Good without God

The Guardian offers a (fairly bland) editorial on what it will mean to be a society in which people increasingly don't believe in God.  They don't really offer an answer, content instead to raise the question: "if organised mainstream Christianity is on the way out, what will replace it?"

I want to make two observations on the editorial, and point out one major error which runs through a lot of humanist and soft-atheist argument.

The first observation is that the Guardian, and others of this ilk, are noticing something which believers have actually been well aware of for a couple of generations at least: namely, that Christian observance and belief is dropping off, in fact has dropped off a cliff.  The editorial observes that "more than half of all British people now say that they have no religion; about two-fifths are Christians of one sort or another; 9% are Muslims."  The phrase which I have italicised is frankly very generous, and can only be reached through allowing a person's religious outlook to be defined entirely by their own self-identification.  Actually, those of us who believe and practice orthodox Christianity have known for some time that the real figure is much lower.  Some have estimated more like 3%.  This may be news to the Guardian, but it has been our reality for ages.

The second observation is that 'organised mainstream Christianity' may well be dying out, if by that is meant the liberal, compromised religion of cultural Christianity and traditional observance.  Far from that being of concern to orthodox Christians, the collapse of this horrible perversion of Christ's religion is in many ways welcome.  Yes, the disappearance of basic knowledge makes mission harder work, and the loss of moral consensus and community cohesion is painful, but on the other hand, it clarifies things.  Where the gospel is still preached, according to the Scriptures, it still works to bring new life and to gather God's people in; God isn't dependent on the structures of cultural Christianity to do his work.

The massive falsehood in the editorial is tucked away in the middle.  We are told that "theology and morality are only tenuously related."  This is so because "habits of kindness, decency and tolerance come from practice rather than belief."  This is demonstrable nonsense.  It depends on the naive Enlightenment view that morality is self-evident, that people simply using their reason unaided will be able to discern in the world a 'right' way to act, and will then be able to follow it.  It assumes a universal moral code, which people can just pick up by thinking right.  The editors of the Guardian should know better; they should have read their Nietzsche more attentively.

In fact, ethical systems and beliefs are particular, not universal, and are grounded in particular beliefs about reality.  You can mask this with bland talk about kindness, decency, and tolerance; but it gets much more difficult when you get into specifics.  We are morally obliged to care particularly for the weak and the helpless.  I guess the average Guardian reader agrees.  But is this a universal moral intuition?  It is not!  It is the ethical corollary of the theological belief in the dignity and sanctity of human life, derived from its Creator.  This belief burst onto the scene historically with Christian revelation and has not been arrived at in any other way.  If it seemed to the Founding Fathers of the American republic that these truths were "self-evident", they only showed thereby that they were steeped in Christian doctrine - without even realising the extent to which their moral intuition was determined by this framework.  More honest and percipient philosophers today - such as Luc Ferry - admit that they do in fact want to continue to hold ethical positions which are specifically derived from Christian belief without the accompanying beliefs themselves, and moreover admit that this is as yet something for which they have failed to derive a convincing reason.

The flipside of this falsehood at the heart of the Guardian's editorial is the assumption that religion basically only exists to make us good.  Can we not, in fact, be good without God?  How can people not see that this question cannot be answered without resolving the question 'what does it mean to be good?'  And one cannot begin to answer this question without dealing with the question of what reality is like.  If there is no God, then it may be possible to be good without God; although I am not convinced that a sound and compelling account can be given of what 'goodness' means in that worldview.  On some versions of theism, and most versions of deism, it may also be possible to be good without God.

But if the Christian revelation is actually true - that is to say, if God the Son really walked among us, died on a Roman cross, and rose to eat breakfast with his disciples - then goodness is inherently wrapped up in relationship with God.  In that case, one cannot be good without God, because being good is not merely about ethical behaviours ("habits of kindness, decency and tolerance") but about bowing before the Creator, accepting his Lordship - and most of all accepting his grace.  Because of course the point of the Christian religion is not to provide you with an ethical system to help you to be good, but to provide you with a Saviour to bring you to God.

On denying God

In The Christian Life (p185ff.), Barth notes that there are three ways of being ignorant of God, all of which are to an extent wilful, incur guilt, and are bad.  However, "within the badness proper to all of them we can think and speak of the bad, the worse, and the worst."

The merely bad, "the most primitive form of the ignorance of God in the world", is theoretical atheism. This atheism has always existed - it is not a unique fruit of modernity, not is it essenitally related to the growth of scientific understanding.  It is, as the Psalmist notes, foolish.  For Barth, the interest of atheism lies in the fact that it brings into the open the world's denial of God, which is concealed in the other forms of its ignorance.  It is also interesting because in atheism we see that the world cannot state its denial of God with nearly so much seriousness as it would like.  "The atheistic negation applies to a "God" who, if he exists, must do so in the same way as the data of other human experience or the contents of other human reflections exist for people."  (Think of Dawkins: God is a scientific hypothesis or nothing).  But such a negation does not touch the true and living God, who "is not a 'datum' of ours.  He is his own 'datum'."  So much for atheism.

The worse form of ignorance of God is religion.  Religion is worse because it conceals what it is really about, masking the denial of God with a "positive substitute".  Religions may be theistic, or they may be avowedly secular (there is no reason why secular things should not be venerated, promoted, in a religious fashion); either way, they represent a denial of the true God.  "In all religions, even the highest ones, or what are usually called the spiritual ones, we simply have surrogates in whose invention, use, and enjoyment the world thinks it can help to safeguard itself against, and to offer satisfaction to, the present God who is not known to it."  Religion represents ignorance, not knowledge of God, because it is always an attempt to avoid his self-revelation.  Idolatry is the essence of religion.

The worst form of ignorance of God, however, is "the attempt of the world to exalt its own cause as God's or, conversely, to subject God's cause to its own, to make it serve it."  Barth calls this the "nostrification" of God.  Rather than deny God, as in atheism, or seek to serve and thus avoid him, as in religion, we can identify ourselves with him, and therefore him with us, so thoroughly that we can throw ourselves into life with absolute zeal, confident that whatever we will, God wills, and whatever we do, God does.  "When the world is really shrewd, as it is not in atheism or idolatry, it tries to help itself in this way over against God."  The world finds itself much more secure here, having, if you like, co-opted God.  Objectively, of course, God stills stands over against the world, but subjectively he is subsumed within it, the world-God.  And so he is safe.

I would only add to Barth's analysis, that the most terrible thing about the nostrification of God is that it is the most prevalent form of God-denial, of the unhallowing of God's holy name, to be found within the bounds of the church.  And for that, we can only repent.

A/theism

I find atheism pretty tempting at times.

This isn't because it is particularly attractive to me, or because I find atheism a particularly cogent intellectual position.  I just find it inexplicably tempting.  It's encouraging to me that Luther had similar temptations.  Anyway, this is a reflection based on the time I've spent on the border between atheism and Christianity.

The main thing that baffles me about most avowed atheists these days is how easy they seem to find it.  Unlike the earlier atheists - Nietzsche, the existentialists - there doesn't seem to be any struggle involved in their atheism.  It makes me wonder if they get it.  What could be more terrifying that being alone in a meaningless universe?  How can anyone live with the burden of being their own god - deciding for themselves what is right and what is wrong, forced to invest that meaningless universe with meaning conjured up from your own mind?  Shouldn't there at least be a struggle?

Having said that, sometimes I look back into Christian territory, and wonder at the ease with which some people put their faith in God.  Maybe it is a gift, but it eludes and confuses me.  I see so much that seems to speak against God's existence, so much that raises doubts.  Even the clearest revelation of God in history involves a cross; every light seems to be shrouded in darkness.  Shouldn't faith also be a struggle?  And what would it mean to live in a world in which I am not of ultimate significance - where I don't get to decide what life is all about?  Isn't it terrifying to be in a universe that belongs to God, where everything is weighed down with value?

To despoil a phrase of the Duke of Wellington's, there can be nothing half so terrifying as a God who exists, unless it be a God who does not.