How “It” Talks to Us

Having waxed eloquent about deuterocanonical or apocryphal books of the Bible yesterday, occasioned by a quote, let me today present the full context of that quote and show how It, the dimension beyond, but not further specified, communicates with us. I take the quote from Owen Chadwick’s book, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, 1975, p. 257-258. Chadwick, as I’ve already mentioned yesterday, is an Anglican Priest. He was born in 1916. Here is the quote:

On 31 October 1941 at breakfast time, more than fifty people were burnt to death in a factory fire in Yorkshire, and a few were killed when they jumped from the top storey down to the pavement. That was a long day. I spent all of it seeing burnt skin and the relatives of corpses, the most miserable and most exhausting day of my life. When at last I got home after 11 p.m., dog-tired and empty and wretched, I opened a Bible and found, reluctantly, the lesson for the day. And the words leapt out from the page as though they were illuminated, and swept over the being like a metamorphosis, with relief and refreshment:

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God; and no torment shall touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die, and their going from us to be utter destruction… Like gold in the fire he put them to the test — and found them acceptable like burnt offering upon the altar.

The quote in the quote is from The Book of Wisdom, 3:1-6—and what the Book of Wisdom is was the subject of yesterday’s post.

In a secular age, we are surrounded by mysteries. And, indeed, we’re always thus surrounded, never mind the label not quite firmly sticking to the times. But it is an indicator of our era that we speak of such experiences as meaningful coincidences, serendipities, and such—rather than as revelations or as communications from beyond. When we experience this sort of thing ourselves, it’s always quite another matter—even when the circumstances are not as powerful, dramatic, and meaningful as what happened to Professor Chadwick.

My own views of revelation as a whole, as a reality, as a doctrine, are built upon these up-close-and-personal experiences of humanity. This particular case is doubly enlightening in that for a large portion of Christianity the Book of Wisdom is not considered to be canonical, thus is not viewed as inspired. It was written at a time when a Greek version of the Old Testament was already partly available, because Wisdom quotes from it. Biblical scholars believe that the writer was a Jewish sage living in very secular Alexandria and wrote towards the middle of the first century BC. The book reveals Platonic influence, thus the presence of a real distinction between the body and the soul. “For a perishable body presses down the soul, and this tent of clay weighs down the teeming mind.” Wisdom 9:15. This view becomes accepted in Christianity as it develops.

Revelation, it seems to me, is continuing, personal, and comes from all of humanity—as It communicates something of Its reality to this dimension. A Jewish sage living in Alexandria in the midst of the hellenistic decline, an Anglican priest in World War II tending to burn victims, a Greek sage writing dialogues in the fourth century BC. Official revelation is but a sampling, and multiple canons exist. In some the Book of Wisdom is excluded; in others the Tao Te Ching is included. But what really matters ultimately is that It communicates…

Startled in the Primeval Forest

In a book I was reading by a distinguished professor, historian, and priest of the Church of England (Owen Chadwick), I came across a quote from the Bible that sounded unfamiliar. I followed the footnote to the back of the book and discovered that the quote came from Wisdom 3:1-6. I was startled, but only a little, because somewhere in my depths I knew there was a Book of Wisdom, something to do with Solomon. The Layman’s Parallel Bible lies within my grasp (four versions: King James, The Modern Language, The Living Bible, The Revised Standard Version). I knew that it didn’t have that book in it, but I checked it anyway. I was right. Odd. Odd because, Chadwick introduced his quote by saying:

When at last I got home after 11 p.m., dog-tired and empty and wretched, I opened a Bible and found, reluctantly, the lesson for the day…

This suggested to me—that phrase of his, “a Bible”—an ordinary Bible. And in the household of an Anglican priest that would be the so-called Authorized Bible, therefore the King James. Puzzled now, I went off to find my Jerusalem Bible, a modern translation that appeared in the 1960s. And yes. There, in that Catholic Bible, there it was, the Book of Wisdom, sandwiched between the Songs of Solomon and Ecclesiastes.

Several questions now arose. Why did an Anglican, on October 31, 1941, find the “lesson for the day” pointing to verses in the Book of Wisdom, a book that is missing in what for Anglicans is the authorized KJ version...unless, as might be, he was using the Bible as an oracle and opening it at random. My next task was to run all of this down. In doing so I found myself in the primeval forest of the western religious tradition, an amazing, fascinating ecosystem, if you like.

It turns out that the Book of Wisdom first appears in the second of three major versions of the Bible, the Septuagint. That book was created by translating the Hebrew Bible into Greek. Long ago. Precisely (if that’s the word) during the third and second centuries BC. The translation was completed in 132 BC. Now one oddity here is that this Greek translation has a Latin name. Septuagint means seventy. This version came to be known, later, to Latin speakers, as “translation by seventy men,” of which the word “seventy” became the abbreviation used in ordinary speech and writing. The seventy translators incorporated several books into this version not present in the Hebrew original. The Book of Wisdom was one of these; it was originally written in Greek. The third major version is the Latin translation, known as the Vulgate, derived from versio vulgate, the “common version,” thus understood by everybody—at least in the fourth century AD when it was commissioned. Of this word we still retain the English “vulgar,” thus common with an attitude. The Vulgate also contains the Book of Wisdom and twelve other books called deuterocanonical in the Catholic tradition; these same books, plus four others, are part of the Authorized King James Bible, but not the King James Bible “Lite,” as it were. On that more soon.

Before I discovered KJV Lite, I had to learn what “deuterocanonical” meant. Turns out that all of the books of the Hebrew Bible, thus of the Old Testament, are part of the official canon of the Catholic church. The books included in the Septuagint in addition came to be labeled as part of the “second canon”—thus also officially recognized as inspired. The word therefore means “belonging to the second canon.” This is a primal forest. We should not expect things to be simple. In the Protestant tradition, the word Apocrypha has come to be used. The word means hidden or obscure or, perhaps, more obscure books. Whatever the name used, these books are not recognized by Protestant churches as part of the canon; thus they are not viewed as divinely inspired. Protestants stick with the Hebrew Bible. And this stance, in part at least, explains why the King James Bible no longer carries the Apocrypha. The other part of the explanation is economic. Startled by that? Or just bemused? The latter, in my case.

Beginning in the 1770s, innovations in printing began to make large print runs possible. To reduce costs—and in efforts to attract a large Protestant market for the King James Version—publishers began omitting the Apocrypha from the book. Those active in the Church of England, like professor Chadwick, continued to use the “full” editions for good reasons. In the life of the Anglican Church, some “lessons for the day” referred to these books, and it is then startling to open the Bible and find them missing.

The realms of faith are just as vast, complex, and organic as all the rest of reality. It’s life, once more, if on another level…

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Chadwick's book referenced above is The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1975.

The Wider Context of Prayer

The poem by Rumi presented in the last post holds the mystic’s view of reality in a grand context, not least cosmological: “For to-night the teeming world gives birth to the world everlasting.” It presents an upward-trending vector—from dust to spirit and on beyond—call it evolutionary, if you like. Rumi suggests that we are slumbering, asleep—and that this sleep is due to the nature of this dimension (“A heavy slumber fell upon thee from the circling spheres.”) To set out on the quest right here and now, we must awaken and stay watchful. And that, I propose, is the wider context of prayer. We find the same linkage in the New Testament: “Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36); and “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation” (Matthew 26:41). In these contexts prayer is not petition but something else—attention directed at something. But at what? Not the sensory environment but something beyond it. It is presented as a technique—in Matthew emphasizing the resistance (temptation, the weakness of the flesh) in Luke and in Rumi (“O soul, seek the Beloved, O friend, seek the Friend” “the Son of Man”) pointing to the goal.

Brought into the humdrum world of immediate experience, these teachings suggest that participation in the cosmic process laid down by the Creator involves an effort of attention to a reality that is not immediately perceived. Prayer, which is initially triggered in us by very ordinary if sharply felt needs, may with practice become a watchful consciousness, a contemplation of a range of reality we may only at first access by means of symbols. The practice of watchfulness, however, will persuade the determined person that the attention directed in one direction is also answered from there—but as with all experiential matters, you have to taste it before you know it.

Rumi speaks of this experience as we reach the end of the poem. “Mine eye,” he says, “is from that source and from another universe; here a world and there a world: I am seated on the threshold.” I like that word, threshold. In this blog I call it the borderzone.

Am I a Heretic?

Sixth in a series on Revelation and Scripture.

Many religious people who read the last posting and understand its argument, may well say, somewhat impatiently, “Yes, yes—but then it isn’t real.” For them revelation is only meaningful if it is the word of God, taken more or less literally. My view of revelation is therefore seen as heretical. It pretends to be sympathetic to religion but denies it by removing its very force. The word itself, heresy, comes from the Latin meaning “school of thought, philosophical sect.” The Latin came from the Greek for “taking” or “choosing.” That very word was applied to the Sadducees, Pharisees, and Christians in the New Testament (according to the Online Etymology Dictionary accessible here), but the word is translated as “sect” in English versions of the Bible. Heresy therefore is the belief of those who do not hew to the prevailing dogma. But let’s look at the distinction here between revelation and dogma.

Dogma is determined by organized bodies, such as councils of bishops. These bodies take their de facto authority from the population of believers who appointed or elected them; the councils are a social creation and some distance removed from the experience of inspiration. Councils make law. Their rulings have an arbitrary character: Thou shalt. It is by means of dogmatic rulings that revelations, already written down, turn into scriptures. By the time that happens, an extensive consensus has already developed that the writings are holy and carry truth. They are then given additional force by an authoritative body. This is the process whereby the very mysterious experiences of individuals are transformed into writing and then, stamped by social structures, into the word of God. This phenomenon is present in one tradition only, the Western forms of religion, all based on the Judaic revelations that first touched Moses. The peculiar character of inerrancy does not attach to other scriptures produced in other parts of the world; those are not held to be literally God’s word, but they carry the authority of consensus.

When revelation turns into dogma, the inspiration that reaches humanity is on its way to being materialized, reified. Such at least is my view. The content of revelation therefore carries two kinds of authority. It carries an inherent force, that which it actually says. The words may speak to me personally. I may respond to them because my own intuition tells me that truth has reached me. In other words, at some low level, I too am sharing in the revelation. The other authority is that of an official stamp of approval. The church affirms it. In this latter case, however, I have no choice but to accept the revelation, whether I resonate with it or not. As a member of a church community, I am under sanctions if I withhold my total consent.

Revelation, once it has been socialized in this way—especially when it has become dogma—is very far removed from the situation in which it entered this world from the world next door. The problems of religious conflict arise in this process of socialization—the supercharging of an inspiration with legal implications and sanctions. Let me offer an illustration.

Many poetic works of humanity contain inspiration of high potency, but let’s just select one author, Shakespeare, widely quoted by thousands upon thousands of people to convey truth to one another. Shakespeare’s writings have never become dogma. His quotes are presented on a “take it or leave it” basis by speakers and writers. Those who have ears will hear the message. No religious wars have ever been fought, no population harmed by the sword because someone denied the truth of some Shakespearean story or fragment.

My own take on revelation, therefore, is indeed heretical in the context of dogma. But I am a heretic in two ways. On the one hand I view the religious interpretation of revelation as arbitrary law-making in a realm where personal judgment must remain sovereign. On the other I assign genuine truth and transcendental value to revelation and thus become a heretic to the dogma of materialism. The socialization of revelation, however, does have a value. It causes the high inspirations of the past, initially shared by many—because these inspirations affected many people—to be preserved, printed, and distributed widely and over centuries. Thus socialization, including dogma, acts as a channel by means of which revelation reaches me. But here I am reminded of a Sufi saying: “The channel doesn’t drink.” No, indeed. Only people can drink, and each one on his or her own; and you can lead the horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink.

A Chosen People

Fifth in a series on Revelation and Scripture.

My own grasp of revelation—as I’ve already laid it out—is that some people are able to have contact with a higher realm and receive inspiration which they personally feel as unusual, from a higher dimension, and filled with energy. This makes the inspiration notable, indeed a singular experience. It will be interpreted as authoritative. Now I want to go beyond that. It also seems to me that the inspiration conveys a value—but that that value is not specifically spelled out. Rather, it is a feeling of exaltation, a meaning but without sharp detail. Therefore it needs a certain kind of reduction to the conceptual level. It will require interpretation, particularly if it is to be conveyed to others. The interpretation is by the recipient—but it will be filtered through that person’s consciousness, knowledge, concerns, and circumstances. By way of example, I want to look at the concept of a chosen people as laid out in the Old Testament, most explicitly in Exodus and then in Deuteronomy.

The recipient is Moses, and the initial instance is the prophet’s mystical experience of a burning bush in which an “angel of the Lord” (initially) appears; but in the same passage this angel is the referred to as “the Lord.” Here the Lord refers to “my people,” meaning the Jews, and speaks of leading these people from Egypt to “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Later, after the great tribulations of the Exodus, on Mount Sinai, Moses hears God say to him:

Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. [Exodus 19:5-6]

We encounter the word “chosen” in Deuteronomy, used my Moses in addressing the people of Israel. The passage is:

For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth. [Deuteronomy 14:2]

Now I will stipulate that Moses had a mystical experience—possibly two, one by the burning bush and another on Mount Sinai. The question I would raise is this: Was the inspiration that reached him as specific as the scriptures record it or was it, rather, an authoritative feeling of value which energized a man who was, already, deeply concerned with the state of suffering of his people? The inspiration he received ultimately led to his rise to the leadership of his folk. But was that portion of his revelation by which the Ultimate Being selected one tribe as its people, as its peculiar treasure, as those chosen to be a people “unto himself” and “above all the nations”—was that content specifically in the inspiration? Or was that an interpretation?

To doubt that Moses had an experience is to suggest that he was a thoroughly cynical and ambitious would-be leader who invented an experience in order to influence others. That suggestion I reject for multiple reasons. For one, I doubt that such a man would have achieved what Moses did in fact achieve. At the same time, I have serious doubts imagining that the Ultimate Being would choose a people in the manner here depicted. I would also doubt that God intervenes in his creation in the manner in which Moses revelation would have it.

This, of course, is also the demarcation line between the believer and the unbeliever. If there are only these two possibilities, I am an unbeliever. But I think there is a third way, and I choose to understand the facts before us in another way. It is that we have access to guidance from a higher realm, but that guidance reaches us in such a form that we ourselves must interpret its meaning, in detail, based on what we know and understand. Therefore it is possible to value revelation at one level and to critique it on another: namely on the level of interpretation. Exactly the same rules apply, it seems to me, to the lowest forms of inspiration, such as intuitions. These also carry a feeling of authority, but it is always sensible to test them rationally. Conversely, our reasonings should also have the nod of intuition.

Inspiration - Concluded

Third in a series on Revelation and Scripture

What I managed to say yesterday is simply that inspiration comes from “the beyond,” and in trying to explain it, I’ve produced a model of sorts. How to picture this model? I picture it as two dimensions that interpenetrated each other. One is physical; the other I simply call mental but could also call spiritual. I call the mental “higher.” Furthermore I claim that we are in bodies (rather than that we are bodies)—and that the body’s processes interfere with an unobstructed vision of the “higher realm.” What else did I assert? That our entire soul life—the workings of our minds, understanding, consciousness, and willing—draw their energy or sustenance from this hypothetical higher region or dimension. Our bodies draw their sustenance from the physical world. This is not the traditional description we encounter in religious doctrines. In those doctrines, at least as popularly understood, higher and lower do not interpenetrate. They are distinct locations. The higher (heavens, purgatories) are above us; the hells are below. Dante’s Divine Comedy places them this way. The philosophical structure undergirding western traditional views pictures a hierarchically arranged reality in which entities range from pure matter to pure spirit; to be human is to occupy an intermediate position, a matter-spirit fusion. In this view to be embodied entities is our rightful and permanent condition. We shall always be embodied, even after death—when, after the End Times, we assume our resurrection bodies.

The traditional view, largely based on the Aristotelian concept of substance (form-matter duality) in which neither form nor matter are permanent, has been modified to recognize an immortal, indestructible soul. And this soul alone—not the entire spiritual dimension—interpenetrates the body. In post-Aristotelian religious thought, embodiment is still held to be the natural state of human souls, but physical bodies decay and resurrection bodies are divinely created later. The model I proposed yesterday differs from this one in suggesting that the entire soul-dimension interpenetrates the entire physical dimension, not merely the soul the body. But that, as humans, held in tight unity with bodies (the whys of that we need to discuss too, by-and-bye), the bodily functionalities filter out most of the “higher” dimension so that we don’t ordinarily see it or perceive its presence all about us sharply.

(Here, finding that I used the word “higher,” in quotes, yet again, I would insert a clarifying note. I use that word to indicate a realm of higher subtlety, not necessarily or invariable a better, a morally elevated realm. In my mode of thought, the spiritual dimension also includes hell.)

Now, still in an attempt to make my conception more vivid, let me note that as souls we depend on the soul-dimension as our natural habitat. We live and breathe it, as it were—we live in it spiritually (our bodily life comes from matter) and we breathe its rarefied airs (thus we use its energies). Thus I propose that we are constantly inspired: waking, sleeping, working, playing, etc. But we are unaware of this. What we call inspirations are episodes of unusually intense contact with that dimension when, for some reason or another—exposure to works of arts, an inner striving, a crisis requiring extreme physical exertion, or circumstances when our filtering mechanisms weaken—we are suddenly exposed to stronger manifestations of a dimension in which we naturally live at least the human part of our mixed human-animal life. Our need for sleep may be evidence for this model. In waking states we are more isolated from our native dimension because our bodies more actively filter out that dimension so that we shall pay closer attention to the needs of physical survival. We must restore our spiritual balance at regular intervals by shutting down the noisy machinery. Not surprisingly, many inspirations come in the night.

This much will suffice to make a case for inspiration—and for particularly strong and unusual manifestations of it. But what about the notion that inspiration of the religious kind comes to us from agents, not from environments: from God, angels, saints, and other transcendental figures who act as messengers of God. This is the religious claim. I will get into that subject in the next post in this series. For the moment I will sketch an outline.

The broad framework might be stated as follows. If the soul-dimension is a real world, if we are destined to enter it after we die, that “place” may be conceived of as a genuine realm complete with all of the features of a “world” as we conceive this: thus a composite of environments analogous to those we know in this life as well as other persons, agents, like ourselves. All those elements interpenetrate this dimension, but we don’t see it. If we can enter that dimension now and then while still alive, it makes sense to assume that, from time to time, we may have actual contacts and communications with other being there who, like us, are selves and agents. I’ll say more about this in the next post.

Inspiration

Second in a series on Revelation and Scripture

Let me continue on this subject and, specifically, look at “inspiration.” As I’ve noted in the first of this series in the last post, revelations are said to be inspired. The first task then would seem to be to examine if inspiration has real standing in human experience. I think it does. And I’ll offer a theory of it.

But let me start with a working definition. A good point of departure is to look at ordinary inspiration as the word is used in the arts and in discovery, not least in science. This word, as usually used, refers to insights. They are almost always sudden and spontaneous; the artist disclaims being their source, thus as having “thought them up”; her or she will, however, acknowledge that a certain preparation came ahead of the inspiration, not least a readiness to receive, a listening attitude. We find many examples of this experience in the creative professions: every artist will agree. Inspirations also have an energetic character. They wake us up, delight us, they amaze us. Recognizing them as integral parts of experience, that experience, always, is a clear and immediate intuition that now we “have something,” also that that something didn’t come from us.

This said, opinion the splits. Some will argue that inspirations do not, repeat not, come from any outside source; to the contrary, they are the end result of subconscious brain activity. This view is legitimate enough, but if brain activity is viewed as purely naturalistic—thus if combined with a denial of mind as a separate reality—it forces the conclusion that many of our most astonishingly creative insights are the consequence of random chemistry. We’re forced to a decision here because we don’t really understand these processes mechanically—if they are purely brain-based. To assign them to the subconscious amounts to substituting one word, easily associated with brain activity (a word like reflex, which also is), for another word, inspiration, which hypothesizes some kind of higher mental realm. In our direct experience inspirations have a creative aura that puts them in the mental realm; they are exceedingly complex on examination and always surprising; they don’t resemble unconscious outcomes, like reflexes, which are adaptive rather than creative.

A decision is needed. Hence what follows is addressed to people who feel spontaneously drawn to the view that mental operations have an immaterial grounding. Those to whom the materialistic explanation sounds innately more reasonable won’t see any merits in the hypotheses I’m about to offer—despite the fact that what I propose also adequately explains their leanings.

My own theory of inspiration might be put this way. Our selves, our souls, belong into another and higher region. Even in these bodies, our mental operations are therefore grounded in another region or dimension. We don’t draw on its energies much, certainly not in our mundane activities, but when we are engaged in creative ventures, our use of higher energies increases and the filtering processes that keep it more or less inaccessible and certainly invisible get in the way of our creative endeavors. The listening stance that we assume when we’re trying to produce arts, understand difficult problems, understand the physical world beyond the kinds of actions we have in common with chipmunks, in creating arts of all kinds—in words, sounds, or visions—that attitude of listening is testimony of our effort, somehow, to reach a dimension native to us although we’re unaware of it except as motions of our will. Here I would stress two things. One is that active involvement in a problem often interferes with its solution, especially when we hit a snag. Inspirations often arise precisely because we turn aside from the problems, release them from active consideration, when we let our minds wander, or sleep, or engage in relaxation. While we thus remove some of the interference, some element of our mind or self is able to contact a more energetic realm, our native dimension. There the elements of the problem are resorted, new linkages form, and visions that don’t reach us in waking states appear. The solution, more or less complete—but by no means fully worked out—then suddenly presents itself in time. The Aha! moment follows. Sometimes we remember participating in this process while we are asleep but dreaming.

This theory fits experience rather well. It explains why inspiration sometimes reaches us suddenly and, at other times, flows like a river. In the first case it was blocked, had to be allowed to cumulate; in the other our personal openness to a higher energetic streaming was greater and therefore every note was perfect and every stroke of the brush brought delight.

I note that these entries require more space than I like to devote to a single blog entry. Therefore, to go on, I’ll need another day.

Revelation and Scripture: The Problem

None of us approaches reality without at least having heard traditional answers to the basic questions. These certainly include the one: Why are we here at all? That question may be put in very basic terms: Why do we exist? Another and potentially more answerable form of it might be: Why are we here on earth?

The traditional western answer is that we are creatures willed to exist by God, a being of infinite power, knowledge, and perfection whose deeper motivations we cannot ever hope to plumb. If we seek the roots of this assertion, we encounter scriptures, literally writings; they assert the answer in mythological forms. Being scriptures, people had to have produced them. To lift these writings to a level above mere storytelling, the tradition calls scriptures inspired writings. The meaning of that word, inspiration, suggests a transmission of meanings from a being or beings at some higher level than the human; the meanings were perceived by some one or several people gifted in some way. They formulated what they perceived; later the substance was written own.

I use both being and beings because, in the case of the Muslim tradition the Angel Gabriel was the conduit of the teachings of Mohammed; and in the Bible angels also play a role as messengers of God. This suggests a hierarchy of higher beings culminating in the Most High who, at various times, most notably addressing Moses from the burning bush, manifested directly and named itself I AM. The western tradition, therefore, may be summed up as holding that a hierarchy of being exists. Its peak is Ultimate Being. The meaning of our existences flows from that peak. And the details are the revelation of that meaning as recorded in the scriptures. Which of the many holy books properly or legitimately belong to the category of scripture is, to some extent, a consensus that has developed over time. It has also changed over time and may well change again.

Now the question I pose today is this one: Is it legitimate simply to dismiss all this as nonsense? The argument for doing so might run as follows: Scriptures are just writings by people, and higher inspiration is simply a claim. The claim may be innocent or calculating. Innocent claims may come from sincere but deluded people who think themselves in communication with God or with angels; they really believe it, but lacking any third party confirmation (good journalistic practice, that) the claims carry no special authority. To the countering argument that sometimes such figures perform miracles, the skeptic answers that miracles are mostly due to natural causes—especially healings; and that proofs of such miracles—when available, which is rarely—are always ambiguous. The second tack, namely that the claimants are calculating, needs no detailed presentation: such people are seeking power and influence and are merely engaging in one form of persuasion that works well on the gullible. Dismissal of revelation is then followed by two more general arguments.

One is the assertion that the results of such teachings in social life produce at least as much evil as good: religious wars, persecutions, pogroms, inquisitions, the arbitrary suppression of scientific discovery, the exploitation of the poor to enrich a priestly class, the oppression of women, the maintenance of authoritarian government, etc., etc. The crowning objection is that scriptures present contradictory images of God or of God’s will, reflect the social consensus of their time (e.g., as regards the status of women) and that different religious traditions have contrasting doctrines. Mazdaism is dualistic, for example; Judaism and Islam are monotheistic; and Christianity produced a Trinitarian deity.

Is there possibly a third way of seeing all this? I think there is. Neither the dogmatic nor the materialistic stance here seems to me to capture the essence of what is going on. I think that revelation is real enough if properly defined and understood; scriptures, similarly, are genuine enough and carry truth—but not if rigidly interpreted and dogmatically enforced. If both—revelation and scripture—are viewed from a higher perspective than is usually the case, their origins and merits gradually emerge. And the skeptics’ attack can be answered point by point, not least the two general dismissals based on bad results and contradictory teachings. But to carry out this task will require at least one and perhaps more posts. Stay tuned.