An Infinite Deal of Nothing — Part Five
‘Religion’
by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906)
I AM no priest of crooks nor creeds,
For human wants and human needs
Are more to me than prophets’ deeds;
And human tears and human cares
Affect me more than human prayers.
Go, cease your wail, lugubrious saint!
You fret high Heaven with your plaint.
Is this the ‘Christian’s joy’ you paint?
Is this the Christian’s boasted bliss?
Avails your faith no more than this?
Take up your arms, come out with me,
Let Heav’n alone; humanity
Needs more and Heaven less from thee.
With pity for mankind look ‘round;
Help them to rise — and Heaven is found.
The gospel according to Hegel that I briefly outlined in the previous parts may serve to indicate why there is a conflict between philosophy and religion; the criticisms that come from the theological point of view are especially illuminating (for what they show about theology that is). Reformed theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968), criticised Hegel on the ground that God and humanity can never truly encounter each other and there can never be a truly new word, especially not a word given by God and received by humanity; and given that the self-movement of truth is identical with the self-movement of the human thinking subject, human reason ‘is just as much divine revelation as is the imagination’; and ‘Hegel’s living God’, Barth wrote, ‘is actually the living man’. But Barth’s chief objection to Hegel from his theological point of view is that Hegel identifies the dialectical method with the being of God, and his philosophy thereby results in a ‘scarcely acceptable limitation, even abolition of God’s sovereignty, which makes even more questionable the designation of that which Hegel calls mind, idea, reason, etc., as God. This God, the God of Hegel, is at the least his own prisoner’. A central theme throughout Barth’s theology is that of the freedom of God, in defence of which divine freedom Barth emphatically rejects Hegel’s imprisonment of God within worldly necessity, for as Barth sees it Hegel’s philosophy means that creation, reconciliation, revelation, the church, and the individual ego are all necessary to God, and Hegel ‘made impossible the knowledge of the actual dialectic of grace’, and this alone rules Hegel out insofar as providing a true way forward for theology is concerned.
Søren Kierkegaard objected to Hegel’s claim that he had devised a system of thought that could explain the whole of reality, with a dialectical analysis of history leading the way to this whole; and that the doctrines and history of Christianity could be explained as a part of the rational unfolding and development of our understanding of the natural world and our place within it. As far as Kierkegaard was concerned Hegel’s explanation of Christianity as a necessary part of world history was a distortion of the Christian message and a misunderstanding of the limits of human reason; and he therefore endeavoured to refute this aspect of Hegel’s thought by suggesting that many doctrines of Christianity, including the doctrine of Incarnation, a God who is also human, the God-man, cannot be explained rationally but remain a logical paradox.
Christian existentialist philosopher and Lutheran Protestant theologian Paul Johannes Tillich, (1886–1965), viewed Hegel’s philosophy as the quintessence of essentialist optimism, (essentialism: the view that every entity has a set of attributes that are necessary to its identity and function), a philosophy that concentrates so much upon the essential and the ideal dimensions that it overlooks the tragic discrepancies between existing actuality and essential ideality, and it is up to him, Tillich, to put forward a less hubristic more humble account through an acknowledgement of existential commitments, or rather, entanglements, and that searches after a merely fragmentary realisation of an ideal harmony.
All of which criticisms merely serve to illustrate the excellence of the Hegelian philosophy over theology and other philosophies, and I do not necessarily mean in terms of its results but certainly in terms of its method and character. The theological objections are clouded by vagueness, obscurity, and equivocation. A ‘true’ encounter with God? Be suspicious whenever the word ‘true’ is used as a modifier. When would an encounter not be a true encounter? And what does an encounter with God even mean? And here we get to the heart of the matter, an elementary distinction in philosophy that the most sophisticated theologians and philosophers of religion seem to have have difficulty in grasping is the synthetic/analytic distinction; and thus they fail to grasp, or perhaps choose to ignore, the distinction between experience and cause. Reports of encounters with God take many forms, and on the supposition of mental incorrigibility, (one cannot be mistaken about one’s mental states given that one has direct access to them), the claim is made that such a unique experience must be attributable to an external cause, that is, God, but such a claim is a synthetic proposition the truth value of which is determined by observation, and a basic principle of philosophy is that of scepticism about the external world: no synthetic proposition can ever be known to be true with absolute unfaltering certainty given that there will always exist a plenitude of possible explanations for objects of sensation; and all synthetic propositions are necessarily tentative conclusions derived from a plethora of empirical data and predictive models. As concerns a ‘true’ encounter with God, from that we may concede an experience of some kind has taken place; but we cannot simply assume that some supernatural cause came into play to bring the experience about; nor can such an experience overrule every alternative argument or evidence.
Similarly with ‘the freedom of God’, or ‘the dialectic of grace’, what are we dealing with here? What are such phrases other than a mouthful of air? And neither Barth or Tillich demonstrate much understanding of the dialectical nature of Hegelian thought; they constantly fall back upon a dualism with their conceptual divisions into opposing or contrasting aspects or principles to explain the nature of God and man; whereas Hegelian dialectic aspires towards a monism. With the presupposition of a subjective/objective dualism subjective experience then plays its part in their explanations whereas the only explanations are logical explanations; causal explanations (so-called) are merely descriptive, one thing following upon another, whereas in a logical explanation (properly called) a consequent necessarily follows its antecedent; the antecedent thereby explains the consequent. As regards Tillich’s ‘existential entanglements’, interpret them howsoever you wish, the possible interpretations open to you are endless and so good luck with that.
And what of the objections from the philosopher Kierkegaard? Much depends upon what you expect from philosophy I suppose, but consider this: two philosophers address a particular issue, the Incarnation say, what does such a singular event mean? One presents you with his or her analysis and conclusions in his or her interpretation of the event through reasoned argument and you can then dissect the arguments and conclusions and agree or disagree with the analysis; the other offers you this, that it is but a paradox and beyond human understanding, and being paradoxical that does not mean simply it is an event displaying contradictory aspects, for contradictions can be resolved; rather, it is an event exhibiting an impossibility. Enter faith. Which philosopher would you prefer?
Much of the scepticism is directed towards Hegel’s idealistic premises and his confidence in philosophical reason’s ability to grasp all reality, including divine reality, within the translucency of pure thought; and towards his identification of the church with the kingdom of God, and his view that Christianity can be construed to teach the essential identity of God and man and woman. Liberal Protestant theologian David Strauss, (1808–1874), believed Hegel to be a pantheist, (pantheism: reality is identical with divinity, or God is immanent in all things), for in answer to the question as to how biblical events are to be interpreted after the assault upon orthodox Christianity initiated by the Enlightenment, that is to say, given the scepticism about such biblical events as miracles, Strauss endeavoured to explain how Christians came to believe when there was no objective historical basis for their faith, and focusing upon the resurrection as the key article of faith his verdict was that religion was an expression of the human mind’s ability to generate myths and interpret them as truths revealed by God; and he characterised Christianity as a stage in the evolution of pantheism that had reached its culmination in Hegelian philosophy.
Philosopher and theologian Bruno Bauer, (1809–1882), was convinced of the atheistic implications of Hegel’s philosophy; for being alert to the role of subjectivity in the experience of religion he was led to a recognition that religious consciousness alienated man and woman from him or herself and that human liberation could only come through a rejection of all forms of religion. Hegel had maintained that God realises Himself in man and woman’s self-consciousness of Him. Hegelianism was thus interpreted as a system of atheism, with revolutionary implications for Bauer; rather than seeing God as a projection of man and woman’s highest values onto the transcendent, as Ludwig Feuerbach, (1804–1872), had done, for Bauer the idea of God was an act of complete invention rather than an objectification of one’s own subjectivity, and the idea of God in general and Christian values in particular were rejections of the inherently free nature of humankind and a denial of this world for the transcendental: ‘Religion’, he said, ‘is a loathing for the world itself, a despair over history, a denial of the world itself and nothing other than that’.
Again we see the temptation to simplify matters and to return to rigid oppositions and to completely overlook the dialectical character of Hegel’s thought; for a central aspect of his philosophical viewpoint is that upon diverse disputes he does not endeavour to discover a resolution through taking up one side as against the other; rather he endeavours to recast the issue by demonstrating the manner by which the dichotomy that underlies the dispute is indeed erroneous, and that it is therefore possible to integrate elements from both positions; and a quite clear indication of someone not understanding Hegel would be if they were to find support for their particular position whatever it may be in his work disregarding the fact that only some aspects may come from that particular favoured position while others may come from its apparent opposite. Hegel has thereby been identified as a Christian philosopher, evidence for this is adduced from his aversion to the crude atheism of the Enlightenment, (we can be sure he would have had little time for Richard Dawkins, (1941- ); yet Hegel entertained a distinctive conception of Christianity that endeavours to undercut the Enlightenment critique of religious faith of the kind espoused by Strauss that involves accusing Christianity of being irrational, grounded upon dubious historical authenticity, and of being authoritarian, while incorporating elements of this critique into a revised conception of Christian doctrine, from which emerges a kind of theism that is devised to be compatible with a kind of humanism to which it had traditionally been in opposition.
Avoid appropriating Hegel as an ally for whatever position you happen to hold. Humanists may well take Hegel’s positive remarks concerning religion to demonstrate that he is a Christian philosopher who thereby repudiates humanism, while as it happens Hegel is endeavouring to subvert this very antithesis and to reconcile both Christian and humanist elements in a manner that undermines neither side; and so it is that he is exposed to an assault from anyone that does not recognise any possibility for compromise on such an issue; and this has the consequence that through endeavouring to find room for the Hegelian middle Hegel himself renders his position very difficult to characterise in any settled manner, for in his struggle to do justice to both sides, he finds himself appropriated or attacked by either side; but note in particular that his endeavours to get beyond a crude atheism do not make him a theist.
However, to continue with theology’s attempts to understand Hegel, much of the standard criticisms may perhaps still turn out to have validity were they to be rediscovered afresh and in novel forms as part of a reinterpretation of the entire tradition of Christian thought; for a principle stumbling block in theological assessments of Hegel has been how he relates religion to philosophy, for instance in his view of the Aufhebung of religion into philosophy, for while philosophy and religion contain the absolute truth as their common content religion grasps this truth in representational form and philosophy grasps it in its own absolutely adequate form of thought. This implies the dialectical Aufhebung of religion in philosophy, while in addition philosophy provides the Beglaubigung or attestation or authentication of the truth of religion; and there cannot be any radical discontinuity between the two given that philosophy embraces the whole system, including religion on the very highest level of adequacy to the Idea; and philosophy has no other content than this whole system.
That there is also a moment, a terminal moment, designated philosophy, within the system, merely implicates the self-referential nature of the absolute scheme, and from the lower moments movement progresses towards religion and then to philosophy wherein one discovers that the movement overseen was a necessary movement of Spirit itself; indeed insofar as its necessity has been explicated at every step we are perpetually within the standpoint of philosophy, most certainly in the philosophy of religion and yet note that though this course may well have been overseen philosophically there is delivered unto it an extraordinary key well proven for unlocking mysteries, that is to say, dialectical logic. From whence comes such a key? Most certainly it did not materialise from God knows where into the lap of an esoteric discipline designated philosophy; on the contrary, the dialectical logic is discovered within the content itself.
Only at the end of the course is the logic posited in its necessity, that is to say, the course is without end and is rather a circle, by which is not implied circular reasoning, there is something deeper going on here for let us not forget with Hegel we are in the midst of logical reasoning and the conclusion whatever it may be is there from the very start could we but bring it to the fore. The idea is that whatever philosophy brings to religion it is not new content but rather belongs within the context of a total, necessary system, in which the moments of religion may be apprehended in their necessity, a necessity neither alien to religion nor imposed upon it, for the historical, positive content of the Absolute Religion itself moves necessarily beyond its positivity through the death and resurrection of the historical God-man.
Religion thereby apprehends the truth in representational form and philosophy apprehends the truth in thought, though thought is already involved even within the lower religions if we may deem them as such, in the Greek religion for instance, and yet thought is here restricted by a natural medium, a statue and so on, which retains a persistent opacity with respect to thought. And yet in Christianity there remains a medium albeit a historical medium, a man in whom even qua historical Spirit resides at least implicitly, and so the Hegelian take upon the death and resurrection, and the result of the Absolute Religion is that the positive medium is aufgehoben and the truth has in principle lost its opacity to thought, has acquired translucency, universality, in the Spirit-determined believers, although all the while historically diverse stages have remained to be realised, moments characterised by the progressive Aufhebung of positivity altogether, and it is philosophy that merely completes such a progressive movement.
God it is supposed is the entire object of philosophy, the God of religion, and philosophy has no special subject matter all its own, for the philosophy of religion involves a relation of an at least apparent identity between a discipline, philosophy, and its object, religion, and unlike the discipline of geometry which itself is distinguishable from its object, which is space, its object, the content of philosophy, its very interests and desires, is entirely in accord with that of religion; and its object is the eternal truth, God and nothing but God and the explication of God, and yet philosophy only ever explicates itself when it explicates religion; and the thinking Spirit penetrates into this object, the truth, which is truth comporting with itself while subjective consciousness purifies itself; and so philosophy and religion combine into one and philosophy itself is in fact worship or Gottesdienst and philosophy, that is to say, absolute knowledge, expands in direct continuity with the life of the reconciled believers; though it is worthy of note that thinking Geist is the common factor that provides the basis for the continuity, and each of the two, religion and philosophy, performs its worship or service of God in its own singular way.
Philosophy is not itself religion as such, but neither does it simply take up where religion leaves off; the philosophy of religion is philosophy even when it dealt with religious positivity, and yet the dialectic which philosophy discovers in religion carries it beyond all positivity and finally beyond the special realm of religion as such, for mediation does not begin in philosophy and the first decisive Aufhebung of the historical positivity of a Gospel event takes place when it is taken up into the Christian consciousness itself, in the church. The history of Christianity is the history of its successive mediations, and finally, in Protestantism the truth of the Gospel permeates a whole civilisation in all its cultural forms-which is another way of saying that it is aufgehoben into northern European Protestant culture. Hence Kierkegaard combined his attack upon Christendom with a philosophical attack upon Hegelianism for Hegelianism is a philosophical expression and not the final one of the view that the permanent truth of the Gospel is entirely embodied in Christendom, in Western culture in fact, and is thus completely an affair of this world given that the Gospel could be mediated by philosophy only if it had already been irreducibly mediated by the cultural history of Christendom.
A controversial point for theology in Hegel’s treatment of the Gospel rests not so much in its Aufhebung into philosophy but in its Aufhebung into the Christian religion and into the culture of the Westl and yet current discussion of scriptural hermeneutics or interpretations as well as explorations into the secular meaning of the Gospel surely indicate that the issues concerning the relation of Gospel event to the Christian religion and to modern culture are by no means settled today, and Martin Luther, (1483–1546), would have satisfied for it to have been said that God is known only in his self-revelation in history, and yet his paradox that God is Deus absconditus (hidden God who in his remoteness seems to ignore human suffering) precisely in being Deus revelatus, (revealed God) , though it would probably enchant Kierkegaard, is quite alien to Hegel.
‘Hegel quoted scripture frequently, and theologian Martin Kähler, (1835–1912), complained about a lack of exegetical integrity arguing that upon the whole he carefully selected such quotes to support of his own points of view, a practice unheard of amongst theologians and Christian apologists, but Hegel with characteristic acuity knew well enough that scriptural exegesis was indeed important and yet from it one was more likely to learn more concerning the expositor than concerning the Bible itself . A quotation from ‘Corinthians’ is one that Kähler cites as used by Hegel for fairly evident reasons:
‘Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life’.
- 2 ‘Corinthians’ 3:6
‘The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth’. (‘John’ 4: 23–24). ‘Spirit will lead you into all truth’, (‘John’, 16:13), and theologians complain about what they see as the patent distortion of scripture in the exegesis of Enlightenment scholars with their naturalistic explanations (as if one could possibly understand anything from other than a naturalistic point of view, for we not of nature?) for howsoever we may value the Bible as a guide and as a corrective to our natural inclinations, must we not extend ourselves beyond exegesis and the letter that kills?
The Law, that is to say, brings condemnation of death upon the heads of those who sin, and yet the God-man brings life through the spirit. The Spirit that makes alive of course is for the theologians fulfilled in philosophy: Zucht und Ordnung, the Christian discipline and order, ‘lasset alles ehrbar und ordentlich zugehen’ (Martin Luther translation) but let all things be done properly and in an orderly manner. (‘Corinthians, 14:40). Discipline, derived from ziehen, to draw. And for Hegel it was no accident that the Christian Idea received its adequate appropriation among the Germanic peoples, for the ground had been prepared by the fact that the German spirit is characterised by a peculiar subjectivity which Hegel designates Gemüt, heart, or soul, or mind.
A mere moment, this is, das ist, is not the truth in itself but is the form in which the truth appears and however one may estimate Jesus himself as a teacher his unique position is not grounded upon such eminence that would still place him in the class of other men, for He is the truth in and for itself and thus Hegel considers the essential Christology to be removed from the threat of literary-historical criticism of scripture and he defends the human individuality of the Savior against the docetic reductions of the Gnostics and other supposed heretics, (docetism: the human form of Jesus was mere semblance without any true reality, he was a kind of phantom in other words). Gott selbst ist tot, God is dead, as it says in the passion hymn O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid, O sadness, O heartache, a saying Hegel frequently quotes, it is there in hi work before Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844–1900), became well known for declaring such, in this connection, indeed it is a line catching the attention of of more than one philosopher with its dread simplicity and has been revised in the present Evangelisches Kirchengesangbuch, it now reads Gotts Sohn liegt tot, the son of God is dead.
Given the references to German words above one may speculate on the shape that German philosophy may have acquired had it not been for the German language, and so it is appropriate to end with a nod to linguistics and the treachery of language. Geist, spirit, mind, intellect, and ghost. Spirit derives from the Latin spiritus defined as breath, or air, or respiration, or wind; and in the Bible the Holy Spirit is often referred to by name through the Greek word pneuma which likewise carries the meaning of breath, or wind, or air, or spirit; and within the Hebrew passages of the Old Testament the spirit of god is frequently referred to as ruach, breath, or wind, or life force; and the cultures of the ancients almost universally equated wind and breath with the idea of a spiritual life essence; and the Chinese word for a spiritual life force is Qi which also happens to translate into air and breath; and ancient Hindu philosophy uses the Sanskrit word prana to describe a cosmic life force connected with breathing, breath, respiration; and old Nordic languages frequently employ terms such as ond and andi to mean breath and soul,or spirit, not to mention ghost. How are we to explain this? Well, our forebears, God bless them all, simply did not understand how air works; and they thereby did what they could with the observations that they had to fill the holes in their understanding, a frequently observable tendency in human history; oh how we abhor a vacuum in our understanding, and so we fill it up howsoever we may, with whatever garbage is at hand, and then we are satisfied.
Air, ah yes, how much we need air, Atmen gibt das Leben, breathing gives life, air, we feel it, and yet we cannot see it: ‘All scripture is breathed out by God’, (2 Timothy 3:16). ‘The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature’, (Genesis 2:7). Maybe He sneezed over some dust and we are the product of divine phlegm. Is not the wind like strong breath? Do not all living things display a tendency to breathe frequently in fact all the time and all things must die which they do when they stop breathing? Must we not conclude that air itself must be comprised of a mysterious vital essence that animates every living thing? Air and breath and soul, therefore to the despair of our species why did evolution lead to such a big brain, for what good has it served us? And yet we encapsulate all three concepts into this one word, spirit. And so the idea permeates in contemporary notions such as that of ghosts which are frequently depicted as anthropomorphic clouds or semi-transparent vapours; and so dwell on this, you bloated ones, you bags of air, as Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844–1900), should have said: the spiritual whatever is meant by such a term and yet to which such importance is assigned; around such there is much theological and philosophical pretence emerging out of nothing more than an ignorance of how air, that thing we cannot see but that keeps us alive, operates.
‘In the beginning when God created the heavens and earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered that face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters’.
- ‘Genesis’, 1:1, (New Revised Standard Version)
‘The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit’.
- ‘John’ 3:8
Add that to the fact that Hegelian dialectical reasoning, an interpretive method leading thought to a higher level of truth with its resolution of contradictions between concepts, leads to a view of the nature of God wherein the divine being is in fact nothing: ‘That man should think of God as nothingness must at first sight seem astonishing, must appear to us a most peculiar idea, Hegel conceded. ‘But, considered more closely, this determination means that God is absolutely nothing determined. He is the Undetermined; no determinateness of any kind pertains to God; He is the Infinite. This is equivalent to saying that God is the negation of all particularity’. And with regard to the theologian and indeed many a philosopher of religion one may recall the response of Bassanio when asked about Gratiano in Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’: ‘Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff — you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them they are not worth the search’.
‘When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me? Memoria hospitis unius diei prætereuntis’.
‘The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me’.
- Blaise Pascal, (1623–1662)
‘The Void’
by Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
Pascal had his Void that went with him day and night.
- Alas! It’s all Abyss, — action, longing, dream,
the Word! And I feel Panic’s storm-wind stream
through my hair, and make it stand upright.
Above, below, around, the desert, the deep,
the silence, the fearful compelling spaces…
With his knowing hand, in my dark, God traces
a multi-formed nightmare without release.
I fear sleep as one fears a deep hole,
full of vague terror. Where to, who knows?
I see only infinity at every window,
and my spirit haunted by vertigo’s stress
envies the stillness of Nothingness.
- Ah! Never to escape from Being and Number!
THE END
Notes:
Aufhebung:
The process by which the conflict between two opposed or contrasting things or ideas is resolved by the emergence of a new idea, which both preserves and transcends them.
Memoria hospitis unius diei prætereuntis:
‘For the hope of the wicked is as dust, which is blown away with the wind, and as a thin froth which is dispersed by the storm: and a smoke that is scattered abroad by the wind: and as the remembrance of a guest of one day that passeth by’.
- ‘The Book of Wisdom’, 5.15.
