The Cross and Resurrection*

 

There was a level of controversy recently, in the media at least, when certain events during the holiday period were advertised omitting the word “Easter”. Some church leaders spoke out against what they claimed was a de-Christianising of the festival.

Setting aside the detail that Easter has pagan origins, does the New Testament account of crucifixion and resurrection still have significance? Easter is central to Christianity due to its theology being based on St. Paul.

Paul promoted the notion that Jesus’ crucifixion was the sacrifice of God’s son to pay the debt incurred by Adam on behalf of humanity: Salvation from sin. The subsequent resurrection was God’s demonstration that not only was the sacrifice accepted, the debt paid, but also a promise of life beyond death for the faithful.

From a Deist perspective such an apparently supernatural intervention is open to a more rational explanation. It is based on the idea that Jesus was actually a proto-Deist within the context of the Judaism of his day.

Jesus seems not to have claimed any of the special supernatural or divine attributes that were to be conferred upon him in the centuries after his death. The “Kingdom of God” he proclaimed, that is to know God and love all your neighbours, was at hand because it is within, ready to be recognised and known by everyone.

However, by proclaiming “The Kingdom of God”, the Jewish population of the time were likely to interpret that as the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel. This would certainly have been regarded as sedition by the ruling Roman imperium.

The Jewish authorities also felt undermined, as all religious authorities do, by any claim that God’s way can be found by each and everyone within themselves. No need then for priests, the temple and the riches and power that go with them.

Also, the threat that the Romans might react in a devastating manner to a perceived threat of revolution would also necessitate a staunching of that threat. Not surprisingly, it did not require supernatural insight for Jesus to know his likely fate.

Nor is it surprising that in the hours before his arrest he fervently prayed to be spared that fate. Yet he remained resolute in his mission, with the result that the cross should be taken as a symbol of commitment, not one of blood sacrifice.

As for the resurrection, the explanation could be as mundane as Jesus actually surviving the crucifixion. From the New Testament accounts it seems he was on the cross for about six hours or so, when it usually took days for a victim to die that way.

Terrible as it was, human physical resilience to extreme trauma can be remarkable. By losing consciousness and not reacting to the spear wound Jesus’ death was declared, probably by soldiers who were only too ready to be relieved of their duty. They did, it seems, break the legs of the two crucified with Jesus to hasten their deaths.

When the disciple Thomas met with Jesus after the event he was able to actually touch the wounds, suggesting an all too real presence. Also, following his crucifixion Jesus did not preach a gospel of atoning death and resurrection.

The message Jesus charged his followers with was to make all nations into disciples observing repentance; that is, changing the way life is lived, and forgiveness of sins. That the message was for all nations rather than a “chosen people” was truly revolutionary.

What happened to Jesus afterwards is unknown. Perhaps his wounds forced him into secluded retirement, or maybe they eventually proved fatal. As to life beyond death, Jesus commended his spirit to God while on the cross. It seems he did not need to look forward to resurrection, unlike St. Paul, a man who did not know him.

 

*Based on “The Cross and the Empty Tomb” – christiandeism.com

Metamorphosis

 

“Time is a river flowing with the elements of creation; and a violent torrent, for as soon as a thing appears, it is swept away, and instantly replaced by another, which in turn is itself swept away.” (Marcus Aurelius)*

Attending the funeral of someone who’s been a friend for well over 40 years is a sombre demonstration of the veracity of what Marcus Aurelius observed. Not quite three score and ten committed to the flames and reduced to ashes. The swish of the scythe sounds ominously close.

For those of a catholic persuasion the requiem mass offered comforting words about heaven and resurrection, though they did little to staunch tears or lift the grim masks of bereavement. The closing curtains in the crematorium seemed to signal little other than finality.

Yet, without the flow of time’s river, however cruel it may seem to those floundering in its rapids, the universe would be in a state of stasis. Death would indeed have been vanquished if the torrent had been dammed, but there could have been no birth either.

That there is life at all is a wonderful creation that can only exist in a universe constantly in flux. However much sadness is felt at the passing of family or friends, it should be mitigated by appreciating that they came into being at all.

Because of the common human experience of fellow sentient beings it is certain that the universe is conscious and self-aware. Whether or not there is a greater consciousness than human consciousness, people possess the privilege of being, in part at least, the universe’s self-awareness.

For deists whether or not there is life after death is moot. Some, quoting the absolute lack of evidence, deny it. Others reason that the Power, Deus or whatever, that so ordered creation to bring life into being, may continue to do so beyond the limitations of this life.

If that is so it would seem unlikely that that might simply be a mere continuation, because change is the one constant. Perhaps that is the point. Death is certainly a radical change, but a necessary one no matter what is felt about it by those immediately facing it or others who, for the time being, remain.

Whatever happens to the individual consciousness, not so much as a particle is lost to the universe, even if a body is largely consumed and reduced by fire. As Marcus Aurelius went on to write,

“When something dies it does not disappear from the universe…it changes and is dissolved into separate particles, which are the elements that form the Universe and yourself. These elements undergo change, but they don’t complain about it.”*

 

*“The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius.” Edited by Mark Forstater. Hodder & Stoughton, 2000. Page 143.

Accommodation

 

A scientist and science broadcaster recently said on the radio that although he wasn’t a religious believer, he thought of himself as an accommodationist. He went on to explain that he is content to accommodate the views of others running counter to his own. He’s not, in other words an atheist fundamentalist for whom any taint of belief is heresy.

This is refreshing in a world where far too often people are publicly derided, persecuted and even executed for daring to even mildly challenge orthodoxy. Even in societies professing to be liberal there is a simmering intolerance.

Making the effort to try and at least appreciate contrary views appears to be too great for many. Those so committed to their religion they perceive any disagreement as a defiance of God and the truth are mirrored by atheists who absolutely insist that God is a deception perpetrated by the self-deluded or outright liars.

Even when such standpoints are not openly elucidated, those utterly convinced by their own viewpoints are unable to tolerate seriously any contradiction.

Deism, however, accepts nothing as being certain. Even the existence of God or what “God” means is up for debate. Reason that brings the deist to the conclusion that there is something way beyond human comprehension that can be referred to as God or Deus, recognises this cannot be a settled issue.

Indeed, it is possible that Deism is a staging post to a view transcending both religion and irreligion. After all it’s beyond possibility that Deism is the final word in this sphere. Deists must be open to questioning and committed to questioning. It is a religious and philosophical accommodation with many rooms.

Liberating God

 

 

While religions, especially the Abrahamic, claim revelation by the divine as their inspiration, giving their scriptures the status of being the word of God, what they are largely doing is containing their image of God. This is God defined in human terms and the holy books are the authentic writings of the hand of Man.

God is reduced to a reflection of the social/political times, a limited deity who can be manipulated to suit the cause of any particular creed or sect. God, to be understood as God, needs liberating from religion.

Like all religions, Deism is man-made, being specifically different in that it fully acknowledges this to be the case. No revelations or divine words channelled to prophets; rather each individual if charged with the responsibility of divining just what is divine about creation, with nature being the only gospel for reference.

Deism’s ultimate success will be its own redundancy, not abolishing religion, but transcending it. The billions of people in the world will have their own personal view of God, perhaps without any necessity for the word “God” or any linguistic substitute.

Even then, the sum total of those billion of views, even if it was possible to add them all up, will still not be close to comprehending what God is. Humility is required to know we are not God(s) and cannot, therefore, really appreciate what is ineffable.

Humanity better serves itself by striving to realise our collective and personal potential, ever questioning, ever pursuing greater and deeper knowledge of creation through science, ever seeking to divine the divine, unhindered by religion.

Mystery in White

 

 “Mystery in White” is a novel written in the 1930s by J. Jefferson Farjeon. It is an entertaining crime story of that era, making use of many of the tropes familiar to readers of that genre. It does not purport to be of any philosophical significance.

However, once the mystery has been resolved the author allows the “Holmes/Poirot” character to voice a view of interest to deists and those interested in deism. Mr. Maltby begins by dismissing illusions that might influence the credulous.

“Believe me…there are quite enough astounding, uncanny, mind-shattering experiences within the boundaries of sheer logic to eliminate the necessity of ghosts…” The supernatural is, in a sentence, dismissed in favour of the wonders of what he, in his Aristotelian way, refers to as “logic”, with science perhaps being a better word in this context.

Maltby goes to enumerate many examples of natural wonders all revealing how nature operates according to its logic in order to be able to function in the complex, but orderly, way it does. He finishes with,

“Have you ever wondered how the Inevitable You came about…You cannot explain these things. You can only become conscious, at rare moments, of the working of some vast Arrangement, and that consciousness may be due to your own intensive vision, or the simplicity of the view you happen to be traveling through.”

Whether or not JJ Farjeon was a deist or was even aware of deism is not known. What he demonstrated through his character Mr. Maltby is the wider truth that many people are really deists, holding similar views, in various formulations, to these. Even those, perhaps especially many of those, who would count themselves non-religious.

York Minster

 

Recently the steel web of scaffolding was removed from York Minster following the completion of extensive restoration. Once again it will become the unencumbered hub of York for worshipers and tourists.

Deists, of course, do not have religiously dedicated buildings: the whole of creation is God’s house. In truth, York Minster and similar imposing cathedrals were built as an expression of human power, a demonstration by the new feudal regime of who was in charge spiritually as well as temporally.

This doesn’t detract from the sheer magnificence of the Minster, and it does have a symbolic relevance for deism. It is beyond all doubt an expression of purpose. There can be no question of it being a random structure that emerged through sheer chance.

As humans patently construct purposefully, why should it be presumed that the very much grander scale of the universe has no meaning or significance? The recent restoration shows how intent maintains the structure.

An indication of the greater purpose of nature can be gleaned from firstly admiring one of the Minster’s soaring columns and then taking a trip out into the woods. There contemplate some tall tree and reflect that, unlike a stone column, however well crafted, the tree not only exists for itself, but is home and shelter for birds, mammals and insects.

York Minster is an expression of human creative capability, but it’s also a reminder of our limitations. Compared to the universe the Minster isn’t even a mote, so it’s hardly surprising we cannot really comprehend the Creator of the cosmos. However, just as York Minster is undeniable evidence of human being, so creation is the indication of Creative Being.

Deism and God

 

 The portrayal of God in the holy books of various revealed religions ranges from the wrathful to the insistence on turning the other cheek. What all these have in common is a God that is all too human, be it on a grand scale.

Deism differs profoundly by appreciating that God ultimately lies beyond our comprehension, so we are not in any position to ascribe a form. What God isn’t is a super being essentially like ourselves.

A certain quality of God is being eternal. This is an assumption, but a reasonable one, differentiating from the finite nature of the universe. There is a scientific notion supporting this view in that Einstein’s general theory of relativity suggests the possibility of there being parts within the universe that are void of time.

Rather than scripture of one sort or another, deists look to science as the best way humanity has of expanding our understanding of creation. For it is through studying creation we can discern some inkling of the Creator.

Deists also want to set aside anachronistic concepts relating to God. For example, God as a celestial king, and a rather despotic one, sitting on a throne in constant judgement over His vassals, humanity.

As our learning evolves, so must human religion, and religions are human creations, they are not ordained by God. In this deism is no different. It presently reflects a religious or philosophical view of current understanding.

Deism is likely, at some future point, to be superseded by a more advanced view taking into account new thinking. Although, not being hidebound by creeds, doctrines or supposed holy books, deism is open to adapt to new and developing ideas.

Arguing with Atheism

 

The easiest way of winning an argument is to concoct a premise flawed in its own terms and then demonstrate the superiority of its contrary position by comprehensively demolishing it. Such is often the method employed by atheists

For example, everything must have a cause, therefore the cause of everything is God. At least this is the atheist summary of the religious position. The cutting counter is then primed: if indeed all things have a cause, this has also to be true of God.

Therefore, God cannot act as the ultimate backstop to infinite regression and so the religious position is demonstrably unsustained. However, the atheist premise is at fault. God cannot be simply just one more component in the collection of components that constitute creation. Otherwise, that is not God.

God has to have a categorical difference from all else that exists, to be an element unconditioned by anything external to itself. Without such a concept we are left with a universe that wasn’t, there being literally nothing, which then produced itself and all that is in it, including the laws by which it operates.

There are attempts to mitigate nothingness with electrical, quantum or fluctuating fields in various guises, but then such is not nothing. Nothing is precisely that, no thing of any sort however tenuous or insubstantial.

What deists understand is that we don’t understand the nature of God. Deists are insistent that God is not some larger scale human and God’s existence can be inferred even while being beyond comprehension.

The God whose death is repeatedly announced by atheists would indeed be subject to dying by being very human. Such a God does figure in the simplified religions of the credulous, But we are capable of a much more sophisticated appreciation than that.

In a sense, deists are atheists in that they have moved away from the Abrahamic creeds of theism in its various forms, based on revelation and scripture, to embrace personal experience of creation illuminated by reason.

It just that deists are atheists who argue for God.

 

Easter Message

 

 The self-appointed advocate of Christ, Saint Paul (as he became), insisted, that if Jesus had not been resurrected then there was no hope of life beyond death. Without such a hope, what then was the point of the newly emerging Trinitarian religion that would become Christianity in all its denominations?

The proposition was that death had emerged through the sinful act of the first man, Adam. That sin banishing all humanity from Eden required atonement if God’s subsequent death sentence imposed on everyone was to be lifted.

Such an atonement could only be achieved through the blood sacrifice of God’s son, Jesus, who had to suffer the pains of death at the hands of earthly authority, only to rise again, demonstrating the overwhelmingly greater power of divine authority.

However, as made plain in Matthew’s gospel (Matthew 26:39), it seems Jesus did not share such confidence in that divine plan. Just prior to his arrest he prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me…”

He knew only too well the ghastly fate of those who challenged Roman authority. It may well be he was prepared to surrender his life in pursuit of his mission, but would have naturally preferred to avoid such a dreadful fate.

Jesus’ message was simply expressed, but profound in its consequences. It is summed up in two commandments, to love God and to love your neighbour. The first, to love God, is the basis of Deism. This is love in the broadest sense, an appreciation from experience of creation of the wonder wrought by its Originator.

This does not require any religious authority, indeed it demands the denial of such authority. Each person must come to this in his or her own way. It does not depend on religious scripture or revelation, other than the gospel of nature and what it reveals to each individual.

No wonder the Jewish authorities of Jesus’ time regarded him as a threat. And such a message contradicts the political and military establishment that demands subservience, or else. The Romans would not countenance a popular movement destabilising the status quo being maintained in large part by the Jewish authorities.

Similarly, loving your neighbour, that is everyone, without qualification, would have been perceived as an assault on the religious conventions that divided humanity into God’s chosen few, the Jews, and the rest, the gentiles.

There are too many today willing enough to kill and maim to preserve or even advance their own limited view of what they impose on God as being “His will”. Hardly surprising, then, that Jesus knew only too well what was likely to happen to him.

As for the empty tomb and the post-crucifixion appearances of Jesus there can only be speculation. It is possible he did not die on the cross. If the gospel accounts are a reasonable indication it would seem he hung there for about six hours.

While this would have been horrific, in terms of crucifixion it was quite short as it often took days for those executed in this manner to die. Certainly he’d become insensible as the spear thrust demonstrated. Perhaps the Romans thought the initial severe scourging had resulted in a faster than usual demise.

Perhaps, then, Jesus survived, all be it badly wounded. Certainly those wounds were real as Thomas, Doubting Thomas, found when invited to touch them. It appears he was with his disciples long enough to send them on their way to carry his teaching into the world.

Jesus then disappears from history. Did he simply die from his terrible experience, especially the spear wound, or maybe he quietly retired to be secretly cared for, never again being able to personally continue his mission?

As to St. Paul’s insistence on resurrection being the only possible proof of life beyond death, it does not accord with Jesus’ view. He spoke of heaven during his earthly days, his Father’s mansion having many rooms.

When he was dying, according to Luke (Luke 23:46) Jesus declared, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Showing a confidence that God would care for him beyond this world.

Whether or not Jesus was correct in this view is another matter entirely, but it does show that the very basis on which the Christian church arose, Paul’s view of resurrection, was at odds with the very person he claimed to be his divine inspiration.

 

A Deist Jesus

 

Setting aside the multifarious creeds and dogmas of all the various denominations and faiths, there is a core as old as humankind that can be termed natural religion. This is what arises from human observation and experience processed through reason.

Natural religion started to acquire a more formal aspect in 17^th Century England when deism began to emerge. The word “deism” comes from the Latin “deus” which means God and was adopted to differentiate from the Greek “theos”, the root of theism, denoting the beliefs of Trinitarian Christians.

Deists proposed that the universe in general, and humankind in particular, are not some random, chance creation. The intentional Originator is commonly called “God”, although deists often prefer the word Deus.

God or Deus, it is insisted, defies human comprehension and description, but the existence of such can be inferred from the complexity of creation acting according to discernible laws. Humans have purpose in their lives, so why should purpose be denied on behalf of wider creation.

Early deists mostly considered themselves to be Christians, their thinking emerging from the Trinitarian orthodoxy of the day. However, they insisted that Jesus had taught natural religion, his teachings subsequently subverted by Paul of Tarsus.

This subversion was further exacerbated when Christianity became a formal religion and the “word of God” was set into creeds and dogma by Church councils, beginning with the first in 325AD.

Jesus taught within a Jewish context, but his genius was to transcend it. The natural religion he promulgated was that one God was/is creator, with love of God and love of one’s neighbours being the two commandments.

Evidence that Jesus transcended his Jewish background can be seen in his broadening the concept of neighbour. At his time, according to Jewish law, a neighbour was a fellow Jew or a non-Jewish “sojourner”, a guest of the Jews. Jesus extended the notion of neighbour to include every Jew and gentile in the world.

Deists opposed Trinitarian doctrines such as original sin, the sacrificial atonement by Jesus’ crucifixion, the condemnation to Hell of non-Christians, the Trinity of God and the divinity of Jesus. Deists intended restoring the natural religion of Jesus.

Scientific thinking was embraced by deists as demonstrating the organised wonder of creation. Science was an ally not an obstacle to expanding human understanding of some of the Originator’s intentions. If science contradicted a religious precept, then that precept had been falsified and must give way.

Deism accepted the example Jesus set, that orthodoxy is no guarantee of veracity. Indeed, natural religion requires each individual to engage with creation, look beyond accepted orthodoxy and employ reason to gain some appreciation of divine being.