So the human mind learns through connection and association. McFague uses the example of a dictionary, a mere 26 letters and it's various combinations which produce the immense English language. This example can be use to look at Plato's dialectics. The question and answer motif is one in which analogies with the familiar are stretched to aquire new meanings and truth, whcih are rather aproximations. An example is Plato's Republic, where the question of what makes a just individual is illustrated by what makes a just city.(McFague, 33)
So there are concrete situations which are expanded upon. Something we find familiar is stretched so that it can provide an understanding of something else, it points beyond itself. Irregardless of how abstract one's thinking in, they are abstractions of the particular. They are drawn from to make new principles and understanding. Interpetation than is as McFague notes "we analyze, classify, and synthesize a series of events, structures, objects, or whatever, we may supress the ways in which they are dissimilar because we have discovered significantg similarities among them." (McFague 34)
So not only do we in our everyday life engage in the use of metaphor, but any form of knowledge area as well engages in metaphor. The language of "the animal kingdom", the earth as a "machine", human beings as "beasts", etc. No discipline operates without metaphor, as much as no individual operates without metaphor. (McFague, 35)
It is this as a basis upon which McFague looks at the human sciences to find the ways in which metaphor is used. Science is particularily important, because for many people it is factual and is only interested in describing the world "as it really is". If it was not focused on objective fact and mapping reality as it really is than it wouldn't be true. In fact such objections to metaphoric language concerning theology employ such an understanding. Yet, science itself has already come to the recognition that much of what it is doing is metaphoric.
Marry Hesse, a noted physicist suggests that the only way one can talk about much of what concerns science is through metaphor. An example is the protons and neutrons. One cannot see protons and neutrons. One can only observe their effects. No one has seen a proton but the metaphor is helpful in making sense of particular effects. As Jacob Brownoski notes" We cannot form any theory to explain, say, the workings of nature without forming in our mind some pattern of mvoement, some arrangement and rearrangement of units which derives from our existence...In this sense, the whole of science is shot through and through with metaphors, which transfer and link one part of our experience to another, and find likenesses between the parts. All of our ideas derive from and embody such metaphorical likeness." (Mcfague, 35)
Human beings in language as well as in any discipline therefore uses something similar to go beyond that to something else which is unknown. In science, frequently, it is the ability to connect two disparate notions and ideas and rearrange them in a new fasion or see something new from these particulars which makes for scientific dicscover. Metaphor than is the root base of language, and takes two ideas , notions, things which are different and finds a similarity between them. An example is chess is a game of war. It is like a game of war, but it is not war and thus is the tension.(McFague 37)
McFague proposes this understanding to much of the language of the Bible and specifically we find examples of this in Jesus and his use of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is and is not. It is like a mustard seed, it is like a sower who wastefully throws his seed on the soil and on rocky ground and yet it is more. To borrow from William James, there is always the more. That understanding of language should keep us modest about what it can do and in recognizing there is always a more to reality itself than what our language can map out. The language takes the mundane such as a mustard seed and stretches itself beyond that. Much of the language of the NT take the form of parables which McFague defines as extended parables.
The parables also have an extravagance which shock people. The shock may also come from having the structures of the world has it has been previously known to be subverted. How can a Samaritan be the one who helps the Jew robbed by theives? Why would a shepard leave 99 sheep to simply find one sheep? Why would the prodigous son receive a banquet, he hardly deserved such a thing? It shakes us from our security and the structures we have built for ourselves. As John Domminic Crossan notes "You have bult a lovely home, myth assures us: but whispers parable, you are right above an earthquake fault" (McFague, 47)
If one had a theology based on parables the results would be significant. It would disorient our security systems, it would be relational between us and others and us and God and it would draw from the secular and everyday life and wouldn't assume a complex system of belief. McFague proposes that Jesus and his life should be seen as a parable of God. His very life was shocking, his concern was relational, and his stories were about everyday life. If to know God was to see Jesus, it would not than be a question of idenity of Jesus as much as that Jesus points to God, in the same way that a metaphor does not have perfect correspondence but rather is and is not.Such an understanding would certainly make sense of our use of language, including that found in the Bible and secondley it would open us up to interfaith dialogues and understandings (McFague, 49)
"Nothing is seen as nakedly or naked". McFague asks if we don't even perceive a fork directly but only the concept fork by which some thing we may be holding in our hands fits within the general rubric, how would this operate on grander scales? McFague explores this inregards to scripture. Scripture is never uninterpeted and read as it really is, but rather always has interpetation. It's a complex relationship between the reader and the text and the contexts and worlds of meaning which many simply assume govern reality will dramatically affect our reading of the text. McFague than takes such questions and places it on a larger scale, by looking at various disciplines, through the question of models. (McFague 55)
Models are sustained and systematic metaphors, and when one has a whole serious of interlocking metaphors which form our world or at least the assumptions and understandings of our world we have a paradigm. McFague notes how different eras have different models such as "The Renaissance", "The Dark Ages", "Postmodern World", etc,. Thomas Kuhn and his work on science and how it's understandings of paradigms and the changes of such paradigms has had a dramatic impact, recognizing that science like other fields are not unchanging but have a whole set of governing assumptions and metaphors which make discourse and manuevering in the world possible. As Ian Barbor notes" most scientific endeavor is carried on within the framework of such a received tradition which defines the kinds of explanation to be sought. The tradition influences the concepts through which the scientist sees the world,. the expectations by which his work is governed, and the language he uses" (McFague, 80)
Since metaphors are the root of language and the way we live in the world regardless of discipline or scale, to propose that theology likewise has models and is metaphoric no longer seems radical, but neccessary. If scientific discovery is rearranging the concepts and ideas to produce a new understanding, one should feel free to do the same in theology. People are in need of a God language which is not oppressive, which does not legitimate patriarchy and which takes the modern world seriously. Sallie McFague's extensive coverage of metaphor, while repitious, is clearily important for the arguement she wants to make concerning the nature of God language. God language is not God., in fact such an understanding is idolatrous. Rather God language are metaphors, and it matters what metaphors are used because the language impacts and reflects our values and how we wish to live in the world. McFague in the end of her book examines the metaphor of friendship, God as our friend.
McFaue's book is helpful in that she explains in depth the nature of religious language can move us beyond an objectvism which makes such questions as God talk impossible to raise. McFague in explaining how every discipline uses the same language and use of metaphor has broken down a crucial dualism between science and religion, in fact science and any other discipline, which is at it's heart the idea of pragmatism.
John Dewey in his work Reconstruction of Philosophy has a similar desire to break down any sort of dualism between various disciplines, especially science and religion and his historical suvery of philosophy suggests the very paradigm shifts which McFague notes in her book. John Dewey's account of human language and understanding are also quite similar.
Dewey gives a historical suvery of philosophy and its purpose. People by nature are story tellers. They have particular experiences which occur and what remains important is not the particular experience but the retelling of that experience in a way that makes it meaningful and exciting. The retelling of the story of the hunt can be dramatized without the fear and disappointment which many times could accompany a hunt. Certain experiences within the life of a community are important and pervasive, such as the need for the hunt. Such experiences become the communities experience and from that ritual, religion, and claims about the world are derived. (Dewey, 2-3, )
The problem was as communities became increasingly connected competing stories and explanations of the world came into conflict. What was understood as true was now seen as custom. So philosophy arose in such a situation not as a disinterested search for truth, but with a particular agenda. The agenda was quite conservative or conserving in that it wanted to place particular understandings, customs, religions upon a surer base than mere custom. It wanted a level of certainity. And such a certainity could only occur when it was realized that the customs did not derive from people as much as they were in the very nature of things itself. The cosmos gave substantiation to these understandings and if anyone did a rational search they too would discover the same thing. "Metaphysics is a substitute for custom as the source and guarantor of higher moral and social values" (Dewey, 17-18)
Philosophy arose form a particular historical context and with particular desires and aims. The problem is that to take local custom and to place it on an absolute footing by placing it into the nature of things, it had to engage in logical form over empiricism. It had to develop logical systems of thought which could demonstrate in absolute form the ethics, morality, etc. that was previously secured by religious custom and community. Dewey polemically suggests "this has reduced philosophy to a show of elaborate terminology, a hair splitting logic, and a fictious devotion to the mere external forms of comrehensive and minute demonstration. Even at the best, it has tended to produce an overdeveloped attachment to system for its own sake, an over-pretentious claim to certainity". The history of philosophy than for the most part has been engaged in the quest of certainity and absolutes and non-empirical demonstration of it's absolute nature, it's neccessity. (Dewey, 21)
Dewey than looks at the historical situation which changed such an understanding, and places great weight on Francis Bacon. His writings have a different spirit, one which places emphasis on newnewss and discovery over truth as already existing. One must do the hard work of trial and error, monkeying around with various matter to produce something new. Truth was not by logical demonstration. The difference is that truth is something that arises from a hard critical look, testing, and discovering some new knowledge from that work. It was not indoctrination and explication of universal truths which already were. Learning was not demonstration, it was growth of knowledge. (Dewey 30-31)
"Active experimentation must force the apparent facts of nature into forms different to those in which they familiarily present themselves; and thus make them tell the truth about themselves. Pure reasoning as a means of arriving at truth is like the spider who spins a web out of himself. The web is orderly and elaborate, but it is only a trap." Since knowledge continually grows and is derived from active experimentation, than the classic logic and induction and systems don't provide new knowledge. In fact such systems may give us a knowingness which prevents us from further exploration and looking at the particular of things. It makes us intellectually lazy and uncritical when examing "received truths" (Dewey 32)
The fruits of experimentation, science in otherwords, versus the scholatisicism of old is the difference between scientific accomplishments, curing of diseases, and not. Bacon wanted people to look at the fruits of these endeavors and choose which one produced more. One is critical, revisionary, tentative, and has power over nature and things and results in products as well as knowledge. The other develops systems of thought, categories, etc. which prevent further invesitgation. (Dewey 35)
Dewey believes that many historical factors impacted this change of thinking. The discovery of the new world, the scientific revolution, the rise of the middle class, the rise of town and travel, of literarcy, and of capitalism. The rise of travel around the world, opened up thought, as the sharing of ideas, information, and unsettling of previous patterns continued on. Travel, exploration, and new products created a thrist for more of the same. "the appetitde for novelty and discovery grew by what it fed upon....it found a delight and interest in the revelations of the novel and the unusual..." (Dewey 40) Improvements in all the sciences and capitalism go hands in hand, as well the changing of world views, so that no such thing is isolated but very much interconnected. Ideas don't pop down from heaven, they arise from particular material and historical contexts, to the needs and desires and questions of people. (Dewey 40-44)
From this human institutions changed rapidly and it became more evident that humans were the ones who established such institutions, made the railroads, set up governments, and produced the economic means of living that had been established. The very idea of a contract theory of government really leaves God out of the equation. From this ideas no longer areaccepted as inherently divine, revealed, but must prove themselves in the spirit of a critical age for their usefulness and impact. With this came an increasingly individualism which sought individual rights and freedoms quite apart from any divine agency or community agency. (Dewey 45)
Dewey looks at philosophy and religion and morality and finds that it never caught up with the scientific revolution and the accompanying changes. Philosophy was still interested in what was tradtionally focused on: providing an absolute knowledge claim. In his discussion of the ideal and the real, Dewey lays out the key differences between the old philosophy and what is needed or what has come about since.. In idealism, truth is already there to be unveiled. For Dewey, truth is worked out from the questions and the problems humans raise by trial and error and critical invesitgation and tenativeness and revision of conclusions. For the ideal, knowledge can be solitary. Meditation and contemplation of the "real" would be an example. For Dewey, knowledge is a group process, a cooperative affair. Knowledge claims are public ones which are open to critique. For the older philosophy it relies on logic, induction, and systems which are supra-rational, for Dewey philosophy should rest on approximation and empiricism and should serve the purpose of solving problems. For the older philosophy, truth is found in the nature of things. For Dewey, philosophy truth is worked out and produced by human interest and concern. For the older philosophy, change is sign of imperfection and perfection means unchanging and absolute. For the old philosophy, matrerial causes are "reductionistic". For Dewey, the question arises, why is the material seem as reducing? Is the material lower and to what? It assumes the platonic division of mind and spirit which Dewey rejects. For Dewey, change means growth and is the only way knowledge can be attained. It is afterall in the change of conditions and the affects we see because of the changes that scientific knowledge increases. For the older philosophy, division creates strife and unity is sought. For Dewey, diversity can be enriching. (Dewey, 108-109)
In examining how this work Dewey looks at some examples. Logic is imagined to be supra-rational. It supposedly relies on apriori foundations and is certainly not empirical. Yet for Dewey, logic is simply what was later projected to be a prior but in fact came from human experience, trial and effor, and extrapolation from the particulars. The same could be said for any category which some talk as existing. Examples such as beauty, the good, and rationality. What is beauty? Beauty does not exist, it is a descriptive term of particular things we happen to find beautiful, and we draw from these particulars to make a general classification called Beauty. What is rationality? It is not a thing which exists like a car, it is a helpful term to describe what is reasonable to us. To say something is rational is to say it is reasonable. It's descriptive language. (Dewey, 137)
Dewey notes that as much as the scientific revolution and the move to empiricism has produced amazing discoveries and new technologies, there has been no apparent affect on the question of morality and ethics. It seems that while humans can build amazing technology, too many times it's used to kill people in war, to have and gain over other people. Categories of knowledge can keep disciplines separate and science vs. religion. A dualism arises between the two, somehow imagining that the methods that have yieled powerful results in so many different areas should not be the same for religion and morality. So much of the moral discourses is based on having an aprior moral categories and rules and statements about the basic ontology of people.
Are people inherently good or evil? Dewey would find such a question nonsensical. If people are inherently good or evil, how could it account for the particulars of when an act is done in the opposite spirit of our inherent nature? Rather than categories, Dewey wants morality and philosophy in general to be about fixing problems and thus the title of his book. Philosophy's aim is not the absolute, it's practical in nature and seeks to fix problems. Philosophy and morality should use the same method of investigation, trial, and error as science or any other discipline. It should be tentative. It should seek the conditions by which people are continually growing, learning, and becoming the person they choose to be.
In the end Dewey's book and McFague's book helped me make sense of God language. I'm no longer convinced that such a language is unusuable. If one recognizes God as a metaphor itself, pointing to something else, in particular to the values we value and wish to live by, I believe it can be workable. To ask if God exists or not would be the same sort of question as to ask if beauty exists or not. Neither do, rather they are extrapolations of particular experiences of the values such as love, mutuality, and others. No particular instance captures "God", but put together , in some semblance of a whole, we have a unifying concept. Whether there is any correspondence with a being out there, I won't venture to say. But in the end it's humans tallking, so that the language is really about us in the world and yet does not foreclose the question of God as other.
The disappointment I had with Anderson and Stone was the inadquacy of God talk, but if I recognize all language as metaphor including God language, than the books make more sense. I have and do remain concerned though that the term raises more questions when used. I am not sure if I am confusing people by using "God" in a way which is different from most understandings. But as McFague reminded me, with the explosion of various religions and an increasing religious pluralism, God always will be problematic in discourse. God, like the good, the beautiful, and the true are vague until broken down into its particulars. We shouldn't let God language be the category which prevents investigation, but rather like McFague be open to exploring many languages about God and the particulars of it.
Now that I am satisfied with an understanding of God language, which was the purpose of my reading list, I came across a book by Harold Kushner called Who Needs God? Kushner wants to avoid notions of God and religion which are based on a list of propositions about the supernatural. While clearily comfortable with God language, the book seeks to provide a case for religious faith not based on intellectual assent to propositions about God as much as what does religion and a religious outlook on life do to human beings? How do these things relate to how we live in the world? It's ethical and pragmatic understanding of religion made it appropriate to end my six books.
"Religion is not primarily a set of beliefs, a collection of prayers, or a series of rituals. Religion is first and foremost a way of seeing. It can't change the facts about the world we live in, but it can change the way we see hose facts, and that in itself can often make a real difference". For Kushner, religion helps us make sense of the world and provides meaning in it. Partly because it looks for places of hope and grace. Without such a religious perspective, we run into views of the world as absurd (Camus), of that which causes nauseau at the senselessness of it (Sartre). Religion can provide a places that establishes a framework to putting order from the chaos. (Kusner, 31,33)
There are several ways this is done. Partly it's by community. Community establishes something bigger than ourselves, establishes care for others, etc. Kushner recounts how in Emile Durkheim's study of religion in the South Sea Islands, that the purpose of religion was really connecting people together. The various facts of our lives, the key aspects of them from birth, marriage, death, war, and natural disasters, need to be faced and faced with other people together. Religion points us to the more fundamental realities, directing us to the truly important when the chaos of life comes in the form of a natural disaster, etc. When people ask "Why me God", it is not as much under the assumption that God in fact did such and such a thing, as they are looking for an answer, a meaning. Is the world treachorous or is it good? Does it have meaning? (Kushner 34, 35) Religion can give us a new sense of what is important. Kushner gives an example of a house on fire. Would you take the thing of highest monetary value or that which was infused with the most memories and attachments which were important to you?
For Kushner, the two biggest issues he tackles outside the question of why evil occurs in the world, is one of the loss of the sacred in our lives and the loss of intimacy. Human beings have "largely lost the capacity for reverence, the sense of awe" Our world is one of control, of machines, of technology, etc Technology shows us what humans can do and in the process God gets edged out of the picture. Such a thing can lead to worship of ourselves and our own power. "Ultimately the worshiop of man and the celebration of the man-made becomes boring precisely because it cannot lift us beyond ourselves". Kushner 55). The difference is feeling at awe for a human accomplishment which can be fleeting and the awe one finds at looking at a mountain lake.
For Kushner, religion points us to something beyond ourselves. To our limitations, to times of awe and not of control but of grace. He gives an example, of families who visit a zoo and are not intrigued with finches and monkeys, but with the amazingly large animals. Humans feel the need to encounter something bigger, stronger, more impressive than themselves that they actively seek out such encounters.
This feeds into the question of community, as the basis for which religion can be nurtured and sustained. When in relationship with one another, we care for something beyond ourselves. Human beings are relational. A good event occurs and the first thing we feel compelled to do is to tell someone else. When we have emotional peaks we don't want to celebrate it alone. As much as society teaches us a rugged invididualism, people are really social beings. (Kushner 104) "Religion is the community, the family through which we learn what it means to human, and by which we are reinforced in our efforts to do what we believe is right. Religion puts our joys and our sorrows into context. The birth of our children, the death of our parents are not statistics. They serve as ways of strengthening or diminishing the community through which we make our lives matter".
Kushner puts the blame on such atomized individualism in various places. Televangelists which stress the individual relationship between God and humans. A mobile society where few people have roots. Kushner's main emphases is the loss of mystery and religiously infused events in our lives. He gives a particular example about eating. Today people eat when they can, in fastfood places, in front of the tv, in the car. We've lost the sense of intimacy with food. In the Hebrew Scriptures, to share a meal with someone was to share a bond and loyality. It was one of the ultimate significant events. Kushner wonders if eating is indicative of the loss of community. What if we were to share a common family meal, where prayer was said, a ritual done, a family sharing time together, a sacred time. (Kushner 113)
Kushner's pins the problem on technology with the language he uses "technology is the enemy of reverence" (Kushner, 54). This is my source of disagreement with the text. It assumes that scientific knowledge is reductionistic and neccessarily must reduce us spiritually, in fact it creates a dichotomy between the two. Technology for much of the book is raised as the spectre to be avoided. I suspect technology is more neutral, and that as much as technology is made with the question of human needs and values that it can be a positive. Kushner's lament of mystery because of the modern era, does not mean anyone of us would wish to live at a time when life expectancy was in the 30s, where children frequently died in child birth, etc. We live in this world and so instead of shuffling off to the side technology and science, we need to find other ways to fashion meaning in our lives.
I believes Kushner's understanding of religion as community and the restablishing of community as well as being intentional and mindful about the sacred in our everyday lives is a fruitful direction. If religion is re-imagined not as a list of propositions about the supernatural but the way we live in the world and make sense of it and build community and lives connected with one another, than the pragmatic project is being worked out. It's the project of pragmatism to revision a religion concerned about this world instead of supernaturalism and seeking to make sense and meaning of it. It's the concensus of all the books I've read.
Bibliography
Anderson, Victor. 1998. Pragmatic Theology: Negotiating the Intersections of an American Philosophy of Religion and Public Theology. Albany, NY, SUNY Press
Dewey, John. 1948. Reconstruction in Philosophy. Boston, MA, Beacon Press
Kushner, Harold. 1989. Who Needs God?. New York, New York, Summit Books
McFague, Sallie. 1982. Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language. Philadelphia PA, Fortress Press
Rorty, Richard. 1997. Acheiving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge, Ma, Harvard University Press
Stone, Jerome. 1992. The Minimalist Vision of Transcendence: A Naturalist Philosophy of Religion. Albany, NY, SUNY Press
Dwight Welch
Readings in Theology
5-19-99