THE MEANING OF LIFE
AT THE
EDGE OF
THE THIRD MILLENNIUM
by
LEONARD SWIDLER
Paulist Press New York/Mahwah, N.J
Copyright 1992 by Leonard Swidler
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Swidler, Leonard J.
The meaning of life at the edge of the third millennium/by Leonard Swidler.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8091-3315-6 (pbk.)
1. Religion. 2. Religions. 3. Ideology. 4. Christianity-Influence.
I. Title.
BL48.S925 1992
200-dc2O
92-10911
CIP
Published bv Paulist Press
997 MacaAur Boulevard
Mahwah, New Jersey 07430
Printed and bound in the
United States of America
CONTENTS
I. DOES LIFE HAVE MEANING?
II. RELIGION (IDEOLOGY)-ITS MEANING
1. Definition
2. The Way
3. Goal of Religion (Ideology)
a) Popular Religion-Reflective Religion
b) Terms Used
i.
Redemption
ii.
Liberation
iii.
Enlightenment
iv.
Nirvana
v.
Heaven
vi.
Communism
vi.
Salvation
4. Human Nature
a) Human Nature is Fundamentally Good
b) Human Nature is Fundamentally Evil or Corrupt
c) Human Nature is Fundamentally Both Good and Evil
d) Human Nature: Love of Self and Other Mutually
e) ‘Excursus’: A Contemporary Marxist Understanding
5. Ultimate Reality
a) Hindu and Semitic Understandings
b) Buddhist and Semitic Understandings
c) Confucian and Semitic Understandings
d) Taoist and Semitic Understandings
e) Marxist and Christian Understandings
6. Interim Conclusion I
III. RELIGIONS (IDEOLOGIES)-THEIR RELATIONSHIP
1. The Age of Dialogue
2. Results of Interreligious, Interideological Dialogue
a) Dialogue Partners Serve as Mirrors
b) Shift from Inward to Outward Looking
c) Dialogical ‘Chain Reaction’
d) Adapt Elements from Our Dialogue Partners
e) Dialogue Must Result in Practice
f) Probe New Questions not Raised Before
i. Effects of Describing Ultimate Reality
11. Human Rights and Separation of Religion and State
g) Dialogue for a Global Ethos
3. Interim Conclusion II
IV. CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIANITY’S CONTRIBUTION
1. Return to Sources
2. Yeshua: a Concrete Human Being
3. Yeshua: Positive on Life
4. Yeshua’s Question: What Must I Do?
a) A Further Analysis of the Meaning of Love
b) Both Judaism and Christianity are Religions of Love
c) Christianity, Confucianism and Love: A Dialogue
5. Yeshua’s Focus: On Persons
a) Yeshua’s Feminism
6. For Yeshua Ultimate Reality Is Personal: Implications
a) A Philosophical Analysis of Language
b) Non-personal Understanding of Ultimate Reality
c) Personal Understanding of Ultimate Reality
d) The Understanding of Ultimate Reality Makes a Difference
7. Three Christian Doctrinal Problems for Moderns
a) Resurrection of the Body, Immortality of the Soul,
Nirvana?
b) Yeshua: ‘God-Man’ or ‘Human-Divine?
i. Prologue of John’s Gospel
ii. ‘Divinization’ in Religion
c) Ultimate Reality: One? Three? Or...?
8. Dialogue: A Key to the Future
a) Yeshua’s Attitude Toward Non-Jews
b) Meaning and Implications of Dialogue Today
V. FINAL CONCLUSION
I. DOES LIFE HAVE MEANING?
Does life have a meaning? First, a question to the question: What is the meaning of “meaning”? Or, What are we intending to ask when we want to know the “meaning” of something? “Meaning” here indicates relating some “thing” to a “knower” so that the purpose of the object is understood by the knower. Or, put otherwise, “meaning” is the relating of an “object” to a ‘subject” in a way that the ‘subject” perceives the point, the purpose of the object (a ‘subject” is anyone with a knowing capacity, and an “object” is anything that is known). For example, if I, a ‘subject,” know a computer in such a way as to understand its purpose, then I am relating it to myself in such a way as to grasp its “meaning.” To a primitive tribesman, on the other hand, a computer would be “meaningless.”
There are only two ultimate answers to the initial question, Does life have a meaning? The penultimate one, “I don”t know,” even though it may be the only answer some humans come up with throughout their whole lives, is basically unsatisfactory. Given the structural desire of humans always to know the answer to every question, such a non-resolving answer will ever be pushed toward a resolution. Many individual humans may never attain a resolution, but others of the same frame of mind will ineluctably continue to strive for resolution.
There are two possible ultimate answers to the question. One is, no. Human life is meaning-less, ab-surd. The problem with such an answer for humans is that it is fundamentally unacceptable to our nature, which has at its core the need to know-endlessly. Given the human faculty of knowing abstractly, that is, in a way that is not limited to any particular things, the object of our desire to know is open-ended. Now, to say that our whole life is without meaning simply means that we are unable to relate reality as we experience it to ourselves so as to see its purpose. Such a path persistently followed leads unavoidably to “malaise” (Sickness Unto Death, Soeren Kirkegaard), “nausea” (Jean Paul Sartre), “madness” (Friedrich Nietzsche for such a way of thinking is “madness,” that is, following the path of ir-rationality-the very definition of madness, in-sanity. Even those stalwart philosophers of existentialist thought who spoke of the absurdity of life, in the end urged humans to give life meaning themselves, claiming that such meaning cannot come from the outside, but only from within. Still, in the end, they too turned away from an utterly meaningless life to the brave forging of one’s own meaning-otherwise, they said, beyond the brink lies the abyss of Sartre’s Nausee, which is to be avoided at all costs.
The only other answer to the question of whether life has meaning or not is, yes. Life does have a meaning, or many meanings. That implies that reality as experienced can be related to the knower. It further implies that the relationship is such that it indicates some “direction” to the movement, the change, that takes place in human knowing, living and acting knowingly (beyond the physical animal nature of humans, these three elements are essentially what makes men and women human). It is right to speak of a “direction,” a telos, to human experience, otherwise we say that our activity, our experience, is “pointless,” is “purposeless.” Life implies experience; experience implies change; change implies movement. Movement can be either “directioned” or “directionless,” as in going back and forth or up and down. But in the latter case we say that such movement is pointless, meaningless. But “meaningless” movement has already been rejected in finally saying “no” to the answer which claims life is meaningless. Hence, to claim that life has meaning is to imply that it has a certain direction.
What then is the “meaning” of life, in what “direction” is it going? Each individual human must search for an answer to this question for her/himself. But since being human means to live in a network of relationships, the answer to this fundamental question is not found alone, but rather in community. The very way the question is posed by each human is something largely determined by the community in which she or he grew up in, and hence the answers are also greatly influenced by the environment in which the questions are asked, by the categories in which the question and answers are cast, and by the mental and emotional horizons within which the whole enterprise takes place. All of these put together comprise what we normally call Religion, and the Culture that corresponds to it.
It is precisely that complex of ultimate questions and answers called Religion (and today in certain circumstances, Ideology-more of that later) that I wish to investigate. In this investigation I want to look into three things: First, I want to ask some basic questions about what Religion is; secondly, I want to look at what the relationship among the various Religions (and Ideologies) is, and needs to be, now at the edge of the Third Millennium; and thirdly, I want to ask what it is Christianity has to offer to the world at this critical juncture. The first two items seem obvious enough, but the reason for the third needs a little explaining.
On a personal note, I as a Christian naturally am interested in how Christianity can creatively relate to the world today, and I presume that is also true of other Christians, and even to some extent for the non-Christians who are affected by the actions of Christians. However, when these two groups of people are put together, because of the intimate relationship of Christianity to Western civilization and the present pervasiveness of Western civilization throughout the world, these two groups in effect constitute the whole world. Said other, Christianity has had-and in many ways continues to have-a massive influence on shaping Western civilization, which has brought the world to the point of existing within a “Global Culture”-which continues, of course, to sustain a plurality of regional cultures within it. Further, Christianity is also leading the world of a plurality of Religions out of the Age of Monologue into the Age of Dialogue, which has already begun now at the edge of the Third Millennium. Thus, Christianity is helping in a determining way to shape Religion in general, and hence, to provide all human life with meaning.
II. RELIGION (IDEOLOGY)-ITS MEANING
1. Definition
Scholars writing about the meaning of religion usually start by stating that it is not possible to give a definition of Religion, then often follow that up with quotations of a number of “descriptions” by other scholars, and end up nevertheless offering their own “description,” or perhaps tentatively a “working definition.” I am more optimistic about the possibility of giving a definition and offer one at the start:
Religion is an explanation of the ultimate meaning of life, based on the notion of the transcendent, and how to live accordingly; and it normally contains the four “C’s”: Creed, Code, Cult, Community-structure.
Creed refers to the cognitive aspect of a religion; it is everything that goes into the “explanation” of the ultimate meaning of life. Code of behavior or ethics includes all the rules and customs of action that somehow follow from one aspect or another of the Creed. Cult means all the ritual activities that relate the follower to one aspect or other of the Transcendent, either directly or indirectly, prayer being an example of the former and certain formal behavior toward representatives of the Transcendent, like priests, of the latter. Community-structure refers to the relationships among the followers; this can vary widely, from a very egalitarian relationship, as among Quakers, through a “republican” structure like Presbyterians have, to a monarchical one, as with some Hasidic Jews vis-a-vis their Rebbe. The Transcendent, as the roots of the word indicate, means “that which goes beyond” the every-day, the ordinary, the surface experience of reality. It can mean spirits, gods, a Personal God, an Impersonal God, Emptiness, etc., etc.
Especially in modern times there have developed “explanations of the ultimate meaning of life, and how to live accordingly” which are not based on a notion of the transcendent, e.g., Marxism. Although in every respect these “explanations...” function as religions traditionally have in human life, because the idea of the transcendent, however it is understood, plays such a central role in religion, but not in these “explanations...” for the sake of accuracy it is best to give these “explanations...” not based on notion of the transcendent a separate name; the name often used is: Ideology. Much, though not all, of the following discussion will, mutatis mutandis, also apply to Ideology even when the term is not used.
It is clear when we say that Religion provides an explanation of the “meaning” of life, that therefore all Religion is constitutively related to humans; it is to provide our understanding of life. (The great Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth agreed with this idea when he argued that all Religions are human creations-and therefore will necessarily be misleading, he concluded-but then went on to insist that Christianity was not a Religion, for it, alone, was created by God, by the Transcendent, and therefore it alone was not misleading.)
Also apparent in this definition is that Religion offers an explanation of the “ultimate” understanding of life, not just part of it. It is an attempt to “get it all together,” as the American expression has it. Religion does not just attempt to explain the meaning of physical life, as “bio-logy” does, or just psychic life, as “psycho-logy,” or life in community, as “socio-logy,” or the earth on which we live, as “geo-logy,” etc., etc. Rather, it is an explanation of the meaning of Ultimate Reality and how Ultimate Reality relates to all finite reality, and most especially to us humans. Perhaps the best way in Western languages to speak of Ultimate Reality as Ultimate Reality relates to us is to follow the Greek linguistic tradition reflected in the other “logies” above: “Theo-logy.” The ancient Greeks spoke of Ultimate Reality as Theos, God. Hence, Theo-logy basically means the study of Theos and the relationship of the rest of reality, especially humans, to Theos.
I am aware that the term Theology is not only culturally a Western term, and therefore has severe limitations, but also that it is a term which has come to mean Ultimate Reality understood in “personal” terms, and therefore is still more restricted. Concerning the latter, I do not want to claim that Religion must have a personal understanding of Ultimate Reality in order to qualify as Religion; that is a matter which is a potentially fruitful subject of dialogue between theists and non-theists.
Concerning the former restriction, the fact is that no term from whatever culture can possibly be without its limitations. Hence, the best we can do is consciously to choose terms that we think will be the most helpful-and then always bear in mind their cultural and other limitations. Only thus can we avoid on one hand being condemned to silence, because we cannot find any words to describe reality which will not be limited and hence distorting, and on the other hand being guilty of “idolatry,” that is, mistaking our words, the “idols” (i.e., the images, the symbols, the “finger pointing to the moon”) for the reality they are supposed to describe, to image.
There is of course much more to reflect on concerning the various explanations of Ultimate Reality and the relation of humans to Ultimate Reality, all of which Religion is supposed to provide. Therefore, I mean to return to that subject later.
2. The Way
However, no one, West or East, would want to use the term theology, even with all the cautions outlined, as if it were synonymous with Religion. Religion is much more than just an intellectual explanation of the ultimate meaning of life-absolutely vital to Religion as that theoretical dimension is. Religion is also “how to live according” to that explanation. It is a “Way” of living, of life. This is reflected in the interesting fact that many major Religions of the world have the very term “way,” or some variation of it, at the heart of their self-understanding.
For example, in the three “Semitic,” or “Abrahamic,” Religions-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-all the following terms mean the “Way”:
Central to Judaism, the Hebrew word Halacha, “the Way,” has come to mean the Rabbinic teachings, the “legal” decisions to be followed, in order to lead a life according to the Torah, that is, as “instructed” by God (the Hebrew word Torah means “instruction”).
At the beginning of Christianity the followers of Jesus (Yeshua, in Hebrew) were not called Christians, but followers of “the Way” (Hodos, in the Greek of the New Testament-Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22) “Rabbi” Yeshua taught and exemplified.
In Islam the traditional way to live a correct life was to follow the Shar’ia, an Arabic term for “the Way”-specifically the path to find water in the desert; it also, analogous to Halacha in Judaism, came to mean the myriad “legal” decisions that should be followed by the devout Muslim.
Much the same is also true for the major Religions coming out of India-Hinduism and Buddhism:
In Hinduism there are three major “Ways,” Margas in Sanskrit, to attain the goal in life: Moksha (Sanskrit for “liberation”), namely, the Way or Marga of knowledge (Jnana), the Marga of works (Karma), and the Marga of devotion (Bhakti).
In Buddhism the key term meaning “Way” is Magga, in Pali, and refers to the Noble Eightfold Path (the fourth of Gautama’s fundamental Four Noble Truths) to be followed in order to reach Nirvana, the goal of life; moreover, Gautama himself in his first, fundamental, sermon, and Buddhism after him, described his way as the Middle Way (Majjhima Patipada in Pali) between harsh asceticism and loose sensuality which will lead to the goal of life.
For the major Religions of the Far East too, the term the Way was central:
The very name of Chinese Taoism places the Way, Tao, at the center, at the foundation of the entire Religion, the goal of which was to discern the Tao of the universe and live in harmony with it.
This notion of the Way, the Tao, was also central to the doctrine of Confucius, who taught that “The Way of Humanity” (Ren-Tao) is to follow “The Way of Heaven” (T’ien-Tao)-for Confucius Heaven, T’ien, was largely “personal,” Theos, though eventually, and especially for the Neo-Confucianists of the Song Dynasty (960-1279 C.E.) and afterwards, T’ien became largely nonpersonal.
Japan’s native Religion, Shinto, likewise has embedded in its very name the term “the Way,” namely, To, “The Way of the Gods,” Shin-To. The term was taken from the Chinese with the same meaning, Shen-Tao, to distinguish the original Japanese Religion (which in pure Japanese was called the “Way of the Kami or Gods,” Kami-no Michi) from that Religion of India, Buddhism, which came to Japan by way of China through Korea, also known in Chinese as “the Way of Buddha,” Butsu-Tao.
3. Goal of Religion
The goal, or goals, of Religion have been described in many different ways. At times the goal seems to be quite crude, and at others it appears to be quite sublime. For example, on a rather primitive level, one goal might be to gain a self-benefitting power or to deflect an injurious power. Here Religion tends to merge with magic-or emerge from magic. On the other hand, on a higher level one goal of Religion might be to engage in self-less praise of Beauty, Truth, Goodness, or to pour one’s self out for another. The Beatific Vision of Christianity would be an example of the first, and the Bodhisattva of Mahayana Buddhism an example of the second.
a) Popular Religion-Reflective Religion
This wide variation in goals underlines the importance of bearing in mind the distinction between popular level Religion and reflective level Religion. In popular Religion the degree of reflexive consciousness, of self-awareness, is quite low. It is rather like that of a child experiencing something. The child is not very aware of its experiencing something, but rather tends to be exclusively focussed on the thing experienced. We thus say that the child is naive, that is, its mentality is still close to the way it was when it was born, natus. Things tend to be understood by the child in a fashion that is rather literal, straight-forward, im-mediate, that is, with no inter-mediate element, with no mental distance between the thing experienced and the one experiencing.
But as a child grows through puberty into adulthood it gains a certain distance on the things it learned when it was young, and on itself. It becomes reflexive, reflective. It becomes aware not only of the things it encounters, that it experiences, but it becomes increasingly aware also of its experiencing of things. It often becomes critical of the things it had previously learned, at times rejecting them because it judges that they could not possibly be literally true, as it had earlier understood them to be.
If the process of maturation continues as it should, the young adult will gradually move to the stage of a “second naivete,” as Paul Ricoeur names it. Now the adult realizes that often those things it understood when it was a child as literally true, and rejected as not literally true when it was a young adult, are in fact true-far more true than the child, who took them thought literally, or the adolescent who rejected them in the same way. Now they are seen for what they truly are-and they often are metaphors, symbols, images pointing to a much deeper reality than can be expressed in literal language.
Matters of deep human import are far too weighty for prose to carry them adequately; poetry-metaphor, symbol, image-must be brought into play to carry such a message, even partly adequately. For example, a prose description of one’s beloved (blond hair, blue eyes, so tall, etc.) is much too feeble to express the object of such an important human experience as being in love; hence, the world is full, not of love prose, literal description, but of love poetry, which bursts with metaphors, symbols, images.
However, all this is true of the development not only of individuals, but also of whole communities, and indeed ultimately of the entire human race. We see the breakthrough to the level of “reflective Religion” particularly in what Karl Jaspers called the “Axial Age,” a period in human development when the major world Religions in several different cultures were born. Humankind in general moved through a kind of “communal puberty.”
Thus there will be individuals, regardless of age, whose religious consciousness is on a quite naive level, and those whose religious consciousness is on a very reflective level-and persons everywhere in between. There will also be whole communities of these different types; for example, certain Protestant Christian churches tend to be “fundamentalist” (naive) and others tend to be “liberal” (from the critical to the “second-naivete” level).
Some communities may even to a large extent be officially on the ‘second-naivete” level, but with much of its leadership still largely, or at least to a significant extent, on the “pre-critical” level; this is true at present of the Catholic Church with its Vatican II (1962-65) official commitments to a historical, dynamic, dialogical, collegial, freedom-oriented, turn-toward-this-world self-understanding on the one hand, and the static, pre-Vatican II, fortress mentality of Pope John Paul II and his chief advisers, like Cardinal Ratzinger, and many of the bishops John Paul II has appointed in the past thirteen years.
It is also important to keep in mind that one can hardly expect that the level of a person’s religious consciousness will be higher than her or his general human consciousness; so, a person who in general is rather naive would also tend to be religiously rather naive. However, perhaps because religious institutions frequently are so old, and hence often very traditional and conservative, it is far too often true that many people’s level of religious consciousness is below that of their general consciousness, especially in modern society with its rapidly expanding educational system, which tends to raise the general level of consciousness of whole populations. James Fowler, for example, judges that American churches and synagogues tend to cultivate their congregants at a level significantly below their level of moral and faith ability.1
b) Terms Used
There are many different terms used in the Religions of the world to describe the goal of Religion. These terms reveal an understanding of human nature, and of Ultimate Reality to which it is related, that is held by at least part of that Religion’s tradition. Hence, it will be revealing for us to analyze, however briefly, some of the most prominent of these terms-perhaps in the end thereby permitting us to conclude with a consensus understanding of the goal of Religion in general:
i. Redemption is a term used in the Abrahamic, and other Religions-very prominently in Christianity-which etymologically means “buying back,” “ransom.” At times, however, both in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament, it simply means the “liberation” of humans. Although it is not always clear in the Hebrew biblical texts what humans are liberated from, both there and in the New Testament it usually is liberation from “sin,” meaning from the condition of being in thralldom to the power of evil resulting from humans having committed evil acts. Humans are prevented by sin from attaining their goal, which ultimately is living in harmony or union with Ultimate Reality, that is, for monotheists, with God.
ii. Liberation (Moksha in Sanskrit) is a Hindu term describing the goal of life in negative fashion, that is, the freeing of the individual human self or soul (in Sanskrit, atman, “breath,” which linguistically is related to the Greek word for breath, atmo-as in the English word “atmosphere”) from a constant round of new physical lives (samsara, Sanskrit for “passing through,” or “trans-migration”). Some (in fact, Buddhism as well as Hinduism uses the term samsara) describe this samsaric ring as being within a single human lifetime, but traditionally it meant a series of lifetimes that a single atman passes through until it attains liberation, Moksha, so that it can thereby accomplish its desired end, that is, union with Ultimate Reality-in Hinduism called Brahman.
It is clear that there is a close resemblance between the largely Hindu term “Liberation” and the largely Judeo-Christian term “Redemption.” Both are a freeing of the inner “spirit” (which is simply a Latin-rooted word for “breath,” spiritus) from that which prevents the self, the soul, from reaching its goal, which in both traditions is fundamentally the same: union with Ultimate Reality. How that Ultimate Reality is understood and what “union” with it means is variously explained-but more of that later.
iii. Enlightenment is a term most often found in Buddhism to describe the goal of life. Indeed, the very name of Buddhism contains the term Enlightenment: Bodhi in Sanskrit means “enlightened,” and Siddharta Gautama (563-487 B.C.E.) was a Buddha, an “Enlightened One.” At bottom, Enlightenment means the perception of reality, including preeminently one’s self, as it truly is. Hence, Enlightenment is a human state of being which can be attained in this life.
Theravada Buddhism teaches that only a few can attain Enlightenment (or Nirvana, to be discussed further below)-and hence is called by those who disagree with it, Hinayana, or ‘small Vehicle”-whereas Mahayana, “Great Vehicle,” Buddhism claims many, or even all, humans can attain Nirvana. Japanese Zen Buddhism refers to this Enlightenment as Satori, and according to one sect, Rinzai Zen, it comes suddenly, whereas according to another, Soto Zen, it comes gradually. It should also be noted that this knowledge, this “Enlightenment,” is not a theoretical kind of knowledge, but an experiential one which utterly transforms all subsequent experience.
iv. Nirvana is another term Buddhism uses (as does also Hindu- ism and Jainism from about the same time as the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, i.e., fifth century B.C.E., though in somewhat different ways) to describe the ultimate goal of human life. Literally in Sanskrit it means “blown out.” What is blown out is the Tanha, the distorting “craving,” which causes the Dukkha, ‘suffering” humans experience throughout life (because they unrealistically attempt to “cling to”-Tanha-things, even though all life is in reality transient, Anicca). When that state of Nirvana is attained, a person is then in a condition of blissful calm. However, as already has been mentioned, Nirvana can be arrived at only by perceiving reality, and most of all one’s self, as it truly is. To some extent, this is like the view of the slightly later Greek thinker, Socrates (470-399 B.C.E.), who taught that ignorance is the source of human evil.
v. Heaven as the final goal of human life is a term that has been prominent in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. In fact, however, the term appears in many religions, coming from more primitive times when the heavens above were seen as the source of light, heat, and life, and hence the abode of the gods-whither humans then also wanted to migrate. In popular religions of all kinds-not just the three Abrahamic ones-heaven became a place of bliss where humans went after death; the same localizing misunderstanding of heaven also happened to the Buddhist notion of Nirvana-in popular Buddhism it too became a place of bliss where humans went after death.
On the reflective level, however, as Jesus stated, “The kingdom of God [or, “heaven”2] is not here or there; it is within you (entos hymon-Luke 17:20). Clearly for Jesus, and subsequent reflective Christianity (and the same is true for reflective Judaism and Islam), heaven as the ultimate goal of life is not a place to go to after death, but a ‘state of being, which is to be attained in this life-which, however, does not cease at the grave. In fact, the customary English translation of the New Testament Basileia tou Theou as “Kingdom of God” is really a mis-translation, reflecting the localizing tendency of popular Religion. It is more accurately translated as the “Reign of God,” that is, the state of being wherein one lives entirely in harmony or union with God, which state of being should exist now, and continue after death.
Medieval Christianity combined this understanding with Aristotlean philosophy and described the ultimate goal of human life as holiness in this life and complete union with God after death, when humans will be “face to face” with God, utilizing to the fullest their highest human capacities, the intellect and will, in knowing and loving THE Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Being (which are various aspects of the Infinite Ultimate Reality of God) in what Thomas Aquinas calls the Visio Beata, the “Beatific Vision.”
vi. Communism is the “final” state humanity is expected to arrive at in the historical future, according to Karl Marx and his subsequent theorists. In that situation there will be the “withering away of the State” because the new ‘soviet Man” will have evolved and the force of the State will no longer be necessary; then will be fulfilled the “communist” goal wherein everyone will “give according to his ability and take according to his needs.” Before that time the penultimate condition, Socialism, will have to be enforced through the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Whether Marx himself held this position literally or not has been debated by subsequent Marxists, but clearly most of the “orthodox” variety (that is, those who took power under Lenin and Stalin and maintained it in the Marxist world until recently) did hold such a position, despite obvious contradictory evidence in Marx’s writings. Thus, except to naive “orthodox” Marxists, it is evident that the condition of “communism” lies beyond human history, as an always receding horizon.
“Non-orthodox” Marxist thinkers have argued this cogently from Marx’s writings, as, for example, Roger Garaudy when he was a member of the Politbureau of the Communist Party of France in the 1960s: “Yes, man will always be capable of an always greater future. For us, Communism is not the end of history, but the end of pre-history, man’s pre-history which is made up of the jungle-like encounters common to all class societies. “This social formation,” Marx writes in his “Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” “constitutes...the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.”“3
vii. Salvation is a term that is widespread especially in the Abrahamic Religions, but it is also one which can be used in regard to the final goal of humans in most, if not all, religions:
It should be noted, however, that Salvation is used both in its primary and secondary senses in religions. Its primary meaning is literally living a “whole, healthy” life. The term comes from the Latin Salus, “health,” whence a number of English and Romance language cognates are derived, all fundamentally referring to health: salutary, salubrious, salute, salutation. The Germanic counterpart is Heil, “salvation,” and as an adjective, heilig, “holy,” whence the English cognates: health, hale, heal, whole, holy. To be “holy” means to be “(w)hole.”
The secondary meaning of salvation is “saving,” that is, as when a “savior” rescues someone in danger of losing his/her “health,” as, for example, when “saving” a person from drowning-whether in water or in “sin.” Thus, even in its secondary meaning, the term “salvation” ultimately means attaining, preserving or restoring a healthy, holy, whole human life-however understood.
Some religions emphasize the secondary meaning in claiming that “wholeness,” “(w)holiness,” can be attained only through the help of the “savior.” For example, in traditional Protestant Christianity, a person can be saved only thus: sola fide, “by faith alone,” sola gratia, “by grace alone,” through solus Christus, “Christ alone”; in Pure Land Buddhism calling on the name of Amida Buddha is the only, and certain, way for anyone to attain Nirvana: Namu Amida Butsu, shortened to Nembutsu, “Praise to Amida Buddha”). This way of being saved is described in Japanese as Tariki, “Other-power,” in contrast to Jiriki, “self-power.”
Faced with the generally human religious question of whether humans are “saved” by either Jiriki or Tariki, it appears to me that here the traditional Protestant principle of sola, “alone,” is not appropriate, but rather the Catholic principle of et...et, “both...and” is: On the other hand, we can become as authentically and wholly human as is possible for us only if we persistently and wisely make the necessary effort. But on the other hand of course we can attain success in this lifelong endeavor only to the extent that we have been given the wherewithal: If we had not been born, we could not become (w)holy human; if we die too young, if we did not have loving care in infancy, or if we did not have a good education and training, encouragement, love, moral example, inspiration, and on and on, we could not become (w)holy human according to our inborn potentialities. So, we become (w)holy human by both Jiriki and Tariki. But we must remember that when we speak of these two “powers” we are speaking on two different levels of causality. As a consequence, there can be no clash-only complementarity.
What it means to be authentically and wholly human, and the best way to attain such, however, is precisely where the greatest, most fundamental, divergences among religions appear to be found. As a consequence, it is important to reflect, however briefly, on the major ways of understanding what it means to be human. I will approach this question by looking at the fundamental ways of understanding human nature: human nature is a) fundamentally good, b) fundamentally corrupt, c) fundamentally mixed. Then I will offer d) a resolution of my own, after which e) an excursus on a contemporary understanding of human nature will be added. Many examples could be proffered, but it will be sufficient to allude to only one or two representatives of each fundamental view of human nature.
4. Human Nature
a) Human Nature is Fundamentally Good
In the ancient world of the East, one of the strongest proponents of the idea that humans by their nature are good was the great Confucian, Mencius (Meng Tzu in Chinese, 371-289 B.C.E.). He argued that humans commit evil only because they forget their original good nature. The human who does evil is like a hill side that was covered with trees (i.e., with virtue, with instinctive goodness) which has been deforested by saw-toothed vice. That is, that person has been so abused by vice that s/he even can no longer discern her/his own instinctual spontaneous tendency toward altruism and justice: as, for example, anyone seeing a child about to fall into a well would instinctively rush to prevent it.
In the modern, eighteenth century, West Jean-Jacques Rousseau represents well the optimist tradition. For him humans are born good, but are corrupted by “civilization”: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains!” According to Rousseau, humanity’s problems would be solved if the education of the young were such as to “lead out” the goodness inherent in the child, as the very term education, “e-ducere” suggests, and keep the corrupting influences of “civilization” at bay.
b) Human Nature is Fundamentally Evil or Corrupt
In the ancient East a much younger contemporary of Mencius, the Confucian Hsün Tzu (c. 313-238 B.C.E.), took the exact opposite position of his elder and argued that “the original nature of humans is evil.”4 He was very detailed in his description of the innate evil tendency of humans: “Man, by his nature, at birth lusts for profit.... is envious and hateful.... and because he follows these tendencies, impurity and disorder result.”5
In the post-medieval West, the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers stressed the fundamental corruption of human nature after its sinful “Fall” in the “mythic” paradise of Eden. Fallen humanity’s state is so dismal, according to Luther and Calvin, that it can do nothing at all to attain its true goal, union with God. It can be ‘saved” only by God’s free gift, sola gratia; and that comes, as noted above, only by faith in Christ, sola fide, solus Christus. Humanity’s inability to do anything for itself was so thoroughgoing for Luther, that he taught that humans have no free will, and for Calvin, that he taught that each human’s ultimate fate was predetermined, predestined, ahead of time by God, regardless of what the individual allegedly freely chose to do.
c) Human Nature is Fundamentally Both Good and Evil
For Catholic Christianity humanity was created good (following the biblical Genesis story of creation, where the Hebrew original says that when God looked over his creative handiwork on the sixth day of creation he saw that it was all mod tov, “very good”), but through humanity’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden it fell into a state of “Original Sin,” that is, its intellect was darkened, its will was weakened and it developed a inclination toward evil.
Concerning the posing of the problem as Luther, and particularly Calvin, did, namely, asking about the relationship between God’s omnipotence or complete foreknowledge- Providence-Thomas Aquinas, and Catholicism following him, steered between Scylla and Charybdis thus: “All things are subject to divine providence, but rational creatures are so in a superior way. For they are under divine providence by participating in it, for they are called to in some way be divine providence for themselves and for others.”6
Thus, Catholicism taught that human nature was originally fundamentally good, but had been so stricken that it needed a “savior”; at the same time, however, each person must also freely collaborate with God’s freely offered help, grace. Hence, humans attain the goal of life, union with God, not through faith alone, but through “faith and good works.”
d) Human Nature: Love of Self and Others Mutually
As “balanced” as the Catholic “both-and” position appears in comparison to the Protestant “only,” the terms in which the question to be answered was posed caused Catholics endless logical problems (not to speak of the immense intellectual antinomies Protestants ran into):
For example, how can one affirm both an Absolute Ultimate Reality, an Ultimate Uncaused Cause of everything-and at the same time a radically free human will (which of course must be the cause of its own decisions; otherwise it would not be free)? The difficulty, it seems to me, is the result of posing the question badly. If I ask, for example, How far is yellow? of course I will receive a non-sense response. So here, too. Christian thinkers in this matter were actually doing something even more irrational:
They were dealing with two elements, both of which by definition cannot be rationally “comprehended,” namely, God (the In-finite cannot be “com-prehended,” by the finite), and the free human will (if it could be “rationally” understood, it would then be “determinable” by reason-and therefore not radically free); then they had the hubris to ask how they were to understand the relationship between these two elements, neither of which they could understand. This is like trying to solve a mathematical equation with three unknowns-and no knowns!
I would like to offer an alternative description of human nature as found in its beginning and development in each human being, which I hope will be both true to our universal human experience and at the same time avoid the antinomies that the above traditional solutions ineluctably run into as a result of how they pose the issue:
What differentiates humans from all other living beings is the fact that they are animals with the ability of abstract thought, who therefore can become reflexive, and, as a result of this capacity, possess the ability of free choice (also called “love”). All our faculties of knowing-our cognitive faculties, mainly our senses and abstract intellect-present us reality under the aspect of “the true.” All our faculties of desiring-our appetitive faculties, mainly our physical and emotional “drives” and our will-relate us to reality under the aspect of “the good.”
The cognitive faculty moves outwardly and then inwardly, reaching out and drawing the outside world to itself by knowing it, and thereby “becoming one” with it; the appetitive faculty also moves outwardly and then inwardly, reaching out and drawing the outside world to itself by loving it, and thereby “becoming one” with it. To restate the latter: the nature, the very structure, of the appetitive faculty is to reach out toward what the cognitive faculty presents as true and good, and to draw it to itself, thereby becoming one with it; thus the fundamental meaning of the term love is, having perceived the good, to reach out and to draw it to oneself.
When a human is born it does not even know itself as different from the rest of reality, but learns to know itself only by coming to know “the other,” as, for example, the infant’s coming to know its own fingers as different from the flame when it learns to know the flame by touching it. Thus as the child develops it gradually becomes increasingly aware of its own self and of others.
There is a similar mode of mutuality that operates in the appetitive, the love, area. The infant begins by perceiving the good-its mother’s breast, for example-and naturally draws it to itself, and in that sense “becomes one” with it. When it perceives the good, it will identify with it in one way or another-the natural manner for the appetitive faculties to operate. If in the process of growing up it receives much love, the child will necessarily perceive the one loving it, its “lover,” as the source of pleasure, as good, and will therefore reach out to it, identify with it; its “lover” will also become its “beloved.”
When the sense of identity with the beloved becomes strong enough, we speak of an “other self,” an alter ego. Then in the natural process when a person’s appetitive faculties perceive the good and draw it to its self, to its ego, s/he will also tend to draw the good to its alter ego. If the love identification of the “primus ego” with the alter ego is strong enough, more and more of the perceived good will be drawn to the alter ego rather than the primus ego (e.g., the father giving food to his child rather than keeping it for himself), possibly even to the extreme of “giving up one’s life for one’s friend”; and, as Jesus said, “greater love than this has no one” (John 15:13).
Thus, the very nature of humans is to love the good as it is presented to them, and their “greatest good” (because the most “human,” most “humanizing”) is to have others act in a loving way toward them-with which “other” they would then naturally identify, making the other to a greater or lesser extent alter egos, “other selves,” thereby drawing the perceived good to them as well as-or even, instead of-themselves.
It should be noted that there is operating here something like a psychical version of the physical law of inertia: “a body at rest remains at rest, unless moved by another body already in motion.” Humans would not perceive other loving humans as their “greatest good” were they not first loved by those other humans. That is, they would “remain at rest” were they not first “moved” by the “motion,” the loving action, of the other, and hence in turn find them good-and therefore love them in return.
But how does it all get started? Ultimately “Ultimate Reality” has to be ultimate not only as a goal, a final cause (a telos), but also as a beginning (a protos), an efficient cause (causa efficiens). Process philosophers speak of Ultimate Reality as this initial efficient cause by its acting as a lure, a “Divine Lure.” The New Testament says much the same when John remarks that, “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
It is doubtless the awareness of the humanly natural movement from the primus ego to the alter ego that has led the great religious traditions to phrase their fundamental principles accordingly. For example, for both Judaism and Christianity the second of the two “great commandments,” and the main way the first one is de facto observed, is “to love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:38). One begins with an authentic self-love, which then extends to the neighbor, the alter ego.
It must also be remembered that it is precisely by this mutual knowing and loving that humans develop their humanity ever more fully. It is the nature of humans to be potentially open to all being, cognitively and appetitively, as far as their faculties can reach-and they can always reach further. Humans are by nature “open-ended.” In other words, humans fulfill their nature by a process of constant self-transcendence, a going beyond themselves, knowing and loving ever more “being”-and a convinced theist would add, ultimately knowing and loving “Infinite Being,” the “Ground of Being,” “Being Itself,” called God.
The same principle of mutuality that starts from the center and moves outward is phrased in another way in most of the world religions in the various forms of the “Golden Rule”:
Perhaps the oldest recorded version-which is cast in a positive form-stems from Zoroaster (628-551 B.C.E.): “That which is good for all and any one, for whomsoever-that is good for me...what I hold good for self, I should for all. Only Law Universal is true Law” (Gathas, 43.1).
Confucius (551-479 B.C.E.): When asked, “Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life?” he said: “Do not to others what you do not want done to yourself” (Analects, 12.2 & 15.23). Confucius also stated in a variant version-likewise in negative form: “What I do not wish others to do to me, that also I wish not to do to them” (Analects, 5.11).
The founder of Jainism was Vardhamana, known as Mahavira (“Great Hero-540-468 B.C.E.); the various scriptures of Jainism, however, derived from a later period: “A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated” (Sutrakritanga 1.11.33). “One who you think should be hit is none else but you.... Therefore, neither does he cause violence to others nor does he make others do so” (Acarangasutra 5.101-2).
The founder of Buddhism was Siddhartha Gautama, know as the Buddha (“Enlightened One”-563-483 B.C.E.); the various scriptures of Buddhism also derived from a later period: “Comparing oneself to others in such terms as “Just as I am so are they, just as they are so am I,” he should neither kill nor cause others to kill” Sutta Nipata 705). “Here am I fond of my life, not wanting to die, fond of pleasure and averse from pain. Suppose someone should rob me of my life.... If I in turn should rob of his life one fond of his life.... How could I inflict that upon another?” (Samyutta Nikaya v.353).
The Hindu epic poem, the third-century B.C.E. Mahabharata, states that its “Golden Rule,” which is expressed in both positive and negative form, is the summary of all Hindu teaching, “the whole Dharma”: “Vyasa says: Do not to others what you do not wish done to yourself; and wish for others too what you desire and long for for yourself-this is the whole of Dharma; heed it well” Mahabharata, Anusasana Parva 113.8).
The deuterocanonical biblical Tobit was written around the year 200 B.C.E. and contains a negative version-as most versions are-of the Golden Rule: “Never do to anyone else anything that you would not want someone to do to you” (Tobit 4:15).
The major founder of Rabbinic Judaism, Hillel, who lived about a generation before Jesus, though he may also have been his teacher, taught that the Golden Rule-his version being both positive and negative-was the heart of the Torah; “all the rest was commentary”: “Do not do to others what you would not have done to yourself” (bTalmud, Shabbath 31a).
Following in this Jewish tradition, Jesus stated the Golden Rule in a positive form, saying that it summed up the whole Torah and prophets: “Do for others just what you want them to do for you” (Luke 6:31); “Do for others what you want them to do for you: this is the meaning of the Law of Moses [Torah] and of the teachings of the prophets” (Matthew 7:12).
In the seventh century of the Common Era Mohammed is said to have claimed that the Golden Rule is the “noblest Religion”: “Noblest Religion is this-that you should like for others what you like for yourself; and what you feel painful for yourself, hold that as painful for all others too.” Again: “No man is a true believer unless he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.”7
The Golden Rule is likewise found in some non-literate religions as well: “One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts”8
The eighteenth-century Western philosopher Immanuel Kant came up with a “rational” version of the Golden Rule in his famous “Categorical Imperative,” or “Law of Universal Fairness”: “Act on maxims which can at the same time have for their object themselves as universal laws of nature.... Treat humanity in every case as an end, never as a means only.”9
It is clear that the core of the world’s major Religions, the Golden Rule, “does not attempt the futile and impossible task of abolishing and annihilating egoism. On the contrary, it makes Egoism the measure of Altruism. “Do not foster the ego more than the alter; care for the alter as much as for the ego.” To abolish egoism is to abolish altruism also; and vice versa.”10
Authentic egoism and authentic altruism then are not in conflict with each other; the former necessarily moves to the latter, even, as noted, possibly “giving one’s life for one’s friend.” This, however, is the last and highest stage of human development. It is the stage of the (w)holy person, the saint, the arahat, the bodhisattva, the sage. Such a stage cannot be the foundation of human society. Rather, it must be the goal of it. The foundation of human society must be first self-love, which includes moving outward to loving others. Not recognizing this foundation of self-love is the fundamental flaw of those idealistic systems, such as communism, that try to build a society on the foundation of altruism. A human and humanizing society should lead toward (w)holiness, toward altruism, but it cannot be built on the assumption that its citizens are (w)holy and altruistic to start with. Such an altruism must grow out of an ever developing self-love; it cannot be assumed, and surely it cannot be forced (as has been tried for decades-with disastrous dehumanizing results).
e) “Excursus”: A Contemporary Marxist Understanding
A popular level version of Marxism has thought of humanity as essentially determined by great social forces, especially economic, in a way that submerges the individual human person and forecasts the inevitable triumph of Marxism through the inexorable development of a classless society which will have gone through the phases of the dictatorship of the proletariat, socialism and, finally, communism, as described above. Such a crass understanding, however, is not the way a careful Marxist understanding of what it means to be human is presented by “non-orthodox” Marxist thinkers.
In the 1960s philosopher and French Communist Party Politibureau member Roger Garaudy stressed that Marxism is not static or pre-determined, but dynamic, relational, and unendingly so:
The individual for Marx is defined by the whole of his social relations just as the object is defined infinitely, inexhaustibly by its relations with the totality of other objects. The reality with which the physicist has to deal is already, as Lenin wrote, inexhaustible. How much more inexhaustible is the human reality which with life, conscience, society has crossed so many other thresholds of complexity!11
Such an “relational” understanding of human nature that has become more and more widespread in twentieth-century philosophical thinking, and has also become increasingly prominent among Christian thinkers. I is also very like the Buddhist notion of “Dependent Co-origination,” and hence of Sunyata, which will be discussed below.
Garaudy also emphasized the dynamic, non-determined core of reality in his emphasis on the Marxist notion that praxis is the fountain of history and truth. He cited Marx as saying that “men make their own history,” and went on to ask, “How, in spite of such insistence, has it been possible to ascribe to Marx a supposed “economic determinism” which is so contrary to the basic spirit of his doctrine?” He answered that, “superficial disciples or excessively hasty or ill-intentioned opponents have frequently mistaken the true originality of Marx’s materialism.... understanding “scientific” history to mean a history in which the future has already been written. This is a distortion of the very spirit of Marxism which is essentially a methodology of historical initiative.”12 Garaudy secured the validity of his interpretation by a citation of Engels:
Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that younger writers sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasize this main principle in opposition to our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to allow the other elements involved in the interaction to come into their rights.13
Decades later the Yugoslav Marxist philosopher from the “Praxis” group, Zagorka Golubovic, argued along a similar line, insisting that according to Marx “the uniqueness of being human cannot be expressed by a definition based on a selection of one of the distinctive traits.”14 Rather, “the very fact that men persistently create and recreate themselves speaks against a definition of man in terms of a fixed set of traits.” For Marx, a key notion was that of praxis, which helps us understand “that human being do not exist as “determined objects,” or as “unambiguously free subjects,” but as the conscious agents who both construct the world by their actions, and are conditioned and limited by the world they themselves have created.”
Golubovic developed this notion humans as conscious agents, rejecting the vulgarized Marxist concept of economic, or other, determinism: “One cannot speak strictly in t