NeedGod?
How real is unreality?
One
feature of certain strands of Postmodern theology is a rejection of the idea
that Christianity requires the factuality of God. God is then a story, a narrative
constructed by human beings, and religion is a thing of value that can exist
independent of the actuality of a divine being.
This viewpoint has certain strengths for Christianity, the assertion that Christianity is a thing of value unrelated to it's description of 'divine reality' is an exceptionally strong apologetic. We live in an age where absolute belief can be a hurdle that many are unwilling to jump. An absolute belief in God (or any other idea) is not required to enjoy the benefits of Christian stories, morality or ritual.
However it is the hurdle of absolute belief on which non-realism can also flounder. There is a danger that non-realism however much it dresses itself up in the clothes of postmodernity hides as its undergarments a modernist rejection of God. It can be altogether too certain that God does not exist, that the supernatural is nothing but superstition. It can be altogether too individualistic, rather than being the product of faith community.
The Other?
Perhaps then we should start not with ourselves, but that which is not ourselves. 'The Other' in this context is that which we perceive is not us, a perception that we develop in early childhood. Our recognition of community and of other people as individuals greatly forms our perception of the world. Indeed it forms our cultural context, a context that although shifting one cannot be extracted from, that is, it is impossible to take a detached 'birds eye' view of ideas, concepts and stories, we are always located within our own story.
However the Other goes beyond the local, it is extralocal. Human beings perceive things that are Other than their community or themselves, religious experience or awareness, indeed 'spirituality', is such an area. How this manifests depends on the individual and community; it could be a sense of peace in a place of worship, elation whilst listening to music, wonder whilst standing in a wilderness. Is such awareness a product of chemicals or hysteria or programming, or does it represent a further aspect of being? Just because we can perceive psychological mechanisms in religious experience does not mean that those psychological mechanisms are the experience. If the Other is in some sense as real as that it is other to, how can we, by definition not being Other, speak of it? The Other must be larger than the stories we tell, but we have to start somewhere.
Christianity
A
strong argument for Christianity is that we have to start somewhere; Christianity
is a place to start. One reason that one might reject Christianity as a starting
point is that in some forms it have been stripped of Otherness. On one side
God is simple and straightforward - he is found in a book, or tradition; on
the other God and the supernatural are distilled to nothingness - human reason
reigns.
Christian narrative is not straight forward or reasonable however. Instead there is tension and dialogue. This tension and dialogue is found within scripture, tradition and experience. Tension and dialogue are seemingly inseparable from community, but Christianity has a tension and dialogue as a core narrative. The incarnation brings together in a single person and point in history a tension and dialogue between the individual and the other. Jesus Christ is Person and God; Local and Other. The word 'Christ' represents this tension, and the Christian Community has long told the story of it's identity being Christ. Being Christian is about being in that tension and dialogue between the Other and the Local. Christian stories reflect that and embrace it.
Fictionalism
In these ideas I think there can be seen an element of philosophical fictionalism. The value of Christianity, or of religion is not dependent on its factuality, because it deals with the Other which by definition is outside what we can factuality speak about. Truth itself is a fiction - it is a story that we enter into, an infants visions of the world as as extension of itself is no more or less true than an adults perception of the Local and extralocal Other.
As a Christian we can believe in creedal Christianity, we can practice it, we can continue to shape it, but we recognize that as soon as we speak of the Other and say 'God' that we are reducing that which is extralocal to that which is Local; but that is 'okay', we cannot speak in any other way.
We can argue that this gap between the stories we use to speak of the Other, and the Other itself, the gap between the experience of the Other and what is Local is mystical. This mystery is in the Christian tradition embraced and demonstrated in the kenotic Christ; Otherness and Locality together, self emptying in incarnation.
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