... Faith and Belief.
I happen to be underwhelmed by both Jack Miles and Karen Armstrong. It is interesting that, the headline notwithstanding, the words faith and belief do not appear in this review. Moreover, insofar as apophatic theology was "lost", it was because of the Protestant Reformation, which effectively gave pride of place to the Old, not the New Testaament. So we reverted to a grim creed dominated by some great Hammurabi in the Sky.
Hi Frank,
ReplyDeleteMiles' review of Robert Wright's writings is interesting in that Wright seems to be taking what we learned in Sunday school to some nth degree outside scripture, in this way supporting it--vis a vis the evolution of God from tribal gods, the realization that it is all one God, not the Boston god versus the Philly god (especially this year with the Sox out of the picture).
Where Miles reviews Armstrong, I see some of what's missing through such a summary statement as this:
A god whose existence you can prove is a god to whom you cannot pray, postmodern theology argues, and prayer -- not proof -- is where religion rises or falls.
The little evangelical in me wants to give such a statement a nod, because the challenge to pray is the easiest "retort" to give non-believers or someone struggling with God's place in individual lives--but it is not so. Yes, the power if prayer is there, and yes, it can be used evangelically. However, God gets personally knowable in other ways, such as in mystic or religious experiences. This is where Jesus becomes the Son, who has walked the earth, that aspect of God which we can identify and relate to. (If this is preachy for any onlookers, then revert to point-A the prayer part. But it is not meant to be.) This is the "personality" of the descending dove, the God we can have a relationship, even a friendship with. Part of the truth in Christian scripture is how this personality is communicated, such that it can be recognized. Billy Graham, for instance, tells the story of sharing the gospel with a man in a remote part of the Orient, who was hearing it for the first time. The man told Graham that he knew this Jesus.
Yours,
Rus