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Title: Questions of Faith: A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity (Religion and the Modern World) by Peter L. Berger ISBN: 1-4051-0848-7 Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: December, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: God Beats Up on Those Who Ask Useless Questions
Comment: God Beats Up Those Who Ask Useless Questions
Questions of Faith is a non-conventional commentary of the ancient Christian Apostle's creed. From the table of contents and the chapter subheadings the book appears like another dull commentary not meant to disturb the Christian theologian or the average believer from their faith.
Near the end of Questions of Faith, Berger relates the story of Martin Luther's reply to a young man who asked him how God occupied himself in eternity. Luther replied, "God sits under a tree and cuts branches and rods, to beat up people who ask useless questions." Scattered throughout the book Questions of Faith are what Berger finds to be humanly unacceptable notions about the Christian religion that he believes need to be pummeled (i.e., "beat up") mainly because of their unthinking acceptance of suffering, death, and evil.
Berger calls his book an exercise of free enterprise in "lay theology" that is written for similarly "unaccredited" people. By questioning the theology produced by professional theologians Berger asks probing questions about religion without being bound by tradition, church, scripture, or even personal experience. This is a well-written work that, nonetheless in parts, is not for the unserious reader. A warning must be issued that there are some glaring typographical errors in the book. One may need to look up words not used in ordinary conversation. However, at points Berger flashes a riveting summary of a complex theological issue with an illuminating one-sentence proposition or even a meaningful joke.
Questions of Faith won't likely be attractive to what Berger calls "Golden Rule" Christians who embrace the images of "gentle Jesus," the exemplar and teacher contained in so much Protestant Christian literature. Nor will it appeal to those "New Age" religious seekers of what Berger calls "The Mythic Matrix," defined as a childlike belief in the one-ness of God, nature, and man. Neither would it resonate with those academics and so-called liberals who reduce religion to mere ethics or diversity, to some inner psychoanalytic conversation, or some Marxist egalitarian view of heaven on earth.
Berger's theological method is to weave into his commentary a number of what might be called null hypotheses that he rejects because he finds them inhuman. Below I have excerpted some of the taken-for-granted theological notions that Berger rejects. I will leave it to the reader to find out why Berger rejects these propositions.
1. Religion is supposed to be necessary as the basis for morality.
2. Religion demands submission to God's will, even in the face of the innocent suffering of children.
3. Religion may seek to console us all by saying that eventually we will be absorbed into some ocean of cosmic divinity (i.e., the mythic matrix).
4. Religion offers certainty in scriptures, spiritual experiences, and in institutions from the chaos of life.
5. Religion provides powerful symbols for the exigencies of human existence.
6. High religion says man is saved, not by works, but by God's grace and forgiveness.
7. Both religious and atheistic eschatologies (i.e., world views) often claim to know the course of history.
8. Religionists, particularly of the orthodox and neo-orthodox schools of religion, often claim that God has spoken to them directly -- or through scriptures God has spoken to them directly.
9. Religion must say no to every freedom-denying scientism or any Buddhist understanding that all reality is non-self (an-atta), and which results in a denial of the existence of the autonomous and responsible self.
10. The collection of Jesus' sayings constituting what we know as the Sermon on the Mount forms the moral and ethical basis for the organization of society.
11. The criteria distinguishing true and untrue religion asserted mainly by academics and liberal North American Christians is whether a religious tradition induces its adherents to cultivate selfishness and altruism.
12. Petitionary prayers are selfish and therefore to be eschewed.
13. The atonement is defined in virtually all strands of Christian thought as the process by which God forgives mankind. 14. The conception of original sin is as an inescapable part of the human condition, of which I should feel guilty.
After reading Questions of Faith the reader will likely be left with the lasting impression that the theological thought police and the totalitarian brainwashers didn't have to "beat up" Berger to get him to provide programmed answers to often-useless theological questions. Perhaps it is fitting to close this review with one of Berger's characteristic jokes:
"A Russian legend has it that there were three holy men who lived on an island, engaged in constant prayer and works of compassion. The bishop under whose jurisdiction the island fell was informed that these men were completely ignorant of the doctrines and rituals of the Church. He found this fact scandalous. He visited the island and spent some time teaching these men the basic creeds and prayers of the Church. He then left the island. As his boat was getting away from the island he noticed, to his amazement, that the three holy men were following the boat, walking on the water. They reached the boat and explained that they had forgotten the words of the Lord's Prayer. The bishop told them that they should not worry about this - they did not need these words" (Questions of Faith, page 113).
Rating: 5
Summary: God Beats Up on People Who Ask Useless Questions
Comment: God Beats Up on People Who Ask Useless Questions (Luther)
Or:
Prolegomena to any Future Eschatology
That may Represent Itself as Humanly Acceptable (Berger)
An interpretive paraphrase of some propositions of religion from a reading of:
Peter L. Berger
Questions of Faith: A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity
(Blackwell Publishing, 2004)
1.Religion is supposed to be necessary as the basis for morality. No thanks! With admirable exceptions here and there, religions over the centuries have not been famous for their moral excellence. Religion has been shown as not necessary for morality because moral judgment is grounded not in the imperative mode (do this, do that) but in the indicative mode (see this, look at that) [p. 164]. Morality is perceptual. The historical record shows that some of the greatest religious figures engaged in really dubious behavior (Luther the anti-semite), some were downright monstrous (Medici Popes) - while agnostics and atheists have been morally admirable. There are atheist saints.
2.Religion demands submission to God's will, even in the face of the innocent suffering of children. No thanks. This is not humanly acceptable. I submit to God who does not will the death of innocent children.
3.Religion may seek to console us all by saying that eventually we will be absorbed into some ocean of cosmic divinity (i.e., the mythic matrix). No thanks. To absorb those who suffer into an ultimate reality in which all individuality, uniqueness, and the irreplaceableness of persons, and the infinite preciousness of children, is lost is but another version of death.
4.Religion offers certainty in scriptures, spiritual experiences, and in institutions from the chaos of life. No thanks to the certitude purveyors and certainty wallahs. Scripture is inspiring, but not inerrant, religious experience of the holy spirit has been found to be inducible by social manipulation, and totalistic religious institutions can be replaced by totalistic secular institutions (e.g., big tent politics).
5.Religion provides powerful symbols for the exigencies of human existence. No thanks. To be sure, it does, but there are other (competitive) sources for such symbols.
6.High religion says man is saved, not by works, but by God's grace and forgiveness. No thanks. Some notion of damnation is necessary if one affirms the justice of God in the face of evil. Nothing short of damnation will be adequate for the perpetrators of the Holocaust. None of us, and certainly none of the victims, should be urged to forgive them.
7.Both religion and atheism often claims to know the course of history. No thanks. Those who ascribe to the popular eschatology -- rapture, end times -- or who claim to know what the secular course of history is, then proceed to help it along by their own action typically will only add to the endless accumulation of suffering, as seen in the great Marxist experiments.
8.Religionists, particularly of the orthodox and neo-orthodox schools of religion, often claim that God has spoken to them directly, or through scriptures, God has spoken to them directly. No thanks. Most of us may be considered the metaphysically underprivileged, as it were, and must acknowledge that God has not spoken to us in such a direct manner. His address to us, if that is what it is, comes to us in a much more mediated manner. It is always mediated. It is mediated through this or that experience, and most importantly it is mediated through encounters with the scriptures and with the institution that transmits the tradition. To proceed as if one had spoken to God directly is to base one's existence on a lie. It seems plausible to propose that, if God exists, He would not want us to lie.
9.Religion must say no to every freedom-denying scientism or any Buddhist understanding that all reality is non-self (an-atta) denies the existence of the autonomous self, because that is a denial of freedom. In the perspective of the Biblical faith the self is not an illusion, neither is the empirical world, because both are creations of God. It is possible to affirm this faith in a threefold no to the Buddha's Three Universal Truths: All reality is not impermanence, because at its heart is the God who is the plenitude of being in time and eternity. All reality is not suffering because God's creation is ultimately good and because God is acting to redeem (repair) those parts of creation, especially humanity, where this goodness has been disturbed. And all reality is not non-self, because the self is the image of God, not because it is itself divine but because it exists by virtue of God's address.
10.The collection of Jesus' sayings constituting what we know as the Sermon on the Mount forms the moral and ethical basis for the organization of society. No thanks! Any human society that would organize itself on the basis of the Sermon's unrealistic demands would promptly lapse into chaos. For goodness to result we must get our hands dirty and we must recognize that most of our actions have unintended consequences. We may desire good ends and employ good means, and nevertheless the results may be unbearably evil. Jesus as a great teacher and exemplar is eminently uninteresting, and we can do well without him.
11.The criteria distinguishing true and untrue religion is asserted mainly by academics and liberal North American Christians as whether a religious tradition induces its adherents to cultivate selfishness and altruism. No thanks! The weakness of this criterion can be seen by transferring it from religion to, say, physics: is one to accept or reject a discovery in physics on the basis of a physicist's moral qualities? Does the theory of relativity depend on Einstein having been a nice man? If religion has anything to do with reality - transcendent reality - then the test of it being true does not depend on the "saintliness" of its representations.
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