A Mystical or Rational God ?

Great Debates
1

I just got through reading Karen Armstrong’s History of God.

She makes some interesting points that I had not heard before - the most profound to my mind is the assertion that each of the three major monotheistic religions have gone through cycles of approaching God either rationally or mystically.

In particular Christianity (because that’s the one I know best) went through these cycles until the Great Schism split the east from the west. From then on, the west adopted a very rational version of Christianity and the East adopted a very mystical version of Christianity.

Defining some terms …

Rational approaches tend to search objectively for evidence and justifications of God (like Anselm’s Proof). To a rationalist, a paradox might cause cause a certain loss of faith.

Mystical approaches experience God subjectively. To a mystic, God is by nature paradoxical. The doctrine of the Trinity is paradoxical precisely because it helps to focus the mystic’s attention, the way a koan might for a buddhist.

Another conclusion that came out of the book was that, given the west’s rational belief system and modern advances in science it was inevitable that Christianity would be questioned and put aside as it has been in many European countries and that the recent rise of fundamentalism is a reaction to this.

So here’s my question. The book gives an outsider’s view that makes inuitive sense to this outsider. I wonder though if the adherents of the various religions and sects see themselves in these terms ?

I am looking for an insider’s viewpoint. Any Orthodox Christians out there with an opinion on Western Christianity ? Are Catholics and Protestants even aware of these alternative view points ?

I’d also like to hear from Jews and Muslims about any analogous situations in their religions.

2

The Orthodox never put aside rationality when considering the Divine (which I know you weren’t implying, but anyway…). However, they did focus more on “emotional” forms of worship, by which I mean that they were more accepting of holistic and symbolic aspects of worship than the Western branches. Much greater emphasis was put on the involvement of the senses during Liturgy, for example, than the Protestant or even Catholic branches of the Church have.

I think it would be more precise that state that while the Eastern branches of Christianity recognized the contradictions in their beliefs, they were more prone to accepting them as human (and/or historical) failures to understand the nature of God rather than a failing of the underlying religion.

Orthodoxy isn’t particularly Zen-Buddhist-like, and its doctrines aren’t intended to be confusion or paradoxical like koans. It’s emotional components are somewhat similar (God cannot be understood, merely appreciated).

3

I vote for a confused, well-meaning bungler with periodic hangovers.

4

God is all over the place. His character depends upon the conditions under which the writers of the story were living when they wrote it. The history, legends etc., etc. cover a period of maybe 1500 years before being collected and written down. So many different good and bad things can happen in such a stretch of time that God can be given almost any attribute the writer desires.

5

What you are talking about is how we see God, not how God is. There was another book, The Biography of God which basically told the way man’s view of God had evolved over time. The book that would be even more enlightening would be The Autobiography of God. So far He seems to have writers block, since as far as he has gotten is “I AM”. He knows that we would not be able to comprehend even the rest of that sentence.

6

Religious mysticism is religious empiricism. Reason and experience are the two approaches to everything, not just God.

7

Do you think that most people are able to make this distinction ?

I mean, one of the assertions in Armstrong’s book was that the eastern churches accepted that all descriptions of God were necessarily metaphorical, but that the western churches - apart from a small theological elite - were much more inclined to attempt literal descriptions of God.

Do you think, for example, that an average member of the congregation in a fundamentalist church in America would interpret a description of God as metaphorical ?

For that matter, would an average member of an orthodox church ?

8

I may have been overstating Armstrong’s case a little, but I found one section particularly interesting. (I don’t have the book in front of me so I can’t give exact quotes).

She was contrasting people like Anselm and Descartes, who were attempting rational proofs of God’s existence with contemporary Orthodox beliefs - one of which was that the statements

God exists

and

God does not exist

are equally meaningless. (apparently a branch of Muslim philosophers came to similar conclusions).

These two statements pretty much sum up the average debate about God on these boards but - if I interpreted Armstrong correctly - Orthodox Christianity completely brushes the debate aside as irrelevant.

In fact, some philosophers in each of the three major monotheistic religions went so far as to say that

God does not not exist

Now that statement would probably be ridiculed as nonsense by the average rationalist atheist. But what would a modern Orthodox Christian say about it ? Or a Catholic ? Would the opinions of the average member of a congregation reflect the opinions of their theologians ?

9

Have the various views of God evolved independently ? Are they still compatible ?

For example, different branches of the monotheistic religions seem to have indulged in various degrees of anthropomorphism. I doubt if there are many people who still believe in the old man on a cloud, but my experience of talking with Catholics and Anglicans suggests that most of my acquaintances definitely assume God to be some kind of manlike being with super-duper powers - we are in His image and vice versa.

The book led me to believe that this kind of personal God does not exist in the east (or in Judaism for that matter). I mentioned this to a friend and he thought the idea was ridiculous. He had never been exposed to the idea that God was anything other than a much better version of us.

Armstrong did say that the anthropomorphic idea of God was not shared by the theological elite of Western Christianity but, if this is true, it seems that they never got around to telling their congregations.

10

is this a left-brain right-brain thing and are they mutually exclusive?

is light behave like a wave or a particle? it depends o the experiment. god is mystical but incapable of being irrational.

theological axiom #1.

GOD CANNOT BE STUPID!

Dal Timgar

11

Greek Orthodox Christian here.

Overstating mildly, but at some point (mainly when the lot of the heretics were batted down), the Eastern Church stopped trying to answer “big questions”; or perhaps to put it more appropriately, it responded to the questions it felt needed attention and left the rest to Scripture/Holy Tradition and the Sacramental/mystical elements of the faith.

That is why, imho, the Orthodox Church (I’m trying not to frame this too monolithically, but it’s hard in this case) has tended to view post-Schismatic “Western disputes” (i.e., faith v. works, free will v. predestination–the Orthodox Church is strongly free will, but not in response to Calvinism, of course) with puzzlement.

I’m not saying the “Western Christian mind” is more sophisticated, not at all, but I believe it is more inclined to “rational meanderings.” (Personally, this is my “default setting,” which is a reason why I deviated toward Protestantism when I was younger, but for me at least, I find peace in the mystical elements of the Orthodox faith.)

If I were a “company man,” I guess I’d have to say Western Christianity ain’t so hot; personally, I think its sects are fine for what they want to accomplish. I’m a high school Sunday school teacher, and while my high schoolers know the rules for fasting and can be moved by the faith’s mystical attributes, they don’t know crap about the Bible. I’d be embarrassed to do an “exchange” program with the Baptist church around the corner. I hope my church is an aberration in the Archdiocese, but I tend to doubt it.

This is actually quite a problem, because our (generally) Western schooling tells us to question things, so they question away. But the more subjective nature of our faith does not (necessarily) place a high priority on dealing with the areas they tend to question–unless you’re a real student of the faith.

As for your second question, I’d say many, many Catholics/Protestants, if they know of the Orthodox Church, know of its subjective, mystical elements. And they may value these elements to an extent, but more as a curiosity or method of incorporation. For instance, a close friend is a pastor at a non-denominational evangelical church. He incorporates some of the “Orthodox mindset” into his worship services sometimes–things like contemplation, incense, some particular non-Virgin Mary prayers–but doesn’t think about it any more than his selection of worship choruses for the week. At least his considers Orthodoxy a more acceptable non-evangelical Protestant faith than Catholicism. :wink:

Anway, thanks for the interesting topic. Sorry for the lengthy response.

12

Mystical or rational? Seems like trying to force a concept so far beyond our powers of comprehension into one of our modes of understanding is a bit like discussing whther God is right or left handed.

13

I didn’t mean to imply that God was rational or mystical - and I apologize for the attempt to come up with a catchy thread name.

I am enquiring about people’s approaches to understanding God.

14

Oh my word yes. Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Francis of Assisi were Christian mystics, and Saint Augustine’s writings contained elements of mysticism. In the sense of being an experience incapable of being understood outside of the experience itself, outside of rational thought, most religions seem to embrace a certain degree of mysticism as well as rationalism, and show there differences not in kind but in degree of emphasis.

Joseph Campbell relates this wonderfully, showing through a series of stories we all seem to share in our religious traditions that there’s a common message we seem to be attempting to discern, a common thread that we attempt to transmit both rationally through logical discourse and irrationally through immediacy and insight.

15

I apologize, I didn’t intend to trivialize your question. I was being sincere; that these approaches perhaps come more from our own perceptions than any innate nature of the Deity.

Or maybe not. What do I know? :smiley:

16

:smack: No matter how hard I try to write an insightful post, I’ll still do something like this.