Revelation and Art, Persuasion and Ideology

Last in a series on Revelation and Scripture.

My presentation on this subject might be summed up in this way: Revelation and real art are closely linked phenomena, closely enough linked so that one might say that they are different words for the same basic experience. The big qualifiers here are, One, that “real art” is difficult to define sharply and itself requires an awakened heart. I’ve discussed this subject in two earlier postings here and here. Two, revelation is equally difficult to separate from moral harangue, legalistic suasion, advocacy and admonition, and other forms of discourse the aim of which is to shape other people’s behavior. I do not hesitate at all to view true revelation as Divine Inspiration. But scriptures are filled with much more mundane writings (harangue, suasion, etc.) which I find difficult to associate with the divine and easily identify with the human.

Thus I would put Revelation and Art to one side and Persuasion (to use a single word for the human part) to the other. Now I would propose that recorded persuasions, once they have been integrated into a society’s collective memory, are gradually transformed into Ideology. And an ideology is always an attempt to shape and control behavior—but with sanctions added for disobedience.

In the first post in this series, I noted that the objections to revelation include two general arguments. One is that the social results of religion (thus of revelation) are wars, persecutions, pogroms, etc. The other is that they present contradictory views of God or of God’s will. And I suggested that the critics’ attacks can be answered satisfactorily. If we accept the division of the phenomenon as I have done—into a presentation of the higher reality as art or as the story of religious experience on the one and into persuasion and ideology on the other hand—the critics’ attacks can be seen correctly. They are directed at those results which arise from ideology. Human beings will always resist coercion. When the religious experience has been transformed into an ideology and thus has assumed a coercive form, it will be resisted. Conflicts will arise, and these, ultimately, will result in mayhem. This will explain why religious phenomena often have bad results. Let’s next turn to contradictory views of God.

These views also arise from the hardening of revelation into ideology. I am a staunch adherent to negative theology, namely the assertion that the Divine is unknowably transcendent. At the same time, as an individual, I too have a picture, as it were, of the cosmic arrangement; it’s only human to make things understandable to oneself. Forcibly to impose my picture on others, however, would be to act against my strongest intuitions—which is that I do feel something but I do not know it as hard fact. I claim the right to see things as I do—and grant that same right to others. People must form their own pictures in their own ways. All claims, therefore, of infallible knowledge arise from the human side of the equation—not from Divine Inspiration. Claims that one view is right and all others are wrong arise from a desire to impose control—thus, again, to shape behavior, loyalty, adherence, and conformity. Granted. Social life benefits from consensus and unity of purpose. But to obtain that illegitimately also introduces in seed conflicts that will later blossom into wars, persecutions, pogroms, etc.

I will conclude this with the splendid analogy I have from Arnold Toynbee, the historian. He suggested that the creative leader resembles the Pied Piper who draws others to himself by the music that he plays. That music, which people willingly follow because it is beautiful and moves their hearts—that is what I call revelation. Toynbee then suggests another kind of leadership, that of the drill sergeant. The drill sergeant’s harsh commands, his power to make you drop and give him ten (push-ups, that is)—that is what I call ideology.

These two modes of communication are, alas, hopelessly entwined in each other in the human experience of religion—also of art. Sorting them, paradoxically, requires that you hear enough of the music, and respond to it enough, so that you can make the necessary distinctions and obey the sergeant when the ordinary circumstances make that rationally sensible. Those who cannot hear this music must also be cut plenty of slack. They are the materialistic critics who simply don’t have an ear for music. Therefore they declare all revelation as pure nonsense and balderdash. But knowing why they cannot hear, those who can must give them time.