I am a proponent of the proposition: “Our ethics is more firmly grounded if it sees itself as grounded in God’s will.”
I am also a proponent of the proposition: “Our belief in God is more rational if it takes into account our advances of the picture of reality provided by modern science.”
But there is a tension between these two viewpoints. The more our God-picture collapses into affirming the world-as-it-is, described by modern science, the less it stands as separate from that world, drawing us upward to the world-as-it-ought-to-be. Yet some accommodation of these two viewpoints is necessary for a modern rationalist theologian like myself.
I can illustrate these views by extreme examples. A literal adherence to Genesis, unencumbered by modern science, puts God squarely in charge. God created the world and God created us. We are obligated to do as God tells us (or—more elegantly—to see our destiny as congruous with the destiny of the world as God has intended it to be—see our early discussion of the Euthyphro-problem).
Fast-forward to Spinoza’s Ethics (1677). God equals Nature. God’s perfect governance of the world equals Nature’s law. But there is no “purpose” on the scale of the world, beyond its own perfection. To project human motives and purposes on God or on the world is an intellectual and moral error. It is up to us to find our happiness in the realistic acceptance of our nature the way it is, within the world’s nature the way it is, without confusing the two. For Spinoza, God has no “will,” and thus to see the ethics as following “God’s will” has only metaphorical-poetical significance, not philosophic truth.
One may posit a spectrum of God-concepts, with the Genesis-God at one end, and Spinoza’s God at the other. Points along this spectrum might be:
- Biblical theism (taking Genesis literally, with a minimum of commentary)
- Medieval classical theism (taking Genesis as true in its essentials, while accommodating it to Greek philosophical theism à la Plato or Aristotle)
- Early modern Deism (God created the world, but left it to operate according to physical law à la Newton)
- Panentheism (God created the world and is involved in the world, but God’s involvement is within the constraints of physical law)
- Pantheism (God is the world)
God’s “immanence” is the degree to which God is involved with the world—an involvement whose maximum-point is being strictly identical with the world (as in Pantheism).
Despite what I have said about Spinoza’s denial of “purpose” in God, I would maintain that a certain kind of Pantheist might be able to argue that God can be the criterion of value for the world even while being identical with the world. Such an argument might maintain, for instance, that value is immanent in every thing, that (for instance) the excellence of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony can be entirely intuited by direct experience of the music itself, and does not require any reference of this piece of music to any outside standard (such as a general theory of music or music appreciation). By the same token, the perfection of the world can be intuited from encounter with the world itself, and what we should do to be in harmony with that perfection would follow directly from that experience.
Having said that, the kind of ethical valuation with which I am more comfortable sees the perception of value in transcendent terms. In that vein, the value of any thing is indeed to be considered in its relation to what is outside itself. My own value is at least to a large extent contingent on my relations with other persons, with the world outside me, with the history of the groups to which I belong (the group of Jews, of Americans, of Western man, of humanity as a whole, of life as a whole, etc.). The world is the limiting-term of these transcendent relations in so far as we can determine them with scientific validity. The religious faith carries this transcendence a step farther and says that the world itself derives its value from its relation to God. But this assertion makes sense only insofar as we conceive God as transcendent—as transcending the world.
My student Paul Steiner raised the intriguing objection: Does not panentheism (a step before pantheism in this progression) constrain the power of God to give value to the world, by affirming that God is immanent and therefore invested in the world-as-it-is? An analogy would be a certain political executive who had a large financial or career investment with a certain private company. The ability of the executive to stand back and act objectively in matters concerning that company might be tainted by that investment. We call this “conflict of interest” on the human-political scale.
My brief answer to Paul is that precisely the dual transcendent-immanent character of panentheism saves it from this trap. Panentheism sees God as containing the world, being “in” the world but also “beyond” the world at the same time. This is expressed also in my metaphor of the artist, who expresses herself in the work-of-art, then stands back and appraises it, judging it to see if it adequately expressed her creative intention.
Similarly, the immanent God of panentheism is invested in the world, and the world is thus rightly perceived as “godly” or “invested with the divine.” But in the contrary motion, God-as-transcendent steps back and sees the world in comparison with the pure ideal (in the “divine mind,” as it were). In the tension between the two, God (and we) can chart a course whereby the real world strives to become closer to the ideal.
"By the same token, the perfection of the world can be intuited from encounter..."
ReplyDeleteIt can be indeed. But it seldom is. In my experience, reaching this degree of intiution -- or better, allowing the intuition to appear on the radar screen -- is a lot of hard work. Believe me, I don't claim even to have made a dent.
I have trouble with the idea of God-as-transcendent/God as immanent. So long as there's also a "pure ideal" behind a notion of God, seems to me you're stuck in an infinite regress.
I agree this is messy. But I think this messiness is an irreducible part of affirming a God who relates to the world and to humankind. Insofar as there is this "other" confronting me, that is transcendence. Insofar as the relation is genuine, that is immanence. And in their conjunction lies the meaning of our lives -- from a Jewish-Biblical viewpoint.
ReplyDeleteThe Aristotelian God of pure transcendence is neater -- but religiously poorer. That's the tradeoff.
As for God referring to the “pure ideal” in the “divine mind” (which you think invites an infinite regress): All mind possesses the possibility of reflecting on itself. (That’s what we’re doing right now.) Reflecting on oneself is a reflexive and a recursive activity. Yes, endless loops are possible (I can reflect on myself reflecting on myself reflecting…etc.). That self-reflective activity is central in mind’s (whether ours or God’s) looking at the world – and at oneself – critically, and thus seeking to transform the world closer to the ideal that we have in our mind. But it doesn’t presuppose an ideal “above” the mind or God (though that was Plato’s notion). Ideals are creatures of the mind. They live within the mind. They are part of what the mind does – why the mind exercises a dynamic function (a critical function) on the reality of the world.
Then why have God? Maybe as a guarantee of objectivity of the ideas of our minds? But that’s another discussion.
It would seem to me that the only thing we ought to revere, and give absolute loyalty to, is an entity or being that is absolutely good. For this reason an absolutely good God would have to be an utterly transcendent God, free of the evils of the world. This perfectly good God would will the good for its creation, and God's perfection would command our loyalty to its (perfectly good) will.
ReplyDeleteIf some parts of God are better than others, as would be the case with panentheism, this would mean that the standard by which different parts of the divine are judged exists independently of divinity. Wouldn't that mean that God no longer is the thing guaranteeing ethics?
I am interested as to what others think about this. And thanks, Dr. Levin, for setting up this blog-- and for being such a great professor, as well.
Thank you. I am digesting the loop. For my part, every infinite regressive loop is a model of the moebius cone (the projected plane... a moebius strip as the emergent edge of a cone.. projected from a point. I don't mind regresses anymore, since all I can experience is some unique spot on the edge and the point from which it emerges ties me to all other points on the surface somehow. it is hardly pointless, but often seems...
ReplyDeleteenough. I must think about the ethical impacts. again thanks, Lenny
sorry to bother you with blather... but trying to grasp the relevance to action and choice rather than purely discussing the ontology of the metric. Of course I would like to know that against which any act is to be judged.... yet to my mind even were we to have a universal system of accounts against which dynamic transactions of living are posted ... my reality is parsed into a myriad of local/global dichotomies... where local laws (metrics) are different than global ones--yet as soon as you get outside the local point, they are contiguous--on the same surface [which is the moebius metaphor]. God is of a logic beyond any we (science and reason) can hope to address, though we humans are at least made in an image of a reason that can appreciate the approaches to the limit.... not to say we can ever know how far we are, but only - perhaps - how far we have come (on an individual basis only). Again, since there are a innumerable set of local/global dichotomies for any acting person(synapse to organ, organ to brain, child to family, consciousness to sub-cultural consciousness (sharing meaning and valuation through multiple sub-cultures), genetic individual to ?species, etcetera etc. To my thinking, whenever the local/global differences are brought into unity that context of action achieves coincidence with some aspect of the logic beyond all reason... it is this which drives us on and provides the distant image or mirage of valuation. It is this coincidence which we confuse with an absolute. It is the pointless point which I referred to before from which projects the projected plane (conceived of rather like a seashell) of experience. Ethics would seem relative were we only to have a myriad of systems and subsystems of local/global paradoxes always trying to come to resolution, finding unity, coincidence and disintegration into discrete local/globall parts again.... But what you described as the Pantheistic option is to say it is all described in the projection of the entire plane from the point. The infinite regress appears again attached to the principle of a metric which must be absolute globally yet relative locally. I guess you could call that 'resolute,' in its coincidence. As with law itself, an ethics is ever-discovered as emergent... always progressing closer to God, just as, in our understanding of God, he progresses further from our reason in his complexity -- and there will ever be a logic that we cannot contain, though we may conceive of it -- and should we be anthropomorthic and male chauvinist as our forefathers on this erev after father's day -- he is God.
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