BLACK BOXES

BLACK BOXES


Dear Friend,

Gretchen tells me that I was somewhat short with you when you asked me for my definition of God. Upon reflection I fear that I was, and for that I apologize. So many people have asked me for my definition of God or given me theirs that I have become both wearied and bored with the question. Alas, you were the recipient of my irritations because of that weariness and boredom. I've been listening to people spin their theories about God for about 65 years. The questions and assertions are spun out of the asylum de ignorentiae because no one really knows what they are talking about. I am somewhat of a curmudgeon because I've concluded that most of what I hear is a freshened package of what I've heard in the past which didn't make much sense back then.

My answer was that to attempt to define God is an act of attempted deicide because if we can contain God within the limits of a human proposition, we no longer talking about God but some type of totem or tribal idol. "To define is to limit," was the answer Dorian Gray gave to the Duchess of Monmouth in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray when she asked him to describe himself. The subject in theology is not God, but our experience of God. Even John Calvin pointed out that we have only human knowledge, not divine, in thinking about our religious experience.

I never knew my father as himself within himself. I only knew him as we related to each other. When I talk about him, I am really talking about my experience of him. I found him to be loving and sometimes fearsome, but I could never define him, only describe my experience of him. Everyone, including ourselves, is a black box in that we are without knowledge of the internal working of the human mind. Just think of the complexity of past experiences, motivations, and ideologies that make up the decision process of human beings. This is why the social sciences are such chancy endeavors. So it is with claims about knowledge of God. I think anything else is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

In short, nobody knows. The church has a nifty word for this ignorance: mystery. Theology begins with a chastened agnosticism about God, but not about our experience of God.

As for those people who claim to be atheists, I've always been puzzled by their assertions of nothingness. How can one believe in that which one does not believe? Wonder is all about me, the love of those who've loved me, the sky, a flower, a symphony, women, Shakespeare, John Donne, Rembrandt, Mozart, Bach, trees. It goes on and on. How can one believe there is not at least something going on behind and beyond?

In my beginning Greek class at Princeton, one of the students proclaimed that he was an atheist as though that it were an achievement with the implication that believers were dolts. The professor who later became president of the university replied, "My dear young man, the question is not whether or not you believe in God, but whether or not God believes in you."



All of the wonder, the tragedies, the heartache, the joys of life cannot in my mind be random and chance. It seems to me that there are three possibilities: a world which is cruel, indifferent, or favorable. I've chosen the favorable with all of the profound contradictions that implies. Nicolas de Cusa, a medieval theologian and philosopher coined the phrase, coincidentia oppositorum, the coincidence of opposites. He was fed up with all the thinkers from Aristotle onwards who wanted a neat, achievable system that would explain everything. I find it a fruitful way to think. The world is too vast to be enclosed in a syllogism.









The more comprehensive a system the less it explains in detail, such as Newton's universe had no explanation of beauty. A philosophically limited physicist once told me I was wrong and pointed to the colors in the spectrum of light. My reply was that his illustration was not art but analysis and that he should try Rembrandt’s use of light. Also, the deeper an understanding, the less comprehensive it is. Psychodynamics isn't very useful for rockets or an appendectomy.

An indifferent or cruel world cannot explain the experience of love and is therefore nonsense. I, frankly, have little patience with those who believe life is cruel, indifferent, or nothing. They have not built the colleges, schools, and hospitals, and they dismiss the love of a mother for a child as though it were an aberration.

Compassion is a far more effective response to life than retribution which I've concluded is mindless sloth.

These all lead to my belief in Jesus Christ, the experience of love in the midst of hate. If there were ever a coincidentia oppositorum, it is the
crucifixion and resurrection which is a model by which to experience life. The goodness and love of God was crucified by the justice and the righteousness of human beings. In short, I am a believer in Jesus, not because that belief explains everything but because it enables me to live with the inexplicable which is my understanding of my experience of God. For me, everything else is vain speculation.

Yours,

Dana


P.S. Saint Paul said that God has not left himself without witness throughout the world which means everyone has something to say about their experience of God, some of it good, much of it nonsense. I believe that the paradigm of the crucifixion and resurrection is the best means to assess it all.


Also, Saint Paul said that we live by faith, not by knowledge, which means for me that all the claims various people make to possess the truth must be viewed with skepticism. The spiritual experience is not a set of doctrines but a faith. Along with that I believe Anselm had it right when he said that the simplest explanations are the best as in not multiplying ideas beyond their necessity. I am puzzled about the complexity of doctrines espoused by many creeds, cults, and churches. Fundamentalists, Roman Catholics, Mormons, New Agers all believe too much. Multiplicity isn't necessary. Anyone or group who claims to possess the truth lacks faith while trying to claim knowledge.

Over a glass of wine I asked a famous Jesuit theologian and friend of mine the basis for his theology. He replied, “I believe in Jesus.”
Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2011