Sunday, March 27, 2016

Christianity as Distinctly Religious: A New Species?

The human mind naturally tends to make (and remake) religion into familiar terms, while resisting the wholly other as such. As David Hume explains, the human mind is naturally drawn to what is familiar to itself; considerably more effort is required to hold onto the notion of pure divine simplicity without adding ornaments. Sociological phenomena such as father-son relationships and the role of a son are more familiar than the Son as Logos and agape.[1] The resurrection is typically thought of in supernatural physiological and historical terms, rather than as whose meaning is distinctly religious and, furthermore, is part of a religious narrative. The Trinity as existing in reality metaphysically is easier to understand than the Trinity as transcending reality, as it’s source rather than its substance. God as the first cause of the Big Bang is easier to grasp than God as the source or condition of Creation. These all-too-easy category mistakes are particularly problematic in that they obscure religion as distinctly religious.

The full essay is at "Christianity as Distinctly Religious."






1. For more on this point and that of David Hume, see ch. 12 of God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth.