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Mike 01/22/08
James Alison: God versus Nothing
In his essay, "Contemplation and monotheism: On the indispensability of irrelevance", Catholic theologian James Alison argues that "monotheism is a terrible idea, but a wonderful discovery." What he means by this is not easy to understand -- especially if you are inclined to believe that most discoveries need to be made up of comprehensible ideas in order for their object to be named. To say, "I discovered monotheism," is different than saying, "I discovered something I don't know what." The first is kind of like an intellectual understanding, where we are proud to put a name to something and distinguish it from other things, whereas the second is more like the beginning of an adventure (perhaps a horror film, perhaps the twilight of a vision quest...). No doubt there is some level of fear, or at least rapt anticipation, in the "I don't know what" that cannot be found in the naming game (where the field guide boxes are checked off and all the wild creatures accounted for). And so isn't "I discovered monotheism" more in the line of the clean and neat naming game than the fearful and adventurous, potentially scary, not-knowing game?
In answer to this question, Alison asks another:
Is this "monotheism" we're talking about a One versus Many type (a monotheistic view up against a polytheistic one)? Or is it more of a One versus Nothing At All?
Alison's own answer goes something like this: If it is a question of One versus Many, than God is not the One and Only, but merely the greatest of Many, and so is in some sense like the Many (since if God is better than any other, there must be some similar basis for this comparison, right?) -- and therefore we are, in a way, playing the game of MY dad is stronger than YOUR dad. Except the monotheistic idea in this case says, "MY dad is so much stronger than YOURS that YOUR dad doesn't even deserve to be counted; MY dad is the only real dad around here."
But of course the other's dad does exist in this picture, and the monotheism claimed here is only an idea, a tactic, a clever maneuver in a game of power and rhetoric. And of course also, the other's dad is actually essential to this monotheist's reality: this monotheism would not have been created if it didn't have a battle to win! And so it is merely a cover-up for an identity that depends on an enemy or a foe to understand itself. (This is a recurring theme in Alison's work, and will come up again in these notes, or future ones...)
Okay then. So what if, instead of a question of One versus Many, it is a question of One versus Nothing At All? In this case, God is more like Nothing At All than like anything else that exists. And if God is more like Nothing At All than like anything we know of, then there is nothing to compare God to, and there is no point in arguing whose God is better, or stronger, or whatever, because there is no rivalry in God at all. God is more like the invisible "I don't know what" we were talking about before than God is like something we could name and set alongside other things, in order to show in what ways God is different.
For this reason it is fair to acknowledge, as Alison says, that, "Atheism, which is untrue, offers a much less inadequate picture of God than theism, which is true. For monotheistic Judaism, as for monotheistic Catholicism…the principal temptation is not atheism, but idolatry."
But let's return to the mystery here: That there is no rivalry in God. That God is up against Nothing At All.
"If God really is true," Alison writes, "then to exaggerate the strength of the wicked other so as to strengthen the faith of the believer is the worst sort of nihilistic atheism."
Again: "If God really is true, then appearances are deceptive, and what look like wicked conspiracies by the wicked other are much exaggerated, because God is much stronger than they." (To say "stronger" is even to risk misunderstanding, it seems, because the type and degree and scope of God's strength is completely unlike, in tactic, intent, and everything else, than the types of strength we typically fear and hope to banish from our holds. It's like "I don't know what.")
So Bin Laden isn't believing a true God when he convinces Muslims they need to kill anyone who threatens their God, and neither do those Christians who believe that homosexuals "could really be such a threat to the order and stability of the Creator of all things" believe a truly monotheistic God (to use Alison's examples).
It follows that those of us who consider ourselves monotheistic Christians should not be too concerned at all, for instance, about who wins the next, or any other, American election. As if George Bush III (or Hillary Clinton for that matter) could genuinely threaten the Creator of the whole thing.
Alison is saying that we do not need to defend God, and we do not need to fight for God, because God isn't "against" anyone!
Instead, says Alison, we need to sit with our fear and the strange pressure of this discovering "I don't know what". It is almost everyone's impulse to explain away this or that uncertainty or jarring fact with a pretended understanding of how God works, or of how the world works, or by blaming one person or thing and taking comfort in another. But all of these are part of the phony demonizing/divinizing game which, occasionally, leads to the idea of monotheism -- which in turn becomes that totalitarian monotheism where we insist that everyone must deal with their problems and stresses and desires the same way as ME!!!
This, says Alison, is not God. This doesn't hardly have anything to do with God (even though it is in these types of contexts that the word "God" is mentioned probably more than any other). What it does have to do with is our fear, our need to be in control, and our need to reinforce our feeling of "being in control and not needing to fear" by subjecting others to the same medicine we used on ourselves -- in this way proving to ourselves again and again that our medicine works. This is called drawing a not-so-perfect circle.
(It also has to do, in my opinion, with a lack of imagination. Like seeing the Oedipus complex everywhere, or phalluses, or Jesus in birthmarks, or the number 253, or whatever it is you think is magical or deeply true because you see it everywhere…)
This post needs to suddenly stop; more thoughts will undoubtedly come out later.
Please, if you want to start a critical conversation, read the piece itself and not just my own thoughts on it! Thanks.
2 comments:
Joel,
Thanks for clarifying and amplifying the logic behind comparing God to Others as opposed to comparing God to Nothing. I think that is a very important idea to try and understand. It seems like it may put interfaith dialogue in a new perspective.
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While I don't understand very well what might be appropriate in the case of what seems to us a clearly tragic and premature death, I do find (unbelievably) a kind of answer from Alison, in another essay. It is perhaps appropriately entitled "Deliver Us From Evil."
Here is the quote, taken from a paragraph that is speaking about desire and how Jesus' resurrection reframes (or is meant to) our complete understanding of "what it's all about...":
"In fact we are brought into being so as to share, by means of human desire, in the life of God, which is so far removed from death that for God human death is not the opposite of life, nor its enemy. Rather it is the form of biological finitude proper to the gift of being the sort of creature which we are, one of the contours of creatureliness, which is the condition of possibility of our coming to enjoy God."
In other words, it seems like he is saying (but probably not at the funeral)(although the early Christians were known, if I remember right, to celebrate the new birth implicit in a brother or sister's funeral, so that this celebration trumped even emotionally any sorrow!), we would not be able to enjoy God or life if it were not for our finitude. It seems. I don't understand it.
Does that mean that finitude is the "night" to enjoyment's "day", to use your analogy? Are we unable to enjoy life -the Divine Life- without knowing that we will die? He seems to be suggesting something much fuller and more joyful than that -- and that is what seems "unbelievable" to me:
That we might be invited to rejoice not only in spite of our finitude, but because of it, and even in the midst of it.
That is definitely mindbending. Concept-bending.
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The idea that difference is different than over-againstness is interesting. Ironically, I'm just not sure that we know how to distinguish the two! It's like the tension I often feel when we talk about "celebrating diversity" when what seems to be more true is that we are just relieved at finding something we can swallow/tolerate in people who are so different than we are... (That's clearly the more cynical side!)
But isn't celebrating diversity different than loving your enemy? Is Alison asking us to impossibly love both sickness and health equally, noting with appreciation their difference? Or is he suggesting that our relationship with death is like our relationship with the enemy, and all that that entails? (No, I don't mean preemptive strikes or false accusations!)
Good reflections Mike. One part of the essay that particularly caught my attention was Alison talk of whenever you compare something to another thing, it is more similar to that thing than dissimilar. In his words, "In that case, since whenever we define something over against something, it is true to say that it is much more like that thing than it is unlike it, “one” God is merely a uniquely big, powerful, and somewhat lonely member of the series “gods” all of whose other members have been declared inexistant."
This makes intuitive sense to me. I can compare the United States to, say Egypt. There are plenty of differences, but the comparison works because they're both countries, similar is so many fundamental ways.
When Alison says that monotheism is more like talking about something versus nothing, then 'God' is much more like nothing at all than any 'thing.' You highlight this, too, Mike.
I can't find where he says it, but I thought I remember him saying "God is not an object in the universe," which is a nice summary of that second comparison.
This all strikes me as very profound and important. How, I don't completely understand. But maybe that's sort of like your expression, Mike, about discovering I don't know what.
At some point in his essay Alison says belief in God is like proclaiming 'is!' which might mean that we recognize that we are undergirded by Being in such a way that we experience grace and gift.
Alison's idea of no rivalry in God, as God not over-against anything sounds right, but is a bit mind bending. How do we know about day except for night? How do I know that I'm healthy except for remembering times when I was sick? Each state of consciousness seems to be dependent on the knowledge that there is another state which is different than this one. Maybe 'difference' is different that over-againstness.
Last week there was a significant death -- a young man who grew up in Cincinnati Menno died of leukemia, and his parents are leading members of the congregation. We had a gathering to process through the death on Sunday and the question of how God works (or not) through prayer was brought up by several people. I have some general expressions that seem appropriate ('God suffering with' being one of them), but am a ways off from any kind of knowing here. This is part of my context for reading Alison's essays right now.