of the Absolute, which could not be communicated, but rather much more modestly, much more relative and human, even if they quickly had supranatural elements injected into them from retrospective positions of later followers. As Charles Hartshorne mentioned the six “theological mistakes,” that came not from ancient Judaism or even the Christian Bible, but later from Greek philosophy,6 Friedrich Nietzsche saw this absolutizing or rejection of any “becoming” as the idée fixe of philosophy from the Greeks through even Descartes: only “being” has value, not “becoming” or “appearance” or the “body” or the “senses.” Nietzsche claimed this showed philosophers’ “Egypticism,” in which they “de-historicize it [the body], sub specie aeterni—as they turn it into a mummy,” and they exhort “Let us all be mummies! Let us represent monotono-theism . . . and above all, away with the body, this wretched Idee fixe of the senses, disfigured by all the fallacies of logic, refuted, even impossible, although it is impudent enough to behave as if it were real!”7
Despite Kierkegaard’s glorification of the individual and subjectivity, and despite the hubris of Hegel against which Kierkegaard was intoning, no religion would ever have come into existence if he were right.8 Clearly, no coherent religious group could exist without having concepts, claims, values, and goals in common. They had to use common language.
The real question seems to be how anything can be (relative) and there still be that which is Absolute. This is not merely a difference between the “ontic” and “ontological,” but the difference between what is limited and the idea of there being that which is completely unlimited. Either term wants to dissolve the other, just as to speak of things as “finite” does not in any way imply that something is actually “infinite.” Most theologians realized that centuries ago. If Paul Tillich was correct in saying there is no way ordinary reason can evaluate anything allegedly derived from an experience of “revelation,” and that “infinite” is not reality but a mere “limiting concept,” what credibility could a religion’s claims have? When the answer is that “revelation” is not information, but rather an event in which that which is beyond the polarity of being/nonbeing still is, even though it is revealed only in something which negates itself (as Tillich claimed), then no religion could ever assert anything nor have any appeal at all.9
While such mysterious, ontological, theological, mythological talk may have assisted the driving presuppositions of three or more of the most significant Protestant and Catholic theologians of the twentieth century—Paul Tillich, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Hans Küng—as their systems were built around the assumption that the destiny of relative humans is to become divine, somehow transformed or being incorporated into the Absolute or Infinite, surely the whole issue is not merely how one can cloud the real question with a greater mystification and obfuscation. This juxtaposition of Absolute/relative is not merely a problem of Christian faith, but is fairly common to many of the major religions.
It is relevant because the religion itself, in its institutional representations and guidance of all those professing the religion, has utilized this authority of the Absolute throughout its later history, gradually increasing the boundaries and ramifications of the claim of its Absolute, I believe, to the detriment of human autonomy. This is what becomes dehumanizing. The more science and culture raise questions about the religions, the more religions reply with intensified authoritarianism, with Christianity finally claiming biblical inerrancy and papal infallibility in the nineteenth century, as will be evident in later chapters. We are living in days of increasing defensiveness among religions because they fear being marginalized by a religious pluralism or secular domination. With the political and national retrenchments occurring while a political populism sweeps the globe with extreme authoritarian undertones, while various forms of ethnic, sexual, and economic divisiveness plague many nations, religions’ Absolute claims appear only to exacerbate the social problems,10 often used as crutches of legitimacy by their antiquity.
Our initial question is whether humanity will survive religion with the latter’s divisive Absolute. But that is to ask whether humanization can survive heteronomy and authoritarianism’s stifling people’s autonomy as well as deny common reason’s dependence upon modern sciences. In the process we will (1) attempt to see what future religion has with its Absolute mythology, by which it professes not only a connection with the Absolute but an appointment by such, and (2) then try to determine how the human who wants and needs to be autonomous can deal with the religion’s heteronomous claims of authoritative guidance by its connection with the Absolute, if at all.
There are any number of ways one can approach the question of religion’s absolutes, which are unique, naturally exclusive, therefore divisive and against autonomy. Obviously, when many of the existing religions today have a long history, from well over a millennium to closer to four millennia, this study cannot be definitive, but only suggestive. I had to choose between possibilities. I selected Christianity as the primary religion for examination, but I will often refer to other religions to show the parallels in those other groups, or to stimulate readers who belong to other religions to begin to formulate their own questions, since the divisiveness of an Absolute is not unique to Christianity. I will utilize Christian theologians and philosophers as well as strident critics of Christianity and even novelists to flesh out the possible problems, with no particular hidden agenda.
Nothing demanded that I have to refer to any scholars or brilliant thinkers. I could have acted like every idea I put forward originated only in my mind. But honest scholarship is also a grateful scholarship and does not work that way. I decided, given my professional involvement, research, undergraduate, and graduate classes I taught over nearly four decades, to choose certain people to use, to quote, and to argue the issues. Often, my selection was based upon the width of the influence and longevity or consistency of an author’s position, as it would be if I were critiquing a history of classical music in which to understand a present style and its particular problems, one has to understand the preceding style upon which it was built or which it cast aside. For every scholar I include, there are another dozen or so that might have been used instead. However, I had specific reasons for using each one. But to have to justify the inclusion of every thinker as well as the exclusion of another dozen or more would destroy the coherence of the book. By the end of this book, the reader will see that there is one central burden within Christian theology that is the very heart of the religion, and, in this sense the focus narrows down considerably since if that burden cannot be resolved, there is no sense in even thinking about all the other burdens articulated prior to it. But they are all possible burdens.
Further, if autonomy, especially mutual autonomy, is possibly essential to the process of humanization, it seemed apropos to me to utilize Nietzsche’s symbols of one’s spirit progressing through metamorphoses toward autonomy, which became such a concern of the Enlightenment. That is not to say the idea of the Enlightenment is totally clear, as Foucault has illustrated.11 These are only possible symbols that hopefully elucidate stages in one’s capturing one’s own voice or autonomy. He symbolized the stages as the “camel,” “lion,” and “child.” But I also selected Nietzsche’s symbols because of the typical oversimplified and antagonistic caricatures by which both Nietzsche and Jesus have been portrayed. Finally, I find fruitful and provoking the graphic and startling irony of the symbol of “child” as Nietzsche’s metaphorical goal or final stage in the quest for autonomy, as actually being an integrated and responsible person, but also because “child” stands for innocence and unpresumptuousness even in the teachings of Jesus.
These “stages” of “camel,” “lion,” and “child” will be explained a bit more in chapter 1. In this book, however, my focus is only on the “camel” stage of bearing and attempting to transcend the “burdens” of a religion’s Absolute. If there actually are no burdens, then it would be fruitless to examine the other two stages Nietzsche anticipated. If there turn out to be real burdens, then the other “stages” of one’s maturing spirit can be addressed in other volumes.
Some religious readers may feel that they experience no burdens at all from their religion.
