Religionless Christianity: Faith in the Modern Age

Philosophy of Religion
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If Christ has not be raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith ~ Paul of Tarsus

Thomas, because thou hast seen me thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. ~ Yeshua Ben Yosef

Christianity stripped of religion is what we call Christian culture. Religion helps people build a life and Christianity does that too. There’s no need to abandon one’s culture because the associated religion is false.

IMHO all religions are false. The Big 3 cancel each other and other nontheistic spiritual traditions like Buddhism and Jainism.

Here we smoothly glide into fideism, which is to believe without evidence. A belief that rests on faith is likelier to be wrong than a belief based on evidence.

The modern world rides on the back of science. This conversation, for example, would be impossible without science and its fruit, technology. An abbot of Buddhism is on record for having said if science contradicts Buddhism then we would have to go with science, not Buddhism.

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Greetings!

A very personal and interesting post. I’d like to share some of my thoughts on religion and its relationship with philosophy.

I am an Orthodox Christian by baptism and by tradition. If we look at my life through the lens of Christianity, it consists of periods of formation. The development of my own attitude, the degree of my involvement and participation in Christ’s teachings. These included periods of complete immersion in Christianity (with the utmost diligence in observing the church calendar of fasts) and periods of excommunication, when I might not have attended church for a year, or maybe even more.

If I were to try to sum it all up, my entire life would be a dialogue. A dialogue with the Christian tradition, a dialogue with myself, with my attitude toward all of this.

In my experience, it often turns out that people who study academic philosophy are most often connected in some way to religion. That is, they most often come from a religious background (not necessarily Christianity) – believers, disillusioned believers, atheists. But all those who philosophize are somehow connected or have been connected to religion.

If we take the last few years of my personal interaction with the teachings of Christ, then, theoretically speaking, this has perhaps been the most productive period. These years are associated with attempts to ask questions of Christianity: “Why does it assert this and not another?”; “Where did this or that tradition come from in Christianity?”; “Did this or that understanding of doctrine exist in early Christianity or is it a consequence of later interpretation?”; “What should we consider Christianity itself – what was uttered by Christ or what was brought about by 2,000 years of tradition?”

All of this undoubtedly accompanies me. It accompanies every attempt at my philosophizing, although the very subject of my philosophical research may not even be connected to the teachings of Christ. I would like to say that the “spirit of Christianity” (if one can call it that) and dialogue with the Christian tradition permeate my research aspirations.

My friend, a Holy Father from the church, had long since ceased to be my interlocutor on religious topics. Our conversations were left somewhere in the past, when I was interested in more superficial topics of Christianity. At some point, we stopped discussing these topics, remaining simply friends. We parted ways because he himself honestly told me that he is not a philosopher or a profound theologian. He is merely a “philistine priest” (as he called himself); a priest for people who come to church for solace in their life’s difficulties, to find simple guidance in life; to baptize children or to perform funeral services for the dead. Despite his seminary education, the topics raised by philosophy in Christianity don’t bother him so much, as they have no significance whatsoever for either the average parishioner or the holy father who greets them. Perhaps the holy fathers with whom it would be truly interesting to discuss the fundamental questions of Christianity live in monasteries somewhere? Who knows.

Returning to your suggestion that Christianization would be more successful without churches (if I understood it correctly), I would disagree. Perhaps at some point, at some stage in one’s exploration of Christianity, a person doesn’t need a church. But in ordinary cases, for the average person, a church is a place where God dwells, where they can find help, comfort, guidance, and where they can feel that special feeling that arises somewhere in the body upon entering a church.

I would even say that the Christian tradition, or the church, is largely unsuited to satisfying the subtle aesthetic needs of the advanced parishioner’s faith. In most cases, this is a mass product, for mass demand. Therefore, I would say that preserving what exists—the churches and traditions—seems desirable to me. Provided they don’t wither away over time, as we see, for example, in the modern Czech Republic.

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After rereading your opening post and reflecting a bit, I’d like to expand on my previous response. I’d like to try, philosophically and seriously, to analyze the very premise of your ideas, the very structure of thought. Well, I’ll try to do so as best I can.

The point here is this. The search for a primary foundation, a first measure, or, as in my case, a primary tradition, is very much in the spirit of the substantialist tradition. After all, look at how the questioning itself occurs. We seem to be asking: how ideologically correct is the belief itself? Does religion need to be for this? Should religion be as Christ taught, or as Aquinas taught, or as Kierkegaard or perhaps Tillich thought? Where does authenticity lie—in the Catholic or Orthodox tradition?

Here I’d like to reflect on the very aspiration of the individual to search for that very center, essence, purity, and the desire to join it. After all, look: at its foundation lies the aspiration to believe. But believing isn’t just something (or some random thing), but something more authentic.

That is, for some reason, consciousness is more focused on seeking purity of belief. And then, in confirming one’s position, that “my” way of believing is (probably) the right one.

Please don’t think that these are accusations. Rather, they’re an attempt to understand things at a meta-level. And this is clearly philosophy, not religion.

Returning to the subject of my statement about the subject’s search for the ultimate essence, I would summarize all of this under the heading of “the substantiality of thought” (essentialization, archeology of authenticity, fundamentalism). The search for what is truly right.

What if the relationship between Man and God doesn’t really require this? What if the search for purity doesn’t bring us any closer to God or the truth? These are rather important questions.

For myself, I found answers to these questions in the Bible itself. I don’t know, perhaps these questions will interest you too.

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Great post !

I ponder this issue too. My current understanding is that we participate in the “eternal” now and then. In inspired moments, we live a relatively stable “high” possibility of human existence. If I listen to great music, I “am” the ecstatic composer. The composer communications his or her “rapture.”

I think it was Bergson who said that philosophy remembers the future. This touches on a “repeatable gnosis” or “knowledge/vision” of the world that includes a sense of its universal validity. Here I think we “become” those who expressed the gnosis before. At least we “overlap” with them in this “high sense” of the character of the world. As others have said in other words, “timelessness” is possibility within time. “High” moments are timeless. The sense of participation in the “deathless” temporarily removes the sting from personal death. This “I” is both already dead and not yet born.

From the nature of art, as it is ordinarily conceived according to the single category of appearance and beauty, the tragic cannot be honestly deduced at all; it is only through the spirit of music that we understand the joy in the annihilation of the individual. For in the particular examples of such annihilation only is the eternal phenomenon of Dionysian art made clear to us, which gives expression to the will in its omnipotence, as it were, behind the principium individuationis, the eternal life beyond all phenomena, and in spite of all annihilation. The metaphysical delight in the tragic is a translation of the instinctively unconscious Dionysian wisdom into the language of the scene: the hero, the highest manifestation of the will, is disavowed for our pleasure, because he is only phenomenon, and because the eternal life of the will is not affected by his annihilation. “We believe in eternal life,” tragedy exclaims; while music is the proximate idea of this life. Plastic art has an altogether different object: here Apollo vanquishes the suffering of the individual by the radiant glorification of the eternity of the phenomenon; here beauty triumphs over the suffering inherent in life; pain is in a manner surreptitiously obliterated from the features of nature. In Dionysian art and its tragic symbolism the same nature speaks to us with its true undissembled voice: “Be as I am! Amidst the ceaseless change of phenomena the eternally creative primordial mother…”

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I agree with you that the theory of evolution puts a “pure logic” in question. This is why I even call a certain flavor of rationalism “theological.”

I see the pragmatists and explicitly historical/relativistic thinkers as facing and accepting this. “Logic” is what different people think we “ought” to do with our signs. For someone like Rorty, rationality just “is” tolerant curious civility. The pejorative term “scientism” labels a confusion of science and religion/politics.

We can also understand rationality in terms of autonomy. I enact a sense of responsibility. I check things for myself. It’s easy to see how empirical science coheres with the project of autonomy, but we also see — even lately — for “science” to function “metaphysically.” The itch for divine authoritative truth sneaks in the window if you push it out the door. I’m not “against” such truth, but obviously I mostly approach philosophy as an investigation of what we already take for granted. My comments on “gnosis” above are more personal or existential. I wouldn’t exhaust myself arguing for them or trying to impose them on others. Maybe others can relate. Maybe not.

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Well effectively that amounts to the end from where I sit. If some mysterious essence of me continues is some ineffable way why should “I” care?

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Christianity is a type of religion; I assume “religion” is being used here in a technical sense as humanly constructed institutions, dogmatic systems, clerical hierarchies, external rituals, and cultural conformity.

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I like your forum name and your attitude here.

Lately I’m especially interested in the gap between theory and practice. Let me see what a person does. Mere talk about goodness is even offensive in the mouth of a cruel person. Give me instead the person who is reluctant to talk about the good, but acts non-verbally in the world with empathy and kindness.

This talk might be about “God” or “humanity” or whatever. What does this talker do ?

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There are many highly effable domains one could be born into. The one who is born may no longer be the same person, but it will still be an ‘I’ nonetheless.

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First, thank you for sharing your story !

I’m more of an “atheist,” but I was strongly influenced by Feuerbach. A certain kind of “humanism” is very close to Christianity, with an emphasis basically on the total incarnation of the divine. “We” enact “God.” Or more exactly our virtuous selves enact the divine down here. I’m not preaching. Just sketching a view that is maybe adjacent enough for me to relate to you.

Did you ever study Bultmann ? I’m a big reader of Heidegger, and I’ve been meaning to read Bultmann.

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Not the I that can be demonstrated or the one which matters.

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I’m with you on this. I think every institution “rots” and loses its basis. Imposing Christianity on others as a “Christian” is absurd. Have you read William Blake by chance ? He understands Satan as a symbol for self-righteous accusation. Basically “false religion” suppresses and accuses, finding “sin” in others.

This passage from Blake is something I associate with a “visionary humanism” that one can also find in Feuerbach.

“The worship of God is, honouring His gifts in other men each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best. Those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there is no other God.”

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It’s not that complicated! In Western culture, post ‘death of God’, it is a commonplace to assert that life started by chance or has no intrinsic reason. After all, once the grand design has been rejected, what remains? IN a religious culture, there is a reason for existence, even for suffering. But absent those ‘meta-narratives’, what reason can there be?

Even in Plato, you read Socrates demanding (in the Phaedo) that the working of reason must be towards ‘what is best’. There’s no hint of him believing in divine providence or a Creator. Simply the assumption that whatever the philosopher is seeking, it must be for the best. Speaking of Anaxagoras (representing natural philosophy), Socrates says:

he seemed to me to be behaving just like someone who says that anything Socrates does is done on account of reason. But then, when he tries to state the causes of each action I perform, he might say, firstly, that the explanation for my sitting in this place now is that my body is constituted from bones and sinews, and the bones are hard and have joints separating them from one another, while the sinews, which can be tensed and relaxed, surround the bones, as does the flesh and the skin which encloses them. Well, since the bones are dangling in their own sockets, the tightening and loosening of the sinews now enables me somehow to bend my limbs, and this is the cause of my sitting here with my legs bent. And likewise with regard to our conversation, he might also propose other causes of this sort, describing sounds, air currents, auditory experience and countless other such factors as causes, neglecting to mention the true causes, that once the Athenians had decided it was better to condemn me, I in turn decided it was indeed better for me to sit here, because it was more just to remain and submit to whatever penalty they might dictate.

Notice that for Socrates, the ‘true causes’ originate in ‘the space of reasons’ (to put it in a modern idiom) rather than the kinds of physical causation which he believes naturalism proposes.

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How do you know this?

Is your God then a type of theistic personalism? A god who follows your activities and with whom you can have a relationship?

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It would matter to you if you believed it was a real possibility.

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I agree that it is dominant in “the talking class.” I’m over here in the US, so that “educated view” stands out as an exception.

I’ve made this point before, but political identity seems to be more than enough “meaning” for many people. I’m not saying that it makes them happy. I’m saying that they don’t seem to experience the world as “unstructured” in terms of values. The “good” people are on one side, and the “bad” people are on the other side. Grand narratives shall always be with us.

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Right. I also picked this up in a Gerson book. As you know, I reject physicalism. I don’t accuse all physicalists of being “theological,” but I do see scientism — at least a certain flavor of it — as generally just a tacitly “deist” “Enlightenment” theology. It has same “tone” of the “ethical socialism” that Spengler associates with our declining civilization.

For me, telos is “real” because the “real world” is the experienced world. An open and honest empiricism leaves nothing out. Life is “toward” something. On the other hand, humans are conspicuously individualized, so it’s hard to agree on common goals or “our” purpose. Or “the” meaning of life. None of this is news to you of course.

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So you wouldn’t agree with this criticism from Jacques Maritain, then?

For Empiricism there is no essential difference between the intellect and the senses. The fact which obliges a correct theory of knowledge to recognize this essential difference is simply disregarded. What fact? The fact that the human intellect grasps, first in a most indeterminate manner, then more and more distinctly, certain sets of intelligible features – that is, natures, say, the human nature – which exist in the real as identical with individuals, with Peter or John for instance, but which are universal in the mind and presented to it as universal objects, positively one (within the mind) and common to an infinity of singular things (in the real).

Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is sugar or what is intruder. He plays, he lives in his affective and motor functions, or rather he is put into motion by the similarities which exist between things of the same kind; he does not see the similarity, the common features as such. What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning. He has not the idea or the concept of the thing he knows, that is, from which he receives sensory impressions; his knowledge remains immersed in the subjectivity of his own feelings – only in man, with the universal idea, does knowledge achieve objectivity. And his (the dog’s) field of knowledge is strictly limited: only the universal idea sets free – in man – the potential infinity of knowledge.

Such are the basic facts which Empiricism ignores, and in the disregard of which it undertakes to philosophize ~ The Cultural Impact of Empiricism

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Could Kierkeggard’s idea of Christianity regarded / classed as secularism? He is known to have clashed with the church for his ideas on God and humans, and also faith.

I recall vaguely he claimed that there is no need for church between man and God. God and man can communicate directly via faith and prayers, not church in-between.

His idea also progressed into a type of existentialism later, I gather. I could be wrong, as it has been long time since I read Kierkeggard.

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Basically. But then I’d specify my criticism in the usual way. Signs are empirical objects with a rich cumulative significance. Signs are “radiant.” A man tells me that the pretty woman next to him is his “wife.” Yes, he vibrates the air with his larynx, but that sound is “significant.” A naive empiricism ignores its own basis, which is the significance of the very signs it uses to define and assert itself. This significance depends on the world as “forum.” While we are individuals for whom signs can come to signify differently, we don’t achieve significant individuality without “absorbing” the default uses or roles of our tribe’s fundamental practical signs first. The generic subject is the foundation of the achieved autonomous or authentic subject.

The significance is “part of” the rich total perception. Indeed, I choose the metaphor “radiance” because that’s more honest about the way that we meet signs. The “meaning” is “from the sign to us.” The stop light is red. That controls me. I don’t control it. Perception is the revelation of the object in all of its quality and significance.

I leave it to scientistic math mystics to pretend that the world is “really only numbers” and that perception is bland “meaningless” sensation.