The best philosophy, at least since Socrates in the West and Laozi in the East, suggests that we don’t know what we think we know, that what we think we know might not be true, and that to truly know is to realize that you really don’t know. Both Socrates and Laozi told us that there is that which is ultimately real, but that we cannot know it; we may catch glimpses of it, and sometimes experience it, only to find words inadequate to express what we have glimpsed or come to experience. “The dao that can be named is not the enduring dao,” said Laozi. Socrates ended his dialogues without a conclusion and no definitive answer.
In all my university classes, whatever the subject, my aim is to demonstrate the complexity of the issue, that the best minds in human history have wrestled with it and have not reached a unanimous conclusion, and that our conclusions are only ever a tentative “maybe.”
Theology—thinking about G*d—like the best philosophy, is always tentative, always full of loose ends, always in awe of the ultimately real. Theology wrestles with ideas, explores possibilities, finds problems with those ideas, pushes to the limits of human thinking, and still says, “No, that's not it.” In the end, theology must be silent. There is nothing. For G*d, the ultimately real, is no-thing. Anything that can be a “thing” cannot be G*d, for G*d is beyond all things, and therefore must be no-thing, nothing at all. And about nothing, we must be silent. That’s why in rabbinic Judaism, the name of G*d is not written or spoken. It’s why I have taken to writing “G*d” not “God” when I mean the ultimate reality. G*d is not a being but, as Paul Tillich would say, “the ground of being,” G*d beyond God.
Theology, as first philosophy, breaks the silence with questions, seeking, searching, looking for meaning—we are, after all, meaning-seeking animals. Theologians find answers in words and concepts, and thoughts and schemes, but then come to realize the utter inadequacy of words and systems. All that can be said is merely analogous—something like a comparison, but inadequately so. In the end, theology, like philosophy, returns to silence, to nothing, to lose the self in the cloud of unknowing. The pathway is from not knowing, through knowing, to unknowing; from no form, through form, to formlessness. Knowing is important, form is essential, but they are only way markers to the great emptiness.
Then there's fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is the kind of religion that promises certainties. It matters little what the religion is, nor that the certainties differ between fundamentalisms. It is the offer of certainty that grips people, whatever its religious garb. Certainties are dangerous. By their nature, certainties are intolerant. People are willing to die for them (perhaps nobly so). More problematically, people are often willing to kill for certainties. The roots of persecution, war, and genocide are all in the certainties of supposed knowledge, often religious knowledge.
Some images of God can be helpful for a while, and some images of God are unhealthy—God as a cosmic tyrant, God as a harsh judge, God as a child abuser. But even the helpful images always become inadequate, for G*d is not this nor that. To remain with the image is ultimately misleading.
Doubtless, I can live with my occupational hazard, and on Monday morning I'll be asked for some philosophical answers. I'll try to make sense of the question, but will likely hear again the response, "But professor, when are you going to give us the right answer?"
And just for the record, beyond any doubt, a hot dog is not a sandwich!
+Ab. Andy