The Case for God

by Karen Armstrong

When Caputo argues that the “event” requires a response rather than “belief,” he echoes the rabbis’ definition of scripture as miqra, a summons to action.

Above all, both Caputo and Vattimo stress the importance of the apophatic.

Religion was never supposed to provide answers to questions that lay within the reach of human reason.

Over the centuries people in all cultures discovered that by pushing their reasoning powers to the limit, stretching language to the end of its tether, and living as selflessly and compassionately as possible, they experienced a transcendence that enabled them to affirm their suffering with serenity and courage.

Religion is a practical discipline, and its insights are not derived from abstract speculation but from spiritual exercises and a dedicated lifestyle.

Experience proved that this was possible only if people cultivated a receptive, listening attitude, not unlike the way we approach art, music, or poetry. It required kenosis, “negative capability,” “wise passiveness,” and a heart that “watches and receives.”

Instead of symbolizing the ineffable, God was in effect reduced to a mere deva, a lowercase god that was a member of the cosmos with a precise function and location.

This would not have been a disaster had not the churches come to rely on scientific proof.

You had to engage with a symbol imaginatively, become ritually and ethically involved with it, and allow it to effect a profound change in you.

Because “faith” has come to mean intellectual assent to a set of purely notional doctrines that make no sense unless they are applied practically, some have given up altogether.

there is an inherent danger that people would imagine “him” as a larger, more powerful version of themselves, which they could use to endorse their own ideas, practices, loves, and hatreds—sometimes to lethal effect.

But if dialogue lacks either compassion or kenosis, it cannot lead to truly creative insight or enlightenment.

But it was essential that religious debates be conducted “in the most kindly manner,” to quote the Qur’an.

“Existence is suffering (dukkha)”

theologians who promoted a more apophatic approach to God were not marginal thinkers. The Cappadocians, Denys, and Thomas; the rabbis, the Kabbalists, and Maimonides; al-Ghazzali, Ibn Sina, and Mulla Sadra were all major carriers of tradition.

Before the modern period, this was the orthodox position.

“Belief” no longer means “trust, commitment, and engagement” but has become an intellectual assent to a somewhat dubious proposition.

The Greek fathers used the word dogma to describe a truth that could not be put readily into words, could be understood only after long immersion in ritual, and, as the understanding of the community deepened, changed from one generation to another.

Indeed, it has been said that the first scientific collective was not the Royal Society but the Society of Jesus.

Today, when science itself is becoming less determinate, it is perhaps time to return to a theology that asserts less and is more open to silence and unknowing.

we should explore the normal workings of our minds and notice how frequently these propel us quite naturally into transcendence.

As Basil explained, we can never know the ineffable ousia of God but can glimpse only its traces or effects (energeiai) in our time-bound, sense-bound world.

There is no dramatic “born-again” conversion but a slow, incremental, and imperceptible transformation.

Holiness was not “supernatural,” therefore, but a carefully crafted attitude that, as a later Confucian explained, refined humanity and elevated it to a “godlike” (shen) plane.

The rabbis were revered as avatars of the Torah, because their learning and practice enabled them to become living, breathing, and human embodiments of the divine imperative that sustained the world.

The point of religion was to live intensely and richly here and now.

There was no point in merely believing it; you would discover its truth only if you practiced his method, systematically cutting off egotism at the root.