The Lack of Reason for God, Chapter 14
Dec. 25th, 2014 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blimixThis is part of a series examining the the logic of Timothy Keller's book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.
Standard disclaimer: This, despite being a public post, is not an invitation for a religion debate with strangers. Been there, done that, still jaded.
Last week: Chapter 13 espoused the resurrection.
Chapter 14
In which the holy trinity loves itself to bits.
(Page numbers are from the hardcover version of the book.)
Keller launches into a bunch of often metaphorical gibberish about god and the holy trinity. (e.g., "The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around him or her, we center on the interests and desires of the other. That creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two." "Ultimate reality is a community of persons who know and love one another. That is what the universe, God, history, and life is all about.") If he didn't overuse the comparison to dancing, it might have been pretty. None of it carries enough meaning to convey any information, nor is most of it even coherent enough to be addressed. The entire chapter establishes nothing more than a view of each part of the trinity selflessly loving the other two parts, and also sharing that love with mortals. There is no reasoning leading to or from this view.
p. 214. "Christianity, alone among the world faiths, teaches that God is triune."
Not quite alone. Some Hindus believe in a three-in-one god. Vaishnavism: "Earlier forms of the Trimurti sometimes included Surya instead of Brahma, or as a fourth above the Trimurti, of whom the other three are manifestations; Surya is Brahma in the morning, Vishnu in the afternoon and Shiva in the evening." Shaivism: "Thus, Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra are not deities different from Shiva, but rather are forms of Shiva."
p. 215, footnote 1. "Hilary of Poitiers, in Concerning the Trinity (3:1), says each person of the Trinity 'reciprocally contains the others, so that one permanently envelopes and is permanently enveloped by, the others whom he yet envelopes.'"
Any student of basic set theory can tell you that the only way this will happen is if the three parts are precisely identical.
p. 216. "If there is no God, then everything in and about us is the product of blind impersonal forces. The experience of love may feel significant, but evolutionary naturalists tell us that it is merely a biochemical state in the brain."
Here, Keller again struggles with the holism/reductionism dichotomy, which we explored in chapter 6. Looking at love from a chemical standpoint does not negate its reality in, and pertinence to, our experience. There is nothing "mere" about love.
p. 216. "When people say, 'God is love,' I think they mean that love is extremely important, or that God really wants us to love. But in the Christian conception, God really has love as his essence."
Need I remind the reader that Keller argued strongly against this idea in chapter 5?
My book club friend points out that Keller presumes too much: "God is love" has a myriad of possible meanings.
p. 216. "If he [god] was the impersonal all-soul of Eastern thought, he couldn't have been loving, for love is something persons do. Eastern religions believe the individual personality is an illusion, and therefore love is, too."
The first sentence seems arbitrary. "Persons" apparently includes humans and the Christian god, but not the "all-soul," for no reason other than that he describes the "all-soul" as "impersonal". Why can love be the essence of god, but not of the universe, the all-soul, or the light side of the Force?
The conclusion of the second sentence is outlandish. For reference, "In Buddhism, one of the goals is to reach a loving compassionate state where one is capable of seeing, caring for, and genuinely loving everyone and everything." (Source.) See also religious views on love.
p. 217. "In many other places in this volume, I've traced out how impossible it is to stay fully human if you refuse the cost of forgiveness, the substitutional exchange of love, and the confinements of community."
My book club friend notes that Keller has done no such thing: He has not spoken at all on the subject of staying "fully human". He has described those refusals simply as things that one ought not to do. The cost of such refusal was measured in salvation, personality flaws, and/or security in one's sense of identity. Personally, if my refusal of Keller's ideas keeps me from staying fully human, so that I turn into an elf, or grow a useful tentacle, I'm okay with that.
p. 218. Keller cites George Marsden summarizing Jonathan Edwards, in saying that god created the universe in order to share his love and joy.
My book club friend tells me that this presentation of god does not represent classical Christian theology, but rather "modern moderate evangelical theology". I don't know if he's preaching this because he believes it, because he finds it easy to justify, or because he thinks that it will be more attractive to non-believers. Not that it makes any practical difference.
The chapter from here on is merely a sermon, with no reasoning to speak of.
Next week: In the epilogue, Keller discusses the process of converting.
The whole series.
Standard disclaimer: This, despite being a public post, is not an invitation for a religion debate with strangers. Been there, done that, still jaded.
Last week: Chapter 13 espoused the resurrection.
In which the holy trinity loves itself to bits.
(Page numbers are from the hardcover version of the book.)
Keller launches into a bunch of often metaphorical gibberish about god and the holy trinity. (e.g., "The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around him or her, we center on the interests and desires of the other. That creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two." "Ultimate reality is a community of persons who know and love one another. That is what the universe, God, history, and life is all about.") If he didn't overuse the comparison to dancing, it might have been pretty. None of it carries enough meaning to convey any information, nor is most of it even coherent enough to be addressed. The entire chapter establishes nothing more than a view of each part of the trinity selflessly loving the other two parts, and also sharing that love with mortals. There is no reasoning leading to or from this view.
p. 214. "Christianity, alone among the world faiths, teaches that God is triune."
Not quite alone. Some Hindus believe in a three-in-one god. Vaishnavism: "Earlier forms of the Trimurti sometimes included Surya instead of Brahma, or as a fourth above the Trimurti, of whom the other three are manifestations; Surya is Brahma in the morning, Vishnu in the afternoon and Shiva in the evening." Shaivism: "Thus, Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra are not deities different from Shiva, but rather are forms of Shiva."
p. 215, footnote 1. "Hilary of Poitiers, in Concerning the Trinity (3:1), says each person of the Trinity 'reciprocally contains the others, so that one permanently envelopes and is permanently enveloped by, the others whom he yet envelopes.'"
Any student of basic set theory can tell you that the only way this will happen is if the three parts are precisely identical.
p. 216. "If there is no God, then everything in and about us is the product of blind impersonal forces. The experience of love may feel significant, but evolutionary naturalists tell us that it is merely a biochemical state in the brain."
Here, Keller again struggles with the holism/reductionism dichotomy, which we explored in chapter 6. Looking at love from a chemical standpoint does not negate its reality in, and pertinence to, our experience. There is nothing "mere" about love.
p. 216. "When people say, 'God is love,' I think they mean that love is extremely important, or that God really wants us to love. But in the Christian conception, God really has love as his essence."
Need I remind the reader that Keller argued strongly against this idea in chapter 5?
My book club friend points out that Keller presumes too much: "God is love" has a myriad of possible meanings.
p. 216. "If he [god] was the impersonal all-soul of Eastern thought, he couldn't have been loving, for love is something persons do. Eastern religions believe the individual personality is an illusion, and therefore love is, too."
The first sentence seems arbitrary. "Persons" apparently includes humans and the Christian god, but not the "all-soul," for no reason other than that he describes the "all-soul" as "impersonal". Why can love be the essence of god, but not of the universe, the all-soul, or the light side of the Force?
The conclusion of the second sentence is outlandish. For reference, "In Buddhism, one of the goals is to reach a loving compassionate state where one is capable of seeing, caring for, and genuinely loving everyone and everything." (Source.) See also religious views on love.
p. 217. "In many other places in this volume, I've traced out how impossible it is to stay fully human if you refuse the cost of forgiveness, the substitutional exchange of love, and the confinements of community."
My book club friend notes that Keller has done no such thing: He has not spoken at all on the subject of staying "fully human". He has described those refusals simply as things that one ought not to do. The cost of such refusal was measured in salvation, personality flaws, and/or security in one's sense of identity. Personally, if my refusal of Keller's ideas keeps me from staying fully human, so that I turn into an elf, or grow a useful tentacle, I'm okay with that.
p. 218. Keller cites George Marsden summarizing Jonathan Edwards, in saying that god created the universe in order to share his love and joy.
My book club friend tells me that this presentation of god does not represent classical Christian theology, but rather "modern moderate evangelical theology". I don't know if he's preaching this because he believes it, because he finds it easy to justify, or because he thinks that it will be more attractive to non-believers. Not that it makes any practical difference.
The chapter from here on is merely a sermon, with no reasoning to speak of.
Next week: In the epilogue, Keller discusses the process of converting.
The whole series.
