The book The Case
for God by Karen
Armstrong never makes a formal
case for God. What Karen Armstrong does
is a painstaking historical
review, a
kind of apology, of what it means to
belong to a faith community. It
includes
accounts of movements and elements
within various religious traditions.
Only towards
the end of her book does she address the
views and arguments of those
writing
such books as The God Delusion.
She
does so largely on the basis that many
of arguments in The God Delusion are
aimed
at a particular contemporary evangelical
faction of Christian thought
rather
than the whole story of several faiths
which she has laboriously set
out.
Within the
steady sweep of information some helpful
thoughts
emerge for those of us who see ourselves
as rational but are joined to
some
religious tradition.
Some formal concept
of God is not
necessary for “religion.”
Armstrong rightly includes Buddhism and
Greek rationalism as religion.
Religious texts were not always taken
as detailed
directions to be followed and their
status has varied over the
centuries. In
the early Christian times, if a Jewish
reader did not interpret or add
to a
text, the writing could be considered
dead .
Some formal declaration of
assent to a
proposition or doctrine
(I believe) has not always been required
for joining a religious
community. She
notes the early initiation into the
church did not involve a
declaration of
“belief” in any doctrines, but rather
mystical ceremonies (baptism)
allowing a
stepping out of accustomed modes of
thought and a commitment to engage
with God
as a new person. It is not so much
“belief” in a proposition
which is
intended by the origins of the current
word believe – but rather that
“commit”
or “engage” with some agent or some
community. That makes practical
sense. Why
do we care what exactly someone believes
if they are willing to join us
and work
alongside us on the same issues with
comparable hopes and
expectations?
Armstrong finds the 19th
century God as some being
who made and is running a Newtonian
machine of nature too prevalent and
not
helpful.
She has a lot to say about
the recent
efforts to
rationalize God in contrast with
older Greek Christian mystery,
uncertainty and exploration of
God. She seems to favour this Eastern
Christian tradition where the
notion of God
is shrouded in mystery. And of course
the writers of books like The God
Delusion will call it a cop out for her
to hide from the rigours of
reason
behind the notion of God as total
mystery. Others will suggest she is
pointing
to a God who hides in the left over
crannies of uncertainty in our
rationalized
world.
There is
some logic and some value for the human
community
in giving Armstrong's understated
conclusions serious thought. Life
includes things which are mysterious.
Politics,
the art of living together in big
communities, is not totally logical
and
rational. Families know that the solution
to rationally insoluble
family
situations is to live through them. In
this sense any concept of some
thing or
experience we might call God linked to
life in human communities is
part of this illogical scene and mystery
is appropriate for now. There
is also practical value for our human
communities in treating notions about God
and religion as cautious
groping
rather than pronouncements of eternal
certainty. Those of us who
participate
in the evolution of some faith community
should walk humbly with
everyone else
while groping around the mystery which may
be summed up as “God”.
