One with Krishna: Yoga & syncretism

Michael Sudduth is a very useful philosopher of religion. But I’m going to comment on a few of his recent statements:

I accept the orthodox formulation of the Trinity as a pragmatically efficacious human representation of the inner life of the Divine being. I don’t thereby exclude there being other pragmatically efficacious representations of the divine. I want to allow “knowledge of God” to arise from many different sources, conditioned in a variety of ways by aspects of our personality and the culture and time in which we are embedded. Again, I allow the possibility that certain representations of the divine are superior to others in some particular way.

This sounds like John Hick’s neo-Kantian pluralism. Or perhaps Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. If that’s the sort of thing Michael has in mind, then not only is this syncretistic perspective antithetical to Biblical Christianity, but it’s also self-refuting. For we can only judge the accuracy of a theological representation to the extent that we have access to the standard of comparison.

The working title of my next book:

One with Christ: Yoga and Christian Theism

This will be a popular book that examines the extent to which yoga and Christian theism are logically compatible. This is part of my broader exploration of continuities and discontinuities between the western and eastern religious traditions. Prepare for a shocking conclusion.

Is he talking about yoga as a physical discipline, mental discipline, or spiritual discipline?

Yes, yoga aims at an altered state of consciousness. So does prayer.

I have no idea why he thinks prayer is aiming for an altered state of consciousness. Jews and Christians normally pray in an ordinary state of consciousness. The purpose of prayer is to confess sin, praise God for his goodness, thank God for his many blessings, ask God to supply our needs, and intercede on behalf of others. None of this requires an altered state of consciousness.

Michael seems to be redefining prayer as a form of mysticism, as if the supplicant is using prayer to cultivate a trance.

Our consciousness, steeped as it is in sense experience, needs to be altered to perceive divine realities, for God is spirit, and those who worship him must do in spirit and in truth.

That is, indeed, the classic mystical view, according to which the sensible world is barrier to perceiving God. But the reference to Jn 4:24 is completely out of context, and actually undercuts the mystical view:

i) Just in general, the Fourth Gospel is replete with subtextual allusions to the OT. There’s a regular interplay or alternation between the past and the present, because OT events frequently prefigure the life of Christ. So OT history is revelatory. Visible, tangible events are signs encoding God’s nature, existence, and purpose.

ii) Likewise, the miracles of Christ meaningful signs, pointing to divine realities.

So the sensible world is not a barrier to perceiving God. To the contrary, God sometimes uses the sensible world as a type of sign language to communicate his nature, existence, and intentions.

iii) In the Fourth Gospel, God is supremely revealed in the physical presence of the Son. So sensory experience is a way of perceiving God in the person of his Son–whose audible words and visible deeds disclose the reality of the invisible, intangible God.

iv) The point of Jn 4:23-24 is that we participate in the life of God insofar as we share in the Trinitarian fellowship. The Father sends the Son while the Son sends the Spirit. Each bears witness to the other. Each contributes to the salvation of sinners.

True worship is not about blocking out the senses, for God has come to us through the senses. God made the senses. God made the sensible world. That’s the theater in which God enacts redemption. We truly worship God, not by introspection or negation, but by living and believing the testimony which he has given us through his revelatory words and his emblematic deeds.

v) Jn 4:23-24 stands in polar contrast to pluralism or syncretism, for the Samaritan faith was the next best thing to Judaism, yet Jesus in this very dialogue repudiates the Samaritan alternative.

Liberal scholarship

"Do not wish to digress here, but it does remind me a bit of James White’s charge/s leveled against Muslim apologists who quote 'liberal', critical Christian scholars in their debates, whilst James allows himself to use 'liberal' and critical Islamic scholars."

http://articulifidei.blogspot.com/2010/08/john-bugay-and-german-critical-scholar.html

It’s less than clear why David Waltz finds this problematic. To begin with, if, in a debate with James White (or whoever), a Muslim quotes a “Christian” scholar who attacks the credibility of the Bible, then White is certainly entitled to point out that this scholar doesn’t speak for Christianity at large. At best, his views merely represent the views of other theological liberals. The Muslim can't use this appeal as an argument from authority.

And, of course, since White is a Christian rather than a Muslim, he’s not going to draw quite the same distinction with respect to Islamic scholarship. Since there’s a fundamental difference between a true religion and a false religion, scholarship attacking the credibility of a true religion (e.g. the Bible) is going to be false. It doesn’t follow that scholarship attacking the credibility of a false religion is going to be false, even when it hails from liberal critical scholars.

Apparently Waltz can only keep one idea in his head. He thinks it’s hypocritical if we don’t treat every religion equally. But equal treatment is only justified when dealing with equal claims. If two religions are fundamentally unequal (e.g. the one is true while the other is false), then, of course, they should be treated differently.

The Last Waltz

David Waltz, who is to religion what Solomon was to women, is charging John Bugay and James White with hypocrisy because they cite liberal scholars in opposition to Islam or Roman Catholicism, but reject liberal scholars in opposition to Scripture. Yet there are several basic problems with his analogy:

i) The comparison would only work if, in fact, the arguments and counterarguments regarding Scripture were comparable to the arguments and counterarguments regarding the Koran or the Roman Magisterium.

If that is David’s position, then he needs to mount an actual argument from analogy, rather than asserting an analogy.

ii) To take a comparison, in sifting testimonial evidence, we don’t treat every ostensible witness the same, for some ostensible (or even real) witnesses are less credible than others.

iii) David would also have to show that Lampe’s argument regarding early Roman church polity is crucially contingent on his argument regarding the composition of certain NT documents.

iv) Liberal scholarship can sometimes be right for the wrong reasons. For instance, it’s wrong to apply methodological naturalism to religious claims. It’s wrong to presume that supernatural dynamics can’t be a factor in religious claims.

But if, in fact, religious dynamics are not a factor in some religious claim or another, then it’s appropriate to interpret the claim on mundane terms. For instance, if the angel Gabriel did not appear to Muhammad, then there’s nothing wrong with a liberal scholar explaining the Koran by reference to natural causes. While it’s wrong for him to assume, as a matter of principle, that supernatural factors can’t figure in the origin of Islam, yet if Islam is a natural phenomenon masquerading as a supernatural phenomenon, then naturalistic methods and assumptions will coincidentally dovetail with the true nature of the phenomenon. And the same holds true for the Roman Magisterium.

v) Incidentally, there’s nothing inherently liberal about redaction criticism. For instance, conservative scholars like Craig Blomberg and Darrell Block use redaction criticism to defend the inerrancy of Scripture.

vi) But even if these methods were suspect, there’s nothing inherently wrong with their application to Roman Catholicism. After all, the modern Magisterium sanctions the historical-critical method. So a Protestant apologist could rightfully apply that methodology to Catholicism as a tu quoque argument. Measuring Catholicism by its own yardstick.

Of course, the basic problem for Waltz is that he has no fixed frame of reference. He’s a boat adrift, anchored to another boat adrift, anchored to another boat adrift. For Waltz, everything is in a state of relative motion.

Hush Hush Relativism

If one has a good moral theory, it seems that it should be pronounced. Taught to others. Publicized. Moral precepts should be teachable. This seems obvious.

Cultural or subjective relativism claims that there are no universal, trans- subject or culture moral principles. That what is ethically right for one subject or culture, might not be for another. Likewise, what is wrong for one subject or culture, might not be for another.

But, ask any relativist you know whether s/he thinks genocide, rape, pedophillia, etc., is wrong, immoral, bad, you'll no doubt here something like: "Well, I think it is." Or, "Well, our culture says it is."

Besides the many, many problems for any form of ethical relativism, I'd like to raise another I recently thought of.

Given the truth of ethical relativism, it seems highly probable that other subjects or cultures would use its truth to justify what you or your culture takes to be immoral.

This isn't speculative either. Take Bundy:

Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ I even read somewhere that the Chief Justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments. Believe it or not, I figured it out for myself – what apparently the Chief Justice couldn’t figure out for himself – that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any ‘reason’ to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring – the strength of character – to throw off its shackles…. I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable ‘value judgment’ that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others’? Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a high’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me – after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self. Louis P. Pojman The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature (Oxford University Press: 2003).

Or take another example from history. Nazi war criminals defended themselves by claiming that they were just following orders given by their culture and legal system. In response, Robert Jackson, chief counsel for the U.S. at the trials responded by saying that: "there is a 'law beyond the law' of any individual nation, permanent values which transcend any particular society."

It seems, then, that, for some, the truth of ethical relativism, for them, will serve as an excuse for them to do things that you, another relativist, thinks is wrong.

Thus, your teaching relativism may lead to people commiting crimes that you take to be highly immoral. That seems highly counter intuitive a result for an ethical theory to produce. Usually we think teaching ethical principles will have the opposite effect. People will be "better" (according to our created standard of better).

Thus it may better to not teach relativism but to teach some kind of ethical absolutism or ethical objectivism where the ethical principles that are absolute or objective transcend subject and culture instead.

The relativist might respond that that would be lying and s/he (or the culture) believes lying to be wrong. But why not allow lying in this instance? Most do not believe it would be wrong to lie to the Nazi at your door step, so what is so wrong about lying about what ethical theory is correct, especially when people might use it to justify henious acts that you take to be highly immoral? Wouldn't it be worth it in this instance to lie?

Another response might be: But teaching relativism is needed because we need tolerance, tolerance among people and cultures would make them less likely to commit genocides, exercise racism, etc. So, teaching relativism will, hopefully, lead to a lessening of genocides &c. Thus my ethical theory will promote what I take to be morally right.

But here the relativist imposes her morality on others. The relativist believes she is right and others are wrong. She is saying with this claim that: what I or my culture thinks is right for us, is right for everyone. Just because the relativist thinks we should be tolerant, doesn't mean another relativist won't use that to his advantage, claiming he doesn't need to be tolerant.

These people could commit what the relativist takes to be highly immoral atrocities. There would be more ground to convince the person or others that he is wrong by claiming a (limited) tolerance is an objective ethical principle, not made true by subjects or cultures beliefs. So, the tolerance principle would still get taught.

Since most ethical relativists will think it is okay to lie in instances where telling the truth could have very disasterous consequences, then it wouldn't violate immoral instances of lying. To tell the truth would, actually, be immoral.

It seems to me that many relativists should think it immoral to teach relativism.