Educating Scholarly Priests: The Cult at Yale

Speaking at a Bhakti-Yoga conference in March, 2025 at Harvard, Krishma Kshetra Swami said that scholars who are devoted to the academic study of religion are also undoubtedly also motivated by their religious faith, even if it is of a religion other than what the scholar is studying. The Swami himself was at the time both a scholar of Hinduism and a Krishna devotee. He was essentially saying that his academic study of Hinduism was motivated not just by the pursuit of knowledge, but also by (his) faith. He also stated that he, like the rest of us in daily life, typically separated his various identities, including that of a professor and a devotee of the Hindu god, Krishna. Although his two roles not contradictory in themselves, a scholar’s own religious beliefs, if fervently held, can act as a magnet of sorts by subtly swaying the very assumptions that a scholar holds about the phenomenon of religion (i.e., the knowledge in the academic discipline). To be sure, personally-held ideology acts with a certain gravity on any scholar’s study in whatever academic field. Religious studies, as well as political science, by the way, are especially susceptible to the warping of reasoning by ideology because beliefs can be so strongly held in religion (and politics), and the impact of such gravity can easily be missed not only by other people, but also by the scholars themselves.  

The full essay is at "Educating Scholarly Priests."

The Apocalypse

In the film, The Apocalypse (2002), the Apostle John is a prisoner at an island-prison because he is a Christian. He is having visions of heaven in the last of days and Valerio, another prisoner is dutifully writing what John dictates so various church congregations can know of John’s revelations. He is esteemed so much by other Christians that he feels pressure to steer them to God’s truth. Too much esteem, I submit, is being directed to John, as he is, as he admits, only a human being, though he does get caught up in his own direct access to God, as in being able to know the will of God. This is a temptation for any religionist, especially religious leaders. Although subtly, the film conveys John’s over-reaches though without having another character explicitly refer to them as such.

The full essay is at "The Apocalypse."

On Believing in Jesus Christ as the Preeminent Focus of Christianity

Jesus’ identity as the Son of God is salient in the four canonical gospels, as well as in Paul’s letters. Hence, christology has been an important field of theology. While the benefits to the Christian have been touted so much in historical and contemporary theological writings, the costs and vulnerabilities of the nearly monopolistic focus have largely gone unnoticed. The realization of them would allow Christians (including extant theologians) to gain a fuller (i.e., holistic) perception and understanding of the religion, and even a better practice thereof.  I will begin with the theology then provide a practical example of the problems involved in having a willowed-down focus at the expense of the drawbacks.

In approximately 170 CE, Irenaeus, a bishop in Lyon in the Roman Empire’s province of Gual (in modern-day France), selected Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as the four canonical gospels. He wrote, “The heretics boast that they have many more gospels than there really are. But really they don’t have any gospels that aren’t full of blasphemy. There actually are only four authentic gospels. And this is obviously true because there are four corners of the universe and there are four principal winds, and therefore there can be only four gospels that are authentic.”[1] To the extent that such a rationale held any sway in his day and beyond, we can surmise just how flimsy what we literally take as gospel can be. Irenaeus assumed that the four gospels were authentically written by the four disciples, but slapping a prominent name on a piece of religious writing was commonly done in ancient times. The Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Peter could also have been said to be written by two disciples.

Irenaeus viewed the negative stance on the material realm in the Gnostic texts as heretical (even though Augustine would write in his later texts very negatively of the earthly realm—seven the physicality of sex is not to be enjoyed even when done to reproduce). I contend that Irenaeus was even in this respect motivated especially to highlight the divinity of Christ.  

Irenaeus didn’t like there being “many gospels circulating with different accounts about Jesus, particularly a number of these accounts [that] rather down-play the materiality and physicality of Jesus’ body.”[2] Ironically, dismissing the physicality of Jesus’ body goes against the christological doctrine that Jesus is the Son of God because as such, God is made flesh (i.e., corporeal). Hence the resurrected Jesus not only walks through a door of the Upper Room, but also asks his disciples for fish, as he is hungry. By implication, that the god-man is fully human and fully divine, which the Council of Nicaea would make official dogma in 325 CE, must have been important to Irenaeus when he was selecting gospels to include in the canon. That is, the identity of Jesus Christ as a god-man must have played an important role in Irenaeus’ selection of the four canonical gospels, within which Jesus’ christological identity is not only the central theme, but also the basis of the salvation of souls in transformed, resurrected bodies, which is the ultimate goal in the faith narratives. God sent his only son to reunite the human species from its sordid earthly condition due to original sin. Jesus’ identity is absolutely crucial to Christ being the second Adam, vicariously undoing Adam’s mistake in having sought divine knowledge of good and evil. I submit that the prideful presumption of seeking divinity is the original sin.

The problem is that presumptuous pride can flourish even though a Christian’s religious focus is on his or her belief that Jesus is divine and that accepting Christ as such means that the he or she is saved and will thus be reunited with God; hence Luther’s doctrine, solo fides, or only by faith. I submit that good works are also necessary. By good works, I don’t mean the liturgical Eucharistic process of sanctification, which is salient in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox doctrine. I don’t even mean good works generally, such as volunteering at a charity. Rather, I mean the putting Jesus’ teachings of neighbor love into practice, and especially of not violating them. Such teachings include turning the other cheek, and even going on to help people who are, in modern parlance, being jerks or assholes. The application of self-emptying love goes well beyond people who are persecuting.

On Easter one year, when I lived in an apartment complex, a resident below one of the units just next to mine played loud, high-bass music with his front door open for hours. Passing by with my garbage at one point, I saw the man in his doorway and asked him to turn his music down. He stared at me for a second, then turned his back. He did not lower his music’s volume or even close his front door. I surmised that the man’s attitude was the underlying problem. Indeed, he even went outside to laugh about my request with another resident who had blasted racist lyrics containing much profanity out in the courtyard (even though kids were in the courtyard). That other resident, who just a week earlier had told police that playing  loud racist, swearing music was part of his culture and thus to be respected, then went to another resident and pointed to my apartment. I knew I was being targeted (with racial overtones), which is at two degrees of separation from being considerate. A bit later, I called the police, who asked the man to turn down his volume. I could hear the man shouting at the police. This is really bad, I thought in reference to the man’s attitude.  

The irony is that the very inconsiderate man was playing the loud music in anticipation of relatives coming over for Easter! He was like the person who goes to hell thinking all the while that he is going to heaven. Aggressively violating Jesus’ teachings on how to enter the Kingdom of God while having an Easter party suggests the presence of gaping cognitive dissidence. The same sort of cognitive dissidence applies when a person celebrates Gandhi’s birthday by being violent. The mind should be able to be conscious of such contradictions, and yet this is not the case, at least in the realm of religious ideas. It is precisely this disconnect that has provoked so much of my analytical thinking on religion. Perhaps the human brain contains a weakness or vulnerability in reasoning and being conscious of discordances between religious ideas and practice. Even in terms of religious ideas, such as inflame self-idolatry, the human mind may be handicapped organically. Such a handicap could warp the use of logic. For instance, a person might think, I’m going to annoy my neighbors intentionally as I celebrate Easter. That such an approach not only undoes any religious merit in celebrating Jesus’ resurrection, but also adds sin is something obviously worth realizing, and yet it is not, and has not, been acted on, let alone realized.

The narrow focus on Jesus’ religious identity and even his role in the history of salvation can mean that his instructions for how to get into the Kingdom of God are eclipsed such that they are violated even, it is presumed, in the service of Christ. Crusaders, for example, killed their enemies in Jerusalem and Constantinople for Christ. It never dawned on the four Medieval popes and their soldiers appropriated by Christian kings that killing Muslims in Jerusalem and eastern Christians in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) violates Jesus’ important injunction against harming enemies (as they are to be loved). In going on offence to take back one or the other city, the Crusaders could not even resort to Christian just-war justifications. That the leaders of the Christian Church in Western Europe were leading the charge demonstrates just how great the cognitive dissidence can be even in proclaimed vicars—earthly representatives of Christ. To represent Jesus by killing enemies is such an oxymoron that the human faculties of mind are themselves implicated as they apply themselves to religion.

I recommend, therefore, that Christians shift their focus from the christological and soteriological beliefs to Jesus’ teachings on how to enter the Kingdom of God. That is, rather than focusing on a belief about Jesus’ divine, salvific identity, focus on following and not violating Jesus’ example and teachings in the gospels. Even in self-questioning whether an attitude or conduct violates Jesus’ admonition to turn the other cheek and even proactively care for neighbors even if they are a pain in the ass or an outright enemy, a Christian can rest assured that beliefs about Jesus’s identity and role in salvation will take care of themselves, like lilies in the field. Perhaps the human mind is not good at holding very abstract beliefs and very concrete conduct together such that they can be compared and contrasted. Beliefs concerning conduct may be easier to hold, and thus a stronger focus for the believing Christian.

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[1] Elaine Pagels, “The Emergence of the Canon,” in “Emergence of the Four Gospels,” Frontline: From Jesus to Christ, PBS.org , April, 1998 (accessed April 12, 2020).

[2] Elizabeth Clark, “Irenaeus and the Heretics,” in “Emergence of the Four Gospels,” Frontline: From Jesus to Christ, PBS.org , April, 1998 (accessed April 12, 2020).

Undermining Progress: Power as Ignorance that Cannot Be Wrong

Bleeding to heal. The Earth is flat. Earth is at the center of the solar system. Zeus lives on Mount Olympus. The divine right of kings to act even as tyrants (e.g., Henry VIII of England). Hitler died in his bunker. Turning the heater on in a local bus kills coronavirus. These are things that were thought in their respective times to be uncontrovertibly true. In some of these cases, the power of the establishment was not subtle in enforcing them even when they should have been questioned. How presumptuous this finite, mortal species is! If ignorance on stilts is bliss, then why is it such in need of power? Subconsciously, the human mind must realize that its assumption of not being able to be wrong is flawed. We are subjective beings with instinctual urges—one of which manifests in the unquestioned assumption that what we know cannot be wrong, and furthermore that we are entitled to impose our “facts” on others. As the homo sapiens (i.e., wise) species, we are too sure, and too proud, concerning our knowledge and especially beliefs. We would like to have the certainty and objectivity that computers have, but we are subjective biological animals, not inert machines. 

The full essay is at "Undermining Progress."

On the Pull of Religious Belief

John Blake of CNN asks, “Have you ‘walked the aisle’ to ‘pray the prayer?’ Did you ever ‘name and claim’ something and, after getting it, announce, ‘I’m highly blessed and favored?’ . . . If this is you, some Christian pastors and scholars have some bad news: You may not know what you’re talking about. They say that many contemporary Christians have become pious parrots. They constantly repeat Christian phrases that they don’t understand or distort.”[1] Making matters worse, such Christians treat their religious beliefs as if they constitute knowledge. This, as well as the presumed wherewithal to claim anything due from God, is highly impious and yet the claimers are certain that they have true belief.

For example, some Christians refer to “the rapture” without realizing that it is out of sync with historical Christian theology before 1850. Marcus Borg, a theologian, makes the point. “’People who speak Christian aren’t just mangling religious terminology’, he says. ‘They’re also inventing counterfeit Christian terms such as ‘the rapture’ as if they were a part of essential church teaching.’ The rapture, a phrase used to describe the sudden transport of true Christians to heaven while the rest of humanity is left behind to suffer, actually contradicts historic Christian teaching, Borg says. ‘The rapture is a recent invention. Nobody had thought of what is now known as the rapture until about 1850,’” Borg says.[2] Representing something as a part of essential church teaching without knowing what one is talking about evinces the “I can’t be wrong” attitude that goes with the de facto presumption, even if implicit, of infallibility. Conveniently, the Christians who evoke the rapture tend overwhelmingly to take it for granted that they will be going to heaven rather than staying around to suffer, but is not the presumption of omniscience worthy of impiety, which, along with greed, is one of the foremost sins?

Many Christians are not aware of the effect that the pull of greed has had through the centuries in decoupling greed from wealth—even from being rich and yet presumed saved. For someone to say, “I name and claim this house as mine" is really just a desire to possess it; the expression "name and claim" is simply a subterfuge for greed (i.e., an instinctual, basic desire for more).  The prosperity gospel, for example, facilitates or enables greed, rather than constraining it. According to Blake, prosperity Christians, who believe that God rewards true belief with material wealth, “don’t say ‘I want that new Mercedes.’ They say they are going to ‘believe for a new Mercedes.’ They don’t say ‘I want a promotion.’ They say I ‘name and claim’ a promotion.”[3] However, it is impious to claim anything, not to mention something as profane as a job promotion. This claim itself reflects a vaunted self-importance that does not account for the flawed nature of man.

Even rational thought, which is typically assumed to be objective, is distorted by ideology and even religious belief. The brain is weak in holding itself accountable, such as in adequately checking its own assumptions (which are subjective).

Perhaps anger (i.e., emotions) can preempt the brain from performing a check-and-balance function on its own products (i.e., assumptions), or, as I believe, the brain has a very weak self-corrective feature, though higher education can strengthen it. If nothing else, in being told, incorrect!, enough, a student can realize just how fallible the mind is. Put another way, the ideational products of the human mind are not as foolproof as we tend to assume. This holds when the mind enters the religious domain too; beliefs are almost always assumed to be facts, and thus knowledge. If this were so, what use would faith be? The religious scholar Joseph Campbell once asked a priest this question only to find the conversation instantly over.

Euthyphro suddenly realizes he had an appointment so he scurries away from Socrates, who has just demonstrated that Euthyphro’s certainty regarding the ethics of turning in his own father for killing a slave is erroneous; Euthyphro does not know what he thinks he knows. Each of us should internalize Socratic questions, as Socrates’ goal in his dialogues is to convince his interlocutors that they really don’t know what they assume they know. We can impose our respective wills on our own minds to prune off branches that claim to be alive but are actually dead, for our brains do not contain enough machinery on their own.

Unfortunately, the defense mechanisms of ideology (e.g., political and economic) and religious belief tend to block any real self-Socratic dialogue from occurring. I suppose this is similar to the denial in an addiction. Are we addicted to our political ideologies and religious beliefs? Do the beliefs we value so have too much pull in the human brain? If so, it seems to me that we could consciously recognize this and fortify checks to counter the defense mechanism. It is so very hard, admittedly, to keep in mind the faith-belief dynamic as distinct when the beliefs feel like empirical facts or facts of reason (i.e., knowledge). It is also difficult to remember to circumscribe assumptions as they are made, for we naturally tend to overestimate what we know and thus can assume.  Of course I’m going to heaven.

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[1] John Blake, “Do You Speak Christian?” CNN, July 31, 2011.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Transcending the United Methodist Vote to Retain Prohibitions on Gay Clergy and Weddings

Delegates meeting at a special session of the General Conference of the United Methodist Church voted on February 26, 2019 to retain the denomination’s ban on gay clergy and same-sex weddings. The alternative plan would have permitted individual congregations to decide for themselves. Clearly, Methodism is not Congregationalism.  The debate was heated on both sides.[1] Transcending them, we may ask whether the heat was overblown. Pope Francis had urged his fellow Roman Catholic bishops and other clergy not to focus so much on that issue and abortion. That urging was itself controversial, which in itself can be read as confirmation that the two issues were getting too much attention and energy. Unlike the case of the Pope’s urging, the vote at the Methodists’ General Conference threatened to split that Church. Can this too be taken as an indication that the emphasis on the issue was disproportionate to its religious importance?

Just how important is homosexuality as a religious issue in Christianity? Jesus does not speak of it in the Gospels, so the issue must boil down to God’s referring to two men lying together as an abomination, which means “disliked by God.” Relatively small things are also disliked by God, including eating things that crawl on the bottom of the sea. So rather displeasing to God does not necessarily translate into a huge sin. How important is the displeasing itself, whether about something that we now take as arbitrary or important? In other words, is it really bad to do something that is displeasing to God. If a person does something that is displeasing to you, that is hardly worse than something that you hate or even detest. Even so, doing a displeasing thing is not a good thing, especially as concerns God, which is to be glorified rather than annoyed. This is perhaps what the issue hinges on in Judaism as well as Christianity, only the latter has the additional question of how much attention ought to be paid to the Old Testament prohibitions. That the issue of homosexuality, like that of abortion, easily gets heated makes it more difficult to get through these questions.

At root, the Methodist delegates disagreed on the importance of the abominations in Leviticus for Christians as well as the importance of “displeasing to God” in itself. Within the disagreement could also have included how much, if at all, to weigh the cultural imprint of the ancient Hebrews in the Biblical naming of specific dislikes of God. Perhaps these questions should have been debated first, so the delegates could have grasped how much basic disagreement existed. The question of whether differences on them are sufficiently important as to justify ecclesiastical separation could have debated too. To be sure, these questions are not easy, and it could be that the sheer distance between answers could justify separation. Religious interpretation by nature allows for a lot of daylight between individual or group interpretations, and people to whom religion is important are likely to find themselves investing a lot of emotional energy into that daylight.

Hence, in the history of a given religion, whether Buddhism, Judaism, or Christianity, splits and splits of the splits have been the norm. Perhaps this is natural, but it also possible that the religious person tends to go over-board in failing to restrict his or her emotions and accepting the fact that a religious institution is not going to perfectly align with any individual therein.  A loss of perspective, including emotional and cognitive, can easily go with homo religiosis—our species when it gets religious. In other words, the real problem may lie with homo sapiens (i.e., our species). The problem is that the loss of perspective flies in the face of the core religious nature of transcendence. As St. Denis of the sixth century wrote, transcendence involves going beyond the limits of human perception and cognition (and sensibility, or emotion). So if these are too intense, we can assume too little attention is being payed to valuing and experiencing transcendence, which if I am correct is the basis and distinguishing mark of religion as a unique phenomenon or domain. In theory at least, if religious transcendence is regarded as foremost, less emotional investment would go into even the basic questions discussed above. If Joseph Campbell was correct, even the masks of eternity must be transcended so as not to obstruct a person’s religious experience, whose referent-point lies inherently beyond perception, cognition, and sensibility.

For more on transcending the ethical in religion, see Spiritual Leadership in Business: Transcending the Ethical, available at Amazon. 

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1. Bill Chappell, “United Methodist Church Votes to Keep Bans on Same-Sex Weddings, LGBTQ Clergy,” NPR, February 26, 2019.

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.

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[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.

Why Do Atrocities Occur in the Name of God?

Why have atrocities been associated with religion—even having been committed under religious auspices? Four Crusades were fought, for example, by popes whose God is love—whose god-man extolls love of enemies and turning the other cheek rather than hitting back. In the modern era, Christianity has been tame, but terrorist acts have been committed in the name of God by people who presume that they cannot possibly be wrong in their beliefs. If Feuerbach is correct, the underlying problem inheres in the belief in God's very existence—that belief pointing us to a still deeper problem in the very nature of faith itself, to a vulnerability or susceptibility that has been overlooked or conveniently glossed over for as long as religion has existed on the face of the Earth.

Feuerbach lays out the problem in the following terms: “If the existence of God, taken by itself, had not rooted itself as a religious truth in minds, there would never have been those infamous, senseless, horrible ideas of God which stigmatise the history of religion and theology.”[1] Senseless ideas of God stigmatize the history of religion. Senseless people carried those ideas into practice, stigmatizing human history. Feuerbach’s surprise is that the belief in the existence of God—this belief in itself—may have a sordid byproduct or be inherently problematic.

“The belief in the existence of God is the belief in a special existence, separate from the existence of man and Nature.”[2] Feuerbach rejects the special existence precisely because it is external. This belief is sheer artifice, he argues, because God represents the best of our human nature—without its limitations: perfect love, all powerful, the highest good, infinite knowledge, and present everywhere. This is the origin of religious consciousness, which has been replaced by the conceptualization of the divine as an external object whose existence is portrayed as separate. To Feuerbach, that object is simply a product of the human imagination. 

The content of revelation is human. Revelation “must not be regarded as outside the nature of man.”[3] By nature, Feuerbach is referring to an instinctual urge. “There is within [man] an inward necessity which impels him to present moral and philosophical doctrines in the form of narratives and fables, and an equal necessity to represent that impulse as a revelation.”[4] This is not to say that religion reduces to morality; rather, what we take to be objective religious truth comes from within. The human imagination plays a vital role. “Man, by means of the imagination, involuntarily contemplates his inner nature; he represents it as out of himself,” as God.[5] As such, God “is an inward, spiritual being.”[6] Denied here is the transcendence of God, which I submit is vital, and, which interestingly does not require the conceptualization of God as an intelligent being or object; the important thing is that the reference point of the religious consciousness lies beyond the limits of human conception and perception.

To Feuerbach, God is rightly understood experience of mankind’s inner nature. At least it is not the actual inner nature that furnishes the divine content. Revelation comes “from the ideal nature of man to the phenomenal man, from the species to the individual.”[7] Even so, “between the divine revelation and the so-called human reason or nature, there is no other than an illusory distinction;--the contents of the divine revelation are of human origin, for they have proceeded not from God as God, but from God as determined by human reason, human wants, that is, directly from human reason and human wants.”[8] Rather than an external object willowing its revelation of itself to fit within human understanding, the source of divine revelation is the human imagination acting on the instinctual wish that our limitations be dissolved. “The imagination is, in general, the true place of an existence which is absent, not present to the senses, though nevertheless sensational in its essence.”[9] God loves and gets angry—vengeance is mine, saith the Lord—but these emotions are cut off from their source as manifesting in a quantitatively less way in human beings as soon as the divine is rendered as an external object whose existence transcends Creation.

As artificial as the cleavage or division is, the certainty of the severed, limitless sensibilities in an external object—not to mention that such an object exists—is perhaps even worse. “The religious mind . . . has the immediate certainty that all its involuntary, spontaneous affections are impressions from without, manifestations of another being.”[10] Such certainty is tantamount to factual knowledge, even though the being transcends the limits of human cognition (and perception). In fact, “a God who gives me a knowledge of himself through his own act is alone of a God who truly exists, who proves himself to exist,--an objective God.”[11] So the knowledge of an objective, externalized God is known to reveal itself as though a fact. Put another way, the belief in the existence of God as an external object carries with it the presumptuousness of belief rendering itself as factual knowledge.

Of course, the presumptuousness is limited to extant beliefs qua facts. “Were not the gods of Olympus also facts, self-attesting existences? Were not the ludicrous miracles of paganism regarded as facts?”[12] Yet in a later age the divine narratives are labeled as myths devised by the human mind. The “religious consciousness itself admits, in relation to past times, the essentially human quality of revelation. The religious consciousness of a later age is no longer satisfied with a Jehovah who is from head to foot a man, and does not shrink from becoming visible as such. It recognizes that those were merely images in which God accommodated himself to the comprehension of men in that age, that is, merely human images. But it does not apply this mode of interpretation to ideas accepted as revelation in the present age, because it is yet itself steeped in those ideas.”[13] Every religionist takes their own religious beliefs as facts of reason yet while insisting on faith, which implies belief rather than knowledge.

Clearly, religious “facts” are problematic. To Feuerbach, a religious “fact is every wish that projects itself on reality: in short, it is everything that is not doubted simply because it is not—must not be—doubted.”[14] To block doubt is not to establish a fact. Hence the wish for unlimited sensibilities impressed on reality in the form of a separate entity is not a fact; such an instinctual urge ought not glorify itself as a fact of reason.

It is important to isolate as problematic the human presumption to immediate certainty that revelation is indeed revelation. “The belief in revelation exhibits in the clearest manner the characteristic illusion of the religious consciousness. The general premiss of this belief is: man can of himself know nothing of God; all his knowledge is merely vain, earthly, human.”[15] We cannot know beyond the limits of our cognition and perception. In fact, what knowledge we do have is tainted. Feuerbach does not go with the obvious conclusion that even if an external intelligent being reveals itself to us we can’t know this. Rather, he claims that God reveals itself to us in terms that we can understand. “God is a superhuman being; God is known only by himself. Thus we know nothing of God beyond what he reveals to us. The knowledge imparted by God is alone divine, superhuman, supernatural knowledge. . . . But nevertheless the divine revelation is determined by the human nature. God speaks not to brutes or angels, but to men; hence he uses human speech and human conceptions.”[16] God’s revelation makes it into our realm through the dark window because the all-powerful knowledge can fit within human terms. “In the scheme of his revelation God must have reference not to himself, but to man’s power of comprehension.”[17] To reach us, God’s revelation of the divine nature must fit within our cognitive limits. Even so, given those limits, we cannot be certain that what we take to be revelation really is from an external intelligent being. Hence we cannot be certain even that such a being exists and yet we assume to have such certainty anyway.

From our presumptuous entitlement to infallibility concerning the belief in the existence of God as an external object follows immediate certainty regarding the religiously sourced morality of our actions, which we deem as righteous because the very existence of the external law-giver cannot even be doubted. “Moral rules are indeed observed, but they are severed from the inward disposition, the heart, by being represented as the commandments of an external lawgiver. . . . What is done is done not because it is good and right, but because it is commanded by God. The inherent quality of the deed is indifferent; whatever God commands is right.”[18] The severing is dependent on the belief in God’s existence as an external object or being. To be sure, Feuerbach seems to have missed Paul’s dictum, “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”[19] Yet a willing heart may embolden the moral certainty that is all too permissive of the sort of blind-spot that can seek in an atrocity or two. Even if God is taken as idealized, unlimited human feeling as Feuerbach urges, such a conception of God can be subject to the sort of religious rationalizations that can twist moral systems into accommodating atrocities under religious auspices.

What if such rationalizations pertain, moreover, to the nature of faith itself? What if atrocities are fallout stemming from faith itself, as a phenomenon in its own right? In his visit to Cairo, Egypt at the end of April, 2017, the Roman Catholic Pope Francis said, “Peace alone is holy and no act of violence can be perpetrated in the name of religion or in the name of God. Together, let us affirm the incompatibility of violence and faith, belief and hatred.”[20] Beyond treating belief and faith as synonymous, Pope Francis assumes that hatred and violence are extrinsic to the nature of faith. This is the common view.

Yet Feuerbach sees a more intricate structure in the nature of faith itself. Within it “lies a malignant principle.”[21] Within the faithful, say a congregation, 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.[22]

Hence in Christianity, it is Christian faith that “is the ultimate ground” of the persecution of heretics.[23] Fear, Feuerbach claims, “is why Christians wish ‘godless’ unbelievers every known calamity, and why, purely out of Christian love and solicitude . . . they experience the utmost pleasure when a misfortune befalls the godless, for they are convinced that trouble will bring them back to God and turn them into good believers.”[24] But even absent the fear, faith can trigger such malevolent hypocrisy because faith, even the Christian faith of universal benevolence, actually “recognizes man only on condition that he recognizes God.”[25] To the person who does not believe in the divine personality, religious hatred, it should be admitted, comes naturally, eclipsing even “universalistic” Christian neighbor-love. 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 christian is antichristian.”[26] 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.”[27] Hence Luther declares, “What I cannot love with God, I must hate; if they only preach something which is against God, all love and friendship is destroyed;—thereupon I hate thee, and do thee no good. For faith must be uppermost, and where the word of God is attacked, hate takes the place of love.”[28] Yet does not hate actually attack a deity which Augustine points out is love itself? Even so, Luther insists, “Rather than God’s word should fall and heresy stand, faith would wish all creatures to be destroyed; for through heresy men lose God himself.”[29] Is it not rather through hatred though? That even a faith of love admits so readily of partiality and thus of hatred suggests that malevolence enjoys a place at the table of faith, eclipsing morality at times altogether. Therefore, a religious faith not only allows for atrocities; faith itself may provoke religionists to partake, even with a clean conscience.

 

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1. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 202.

2. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 203.

3. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 208.

4. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 208.

5. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 208.

6. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 226.

7. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 207.

8. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 207.

9. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 202.

10. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 206.

11. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 204.

12. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 205.

13. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 207.

14. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 206.

15. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 206.

16. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 206.

17. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 207.

18. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 209.

19. 2 Cor. 9:7.

20. Francis X. Rocca, “In Egypt, Pope Decries Religious Violence,” The Wall Street Journal, April 29-30, 2017.

21. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 252

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

23. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 321.

24.  Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 28.
25. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 321.

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

27. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 252.

28. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 325.

29. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957): 325.