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Eric Sams
Letters from an Atheist
Letters on Theology and Religion
(from Nancy Wansbrough, Letters to an Atheist, 1988)
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25.
7
February 1987
Dear Nancy,
For
some reason I can't concentrate on the trivial pursuits that usually
preoccupy me; so I turn to the profundities of theology as a welcome
diversion. And instantly I'm plunged into my usual stupefaction; I
can't even understand the basic vocabulary, let alone the questions
posed therein. My consolation is that the theologians themselves seem
essentially – indeed, manifestly – in the same predicament. And it
may not matter too much how far out of one's depth one is if everyone
has the same problem, namely seeing how near they can get towards the
surface. For all the pontifications and pretensions of the
specialists, there's little enough real difference between having
one's head just hidden and lying full fathom five. Seen from above,
in the light of reason, the only vista is the level unbroken expanse
of personal nescience.
Öd'
und leer das Meer. And no doubt it's logical enough in its way that
invisible things should be studied by invisible people. But wouldn't
it honestly be better for all concerned and the world in general if
they just stuck to a few simple basic predicates to which all can
subscribe, such as good works, instead of exercising their brains and
jaws on such intractable and very likely nonsensical puzzles as –
well, to take the first example that comes to hand and therefore to
mind, the prime point you raise about whether one has to retain
Christ as defining the difference between good and evil, no matter
what the content of other religions may be. I can see that this seems
entirely meaningful to you, and to Alan Race, and that the answer is
`yes' or `no' as the case may be, which leaves me more convinced than
ever that `don't know' is the appropriate category. I can't even tell
what the question means; it looks to me very like an empty vessel the
main function of which is to be brimming and foaming with the heady
wine of one's own opinion, which is then duly quaffed.
Still, I don't see why I should be excluded from these festivities;
so here goes. The answer is this: 'yes' if you define good and evil
solely or mainly in Christian terms and 'no' if you don't. As my
ex-colleague in the Ministry of Labour became famous and rich for
saying, 'it depends what you mean by ...' etc. It would certainly be
hard to deny that Christianity is (not just has been) violent
imperialistic and exclusive. My Jewish friends are just as terrified
by the cross as Dracula was. Not even Islam, try as it will, has
unleashed such hellhounds. I don't see that these unlovable traits
are much palliated by the fact that Jesus washed his disciples' feet.
That sounds to me like Christianity washing its own hands. Besides,
those same feet were hardly dry before the same Jesus was reported as
saying `no man cometh unto the Father but by me'. That's not in the
least, surely, like a chap who says `you're the only girl in the
world for me'? It's a man who says 'I'm the only man in the world for
you', meaning both this world and the notional and nebulous next.
It's good of you to say that my transmitter-receiver analogy helped
this communication problem, but I certainly wouldn't see it as any
kind of Christian formulation. We all use the telephone that works;
but I bet Jesus wouldn't have seen himself as wearing an 'out of
order' sign, or even `emergency calls only'. He says, in the plainest
possible terms, that he's the only telephone in the world that can
give you a direct line. The minute that claim is objectively
submitted to the pragmatic tests of the market-place and open
competition, it is seen to fail. From the standpoint of all other
religions, if there is anything of substance at all in their most
deeply-felt and cherished beliefs about the nature of deity, the
claim made by Jesus is not merely false but fraudulent (as the Jews
have been pointing out for some 2000 years). As soon, therefore, as
Christianity deigns to mingle with the mob, i.e. the rest of the
world, and for that purpose steps down into the market-place, it will
be accused, and with good cause, of hectoring not to say huckstering.
If I were any kind of Christian, I should view dialogue with the
gravest disquiet. It seems to me that Karl Rahner has omitted the
fourth stage in his perhaps all too prophetic history of
Christianity: first Judaistic, then Romano-European, then in dialogue
with Islam, and finally non-existent. It's perfectly possible to fit
the Terry Waite story into that sequence too; alas.
On that basis I can offer a comprehensive and (I think) rather
compelling answer to your crunch question about how old chums can
agree about works and not about faith — it's because those two have
nothing whatever in common. 'Operational values' as you call them are
surely social and intellectual, not specifically religious? Indeed
I'd be prepared to argue that religion, as its history shows, is a
powerfully anti-ethical force. Would the sum of human happiness and
achievement in the Western world have been greater or less if Jesus
had never lived? What other criteria of our raisons d'etre are
there?
I don't mind agreeing, on the other hand, that human values would, if
God existed, have something God-like about them. And, very well, if
you insist, there's no apprehensible objective reality. But I must in
my turn be allowed to say that the reason is solely our
infinitesimally limited mental apparatus, not at all (as you seem to
feel) that the universe itself is somehow basically confused. I agree
in this context too that the fault is not in our stars, in any sense,
but in ourselves. Then from both our standpoints, yes, I quite agree,
there's nothing for it but to do the best we can as individuals,
often in very difficult circumstances, to brighten the corner where
we are according to our own lights, like so many fireflies. But the
hope of thereby illuminating the obscurities of theology, or even
seeing through glass slightly less darkly, strikes me as decidedly
over-ambitious. God, I feel, is likely to remain above my head. So
far as I know we've never
exchanged any communication, telephonic or other. I shall just
continue with my share of the proper studies until it's my turn for
annihilation. Meanwhile I know of no objective formula for
distinguishing between Christian theology and self-deluding folly,
though I hope to remain open to approach and discussion on that point
as on others. I've attended the course with all the patience and
diligence I can muster (no doubt not enough of either) yet I can
discern no spark of response to speak of: I infer that any rapport
among those of differing faiths and non-faiths must be essentially
humanist and secular; and I can't help further inferring that it is
therefore in human as distinct from religious values that any such
rapport resides. Ordinary experience tells me that religion, which by
definition binds together certain ethnic or social categories, by
that same act exerts a powerfully (and I would say malignantly)
divisive influence and effect among larger categories. Wherever I
look in history or the actual world, I see people killing or maiming
or torturing each other in the name of strongly-held personal beliefs
and opinions, not one of which is clothed in even the flimsiest fibre
of objective evidence and many of which are nakedly insane; and this
disposes me to wonder whether one's very first duty is not to abjure
any such beliefs one already has and then to persuade others to
abandone theirs.
It seems ironic, in such a frame of mind, to hear Christ claimed as a
touchstone because he gave us a new commandment to love one another.
But that wasn't new, was it? It's just plain Judaism, for a start and
no doubt found in other faiths as well; it's among the many things,
some of them very bizarre, that the Lord spake unto Moses, in
Leviticus; 'thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. I see what you
mean about this commandment's incorporating a value so high that it
equates with God, namely that it remains inconceivably remote from
any human reality. But what, in practice, is the use of that?
All this is intended to be without prejudice to the values and
delights of music, poetry, chess (and of course cricket) and so
forth. But isn't it really rather apparent that these are all quite
specifically human interests and activities — like love? Even
when we subscribe, in all earnestness, 'with love, as ever', we still
know, don't we, that the `ever' part is, alas, something of an
overstatement of the case?
With love, as ever,
yours E.
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