EssaysVolume12
the Twenty-First Century
"Teresa MacBain has a secret, one she's terrified to reveal. Her secret is taking a toll, eating at her conscience as she goes about her pastoral duties week after week — two sermons every Sunday, singing hymns, praying for the sick when she doesn't believe in the God she's praying to. She has had no one to talk to, at least not in her Christian community, so her iPhone has become her confessor, where she records her private fears and frustrations." http://www.npr.org/2012/04/30/151681248/from-minister-to-atheist-a-story-of-losing-faith
"There is a distinction between belief in a set of propositions and a faith which enables us to put our trust in them." Karen Armstrong, A History of God, Gramercy Books, 1993, p. xvii.
"The doctrines that I had accepted as a child were indeed man-made, constructed over a long period." Armstrong, p. xviii.
"We learned about God at about the same time as we were told about Santa Claus. But while our understanding of the Santa Claus phenomenon evolved and matured, our theology remained somewhat infantile." Karen Armstrong, The Case for God, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, p. 320.
"But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." 1 Corinthians 13:8-11 (NIV).
"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." John 8:32 (NIV)
CONTENTS
1. Postmodern
2. Divine Entity
3. Concepts
4. Universe
5. Simulation
6. Time
7. Knowledge
8. Names
9. Monotheism
10. Anthropomorphism
11. Avatar
12. Quid pro Quo
*Clicking on a raised in-text endnote number will take you to that endnote in the Endnotes section. Clicking on the endnote number in the Endnotes section will return you to the paragraph containing that endnote.
You may click on the symbol <> at the end of any chapter to return to the CONTENTS.
<Blog Post Essays>
<This Computer Essays>
The shoulder or verge of a roadway is its margin. The edge of a table is its margin. In economics, marginal means at the edge of decision making. At the edge of economic decision making, it is rational to acquire another unit of something that I have been consuming if the benefit from it is expected to exceed the cost of acquiring it. It is also rational to dispose of something if the cost of retaining it is greater than the benefit that it confers.1
Over the past five millennia the developing Judeo-Christian theologies have become progressively elaborated and embellished to include many elements that are ancillary to their central thrusts. What elements should be retained? Can any be safely ignored? Should any be added?
In this book I propose to explore the application of benefit/cost analysis and the marginal principle to the various components that comprise the complex of Christian ideology by asking whether a component costs more to retain than the benefit that it confers.2 After an introductory chapter that describes the milieu of the current Postmodern cultural epoch, the ensuing chapters of this book consider the marginal benefits and costs of features that have become cherished components of the emerging Judeo-Christian theologies.
This book began as an essay to explore my personal spiritual journey. In 2018 I encountered a book by Jim Vincent entitled Should the Church Abandon the Bible?3 Vincent writes about aspects of church in England that I have thought or suspected about churches in the United States but have not otherwise seen in print. Once I had encountered Vincent’s book, my spiritual journey essay morphed into an effort to respond to a question posed by Vincent:
If the church can liberate itself from its biblical straightjacket it may enable itself to develop a new theology acceptable to the 21st century intellect. In doing so it may grant itself a new lease of life and the opportunity to grow and develop; and it may perhaps offer a meaning to life that many find lacking within the materialism of our present age. What might such a theology for the modern world look like?4
I agree with Vincent that a new theology is needed for the twenty-first century, but I doubt that any will be forthcoming from a theological establishment that is heavily invested in classical orthodox theology.
I am an economist with no training in the natural sciences, philosophy, or theology, and thus no standing to propose a new theology. I retired in 2008 after teaching economics for forty years at an American liberal arts college. I have told my students through the years that, at the end of the day, each must become his or her own economist in navigating the economic wilds of daily life. By the same token, each human, at the end of the day, must become his or her own theologian in a personal quest to understand deity and relate to it. Even though I have no formal standing to offer any vision of a new theology, in the final chapter of this book I shall claim personal theological privilege to reconsider Christian theology “at the margin” with the goal of offering a vision of what a “cleaner” and “leaner” Christian theology for the Postmodern age might look like.
While Vincent has written from the perspective of long-time membership in Church of England parishes, my perspective has been that of a member of a Baptist congregation in the south of the United States. It may be helpful to non-Baptist readers in discerning the source of my theological ideas if I describe the church of which I have been a member for almost 50 years.5 This church practices what I would call a Modern-era Trinitarian theology. It maintains its Baptist identity as an independent self-governing organization (i.e., it answers to no external church hierarchy) that selects and employs its own ministers. It subscribes to the doctrines of “soul competency” of the individual to interpret the Bible for him- or herself, and “priesthood of the believer” so that no intercessor is needed between the believer and God. It regards the elements of the eucharist purely as symbolic reminders of Jesus’ death until he "comes again." It does not baptize infants, but rather implements "believers’ baptism" by immersion of new members.
Jim Vincent asks what a theology acceptable to the twenty-first century intellect might look like.7 A review of emerging cultural epochs can set the stage for delving into this question and possible responses to it.
Many of today's leading intellectuals are postmodernists who accede to the ideas of anti-realism, skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, pragmatism, collectivism, egalitarianism, altruism, anti-individualism, the world as conflictual and contradictory, and emotions, instincts, and feelings as better and deeper guides to action than reason.8
Newspaper columnists add envy, resentment, self-righteousness, and outrage to this list. Thomas Sowell says that, "There was a time when most Americans would have resented the suggestion that they wanted someone else to pay their bills. But now, envy and resentment have been cultivated to the point where even people who contribute nothing to society feel that they have a right to a ‘fair share’ of what others have produced."9 Leonard Pitts says, "So much of what purports to be political discourse these days is instead this primal scream of self-righteousness and outrage."10
My church is atypical of Baptist churches in the United States in that it accepts for membership from other denominations any who state that they have had a genuine prior Christian initiation (baptism) experience, whether by immersion or otherwise, and it practices non-discriminatory inclusiveness with respect to race and gender identity. Women as well as men serve on the ministerial staff and the diaconate. It is also atypical in that its worship style might be described as "high church." Our ministers usually follow the liturgical calendar when preparing their sermons, and our worship service scripture readings and liturgies often are taken from the Revised Common Lectionary, a service of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library. Our robed choir and ministers process on Sundays, led by acolytes carrying Bible and candle lighter snuffer, and on high Sundays in the liturgical calendar, a crucifer. This church may appear more like some American Episcopal churches (historically descended from The Church of England and still a part of the worldwide Anglican Communion) than a typical Baptist church.
The church of which I am a member enjoys gradual membership growth and financial stability. However, it may be an anomaly among so-called "mainline" Protestant churches in that it is gaining members from other churches in its vicinity. Several nearby Protestant churches of various denominations are losing members, and some have failed financially as their contribution revenues have fallen below their operating expenses. For some churches, denominational affiliations (e.g., Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian) and the word “church” in their names have become liabilities in the postmodern perception. In efforts to survive membership decline and financial exigency, some have dropped their denominational affiliations and now call themselves "fellowships" or "communities of faith" (rather than "churches") in hopes of retaining current members and attracting new members. My church may be enjoying membership growth and financial stability at present because it is hospitable to people in the LGBTQ community and it continues practicing Modern-era Christian theology (a combination that some may find incompatible). It may have become somewhat of a refuge for people from failing churches who are still tied to their classical Christian up-bringings. If so, its viability may be threatened with the passing of older generations of members.
The problem of declining church membership is broader than just in the vicinity of my church. The Pew Research Center reports that church membership in the United States has been declining in the early decades of the twenty-first century.6 The Postmodern cultural setting that is described in the first chapter of this book is likely to be a contributing factor in this process.
Retirement can be a wonderful state of bliss and idleness, or it can be a terrible state of boredom and anxiety. A friend once told me of a fellow academic who "failed retirement" and felt compelled to go back to teaching in order to avert boredom insanity. My main vehicle for averting retirement failure has been the "e-reader." This device and the "e-books" that can be down-loaded to it have enabled me to explore the vast array of literature that I had foregone as I read mostly professional economics literature and the news sources pertaining to it (e.g., The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times) during my academic career.
As a regular church goer I had always considered myself to be religious in a conventional sense, even though upon occasion I found the rational economic behavior that I taught to be at odds with theological dictums focused upon selflessness. Intrigued by this apparent incompatibility, I have devoted a substantial portion of my newfound freedom to delving into theological literature, mostly written by American theologians and biblical historians. I have also explored some of the critical literature advanced by self-styled atheists. These literatures have enabled me to glimpse behind the veil of "consumer theology" that has been retailed to me from childhood onward through my adult life.
These literatures also have caused me to struggle with the Christian faith that Baptist churches have instilled in me through my lifetime. I have become both skeptical and a bit cynical as I pass my 76th birthday. In what might be regarded as a late-life "crisis of faith," I am wondering if indeed I have become an atheist.
I have also begun to wonder whether some of the theologians, teachers of religion, and ministers of the Gospel that I have known still believe what they teach and preach. Or, having become deeply invested in their vocations, are they just continuing in character until they can retire?
I have contemplated withdrawing from my church so as not to embarrass it or become an encumbrance to it when people, inside or outside my church, begin to suspect the authenticity of my faith. I remain engaged in my church in hopes that I shall be further enlightened as to truth.
I have felt the need to try to verbalize what I have come to believe (or no longer believe) about church, theology, religions, and Christianity in particular. The thoughts presented in this book are my effort to achieve clarity in these matters.
I am happy if these thoughts are helpful to some; I regret that they may be impediments to others. In any case, I hope that they will spark deep thought and respectful discussion.
Dick Stanford, April 2019
Critics and commentators have outlined a progression of cultural epochs from ancient understandings of the workings of the world through the Medieval, Enlightenment, Modern, and Postmodern eras. The epochal progression provides historical insight into societies’ early twentieth-first century theological views.
Ancient peoples perceived that the universe was created and controlled by God (or gods), and all unexplained phenomena were attributed to divine causation. The Western Medieval worldview differed from the Ancient view in that God appeared to follow consistent patterns that became regarded as "natural law."
The Enlightenment of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries shifted understanding of causation from subjective judgment and emotion to objective reason and rationality. The Enlightenment was the precursor to the so-called Modern epoch that commentators describe as coincident with Industrial Revolution in the West and continuing to mid-twentieth century. The Modern epoch entailed the optimistic belief that the application of science and technology to industry could bring about a better world. The ideals of Modernity included equality, democracy, freedom, and human rights.
Coincident with the post-World War II transition of Western economies from primarily industrial to mainly service economies, a movement among European continental philosophers began to question the ability of industrial capitalism to continually bring about material improvement and emotional well-being for their societies. Philosophers also focused upon negatives that they perceived were brought about by industrial capitalism during the twentieth century: the Great Depression, two world wars, the Holocaust, a “cold war,” the prospect of nuclear annihilation, and ever more unequal distributions of income. By the last quarter of the twentieth century philosophers had begun to exhibit a rising skepticism concerning absolutism in science and religion.
Social commentators perceived that the cultural milieu of the late-twentieth century was becoming characterized by skepticism, ethical relativity, permissiveness, religious pluralism, and a victimhood mentality. Crime and vandalism were on the increase. Expectations were rising that government should ensure that all of society’s needs are met and that government should prevent any from suffering harm or discomfort. For want of a better term, the emerging era became known by the rather unimaginative term "postmodern" to distinguish it from the Modern epoch prior to WWII. Edward W. Younkins describes the present-day content of postmodern thought:
A continuum between the extremes of Modernity and Postmodernity may be imagined. Not all people in Western societies have adopted philosophical positions at either extreme, but rather may be somewhere between the extremes. Conservatives and religious fundamentalists likely are closer to the Modernity extreme of the continuum. People who perceive themselves to be liberal and "liberated" from the constraints of doctrine and absolutist social values may put themselves closer to the Postmodernity extreme at the other end of the continuum.
People may find themselves gradually moving in one direction or the other along the continuum as they mature and as their social associations and perceptions change. It is likely that people of older generations remain closer to the Modernity extreme. Those in subsequent generations may occupy social thought positions closer to the Postmodernity extreme. Great social transformations often take multiple generations to complete.
Early in the twenty-first century, Postmodernity’s extreme subjectivity, pessimism, ethical relativism, pluralistic tolerance of other religious traditions, and rejection of absolute truth seemed to produce a cultural malaise that weakened the "social glue" that binds society together.
Vincent’s call for a new theology to supplant the absolutist theologies of the Modern epoch is issued against these characteristics of postmodern society.
The Pew Research Center reports that church membership in the United States has been declining during the early decades of the twenty-first century:
The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic groups. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high school education; and among women as well as men.11
This phenomenon raises questions about whether Postmodernity’s subjectivity, pessimism, relativism, and quests for personal spirituality are rendering organized religions obsolete. If so, it is not certain that Vincent’s call for a new theology can save “church” as a vehicle for corporate worship of deity in the twenty-first century and beyond.
The exit of membership from mainline Protestant churches in the United States seems to be in four directions: (1) a search for an ethos myth in superhero films, (2) the emergence of a pseudo religion centered on Donald Trump, (3) the "megachurch" phenomenon, and (4) no church affiliation or religion connection.
(1) Richard Brody, writing about movies in his blog for The New Yorker, describes a current search for a new ethos myth:
Through the vast complexity of their imagined universes and through their iconic status in mass culture, superhero-comic stories have morphed into a secular religion. .... With their aura of the sacred, superhero movies have also acquired an air of the sanctimonious and a fixation on doctrinal purity. New installments are often designed to satisfy the craving of the devout for fidelity to the underlying mythology—or for a mythology to adhere to.12
The postmodern grasping for superhero ethos myths implies rejection of the ethos myths underlying Christianity (and other Abrahamic religions). Ethos myths have been essential to the viability of classical Christianity, but postmoderns appear to be less accepting of their stories.
(2) Christine Emba, writing in The Washington Post, describes the emergence of what she perceives to be a “new religion" centering on Donald Trump:
…like many heretics, Falwell [president of Liberty University] and his fellow evangelical Trump apologists are on their way to founding a new religion, one in direct conflict with the old. This new religion doesn’t have much to do with Christ at all. Instead, it centers Trump as savior above any other god. A disconcerting number of self-professed Christians have transitioned from the traditionally “evangelical” ambitions of spreading the gospel and forming a personal relationship with Jesus to spreading the gospel of wealth creation and fighting the “radical left.” National identity is what ties this body of believers together, and “the wall” has become its icon of hope, pushing the cross to the side.13
(3) Beginning around the middle of the twentieth century and coincident with the transition from the Modern to the Postmodern era, many people in the United States have left mainline Christian churches for "megachurches," conventionally defined as attended by 2000 or more persons on a typical Sunday. Megachurches offer a theology that has been termed “church lite” and which exhibits the characteristics of American “consumerism.” Theological content may be incidental to “high tech” video entertainment and inspirational motivation addresses by ministers that promote the achievement of a successful life and financial soundness by “following Jesus.” The following extensive quote from The Real Truth magazine is included to convey the sense of American megachurches:
Every weekend, similar scenes play out across the United States, as millions of people flock to the latest craze in religious experience—gigantic, multi-million-dollar worship complexes called “megachurches.” Resembling concert halls or shopping malls, these churches are stirring up frenzy among those seeking a more modern approach to religion. …. Massive attendance is not the only defining characteristic of a megachurch. These giant social complexes have other distinctive trademarks such as gymnasiums, schools, divorce centers, aerobics studios, computer centers, arcades, banquet halls, etc.—one even has a McDonald’s restaurant! Virtually all aspects of life are catered to at megachurches; they are not just Sunday experiences. …. All megachurch services share one thing in common: They are entertaining. Most use varying degrees of video, contemporary music and drama in their services. One megachurch stated that its goal is to have its services “feel like a concert”—to whip people into an emotional frenzy. Music is certainly an effective device for accomplishing this goal. Megachurches strive to reconstruct traditional religious ideas and traditions to be more in line with the “modern person” who is turned off by traditional religion.14
The shift by millions of Americans to the megachurch shopping mall ethos is implicitly a rejection of the Modern-era ethos myths that have been foundational to classical Christian theology and have sustained Christian churches into the twenty-first century.
Changing concepts of deity have emerged in the transition from the Modern epoch to the Postmodern epoch. Karen Armstrong, in her book A History of God,
writes of the idea of God that has been cultivated and sought by human populations through the ages.15 Postmoderns may question whether God is any more than just a human idea.
Even if a divine entity does not actually exist, the idea that one exists, if widely believed, worshiped, and prayed to, can exert powerful effects upon human psyche and behavior. Those who believe in an imagined divine entity may relate to one another in a sort of collective or shared consciousness.17 Communal worship experiences may serve to instill and reinforce the ideology of the shared consciousness.
Marcus Borg, in his book The God We Never Knew: Beyond
Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith, questions where is God with respect to the universe.21 Is God apart from the universe, within the universe, or coincident with the universe? Borg characterizes the concept of an interventionist divine entity as "supernatural theism." He says that supernatural theism is only a small step from "deism" that is characterized by belief in a deity that created the universe and established its physical laws, but then left it to "run" without further intervention. In both concepts, the deity is "out there" (not here) and largely uninvolved with the creation. Here is Jim Vincent’s description of the "out there" deity:
The church’s prevailing image of God is of a supernatural being who is in some way ‘out there’; a God who is separate from ourselves and the universe, who looks on benignly—or otherwise—from a distant place called ‘heaven’ and, perhaps, sometimes tinkers with his (or her) creation. Such a notion of God is intellectually unacceptable today, although I suspect that many of us find it difficult to escape from such a concept and are perhaps reluctant to do so.22
Borg mentions the concept of "pantheism" in which God is perceived to be coincident with the universe, i.e., the universe is God (or God is the universe). In the concluding chapter of his book God: A Human History, Reza Aslan says that he arrived at pantheism through Sufism: "In its simplest form pantheism is the belief that God and the universe are one and the same—that nothing exists outside of God’s necessary existence."23 This leads him to conclude that humans are inherently divine.
The humanist religion worships humanity, and expects humanity to play the part that God played in Christianity and Islam, and that the laws of nature played in Buddhism and Daoism. ...the central religious revolution of modernism was not losing faith in God; it was gaining faith in humanity.24
Harari concludes that the concepts of God, the human soul, the self, and an afterlife simply do not exist
A common presumption among Modern-era religious believers is that a divine entity created the universe. Latter-day scientists have perceived the possibility that the known universe may have initiated spontaneously with a so-called "big bang" at a point that physicists call a "singularity."25 This is only an hypothesis that can be neither proved nor disproved. While the "big bang" theory cannot be ruled out, the initiation of the universe by a divine entity also cannot be ruled out. A possible reconciliation of the big bang theory with the idea of divine creation is that a divine entity may have sparked the big bang that created the universe.
In 2003 Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor at Oxford University, published a paper entitled, "Are You Living In A Simulation?"31 The paper elicited a great deal of discussion among philosophers and physicists (but apparently little discussion among theologians), and it precipitated activity in the worlds of simulation modeling, digital gaming, and futuristic literature and film.
An implication of the Theory of General Relativity enunciated by Albert Einstein in 1915 is that space and time are so inextricably linked (the so-called "space-time continuum") that neither could have existed prior to the initiation of the universe. If we insist that our universe was created (rather than initiating spontaneously), this implies that the creator deity must have preexisted our universe and the initiation of our time. But if there was no time prior to the creation of the universe, this raises the logical question of how there could have been a “before the universe” in which the creator deity must have existed.
Pre-scientific humans indeed may have needed explanations and attributions of natural phenomena that they did not understand. In his book The Invention of Christianity, Alexander Drake argues that when humans have neither science nor religion, psychological mechanisms lead them to invent new religions.37 Is the success of Postmodern era scientific inquiry rendering obsolete the need for the idea of god?
One of the most important things I understand about science is this: Scientists know a lot less than we ordinary folks sometimes like to believe. I doubt there is a single scientific discipline in which humans know even half of all there is to know. (I would love to hear from experts in a field nearing the totality of knowledge — that would be a fascinating discovery in itself.) In many fields, I suspect humans know only one-tenth, or one-hundredth, or one-thousandth of all there is to know. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-no-scientific-consensus-that-humanity-is-doomed/2019/06/25/5daec93a-9759-11e9-916d-9c61607d8190_story.html?utm_term=.bd22ad70cd59&wpisrc=nl_ideas&wpmm=1)
Humans through the ages have believed themselves to be dependent upon the divine for sustenance. As this Postmodern age continues to unfold, is the divine now in the process of cutting humans loose, i.e., opening the knowledge flood gates in order to allow humans to feel more self-sufficient and less dependent upon the divine? Or, are humans by themselves the sole discoverers of the universe’s technological secrets?
Many names have been used through the ages by peoples of different cultures to refer to the divine entities that were associated with their tribes. One of the names that ancient Hebrews used to refer to their god was "Y_hw_h" (Yahweh), but in fear and reverence were reluctant to pronounce this name.
The word God, he [Einstein] says, is "nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness," and the Hebrew Bible is a collection of "honorable, but still purely primitive legends."39
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Reza Aslan, in his book God: A Human History, explains that the Israelites did not become truly monotheistic until after the period of exile in Babylon.40 Following is a synopsis of Aslan’s explanation of the emergence of Israelite monotheism.
If a tribe and its god were indeed one entity, meaning that the defeat of one signaled the demise of the other, then for these monotheistic reformers suffering exile in Babylon, it was better to devise a single vengeful god full of contradictions than to give up that god and thus their very identity.41
Aslan speculates that monotheism was firmed up after the Exile when Israel insisted upon replacing its system of rule by judges with a monarchy. The emerging Kingdom of Israel required a strong and unitary national god to survive its aggressive neighbors.
In a New Yorker opinion piece about the so-called "God Letter" written by Albert Einstein to Eric Gutkind, Louis Menand says,
Einstein had what might be called a night-sky theology, a sense of the awesomeness of the universe that even atheists and materialists feel when they gaze up at the Milky Way. Is it too awesome for human minds to know? A scientist from a generation before Einstein, William James, thought that maybe we can’t—maybe our brains are too small. There might indeed be something like God out there; we just can’t pick it up with the radar we’ve got. In James’s lovely metaphor, “We may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all."44
Something like God may be “out there” in the “awesomeness of the universe,” but God is thought by postmoderns to be ineffable (i.e., incapable of being described with mere human language). Pre-postmodern writers often subjected the idea of god to anthropomorphization, i.e., imputation of human characteristics. Old Testament writers certainly did this, and it is not uncommon today for humans to anthropomorphize human characteristics to a perceived divine entity. Most assumptions about the nature of a god are anthropomorphisms. Reza Aslan, in his book God: A Human History, makes this case using the term "humanize" rather than "anthropomorphize":
We are the lense through which we understand the universe and everything in it. We apply our personal experience to all that we encounter, whether human or not. In doing so, we not only humanize the world; we humanize the gods we think created it.45
Old Testament writers characterized their god as lonely and in need of company, needy of human adoration and worship, and surprised by human infidelity when accorded free will. Jim Vincent, in his book Should the Church Abandon the Bible?, describes the Old Testament perception of God:
The God of the Old Testament is a primitive, supernatural, anthropomorphic being who experiences a wide range of human emotions: love, jealousy, vindictiveness, anger, pride; a God who is often ruthless and unforgiving, savage, petty, irrational and vainglorious; in effect, a magnified image of the sort of despotic tyrant that would have been familiar to many in ancient times, either by repute or from bitter experience.46
These characterizations are human anthropomorphisms that are unseemly of a presumed divine creator of the universe. In his final chapter, Vincent says,
The primitive, anthropomorphic and supernatural God of the Bible is, I believe, a stumbling block for many. The abandonment of such an image of God would allow the church to develop an adult view of the divine.47
Anthropomorphization has a long history, and not just with respect to divine entities. Human characteristics were imputed to animals in Aesop's Fables and Grimm's Fairy Tales. Modern humans may be influenced to regard anthropomorphization of a god as appropriate since Disney, Warner Brothers, Hannah-Barbera, and other animation studios regularly anthropomorphized their animal characters.
For me, and for countless others, ‘The One’ is what I call God. But the God I believe in is not a personalized God. It is a dehumanized God: a God with no material form; a god who is pure existence, without name, essence, or personality.48
This may indeed be the true nature of God, but anthropomorphization may be the only way that many pre-postmoderns can attempt to gain even a partial understanding of the divine entity that they worship. Even so, the anthropomorphic characteristics ascribed to God are prime candidates to be subjected to the marginal principle in applying Ockham’s razor to to the margins of Christianity for the Postmodern era.
An avatar of a god can mean whatever the avatar creator needs for the avatar to mean. Edgar McKnight, in his book Jesus Christ Today, asserts that the reader of scripture can be an active participant in the interpretation of the meaning of scriptural texts.50 McKnight concludes that Jesus can mean whatever the reader of scripture needs for him to mean, and by extension (mine, not McKnight's) this must also apply to god avatars.
Through the ages humans have almost always wanted something from the deities that they worshiped: a good hunt, victory in battle, rainfall, abundant crops, children, good health, healing of disease, surgical success, longevity, safe transit, employment, income, wealth, etc. …and relief from violence occurring in nature (tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.) or violence perpetrated upon their persons or their property by other humans. …and forgiveness of sins. …and salvation to a promised heavenly afterlife.
A Calvinist view is that God predestines all cosmic and human events, and that God "elects" chosen human individuals for a Heavenly destination. A corollary view is that God has a discrete will and plan for the life of every individual who must discover this will for his or her life and then comply with it.
In addition to life itself, humans possess intellect to varying degrees. Life comes to an end when a human dies, at which time it may be presumed that his or her intellect also expires. It cannot be ruled out that humans may be imbued by a divine entity with souls that exist apart from physical life and intellect. Souls are thought to be non-material essences of being that are coexistent with human physical life, may have preexisted human life, and may continue to exist beyond the end of human life, i.e., in an "afterlife." It is not clear whether intellect might survive along with the soul to an afterlife.
Religions are human social contrivances that enable corporate fear, worship, and/or petition of divine entities. A religious faith is a collection of firmly held ideas (an ideology) about the nature of divinity and its relationship to the universe and to human inhabitants of the universe. Worship is the principal vehicle of indoctrination into the ideology of a religious faith. Most religious faiths entail some form of initiation.
Perhaps the most common perception of "myth" is that of a story about an imaginary character that may have derived from some ancient context, but that no one expects actually to be true—a "fairy tale" character. A more sophisticated concept of myth, and one that often is found in religious and sociological discussions, is that of an ethos story which is retold through the generations and conveys the fundamental nature of a society and the relationships among its members. But the two concepts may merge, for example in Aesop's Fables and Grimm's Fairy Tales in which the stories employ mythical characters to relate moralisms.
The 'gospel' story of Jesus is not a factual portrayal of a historical 'master' who walked the earth 2,000 years ago. It is a myth built upon other myths and godmen, who in turn were personifications of the ubiquitous sun god mythos.64
Robert M. Price describes the "Christ-as-myth" origin of Christianity as the theory that the Jesus story began as a myth that was historicized, rather than as a story about an historical figure who was mythologized. In this view, the Jesus story is a version of a "dying-resurrecting Pagan godman" who was "eventually supplied with sayings borrowed from Christian sages, Jewish rabbis, and cynics, and clothed in a biography drawn from the Old Testament."65
Through the vast complexity of their imagined universes and through their iconic status in mass culture, superhero-comic stories have morphed into a secular religion. .... With their aura of the sacred, superhero movies have also acquired an air of the sanctimonious and a fixation on doctrinal purity. New installments are often designed to satisfy the craving of the devout for fidelity to the underlying mythology—or for a mythology to adhere to.69
This ethos myth search affirms Jim Vincent’s call for a new Christian theology for the twenty-first century. The postmodern grasping for superhero ethos myths implies rejection of the ethos myths underlying Christianity (and other Abrahamic religions). Ethos myths have been essential to the viability of classical Christianity, but postmoderns appear to be less accepting of their stories. As postmoderns continue to flee institutional religion in search of alternative mythos, a marginal comparison of the costs of retaining Christian ethos myths may exceed their value to twenty-first century Christian theology.
According to the Gospel of Matthew, Mary was pledged to marry Joseph, "but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 1:18, NIV) Modern scientific understanding of the life initiation and birth processes casts doubt upon such an "immaculate conception" followed by the virgin birth of Jesus. In a New York Times interview, Professor William Lane Craig of the Talbot School of Theology says
…I used to struggle with this, too. But then it occurred to me that for a God who could create the entire universe, making a woman pregnant wasn’t that big a deal! Given the existence of a Creator and Designer of the universe (for which we have good evidence), an occasional miracle is child’s play.70
Stephen Mitchell suggests in his book The Gospel According to Jesus71 that Mary either may have been a harlot, or she may have been raped by a Roman soldier, the identity of whom was known at the time.72 In either case, Jesus would have been illegitimate, a condition abhorrent in first-century Jewish society. Mitchell argues that this fact, widely known by the local Jewish society of the day, haunted Jesus throughout his lifetime. Mitchell finds hints of this likelihood in challenges to Jesus, in a number of Jesus' harsher pronouncements about his mother, his family, and women, and in the fact that Jesus never mentions an earthly father
It was common practice in the patriarchal society of first century Palestine to trace a person's lineage through the person's father (patrilineage). Chapter 1 of Matthew's gospel traces the lineage of Jesus through his adoptive father Joseph to King David's son Solomon. Ross Douthat, writing an opinion column in The New York Times, says
If you only know the Bible vaguely, this litany of names probably sounds a bit pompous, an attempt to elevate the infant Jesus by linking him to great patriarchs and noble kings. But the truth is roughly the opposite: The more you know about Genesis or Chronicles or Kings, the more remarkable it is that Matthew announced the birth of the son of God by linking him to a pack of egregious sinners.74
Douthat goes on to cite in the Matthew lineage examples of sinful misdeeds. He concludes that "all this has happened before and will happen again."
Jesus' "ministry period" spans roughly the last year (or two or three) of his life beginning around 28 or 29 C.E.
The ‘Q’ document material in the gospels take us to the heart of that Christianity which Jesus taught and practised. Within it one can discern a singular, highly distinctive voice. That voice is concerned not with theology or doctrine, but simply with how to live in the present world.78
The important point here is that Jesus’ ministry was focused primarily upon how humans should interact with one another in this world, not upon messiahship or apocalypticism or a next life.
Contrary to popular opinion, Jesus never claimed to be God and it is extremely improbable that he ever used the designation ‘Son of God’. He never does so in the synoptic gospels and on the small number of occasions when John attributes the phrase to him it is likely to be by way of interpolation . . . which is so alien to the ‘Q’ document teachings that it fails to convince.84
Even as ancient concepts were being projected forward to Jesus' time, the post-resurrection perception of Jesus as Son of God became projected by Gospel writers back to accounts of Jesus' life decades earlier. Ehrman notes that "Son of God" is an ancient Hebrew term applied to kings of Israel who had been anointed by God and thus had been "adopted" by God. Ehrman argues that Jesus' references to "Son of Man" do not refer to himself. Rather, they refer to a heavenly lesser-deity described in the biblical book of Daniel and in the non-canonical book of 1 Enoch. This Son of Man, a heavenly being, will be sent to earth by God Almighty at the apocalypse to eliminate evil and establish the Kingdom of God over which a human messiah (an "anointed one") will rule as King. The term "son of man" eventually came to be understood as referring to a normal human being.
As noted by Michael Baigent in his book The Jesus Papers, zealots in Galilee promoted Jesus' potential messiahship as a vehicle for countering Roman hegemony of Palestine.91 At least two of Jesus' disciples may have been zealots, Simon ("the Zealot") and Judas Iscariot (who hailed from the Judean town of Kerioth and carried a sicarii dagger that was a zealot signature). Others also may have been zealots.
Jesus' time on the cross was much shorter than usually required to cause death. In Mark 15:44 we are told that Pilate sent a centurion to see if Jesus was dead, and Pilate was surprised when told by the centurion that Jesus had already died. Michael Baigent conjectures that Jesus may have been drugged by the sponge which contained, not wine vinegar that would have revived him (Mark 15:36), but some combination of drugs so that he appeared to have died.94 He then could be removed from the cross in a sedated (perhaps even comatose) state and taken to a nearby tomb so that he could recover and his wounds could be treated. Baigent argues that this may be implied in John 19:39 which indicates that Joseph and Nicodemus took with them to the tomb a large amount of aromatic spices (myrrh and aloes) that also had healing properties. This theme is also pursued in Howard Brenton's Postmodern-era play "Paul" that was first produced at the National Theatre in London in 2005.95
1. Jesus was actually God (or God’s Son, a version of God himself) who contrived a death-by-crucifixion charade, and thus by divine prerogative could appear to humans after the crucifixion.
These are theories that can neither be proved nor disproved by historical or scientific evidence, so the question boils down to which seems more credible. Pre-postmodern orthodox theology believers may choose theory (1) or theory (2). To me, the most credible alternative is theory (5).
There were no transcripts of either Jesus’ acts or his sayings, only imperfect recollections by multiple witnesses, recorded by different writers long after the actual occurrences, each of whom had different agendas in writing for different audiences. The Gospel writers were acting as if writing dramatic scripts for historical events that they themselves had not witnessed but had been recalled to them by earlier witnesses or in stories that had been circulated over the course of decades. In the same sense that playwrights through the ages have had to "make up" dialogues or speeches for their characters to engage in or deliver in their plays, the Gospel writers wrote the scripts for the dialogues and speeches recorded in the Gospels and the book of The Acts of the Apostles. As recorded in Acts, the speeches by the illiterate Aramaic-speaking peasant Peter and the highly-educated Greek-speaking Pharisee Paul sound very much alike (same style, grammar, vocabulary) because the author of Acts wrote both speeches in Greek.
For on a time when a Cardinall Bembus did move a question out of the Gospell, the Pope gave him a very contemptuous answer saying: ‘All ages can testifie enough howe profitable that fable of Christe hath ben to us and our companie.’105
Bale's satirical piece aside, biblical historians generally accept as historical facts that Jesus lived and was crucified. Bart Ehrman asserts (in How Jesus Became God) that the only authentic historical facts about Jesus' burial and resurrection are that some people believed that these events happened, and many other people accepted their assertions (witness). Paul, in I Corinthians 15, indicates that Jesus appeared to more than five hundred people, including all of the apostles and Paul himself. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew says that even though the apostles saw Jesus, some still doubted (28:17). Ehrman argues that while the crucifixion seemed to deny the messiahship of Jesus, the perception of his resurrection led witnesses to believe that Jesus was indeed the messiah, although a different kind than they had expected.
To protect his opinions of himself and his abilities, the consumer has a program running in the background that screens out unfavorable information about the Chevy and favorable information about the Ford, so he does not need to think he made the wrong choice. .... The unconscious program is always there, running in the background. New information might come along that strongly indicates we should change our original decision. Almost always, unless we realize what is happening, we tend to ignore it. This can keep us from changing a poor decision to one that will enhance our future well-being and happiness.109
Most of us who are religious "consumers" did not make our early religious belief choices as a matter of our own free wills. Our religious beliefs initially were made for us in childhood as we were indoctrinated by parents and in Sunday School and church. But once they had been instilled in us, we tended to embrace and hold onto them as we matured. So we cling to the "old, old stories," even as subsequent information suggested that they may not be true.
The good news is that psychologists and other social scientists are working hard to understand what prevents people from seeing through propaganda. The bad news is that there is not yet a consensus on the answer. Much of the debate among researchers falls into two opposing camps. One group claims that our ability to reason is hijacked by our partisan convictions: that is, we’re prone to rationalization. The other group — to which the two of us belong — claims that the problem is that we often fail to exercise our critical faculties: that is, we’re mentally lazy. 112
Pennycook and Rand note that according to the rationalization theory, “people use their intellectual abilities to persuade themselves to believe what they want to be true rather than attempting to actually discover the truth.” And research indicates that the smarter people are, the more likely they are to rationalize.
...the only myth that is going to be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one that is talking about the planet, not the city, not these people, but the planet, and everybody on it. .... And what it will have to deal with will be exactly what all myths have dealt with...how to relate to this society and how to relate this society to the world of nature and the cosmos.113
The economic question is whether the ethos myths of Christian theology provide sufficient benefits of understanding for Modern-era believers to offset the costs that they incur to the skeptical minds of twenty-first century postmoderns who are fleeing organized religions. As noted in Chapter 1, many postmoderns seem to be searching for new ethos myths that they may take as credible.
In his first book, God: A Biography, Jack Miles examines the "person" of God from the literary perspective of character development.114 Using the chronological book order of the Hebrew Tanakh (rather than the non-chronological order of the Christian "Old Testament"), Miles reveals a sequence in the transition of God's character from initial almighty creator of the world through stages of naivete of the human creation, intimate conversationalist, wrathful evictor from the garden, destroyer of wicked humanity, exile liberator, law dictator, disobedience punisher, mighty warrior who destroys his people's enemies and perpetrates genocide, and capricious manipulator of a human subject. After God speaks to Job, we see a gradual waning of God's direct involvement in the world as God no longer speaks with humans but communicates to them only through "prophets." Toward the end of the Tanakh we see a distant and receding "Ancient of Days" figure who doesn't engage with humanity for four hundred years.
* Jesus, the Son of God, was begotten of God and is the same substance as God.
The Nicene Creed, as amended in subsequent ecumenical councils to deny specific heretical notions, presents the view of the "Catholic and Apostolic Church" that is supposed to have descended in direct lineage from the apostles of Jesus. Today Catholics in good standing with the Roman Catholic Church are expected to "toe the line" specified by the Nicene Creed.116 Protestant churches and individual Protestants may accept all or only some of the tenets of the Nicene Creed. Ehrman says that many of the more liberal thinkers that he knows may mouth the creed without thinking much about it when it is recited in their churches, and many do not believe all of the tenets of the Creed.
Relative to what became the orthodox perception, Bart Ehrman
(How Jesus Became God) identifies
various concepts that had been advanced but were rejected at the Council of Nicaea:117
Of the reputed heresies that were rejected at Nicea, the one that (to me) seems most plausible was advanced by an Alexandrian presbyter, Arius (256-336). Arius argued that Jesus was not divine, but was entirely mortal and nothing more than an inspired teacher. Further, Arius asserted that God was a single omnipotent deity (not a trinity) who had not incarnated into human flesh.
I have often watched congregants and choir members in my own church read liturgies and sing hymns, apparently with little thought as to the meanings of the words that they read and sing. However, as I have become more attentive to them, I have found myself becoming ever less comfortable with various archaic concepts in some of the hymns, anthems, and liturgies that are included in our worship services. A case in point is the Doxology.
The Queen in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland obviously belongs to the Modern epoch. One reason that interest in Christianity may be waning among twenty-first century postmoderns is that its doctrines require belief in incredible things or events. Synonyms for the word "incredible" include "unbelievable" and "impossible."
The atonement doctrine is the convoluted logic of a deity who must allow itself (or its own son, a version of itself) to be killed by sinful humans as a substitutionary blood sacrifice to itself in order to provide humanity with an object of belief that absolves humanity's sin. Jim Vincent, in his book Should the Church Abandon the Bible?, says that
This barbaric doctrine [atonement]—which may be largely, or even wholly, a Pauline construct—is an abhorrent one from the standpoint of the modern-day rationalist, whether Christian or not. The idea that God does not forgive the sins of mankind without some form of 'blood sacrifice' is one that can no longer be entertained.119
If Jesus truly was divine at the same time that he was human, or if he was God in the guise of a human, then his "suffering" during the crucifixion was a divine charade.
Jesus was not commissioned by God to found a church, nor did he intend to establish theologies, doctrines, or orthodoxies. Churches and these various ideologies are fully human products that twenty-first century postmoderns may be inclined to avoid.
Here are some generally agreed-upon facts about religious trends in the United States. Institutional Christianity has weakened drastically since the 1960s. Lots of people who once would have been lukewarm Christmas-and-Easter churchgoers now identify as having "no religion" or being "spiritual but not religious." The mainline-Protestant establishment is an establishment no more. Religious belief and practice now polarizes our politics in a way they didn’t a few generations back.121
Jim Vincent argues that continuing decline of the church in England will render it progressively more irrelevant in the twenty-first century unless it can develop a new theology:
If the church can liberate itself from its biblical straightjacket it may enable itself to develop a new theology acceptable to the 21st century intellect. In doing so it may grant itself a new lease of life and the opportunity to grow and develop; and it may perhaps offer a meaning to life that many find lacking within the materialism of our present age. What might such a theology for the modern world look like? I suspect the following will be key criteria:
* It should not be chained to the Bible.
Vincent's assessment of the church in England applies no less to Christian churches in the United States and elsewhere. In the last chapter of this book I shall offer a vision of a new theology that is intended to meet Vincent’s criteria and possibly serve the spiritual needs of twenty-first century postmoderns
Life may be good, but risk is attendant upon every activity of life, even the very act of stepping out of bed in the morning. Risk that is not recognized and adequately managed may make life seem very bad. The goodness of life should be celebrated even as life's risks need to be managed.
* engaging in activities that may entail off-setting risks of either losses or gains;
The trivial risks associated with most mundane human activities typically are just assumed, e.g., the risk of stubbing my toe on the bedstead when I step out of bed in the morning. We assume these trivial risks without even thinking about them as risks.
"Sin" is understood by believers in a divine entity to be separation or estrangement from the divine entity. Sin entails engaging in behavior (or even thought) that violates the stipulated commands or perceived preferences of the deity.
The appropriate venue for prayer (communion with the divine) is private, personal, and within the human psyche. Many "public" prayers have been written and are read to be heard by a congregation, audience, or other group, rather than by a divine entity.
The term "the human condition" appeared in humanities literature during the first half of the twentieth century to refer to common elements in human life. The postmodern contexts in which it has been used often imply that human life is fraught with uncertainty, suffering, and anxiety attributable to poverty, violence, isolation, the search for ultimate meaning, and the inevitability of death. In our churches as well as in our private lives we often bemoan and pray for relief from what we perceive to be the pervasiveness of suffering in this postmodern world.
On the simplest and most important measure, income, the story is actually one of astonishing progress. Since 1990, more than 1 billion people have moved out of extreme poverty. The share of the global population living in these dire conditions has gone from 36 percent to 10 percent, the lowest in recorded history. This is, as the World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, notes, “one of the greatest achievements of our time.” Inequality, from a global perspective, has declined dramatically. …. Look at any measure from a global perspective and the numbers are staggering. The child mortality rate is down 58 percent since 1990. Undernourishment has fallen 41 percent, and maternal deaths (women dying because of childbirth) have dropped by 43 percent over roughly the same period.126
An early twenty-first century phenomenon is the slogan and registered trademark of a popular apparel company, Life is good®. I am pleased to note that this perspective is recognized in the commercial sphere (albeit for marketing purposes) even though many of the ministers that I have known seem to be focused upon the negatives of life—the human condition. This may be due to the fact that they are the "go-to guys" when misfortune occurs within their congregations. I recently heard a minister say in a sermon that "Suffering is all around us." It seems that most congregational prayers are loaded with petitions to salve suffering and misfortune, both of members of the congregation and of the larger society as well. The goodness of life may be mentioned only in passing.
So, am I an atheist? Or am I a theist? Or am I simply an agnostic?
Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6,000 years ago, historians have cataloged over 3700 supernatural beings, of which 2870 can be considered deities. So next time someone tells me they believe in God, I’ll say "Oh which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra?..." If they say "Just God. I only believe in the one God," I’ll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don’t believe in 2,870 gods, and they don’t believe in 2,869.128
Selective atheism has a long and, I think, honorable history. The Hebrew slaves in Egypt were selective atheists with respect to the gods worshiped by their Egyptian masters. Once the Children of Israel reached the "Promised Land," they were required by Yahweh to be atheistic with respect to Baal and other gods of the local tribal peoples. First-century Christians were regarded as atheists with respect to the orthodox Judaism of the day. The apostle Paul was atheistic with respect to local gods in both Athens and Rome.
But, am I a "Christian?" There is a greater standard and a lesser standard here. If in order to be judged a "real" Christian one must believe that Jesus was God's actual son (or a human version of God himself) and that he (god or man?) died on the cross to absolve me of my sins (the "orthodox" view), then I cannot meet this greater standard. On this standard I am without doubt a heretic.
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. --John 8:32 (NIV).
A spiritual journey is a quest for "truth," usually perceived to be truth about deity. I have realized that this exploration of my faith indeed has been a spiritual journey, but one that has culminated in questioning the existence of deity, soul, and afterlife.
Jim Vincent calls for a new theology for the twenty-first century:
. . . unless the Christian church is able to develop a new theology that is compatible with educated, modern thought and intellectual progress, it will inevitably find itself in terminal decline. To develop such a theology the church must re-examine unflinchingly the doctrines that it has hitherto taken as 'gospel', e.g. the concept of the Trinity; the atonement for sin; justification by faith; and the exclusivity of Christianity. If necessary all of these, and more, must be abandoned.134
In the preface to this book I wrote that each human must become his or her own theologian in a personal quest to understand deity and relate to it. So here, in the last chapter of this book, I claim personal theological privilege to offer my vision of what, in Vincent’s words, "a new theology that is compatible with educated, modern thought and intellectual progress," might look like.
Rather than a "salvation gospel," this theology would entail a "social gospel" (but excluding expectation of a "Second Coming"135) that may have been Yeshua's original intent. It would not presume "justification by faith alone," but it would insist that adherents "do good works" to and for their fellow humans. It would not turn upon confession and repentance of sin or require belief in a blood sacrifice as a condition for forgiveness of sin. It would not be based upon the death and resurrection of a savior figure. It would not insist upon being an exclusive channel to the divine. It would not promise the possibility of an afterlife to serve as an object of human hope, but it would emphasize the prospects for joy and happiness in this life.
With such grace our God has called us to reach out to everyone,
A concern is whether postmodern humans would be able to revere, love, and worship such a formless deity without wanting something from the deity (i.e., a quid pro quo relationship). Petitioning a divine entity that rarely intervenes in the world may not have the desired result, i.e., prayers may appear not to be answered; coincidental with natural processes and human activity, some prayers may only appear to be answered.
So now it’s time to sort and catalog my beliefs and unbeliefs. Here is a list of theological concepts about which I am at least skeptical if not selectively atheistic. These are my candidates that could be pared from the complex of Christian ideology for the twenty-first century without significant loss of benefit. In my perception, these are the elements of received Christian theology that may entail greater costs than the benefits conferred if they are retained:
So, what do I now actually believe? This is my list of theological elements that offer greater benefits to understanding the nature of deity than the costs of their retention.
(4) Many intelligent, educated, and thinking people in Western societies today choose not to affiliate with any organized religious institutions. Assuming that the attitudes of Postmodernity have not yet rendered organized religions obsolete, these are people who have drifted toward the Postmodernity end of the continuum, and it is these for whom a new theology is needed.
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Francis Collins is an eminent geneticist who directed the Human Genome Project that developed the first complete draft of the human DNA map. In his book The Language of God (Free Press, 2006), Collins reflects a Modernity era view in arguing that a divine entity must exist because humans in nearly all cultures through the ages have sought a divine entity.16 That they have done so does not constitute proof that a divine entity exists.
Theologians are fond of referring to God as "the ultimate reality." Scientists may take exception to this use of the word "reality," a term that for them refers to the physical aspects of the universe. Given the inability of humans to either prove or disprove the existence of God, better references to God might be "the ultimate possibility," or "the ultimate mystery."
Is God real or imaginary? That a divine entity in reality exists cannot be ruled out. It also cannot be ruled out that "God" is nothing more than an idea, a figment of the human imagination, but one that that has been widely believed, desired, needed, and sought by humans through the ages.
Is there a scientific basis for shared consciousnesses? Tam Hunt explains that everything in the universe vibrates. The "resonance theory of consciousness" posits that vibration (or resonance) confers consciousness (a.k.a. "subjectivity") on humans and lower-order animals.18 Hunt says that vibrations "are the basic mechanism for all physical interactions to occur." Vibrations occur at different frequencies, but when two things come into close-enough proximity to one another, they may begin to vibrate in a common frequency. This enables their consciousnesses to synchronize so that they can act in concert. This theory may explain the behaviors of schools of fish and flights of swallows as they move together with no apparent contact or communication among themselves, and the fact that lightening bugs in the same vicinity tend to flash their lights simultaneously. Humans synchronize through their senses and speech as well as their vibrations to engage in collective consciousnesses.
Humans sharing in a collective consciousness of an imagined divine entity may feel directed or guided to be concerned about the welfare of others sharing the collective consciousness. Feelings of benevolence or malevolence may extend to humans outside of the collective consciousness, and they may result in acts of kindness or hostility toward others. Those sharing in the collective consciousness of an imagined divine entity may feel a sense of evangelical urgency to proselytize others not yet so engaged to share in the collective consciousness.
A collective consciousness of an imagined divine entity implies that the divine entity resides in the minds of those sharing in the consciousness. Such a collective consciousness may have powerful and real effects, both emotional and behavioral, upon those who share in the consciousness. An imagined divine entity may seem to be real to those who share in the collective consciousness, and it may even appear to "act" through those sharing in the collective consciousness.
It must be acknowledged that the idea of a shared consciousness may apply just as well to the existence of a real divine entity as to an imagined divine entity. For that matter, the idea of a collective consciousness may apply to heroic mortals who have become objects of public adoration. Examples may include the likes of Hitler, Churchill, Kennedy, Obama, Trump.
Blaise Paschal was a French mathematician and philosopher who lived during the Age of Enlightenment from 1623 to 1662. In Pensées, literally "thoughts," Paschal described what is now called "Paschal's wager" or "Paschal's gamble"19: if one bets that a divine entity does not exist and a divine entity does in fact exist, then all is lost; if one bets that a divine entity exists but a divine entity does not in fact exist, then nothing is lost; if one bets that a divine entity exists and a divine entity does in fact exist, then all is gained. Whether or not a divine entity actually exists, a rational human should of course bet that a divine entity does exist.
However, betting on the existence of a divine entity does not in itself rise to the level of either belief or faith. Belief entails an intellectual and emotional commitment that is not necessary to a wager. And as Armstrong notes, "There is a distinction between belief in a set of propositions and a faith which enables us to put our trust in them." Betting that a divine entity exists is a risk management strategy that may not entail either belief or trust.
Following Armstrong's use of the term, a divine entity would not be a "being" in the sense that humans and sub-human animals are "beings." A divine entity, if one exists, would be in an entirely different league from humans and sub-human animals, a unique league that humans can hardly even imagine.20 A different word, "entity," has been used here to refer to the possibility of the divine.
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Borg advocates an experiential concept of deity in which the deity "interpenetrates" the universe and is understood to be always present "in the here and now," is continually engaged with the creation (i.e., the universe), and is readily accessible to the inhabitants of the creation. This concept of deity is called "panentheism."
Borg's ideas beg the question of whether it is only a matter of degree in the difference between the concept of a deity that is present only upon occasional interventions, and the concept of one that is continually engaged and ever present. Three concepts of deity could be arrayed along a continuum from deism (no involvement after the creation) at one extreme, Borg's concept of panentheism (continual engagement) at the other extreme, and supernatural theism (occasional intervention) at various points between the extremes depending on how often the deity is perceived to intervene in the creation. Beyond the deism end of a theistic continuum would be atheism, i.e., the non-belief in deity and any role for deity in the universe.
The idea of a god may have served a useful purpose for pre-Modern and pre-scientific humans who needed explanations and attributions of natural phenomena that they did not understand. The deity concepts of pre-scientific peoples thus might be closer to the panentheistic end of a theistic continuum. As a society becomes more scientifically knowledgeable and sophisticated (and thus less in need of mystical explanations and ascriptions of natural phenomena), the deity concepts of members might tend toward the deism end of the continuum or beyond into the realm of atheism. If this is true, Borg's advocacy of a panentheistic concept of deity would contravene a postmodern trend toward deism or beyond to atheism.
The idea of an ever-present and continually-engaged deity suggests the possibility of continual manipulation of the creation by deity (“God is in control!”), and it may hint at the Calvinist concept of predestination by deity of all cosmic and human events. This begs the further question of whether the concept of an ever-present and continually-engaged deity is compatible with the notion that deity accords free will to humans.
Youval Harari, in this book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, takes a postmodern position in dismissing the concept of God and the religions that worship a god. Beginning in the early eighteenth century, "humanism" emerged as an effective successor religion to the various forms of theism:
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The anthropic principle is the contention that the properties of the known universe are "just right" to allow the initiation and support of life. This principle implies that the universe was carefully designed by a divine entity. However, some scientists hypothesize that the known universe may be one of an infinite number of universes with different properties and laws of physics, and that the known universe is one (perhaps among others) that happens to have just the right properties and laws of physics to enable the initiation and support of life.26
Richard Carrier says that the universe looks exactly like a godless universe would look, and not at all like a Christian universe would look, even down to its very structure.27 Victor Stenger argues that the emerging understanding of the multiverse consisting of trillions upon trillions of galaxies is fully explainable in naturalistic terms with no need for supernatural forces to explain its origin or ongoing existence.28 However, a multiverse hypothesis is no more provable or disprovable than is the belief that a divine entity designed the known universe.
If a divine entity did indeed establish the laws of physics that govern the known universe, the divine entity must have the power to intervene in the laws, i.e., to perform what may appear to humans to be miracles. The fact that human scientists have been able to identify the laws of physics of the known universe with high degree of confidence suggests that the divine entity rarely intervenes, at least in the physical aspects of the universe.
Albert Einstein famously argued with Niels Bohr whether God "plays dice with the universe," i.e., whether the universe is deterministic as maintained by Einstein, or subject to randomness as asserted by Bohr.29 By "deterministic" Einstein meant that it should be possible to describe any aspect of the universe by an equation. Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel explains that today’s knowledge of quantum mechanics renders Einstein’s conclusion false.30 Random and unpredicted events do occur in the universe, but with the accumulation of enough data about similar events, scientists can estimate probabilities of their occurrence. A question is whether random events occur in the universe independently of divine causation, or are they evidence of God playing dice with the universe?
Some of the events of the modern world that are deemed to be miracles actually may be happenings for which there are very low, but still non-zero, probabilities of occurrence. Even events with very low probabilities of occurrence still happen. For example, if there is a one-in-a-million chance of an event occurring, somewhere in a million opportunities it will occur. When it does occur, those who witness it may be inclined to call it a "miracle" and attribute it to the "hand of God."
Such happenings may be non-events. For example, in 9,999 of 10,000 similar automobile accidents in the past the driver died, but in one particular similar instance a driver survives the accident. Although the result may have been purely a matter of probability (0.01 percent), some will be inclined to regard the survival of the driver as a miracle and look for God's intent in preserving the life of the driver.
A variation on this example provides another interesting puzzle. Suppose that in 9,999 of 10,000 similar automobile accidents the driver has survived, but in one particular instance a driver dies. Again, the event occurred as a matter of probability (also 0.01 percent), but friends and family of the driver, suffering acute emotional distress, may blame God or presume that God had some particular intent in taking their loved one from them prematurely. I am skeptical that such low-probability occurrences are revelations of God’s intent or power.
Given the range of possible outcomes of any event, humans tend to focus on the worst imaginable. As suggested in Blaise Paschal’s Pensées, numbers 82-84, anxiety seems to heighten when the imagination of the possible outcomes of an event overpowers the probabilities of their occurrence. For example, the probability of an automobile accident may be quite low, but an overdue arrival of a loved one may elevate the anxiety of those awaiting the arrival out of proportion to the probability of occurrence. My guess is that uncertainty of random events with possible negative outcomes may elicit more prayer than does anticipation of events with positive outcomes and higher probabilities of occurrence.
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Bostrom posited three future possibilities for humankind, (1) that the human species is likely to go extinct before reaching a "posthuman" stage; (2) that a surviving posthuman civilization is unlikely to run simulations of their evolutionary history; and (3) that "we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation." He assessed the probabilities of the first two at nearly zero, but the third to be highly likely.
Bostrom conjectured that future (post-postmodern) computing capacity will become great enough that posthumans can conduct a virtually unlimited number of simulations of environmental and life circumstances. These simulations may be sufficiently complex and refined that they cannot be distinguished from reality.32 And with enough computing power it may become possible to simulate human or posthuman participants that cannot be distinguished from real humans. The simulated humans and posthumans, called "sims," might even possess consciousness so that they are sentient and self-aware, but unaware that they are not real humans.
Who would be conducting those simulations? Bostrom suggests the possibility that at least a few advanced posthumans may, for whatever reasons, run simulations of the lives of their ancestors or similar beings. Unbeknownst to us today, we may be participants in such simulations that are being run by our advanced descendants.
When I taught economics courses for undergraduate students, I designed and wrote the code to implement a number of simulation models. In a macroeconomic model, groups of three or four students role-played making government expenditure, taxation, central bank, and international trade policy decisions for countries in pursuit of economic growth. In a microeconomic model, groups of students role-played in making management decisions for companies in competition with each other for profits and market shares. As the simulation designer and digital code writer, I was acting as if "god" in creating the simulation models, determining the rules of the games, and setting (and manipulating) the parameters.
With this experience as background, another possibility comes to mind in regard to Bostrom’s paper: the world that we live in today may be a simulation being conducted by a divine entity.33 In this perception, the divine entity programs the simulation (i.e., writes the digital code that creates the simulation environment and establishes the rules which govern it) and can change the parameters at will (i.e., intervene or "tinker" with it). The divine entity may run digital-code simulations in order to observe how humans behave and react to changing conditions, or possibly just for the divine entity's own amusement. The simulations may be populated by both real humans and sims, but the simulation participants may be unable to distinguish either their own or any other simulation participant's existential status. The divine programmer may even choose to play a role as a participant in the simulations.
A crucial question is whether in any such divine simulation, the participants, real or simulated, may have access to the divine code writer to petition for assistance or relief from simulation adversity. From a simulation-modeling perspective, the initial chapters of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, appear to be pre-scientific efforts to describe the divine code-writing process that created the simulation environment. The Hebrew Tanakh (to Christians, the Old Testament) book of Job may have been a divine simulation in which the simulation operator interacts with a human simulation participant. And in the Christian New Testament, could the life of Jesus have been a divine simulation experiment in which the divine code writer becomes a simulation participant? Perhaps we today are living in one of the divine entity's simulation environments. And what if all of us are digital sims rather than blood-and-bone humans? This of course begs the question of what constitutes reality in our postmodern world.
Even if real humans inevitably must die, could a sim survive to an "afterlife" in another divine simulation?
Many of the Old Testament narratives originally were oral-tradition stories that were elaborated and embellished as they were told and retold around campfires during the 40-year migration of the Israelites through the Sinai desert en route to the “Promised Land.” Other narratives were the products of imaginative writings during and after the Babylonian exile. Postmoderns who dismiss Old Testament stories as myths may find simulation narratives more credible than the ancient stories, but classical theology believers may find the simulation narratives fantastic. The economic consideration is whether the benefit to churches of attracting postmoderns by embracing simulation narratives might exceed the cost of alienating long-time members who are “turned off” by such narratives and value the ancient stories.
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--Carlo Rovelli, 2014
The emerging scientific understanding of a "multiverse" suggests that our universe (the only one that we know) may be one among many universes that exist but as yet are unknown to us. Since our universe may not have been the first universe to have come into existence, multiverse time may have preceded the creation of our universe and the initiation of its time. This idea only begs the question of whether deity preexisted the first universe in the multiverse. This conundrum suggests that the divine is timeless and "preexistence" is meaningless. Or it may weigh in favor of a theory of spontaneous initiation of the universe that side-steps the deity preexistence issue.
In his book Reality is Not What it Seems, physicist Carlo Rovelli notes that Einstein perceived the space-time continuum as like the surface of a mollusk that might exhibit curves, waves, ripples, and even vortices.34 Although a mathematical solution to the field equations of his General Relativity theory predicted the existence of “black holes” in the universe, Einstein doubted that they actually existed. Physicists subsequently have theorized that a dying star can produce a gravitational vortex around it that results in a black hole at its center when the star exhausts its fuel and goes dark. Every galaxy that can be observed (including the “Milky Way”) appears to have at least one black hole near its center.
A black hole exerts a gravitational force that seems to hold the galaxy together and pull near-by matter (including other stars in its galaxy) into its center so that the center becomes ever more densely concentrated. The gravitational pull of a black hole may be so strong and the center so densely packed that not even light can escape. Although black holes cannot be observed directly, astronomers have inferred their existence from incidental evidence. Using a global network of radio telescopes, they have captured an image of the light halo of gas and dust surrounding a black hole at its “event horizon,” i.e., the outer edge just before mass falls into the back hole.35
Physicists theorize that if the gravitational force of a black hole were strong enough to pull all of the stars of its universe into its center, the center would become a “singularity” that could explode in a "big bang." Some physicists call this hypothetical event a “big bounce” as the universe disappears into the black hole singularity which may then explode (bounce) into a new universe that can continue to expand for billions of years. Although this theory cannot be tested, it suggests that a previous universe might propagate a subsequent one. But it does not explain the existence or initiation a first universe.
Twenty-first century physicists note that the big bang theory is a "macro" (large body) perspective of the General Relativity theory that is not consistent with the emerging micro (atomistic) theories of quantum mechanics and quantum gravity. Rovelli says that when the quantum nature of the universe is taken into account, both space and time disappear into atomistic particles (quanta) and force fields.
Rovelli is an advocate of a quantum explanation of gravity. In the quantum gravity theory, everything in the universe, including what appears to be "empty space," consists of particles (photons, electrons, gravitons) and force fields (light, electromagnetic, gravity) that manifest themselves only in sequences of quanta collisions. The trajectory of any single quantum is random and can be perceived only as a probability distribution of the possible paths that it could take. The particles and fields are related in nets of "probability cloud" nodes that are connected by force links. Rather than space being like Einstein's image of the surface of a mollusk that exhibits curves, waves, and ripples, the changing strengths of the force links may cause the nets to expand or contract in waves and ripples as their densities change.
Rovelli explains that “time” is meaningful to humans at the macro level relative to large bodies such as Earth or Mars, althouth Mars time is different from Earth time. But at the quantum level neither time nor space actually exist. Quanta do not inhabit space; space is the fabric of the neighboring relations among quanta. There is no such thing as “empty space.” And events do not happen in time; rather, time is just the counter of the interactions of the quanta events.
The quantum gravity theory appears to require no role for deity in the universe as we know it. Rovelli notes that Belgian priest/physicist Georges Lemaitre was convinced that it was foolish to mix science and religion: "The Bible knows nothing about physics, and physics knows nothing about God."36 But is it indeed not possible to link belief in deity with quantum physics theory? The following is a conjecture about the possible role that God may have played in the creation of a universe composed of quanta and force fields.
When I wrote code to design simulation models in which my students made decisions, I still had to implement the code by submitting it to a computer to process the code and student decision data, and to provide printouts of student decision performance. God may have acted like a code-writer designing a simulation model of the universe, but the design of the universe still had to be implemented in some way.
In this conjectural perception, God may have chosen quanta particles and force fields as the media for implementing the model design in a manner as yet unknown to humans. At some point of God's own choosing, God may have "sparked" the big bang explosion at a black-hole singularity that created the expanding universe that we observe today.
To extend this conjectural perception even further, God may have included in the simulation model design the possibility that life could emerge from the primordial chemical soup following the big bang. And God may have chosen evolution as the vehicle that produced the variety of life forms which have been discovered in archaeological evidence and that we know today
So we have at least three possible hypotheses about the universe initiation process: (1) the classical six-day Genesis narrative of creation as spoken by God; (2) spontaneous initiation of the universe by a big bang at a singularity in a quanta network of particles and forces, followed by the natural emergence of life and the evolution of diverse life forms; and (3) a simulation model designed by God, implemented by God’s choice of media consisting of particles networked in force fields, sparked by God at a singularity, followed by life emergence and evolutionary processes enabled and guided by God.
We would like to know the truth about the creation process, but in the absence of means to test these hypotheses, the question boils down to personal belief based on the credibility of the hypotheses. Which hypothesis is likely to seem more credible to the twenty-first century intellect?
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Knowledge consists of information acquired and possessed by humans about human psychology, human social interaction, technical aspects of the laws of the universe, availability of the resources of the universe, and mechanisms that have been contrived by humans to use the resources of the universe. Wisdom involves moral choices made by humans with respect to human social interaction and the use by humans of the resources of the universe
Human acquisition of knowledge occurs by discovery, teaching, and study. Can knowledge be discovered by humans apart from a divine entity, or is a divine entity the source of all knowledge (scientific, physical, metaphysical) of the universe? It cannot be ruled out that a divine entity enables the provision of knowledge to humans so that they may access and use the resources of the universe. But if a divine entity is indeed the source of all knowledge, one might wonder why the divine entity lately has been allowing humans ever greater access to the technical knowledge of the universe? And in allowing humans to eat so freely of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, is the divine entity incurring risk that humans may use the technical knowledge to destroy the earth?
David Von Drehle, writing in The Washington Post, says that
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Bible scholars have identified four principal sources for Old Testament literature: the Elohist (pertaining to the god El who was worshiped by Canaanites), the Yahwist (pertaining to the god Yahweh who was worshiped by Midianites), the Priestly, and the Deuteronomic sources. The first two were written before the Babylonian exile; the last two were written during or soon after the exile. English language translations of Old Testament literature usually represent El as "God" and Yahweh as "LORD" (all caps). The Priestly writer attempted to merge the Elohist and Yahwist identities of God by introducing the term "Yahweh El," i.e., "LORD God," that we see in the Psalms and other books of the Old Testament.
On the assumption that there is only one divine entity, English-speaking Jews and Christians have appropriated the English language common noun "god" and made it into a proper name, "God," to refer to the divine entity. Speakers of other languages likewise have made the generic word for god a proper name, e.g., Dieu in French, Gott in German, Dios in Spanish. For want of a better term or name, the following also employs this common convention.
The English proper name "God" has been adulterated by its use in common parlance expletives "Oh God!", "My God!", and similar phrases to register shock or indicate that something bad is happening or has happened. Also, the phrase "OMG!" ("Oh my God!") has become used in text messaging to indicate surprise or joy. These expletives rarely are intended to evoke anything having to do with a divine entity.
Reza Aslan, in his book God: A Human History, says that as a Sufi he worships "...a God with no material form; a god who is pure existence, without name, essence, or personality."38
Writing in The New Yorker, Louis Menand describes a letter written in 1954 by Albert Einstein to Eric Gutkind criticizing Gutkind’s book entitled Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt:
In ancient times gods were associated with specific tribes. Bible scholars have been aware for some time that the ancient Hebrews worshiped two different gods, the Canaanite god El (or the plural Elohim) and the Midianite god Yahweh. The Israelites (Jacob and sons) that migrated from Canaan (in northern Palestine) to Egypt worshiped the Canaanite god El; however, they practiced monolatry, i.e., they worshiped one god without necessarily denying the existence of other gods.
After Moses killed an Egyptian overseer, he fled Egypt to the "Land of Midian" (probably south of Canaan in the Sinai or trans-Jordan area) where he encountered a Midianite priest for whom he went to work and whose daughter he married. The Midianite god Yahweh instructed Moses to return to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of Egypt to a new "promised land." Aslan says that since the Israelites in Egypt worshiped El and did not know Yahweh, Moses had to introduce them to Yahweh and convince them to follow him out of Egypt into the Sinai desert (the land of Midian) en route to the Promised Land.
According to Aslan, Moses says something surprising to the Israelites who knew El as their god: "Yahweh, the god of your fathers, the god of Abraham, the god of Isaac, and the god of Jacob, has sent me to you." (Exodus 3:15) Aslan says that a post-exilic writer attempted to reconcile the two god names by having Moses' god Yahweh state that "I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai [God of the Mountain], but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them." (Exodus 6:2-3)
It is not until the Exile and the monarchy period of their history that the Israelites became true monotheists. Aslan explains that the stronger Babylonians and their god Marduk had defeated the weaker Israelites and their god Yahweh.
Judaism is the monotheistic predecessor of both Christianity and Islam, but it never exhibited an evangelistic fervor to convert non-Jews (Gentiles) to Judaic monotheism. Christianity may have served a useful purpose because without the Apostle Paul and his efforts to spread Christianity to the non-Jewish world, much of the world's populations through the ages might never have come to understanding and worship of one true god. A parallel speculation may be drawn with respect to the teachings of the prophet Mohammad and the subsequent spread of Islam.
Both Christianity and Islam have precipitated violence and engaged in religious wars and terrorism. Christopher Hitchens says that religion poisons social and political relationships.42 Terrorism and atrocities perpetrated by Islamic extremists are palpable early in the twenty-first century. Contributors to Christianity is not Great: How Faith Fails, an anthology compiled by John W. Loftus, describe how almost anything can be believed or denied, and how almost any horrific deed can be committed in the name of faith.43 The contributors tally political, institutional, scientific, social, and moral harms committed in the name of Christianity, ranging from witch hunts and the persecutions of the Inquisition to the current health hazards of faith healing. However, both Christianity and Islam may also have served through the ages as vehicles of social control within their own realms to lessen destructive interpersonal rivalry and to foster humane social relations based upon Jesus' and Mohammad's moral philosophies.
Prior to the Modern era, much of the world's population had become attuned to monotheism. Now in the Postmodern era it may be time to dispense with the clutter of myths, legends, and orthodoxies surrounding both Christianity and Islam. The reverence and worship of a divine entity surely is simpler than either Christian or Islamic authority and orthodoxy would have us to believe.
Jim Vincent contends that intelligent, educated, and thinking people need a new theology in this Postmodern era. The solution may be an application of Ockham’s Razor to the accreted clutter that distracts from the core of Christian theology: cut off the redundant complexity; let the simplest approach suffice. Economists would apply benefit/cost analysis and the marginal principle as the obvious criteria to use in the trimming process.
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Although there is a natural tendency to humanize (i.e., to anthropomorphize) God, Aslan professes in his concluding chapter that
In her book A History of God, Karen Armstrong suggests that when humans impute human characteristics to a divine entity, they create avatars of the divine entity that they may worship and to which they may pray.49 When worshiped, avatars of the divine entity in effect are idols. In their inability to grasp the ultimate nature of a divine entity, most pre-postmodern humans worship anthropomorphized avatars of a divine entity that they then may refer to as "God." Rather than bronze or wooden statues, anthropomorphized concepts of a god are the idols of the twenty-first century.
Since each human's god avatar is a unique collection of anthropomorphized characteristics, there may be as many unique avatars of divine entities as there are humans, but there may be shared characteristics among the avatars. Humans organize themselves into religions and denominations based upon the shared avatar characteristics. In a leaner Christianity devoid of anthropomorphisms, postmoderns may feel less inclined to create deity avatars for themselves.
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Each of our personal god avatars may be a collection of wishful thinkings about what we would like for our god to be or to do for us. I can take my god to be my buddy, my friend, my co-pilot, my personal god, the lord of my life. I can ask my god to feed me, clothe me, shield me from harm, bless me ("give me a Mercedes Benz"), give me success in all of my endeavors, and direct my every step.
But is human life really like this? As an economist, I recognize that one's fortunes in life are pretty much what one makes of them, given inherited characteristics and wealth, social situation of childhood, educational experiences and opportunities, and plain good or bad luck
If God in fact exists, here are some of the characteristics of the god avatar that I as a pre-postmodern had envisioned:
I have thought God to be "omni-," e.g., omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. While these properties may be implied in some scriptural passages (particularly in certain Psalms), these terms are not explicit in any biblical passages. Jim Dant reminds us that these terms are "hardly descriptive of the God we find in scripture.... They probably describe the kind of God we think we want, but not necessarily the God we've actually got."51
Concerning omnipresent, Marcus Borg argues in The God We Never Knew that God is not a supernatural being apart from the universe, but indeed is everywhere, including "right here," what he calls a panentheistic view.52 This accords with John Dominic Crossan's argument that Jesus' ministry was sapient (rather than apocalyptic) in teaching that the Kingdom of God is near ("in the here and now") rather than something that will happen in the future.53 Americans may find it difficult to relate to the concept of a “kingdom” of God since the American Revolutionary War was fought to escape the constraints of monarchy.
I perceive God to be omnibenevolent in the sense that God's grace and mercy may extend to all humans without limit. "Fair" and "unfair," "deserving" and "undeserving," are purely human judgments that are trumped by God's grace and mercy.
God imbues humans with innate empathy with other humans, but God does not prevent failure of human empathy when they perpetrate harm, physical or emotional, upon other humans.
"Good" and "bad" human behaviors are human specifications that are culturally-determined and time-bound. Although some atheists have argued that God is not good, most theists (believers) understand God to be good without qualification.
God neither rewards good human behavior nor punishes bad or evil human behavior during human material life. Any rewards or punishments are levied by God upon human souls beyond the ends of the humans' material lives.
Evil as well as goodness is inherent in human nature, i.e., there is no diabolical entity external to humans or on a par with the divine entity. We are our own "devils." Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
God is "no respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34). Good and bad things happen to humans, irrespective of whether they are good or bad during their material lives. God is not biased in favor of or prejudiced against any humans during their material lives. God does not "bless" or "damn" some humans to the exclusion of other humans. Nor does God choose ("elect") some human souls to an afterlife or reward or punish them during their material lives. Humans may choose to worship and petition God for admission to a rewarding afterlife.
God is thought to "love" all beings of the universe (an obvious anthropomorphism), including both sub-human and human beings, and is assumed by believers to hope for their reciprocal love, honor, reverence, and respect (another anthropomorphism).
God may have the ability to "appear" to humans in any guise chosen by God, including those specific to religions other than Judaism and Christianity.
It cannot be ruled out that God may have appeared to first-century Palestinian Jews in the guise of a human with the Hebrew name Yeshua. However, if God in the guise of Yeshua is depicted as having suffered during a crucifixion, this would appear to be nothing more than a divine charade.
God may commission selected humans ("prophets") during their material lives to convey messages to humans from the divine. Rather than God in the guise of a human, it seems more likely that Yeshua may have been a human who was commissioned by God to serve as a prophet. As a human, he certainly would have suffered during crucifixion.
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This list could go on forever. It leads one to wonder whether it would even be possible for humans to worship a deity without wanting something from the deity. In hope and expectation that their prayers of want will be answered, humans offer honor, worship, adoration, glorification, and obedience to their chosen deity.
And does the deity want anything from the human subjects? The Judeo-Christian belief is that God created the world (indeed, in modern language, the whole universe) and gave the resources of the universe to humans to use. And the accompanying presumption (an obvious anthropomorphism) is that God does in fact expect obedience, and glorification, and adoration, and worship, and honor in return . . . quid pro quo.
Should humans have expectation that their god will accede to their petitions? If, as experience seems to indicate, God rarely intervenes in the world (or the greater universe or multiverse), many of their prayers of petition may appear to go unanswered. Or, coincidental with natural processes (e.g., favorable crop weather) or human activity (e.g., successful surgery by a team of skilled surgeons and nurses), such prayers may appear to be answered. Postmoderns may be less likely to rely on petitions for divine beneficence than are Modern era believers.
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I have adopted an Arminian view,54 i.e., that humans possess free will to choose and act as they wish. If a god has the ability to intervene in the knowledge, wisdom, emotions, or motives of humans (e.g., to "move" humans to certain beliefs or actions), any such intervention would seem to conflict with the belief that the god allows free will.
In the "Lord's Prayer" (Matthew 6:9-13), Jesus (the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name Yeshua) entreats the Father to let "your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven," but the nature of this will is unspecified. Does God have a generic will with respect to all of humankind, or is it specific to individual humans?
The belief that God has a will and a plan for each and every individual human often leads to anguished searches for direction with no clear criteria of discovery. Later in life there may be feelings of guilt and remorse that God's will for one's life may not have been found or followed ("I missed my calling"). My sense is that if God exists, he (she?) must have a generic hope that all humans will come to recognize, honor, respect, and love God, but that God leaves it to individuals to find their own ways in life.
This view accords with the economic theory that humans are driven to discover their "comparative advantages," i.e., the productive activities that they can perform at least cost in terms of what must be given up. If all were to discover and specialize in their comparative advantages and then trade the fruits of their labors with one another, the material welfare of society would undoubtedly increase.
A twenty-first century economist might recognize Paul's idea of "gifts" (Romans 12) as a first century predecessor of the modern concept of comparative advantage. Members of the "body of Christ" have different gifts, each of which contributes to the well-being of the whole Christian community. It is plausible to an economist that the process of discovering one's comparative advantage may serve as the vehicle for effecting divine will with respect to individual life paths.
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Ancient writings in nearly all cultural traditions make some reference to a "soul" concept. Some religions, e.g., Jainism and Hinduism, teach that all biological organisms have souls. Some religious traditions even suggest that non-biological entities (such as rivers and mountains) have souls. Medieval Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas attributed soul to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal.55
It cannot be known whether souls are sentient (i.e., possess the ability to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively) or have any ability to act in either the physical world or in an afterlife once human physical life comes to an end. Whether humans indeed have souls with any of these properties can be known with certainty only when humans depart their physical lives, only by the departing humans, and only if they do survive to an afterlife. If humans do have souls that survive their physical lives, I would be surprised to learn that the souls have physical mass.56
Without physical mass, their physical locations cannot be ascertained, i.e., the locus of an afterlife ("heaven" or "hell") is unspecifiable and unknowable to humans during their physical lives.
Many cultural traditions include the concept of "ghosts" or "spirits" that survive physical life in some sense, and that may present to still living beings some ephemeral representation of the souls of the departed. Ghosts are presumed by some to be able to act in the physical world as well as in the spirit world. C. S. Lewis in his book The Great Divorce describes a dream in which angels entreat the ghosts of recently deceased humans to move toward and accept an angelic heavenly afterlife.57 Lewis' ghosts seem to be both sentient and able to "act," at least in the spirit world.
Youval Harari, in his book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, argues that in the twenty-first century humanism is displacing the various forms of theism. He says that "The humanist religion worships humanity, and expects humanity to play the part that God played in Christianity and Islam, and that the laws of nature played in Buddhism and Daoism."58 He concludes that the concepts of the human soul and an afterlife simply do not exist. If Harari is right, a marginal comparison of the costs and benefits of retaining these concepts may imply that they could be deleted from a version of Christianity for the twenty-first century.
If humans do not have souls, then this can never be known with certainty by living humans. Finding no physical evidence of the existence of souls, some scientists have concluded that there is no afterlife, i.e., "when you're dead, you're dead," full stop. The message of a recent beer commercial is predicated upon this belief: "You only go around once, so get all the gusto you can!" A credit card solicitation reads, “Life is such a short little visit. We get one chance to do it well. Which is why everything that we do should be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” As argued by John Dominic Crossan in The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, Jesus taught that "The Kingdom of God is near" or "at hand," with implication that it pertains to this life, whether or not souls or an afterlife exist.59
But there are other possible dimensions of afterlife. Unless we are "sims" (as described by Nick Bostrum) or until scientists discover how to extend life indefinitely (as speculated by Yuval Harari), it is inevitable that human physical life must end. However, each of us lives on in the DNA that we confer upon our progeny. We also continue to live in the memories of our families and those who have known us or have learned about us even if they have not known us. And we also may continue to live in the form of any artistic expression or printed legacy that we have left for subsequent generations to encounter. These other dimensions of afterlife may influence those who continue in physical life, but they cannot otherwise be sentient or have any ability to act.
The promise of an afterlife is a critical component of classical Christian theology, but it is a belief that postmoderns may find difficult to accept. Many postmoderns are convinced that “this life” is all that there is, and they intend to live it to the fullest. This view accords with Jesus’ teaching that the “Kingdom of God is at hand,” whether or not an afterlife exists. The possibility of an afterlife is a belief that has sustained Christian churches through the twentieth century, but a question is whether the cost of retaining this belief in the Postmodern era may outweigh any benefits as postmoderns shy from institutional churches.
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Christianity is one among many religions that have been contrived by humans through the ages. Many humans, principally in Western regions, are born into, subscribe to, or adopt some variant of the Christian faith. Initiation into the Christian faith typically is by some form of baptism.
Barrie Wilson, in his book How Jesus Became Christian, notes that although the religion called "Christianity" derives from the Jewish figure of Jesus (the Greek version of the Hebrew name "Yeshua" or "Joshua"), it does not even bear his name.60 Wilson distinguishes between the "Jesus movement" and the "Christ movement," both of which emerged during the latter half of the first century, C.E. The Jesus movement focused on the teachings of Jesus that stressed service to the poor; it attempted to remain within Judaism by observing the requirements of the Hebrew Torah.
"Christos" is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word for "messiah" that means "the anointed one." "Christ" is the anglicization of "Christos." It is a title, not a name (certainly not Jesus' surname). All Hebrew kings were referred to as messiah. The title was also taken by Roman emperors.
The Christ movement followed from a vision of Jesus as a mystical "Christ" figure experienced by a Jewish Pharisee named Saul during a trip to Damascus, and from subsequent revelations by the Christ to Paul (Saul renamed). Developing apart from Judaism, the Christ movement was based on "letters" that Paul wrote to congregations comprised of Jews and Gentiles ("God fearers") in the Jewish diaspora of Asia Minor. Paul's letters make only passing references to the historical Jesus and his teachings, and many of the passages in the letters argue against the teachings of the Jesus movement. The Christ movement rejected the Torah and stressed faith in Christ rather than good works as taught by Jesus and required by the Torah. The Christ movement effectively rejected Judaism and became a Gentile movement. The Jewish Jesus movement eventually died out, but the Gentile Christ movement evolved into what today is called "Christianity." Wilson suggests that Christianity really should be called "Paulinity."
The subtitle of a twenty-first century book by Robin Meyers reflects the first-century rift between the Christ movement and the Jesus movement: Saving Jesus From the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus.61 The worship styles of many twenty-first century liturgical churches may reflect the first-century Christ movement approach. In contrast, the greater emphasis of latter-day evangelical churches on the life and teachings of Jesus and the oft-asked question "WWJD?" ("What would Jesus do?") imply that elements of the Jesus movement have survived to the present day.
The Christ movement in the first century C.E. was a distraction from the essential teachings of Jesus, and it continues to be a distraction today in postmodern thought. The cost of retaining this distraction may be greater than its worth to a postmodern revisioning of Christian theology.
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The term "ethos myth" may be understood as the underlying ideology that governs the way in which society members relate to one-another. In Western cultures the ethos story myths or underlying ideologies have included individualism, democracy, capitalism, the free market, and Christianity. But of course, the ethos stories gradually change with their retellings as great social transformations ensue. Lately, in postmodern American culture, the ideology of democracy has been yielding to "progressivism," individualism is being supplanted by "communitarianism," capitalism is being threatened by "statism" (a veiled term for fascism), and the free market myth is gradually succumbing to regulatory control. What is happening to the ethos myth of Christianity?
Dictionary definitions of myth include (1) "a person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence," (2) "an unfounded or false notion," and (3) "a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon."62
The most fundamental question about Jesus is whether he existed at all, or was his story only a Jewish version of legends transliterated from various ancient cultures? This may suggest that Jesus is an example of definition (1) above.
Most of what is "known" about Jesus is found in the New Testament Gospels and in the writings of the Apostle Paul. A startling fact is that corroborating references to Jesus are virtually absent from the records and writings of non-biblical authors of the first century, C.E. With so little corroborating commentary, the Jesus story might comply with definition (2) above.
Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, in their 1988 book The Power of Myth, convey a postmodern idea that myths are stories told in all societies out of their ethos, and that all myths are essentially the same at the core, but differ only in details specific to their respective societies.63 Moyers says that "Myths are stories of our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance. .... We need for life to signify, to touch the eternal, to understand the mysterious, and to find out who we are." Campbell says that "What the myths are for is to bring us into a level of consciousness that is spiritual." On this concept of myth, the Jesus story fits with definition (3) above.
D. M. Murdock surveys an extensive literature (145 bibliographic entries) that pertains to the contention that the Jesus story is only myth. After describing Jesus story parallels with legends of the Buddha, Horus, Mithra, Prometheus, and Krishna, all of which predate the Christian era, Murdock concludes that
Barrie Wilson, in his book How Jesus Became Christian, notes that stories of virgin births circulated around the thoroughly Hellenized world of the first century, C.E., particularly with respect to the so-called "mystery religions" surrounding Isis (Egyptian), Mithras (Persian), and Dionysus (Greek).66 Such mystery religions typically entailed virgin births of what Wilson calls "dying-rising savior figures" which promised salvation to believers. Wilson says that Paul's Christianity religion was almost indistinguishable from these mystery religions.
In his book The Invention of Christianity, Alexander Drake explains how the stories of Dionysus might have evolved into those of Jesus, how Christian rituals are similar to the Dionysian mystery rituals, and how the Christian conceptions of Heaven and Hell may have evolved from the Greek conception of the afterlife.67
Perhaps because of their heavy investment in the historicity of Jesus, latter-day biblical historians too have compiled a substantial body of literature in support of the contention that Jesus lived and was crucified. Prior to the turn of the twentieth century a number of works had been published about "the life of Jesus." In 1906 Albert Schweitzer wrote a biblical historical criticism of these prior works, pointing out various shortcomings in the research approaches used. Schweitzer's book, Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, was translated into English by William Montgomery in 1910 and published under the title The Quest of the Historical Jesus.68 Schweitzer's book sparked a second quest in the 1950s and a third quest in the 1980s that introduced newer methods of analysis into the question of the historicity of Jesus. By the early twenty-first century, the issue had attracted the attention of a number of prominent biblical historians, among them John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Bart Ehrman, and Reza Aslan.
Subsequent discussion presumes the historicity of Jesus, but I shall return to the issue of mythologization of his life and ministry in a subsequent chapter.
Richard Brody, writing about movies in his blog for The New Yorker, describes a current search for a new ethos myth:
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Some Roman Catholics maintain that Mary remained a virgin through the remainder of her life. This sounds implausible since Jesus was known to have brothers and sisters. But it might have been possible if Jesus’ brothers and sisters were actually older half-brothers and half-sisters born to a first wife who may have expired before Joseph became betrothed to Mary. This possibility is a premise in the historical novel Before Bethlehem by James Flerlage.73
The virgin birth narrative is an ethos myth that is central to orthodox Christian theology, but it is a distraction from Jesus’ teachings and life example. This myth may seem incredible to twenty-first century postmoderns. The question is whether it is worth more as an ethos myth for pre-postmodern believers than it costs in skepticism about its credibility to postmoderns.
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The lineage in Matthew is relevant only if adoption can establish authentic lineage (or if Joseph happened to be the biological father of Jesus). Roman practice in fact did allow inheritance (and implicitly lineage) to be through an adoptive father, and an adopted son often took inheritance precedence over biological sons. Perhaps the most prominent example is that following the assassination of his maternal great-uncle Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.E., Gaius Octavius was named in Caesar's will as his adopted son and heir (Caesar had no known legitimate children).
Bart Ehrman notes in his book How Jesus Became God that "Son of God" is an ancient Hebrew term applied to kings of Israel who had been anointed by God and thus had been "adopted" by God.75 It is unknown whether first-century Palestinian Jews would have been accepting of lineage by adoption for other than kings of Israel, but the author of the Gospel of Matthew certainly seems to be arguing this in Jesus' case.
There is more to the Octavius story that pertains to Jesus. Upon his adoption, Octavius took the name Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. Once Julius Caesar was deified (post-mortem) by vote of the Roman Senate, Octavius added Divi Filius ("Son of the Divine") to his name. After his forces defeated those of Mark Antony in 27 B.C.E. to end twenty years of civil war, the Roman Senate voted him a new title, Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus, making him the first Roman Emperor. (In this context, Augustus means "the venerated one.") Although Julius Caesar was deified after his death, Augustus encouraged worship of himself as a god during his lifetime. He continued to be regarded as "Son of the Divine" even after his death in 14 C.E. A couple of decades later when Roman authorities learned that some Jews in Palestine were beginning to call Jesus "Son of God," they regarded this as unacceptable since Augustus was the only figure that Romans identified as the son of a god. Jews, of course, took offense at Romans calling Augustus "Son of the Divine."
Historically, the Jewish identity of a child born to parents, one of whom is not a Jew, has been determined according to halakhic rules (the Jewish religious laws derived from the Torah) by the ancestry of the mother. The halakhic matrilineage rules were derived from Deuteronomy 7:1–5, Leviticus 24:10, and Ezra 10:2–3. Some biblical historians believe that the lineage traced in Luke's Chapter 3 may actually have been that of Jesus' mother Mary to another of King David's sons, Nathan.76 By halakhic rules this would identify Jesus as an authentic descendant of David and thus eligible to become a Jewish messiah.
In Mark 6:3 Jesus is teaching at the synagogue in his hometown. Incredulous at the authority that he seems to exhibit, people ask, "Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon?" (NIV) Since Hebrew males usually were identified as sons of their fathers even if they were deceased, this question may imply the significance of matrilineage in Jesus' case since his birth father was unknown to the locals who may have suspected illegitimacy.
The lineage of Jesus is ancillary to his teachings and life example, and the lineage issue may be a distraction to his preaching about how to live in society. A marginal comparison may reveal that it costs more in terms of postmodern skepticism than its retention is worth to classical theology believers.
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The three synoptic Gospels all contain descriptions of Jesus’ ministry period, but there is material in Matthew and Luke that does not appear in Mark. This has led biblical historians to infer that Matthew and Luke must have had access to source material that Mark did not know. This source material, likely from the early church’s oral tradition, is unavailable to us today. It has become known as the ‘Q’ document from the German word for source, Quelle.77 Jim Vincent asserts that
Even so, biblical historians continue to debate whether Jesus' ministry should be characterized as apocalyptic or sapient. Reza Aslan characterizes Jesus as a fully human historical apocalyptic messiah figure.79 Following is a brief synopsis of Aslan’s argument.
As a young adult Jesus fell under the influence of John the Baptist who advocated repentance of sinful behavior because the Kingdom of God soon would arrive. After Herod Antipas had John beheaded, Jesus took up proclamation of John's message that the Kingdom of God was near, a message that the Roman state would regard as sedition relative to Roman sovereignty in Palestine. Jesus aggressively preached his message, but only to and for Jews in supporting and sustaining Jewish law. Jesus held an apocalyptic vision of the end of the world as it was known, to be replaced by a new world order that he called the "Kingdom of God."
Aslan says that Jesus’ self-concept probably was that of the long-expected and hoped-for messiah who would liberate Palestine from Roman control and usher in the new world order in which he would be King of the Jews. However, as Aslan sees it, Jesus failed in virtually all aspects of his messianic quest.
In his book How Jesus Became God, Bart Ehrman asserts that since apocalypticism was intense in Palestine during the third decade of the first century C.E., Jesus may have viewed himself as an apocalyptic messiah.80 Patrick Goggins notes that apocalypticism had been "in the air" in Palestine for five centuries, but that the political environment of Palestine in the third decade of the first century was relatively calm.81 However, apocalypticism heightened significantly in the seventh and eighth decades of the first century (when the earliest gospels were being written) due to several destabilizing political and religious events. Apocalypticism thus may have been projected by the Gospel writers in the seventh and eighth decades of the first century back to the ministry of Jesus in the third decade.
But literary projection may occur in either temporal direction, back in time by applying present understanding to interpretation of the past, or forward in time to interpret past events as applying to present conditions. Biblical scholars are in general agreement that the Tanakh (Old Testament) writers were writing about circumstances of their own times as shaped by their history; they were not attempting to predict the future arrival of a messiah. Peter Enns says that Old Testament writers often "shaped how Israel's storytellers talked about their past" to apply to their present.82 Enns notes that New Testament writers Matthew, Luke, and Paul in particular, anxious to tell their perceptions of the Jesus story to their respective audiences, took liberties to reinterpret a number of Tanakh passages to refer to and predict the coming of Jesus as the long-expected Messiah. Terry Teachout, in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about colorizing historical black-and-white photos says, "Would you trust a biographer or historian if you found out that plausible-sounding unspoken 'thoughts' that he attributed to his subject were actually made up out of whole cloth in order to punch up the narrative? I know I wouldn’t."83 Nor would I, but it seems to have been a common practice among the writers of both the Old and the New Testaments. Even Jesus himself took liberties in creatively applying various Mosaic Law passages to circumstances that he encountered.
Ehrman says that Jesus didn't think of himself as God, the Son of God, or the Son of Man, but rather as the long expected apocalyptic messiah, a human, who would rule the Kingdom of God once the Roman regime had been overthrown. Ehrman further argues that soon after his death and perceived resurrection, Jesus was no longer present and his body was missing, so his followers presumed that he was exalted by God to divine status. By the time that the Gospels were being written, Jesus may have become regarded as Son of God and eventually as God or co-god with the Almighty. Vincent says that
In his book How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels, N.T. Wright offers a theological foil to other theories about the Kingdom of God and who would rule it.85 Wright accepts the orthodox premises of Jesus' virgin birth, his divinity, and his resurrection from the dead. He likens the Jesus story to a cloak that is an outer shell covering an inner body. The outer shell includes the circumstances of Jesus' virgin birth at one end of his life, and his death and resurrection at the other end. Wright suggests that it is these outer cloak circumstances that capture the popular attention, so that the body inside the cloak often is forgotten. The conclusion that Wright deduces from his approach is that the body inside the cloak as described in the four Gospels is the real story about the Kingdom of God. Along with the cloak matter, this story is crucial to Christian theology in asserting the divinity of Jesus and explaining that it was God himself (not a "Messiah," not the "Son of God," not the "Son of Man") who became "King" to rule the Kingdom of God. Assuming that God has always been sovereign over the entire universe (or the greater multiverse), the kingship over earth’s humanity would be a lower-order sovereignty that has always existed but was not recognized by humanity. Given the secular disarray of the current world and the fact that many postmoderns are fleeing organized religion, the idea of God becoming universally recognized as King may qualify with “second coming” and “apocalyptic end of time” as events yet to happen.
Marcus Borg, in his book Meeting Jesus for the First Time Again, asserts that Jesus' self-understanding was unlikely to be messianic. Borg says that "... we have no way of knowing whether Jesus thought of himself as the Messiah or as the Son of God in some special sense," or that ". . . Jesus expected the supernatural coming of the Kingdom of God as a world-ending event in his own generation." 86
In analyzing Paul's letters to the Corinthians and the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, John Dominic Crossan argues that the primary emphasis of Jesus' ministry was not apocalyptic, but rather was "sapiential," i.e., that the Kingdom of God is present in the here-and-now, and is open to the righteous.87 Crossan says that apocalyptic eschatology is a matter of humans waiting for God to act; in contrast, sapiential eschatology perceives that God is waiting for humans to act.88 If Patrick Goggins is right that apocalypticism was projected back to the ministry of Jesus by the Gospel writers, Jesus' ministry indeed may have been sapient rather than apocalyptic.
The competition between the apocalyptic and sapient views was played out during the fourth decade of the first century in the "justification debate" between the apostle Paul (who initiated the Christ movement) and the brother of Jesus, James "the Just" (who led the Jesus movement). In following Jesus' teachings, James argued that salvation resulted from honoring the prescriptions of Torah to act in doing good deeds, whereas Paul rejected the requisites of the Torah (particularly in regard to circumcision and dietary restrictions) and asserted that salvation is a matter of faith alone (the sola fide doctrine). An apocalyptic ministry accords with Paul's view that salvation is by faith alone (i.e., that God will act); a sapient ministry advocates that salvation results from human actions to do good deeds (i.e., God waiting for humans to act). Vincent concludes that "…both the doctrine of atonement and that of justification by faith—the twin pillars of Pauline theology—cannot be said to have originated with Jesus, but only with Paul."89 While Paul's view may have won the debate in established Christian orthodoxy, a possible resolution of the doctrinal dispute lies in the belief that one who is saved by faith alone will want to do good deeds.
During his lifetime, and particularly during his ministry period, Jesus was a great teacher, prophet, and moral philosopher, a point that can be accepted even by twentieth century postmoderns. His moral philosophy was not unique, but paralleled other earlier and contemporary moral teachings. In his book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (Simon and Schuster, 2010), Sam Harris makes the case that just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality.90 Harris argues that morality is a universal matter that should be considered in terms of human and animal well-being, rather than prescribed by religious dogma.
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But Jesus refused to assume a political role of messiahship as intended by zealots. Zealots may have ceased promotion of Jesus' potential messiahship and abandoned him to the Jewish and Roman authorities once Jesus said that taxes should be paid to Rome. In Matthew 22:21, Jesus says to "Give to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is God’s." The first clause in this sentence is addressed to the Jewish religious authorities who had been questioning Jesus. Baigent conjectures that the second clause may have been directed at the Roman political authorities, i.e., give the land of Palestine back to God and to God's chosen people, the Jews. Judas' betrayal of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:48) implies abandonment by the zealots. So also does Peter's denial of Jesus during his trial.
Jesus never made public declaration of his messiahship, and he taught (or perhaps only implied) privately to his disciples that he was the long-expected messiah. Bart Ehrman argues in How Jesus Became God that Judas' betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane was really a betrayal to the Roman authorities that Jesus thought of himself as a messiah who would overthrow the Roman state to become King of the Jews.92 Roman authorities took this to be an act of sedition that would threaten the sovereignty of the Roman state and thus could not be tolerated.
Jewish religious authorities also may have wished to dispose of Jesus since his teachings threatened their authority. In his book The World of Jesus, William H. Marty says that the Sanhedrin feared an uprising against Roman rule as support for Jesus continued to increase. High Priest Caiaphas concluded that it would be better to have Jesus killed than to risk Roman reprisals.93
Baigent argues that Pilate, Rome's official representative in Palestine, was in a difficult position. On the one hand a Jewish mob, likely organized by the Jewish religious authorities, was calling for Jesus' crucifixion because he said that taxes should be paid to Rome, but on the other hand the Roman authorities might not have seen the need for a crucifixion for the very same reason, i.e., because Jesus had said that taxes should be paid to Rome. Baigent conjectures that Pilate may have been complicit in approving an apparent crucifixion to satisfy the mob, but one that could be ended prematurely in deference to the Roman authorities.
Jesus' crucifixion was a political act fostered by Jewish religious authorities and implemented by Roman political authorities. Jesus was crucified around midday on the Friday of Passover Week, probably in the year 30 C.E. Jewish law required that a crucified body be removed from the cross and buried before sundown when the Passover celebration would begin. Chapter 19 of John's Gospel reports that Pilate gave Joseph of Arimathea permission to remove Jesus' body from the cross since he apparently had died after being on the cross for a relatively short time (only about six hours between midday and sundown).
Baigent notes that in the original Greek, John's Gospel says that Joseph asked for Jesus' soma, the Greek word for a living body. Pilate, thinking that Jesus had already died, gave Joseph permission to remove the ptoma, the Greek word for a corpse. Although Jewish law required that a crucified body be buried before Passover sundown, many Jews would have been reluctant to remove a corpse from the cross because they would have been defiled by touching a dead body. Baigent says that Joseph's willingness to remove Jesus' body from the cross indicates that he knew that Jesus was still alive.
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Bart Ehrman contends that it is inconceivable that Jesus received a decent burial since his disciples had fled, he had no family living in Jerusalem, and no one else in Jerusalem would have been able or willing to provide proper burial for a peasant executed for sedition.96 In Ehrman's opinion, the story about Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus likely was a later fabrication to enable a resurrection narrative. If there had been no decent burial in a grave, there also could have been no resurrection from a grave. Ehrman doubts that either burial or resurrection could have occurred as described in Matthew's and Luke's gospels. John Dominic Crossan says that Jesus' corpse likely was left on the cross, as was the usual Roman practice, to be eaten by dogs.97 However, Simcha Jacobovici and coauthors have published books claiming to have found the Jesus family tomb in Jerusalem.98
Ehrman argues that soon after his death and perceived resurrection, Jesus' followers presumed that he had been exalted by God to divine status since he was no longer present and his body was missing
After the reputed resurrection, Jesus was "seen" on the road to Emmaus and by various disciples and disciple groups. This might have been possible if Jesus had survived the crucifixion and recovered as hypothesized by Baigent. Ehrman says that Jesus probably did die in the crucifixion, and that the "appearances" of Jesus after his crucifixion more likely were visions experienced by the various parties. Jim Vincent says that "The most convincing interpretation of the resurrection accounts is that they describe, in figurative form, the dawning of a gradual realisation on the part of the disciples of the significance of Jesus and of his continuing existence."99
So we have five identifiable theories of how Jesus may have been seen by people after the crucifixion:
2. Jesus was a human who actually died in the crucifixion but was resurrected by God and exalted to divine status, and who then could appear as a living human until his ascension to heaven.
3. Jesus was a human who actually died in the crucifixion but whose “appearances” after the crucifixion were visions experienced by various parties.
4. Jesus was a human who actually died in the crucifixion so that his “appearances” after the crucifixion were a figurative description of a gradual realization by disciples of his significance.
5. Jesus was a human who was crucified but who survived the crucifixion and recovered enough to actually be seen by other humans.
I must admit that even before I encountered these ideas about the birth, death, and resurrection narratives, I harbored some latent suspicion if not outright skepticism. If Baigent's or Ehrman's or Vincent’s takes on these stories are true, then the biblical birth, death, and resurrection narratives are myths.
Patrick Goggins takes a postmodern view in asserting that even if the resurrection narrative is a myth, Jesus' message does not depend on his resurrection from the dead for its truth. Goggins says that "Islam teaches that Mohammad died and was buried, yet his earthly message lives on. Perhaps Jesus's words can likewise survive the death of his earthly body."100
The resurrection narrative may seem incredible to the twenty-first century postmodern mind. To twenty-first century churches, this myth may cost more in terms of postmodern skepticism than the value that it adds as an ethos story for classical theology believers.
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Although they may have attempted to make the dialogues and speeches as faithful as possible to the reported originals, each Gospel writer would of course put the "spin" on the dialogue or speech that would convey his intended message to his audience. The synoptic Gospels, read in the sequence in which they may have been written, progressively embellish the birth, death, and resurrection stories of Jesus, including different details for different audiences.101
Robert Price maintains that the Jesus story began as a myth that was historicized.102 Michael Baigent argues that early Christian church leaders mythologized the Jesus narratives, with the effects both of creating an object of faith and of establishing the locus and line of authority over the emerging Christian church.103 Taken together, these two views imply the historization of a myth followed by the mythologization of the history, i.e., myth to history to myth.
The idea that Jesus' crucifixion, death, and resurrection were a divine plan to absolve humanity of sin was an element of the early Christian church's rationalization of Jesus' death and mythologization of the Jesus story. The myths surrounding the Jesus story eventually became theologized, i.e., accepted as religious orthodoxy. By the third century of the Common Era, the Christ of faith bore little resemblance either to the Jesus of history or to the ancient myths that preceded the Jesus narratives. We can add another step in the progression outlined in the previous paragraph: myth to history to myth to orthodoxy. If valid, what does this progression portend for the credibility of the Christian ideology that has come down to us in the twenty-first century?
Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici (1475-1521), Pope Leo X from 1513 to 1521, is reputed to have said, "It has served us well, this myth of Christ." However, historians have expressed doubt that Pope Leo X actually said this.104 The quote may have derived from a satirical piece entitled "The Pageant of the Popes" by a Protestant Reformer named John Bale (1495-1563). In the satirical piece, Bale wrote
In a syndicated column, Clarence Page, in a Chicago Tribune opinion piece, reminds us of an old saying: ". . . if you tell a big enough false-hood, wittingly or unwittingly, you don’t need evidence for it to have a big impact."106 The narratives of Jesus' virgin birth, burial, and resurrection may be lacking of historical evidence. They may have been true, or they may have been witting or unwitting falsehoods. Even so, the lack of historical evidence has not kept them from becoming Modern era resurrection metaphors that are central to Christian orthodoxy.
Alexander Drake notes that according to a social psychology concept, the "belief disconfirmation paradigm,"107 people who have great personal investment in a belief often are more committed to that belief after it has been disconfirmed than they were before the disconfirmation.108 Also, groups tend to be more insistent (than individuals) upon retaining a heavily invested belief even after it has been disconfirmed because group members tend to reinforce the shared belief. The crucifixion seemed to disconfirm the belief that Jesus was the long-awaited messiah, but the perception of his resurrection confirmed the pre-crucifixion belief among those to whom he made appearances, and subsequently to many more who accepted their witness. Belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus may have persisted for nearly two thousand years because of the heavy investment in the idea by successive generations of Christian theologians, ministers of the Gospel trained by them, and the laity to which they preach.
Why do we stick with our religious beliefs long after we have begun to doubt that they are true? Leonard Gaston explains how "confirmation bias" (a form of cognitive dissonance) affects our choices:
If indeed the Jesus birth, death, burial, and resurrection stories are only myths that are unverifiable, the Christian faith and doctrine based upon them are a myth story that according to Bill Moyers serves to "bring us into a level of consciousness that is spiritual."110 As noted by Karen Armstrong in her book The Case for God, myths are means for conveying essential truths even if they are not factual, and they have been important vehicles through the ages in helping humans to discern the meanings of what is transpiring in their lives.111 Even if the Jesus birth, death, and resurrection stories are theologized myths, Jesus' moral philosophy is compelling (but not unique) and may be revered as an authentic code for ethical social behavior (love one's neighbor…, do unto others…, care for the poor).
Gordon Pennycook and David Rand, writing in The New York Times, ask why people fall for “fake news”:
Although religious myths are not to be equated to “fake news,” the ideas discussed in the Pennycook and Rand column may apply to scriptural narratives accepted by Modern-era Christian believers. Instead of reason being hijacked by partisan convictions as in the political arena, believers may rationalize the truth of scriptural narratives because reason is conditioned by religious indoctrination from childhood onward. And people may believe the religious stories that they want to be true. As Pennycook and Rand suggest, some believers simply may be too mentally lazy to think critically about the value of the myths that they hold to be true.
Joseph Campbell says that the only myth that is relevant to the future will not be focused upon Jesus or the central character of any other religion. His postmodern view is that the myth must be generalized to the society of the entire planet:
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In a sequel, Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, Miles, harking back to the story line in his first book, perceives God to have brooded over the "mistake" of eliminating eternal life for all humans after Adam and Eve sinned by eating the prohibited fruit in the Garden of Eden.115 But God devises a means of correcting this mistake by coming to earth in the guise of a human named Yeshua (Jesus). In this view, the literary character of Jesus is God Incarnate, i.e., God in the flesh. By allowing God's self as Jesus to be "killed" by humans as a blood sacrifice to God's self as God in order to atone for the sinfulness of all humanity, God created a means by which humans again could achieve eternal life. Humans who confess and repent of their sins and who believe that Jesus rose from the dead and is God’s own Son can enjoy heavenly eternal life beyond earthly mortal life. From the literary perspective of character development, Jesus as God Incarnate is a divine being who pre-existed time, who lived as a human, died, and rose from the dead, and who continues to live in judgment of the world.
Miles' literary perception of Jesus approximates the conclusion reached at the Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E. after nearly three centuries of emerging thought and debate about the nature of Jesus. For many Christians the Nicene Creed specifies the orthodox ("right thinking") understanding of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as three separate divine forms in one being, i.e., a "Trinity." At the Council of Nicaea that was attended by 318 bishops of Christian churches in 325 C.E., the orthodox perception of Jesus was hammered out through much debate. While the Nicene Creed affirms belief in the Trinity of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Creed focuses upon the nature of Jesus:
* Because of our salvation, Jesus came down [from heaven] and became incarnate [i.e., God in the flesh, a human].
* Jesus suffered [death by crucifixion] and rose from the dead on the third day.
* Jesus ascended to the heavens.
* Jesus will come [again] to judge the living and the dead.
Twenty-first century postmoderns may be fleeing the institutional church because they are reluctant to subscribe to any creeds, much less one that was formulated nearly two millennia ago by “Church Fathers” who had diverse opinions about the nature of deity.
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After the Nicene Creed was accepted and amended in the ecumenical councils, any views of Jesus that diverged from the Nicene Creed were regarded as heresy (heterodox views). Advocates of such heresies often have been vilified, attacked, and even excommunicated from the Church or from particular church congregations. In the twelfth century, the Roman Catholic Church launched the "Inquisition" to root out heresies and heretical groups such as the Cathars in France, even executing people charged with heresy (often by burning them at the stake). The Inquisition was intensified and expanded in scope across Europe in response to the Protestant Reformation. Though its activities have softened, the institution of the Inquisition has survived into the twenty-first century as part of the Roman Curia (the central government of the Catholic Church) but now is known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
We can now add yet three more stages to the progression identified above: myth to history to myth to orthodoxy to heresy to inquisition to reformation.
A cynical view is that the bishops at Nicaea in 325 C.E. argued themselves into a forced and strained compromise, a Trinity, that is not faithful either to the historical Jesus of Nazareth or to the divine entity. I am reminded of the story that the camel is the result of a committee effort to meet the design specifications for a horse. The analogy should be obvious.
An even more cynical view is that the Nicene Creed has served as a full-employment act for untold generations of theologians and preachers to explain (or obscure) the mysteries of the Trinity to theologically naive parishioners.
So, how should I regard Jesus and his relationship to God? Jesus may be revered as a prophet commissioned by a divine entity, but he should not be worshiped as a divine entity or as a form of the divine entity. The concept of Trinity, an early church rationalization of the debate over whether Jesus was fully human or fully divine (or both), is not authentic to the perceived monotheistic nature of the divine entity that had been settled by post-exilic Israelites more than two thousand years ago.
Twenty-first century postmodern skeptics reject absolutism in science and religion. They are reluctant to subscribe to any creed, and especially to one that casts deity in three parts that are essentially identical. The economic question is whether the benefit of retaining the Nicene Creed as a basis for Christian theology exceeds the cost in terms of postmodern skepticism.
The common Protestant version of the Doxology is the last stanza of two hymns written in 1674 by Thomas Ken and intended for morning and evening worship at Winchester College.118 In many Protestant churches today, the Doxology is a four-line, single-stanza Trinitarian hymn that typically is sung to the tunes Old 100th or Duke Street. In the church in which I grew up, the Doxology follows the presentation of the morning offering. In my present church it is sung by the choir and congregation to the tune Lasst uns erfreuen, with "Alleluias!" inserted after the second and fourth lines. It is usually sung near the end of our worship service as a "final praise to God" just before the benediction.
Here is Thomas Ken's original four-line stanza:
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen
A gender-neutral version is sung in my church:
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise God, all creatures here below;
Praise God above, ye heavenly host;
Creator, Christ, and Holy Ghost.
Even this gender-neutral version is an archaic expression relative to my postmodern perception of the relationship between humans and deity.
In either version, the first line of the hymn may acknowledge God's provision of raw materials in the natural environment, but it implicitly ignores human roles in transforming raw materials into goods and services (material "blessings"), and it fails to recognize a human entrepreneurial role in constructing the "built environment."
If the Kingdom of God coincides with real-time life in the "here-and-now" as maintained by Marcus Borg, the second and third lines inappropriately imply separation of heaven (above) and earth (below), and the third line suggests that God is "out there" in heaven, apart from the earth (or the universe).
The Trinitarian fourth line is incongruous with the unitary-god presumption of monotheism, and it implies the divinity of Jesus who I now perceive to have been a human commissioned (adopted) by God to serve as a prophet in transmitting a message (of universal love) to humankind. This fourth line also purports to worship a spirit (the "Holy Ghost") that is separate from (but the same as) the creator god, who is also understood to be spirit. This amounts to an unnecessary and confusing redundancy.
In accordance with these objections, the only words that I choose to sing are:
Praise God, . . . ;
Praise God, all creatures . . . ;
Praise God, . . . ;
Creator...
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--Genealogiai, circa 490 B.C.E.
“There is no use trying,” said Alice;
“one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
--Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865 C.E.
Critics of Christianity have identified a number of so-called "absurdities" of Judaism and Christianity, many of which are simply incredible. They are absurdities in the sense that they are either illogical or are incongruities. Many of the reputed absurdities are human ideas that have been imputed to deity, i.e., they are anthropomorphisms. Others are rationalizations of events occurring during the first century of the Common Era.
These are some of the absurdities that may “put off” twenty-first century postmoderns and incur greater costs of retention in Christian theology than the benefits that they offer:
Twenty-first century postmoderns are likely to regard the doctrine of the "Trinity" as an incongruity with respect to the belief in monotheism. It’s ironic that although the Israelites had adopted monotheism by the fifth century B.C.E. after the Babylonian exile, the Christian bishops at the Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E. virtually gave it up when they settled orthodoxy upon a tri-partite understanding of deity. Vincent says that "The concept of Jesus as 'a man attested by God' is more likely to reflect the beliefs of the original disciples."120
The idea that a deity chose the Hebrews to the exclusion of all other peoples on earth is both audacious and self-serving. Members of any tribe, sect, ethnic group, or nationality likewise could envision themselves to be their god’s chosen people. Puritans, Calvinists, Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists, Rastafari, and some other Christian sects have claimed to have been chosen by their god. Nineteenth century British noblesse oblige with respect to empire and rule by divine right, twentieth century Nazi delusions of Aryan racial purity, and American exceptionalism ("manifest destiny" in the nineteenth century, world war victor and policeman of the world in the twentieth century, champion of global democratization in the twenty-first century) imply self-asserted "chosenness."
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Many Christian churches today are simple communities of faith that organize members to worship God and promote various Christian ideologies. As such, they are authentic venues for corporate worship of God. But some latter-day Christian churches have become bureaucratized institutions that enlist ever more members and entreat members to give ever-increasing amounts of money to finance church activities ("ministries") and church employee payrolls. The primary goal of a bureaucracy often becomes self-perpetuation. For an institutionalized church, worship and ministry may become secondary goals, or activities that are only incidental to the main goal.
While many new church "plants" are authentic vehicles for spreading the Christian faith (ideology), some may be little more than risky entrepreneurial ventures established to provide employment and financial support for the planters.
The essence of entrepreneurship is the assumption of risk in innovation, i.e., undertaking new ventures or implementing new procedures. The ultimate means of dealing with entrepreneurial risk that cannot otherwise be managed is to assume it. It is only by the assumption of risk that opportunities for gain may be pursued. If returns are adequate to compensate for the risks assumed, the entrepreneurial venture may be successful. If the associated risks are excessive relative to the hoped-for returns, the entrepreneurial venture is likely to fail.
The planting of a new church may be a risky entrepreneurial venture. So also are missionary efforts in "mission fields" where the local political or religious environments are hostile. A church's determination to start a new program and build a new building to house it may be a risky entrepreneurial venture if the construction is financed by debt that must be amortized by an uncertain flow of contributions.
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, noting the decline of institutional Christianity in the United States, says that the institutional church in the west is in trouble:
* It should not only be compatible with modern science and thought but should actively embrace them in forging a coherent view of the universe.
* It should be adaptable to future developments in science and thought.
* It should advocate no form of absolute law or moral code and should hold to no creed or doctrine, barring that of the unconditional love for others.
* It should develop a new conception of Jesus as Christ.
* It should make no claim to exclusivity.122
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Dealing with risk is a human matter, not a divine responsibility. I may pray to a divine entity for protection from harm, but it is up to me to take all reasonable actions to protect myself, my loved ones, and my possessions from harm or loss. To this end, I should drive carefully and defensively, and otherwise behave prudently.
One of the most important human functions while mortal life ensues is the management of the risks that threaten life and well-being. Indeed, life itself is a continual exercise in risk management. But a divine entity is not my risk manager. I must be my own risk manager.
Risk may be managed by
* diversifying activities so that all will not be subject to the same risks;
* purchasing insurance against threats to health and hearth; and
* avoiding non-trivial risky situations or activities for which the risk cannot otherwise be managed.
Recognition of my personal responsibility in dealing with life's risks leaves me feeling less free than when I thought I could pray to God and shift responsibility to him to protect me and my loved ones from harm. To the extent that I may have assumed risks in the belief that a divine entity would help me and protect me, I surely have indulged in unacknowledged moral hazard. Twenty-first century postmoderns who harbor few illusions that a deity will “bail them out” of their travails may be less likely to indulge in such moral hazard behavior.
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Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity;
I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD," and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
--Psalm 32:1-5 (NIV)
The Jewish tradition (in the Tanakh, i.e., the Christian "Old Testament") is that the essential relationship between God and humans is one of human sinfulness that requires the human to confess sins, repent of them (i.e., change behavior so as to no longer engage in sin), and seek forgiveness from God (see Psalm 32:1-5). Christianity (New Testament) adopted the sin-confession-repentance-forgiveness (SCRF) axis from the Jewish tradition. Further, Christians believe that forgiveness of sin and salvation to an afterlife is contingent upon genuine confession and repentance of sin accompanied by belief in God’s Son, Jesus, as savior.
It is regrettable that the perceived relationship between humans and the divine must center on sin and forgiveness. But the SCRF axis is so central to Christianity that most Christians would be challenged to imagine a relationship to the divine that is not based on it. Many postmodern thinkers believe that a pluralism of religions can produce ultimate peace and "oneness" with deity. Can achieving oneness with deity be the ultimate goal of religious practice apart from sin and forgiveness?
A study of "Religions of the World" suggests that while Judeo-Christian religions are centered upon the SCRF axis, there may be other religions that are not SCRF based. Individuals practicing such religions may seek peace and oneness with deity figures or ancestors on the basis of reverence apart from any concept of sin that requires the deity’s forgiveness. But the peace and oneness with the deity that they seek is in return for the reverence of the deity.
The experiences of some Postmodern era scientists suggest that it is possible for humans to enjoy worshipful relationships with a loving deity based on mystery, wonder, and awe of the universe without being cast as human sinners in need of divine forgiveness.123 In a New Yorker opinion piece about Einstein’s so-called “God Letter,” Louis Menand says that "Einstein had what might be called a night-sky theology, a sense of the awesomeness of the universe that even atheists and materialists feel when they gaze up at the Milky Way. Is it too awesome for human minds to know?"124 In his book God: A Human History, Reza Aslan says, "As a believer and a pantheist, I worship God not through fear and trembling but through awe and wonder at the workings of the universe—for the universe is God."125
Churches subscribing to a pre-postmodern Christian theology which insists that members obey the SCRF sequence are likely to find that twenty-first century postmoderns avoid them. Retention of the SCRF axis may incur greater cost in terms of lost postmodern membership than the forgiveness benefits perceived by a shrinking cohort of classical Christian theology believers.
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The doctrine of the “priesthood of the believer” maintains that one who believes in God needs no intercessor (Jesus, Pope, priest, pastor), but can communicate (pray) directly to God and appeal for forgiveness of sin and admission to the heavenly afterlife.
Prayers should be addressed to God alone, and not to Mary or to Jesus any more than to any other human prophet that God may have commissioned to bring a message to humanity.
In public prayers we often hear the one who prays affirm that all good things come from God and thank God for these things. If indeed a divine entity exists, there is a division of labor between humans and the divine. The divine provides the natural environment that includes the raw materials of the universe, and the divine may be the source of knowledge about how to use them. But the built environment is the product of human entrepreneurship and investment, and it is by human effort that the raw materials are processed to produce most of the consumables that make life sustainable and enjoyable in advanced and complex modern societies. Of course, it may be argued that all human entrepreneurial, investment, and productive effort is "by the grace of God." But this line of argument may go too far in imputing the responsibility for human economic and entrepreneurial activity to the divine.
Authentic purposes of prayer include expressing awe and wonder of the universe, thankfulness for the resources and knowledge of the universe that are provided to humankind, worship and reverence of a divine entity, acknowledgment of human frailty, and petition for forgiveness of sin and admission to a heavenly afterlife.
"Gimme" prayers, i.e., petitions for material things, income, wealth, employment, personal achievement, health, safety, prevention of harm, etc., are not authentic with respect to a deity who rarely intervenes in the world. Such prayers often may appear not to be answered. Or, coincidental with natural processes (e.g., good crop weather) or human activity (e.g., successful surgery performed by a skilled team of surgeons), such prayers upon occasion may appear to have been answered. A perceived high incidence of unanswered prayer may have discouraged postmoderns from prayer and induced them to seek communion ("oneness") with deity through meditation.
Prayers thanking a divine entity for specific blessings to the one who prays are audacious in presuming that the divine entity would favor the one who is praying over other humans who may be just as (or more) righteous than the one who is doing the praying.
Twenty-first century postmoderns who are seeking “oneness with deity” are more likely to engage in personal and private meditation in their quest for spirituality. They may be put off by corporate worship in which the minister or church member who prays has written the prayer to be read in the presence of a congregation. But they might be more tolerant of "guided" meditation by a worship leader who mentions in succession various meditation topics and allows time between them for personal meditation.
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The twentieth century was one of the most violent on record due to wars, both hot and cold. But the twentieth century also saw great technological advances that enabled economic growth to raise per capita incomes across the globe, thereby alleviating poverty and physical suffering. Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria highlights the global improvement of the state of humankind since 1990:
The asymmetrical effects of bad and good news are well understood in economic theory: for a normally risk-averse person, a certain value of loss (bad news) has a greater negative emotional impact than the positive emotional effect of an equivalent gain of value (good news). For example, in an even-odds bet (a flip of a "fair" coin) with another person where each of us has put $100 at stake, I would hate to lose my $100 more than I would love to win the other person’s $100. Congregants are quick to seek pastoral care when misfortune occurs, but they typically are slower to share good news with their pastor. Pastors hear a lot more bad news than good news: suffering may indeed appear to be all around them.
But if the divine has given humans life itself, a universe full of resources to make life bearable, and the knowledge and ability to use the resources of the universe to make life enjoyable, should we think that the divine would intend for life to be fraught with suffering and terror in malevolent environments?
Granted, there have been horrible eras for much of humankind, e.g., during wars, famines, plagues, and ice ages. Even in peacetimes, malevolent environments exist at various places on earth, usually attributable to human behavior rather than to the intent of a deity. And in any generation there are some tragic figures. But here in the twenty-first century, and particularly in North America, for most humans, in most places, most of the time, life environments are relatively benign. By this I mean that we need not expect any more than a trivial probability of suffering a natural disaster or of being killed in an accident or attacked or otherwise maimed or struck dead when we make trips to the grocery store. Yes, unexpected misfortunes happen, but life goes on and we have to get beyond our misfortunes.
Suicides do occur for those who reach the conclusion that they "cannot go on," but the fact that in most societies many more people die from natural causes than from suicides implies that on the whole life is good and should be celebrated and enjoyed.
Ministers who are obsessed with salving the suffering "all around them" are in danger of demonstrating Karl Marx's contention that religion is the opium of the people (in the introduction to a proposed book, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1843).
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A dictionary definition of theism is belief in the existence of a god or gods. A theist is one who believes in the existence of a god or gods. The negative of the term, atheism, means disbelief in a supreme being or beings. An atheist is one who denies the existence of a supreme being. The term "atheism" derives from the Greek word atheos meaning "without god(s)." The earliest instances of people publicly identifying themselves as atheists probably date from the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment. An "agnostic" is one who simply cannot discern whether a deity exists.
A postmodern might use the adjectives "universal" and "selective" to qualify these terms. Although the term "universal theism" may lack meaning, the term "selective theism" can refer to belief in a specific god, e.g., the monotheistic God of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity (the three Abrahamic religions).
"Universal atheism" is the denial of the existence of any supreme being. "Selective atheism" is disbelief in a specific conception of a supreme being. Karen Armstrong, in her book The Case for God, suggests that even the most ardent self-identified and implicitly universal atheists usually are railing against some particular conception of God, often a simplistic notion of deity as commonly depicted by televangelists.127 Most theists in effect are selective atheists with respect to other conceptions of God (anthropomorphized avatars) that diverge too widely from their own conceptions of God.
British comedian Ricky Gervais, a self-professed atheist, points out that selective monotheism is only one off from universal atheism:
These ideas suggest a practical distinction between theology and mythology. My theology is what I believe to be the nature of the divine entity that I may worship. Mythology to me is what anyone else believes about deity if the belief differs significantly from what I believe. Most postmoderns (Christian or otherwise) regard the ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman pantheons as populated by mythological deities. Our descendants some generations on may look back on what we believed and wonder at our "Christian mythology."
In this sense, then, most of us are selectively atheistic, both with respect to mythological deities and with respect to any currently-held concepts of deity that are significantly different from our own. A Muslim may regard me as an atheist with respect to the Islamic concept of Allah. I may also be selectively atheistic with respect to some of the god concepts held by Muslims, Jews, Catholics, other Protestants, and even other Baptists.
Some twenty-first century postmoderns proclaim themselves to be universal atheists. A significant characteristic of the Postmodern era is pluralistic tolerance of multiple religions. My guess is that many postmoderns are private theists who genuinely seek what is called “oneness with deity” through personal meditation, but who may not want to associate themselves with any organized religion or denomination. To avert descent into irrelevance, twenty-first century Christian churches might attempt to develop worship styles that accommodate personal meditation in quests for spirituality.
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However, I can meet the lesser standard of revering Jesus as a prophet who may have been commissioned by a divine entity to bring a message to humanity. But Muslims too can meet this standard.
In his 1902 book Varieties of Religious Experience, A Study in Human Nature, William James distinguished between first-hand and second-hand religion.129 First-hand religion is experienced; second-hand religion is what is described by others. Joseph Epstein, in a Wall Street Journal review of James' book, notes that at one point, James speaks of "those of us not personally favored with such specific revelations [mystic experiences]," and at another of his "own constitution [shutting him] out from their enjoyment almost entirely, and I can speak of them only at second hand."130 Like James, I have never had what I can only imagine to be a spiritual experience or a spiritual relationship with the divine.
In his book Meeting Jesus for the First Time Again, Marcus Borg says that a few people have the gift of being "spirit persons" (Borg's non-gender-specific substitute term for "holy men") in the sense that they are able to directly experience the divine.131 Borg identifies four such spirit persons in the Bible: Moses, Elijah, Jesus, and Paul. A most important role for spirit persons to play in society is to mediate the sacred to the vast majority who are not gifted as spirit persons. Sadly, as much as I may have tried to be open to spiritual experiences, I seem not to have been gifted to be a spirit person. I am in need of the mediation of the sacred that spirit persons can provide so that I can at least believe in, even if not directly experience, the sacred. Perhaps it is my training as an economist that has impeded my spiritual formation potential.
So what should I now call myself? I no longer subscribe to the Christian ideology that was inculcated into me during my earlier life, and I am no longer confident of the existence of a divine entity. I cannot affirm the existence of a divine entity, but neither can I rule out the possibility that a divine entity exists. I may be agnostic, but deep down inside I have hoped that a divine entity does indeed exist.
Mark A. Noll, in describing the theology of Emily Dickenson, Herman Melville, and Abraham Lincoln, uses a term that may apply to my evolving theological understanding: "post-Christian theism."132 Although I cannot claim to possess the faith of Abraham Lincoln, I am not above borrowing the term that Noll applies to his faith. I have thought of myself as a post-Christian theist.
Yuval Harari has argued in his book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow that beginning early in the eighteenth century the Age of Enlightenment fostered the emergence of "humanism" that has been displacing theism.133 Harari also speculates that humanism eventually will be displaced by "dataism" and that homo sapiens will be technologically upgraded to super-human status ("homo deus"). In turn, homo deus eventually may be dominated by cyborg humans (humans with integrated physical and mental assist devices) or displaced by pure artificial intelligence (AI) entities.
I have found Harari's "brief history of tomorrow" to be both persuasive and unsettling, not only for myself, but more importantly for my children and grandchildren. I have already entered a very early stage of cyborg transformation with integrated physical-assist devices in the forms of artificial knees and breathing, dental, visual, and audio aids. I now regard myself as humanist in the sense that I no longer indulge in superstitious beliefs in deity, soul, and afterlife. As a twenty-first century postmodern, I favor rational thought based upon experience and empirical evidence; and I believe that humans can perceive and exercise ethical behavior apart from religious dogma
For a twenty-first century postmodern, the Apostle Paul's admonition in Philippians 4:8 can serve just as well as a basis for humanist ethics as for Christian ethics: "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—think about such things." (NIV)
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In this exploration of my faith I have speculated on the truth about the divine and the human soul, but I have come to realize that such truth can never be known by mortals until they pass from this life, and only if they survive to an afterlife. In this sense, the verse quoted above from John's gospel is turned on its head: becoming free of my mortal body will let me know the truth, but only if my soul survives to an afterlife.
I felt more free when I suffered the delusion that I could ask God for success in my endeavors and protection from harm, and expect God to deliver. Where I do feel a sense of greater freedom is in dispensing with myths inculcated in me from childhood onward. As a postmodern believer in pluralism of religions, I no longer regard Jesus as "the only way" gateway to the divine.
As a twenty-first century postmodern, I am free to live this life according to humanist ethical principles with no expectation of an afterlife, and to celebrate the goodness of this life beyond any misfortunes that may befall me.
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Ockham's Razor is the principle that the simplest answer to a problem often is the true or the best solution, i.e., let the razor "cut-off" the redundant complexity. The economist's criterion for applying Ockham’s Razor is the marginal principle that was introduced in the first paragraph of the Preface. What might a new theology look like if Ockham's Razor were applied to the Christian theology complex to carve away extraneous matter, i.e., the clutter that distracts from the core of Christian theology and may entail greater costs than benefits in the postmodern perception?
In my perception, the archaic candidates that might be cut from the Christian theology complex include a multitude of Old Testament oral campfire stories that were progressively-embellished with successive retellings; the minutiae of Mosaic law; the Trinity, atonement, election, and sola fide doctrines; the messiah obsession; the virgin birth, crucifixion, and resurrection narratives; the sin-confession-repentance-forgiveness axis; and the exclusivity of the only-way mandate.
Pre-postmodern Christians often focus their personal theologies on Jesus’ lineage or the circumstances of his birth or death. The lineage, virgin birth, burial, and resurrection narratives should be understood as distractions from the message of universal love that God commissioned his Jewish prophet Yeshua to bring to humanity
My vision of a new theology that is trimmed down to essentials to meet Vincent’s specification for the twenty-first-century postmodern intellect would include the following tenets:
Following Vincent’s assessment, this theology would understand much of the Old Testament matter as cherished mythological literature rather than sacred scripture. It would regard much of the New Testament matter as a contrived "Christology" that is not authentic to the life and teachings of Yeshua. And it would be largely devoid of classical Christian ethos myths that already have been dismissed by many postmoderns.
Such a non-exclusive theology need not entail evangelical compulsion to proselytize or share the ideology with other humans, but it should invite other humans to share its beliefs and practices. And it should include a social mission requisite for adherents to reach out with generosity to less fortunate humans in providing assistance and service to them.
The third stanza of the hymn, “As We Come into God’s Presence” by Donna M. Forrester (sung to the tune Promise), represents well this vision of a new and leaner theology for the twenty-first century intellect:
spreading love and deeds of kindness, till on earth God’s will is done.
We will faithfully surrender what distracts us from the need
‘til we know what really matters and our hearts are free of greed.136
It is difficult to envision how a religion that incorporates such a theology might be practiced. Without reliance upon Christian ethos myths and the promise of an afterlife, the theological substance and social mission compulsion of a new theology may be insufficient to sustain religious organizations and corporate deity worship. Such a theology may be more suitable for individual communion experience than for corporate worship experience unless corporate worship can be adapted to enable guided personal meditation in lieu of public prayer. Indeed, a personal communion experience ("oneness" with deity) seems to be what many twenty-first century postmoderns are seeking. This begs the question of whether organized churches are becoming obsolete in the Postmodern era.
Great social transformations often are not completed within a generation. The transition from the archaic Judeo/Christian/Islamic traditions to new theologies would be difficult and may involve the passing of generations who cling to archaic religious traditions, concepts, and worship modes.
A postmodern theological transformation is unlikely to come from within the professional theological establishment. Those most resistant to such transformation may be theologians, religion professors, and ministers who are deeply invested in interpreting ancient scriptural matter to their students and preaching to their congregants.
How might transition to a new theology come about? Changing postmodern perceptions of deity and the threat of institutional obsolescence and irrelevance may prompt transformation, but I think that a wholesale transition to a new theology to be unlikely. A postmodern Christian theology might emerge gradually as successive generations of pastors deemphasize and eventually drop archaic components from worship modes in their churches. If such a gradual transition occurs too slowly to forestall flight of postmoderns from the churches, the church as an organized mode of religious observance may become obsolete.
It is April, 2019, at this writing. In twelve more years my church, the one that I described in the Preface, will have survived for two hundred years from its founding in 1831. Will it still be here in another two hundred years? Given the latter-day American propensity to tear-down and rebuild after a few decades, the steel, brick, and mortar of the present buildings may not still be standing in 2231. But a church exists over time in its ever-changing congregations who may build, occupy, and replace several physical facilities. I won’t be here to witness it, so it remains to be seen by my descendants several generations on whether the church’s congregations and ministers adapted successfully to postmodern and “post-postmodern” cultural and technological changes, whatever they may be. If not, the church buildings, if they are still standing, may have become a museum (like many churches in Europe), a school, a civic meeting venue, or perhaps housing for a digital archive of historical religious mythology.
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1 Economists often compare benefits to costs in assessing the viability of a process or project. Letting the symbol B represent a benefit and the symbol C represent its cost, then the process or project may be judged economically viable if B is greater than C, i.e., B > C, or if the ratio of B to C is greater than 1, i.e., B/C > 1. A process or project is judged not economically viable if B < C or if B/C < 1. But if we need to determine whether to do more or less of an on-going process, we must consider marginal relationships. In analytical terms, marginal means "addition to" something and is usually represented by the delta symbol, Δ. Letting quantity be represented by the symbol Q in a mathematical function B = f (Q), then the marginal benefit may be represented as the ratio ΔB/ΔQ as ΔQ approaches zero (practically, for the smallest possible change of ΔQ, one indivisible unit). The marginal cost ratio may be structured as ΔC/ΔQ for a smallest possible change of Q. It is rational to acquire another unit of something if the marginal benefit of acquiring the unit exceeds the marginal cost of acquiring it, i.e., if ΔB/ΔQ > ΔC/ΔQ for smallest possible ΔQ. If ΔQ is the same for both marginal benefit and marginal cost, then the criterion reduces to ΔB > ΔC. When ΔB < ΔC, a marginal unit should be curtailed. In this book, the question will be whether retaining a theological component costs more in terms of alienating some church members who leave than the benefit that it confers to church members who remain.
2 In principle, benefit/cost and marginal analyses require data for both benefits and costs, and ideally the data should be collected with all other matters unchanged. As a practical matter, this will almost never be possible, so we will have to consider benefits and costs of most worship elements together as a package. We cannot expect to find explicit data for either the benefit or the cost associated with any single element of Christian theology. Rather, we can only infer that the benefits of elements may exceed their costs if churches incorporating the elements in their worship processes are thriving and attracting new members. But if churches employing those worship elements are losing membership and the general population is shying from them, the inference is that the costs of retaining those elements may exceed the benefits conferred by them.
3 Jim Vincent, Should the Church Abandon the the Bible?, aSys Publishing, 2018.
4 Vincent, Kindle e-book location 4649.
5 First Baptist Church, Greenville, South Carolina, https://firstbaptistgreenville.com/. Worship services at this church may be viewed by Livestream at
https://livestream.com/fbcgreenvillesc.
6 Pew Research Center, "America's Changing Religious Landscape," May 12, 2015, http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/
7 Vincent, Kindle e-book location 4649.
8 Edward W. Younkins, "The Plague of Postmodernism," http://www.quebecoislibre.org/04/041215-9.htm
9 Thomas Sowell, "Dismantling America, Part II," Jewish World Review, August 18, 2010, http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell081810.php3
10 Leonard Pitts, "A flagrantly reasonable conservative," Miami Herald, August 22, 2010, http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/22/1787010/a-flagrantly-reasonable-conservative.html
11 Pew Research Center, "America's Changing Religious Landscape," May 12, 2015, http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/
12 Richard Brody, “The Superhero Movie as Secular Religion in ‘Aquaman,’ ‘Bumblebee,’ and ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,’ The New Yorker, December 29, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/the-superhero-movie-as-secular-religion-in-aquaman-bumblebee-and-spider-man-into-the-spider-verse
13 Christine Emba, "Evangelicals' infallible new faith: The gospel of Trump," January 4, 2019, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/04/evangelicals-infallible-new-faith-gospel-trump/?utm_term=.ee69f59380d5&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
14 “The Rise of the “Megachurch,” The Real Truth, https://rcg.org/realtruth/articles/418-trotm.html; see also Roger E. Olson, “Theological thoughts about “megachurches,” Patheos, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/05/theological-thoughts-about-megachurches/"; see also Hartford Institute for Religion Research, “Megachurch Definition,” http://hirr.hartsem.edu/megachurch/definition.html
15 Karen Armstrong, A History of God, Grammercy Books, 1993.
16 Francis Collins, The Language of God, Free Press, 2006.
17 Reminiscent of the "Borg" as envisioned by Gene Roddenberry in his "Star Trek" television series; "Borg," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg
18 Tam Hunt, "The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man!," Scientific American, December 5, 2018, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-hippies-were-right-its-all-about-vibrations-man/
19 Edited and published posthumously in 1669.
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Analogous to the difference between deity and humanity, I and my dog are of different species. Although I did not create her (she is a "rescue dog" that I adopted), I am as if "god" to my dog who is subject to my control and entirely dependent upon me for her sustenance and well-being. In return she is devoted to me although I can't characterize her devotion as "love" in the human sense. Sometimes she does naughty things and doesn't obey my commands. Upon being chastised, she comes to me with head down and tail between her hind legs, appearing to seek forgiveness. So I forgive her and still love her. See Gregory Berns book, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain, Amazon Publishing, 2013, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/?ASIN=B00CLIK6NA&?ref_=pe_170810_391844200_KCLC-test-B00CLIK6NA
21 Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith, HarperCollins, 1998.
22 Jim Vincent, Should the Church Abandon the Bible?, aSys Publications, 2018, Kindle e-book location 4820.
23 Reza Aslan, God: A Human History, Random House, 2017, Kindle e-book location 2360.
24 Youval Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, HarperCollins, 2016, p. 221. In his novel Origin (Transworld Publishers, 2017), Dan Brown’s scientist protagonist foresees a future without religions, i.e., when science has displaced religions.
25 cf. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, Bantam Books, 2010.
26 cf. Hawking and Mlodinow.
27 Richard Carrier, Why I am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith, Philosophy Press, 2011.
28 Victor Stenger, God and the Multiverse: Humanity's Expanding View of the Cosmos, Prometheus Books, 2014.
29 "Bohr-Einstein Debates," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr%E2%80%93Einstein_debates
30 Ethan Siegel, "Proof Of 'God Playing Dice With The Universe' Found In The Sun's Interior," Forbes, September 15, 2017,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/09/15/proof-of-god-playing-dice-with-the-universe-found-in-the-suns-interior/#11803cea3b03
31 Nick Bostrom, "Are You Living In A Simulation?", https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html; see also Ashutosh Jain, "World is a simulation—and ‘God’ is the machine," Medium.com, https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/world-is-a-simulation-and-god-is-the-machine-d6e000aa21c6; see also Tristan Greene, "Simulation Theory and the scientific pursuit of God, The Next Web, July 6, 2017, href="https://thenextweb.com/distract/2017/07/06/simulation-hypothesis-and-the-search-for-god/
32 In his novel Origin (Transworld Publishers, 2017), Dan Brown uses simulation modeling as a plot device to move the story along. A computer scientist has built a new type of supercomputer to run a simulation model of a chemical experiment intended to approximate creation conditions. He uses the simulation model as a virtual time machine to run simulations backward in time through an infinite number of iterations to reach the singularity point at the initiation of the universe. He also runs the simulation model forward in time from the singularity and announces his great "discovery" that life could have emerged spontaneously from the "primordial soup" of chemical elements present on earth four billion years ago. In this fictional simulation model account, no "first mover" concept of deity is needed to explain either creation or the emergence of life in the universe. While Brown’s novel is fiction, it may portend a near-future simulation modeling possibility
33 cf. Mike Adams, "Yet more evidence that our universe is a grand simulation created by an intelligent designer," Natural News, February 7, 2013, https://www.naturalnews.com/038985_universe_simulation_intelligent_design.html
34 Carlo Rovelli, Reality is Not What It Seems, Riverhead Books (imprint of Random House LLC), 2014; English translation 2017.
35 See Priyamvada Natarajan, “At Long Last, a Glimpse of a Black Hole,” The New York Times, April 8, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/opinion/black-hole.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_ty_20190409&nl=opinion-today&nl_art=6&nlid=74240569emc%3Dedit_ty_20190409&ref=headline&te=1; see also Dennis Overbye, “Darkness Visible Finally: Astronomers Capture First Ever Image of a Black Hole,” The New York Times, April 11, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/science/black-hole-picture.html?emc=edit_NN_p_20190411&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=74240569ion%3DwhatElse§ion=whatElse&te=1
36 Rovelli, p. 252.
37 Alexander Drake, The Invention of Christianity, The Emperor Has No Clothes Press, 2005, Kindle e-book location, 2012.
38 Aslan, Kindle e-book location 4679.
39 Louis Menand, "Einstein’s God Letter," The New Yorker, December 25, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/reading-into-albert-einsteins-god-letter
40 Reza Aslan, God: A Human History, Random House, 2017.
41 Aslan, Kindle e-book location 1817.
43 Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Twelve Books, 2007.
43 John W. Loftus, Christianity is not Great: How Faith Fails, Prometheus Books, 2014.
44 Louis Menand, "Einstein’s God Letter," The New Yorker, December 25, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/reading-into-albert-einsteins-god-letter?
45 Reza Aslan, God: A Human History, Random House, 2017, Kindle e-book location 843.
46 Jim Vincent, Should the Church Abandon the Bible?, aSys Publishing, 2018, Kindle e-book location 709.
47 Vincent, Kindle e-book location 4808.
48 Aslan, Kindle e-book location 4679.
49 Karen Armstrong, A History of God, Grammercy Books, 1993.
50 Edgar McKnight, Jesus Christ Today, Mercer University Press, 2009.
51 Jim Dant, Finding your Voice: How to Speak Your Heart's True Faith, Faithlab, 2013, Kindle e-book location 783.
52 Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith, HarperCollins, 1998.
53 John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, HarperCollins, 1992.
54 Named after Dutch theologian Jacob Armenius (1560-1609) whose principal teaching was rejection of Calvinism and corresponding affirmation of the freedom of the human will; "What is Arminianism," Bible Research, http://www.bible-researcher.com/arminianism.html
55 "Soul," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul
56 One of Dan Brown's characters in his novel The Lost Symbol (Random House, 2009, pp. 391-395) is depicted as attempting to prove the existence of a soul by weighing the physical mass of a dying colleague in a sealed compartment immediately before and after death. A lesser weight after death would imply the existence of a soul that departs the physical body at death. To my knowledge, this fictional process has not yet been accomplished, or even attempted.
57 C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1947.
58 Youval Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, HarperCollins, 2016, p. 221.
59 John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, HarperCollins, 1992.
60 Barrie Wilson, How Jesus Became Christian, St. Martin's Press, 2008.
61 Robin Meyers, Saving Jesus From the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus, HarperCollins, 2009.
62 Miriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/myth
63 Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, Doubleday, 1988, p. 14.
64 D. M. Murdock, The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ, Stellar House Publishing, 2011, p. 39.
65 Robert M. Price, The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems, American Atheist Press, 2012, p. 51.
66 Barrie Wilson, How Jesus Became Christian, St. Martin's Press, 2008.
67 Alexander Drake, The Invention of Christianity, The Emperor Has No Clothes Press, 2005, Kindle e-book location, 2012.
68 Albert Schweitzer, Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, 1906, translated into English by William Montgomery, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 1910.
69 Richard Brody, "The Superhero Movie as Secular Religion in 'Aquaman,' 'Bumblebee,' and 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,' The New Yorker, December 29, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/the-superhero-movie-as-secular-religion-in-aquaman-bumblebee-and-spider-man-into-the-spider-verse
70 Nicholas Kristof, "Professor, Was Jesus Really Born to a Virgin?", The New York Times, December 24, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/opinion/sunday/christmas-christian-craig.html
71 Stephen Mitchell, The Gospel According to Jesus, Harper Perennial, 1993.
72 Origen, Contra Celsum, as quoted by Mitchell, pp. 25-26.
73 James Flerlage, Before Bethlehem, Dreamscapes Publishing, 2013.
74 Ross Douthat, "Staying Catholic at Christmas," The New York Times, December 22, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/opinion/catholic-christmas-church.html
75 Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, HarperCollins, 2014.
76 Anthony Maas, "Genealogy of Christ," Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Company, 1913.
77 Matt Slick, "What is the gospel of Q and does it prove the Gospels are false?", https://carm.org/what-gospel-q-and-does-it-prove-gospels-are-false
78 Jim Vincent, Should the Church Abandon the Bible?, aSys Publications, 2018, Kindle e-book location 4633.
79 Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Random House, 2013.
80 Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, HarperCollins, 2014.
81 Patrick Goggins, A Reader's Guide to Bart Ehrman's How Jesus Became God, Part III, Kindle e-book location 2014.
82 Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So, HarperOne, 2014, p. 227.
83 Terry Teachout, "Is it Real or Is It Color?", The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 4, 2014, https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-it-real-or-is-it-color-1417744290
84 Vincent, Kindle e-book location 5017.
85 N. T. Wright, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels, HarperOne, 2012. A well-known concern in economic analysis is that any conclusions to be deduced from an economic model are at least biased if not pre-determined by the assumption of premises upon which the model is based. Different premises may lead to different conclusions. My model for attempting to understand the identity of Jesus differs from Wright’s in that it is based on the premises that Jesus came into existence through normal life-initiation and birth processes, that he may have survived the crucifixion and recovered enough to have been "seen" by various parties, and that he may have died naturally and was buried at some later time. With these premises as analytical starting points, the conclusion that I have deduced with regard to Jesus’ teachings and life example (i.e., the “middle” of the story between the “bookends”) is that Jesus was a fully-human being who was appointed by God to serve as a prophet in conveying a message of universal love for individual humans and all of humankind. As in Wright’s model, the "middle" is the real story, but unlike Wright’s model, the "bookends" (i.e., the circumstances of Jesus’ birth and death) are distractions to the real story.
86 Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus for the First Time Again, HarperCollins, 1995, p.29.
87 John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, HarperCollins, 1992.
88 John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images, HarperCollins, 1998.
89 Vincent, Kindle e-book location 3703.
90 Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, Simon and Schuster, 2010.
91 Michael Baigent, The Jesus Papers, HarperSanFrancisco, 2006.
92 Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, HarperCollins, 2014.
93 William H. Marty, The World of Jesus: Making Sense of the People and Places of Jesus' Day, Baker Publishing Group, 2013, Kindle e-book location 947-948.
94 Michael Baigent, The Jesus Papers, HarperSanFrancisco, 2006.
95 Howard Brenton, playscript Paul, NHB Books, London, 2006.
96 Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, HarperCollins, 2014.
97 John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, HarperCollins, 1992.
98 Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, The Jesus Family Tomb: the Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence that Could Change History, HarperCollins, 2007; James Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici, The Jesus Discovery: The New Archeological Find that Reveals the Birth of Christianity, Simon and Schuster, 2012.
99 Jim Vincent, Should the Church Abandon the Bible?, aSys Publications, 2018, Kindle e-book location Kindle e-book location 3530.
100 Patrick Goggins, A Reader's Guide to Reza Aslan's "Zealot", Kindle e-book location 838-841.
101 see Steve Berry’s description in his novel The Templar Legacy, Ballentine Books, 2006, pp. 334-337.
102 Robert M. Price, The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems, American Atheist Press, 2012.
103 Michael Baigent, The Jesus Papers, HarperSanFrancisco, 2006.
104 William Roscoe, The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth, 1806; Ludwig von Pastor, History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, 1908.
105 Michelle Arnold, Catholic Answers, http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/did-pope-leo-x-say-it-has-served-us-well-this-myth-of-christ
106 Clarence Page, "Repeating the mistakes of the AIDS epidemic with Ebola," Chicago Tribune, October 21, 2014.
107 Carrie Foster, "Cognitive Disonance," Organization Development, http://organisationdevelopment.org/social-psychology-conflicting-beliefs/
108 Alexander Drake, The Invention of Christianity, The Emperor Has No Clothes Press, 2005, Kindle e-book location, 2012.
109 Leonard Gaston, "Everybody Plays the Fool: Man's greatest trick is the one he plays on himself," Mensa Bulletin, February 26, 2019, https://www.us.mensa.org/read/bulletin/features/everybody-plays-the-fool/
110 Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, Doubleday, 1988, p. 14.
111 Karen Armstrong, The Case for God, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
112 Gordon Pennycook and David Rand, “Why Do People Fall for Fake News?”, The New York Times, January 19, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/opinion/sunday/fake-news.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_up_20190124&nl=upshot&nl_art=4&nlid=74240569emc%3Dedit_up_20190124&ref=headline&te=1
113 Campbell and Moyers, p. 32.
114 Jack Miles, God: A Biography, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
115 Jack Miles, Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.
116 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, "What We Believe," http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/
117 Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, HarperCollins, 2014.
118 "Doxology," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxology
119 Jim Vincent, Should the Church Abandon the Bible?, aSys Publications, 2018, Kindle e-book location 3658.
120 Vincent, Kindle e-book location 4638.
121 Ross Douthat, "The Return of Paganism," The New York Times, December 12, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/opinion/christianity-paganism-america.html
122 Jim Vincent, Should the Church Abandon the Bible?, aSys Publications, 2018, Kindle e-book location 4649.
123 cf. Krista Tippett, Einstein's God, Penguin Books Ltd., 2010.
124 Louis Menand, "Einstein’s God Letter,"
125 Reza Aslan, God: A Human History, Random House, 2017, Kindle e-book location 2407.
Chapter 30. Prayer
126 Fareed Zakaria, “We have a bleak view of modern life. But the world is making real progress,” The Washington Post, January 31, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-have-a-bleak-view-of-modern-life-but-the-world-is-making-real-progress/2019/01/31/6ee30432-25a8-11e9-ad53-824486280311_story.html?utm_term=.fad6524fa5c1&wpisrc=nl_ideas&wpmm=1
127 Armstrong, Karen, The Case for God, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
128 Ricky Gervais, "Why I am an Atheist," The Wall Street Journal, blogs, https://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/19/a-holiday-message-from-ricky-gervais-why-im-an-atheist/
129 William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, A Study in Human Nature, 1902.
130 Joseph Epstein, review of William James' Varieties of Religious Experience, A Study in Human Nature, in The Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2014.
131 Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus for the First Time Again, HarperCollins, 1995.
132 Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 438.
133 Youval Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, HarperCollins, 2016. A plot line in Dan Brown’s novel Origin (Transworld Publishers, 2017) is congruent with Harari's ideas. In this novel, simulations are conducted by a computer scientist forward in time from the singularity point of initiation of the universe to demonstrate the possibility that life could have emerged spontaneously. As living organisms became ever more complex, they evolved until homo sapiens emerged about 200 thousand years ago and became the dominant species on earth about 65 thousand years ago. As perceived in this novel, twenty-first century homo sapiens is only one stage of evolution. Continuing simulations of the model into the future reveal that homo sapiens will disappear as an identifiable species by the middle of the twenty-first century as it is "absorbed" by emerging technology. In this fictional perception, it will become an entirely new species that is a hybrid of biology and technology in a new taxonomic kingdom, Technium. This fictional story may lie within the realm of possibility for twenty-first century postmoderns who are aware of the exponential rate of technological advance.
134 Jim Vincent, Should the Church Abandon the Bible?, aSys Publications, 2018, Kindle e-book location 4971.
135 "Social Gospel," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Gospel
136 Donna M. Forrester, "As We Come into God's Presence," First Baptist Hymnal, Smith & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 2001.
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