Del Toro on Fantasy and Religion

Yet does not our own Scripture also do just this? Does not the book of Revelation speak metaphorically of the beast as a political metaphor? (really bad Left Behind junk aside) Obviously the main difference is that the metaphors that John the Revelator used were intentional because of his own persecution so he had to remain under the radar and be subversive, whereas Del Toro has a completely different intent.

I could name many other examples of metaphor that our own sacred texts use, I suppose, but then again, even articles like this one remind us that for all of Del Toro’s attempt to overcome his Roman Catholicism, it seems like he can’t help but still have very Christian themes in his dark movies. Thoughts?

Del Toro said, “The fantastic is the only tool we have nowadays to explain spirituality to a generation that refuses to believe in dogma or religion.”

Perhaps. But what spirituality are you explaining & why exactly does it matter? Spirituality is just another word for a self chosen religion. A choosing of one’s own god, as it were.

And this has been the problem with mankind throughout all history, our desire to chose our own god(s), our own spirituality.

So, if Del Toro is a lapsed Catholic, I wonder just what sort of spirituality he thinks people should be taught & how the fantastical can do that. Because I don’t know what he’s talking about when he says we’re in a generation that refuses to believe in dogma or religion. People are always going to believe in something & right now that something is along the lines of chose whatever makes you feel good about yourself & don’t ever, ever claim that there’s only one way of spirituality. And people will be quite dogmatic about that!

revgeorge, you’re welcome. Regarding Del Toro, The Hobbit, and LWW, though — the world of the Hobbit is far less overt in the subject material than in the LWW regarding its Christianity, regardless of how faithful its authors are. That’s not to obviously say that either of the stories in question are more or less “Christian” (I would hardly want to even attempt to compare or judge), but it honestly doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to see Del Toro directing The Hobbit based on the story itself. Being a Kierkegaardian myself, I’m a bit hesitant with the more overt stuff anyway, but that’s another conversation (and I don’t have anything against LWW).

But still, I’m with Travis that Del Toro realllly should get to doing At the Mountains of Madness!

At least in the US, I don’t think religion in general is taboo, despite popular proclamations otherwise. I haven’t seen any hard and fast statistics on the subject, but my impression is that the number of active participants in the three major monotheisms has been on the rise over the last ten years or so. Thus, religion itself doesn’t seem taboo — just the potential to offend others of specific beliefs. Perhaps some of you with more expertise can speak more concretely on that subject.

I think the reason fantasy has garnered such popularity has to do with a version of a thesis John Granger and Travis both have been arguing with HP — that it’s a way of smuggling a more emotional/symbolic understanding of faith into our culture. I don’t think the lack of such an understanding is entirely due to a broad spectrum lack of faith. We also should pay attention to the fact that the dominant public voices in religious expressions of all kinds lately have been extremely literal in their interpretations of their faith and their scriptures.

Eric, you asked initially about metaphoric understandings of the Bible, particularly Revlation. In many cultures here in the US (including my own), Revelation is a literal account of what is to come — blood, Four Horsemen, and all. Whether or not this is in fact the way most Christians believe, it’s certainly become loudest voice in mainstream faith in the US.

Dave,

Very excellent points! Religion may be taboo as a discussion topic, but there are plenty of people in the United States that are religious.

I like the world “smuggling” in this context. C.S. Lewis discusses this idea in his essay “(Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say What’s Best To Be Said”:

Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. … But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.

Regarding the “extremely literal in interpretations of faith and scriptures”: this is an interesting and modern phenomenon. Karen Armstrong’s book The Battle for God discusses this in great detail. The first five chapters or so are important for anyone interested in religion, myth, fantasy, and intellectual history. She looks at how in the last few hundred years modernity and its scientific and rational way of thinking (which she calls logos) replaced in the European tradition the more intuitive and mystical way of thinking (which she calls mythos). We see in Christianity in America today, at least in the dominant public voices, the scriptures interpreted as if they reflected logos instead of mythos.

Randy,

I wasn’t trying to express anything as deep as you mentioned in your post. What I mainly was trying to do was point out that the word ’spirituality’ is pretty useless on its own, without any context.

That is, it sounds nice. I’m a spiritual person. I believe in spirituality. But it is the ultimate in ambiguity. One doesn’t have to be specific about anything. It’s a word that we add all the definitions to. Spirituality is something totally within our control, because we can make it mean anything we want. Spirituality is a noun derived from an adjective, which means it really has to be used to define something else, i.e. the spirituality of Catholics or of Buddhists or of something concrete & definable. By itself, it is as I pointed out, a wax nose we can bend & shape anyway we want.

So, I am totally confused by Del Toro’s statement, “How do we bring spirituality to a generation that has rejected dogma & religion?” He seems, in the end, to be advocating replacing an old dogma & religion with a new one crafted by mythological imagery & fantastical insights. Again, just what spirituality is he thinking needs to be brought to a new generation? Some specificity on his part would be nice.

I take Randy’s statements as the more accurate point of departure for interpreting del Toro’s comments. I think he’s just using “spirituality” as a counterpoint to “materialism”. Del Toro seems to want to turn the contemporary preoccupation with spectacle back upon itself and recover some element from the sound and the fury so that it does signify something. I haven’t seen everything, but del Toro doesn’t do shocking just for the sake of itself.

Pan’s Labyrinth is at once one of the most disturbing and violent movies I’ve ever watched, yet also one of the more uplifting and emotionally powerful films I’ve seen. Ofelia’s hope to escape the ravages of wartorn Spain (and eventual inability to do so) play as an immensely rich folktale in the more traditional vain — like the original Grimm’s Tales. I know he’s expressed admiration for horror/gore masters like David Cronenberg and John Carpenter, and his films outside the Hellboy movies are literally dripping with their influences in some scenes. But del Toro manages to frontload the spectacle into a more challenging purpose than an hour and a half of escapism.

It just seems we’re maybe parsing a particular word a bit too much.

revgeorge, I have no problem with you disagreeing with me! :~) However, I haven’t actually made any claims about what I personally believe. All my comments are observations about what other people believe. Just for clarity’s sake: do you disagree with me or with the people I describe?

For example:

I said: Many modern people believe that science has proven that religion is false. — Do you disagree with me and insist that many people believe this? Or do you just disagree with people that believe this?
I said: But for someone who does not accept religious traditions as authoritative, that’s all they have. — Do you disagree with me that such people have something else? Or do you just disagree with people that reject religious traditions as authoritative?
I said: I think Del Toro believes that fantasy can do that for people that do not believe in a religion. — Do you disagree with me and insist that Del Toro does not believe this? Or do you disagree with del Toro if he thinks this?

Am I right? Do you disagree with the people I describe and not with me? (If not, I’d love to hear what you disagree with me about.) If so, did you find my comments helpful in understanding del Toro’s comments — even if you disagree with him?

I apologize, Randy, for my confusion.

First, I do not disagree that many people believe what you have posited. That’s why I pointed out the wishy washy nature of the word ’spirituality.’ Instead, I disagree that such a view of religion & spirituality is an accurate view. And I don’t think such people really end up rejecting religious belief as authoritative; they simply find their authority somewhere else & in general that authority comes from themselves. But I don’t doubt that you’ve painted a fairly accurate picture of modern day belief. I hope that’s a more clarifying answer.

And yes, I did find your analysis of Del Toro’s comments most helpful. I was going to say that in my previous post, but I forgot.

I’ll see your avatar and raise you one…

penguin gunfighter vs. sniper kitten…

Dave, what’s your current avatar? I never could tell. I always think it looks like something from a monster movie. I used to use a Godzilla avatar before Outlaw Tux.

revgeorge,

That’s an excellent question: what is Dave’s avatar?

I believe he’s in mid metamorphosis and we’re about to get a gun-toting feline. But what’s the one we’ve been seeing? An alien spaceship. A robot entity? A high-tech five-armed jack? What?

Quick, guess before it changes and we never see it again!

BTW, I wrote a very, very long comment for this post earlier in the day and decided not to post it. Not really my area of expertise.

Randy,

No thoughts. It was just some stats, about the percentage of people in various countries and various age groups who self-identify as belonging to a certain religion, who say they believe in God (and with what degree of certainty, ranging from absolutely certain to not at all.

Point being, belief in God and religious behaviour varies from country to country and by age group. But even in the young generation (age 18-29) which is the group which I believe del Toro was referring to, more than half are “absolutely” or “somehat” certain that there is a God.

Randy,

I already had your myth site bookmarked. I’ve just been hesitant to start in on it because, well, I’m sure I’ll be drawn into it pretty heavily & I’ve already got a lot going on. But I am looking forward to reading through the articles on there soon.

I agree with you, & thus with Tolkien & Lewis, about the power & place of myth to complement Christian belief. I think they are on the right track in their belief that all myths simply hearken back to the one great True Myth. Lewis especially. His favourite work of his own, & one of my own favourite, is Till We Have Faces, appropriately subtitled A Myth Retold.

I also think you’re right in that people who have lost or ignored the authority of religious tradition, whatever it may be, can find in stories of myth or fantasy, even horror, a connection with ’spirituality.’ Which is why I think stories like Harry Potter so resonate with people. HP taps into something people are looking for or longing for, just like Lewis was seeking, his sehnsucht.

Speaking of large bipedal walking tanks, Vin Diesel has a movie coming out later this summer: Babylon AD. Saw the trailer before Mummy 3: the death of a Franchise Diesel looks cool, but then I’ve always been a sucker for big bald men with well-developed upper bodies. Don’t ask. The even better news is that after a long hiatus, The Fast and the Furious is back. If there’s one thing that turns me on more than big bald men, etc, it’s big bald men driving fast cars.

What’s the link to the ongoing conversation? The link that Dave provided above features an ad for Babylon AD.

So I take it you haven’t seen Pitch Black or The Chronicles of Riddick? Nor ever played The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury? or Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay?

Pitch Black is to XXX as Pirates of the Caribbean 1 is to The Ninth Gate

I think del Toro is defining religious as belief in God and religious doctrine. He says this generation “refuses to believe in dogma or religion”; dogma and belief are not traditionally part what you mean by religion, as an experience of the numinous.

I do think his word “spirituality” does refer to this experience of the numinous and is something that he is trying to encourage. He makes it sound like dogma and belief can produce this kind of spirituality; Travis, are you trying to say that this kind of religion does not produce such an experience?

Your comments about alchemy are interesting. I might be more of a Jungian than I realize, does it really matter if the metals aren’t really transformed? Perhaps the metals have to be transformed in the story world and perhaps the alchemist has to believe the metals are transformed in the physical world, but I’d say the magic has done the trick if the soul is transformed.

Travis said, “Further, I’d say that, as far as Christians churches go, the majority of the “growth” (leading Dave and Randy to conclude that religion is not on the slide) has come from within churches that specifically do not like religion and downplay traditional religious elements of the faith.”

Except that such churches aren’t really growing. They aren’t forming new Christians per se but are cycling through members as people try to get more & better spiritual experiences.

But aside from that point, yes, you’re right. Most churches nowadays & most people nowadays can’t abide sacramental theology. They are gnostics or mystics. But I’d also say that’s been the way it’s always been, too, for the most part.

Travis, I think you and I are in closer accord — you just write about this far better than I do. My larger point is that the main voices of faith in the US have essentially reduced the numinous into a literalist (even materialist) expression. It’s basically Randy’s point, that the scientific influence in reason has pushed many believers to catalogue numinous experiences in very literal terms.

Thus, there seems to be something a reactionary reflex when some of these voices (e.g. the RA-who-must-not-be-named) encounter much more figurative expressions. Abanes seems to me sometimes flatly unwilling to accept a metaphoric presentation of Christian ideals — especially if the metaphors seem at odds with the surface meaning(s) of scriptures.

Another anecdote for this tension has to do with my World Cultures students I sometimes teach at the University of Evansville. During the fall semester, one of their texts is Genesis and Exodus. They have to attend general, program-wide lectures that give them background in the cultural and bibliographical history of the books. It has never failed that many of my students are up in arms because they feel that learning the history surrounding the text’s composition calls into question its legitimacy as literal history.

Yet, the spring semester sees them read some of Galileo’s writing, including theLetter to the Grand Duchess Christina. The Letter defends Galileo’s pursuit of science and the Copernican system by arguing that astronomy (and other physical sciences) addresses details of human experience that Bible is not “intended” to. He quotes at length from all the proper sources (Augustine, Aquinas, etc.) to defend his argument. He essentially defends the exact process my students undergo with Genesis, and my students almost always really like the argument (at least when they pay attention to it).

Of course, to don my postmodernist’s mantle for a second, I think a large part of the problem we’re discussing is a problem with language and expression in our culture — picking up on revgeorge’s earlier point. Nothing in our culture is exactly what it says.

Conservatives and Liberals are really neither.

“Reality” television usually involves hyper-realized types in fantastical scenes/situations.

There’s a long list that I won’t go into, but Travis’s comment hints at this issue cropping up in faith practices:

This is important, because religious rite and ceremony are traditional means of experiencing the supernatural – of heaven and earth coming close together and meeting in sacramental participation. Much of U.S. “spiritual” culture has become far too gnostic to abide a sacramental theology.

That “gnostic” turn is really an “agnostic” one I think. Our drive toward reason has resulted in an overload of information in which contradictory “facts” seem equally credible. Think of the dilemma in which two statistics about the same issue seem to suggest radically different conclusions. Theology suffers from the same predicament. The information overload becomes so overwhelming that end up accepting both conclusions, despite the incoherence. It’s not relativism per se — I would argue that it’s actually a rather nihilist declaration.

Some of this conversation pertains to the brief exchange of comments Travis and I had on the last podcast post, but this post is much more “happening” so I’m going to put this thought here.

I’m re-reading _Christian Mythmakers_ and struggling through some of the ideas of why “myth” connects with my soul, and wondering where a scientific, “earthly” understanding of the world fits in. Travis suggested (and several commenters here are talking about) sacrament. I think this is helpful.

The next section of this book I’m reading just happened to be on sacrament! It quotes Clide Kilby about CS Lewis’ understanding of sacrament. In the Ransom stories, Kilby says “One of the most significant things Ransom learned on his journeys to Mars and Venus was that ‘the triple distinction of truth from myth, and of both from fact was purely terrestrial – was part and parcel of the unhappy division between soul and body which resulted from the Fall. Even on Earth the sacraments existed as a permanent reminder that the division was neither wholesome nor final. The Incarnation had been the beginning of its disappearance…’” Kilby goes on: “Myth – the Christian element of myth at least – is therefore something like the Eucharist itself, a symbol of man’s relationship to God and of his glorious return to paradisal fellowship with the uncreated, unconditional Reality Himself.”

I think this sacramental understanding of the world may a bridge to help us integrate the outward and the inward…?

Thanks, Travis! Well said. I agree. Lewis’ writings reflect that. As he grew in maturity, he, too, seemed to lean more toward orienting himself toward the mystery. _The Pilgrim’s Regress_ is all about him grappling with intellectual obstacles to faith, whereas his later works, like Til We Have Faces, show him submitting to the more mythic elements of knowing God. I’ve got to quote this book again: “Orual’s devastating intellectual humiliation before the gods, her affirmation of the supreme efficacy of self-abandoning love, her desire that her work be read in ‘Greece,’ and the humbling of the Fox, all stand as Lewis’ final comments on the matter.” Amen, and amen!

Is it in Til We Have Faces that Lewis talks about the “thick” and the “clear” methods of seeing truth? I can’t remember – maybe Mere Christianity.

Now, Travis, you know that the imagination is b-a-d!!!

After the final section of the article discussing why the book is popular with adults, despite its aim towards children, the article drops this:

Jesus tells us in the book of Mark to “be like little children.” What a great way to learn about Christianity or reaffirm your faith! — read this Christian children’s novel and see if J.C. Lamb in The Secret of Yahweh! really is the “answer” people say it is.

Perhaps I’m missing something that revgeorge, Randy, or Leanne might clarify for me — this seems about as literalist as it could be.

Korg,

Lots of movies are flops. I strongly suspect that most movies fail to make a profit, either through lack of publicity, lack of distribution, because they don’t have wide-spread appeal, or because they fail to entertain, move or enlighten. And I think that cuts across genres.

I haven’t seen Lady in the Water. But I only blame Shyamalan for that. I fell in love with his work after watching Sixth Sense and faithfully went to three of his movies after that: Unbreakable, Signs, The Village And was grievously disappointed each time. So after reading the fairly negative reviews for Lady I just didn’t want to waste my time. And you too might have discovered that going into a movie with high expecatations which are slowly extinguished is a lot worse than going into a movie with low or even no expectations.

Unfortunately for me, he’s about to make a movie based on an animated children’s TV series which I love very much: Avatar, the Last Air Bender. The series just wrapped up in a very satifsying fashion on TV after 3 seasons. I would highly recommend the DVD sets. So I feel compelled to go. Knowing full well that the most likely outcome is disappointment, again. I hold onto only one strand of hope: a reviewer once said that Shyamalan, the writer, lets down Shyamalan the director. Since Avatar has been completely plotted out for him, maybe it will be safe.

Agree completely about Phantom Menace btw. The only part that half-way worked was the pod racing. If the characters had been called by different names, it would have been recognized as the B movie it was.

I agree with Dave about Signs. I liked it all the way till the very end.

I’m a big fan of The Village. Never seen <em<Unbreakable. I agree with Matthew – Lady in the Water was excellent; a quirky sort of postmodern take on myth and story. Hollywood hated it, because it picked on Hollywood.

Shyamalan has another one out now: The Happening which seems to suffer from the same symptoms: interesting premise, carefully orchestrated build-up, and nowhere to go to except a flat, cliche ending.

For those who liked/loved Unbreakable I struggled to like that movie. I justified its lack of heart and meaning in many different ways. I truly tried. But in the end, I was left empty. It just didn’t work for me. Waste of two talented actors.

For those who liked/loved The Village once we saw the red mask, it was game over. Peggy Lee’s Is that all there is? with a vengeance. Interesting premise though, with many real life parallels. Shyamalan just couldn’t do justice to it.

Same thing for Signs All that wonderful buildup (and the man does do that better than anyone else I know). And in the end? Give me a break. Was there no advance team to do a chemical analysis of the atmosphere? How about the fact that the planet is BLUE? And what’s with the aluminum caps? It was worse than flat and cliche; it was extremely silly.

I loved Unbreakable. It takes ideas from comic books and projects them into real life in a very thought-provoking way. I can watch that movie over and over; even though the ending is no longer a surprise, it has that quality of surprising that Travis often mentions from C.S. Lewis. Unbreakable explores a few of the themes from from comic books, but it does so outside of the context of a comic book story. (The Joker in the new Batman movie expresses some of the same thoughts as Elijah, Samuel L. Jackson’s character, though Elijah is of course a much more sympathetic character.)

Regarding “J.C. Lamb” … wow! Dave, I wouldn’t count this book as literalist since the author probably doesn’t believe there was a real Christian warrior with a sign of a fish on his chest. But I would say it is the literalist mindset that would drive someone to create it. People have commented on the site before that “Christian art” too often works harder to be “Christian” than to be “art”, and that sounds like what this would be.

I don’t want to judge it without having read it — well, I suppose I kind of do — but I imagine it’s probably a fun story with a blatantly moral message but without any of the depth of the alchemical framework in Harry Potter. Reading a book where a character says “Be good” is not a transforming experience. Good artists know how to weave together symbols and pattern of events and evoke a response in the one perceiving the art: the belief of this site, I take it, is that Rowling succeeds in doing exactly this in the Harry Potter stories.

Travis,

That was certainly a potentially fascinating aspect of the The Village: embracing a lie to preserve your values. I often think about that movie when I look at the pictures of the Mormon child-brides and read about Bountiful. B.C. But my answer to that would be: the movie wasn’t set up as a movie about sacrificing truth – and freedom – for the sake of your (questionable) values. It was set up as a pseudo-supernatural suspense thriller, with shadowy monsters lurking at the edges of the world. And 3/4 of the way through, the suspense thriller morphs into a social commentary.

That is either plain dishonest, or it’s the sign of a film maker who doesn’t know what he wants to say.

Great discussion going on. I kind of got distracted away & have just finished reading through all the messages since I last commented.

First, an easy comment, Matthew is right. Phantom Menace et al sucked. The only thing I liked out of Phantom Menace was Darth Maul. Pretty sad when I was rooting for him to kill Qi Jong.

Second, I’m really happy Till We Have Faces got brought into all this. I think in it Lewis does manage to combine the reality that we find in life. The real material world & yet the real spiritual world as they combine & impinge upon one another & the spiritual, numinous world being in the end the deeper one that brings meaning to all the rest.

That quote from the old priest of Ungit is priceless. He gets it. He’s not denying reason or reality but he knows there’s something deeper going on, something that can’t be quantified & qualified by limited human knowledge.

Lewis does a similar thing in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader when the answer is given to Eustace’s assertion that a star is simply a great, glowing ball of gas. “Even in your world, that’s not what a star is, simply what it is made of.”

I too have read a lot of comics. I could tell you the names of the founding members of the Legion of Super Heroes, the name of Aquaman’s wife, and recite Green Lantern’s oath. So of course I could understand the superhero references of Unbreakable It just failed to move me, that’s all.

But speaking of exploring interesting ground, I can see a clear parallel between David Dunn/Elijah Price on the one hand and Batman/Joker on the other. And although I haven’t seen it yet, I suspect Nolan does a better job of exploring the yin/yang aspect of good and evil.

Travis, the problem with The Village for me is that I went into it expecting a suspense/supernatural thriller. I think a lot of people did. That is certainly how it was publicized. If I had known it was a social commentary, I might still have gone – although I suspect many others would not – but my expectations would have been very different. And I do think there is something basically dishonest in “outing” a movie as a social commentary 3/4 of the way in.

But if you (Travis and Korg) did find pleasure in Shyamalan’s more recent movies, that’s great. I too have delighted in movies which others could not relate to.

Very interesting! In my experience ‘lapsed Catholic’ often translates ‘protesteth too much.’ He won’t do the more Protestant work LWW, but jumps into The Hobbit (albeit less Catholic that LOTR), but my goodness, what would Freud say about that!!??? (Or Tolkien for that matter?)

I love fantasy as a religious person, because like fairy tales, they seem to better convey the mysteries of belief.

Thanks Rev.

I meant to say ‘than LOTR’ (I type too fast)

“But fantasy fiction must be sacramental. The magic is never just about inner psychological wellness (with apologies to Jung). It’s about physical “stuff” happening, by magic, and corresponding to and producing change in the individual.”

Aha! Nail on the head Travis!! Fantasy is no fun or no good IMHO if it ignores this aspect! But of course even more fun than sacraments in fantasy, are sacramentals!! (especially since they make the most awesome jewelry!)

Steve, @62, Thanks for referencing that passage from Till We Have Faces. One of the things I love about C.S. Lewis’ work is how wonderfully he expresses his ideas in his fiction and his non-fiction. I had read that passage recently but had not connected it with the “Christian Apologetics” essay.

Travis</strong< @38, you said that “Much of U.S. spiritual culture has become far too gnostic to abide a sacramental theology.” I can tell that you prefer a more sacramental theology, but not everyone does. I don’t think you are trying to make a value judgment that sacramental religion is better than a gnostic one, are you?

Many people consciously use the term “gnostic” to refer to their theology in a positive way. I just finished a book by a Sufi scholar in which he repeatedly referred to the great Sufi masters as “gnostics” where I would have used the word “mystic”. (You suggested “way” for “road”, which I think is good; this author used the word “path” throughout.)

Not to add too much to a religious debate. But one involves certainty based on who the doer is & one involves doubt based on who the doer is. I’ll leave you to decide which is which.

And also preferences is probably not helpful in speaking about truth. As in I prefer to take the bus rather than the train. The question more should be, which one is actually going to get me to my destination? And to come up with that answer involves concrete truth. If the bus is not going to take me to my destination, then it doesn’t really matter that I prefer it, I’d better get on the train instead. Now, whether the train & the bus are going to the same place is another question, also involving truth.

revgeorge, Yes, many people would claim that the train and the bus are going to the same destination. There’s a popular statement in the Vedas along these lines: ” Truth is One, though the sages see it as many.” I bring this up not to agree or to disagree with it here, or even discuss it. I think you are right that it’s not a matter of preference but of truth, and this is probably not the right place to discuss whether this statement is true or not.

Travis, Sufism is definitely “mystic” — and I would guess it is “gnostic” in the way you are using the term.

Travis, I thought you were saying that authentic Christianity is sacramental and thus the more gnostic form of Christianity in America is thus inauthentic. I see that you are saying much more than that. I do not want this to spiral into a “whatever works for you” discussion or anything, but I would just point out that many people would argue that sacramental theology.

(I should also make it clear that I have not put forth any of my own views about religion. Just like you don’t want to hear pop singers talk about their personal political views, you probably don’t want to hear me talk about my personal religious views.)

I agree, too, Randy. But I think it also not helpful to use the term personal religious beliefs. Because by prefacing it with personal, we already frame how the discussion will go & predetermine its conclusion. And the conclusion will wind us up in relativism.

When we do discuss these things, we shouldn’t focus on whose belief it is but on whether or not it is true. What I do or do not believe about it shouldn’t matter. When you’re about to snip the wire on the explosive charge, you don’t ask about what you believe, you ask about which wire is the right one to clip.

I think we’ve done a good job here discussing these issues as far as we can take them, without going into a fully involved religious debate because then we get mucked up with apologetics & epistemology & that’s a whole different ballpark !

revgeorge, your analogy of the man about to snip the wire on an explosive charge brought to mind Pascal’s Wager. For those of you (probably very few here) who’re not familiar with the Wager, Wikipedia explains:

Pascal’s Wager (or Pascal’s Gambit) is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal that even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should “wager” as though God exists, because so living has potentially everything to gain, and certainly nothing to lose.

The premise is, of course, that reason can not determine the existence of God. If it can, then the Wager is unnecessary.

There have been some mentions of the post-modern (at least I think that would be the right adjective) attitude towards religion that says, “whatever works for you” or “we are all seeking the same truth.” This attitude has been depicted as absurd or nonsensical in this conversation; an emphasis has been placed on what is true in revgeorge’s bomb analogy and Travis’ comment about belief and Professor L’s paraphrase of Dennis Miller. I definitely understand this position, and my own inclination is in agreement with it.

However, I thought it at least worth offering a small defense of the post-modern (again, I hope that’s the right word) attitude — not to argue that it is correct, but simply to provide some understanding from those like myself that think it absurd. This attitude begins from a deep and sincere agnosticism or even all-out skepticism. (Dave mentioned this above, @42, but I thought it worth presenting in a more sympathetic light.) So many human beings across time and geography have reached such drastically different conclusions about the nature of mankind and the divine, about our purpose in life, and a great many issues of equal importance. These differences have encouraged in many people a strong sense of uncertainty, an uncertainty that it might seem impossible to overcome.

What do you do when you reach this point? Do you throw in the towel and discard all the different religious traditions of the past? Anything you believe will be on some kind of faith, whether atheist or Buddhist or Christian.

You might conclude that all the religions of the world contain some glimpse of some knowledge or wisdom; I think people that study comparative religion and mythology often fit this description (like Joseph Campbell and Karen Armstrong). You might throw yourself fully into one particular faith, concluding that it has met the psychological needs of people for generations and it could meet your needs as well. People fitting this last scenario would then be fully committed to their own particular faith, throwing “metal in the cauldron” and expecting “transformation of their soul”, even if they don’t fully believe in the alchemical process — but they would also be open to the insights of other faiths and would never insist on their own faith or expect people from other faiths to suffer eternal condemnation.

Let me stretch revgeorge’s analogy about the bomb and hope it doesn’t break.

You come upon this explosive charge, and you start trying to figure out which wire to cut. You wonder if it is the red or the green wire. But you see hundreds of other people talking about their own beliefs. Some say it is not a bomb at all but that when the time runs out it will pour forth fountains of living water. Others say the correct wire is orange and underneath, but still others say that if you touch it the bomb will detonate immediately. Some say that either wire will diffuse the bomb; others that either will detonate it. Still others say it is simply a replica and contains no real explosives at all; after the timer expires it will reset and start again. Others have concluded it will detonate no matter what. Others want to blast it with an alien laser gun they found, but no one is sure if that will make it explode immediately or stop the timer.

I think the person with the post-modern attitude would say that this is more like the situation we are in regarding religion, with many competing opinions that cannot all be right. But note that multiple positions might lead to the right result. Cutting the red wire would be the right thing to do according to a number of the positions; not doing anything at all would be the right thing to do under another few of them. They aren’t all right, but a few of them might “work” — more than one position might lead to the right outcome.

If you think your religion offers you absolute truth, this attitude will no doubt appear wishy-washy and unsophisticated and absurd. I hope I have provided an account of the faith that makes it seem at least some amount less so.

revgeorge, I admit that I spend too much time thinking about the distant past and not enough time on current developments. I found an article on Wikipedia on the emergent church, which I include here for those that are interested: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_church]. Do you have anything you can recommend reading about what is replacing post-modernism?