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What is God?: How to Think about the Divine
Suggests five ways of thinking realistically about God by reflecting on profound human experience of depth, future, freedom, beauty, and truth. †
158 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1986
About the author
John F. Haught
53 books37 followersJohn F. Haught is a Roman Catholic theologian, specializing with systematic theology. He has special interests in science, cosmology, ecology, and reconciling evolution and religion.
Haught graduated from St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore,, and he received a PhD in Theology from The Catholic University of America in 1970.
Haught received the 2002 Owen Garrigan Award in Science and Religion, the 2004 Sophia Award for Theological Excellence, and, in 2009, the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Leuven.
He is Senior Research Fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. There, he established the Georgetown Center for the Study of Science and Religion and was the chair of Georgetown's theology department between 1990 and 1995.
Haught graduated from St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore,, and he received a PhD in Theology from The Catholic University of America in 1970.
Haught received the 2002 Owen Garrigan Award in Science and Religion, the 2004 Sophia Award for Theological Excellence, and, in 2009, the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Leuven.
He is Senior Research Fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. There, he established the Georgetown Center for the Study of Science and Religion and was the chair of Georgetown's theology department between 1990 and 1995.
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August 8, 2021
This is a book for those wondering how to think about God beyond overly anthropomorphic images and for those who struggle to believe in God because of them. It is also for those of us who are comfortable with anthropomorphic images but would like to explore some of the other ways of thinking about God that would not contradict but supplement these images. This is a concise, yet rich meditation on God for the 21st century explorer. It will certainly give much on which to ruminate and prove an enrichment to your spiritual life.
December 4, 2012
A theologian at Georgetown University, Haught takes a philosophical perspective in arguing that it is easier to argue the “what” of what God might be than to argue the existence of a personal “who” God might be. In What is God? How to Think About the Divine, Haught uses the existence of awareness of human desire for depth experiences, future hope, authentic freedom, integral beauty, and verifiable truth, as well as an examination of the necessity of mystery, to point toward the need for God. In so doing, he considers why the God who would stand behind each desire might be considered to be “absent” and what the God who would stand behind each desire would mean with regard to religious application.
TRUTH
Perhaps, the most profound aspect of this volume is not, however, his clever use of these universal desires to point toward the existence of some transcendent universal (if not, indeed, personal God) but his suggestion of a truth verification within the context of his system. Haught holds off his discussion of the pursuit of truth till near the end of the volume because he is well aware that the pursuit of truth seems to be less compelling in the lives of some because it competes with a variety of other desires. He observes that many humans are content to live without the pursuit of truth because these other urges are “quite content to live with illusion” (p. 93) in order to have those urges met. For example, some can put up with a whole lot of phoniness in order to assuage their sex drive or a great deal of manipulation to acquire power. Yet, he contends that in the very asking of questions, “…we have the most obvious evidence of our undeniable longing for the truth.” (p. 95)
Embracing the idea of truth as a “horizon” that evades human efforts of “intellectual control and adequate definition” and admitting the postmodern observation that truth is somewhat heuristic (in the sense of seeking, but never quite ensnaring—p. 94), Haught yet argues that a strict relativistic perspective is self-contradictory when one says, “It is a truth that it is not possible to know the truth.” (p. 95) He argues, “…we implicitly appeal to our trust in the truth every time we have a doubt about something or every time we say: ‘It is the case that such and such is so.’” (p. 95).
So, if humans have such an implicit regard for the truth, why is there so much disagreement about the truth? Basically, Haught argues that there is a constant “combat” between the desire for social acceptance and the desire for truth (p. 99). In other words, we will often delude ourselves in order to gain approval and acceptance (p. 101). Then, he seems to go out on a limb by asserting that God is not only the grounds of truth, but that we can seek that truth without having to renounce acceptance and approval because God’s unconditional love/acceptance is the only condition that could support both our desire for truth and our desire to be accepted (p. 102). As a result, we no longer need self-deception to protect our feelings of acceptance and security (p. 103).
Since one cannot test this hypothesis by empirical testing, Haught suggests an indirect way of testing the truth-status of this assertion about unconditional acceptance/love. “We must ask whether a trust that we are unconditionally loved promotes or frustrates our desire to know which is itself utterly intolerant of illusions and whose only interest is the truth.” In short, does our belief in God who provides unconditional love foster a desire to “know” or does it impede it? (p. 104) “The belief that the universe in its depths is ultimately loving is a portrait of reality full congruous with and supportive of the desire to know, and is therefore a truthful position for consciousness to take. Indeed, …the only hypothetical matrix that can fully support our desire to know as it seeks to disentangle itself from the desire and the strong temptation to self-deception.” (p. 105)
Responding to those who see the universe as hostile, he rejoinders that the idea of a hostile universe may be interpreted itself “as a projection rooted in a distorted, unrealistic perception of ourselves as ultimately unloved.” (p. 106) Further, “It is axiomatic that a distorted sense of ourselves is likely to result in our misconstruing the identities of others and of the nature of reality as a whole.” (p. 107)
To those who ask why God isn’t always readily discernible if God can be recognized as the unconventional acceptance within truth, Haught suggests, “The truth our question is seeking has to be ‘absent’ in order for us to seek it.” (p. 111) He goes on to charge that our human desire for the absolute certitude of God’s present is “…at root a will to control.” (p. 112) Authentic faith “…is a rejection of the strong temptation to make truth the object of our will to mastery.” (p. 112)
FUTURE
That’s a pretty strong argument in my perception, but it isn’t the only way Haught endeavors to describe what God is. He also suggests that we experience the negative perception of God, the threat of the divine, in the fearful uncertainty of the future and the positive perception of God in a courageous openness to the future. He does this by asserting that no matter how idealized a future we are able to conceive, it is inadequate compared to the complexity of the reality.
So, he writes, “Even if it happens that we arrive at an imagined ‘utopia’ in our individual or social life, we inevitably find that it too will be relativized by the horizon of a future beyond itself. It will be exposed as finite, fragile, and we will have to continue our quest.” (p. 30) In describing this horizon of a future beyond itself, he states, “The name of this infinite and inexhaustible future is God.” (p. 31) Here are some statements that I compiled in order to remember Haught’s argument.
“Openness to the future is the very condition of, and not an obstacle to, recovering the meaning of the past and of the important traditions of our human history. The horizon of the future liberates significant events and traditions from the heaviness of merely having been and opens up a space in which they can come to life once again.” (p. 34) One reason that we don’t have such an openness is that, “Science is fixed on the present or past, and is incapable of dealing with the future since there is no way it can bring the dimension of yet to come under any sort of verificational control.” (p. 36) Noting a pure Freudian idea that even this God imagined in anticipation of the future might be “wish fulfillment,” he argues, “Our anticipation of the fullness of reality would then take the form of imagining the future in such a way as to allow for its entrance into the present.” (p. 38)
Just as insightfully, he observes: “It is possible that the origin of our sense of God may be explained in part as the product of our desire while at the same time being explained also as the result of our consciousness being taken hold of by the actuality of the divine.” (p. 41) “To the skeptic the eventual displacement of religious images is proof of their unreliability. …however, the instability of religious life and consciousness is just what we should expect if the divine is indeed a reality. Because of its eminence and transcendence no particular representation of the divine could adequately encapsulate it.” (p. 43)
To illustrate his point, Haught notes that people who initiate a romantic relationship usually start off with unreal expectations and unreal images of the person with whom they are smitten. Yet, “…while epistemologically suspect, the romantic illusions seem to be inevitable developmental stages…” (p. 44) In other words, we cannot know the whole truth of other human beings right off the bat, why would we expect any such epistemologically verifiable experience of God. So, “At the risk of oversimplification we may refer to those ‘religious’ attitudes that remove hope in the future and seek to escape history by elevating a past or present cultural ideal into a timeless eternity as ‘gnosticism.’ It has been pointed out that Gnostic forms of religion often originate among social groups that have been divested of an elite cultural or socio-political status.” (p. 45) But Haught goes on to write, “The future…does not demand that we abandon this history in order to escape into a timeless eternity.” (p. 46)
FREEDOM
I particularly like his observations about freedom (I generally use the term “free will” in my discussions, but Haught deliberately goes broader in scope than I do.). “Freedom is most appropriately understood as the comprehensive horizon of our existence rather than as something we possess…” (p. 49) “We shrink from it in fear that we will be lost in its [freedom’s] embrace…” (p. 49) Perhaps, most importantly, “One meaning of ‘anxiety’ is the awareness of yet unrealized possibilities.” (p. 51) So, without grounding, we are afraid of our actual potential.
“Our existence, as we noted earlier, is always capable of realizing new possibilities. It is not stuck in one static identity indefinitely. And yet it always falls short of realizing the possibilities open to it.” (p. 53) “Every concrete decision that I make means that I am cutting myself off from (de-cidere), an inexhaustible number of alternate possibilities in order to realize this particular one. The gap between what I am and what I could be is felt as guilt.” (p. 54) Haught goes on to suggest that when we allow that guilt to cripple us from positive action because it is tied to failure to meet unreasonable, unrealistic goals, it is the kind of unhealthy guilt with which psychologists must deal. When that pathological guilt occurs, it means that the cultural aspects (traditions, myths, symbols, art, etc.) that usually embolden us to face anxiety “…sometimes lose their capacity to enliven us…and leave us in doubt about the very meaning of our existence.” (pp. 54-55) The good news Haught writes is, “Humanly speaking, freedom is the awareness that existential anxiety has been conquered rather than simply ended.” (p. 56) That is what authentic faith can provide. He profoundly states, “Our finite freedom is not a negative ‘freedom from’ but rather a participatory freedom, an experience of opening oneself to and being grasped by the encompassing freedom that embraces and conquers the threat of non-being.” (p. 58)
Haught cites psychologist Ernest Becker as stating that unhealthy psychological transference and the energy behind it “…is located in sources such as cowardice, the desire to escape freedom or the search for a power-source that will protect us from ‘reality’ and, above all, from accepting our mortality.” (p. 61) He goes on to note that this unhealthy transference whether onto other people, objects, or systems is ultimately unsatisfying because “…the provisional objects of transference cannot bear the final burden of being the ultimate, absolute, omnipotent sources of power and freedom we would like them to be.” (p. 62) As a result, people “…need a ‘beyond,’ but the reach first for the nearest one, this gives them the fulfillment they need but at the ‘same time’ limits and enslaves them…” (p. 63) He concludes his discussion of freedom by insisting, “The demand that God be ‘visible’ stems from a transference idolatry.” (pp. 65-66). That is, when we demand that God be “visible,” we are trying to squeeze ultimacy out of our immediate experience (p. 67).
BEAUTY
“This experience of being grasped by the beautiful is one of the clearest models we have for expressing what is involved in the intuition of the divine.” (p. 69) “We are implicitly aware of the chasm that lies between the beauty embodied in any particular object of aesthetic delight and the unlimited beauty for which we long in the depths of our desire.” (p. 70) “By our tasting the beauty in our ordinary experience we are already being invited into the realm of ultimacy, though we may not wish to interpret is as such.” (p. 71)
Those three quotations sum up Haught’s argument with regard to beauty as a model for God. I particularly liked being reminded of Alfred North Whitehead’s definition of beauty as “harmony of contrasts” from both Adventures in Ideas and Process and Reality (p. 72). Whitehead, of course, observed that nuance without harmony would be chaos and that harmony without nuance would be monotony (p. 72).
Haught goes on to suggest that the very idea of meaning in life is determined by the way we sense that we are participating in an ongoing story. He observes, “Where people today speak of their experience of meaninglessness, isolation, alienation, rootlessness, etc., such experience can invariably be traced to an inability to find some meaningful story in which to situation their lives.” (p. 74) As a result, Haught warns against irresponsibly clinging to such avant garde approaches: “If the horizon of the transcendent is wiped away, as it has in some post-Enlightenment consciousness, then all the stories inscribed on our consciousness according to the beginning-struggle-fulfillment model of Western religion have no validity whatsoever.” (p. 80) As a result, “Human discourse and literature become nothing more than word play without any transcendent signification.” (p. 80)
Even so, Haught is aware of some of the appeal of deconstructionism in avoiding the tendency of narrative patterning to “freeze” narrative prematurely and impose meaning. Haught says that “freezing” the narrative artificially kills it (p. 82). The irony, of course, is that Deconstructionists are constantly invoking myths like Sisyphus, Zarathustra, and Prometheus in order to advocate the “futility of myth.” (p. 82) As a result, their protest actually becomes “Gnostic” in the sense of being cut off from reality (p. 83).
I realize these quotations may seem extreme to most readers, but Haught manages to riff on culture in an amazing way. He invokes Huxley by suggesting, “…the ‘doors’ of our perception [experience, absence, religion] are possibly too narrow to let in the fullness of the beautiful, while the inner chamber of our consciousness continues to ask in emptiness for a beauty that would fill it and to which our perceptivity is inadequate.” (p. 85) As a result, following Whitehead: “In a vague and cloudy way we are ourselves being patterned by an aesthetic whole, the universe, in ways that we are not explicitly aware of, and in a manner that we can’t control.” (p. 86) So, as we are influenced by the beauty of the universe, we find ourselves simultaneously embedded in a transcendent experience of the cosmos at a more fundamental level than sense perception.
So, Haught argues, “The demand that God be available in the region of sensibly verifiable entities is rooted in an inadequate philosophy of perception.” (p. 86) Haught urges us to “Be open to novelty even if it produces a temporary discord, for in the larger scheme of things that lies beyond your present comprehension, beauty will prevail.” (p. 91) His conclusion (after the “truth” discussion considered at the beginning of this summation) is that our “peak experiences” reflect mystery in life (p. 123). As a result, “Without denying that our images of a personal God always have a projective aspect to them or that these images do not exhaustively represent the mystery of our lives, we may still view ‘divine personality’ as an indispensable symbol of the proximity to us of mystery.” (p. 129) There is no contradiction between the absence, then, and the nearness of God (p. 130) because “The divine must withhold presence precisely in order to bestow intimacy.” (p. 131).
This is the second book I’ve read by Haught and I have to say that, as a contemporary philosopher of religion and theologian, he is vastly underrated. This little volume is tremendously insightful and even my lengthy summary doesn’t do it justice.
TRUTH
Perhaps, the most profound aspect of this volume is not, however, his clever use of these universal desires to point toward the existence of some transcendent universal (if not, indeed, personal God) but his suggestion of a truth verification within the context of his system. Haught holds off his discussion of the pursuit of truth till near the end of the volume because he is well aware that the pursuit of truth seems to be less compelling in the lives of some because it competes with a variety of other desires. He observes that many humans are content to live without the pursuit of truth because these other urges are “quite content to live with illusion” (p. 93) in order to have those urges met. For example, some can put up with a whole lot of phoniness in order to assuage their sex drive or a great deal of manipulation to acquire power. Yet, he contends that in the very asking of questions, “…we have the most obvious evidence of our undeniable longing for the truth.” (p. 95)
Embracing the idea of truth as a “horizon” that evades human efforts of “intellectual control and adequate definition” and admitting the postmodern observation that truth is somewhat heuristic (in the sense of seeking, but never quite ensnaring—p. 94), Haught yet argues that a strict relativistic perspective is self-contradictory when one says, “It is a truth that it is not possible to know the truth.” (p. 95) He argues, “…we implicitly appeal to our trust in the truth every time we have a doubt about something or every time we say: ‘It is the case that such and such is so.’” (p. 95).
So, if humans have such an implicit regard for the truth, why is there so much disagreement about the truth? Basically, Haught argues that there is a constant “combat” between the desire for social acceptance and the desire for truth (p. 99). In other words, we will often delude ourselves in order to gain approval and acceptance (p. 101). Then, he seems to go out on a limb by asserting that God is not only the grounds of truth, but that we can seek that truth without having to renounce acceptance and approval because God’s unconditional love/acceptance is the only condition that could support both our desire for truth and our desire to be accepted (p. 102). As a result, we no longer need self-deception to protect our feelings of acceptance and security (p. 103).
Since one cannot test this hypothesis by empirical testing, Haught suggests an indirect way of testing the truth-status of this assertion about unconditional acceptance/love. “We must ask whether a trust that we are unconditionally loved promotes or frustrates our desire to know which is itself utterly intolerant of illusions and whose only interest is the truth.” In short, does our belief in God who provides unconditional love foster a desire to “know” or does it impede it? (p. 104) “The belief that the universe in its depths is ultimately loving is a portrait of reality full congruous with and supportive of the desire to know, and is therefore a truthful position for consciousness to take. Indeed, …the only hypothetical matrix that can fully support our desire to know as it seeks to disentangle itself from the desire and the strong temptation to self-deception.” (p. 105)
Responding to those who see the universe as hostile, he rejoinders that the idea of a hostile universe may be interpreted itself “as a projection rooted in a distorted, unrealistic perception of ourselves as ultimately unloved.” (p. 106) Further, “It is axiomatic that a distorted sense of ourselves is likely to result in our misconstruing the identities of others and of the nature of reality as a whole.” (p. 107)
To those who ask why God isn’t always readily discernible if God can be recognized as the unconventional acceptance within truth, Haught suggests, “The truth our question is seeking has to be ‘absent’ in order for us to seek it.” (p. 111) He goes on to charge that our human desire for the absolute certitude of God’s present is “…at root a will to control.” (p. 112) Authentic faith “…is a rejection of the strong temptation to make truth the object of our will to mastery.” (p. 112)
FUTURE
That’s a pretty strong argument in my perception, but it isn’t the only way Haught endeavors to describe what God is. He also suggests that we experience the negative perception of God, the threat of the divine, in the fearful uncertainty of the future and the positive perception of God in a courageous openness to the future. He does this by asserting that no matter how idealized a future we are able to conceive, it is inadequate compared to the complexity of the reality.
So, he writes, “Even if it happens that we arrive at an imagined ‘utopia’ in our individual or social life, we inevitably find that it too will be relativized by the horizon of a future beyond itself. It will be exposed as finite, fragile, and we will have to continue our quest.” (p. 30) In describing this horizon of a future beyond itself, he states, “The name of this infinite and inexhaustible future is God.” (p. 31) Here are some statements that I compiled in order to remember Haught’s argument.
“Openness to the future is the very condition of, and not an obstacle to, recovering the meaning of the past and of the important traditions of our human history. The horizon of the future liberates significant events and traditions from the heaviness of merely having been and opens up a space in which they can come to life once again.” (p. 34) One reason that we don’t have such an openness is that, “Science is fixed on the present or past, and is incapable of dealing with the future since there is no way it can bring the dimension of yet to come under any sort of verificational control.” (p. 36) Noting a pure Freudian idea that even this God imagined in anticipation of the future might be “wish fulfillment,” he argues, “Our anticipation of the fullness of reality would then take the form of imagining the future in such a way as to allow for its entrance into the present.” (p. 38)
Just as insightfully, he observes: “It is possible that the origin of our sense of God may be explained in part as the product of our desire while at the same time being explained also as the result of our consciousness being taken hold of by the actuality of the divine.” (p. 41) “To the skeptic the eventual displacement of religious images is proof of their unreliability. …however, the instability of religious life and consciousness is just what we should expect if the divine is indeed a reality. Because of its eminence and transcendence no particular representation of the divine could adequately encapsulate it.” (p. 43)
To illustrate his point, Haught notes that people who initiate a romantic relationship usually start off with unreal expectations and unreal images of the person with whom they are smitten. Yet, “…while epistemologically suspect, the romantic illusions seem to be inevitable developmental stages…” (p. 44) In other words, we cannot know the whole truth of other human beings right off the bat, why would we expect any such epistemologically verifiable experience of God. So, “At the risk of oversimplification we may refer to those ‘religious’ attitudes that remove hope in the future and seek to escape history by elevating a past or present cultural ideal into a timeless eternity as ‘gnosticism.’ It has been pointed out that Gnostic forms of religion often originate among social groups that have been divested of an elite cultural or socio-political status.” (p. 45) But Haught goes on to write, “The future…does not demand that we abandon this history in order to escape into a timeless eternity.” (p. 46)
FREEDOM
I particularly like his observations about freedom (I generally use the term “free will” in my discussions, but Haught deliberately goes broader in scope than I do.). “Freedom is most appropriately understood as the comprehensive horizon of our existence rather than as something we possess…” (p. 49) “We shrink from it in fear that we will be lost in its [freedom’s] embrace…” (p. 49) Perhaps, most importantly, “One meaning of ‘anxiety’ is the awareness of yet unrealized possibilities.” (p. 51) So, without grounding, we are afraid of our actual potential.
“Our existence, as we noted earlier, is always capable of realizing new possibilities. It is not stuck in one static identity indefinitely. And yet it always falls short of realizing the possibilities open to it.” (p. 53) “Every concrete decision that I make means that I am cutting myself off from (de-cidere), an inexhaustible number of alternate possibilities in order to realize this particular one. The gap between what I am and what I could be is felt as guilt.” (p. 54) Haught goes on to suggest that when we allow that guilt to cripple us from positive action because it is tied to failure to meet unreasonable, unrealistic goals, it is the kind of unhealthy guilt with which psychologists must deal. When that pathological guilt occurs, it means that the cultural aspects (traditions, myths, symbols, art, etc.) that usually embolden us to face anxiety “…sometimes lose their capacity to enliven us…and leave us in doubt about the very meaning of our existence.” (pp. 54-55) The good news Haught writes is, “Humanly speaking, freedom is the awareness that existential anxiety has been conquered rather than simply ended.” (p. 56) That is what authentic faith can provide. He profoundly states, “Our finite freedom is not a negative ‘freedom from’ but rather a participatory freedom, an experience of opening oneself to and being grasped by the encompassing freedom that embraces and conquers the threat of non-being.” (p. 58)
Haught cites psychologist Ernest Becker as stating that unhealthy psychological transference and the energy behind it “…is located in sources such as cowardice, the desire to escape freedom or the search for a power-source that will protect us from ‘reality’ and, above all, from accepting our mortality.” (p. 61) He goes on to note that this unhealthy transference whether onto other people, objects, or systems is ultimately unsatisfying because “…the provisional objects of transference cannot bear the final burden of being the ultimate, absolute, omnipotent sources of power and freedom we would like them to be.” (p. 62) As a result, people “…need a ‘beyond,’ but the reach first for the nearest one, this gives them the fulfillment they need but at the ‘same time’ limits and enslaves them…” (p. 63) He concludes his discussion of freedom by insisting, “The demand that God be ‘visible’ stems from a transference idolatry.” (pp. 65-66). That is, when we demand that God be “visible,” we are trying to squeeze ultimacy out of our immediate experience (p. 67).
BEAUTY
“This experience of being grasped by the beautiful is one of the clearest models we have for expressing what is involved in the intuition of the divine.” (p. 69) “We are implicitly aware of the chasm that lies between the beauty embodied in any particular object of aesthetic delight and the unlimited beauty for which we long in the depths of our desire.” (p. 70) “By our tasting the beauty in our ordinary experience we are already being invited into the realm of ultimacy, though we may not wish to interpret is as such.” (p. 71)
Those three quotations sum up Haught’s argument with regard to beauty as a model for God. I particularly liked being reminded of Alfred North Whitehead’s definition of beauty as “harmony of contrasts” from both Adventures in Ideas and Process and Reality (p. 72). Whitehead, of course, observed that nuance without harmony would be chaos and that harmony without nuance would be monotony (p. 72).
Haught goes on to suggest that the very idea of meaning in life is determined by the way we sense that we are participating in an ongoing story. He observes, “Where people today speak of their experience of meaninglessness, isolation, alienation, rootlessness, etc., such experience can invariably be traced to an inability to find some meaningful story in which to situation their lives.” (p. 74) As a result, Haught warns against irresponsibly clinging to such avant garde approaches: “If the horizon of the transcendent is wiped away, as it has in some post-Enlightenment consciousness, then all the stories inscribed on our consciousness according to the beginning-struggle-fulfillment model of Western religion have no validity whatsoever.” (p. 80) As a result, “Human discourse and literature become nothing more than word play without any transcendent signification.” (p. 80)
Even so, Haught is aware of some of the appeal of deconstructionism in avoiding the tendency of narrative patterning to “freeze” narrative prematurely and impose meaning. Haught says that “freezing” the narrative artificially kills it (p. 82). The irony, of course, is that Deconstructionists are constantly invoking myths like Sisyphus, Zarathustra, and Prometheus in order to advocate the “futility of myth.” (p. 82) As a result, their protest actually becomes “Gnostic” in the sense of being cut off from reality (p. 83).
I realize these quotations may seem extreme to most readers, but Haught manages to riff on culture in an amazing way. He invokes Huxley by suggesting, “…the ‘doors’ of our perception [experience, absence, religion] are possibly too narrow to let in the fullness of the beautiful, while the inner chamber of our consciousness continues to ask in emptiness for a beauty that would fill it and to which our perceptivity is inadequate.” (p. 85) As a result, following Whitehead: “In a vague and cloudy way we are ourselves being patterned by an aesthetic whole, the universe, in ways that we are not explicitly aware of, and in a manner that we can’t control.” (p. 86) So, as we are influenced by the beauty of the universe, we find ourselves simultaneously embedded in a transcendent experience of the cosmos at a more fundamental level than sense perception.
So, Haught argues, “The demand that God be available in the region of sensibly verifiable entities is rooted in an inadequate philosophy of perception.” (p. 86) Haught urges us to “Be open to novelty even if it produces a temporary discord, for in the larger scheme of things that lies beyond your present comprehension, beauty will prevail.” (p. 91) His conclusion (after the “truth” discussion considered at the beginning of this summation) is that our “peak experiences” reflect mystery in life (p. 123). As a result, “Without denying that our images of a personal God always have a projective aspect to them or that these images do not exhaustively represent the mystery of our lives, we may still view ‘divine personality’ as an indispensable symbol of the proximity to us of mystery.” (p. 129) There is no contradiction between the absence, then, and the nearness of God (p. 130) because “The divine must withhold presence precisely in order to bestow intimacy.” (p. 131).
This is the second book I’ve read by Haught and I have to say that, as a contemporary philosopher of religion and theologian, he is vastly underrated. This little volume is tremendously insightful and even my lengthy summary doesn’t do it justice.
May 26, 2015
What is God? For John Haught, God is the horizon of human experience. There are some moving passages in the book, but at its core it is simply a non-sequitur. For example, we are told that humans have a sense of "depth" that contrasts with the "surface" of life. That seems plausible. Many people have and do express such a sense. Then we are told that the deepest depth is God. But there is no argument for that; it is an entirely arbitrary assignation. Haught offers no path for how we might move from the deep to the divine. He then repeats this with the other topics: the future, freedom, beauty, truth. What we end up with then is a kind of piecemeal ontological argument in which aspects of human experience are raised to their supposed highest degree and labeled "God."
Haught's book came out in 1986, but it feels dated in another way. It works on the late-19th to mid-20th century model of experience as epistemically prior to religion and/or God. That is, people end up believing in God or practicing religion because they are led that direction by "religious experiences." He writes, "If we are interested in referring to God at all it is probably because we have had a 'feeling,' a 'premonition,' a 'sense' or 'intuition' of what is referred to as God" (1).
Toward the end of the 20th century, though, there was quite a backlash to this. Anthropologists and sociologists pointed to how much of religious experience is socially determined. Perhaps people have certain so-called religious experiences because they are prompted to have them. People in four different cultures might have the experience of being about to do something and hearing almost an internal voice telling them not to do it. The first might call that "voice" the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the second her good angel, the third a watching ancestral spirit, and the fourth his conscience without any supernatural overtones. The interpretations take place within a prior cultural context. These ideas were available in theology by 1984 with the publication of George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine. It isn't necessary to believe that experiences are absolutely, 100% determined by culture to see how cultural contexts render Haught's appeal to naive, universal human experience irresponsible. There may be no such thing as universal experience, and if there is, there would be no easy way to draw religious conclusions from it.
Haught's book came out in 1986, but it feels dated in another way. It works on the late-19th to mid-20th century model of experience as epistemically prior to religion and/or God. That is, people end up believing in God or practicing religion because they are led that direction by "religious experiences." He writes, "If we are interested in referring to God at all it is probably because we have had a 'feeling,' a 'premonition,' a 'sense' or 'intuition' of what is referred to as God" (1).
Toward the end of the 20th century, though, there was quite a backlash to this. Anthropologists and sociologists pointed to how much of religious experience is socially determined. Perhaps people have certain so-called religious experiences because they are prompted to have them. People in four different cultures might have the experience of being about to do something and hearing almost an internal voice telling them not to do it. The first might call that "voice" the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the second her good angel, the third a watching ancestral spirit, and the fourth his conscience without any supernatural overtones. The interpretations take place within a prior cultural context. These ideas were available in theology by 1984 with the publication of George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine. It isn't necessary to believe that experiences are absolutely, 100% determined by culture to see how cultural contexts render Haught's appeal to naive, universal human experience irresponsible. There may be no such thing as universal experience, and if there is, there would be no easy way to draw religious conclusions from it.
August 3, 2016
Puts forward some interesting ideas but was too repetitive.
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