So far we have explored how the idea of God cannot be reduced to some abstract intellectual system but rather refers to a presence that cannot be rendered present, a reception that is not equivalent to conception. In this section, I want to turn our attention to the nature of this reception. If God is not to be thought of in terms of objectivity but rather as the incoming of life, then what does this mean for Christianity? For it would seem that once we affirm the idea that God lies beyond our ability to contemplate, we have to ask why we should even use the name “God” at all. Why not call this source something else entirely, or call it nothing whatsoever? In addition to this, why should one bother calling oneself a Christian in the first place? If the event of faith escapes all religious systems, then such a term would seem overly narrow and constrictive.
However, it is important to note that such thinking does not place us in any way at odds with Christianity but rather emanates directly from a deep and sustained engagement with it. Far from undermining Christianity, it could be argued that this very tradition encourages us to both understand and accept that the truth that it affirms transcends any language, culture, or religion. In short, this acknowledgment, which seems to undermine Christianity, is actually a deeply Christian insight.
It would be a mistake to think that the critique of Christianity as a religion is primarily an attack that is launched by those outside the tradition; rather, it would be better to think of it as an integral part of Christianity itself. For instance, let us consider the parable that Jesus tells as he attempts to offer people a tangible sense of the kingdom:
What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.68
The most common interpretation of this parable goes something like this: Jesus was claiming that the movement he instigated will continue to grow until it becomes a great institution that provides shelter for all those who seek sanctuary in it. Here Jesus is cast as the founder of Christianity, a religion (the religion) that will bring salvation to the world.
Yet there is another, more subversive, way of reading the above parable, one that takes us in a very different direction from the idea that Jesus is the founder of Christianity. According to the second reading, the birds of the air are not to be mistaken for a symbol of the innocent taking shelter; rather they are symbols of evil. The reason for this understanding is partly based upon the idea that such symbolism is used elsewhere within the Bible, such as when birds steal the seed of God from the earth.69 The result is an interpretation that stands in sharp contrast to the traditional one. Here we are presented with the idea that this wonderful way of love and healing that Jesus is demonstrating will one day be reified into a vast institution that will house great evil.
This more subversive reading has also had its faithful adherents in those who would see Christ as demonstrating a way of being in the world (the way of love and healing) rather than a way of believing things about the world. These individuals would see Christianity, not as a religion at all, but rather as a critique of all religion.
Of course, those who advocate the first reading do not reject the idea that Christianity is about love and healing. Rather, the difference lies in the fact that the second approach goes much further than the claim that Christianity is more than a system, but rather asserts that Christianity is a rejection of all systems. Unlike the former reading, which sees Christianity as a worldview that can somehow be compared and contrasted with other worldviews,70 this latter approach questions the idea that Christianity can be approached as a religious worldview at all; rather, in this approach Christianity operates within all worldviews, at least in those places where people’s lives reflect love, hope, and passionate commitment to one’s neighbor. While the first interpretation sees Jesus as the founder of the one true religion, the latter interpretation sees in Jesus one who would set an axe to all religion.
Initially it would seem difficult, when confronted with these alternative interpretations of the parable, to decide which offers a better description of the Church today. For, depending upon where and how we look, we can see parts of the Church that are involved with acts of great kindness in the world and other parts that have been implicated in great evil. Perhaps in light of this, we should not attempt to choose between the two options, as if one grasps the radical nature of Christ’s message in isolation from the other, but rather embrace both interpretations—bringing them together in a way that opens up an approach to faith that moves beyond the limitations of each.
There is a powerful representation of this idea in the old town located in the heart of Geneva. In the main square stands St. Peter’s Cathedral, an ancient building that was commandeered by Calvin as part of the Reformation. This great architectural structure stands as a powerful symbol of institutional religion. Yet, at the other end of the square, there stands a formidable statue of Jeremiah, carved, I am told, by one of Rodin’s students, turning away in shame and disgust from the church. One’s first reaction when confronted by these two poles is to ask which one we ought to gravitate toward, which one better captures the nature of Christianity. Yet perhaps it is more accurate to say that the Christian is one who stands between these two images, embracing both the church and Jeremiah, manifesting elements of both priest and prophet, celebrating both the religion that began with Jesus and its overcoming. Here, in this space, Christianity finds its radical message as a religion without religion.
Christianity thus ought not be understood as either purely religious or irreligious, and the church should not be fully embraced as necessary or rejected as unnecessary. Rather, Christianity is structured as ir/religious and the church as a structure attempting to live with its un/necessary status. Christianity grounds us and yet invites us to gaze beyond its walls. As we attempt to understand our faith, we will develop ideas and practices that help us. Yet the point is that we must always be ready to critique these ideas and practices, for they are forever provisional. To display our fidelity to them we must always be ready to betray them.
As such the critique of Christianity as a religion derives from Christianity itself. Hence the statement by Karl Marx that the beginning of all critique lies in the critique of religion71 can be seen as a profoundly religious assertion—one that is borne witness to in the lives of prophets such as Jeremiah and Amos, in Jesus, and in many of the great Christian leaders throughout history.72 Christianity affirms an idea of truth that transcends any system, and thus the Christian is one who is, in the moment of being a Christian (i.e., standing in a particular tradition), also the one who rejects it (remembering the prophets of old who warned us about how any tradition could become idolatrous)—betraying it as an act of deep fidelity. It is for this reason that the authentic believer can be described as a non-Christian in the Christian sense of the term.
This ir/religious drive of Christianity can be further elucidated as we acknowledge how the Christian operates amidst the tension created between the faith of Christ and confessing a faith in Christ.73 Put differently, a Christian seeks to be embraced by the living source emanating from Jesus—that deep, living faith that existed before the existence of Christology and the various dogmas of the Church. However, flowing from this will inevitably come certain views about Jesus that, within the church, are reflected in the doctrinal affirmations developed in his aftermath.
This tension can be illustrated via an anecdote that describes a situation in which the Catholic Church protected a group of Jews from persecution by letting them take refuge in Vatican City. The problem with this arrangement was that, as time passed, some priests became concerned that the community had stayed too long. They became distressed by the situation and approached the pope with their concerns, saying, “Father, Vatican City is a Catholic refuge and a beacon of Christian light for the world. While we must help our Jewish friends, we cannot allow them to settle here.” The pope was not prepared to simply ask these guests to leave, and so he asked some of his emissaries to go to the Jewish community and ask if the chief rabbi would agree to a debate. If the rabbi won, the community would be able to stay as long as they desired; however, if he lost, the community would have to pack up their possessions and move on. The chief rabbi agreed, and a date was set for the great debate. The only problem was that there was a language barrier, and both the pope and the rabbi wished to debate in private, so it was decided that the debate would be held purely with hand signals.
When the day finally arrived, the pope signaled the beginning of the debate by holding up three fingers. The rabbi immediately responded by holding up one finger. The pope hesitated and then put his hand in the air, waving it in a large circle. Again, without hesitation the rabbi pointed to the ground. Finally the pope stood up and went over to a large table upon which lay some bread and a silver chalice full of wine. Picking these up, he showed them to the rabbi with a smile. In response the rabbi reached into a bag beside him and pulled out a luscious red apple, holding it aloft, before leaving. As soon as he had left the room some priests ran up to the pope and asked who had won. The pope was visibly shocked and weakened by the debate. Shaking his head he said, “The community can stay. The rabbi had an answer for everything. First I held three fingers aloft to signify the glorious triune nature of God, but the rabbi held one finger aloft reminding me of God’s wondrous unity. Then I held my hand aloft and waved it in a circle to signify that God is transcendent, inhabiting the heavenly realm, but the rabbi pointed to the ground reminding me of God’s immanence in the world. Finally, I showed him the bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ, the second Adam, but my rabbi friend, second-guessing me at every point, had known to bring in an apple, reminding me of the fall and the first Adam who preceded the sacrifice of Christ.”
At the same time some of the Jewish leaders rallied around the chief rabbi to hear what had happened. “Incredible,” said the rabbi, “I can’t believe what just happened. First he tells me that we have three days to leave, but I signal that not one of us will go. Then he says that he is going to round us all up, but I told him that we are staying rooted to the spot.” Then the leaders asked, “So what happened next?” “That’s the most frustrating thing of all,” replied the rabbi. “Then we broke for lunch.”
The reason this anecdote works is that it capitalizes on a misunderstanding generated by the contrast between a Christian doctrinal emphasis concerning faith with a more Hebraic emphasis upon the lived outworking of religious conviction in concrete existence. However, this traditional understanding makes more sense, not if we see one as a Christian approach and the other as Jewish, but rather if we see this as a tension that is opened up by and operates within the traditions themselves.
While certain beliefs are affirmed as a means of reflecting upon the faith of Jesus, these beliefs can never take the place of, or fully describe, that faith. A metaphor that may help to illustrate this relationship concerns a beautiful, bright-white dove that, one day while flying through the air, imagines how high and fast she could soar if only the air, with all its resistance, did not exist. Never did this dove realize that it was the air she cursed, with all of its restrictive forces, that allowed her to rise up in the first place. We must endeavor to understand then how the common critique that Christianity offers a particular, “narrow” stance in relation to the transcendent fails to understand that this “constrictive” location is itself a privileged opening into the transcendent. It is only by locating oneself in a narrow particular site, perceived as such, that one can gaze beyond it.
In short, such an approach reveals that Christianity exhibits the structure of a religion without religion. Belief thus has an important place; however, it is ultimately subordinate to the event that it points toward. The result is the idea that living within the event that is testified to in Christianity is more important than the affirmation that one is a Christian, or in other words, the event contained in the affirmation of God is more important than the belief in God.
There is an anecdote about the theologian Karl Barth that may help to clarify this idea. It is said that after a seminar one day a woman asked Barth if it was true that the serpent, spoken of in the Torah, literally spoke. In response Barth turned to her and said, “Madam, it does not matter whether or not the serpent really spoke; all that matters is what the serpent said.”
Let us take this answer and apply it to the question of God. Following this logic, if someone asks us, “Do you believe that God exists?” instead of answering with a yes, no, or not sure, the properly religious response would be, “The question is not whether God exists but rather what God has said.” Here the Word of God is privileged over the being of God.
In other words, philosophers can sit around debating the existence of God as a being out there, a question that is not without interest to many. However this is not, properly speaking, a religious question; it is not the kind of query that those who have been caught up in the truth of faith stake their life upon. If anything, it is the kind of question one talks about over a beer in the local pub, but not in a church. In contrast to this, the religious question could be said to relate to what God has said. This comes before any question concerning the existence of God and remains after all those discussions have run their course. Questions concerning the essence of God, the nature of sin, or the historical life of Jesus can and should be discussed. However, a faith cannot be built upon such fragile propositional foundations.
Once we add this to the insights of chapter three, namely that the Word of God is not something that communicates propositional concepts, then we will not misunderstand this privileging of the Word by thinking that it is something that enters our world as that which we can isolate, consider, and reflect upon. As we have already explored, the communication of God is such that nothing is said in the saying. Rather, a life-giving event takes place, a happening occurs, an earthquake in our being fractures us. Like the apostle Paul, we are knocked to the ground, blinded and changed by the Word.
If the call of God were something akin to an actual voice communicating ideas, then this very communication would become a blockage to God. If this voice were anything other than a happening, it could so easily be heard without being heeded, offering insight without enlightenment. We could then compare this divine call to listening to an opera in which we can be so captivated by the poetry of the words that we fail to hear the event that is contained in the opera, the event that gave birth to the opera, the event that is more important than the opera. This divorce between voice and action is evidenced in an old Italian anecdote about some soldiers who were at the front lines of a battle. These soldiers were very frightened about what lay on the other side of the bunker and, being Italian, loved the arts. Finally the general approached and shouted at the top of his voice, “Go ahead, men, attack!” But nobody moved. As the general stared in disbelief, one of the men whispered, “What a majestic voice he has.”
If the truth affirmed by Christianity lay in something that people could intellectually grasp, then the truth of faith would be something that one could hold without ever hearing or following its demand. But Christianity, as a religion without religion, is too elusive to be held in this way. It does not allow for such a divorce between the hearing and the happening, for its saying does not occur in that which is said, but rather in the undergoing of an event. The divine Word, like that spoken of in Genesis, results in life being birthed in the depths of our being. In the anecdote about the Italian soldiers, we see that it was possible for them to hear the call and yet fail to heed it. However, the call of faith is one that is heard only in its transformative effect. It is a still, small voice that is heard only in being heeded.
Let us approach this idea by considering the commonly held belief in an interventionist God. Such a belief is of course open to question, and anyone who has embraced Christianity will, at various times, struggle with such an idea. After all, suffering and pain are evidenced all around, and reconciling this with the idea of a loving, all-powerful God can prove extremely difficult. When we come to questioning this belief, we can find ourselves drawn toward two alternatives. On the one hand, we may come to wonder whether there is actually a God at all. We may begin to wonder how such a being could exist when one considers the dark, lifeless expanse of the universe and the fact that most human life over the majority of history has, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, been nasty, brutish, and short. On the other hand, we may conclude that God probably does exist but does not in any way get involved in what happens in life. God may be needed in order to explain the existence of the universe itself, but this cannot be conceived of as a personal, interventionist God who cares about the petty concerns of human beings.
In the modern world these are the two most logical ways to doubt the idea of an interventionist God. However, there is another way in which doubt concerning this claim can raise its head—one that becomes apparent if we are sensitive to the approach outlined above—namely, the idea that we doubt the existence of God but we retain the belief in intervention. Here the belief in God is not primary but rather the movement of God is. One says, “I have been touched by God in a manner that is undeniable to me. However, I am still open and free to wonder, at times, whether this God of which I speak can be explained in natural terms.” Or, to put it another way, one says, “As a human being I am always haunted by doubt as to questions concerning God. However, I cannot deny that something has transformed my life and that I love the source of that transformation with all of my heart.”
Is this not what we see being proclaimed in the Gospel of John when we read that once Jesus had healed a man from a debilitating blindness, some of his friends brought him before the Pharisees. Here, when the man was asked whether or not he thought Jesus was a sinner, the man simply replies, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”74 Here we witness doubt concerning the status of Jesus but an absolute affirmation of the intervention itself. For Christians it is a happening, an event, that we affirm and respond to, regardless of the ebbs and flows of our abstract theological reflections concerning the source and nature of this happening.
All this may sound like the affirmation of doubt above all else.75 However, nothing could be farther from the truth. Yes, doubt is affirmed in this perspective, and yes, it is welcomed and even celebrated rather than fought and repressed. However, in this reading, doubt comes in the aftermath of a happening that is itself indubitable. As we have already noted, whenever one reduces the truth affirmed in Christianity to the idea of factual claims, then doubt becomes a negative and corrosive force to be attacked. However, here doubt is embraced as a deeply positive phenomenon and is given its proper place, not as that which strikes up against the truth of faith but as the natural outworking of this truth. That is why doubt is intimately tied up with faith, because the deep truth of faith gives birth to doubt. It is not doubt that lies at the center here, as it does in the modern thought of Descartes, but rather a form of certainty. This is not, however, the epistemological certainty so loved by Enlightenment-influenced Christians. It is the certainty that something has happened, that a Word has taken root in our being and brought overabundant life, a certainty testified to in a renewed existence that gives rise to doubt regarding its source.
The affirmation of an intervention amidst all our doubt and uncertainty concerning its source thus represents the Christian idea that we have been marked by a life-giving event that invites us to passionately respond with our entire being. It is out of this that a deep and sustained questioning arises.