Not 'weirded out' by Christian Faith? Maybe your God is too small!

[2PhiloVoid]

As I've encountered the various fragmentary theological concepts in the Bible, swimming around as they do within the minds of the writers of both the Old Testament and the New, I've often had the feeling of being somewhat 'weirded out' by it all. This has been markedly the case when I've contemplated God as He is portrayed atop Mount Sinai, interacting at times with Moses.

I also have felt 'weirded out' when I think about Jesus Christ, Risen from the dead and then portrayed as the no longer merely earth bound, crucified sacrifice of a bygone age, but rather as the cosmically manifested “Alpha and Omega” in the book of Revelation, enshrouded in brilliant light and power beyond compare.

Some of the additional philosophical sources (although by no means the final authorities) that have fed further into my being 'weirded out' by Christian theology through the years have come from various theorists and theologians, two of which I'll mention here. One, Rudolph Otto, author of the The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational (1923), struck a chord with me in describing the kind of thing I've felt when I watch the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Otto's position followed after Kant, Schleiermacher, and Fries, and he articulated his idea of the “Numinous,” a term referring to feelings of awe or of terror we may have as we engage with our personal ideas and intuitions about God, His Being, and the cosmic mystery of it all.

The second of my sources here has been a little book by biblical scholar, J.B. Phillips, titled, Your God Is Too Small (1953). In that book, Phillips posits that many people either can't find faith or, when they do, they don't have a conceptual grasp of God that enables them to 'feel' a sense of awe, mostly because their conceptual frames about theology often produce or lead to “unreal gods.”

In thinking about the feelings we each have regarding the mysteries of our existence and how these interplay with our notions about God, our impending deaths, our places in life, our successes and our sufferings, might these all in turn play a part in our ability to believe in God and in what we think we 'feel' as we each confront the claims of the Christian Faith?

Maybe, as is alluded to in the following song/video by the band, Paper Route, we have difficulty finding a way to “Laugh About It” [i.e. about our difficulties, whatever they may be] because our individual concepts about God, Christ,and the Holy Spirit are too small? If this isn't the case, then why else might many of us today be so disaffected or dissatisfied with Christianity?

... oh, this video is so "me"!

 

[gaara4158]

Your take reminds me of the way extradimensional creatures are described in Lovecraftian horror literature. They’re things beyond our comprehension, which implies a disturbing discrepancy between the way we are “calibrated” to understand the world and how the world truly is.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Your take reminds me of the way extradimensional creatures are described in Lovecraftian horror literature. They’re things beyond our comprehension, which implies a disturbing discrepancy between the way we are “calibrated” to understand the world and how the world truly is.

Lovecraft aside...wouldn't you have to "know" in no uncertain terms that there is indeed a fully discernible distinction between what we think the world is versus what it 'actually is' in and of itself? I'm asking because your statement seems to imply that you somehow clearly 'know' this distinction, and it is in this specific point that we go to the heart of the arguments among the Philosophical Hermeneuticists as we each grapple perceptually and conceptually with the cosmos around us.

 

[gaara4158]

Lovecraft aside...wouldn't you have to "know" in no uncertain terms that there is indeed a fully discernible distinction between what we think the world is versus what it 'actually is' in and of itself? I'm asking because your statement seems to imply that you somehow clearly 'know' this distinction, and it is in this specific point that we go to the heart of the arguments among the Philosophical Hermeneuticists as we each grapple perceptually and conceptually with the cosmos around us.

Wouldn’t the existence of something incomprehensible logically imply that difference automatically? I mean, I guess we could question our ability to really “know” that said incomprehensible thing exists, but if we’re pushing past that then I think the implication is automatic.

 

[FireDragon76]

Your take reminds me of the way extradimensional creatures are described in Lovecraftian horror literature. They’re things beyond our comprehension, which implies a disturbing discrepancy between the way we are “calibrated” to understand the world and how the world truly is.

My pastor is actually a fan of that sort of literature.

Horror is actually about the only genre left in our culture that understands something like what Rudolf Otto was discussing. In other genres, we have a naive realism about the world owing to a great deal of modernist philosophy (especially Scottish Common Sense Realism) that says the way we understand the world directly corresponds to its reality.

 

[FireDragon76]

I encountered this sort of thing myself weeks ago grappling with the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac. Especially dealing with the Reformed Jewish scholarship on it that says that in the original story, Abraham probably really did sacrifice Isaac. Suddenly I was transported back to the copper age and I connected with that story on a whole new, "primal" level.

It's akin to what Nietzsche was talking about when he criticized Zarathustra for revealing morality- Nietzsche was trying desperately to reawaken something that he felt had been killed by bourgeois approaches to Christianity brought on by the Enlightenment.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Wouldn’t the existence of something incomprehensible logically imply that difference automatically? I mean, I guess we could question our ability to really “know” that said incomprehensible thing exists, but if we’re pushing past that then I think the implication is automatic.

Yes, and no. Part of the problem here centers on the epistemological structures involved in the conceptions we think we're entertaining while pondering or investigating the world around us. The result being that, I think, we can't always clearly differentiate between our having entered into what is a purely objective approach to the world from an approach that contains our own individual subjectivity as a part of our very attempt(s) to be objective when acting in cooperation with other human beings during our explorations of the world.

So, "yes," logically we can say that mental state X isn't mental state Y when X seems to empirically obtain. But "no," we can't say that the logic we've used to impress a measurement upon our world 'means' that we have, in fact, attained full objectivity apart from own own individual notions about whatever entity we think we're engaged with in the world.

 

[FireDragon76]

As I've encountered the various fragmentary theological concepts in the Bible, swimming around as they do within the minds of the writers of both the Old Testament and the New, I've often had the feeling of being somewhat 'weirded out' by it all. This has been markedly the case when I've contemplated God as He is portrayed atop Mount Sinai, interacting at times with Moses.

I also have felt 'weirded out' when I think about Jesus Christ, Risen from the dead and then portrayed as the no longer merely earth bound, crucified sacrifice of a bygone age, but rather as the cosmically manifested “Alpha and Omega” in the book of Revelation, enshrouded in brilliant light and power beyond compare.

Some of the additional philosophical sources (although by no means the final authorities) that have fed further into my being 'weirded out' by Christian theology through the years have come from various theorists and theologians, two of which I'll mention here. One, Rudolph Otto, author of the The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational (1923), struck a chord with me in describing the kind of thing I've felt when I watch the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Otto's position followed after Kant, Schleiermacher, and Fries, and he articulated his idea of the “Numinous,” a term referring to feelings of awe or of terror we may have as we engage with our personal ideas and intuitions about God, His Being, and the cosmic mystery of it all.

The second of my sources here has been a little book by biblical scholar, J.B. Phillips, titled, Your God Is Too Small (1953). In that book, Phillips posits that many people either can't find faith or, when they do, they don't have a conceptual grasp of God that enables them to 'feel' a sense of awe, mostly because their conceptual frames about theology often produce or lead to “unreal gods.”

In thinking about the feelings we each have regarding the mysteries of our existence and how these interplay with our notions about God, our impending deaths, our places in life, our successes and our sufferings, might these all in turn play a part in our ability to believe in God and in what we think we 'feel' as we each confront the claims of the Christian Faith?

Maybe, as is alluded to in the following song/video by the band, Paper Route, we have difficulty finding a way to “Laugh About It” [i.e. about our difficulties, whatever they may be] because our individual concepts about God, Christ,and the Holy Spirit are too small? If this isn't the case, then why else might many of us today be so disaffected or dissatisfied with Christianity?

... oh, this video is so "me"!

I think our culture resorts to humor too much at times. Humor is the new religion for many people, but humor can turn against us when it isn't grounded in a sober realization that "the bell tolls for thee", as John Donne put it.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I think our culture resorts to humor too much at times. Humor is the new religion for many people, but humor can turn against us when it isn't grounded in a sober realization that "the bell tolls for thee", as John Donne put it.

True, but I don't think I've implied in the use of this song by Paper Route that all of the felt implications we perceive in these issues are just something we should learn to "laugh off." In fact, that's not what the song is saying if we apply hermeneutics to it.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Your take reminds me of the way extradimensional creatures are described in Lovecraftian horror literature. They’re things beyond our comprehension, which implies a disturbing discrepancy between the way we are “calibrated” to understand the world and how the world truly is.

Which is perhaps why the Godzilla, King Kong, Transformers and other Giant Robot---even Avengers---movies get attention? Because they represent a kind of fictional reconciliation and reconstitution of this Lovecraftian type epistemological discrepancy in our perceptions and it gives us a taste--even a small taste--of the 'numinous'?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

My pastor is actually a fan of that sort of literature.

Horror is actually about the only genre left in our culture that understands something like what Rudolf Otto was discussing. In other genres, we have a naive realism about the world owing to a great deal of modernist philosophy (especially Scottish Common Sense Realism) that says the way we understand the world directly corresponds to its reality.

This is a good point, but I'm not sure I'd apply the term Horror [a posteriori] (or Terror, [a priori]) here to all possible cases of the numinous type film reference to which I'm alluding in the OP; we might leave room for the additional facets of awe and wonder involved as well, such as is implied in the sci-fi movies, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and perhaps in that very first Star Trek movie from 1979, and more recently, Gravity with Sandra Bullock, Interstellar with Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, and Arrival with Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker.

 

[FireDragon76]

Which is perhaps why the Godzilla, King Kong, Transformers and other Giant Robot---even Avengers---movies get attention? Because they represent a kind of fictional reconciliation and reconstitution of this Lovecraftian type epistemological discrepancy in our perceptions and it gives us a taste--even a small taste--of the 'numinous'?

Godzilla especially, because it comes from a culture where this sort of thing is alive and well. Shinto's sense of places and objects literally being haunted or enchanted is very similar to the Roman concept of numen, where Otto derived his concept.

If you've seen the movie Sea of Trees, it's a bit of a glimpse into this sort of a world where the uncanny is not so foreign.

The Sea of Trees - Wikipedia

Critics didn't like the film so much but I could appreciate at least what it was trying to do. I guess I like films that are sentimental, as well, once in a while.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Godzilla especially, because it comes from a culture where this sort of thing is alive and well. Shinto's sense of places and objects literally being haunted or enchanted is very similar to the Roman concept of numen, where Otto derived his concept.

If you've seen the movie Sea of Trees, it's a bit of a glimpse into this sort of a world where the uncanny is not so foreign.

The Sea of Trees - Wikipedia

After reading the first few sentences in the intro to your link, I stopped because this film sounds like the kind of movie I'll put on my 'to watch' list, and I don't want to spoil it. Thanks for the ref, FD!

Yes, Godzilla especially since, like you said, it comes from a relatively still foreign culture to that of our own in the English world. Good point!

 

[FireDragon76]

After reading the first few sentences in the intro to your link, I stopped because this film sounds like the kind of movie I'll put on my 'to watch' list, and I don't want to spoil it. Thanks for the ref, FD!

Yes, Godzilla especially since, like you said, it comes from a relatively still foreign culture to our own in the English world. Good point!

It was worth watching, though it's not going to be the kind of film I watch all the time. I don't understand where the hate came from, with the critics. If you like Shyamalan films, you might like it. YMMV though.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

It was worth watching, though it's not going to be the kind of film I watch all the time. I don't understand where the hate came from. If you like Shyamalan films, you might like it. YMMV though.

I do like Shyamalan films. In fact, I'll probably be watching Glass today or tomorrow ... another movie the critics apparently 'hated.'

 

[FireDragon76]

I actually think Otto was onto something. Not coincidentally, he was also a Lutheran, but I think he was doing a bit of a double-take towards the rationalizing tendency that was overtaking Evangelicalism in Germany in the form of theological liberalism. Liberalism tended to emphasize a dry, moralistic, scientific reductionist approach to religion in place of the old religion that, like Luther, said you couldn't swing a stick without hitting an angel.

Some manifestations of the Lutheran worldview are more compatible with this sort of thing. It's somewhat foreign to the standard Anglo-American sentiments. Calvinism has always had an impulse to strip this stuff out because it saw it as too much like the old medieval past. Calvin was probably the first modern man, by some accounts, in introducing a rigorously disciplined consciousness to the western world, and part of that cast a harsh eye on anything smelling of mysticism or anything suggesting that God was beyond human understanding.

 

[zippy2006]

Wouldn’t the existence of something incomprehensible logically imply that difference automatically?

I would say it's not a matter of calibration so much as capacity. God is infinitely knowable and thus incomprehensible. It's like falling into a bottomless pit. It's not so much that there is no movement due to a miscalibration, but rather that the movement and the depths are endless due to the nature of God.

 

[cloudyday2]

The problem is created by a need to accept and reconcile every canonical description of God. To a non-Christian like me it seems obvious that most (if not all) of the Bible is fiction or embellished history written at different times by people from different cultures with different theologies. Plus there are the generations of theologians who have added their own ideas about God. If you try to reconcile many incoherent ideas about God it is not surprising that you will struggle.

Why don't we discard all that and define some definitions of God that are as minimal as possible while also making Him worth our bother to investigate? A deist God for example is too inconsequential and untestable to investigate. The Gods defined by Christian theologians seem more like crude attempts to flatter God by giving Him every imaginable praiseworthy attribute regardless of the feasibility and evidence.

Here is an example of a definition that I would try: "God is a paranormal being who takes an interest in my life and responds to me in various ways". That definition is a bit too loose, because it would include things like poltergeists, but at least it isn't as muddled as the theology we have inherited from 3000 years of religious tinkerers.

In other words rather than gaping in awe at the impossibility of making sense out of the incoherent ideas about God and imagining that this is evidence of God's transcendence, why not consider that maybe we need to start over with a blank theological slate?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

The problem is created by a need to accept and reconcile every canonical description of God. To a non-Christian like me it seems obvious that most (if not all) of the Bible is fiction or embellished history written at different times by people from different cultures with different theologies. Plus there are the generations of theologians who have added their own ideas about God. If you try to reconcile many incoherent ideas about God it is not surprising that you will struggle.

Cloudy, I think you need to be more definitive here. You don't really get to play both sides of the court by saying the Bible is "fiction OR embellished history." The former side implies you're ready to nail the coffin shut, but the other, latter side leaves OPEN the possibility that Jesus could still be what He claimed to be ...

So, which is it? Fiction OR embellished history?

Why don't we discard all that and define some definitions of God that are as minimal as possible while also making Him worth our bother to investigate? A deist God for example is too inconsequential and untestable to investigate. The Gods defined by Christian theologians seem more like crude attempts to flatter God by giving Him every imaginable praiseworthy attribute regardless of the feasibility and evidence.

Of course, you could discard all of the various theologies across the world that have come previously, but then you'd really have to dig deep and construct your definitions in such a way that they seem intuitive enough for a large number of other people to want to follow along. And how would you propose to 'do' that, my friend, especially if you have to begin not with the world as you'd like it to be, but as it presently is?

Here is an example of a definition that I would try: "God is a paranormal being who takes an interest in my life and responds to me in various ways". That definition is a bit too loose, because it would include things like poltergeists, but at least it isn't as muddled as the theology we have inherited from 3000 years of religious tinkerers.

Yes, I'd say that definition is too loose, and you'd have to do a lot of explaining as to why your definition is correct and relevant. Just showing up and saying, "I propose another defintion without much deeper thought, without a 300+ page treatise to go with it," is perhaps not a good way to start. But, we have time, so do you want to try again?

In other words rather than gaping in awe at the impossibility of making sense out of the incoherent ideas about God and imagining that this is evidence of God's transcendence, why not consider that maybe we need to start over with a blank theological slate?

And what does a 'blank' theological slate look like precisely, Cloudy? You're not going to bring John Locke into all of this, are you?

 

[FireDragon76]

Why does God need to be coherent? A God we could comprehend would not be God.