Another way to use our minds, Richard Rohr on Unknowing and Christianity

Faith & Science Conversation
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This term carries a lot of weight for me.
I am greatly inclined to live in that space most the time, which isn’t always helpful.

It distracts from actual practice of faith, which includes interaction with God as well as allowing practice to be guided by God.

It also allows us to feel like we know a lot more about God than we really do. When we make claims about what is or must be true about God we are often just hiding our blind spots, answering the “right” questions with the prepared answers we already own.

This argumentative mind is important, though. Christians don’t embrace just anything that is said about God. Christians understand that there are boundaries to what can be true of God. There is not universal agreement among various faith traditions regarding these boundaries.

While Rohr embraces the aphopatic tradition, aphopatic statements about God are still claims about what God is or is like. In spite of the linguistic use of the negative, they are positive statements of belief.

Humility about what we can and cannot know about God is yet different from stating what God is not or is not like.

[Quote from Mark’s post altered slightly for clarity.]

I find this kind of maneuver by Rohr alienating -he is pushing outside the bounds of Christianity.
Jesus was not criticized for non-dual thinking. The religious leaders sought to kill him and eventually demanded his crucifixion on the basis of blasphemy - claiming to be one with God was claiming to BE God. They understood this, and so did he.
Rohr minimizes Jesus’ claim about himself and his identity by talking about Jesus’ claim as a mindset and in a way that makes it accessible to the rest of us.

Yes, I understand I am arguing a theological issue here. But this is a foundational matter for the worship of Jesus. If Jesus is merely demonstrating a particular form of thinking, he is not worthy of my worship. Rohr, as a Christian, understands this. I find it destressing that he would even take this approach in the way he talks about Jesus’ claims to divinity.

Didn’t originate with Francis Schaeffer?
And the idea of the Good Life did not originate with beer commercials in the '80s.
The Greeks worked pretty hard on this question. They wrote a lot about it.
What have you gleaned?

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My inclination is to recognize that my grasp on the relevant facts is always limited and I’d rather contemplate questions longer than to get busy seeing how far my limited grasp will take me. I think we do have a ‘bigger mind’ we can channel as Rohr suggests. It is wiser but it isn’t a mind to command.

Interaction with God is like interaction with reality - highly mediated by our culture and the limitations of language. While it is possible to know if your approach adheres to a settled practice, it isn’t possibly to know that practice is always best.

I hear this as saying Christians will happily persist in the practices and beliefs they have inherited and dismiss out of hand whatever conflicts. Not really a bragging point IMO.

I don’t think so. It is only about paying attention to one’s limited epistemic position. There is no apophatic doctrine regarding practice that should lead one to proceed with the confidence you have. That way is not expeditious. Whether any realization about God one comes to on that path is right or not is on the shaky ground of resonances.

I don’t think he is minimizing any claim of Jesus. I hear him as questioning whether people have correctly understood Jesus’ words - while remembering how slippery words can be.

Rohr is questioning whether Jesus actually wanted to be worshipped. He was a rabbi and a teacher so I think he was seeking to be instructive to lead people into a better relationship with God.

But Rohr also says the church was reshaped by the Romans to aid in their imperial aspirations. For their uses it was expeditious for beliefs to be spelled out and adhered to. Trusting oneself was not ideal if one needed to control people. That is why faith has come to mean stubborn adherence to doctrine rather than what one recognizes while in that open stance toward God. That was my take.

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I was speaking definitionally rather than making a judgement about truth or the rightness of a particular kind of belief. There is such a thing as Christianity, and it can be described. The descriptions can vary but there is overlap regarding what is the core or foundation of the thing we call Christianity. Likewise, adherants to the thing we call Christianity, adhere to it for a variety of reasons, often finding it to be true.

However Christians persist, or don’t, in their practices and beliefs, those are rooted in this describable thing known as Christianity.

Individuals’ disposition toward whatever conflicts with Christianity varies widely. This could include dismissing something out of hand, or deciding what to do with it after careful consideration. The world of Christianity is pretty wide.

And yet when I read quotes by Rohr and others who claim to embrace that tradition, I see confident assertions about what God is/must be like or the nature of reality. Doctrine or not, there is a kind of certitude that goes beyond basic epistemic humility.

If so, he is claiming to have a better grasp of Jesus’s self-concept, goals and teaching than the Apostles and disciples who wrote the New Testament, and the earliest Christians, whom the Romans pursued relentlessly. Jesus’ claims to divinity and the early church’s worship of him as God are not a mystery.

The changes you mention that were related to Rome came later.

This statement of Rohr’s

is in direct conflict with the early church’s understanding of Jesus and what he meant, when he claimed “I and the Father are one.”

Rohr is welcome to see Jesus as another rabbi, or confuse him with Siddhartha Gautama. But in doing so, he is in conflict with the core of Christianity.

This, again, is a definitional question.

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I don’t wish to challenge your definitions or regard for the traditions of the church. But as an outsider I just find his understanding of God and the trinity resonates more deeply with me.

Usually I would keep a safe distance from any conspiracy theory and his idea that the church had been corrupted to serve as a tool for imperial Rome certainly sounds like one. But, again as an outsider, I have very little sympathy for the tradition of the book and the legalism it engenders. The idea of exchanging the Christian mythos for the propositional treasure chest of God’s one-time transmission seems like a bad one to me. But as I’ve said before I also think faith is important so if it works for you, more power to you.

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There is nothing surprising in the observation that a change from a small persecuted group to the dominant religion in the empire changed much within the church. It may be a matter of disagreement how much the practices or even doctrines of the church changed but there is little doubt that at least some practices changed.
Part of the change happened simply because of a large flux of new ‘wannabes’ that wanted to join the religion favoured by the emperor. A later change was that most citizens had to join. The new converts brought with them their ‘pagan’ beliefs and thinking. Initially, there was not enough of time and teachers to teach the basic apostolic teachings to the converts before they were baptized and became members, at least not everywhere. In addition, it may be that the beliefs and culture of the new members affected the way how the future church leaders interpreted the scriptures - the interpretations did not necessarily stay the same, even if the faithfulness to the tradition and scriptures stayed. In my opinion, what Augustine concluded is one sign of the change.

For the emperor, the key goal in the relationship with Christians was stability and peace in the empire. Christians needed to be faithful members of the empire, which necessarily affected the teachings about joining the army, becoming administrators in the empire or other matters that the empire wished. The emperor was as the sovereign ruler of the empire even the ruler of the church and the heads of the church needed to act accordingly.

What it meant can be seen in the history of the Latin (west) and Greek (east) churches. When the western Rome collapsed, the eastern Rome survived for another millennium. In the east Rome, the church continued under the rule of the emperor and left therefore a different model and heritage for the future generations than what happened in the west.

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I think they all are though not necessarily as they are known to us. Our knowledge of reality and God is mediated by what we are able to notice and think - which are always works in progress.

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Came across an earlier Richard Rohr talk which may not be as ambitious as the first one here but is probably easier to digest. This goes to the question “who are we?” How do we understand who we are? I’m still listening to it but by the 20 minute mark I knew it was worth sharing. I’ll bet @Mervin_Bitikofer is familiar with it already.

@Kendel I remember us trying to understand how God could have anything to do with what we are.

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Actually - if I had heard this one, I can’t remember it! So I’ve started a fresh listening to it now (but will finish it later due to interruptions.) Yes - this is classic Rohr! Thanks for sharing it.

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Just got back from the tax accountant. Will be looking soon for something pithy but for now here is the first comment:

Raised in an evangelical-lutheran household, in rural Finland, and was christian up until the age of 15. I lost the faith short and simple. Now at 22, people like Rohr, Peter Rollins, Paul Tillich, Slavoj Zizek, Kierkegaard, Levinas, I’ve relunctantly given up the atheism. I’ve realized a spiritual life is..possible. Possible is good enough for now, I’m excited to continue my intellectual and spiritual journey. Reading has changed my life, don’t let superficial social media consume you.

*@BuffaloMax17

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Hello. I saw you tagged me?

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Yes. Hello I’m an agnostic but believe in God though not necessarily the Christian trademarked one. I’d seen some of your posts so I thought you might find it interesting while he’d begun to fall away into atheism those authors and the one in the video I posted, Richard Rohr, helped him realize a spiritual life is possible. Some of these plus my own favorite Iain McGilchrist helped me realize that life need not be restricted to physicalism.

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Okay. Thank you for the support!

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Thanks Mark. I watched it last night and will review it today before commenting.

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I’m still replaying it to try to understand more. But the idea that making heaven something that happens in the future has always struck me as wrong headed. The more I listen the more I agree.

I also think he is right to stress the relationship between us and God being reciprocal and mutually nourishing. It isn’t and can’t be equal but it can be collaborative and lead both us and God to better understanding. I definitely think God is still becoming and learning too.

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I must be doing something wrong; religion hasn’t given me a positive self-image! Mostly it makes me realize what a wreck I am. I don’t even think God likes me, and I don’t really see a point in trying to change that. But I am working on being a human being as well as I can, damaged goods that I am.

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Being able to “look in the mirror” and see our own ‘train wreck’ status is never warm fuzzy experience. But I’m thinking that Rohr would say it’s the necessary start of something at least that precedes God’s continued work with us. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

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Hi Mark. I watched it a few times, and will try to focus on what I found valuable.

Rohr talks about the real goal of religion being transformation and liberation. I think this is, or should be, true. I don’t see the point of Christianity, for example, to be a guide for morality, but to be the way to a relationship with God. Attempting to use morality to gain access to God is simply legalism, which leads to pride or despair.

To be fair, though, the most “legalistic” people I know from church are seeking to please God. Their rule-keeping is founded in their understanding of what God requires, and many of them are humbly, lovingly striving to obey God, and that obedience often exhibits itself in serving other people.

I think the strength of Rohr’s point about the goal of religion is in its outworking, that is, into actual action which serves the needs of others, which seeks their liberation, because that is a real and universal value.
In this way, Rohr comes a bit closer to N.T. Wright’s points about the Kingdom of God having been inaugurated here already - not in some distant future and other place - and this is the work we should be doing now.

Rohr talks about the value of suffering and how it destablizes the ego. It certainly does that. It strips us of assumptions about a quid pro quo relationship with God.
Dealing with the devastation of suffering was/is hard enough with the theological assurance that God loves me, still loves me, even though he is not explaining himself. I don’t know how I could conclude that God loves me without such assurance. Experience certainly didn’t provide it.

I don’t understand at all what Rohr concludes on this matter.

I’m not sure what to make of Rohr’s concept of “true self” unless he has something in mind like the Image of God. Our selves bear scars and imprints of our experiences and life training. Some of those scars result from horrible trauma. Rohr seems to think nothing of that. If I have to do all the work to dig back to present a particular, “true” version of myself to God, I don’t see how that is any different from quid pro quo and legalism. There are things I cannot fix in myself. If I have to perfect myself to approach God, then I dont’ really see much point in trying.

N. T. Wright agrees with you in ways I can accept and run with. Very roughly: The Kingdom of God has been inaugurated, and Christians should be carrying out the care of and work for those in it right now. This doesn’t mean that Christians should be trying to rule that kingdom; that isn’t our job. Rather we should be doing the good works of righteousness and justice now.

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This old joke supports my odd ball conception of God:

God is sitting in Heaven when a scientist says to Him, “Lord, we don’t need you anymore. Science has finally figured out a way to create life out of nothing. In other words, we can now do what you did in the beginning.”

“Oh, is that so? Tell me…” replies God.

“Well”, says the scientist, “we can take dirt and form it into the likeness of you and breathe life into it, thus creating man.”

“Well, that’s interesting. Show Me.”

So the scientist bends down to the earth and starts to mold the soil.

“Oh no, no, no…” interrupts God, (I love this)

“Get your own dirt.”

God’s Dirt - Author Unknown

I don’t think there is any permanent division between God and us or anything else for that matter. God’s dirt is also God as are we. I think God creates/differentiates so that there can be true others with whom He can relate. A sort of distributive democratic spirit.

As human beings we are in a position to recognize the union of God with creation. That means we too are a part of what has always existed and always will. But how that works is God’s business. God will be what God will be (as it says somewhere in the Bible) and for now that includes us whether or not we are ever exactly the same twice. I think an order in which each new life is its own and unencumbered by those who have come before except to teach them that there is more to this world than meets the eye or any instrument of observation.

Clearly where we part company involves the role of ‘official’ revelation. I do not believe God ever speaks or communicates as we do, though through Him (or at least the portion given each of us) God can inspire us to speak. I think there have been and are many words inspired by God. But I do not think He wishes to micro manage that to which he has given free will, and certainly not through intimidation. I think the church has decided that revelation after Jesus is not needed, that all make do with a canned version of God’s presence and the inspiration which the mystics sought is something evil instead. I think they are wrong but every tradition passes on some good advantages and encumber with some disadvantages. I certainly see how some at least are lifted up by it.

But where the church especially encumbers believers is by insisting only the revelation approved by them is from God. To me that seems like institutional hubris. God reaches out to all and always has, to try to stake an exclusive claim to God’s word twists Jesus’ message.

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