the partisan nature of faith is obscured by the unity of the faithful. The prejudiced nature of faith—its “(d)ogmatic, exclusive, scrupulous particularly”—does not play out among the faithful, except as it cuts off part of itself as heretics.[3] Far from being universally applicable, love gives way only within the confines of the faithful. “He is not for Christ is against him; that which is not chiristian is antichristian.”[4] It would be to dishonor God to love those who dishonor God. “Hence faith has fellowship with believers only; unbelievers it rejects. It is well-disposed towards believers, but ill-disposed towards unbelievers.”[5] Even as believers actually harbor hatred toward the disbelievers—belief being presumed to be decisive to faith—they overlook their ill-will and thus that in faith itself “lies a malignant principle.”[6] Within the faithful, it does not come into play, so faith is perceived as wholly salubrious—without a back side. Keeping disbelievers at bay ensures the apparent congruence of love and faith. Yet if another sort of partisanship is introduced within a congregation—such as political partisanship—a cleft arises such that can break up the serenity of the love of faith. Put another way, introducing political disagreement disrupts the agreement that exists within the faithful. The cost in endorsing partisan causes or candidates is in terms of the original domain—that of religion. The malignant principle of faith and political anger at the opposition are one and the same; introducing a political cleft into a congregation resonates with the partisan nature of faith, yet even as the latter can remain invisible from within the confines of the faithful.

So clergy in the pulpit should think twice before lapsing into the political arena, even as mere partisan mouthpieces. In addition to the opportunity cost of foregone attention to religious matters, the offense engendered among the faithful creates a rift on the bright side of faith that detracts from it unnecessarily.

---

[1] Michael D. Shear, “Trump Eases Political Activity by Religious Organizations,” The New York Times, May 4, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 251.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid, 252.

[6] Ibid.

Kierkegaard’s Socratic Task: Delivering a Christianity of Inward Faith

Kierkegaard learned from Socrates the value of (being) the single individual, especially in the subjective pursuit of truth. Before Socrates, truth (and morality) was to be found externally, in culture and tradition, and thus in an objective sense. Kierkegaard learned from Socrates the value of the individual’s subjectivity in the pursuit of truth; that truth can be internal without devolving into relativist nihilism. The Danish philosopher appropriated what he had learned from Socrates methodologically in the self-declared “Socratic task” of auditing “the definition of what it is to be a Christian.”[i] Behind Kierkegaard’s authorship is “the task of becoming a Christian.”[ii] This applies to helping others—as a Socratic midwife!—to become Christian and, relatedly, to Kierkegaard’s own willingness accept the inexpressible grace of being sacrificed by the Danish Church—those self-declared Christians actually oriented to money. Kierkegaard ironically exclaims, “I am not a Christian.”[iii] Such irony! “I do not call myself a Christian,” Kierkegaard wrote strategically, “but I can make it manifest that the others are that even less.”[iv] Herein lies the acceptance of being sacrificed in the interest of truth. Kierkegaard observed that “’Christendom’ lies in an abyss of sophistry that is even much, much worse than when the Sophists flourished in Greece.”[v] The success of comfortable pastors justifying their earthly wealth theologically under the auspices of the Prosperity Gospel renders the Socratic Kierkegaard still relevant today.[vi] Fortunately, Kierkegaard would assure us that the individual Christian can still find truth within rather than outwardly comprehending the doctrines that the pastors, whose claim to being Christians is dubious at best, claim to know. In this essay, I show how Kierkegaard appropriates Socrates’ method in service of this point. The Danish philosopher gained from his Greek model the tools with which to undercut the doctrines as knowable (by the theologians and pastors), so he could privilege becoming and being a Christian as a matter of personally discovered inward faith yet without positive epistemological content getting in the way.
For Socrates, rather than demonstrating a thesis, the result to be achieved is “purely negative . . . no positive definition has survived the critical examination.”[vii] Socrates, the gadfly of Athens, picks apart Euthyphro’s presumed knowledge of piety while claiming to be ignorant, and yet ironically it is Euthyphro’s knowledge that is found wanting. To be sure, Socrates leaves nothing positive (i.e., aporia), and yet, ironically, this is wisdom! Kierkegaard takes on Socrates’ role as the single individual who does not fit into the crowd, insisting that he himself is not a Christian as he reduced the leaders of the crowd to aporia. The Danish church functionaries must have viewed this project as a provocation.
Socrates’ privileging of the subjective of the individual over Greek tradition resulted in the charge of “corrupting the youth.” Likewise, Kierkegaard’s question, “what does it mean to be a Christian,” was provocative to his contemporaries (e.g., pastors and theologians) for whom there was no reason to ask the question; they were satisfied with the externals.[viii] Indeed, Kierkegaard wrote of the late Bishop Mynster that he had been all too satisfied in his paid position to qualify as an “authentic truth-witness.”[ix]
The subjective quest for truth inwardly is inherently threatening to the self-appointed guardians of doctrinal truth because the mind and heart of the single individual is beyond reach. The individual Christian can believe that Jesus is her savior as a matter of faith and yet not be able to communicate the paradox even to her pastor, who is ensconced in the universal below the individual of faith. Kierkegaard argues in Fear and Trembling that the absurd of faith is above the universal (e.g., the ethical, the rational, language, etc.). Put another way, an individual taking the god’s commands on faith is above being able to comprehend them. The self-contradiction from the divine-commands revealed to Abraham cannot be made sense of, much less communicated to the crowd.
Communicating faith would distort its inner nature, as language is of the universal, so clerics and theologians cannot get at the faith held by individuals. Therefore, theologians cannot compare what an individual accepts in the inwardness of her private heart to the value of comprehending doctrines, so no judgment can legitimately be made. This can only be frustrating to clerics for whom the subjectivity beyond reach of other people can only be perceived as an obstacle to be overcome. Whereas the typical pastor looks to the collective of his congregation, Kierkegaard esteems the single individual above the crowd. Similar to ethics to Socrates, inward faith to Kierkegaard cannot be delegated to the collective but must reside within the individual.[x]
Emphasizing the element of subjectivity that Socrates introduced into the field of ethics, Kierkegaard claims “there is something infinitely important and valuable in each individual, but to get at this one must occasionally get away from the crowd. . . . one must focus instead on one’s own inwardness and religiosity.”[xi] This subterranean ground of faith is unfathomable by the theologians whose doctrinal knowledge—a corruption—is subject to the irony and negative aporia that Kierkegaard appropriates from Socrates.
In Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard applies Socrates’ method of aporia to the doctrine of the Incarnation. On the chopping-block are the “Sophist” theologians who have claimed quite astonishingly to know the absolutely different unknown, which cannot be known even though reason is drawn to the frontier. Socrates claims in Phaedrus that he does not contemplate the gods because he is trying to know himself, and he is ignorant of himself. Kierkegaard sees in this a paradox: namely, the desire “to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.”[xii] Specifically, “(t)he understanding wants to grasp what is unknown, and is constantly frustrated when it encounters what is unknown. This unknown must be something that is absolutely different, since if it were similar to us, we could know it by recognizing certain aspects that we’re familiar with. The human mind can’t grasp what’s absolutely different.”[xiii] If Kierkegaard, and by implication, Socrates are correct, such knowledge cannot possibly be requisite to salvation, for such knowledge is impossible. Put another way, if the god extends beyond the limits of human reason and perception, then the divine must eclipse the grasp of the human mind, and must instead be grasped inwardly by the human heart in faith that surpasses all understanding.
In the doctrine of the Incarnation, the god-man is “the unity of God and an individual human being.”[xiv] This involves an unresolvable paradox: the eternal and infinite god becoming temporal and finite. “The God-man is the paradox, absolutely the paradox. Therefore it is altogether certain that the understanding must come to a standstill on it.”[xv] How is it that a particular human being can be the god? Doesn’t this ignore the abyss that separates Creation from its Creator? Socrates was “on guard duty,” Kierkegaard points out, “keeping watch so that the deep gulf of qualitative difference between [God and mankind] was maintained . . . that God and man did not merge in some way . . . into one.”[xvi] So unlike Hegel, Kierkegaard claims the contradiction in the absolute paradox of the god becoming flesh as Jesus cannot be mediated in the sense of being synthesized within a higher organic structure. The paradox must simply be accepted on faith in the heart of the individual Christian—something beyond the reach of the cleric and thus inherently suspect.
Similarly, in Stages on Life’s Way, Kierkegaard is amazed that theologians think they have understood the doctrine of Jesus forgiving sins. “Surely,” Kierkegaard has Socrates say, “what you are asking about is a difficult matter, and it has always amazed me that so many could believe that they understood a teaching such as that; but it has amazed me even more that some people have even understood much more.”[xvii] For instance, theologians think that the post-forgiveness state is identical to the initial immediacy between the god and humans, and yet how do those Christian “thinkers” know this? The faith grasped inwardly in the heart of the individual is on much more solid ground—on this ground I will build my Church, Jesus says of Peter’s inward faith not built on understanding. Doctrines such as the Incarnation and the Forgiveness of Sins “are to be accepted in inwardness and passion” rather than understood and comprehended.[xviii] Hence Kierkegaard applied Socratic aporia to any positive content of the understanding regarding the theological doctrines.
So—and this is extremely relevant in churches today!—rather than delivering expository sermons, pastors should be conversational, Kierkegaard insisted, as the Socratic dialogues are. Like Socrates and Kierkegaard, the sermonizer should be a midwife of sorts, rather than a source of doctrinal “knowledge,” urging parishioners to look inward for faith that surpasses all understanding. A good pastor should take look back to Socrates as “the occasion for the student to arrive at the truth.”[xix]  Socrates doesn’t teach the truth.  Likewise, Kierkegaard points out that Jesus “is the occasion for his followers to learn the truth.”[xx] So Socrates’ notion of midwifery can be useful for contemporary clerics. For Socrates, the idea is that “though his questioning and conversation, the individual is led to find the truth within himself. . . . So also with the sermon, the pastor instead of simply preaching some external fact or bit of knowledge, encourages the individual members of the congregation to find the truth of Christianity in themselves—each in their own way. Every follower of Christ must appropriate the Christian message for him or herself.”[xxi] A preacher can only go so far externally, and each Christian is thus tasked with having to search his or her heart for glimpses of the truth held inwardly.
In conclusion, the truth according to both Socrates and Kierkegaard is something inward—something that a person must appropriate for himself. Because the truth is presumed to exist, and is the object of the quest for faith, the subjectivity does not devolve into relativism and nihilism. In other words, truth keeps subjectivity from becoming its own anchor. Truth is above the universal, which includes ethics and even language; hence, to Kierkegaard, “Christianity is concerned with the inwardness of each and every individual; it’s about the passion of the individual in the face of certain ideas that are paradoxical, absurd, and contradictory.”[xxii] Reasoning can only go part of the route, and thus doctrinal Christianity too falls short. Using Socrates’ method, Kierkegaard wanted to “undermine the different positive doctrines about Christianity” in order to return to the paradox, absurdity, and contradiction that are intrinsic in Christianity “as a sort of inward disposition that focuses on the individual subject.”[xxiii] This point is relevant to clergy today, as sermons can indeed be reoriented to honor and facilitate (as a midwife) the individual’s inner birth of faith. In other words, the Socratic Kierkegaard connection is indeed still relevant, as Christianity still has its externally and collectively oriented doctrinal truth-sayers who presume even just that truth can be known, even at the expense of the single individual's leap of faith in accepting, like Abraham, the absurd and also the absolutely paradoxical; both of which transcend the limits of human cognition and perception and thus cannot be comprehended.

---

[i] Soren Kierkegaard, The Moment, in The Moment and Late Writings, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans.  (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 341

[ii] Soren Kierkegaard, The Point of View: On My work as an Author, the Point of View for my Work as an Author, Armed Neutrality, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 55.

[iii] Soren Kierkegaard, The Moment, in The Moment and Late Writings, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans.  (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 340.

[iv] Ibid., 341.

[v] Ibid.
[vi] On the historical shift in theological interpretation from anti-wealth to pro-wealth, see Skip Worden, God's Gold (Seattle, WA: Amazon, 2016).

[vii] Jon Stewart, University of Copenhagen, Lecture (2016).

[viii] Peter Sajda, from Jon Stewart, University of Copenhagen, Lecture (2016).

[ix] Soren Kierkegaard, The Moment, in The Moment and Late Writings, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans.  (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

[x] Peter Sajda, from Jon Stewart, University of Copenhagen, Lecture (2016).

[xi] Jon Stewart, University of Copenhagen, Lecture (2016).

[xii] Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 37.

[xiii] Jon Stewart, University of Copenhagen, Lecture (2016).

[xiv] Soren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans.  (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 82.

[xv] Ibid.

[xvi] Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 99.

[xvii] Soren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life’s Way, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 482.

[xviii] Jon Stewart, University of Copenhagen, Lecture (2016).

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid.

[xxi] Ibid.

[xxii] Ibid.

[xxiii] Ibid.