Thoughts on Faith, Philosophy, and More

Category: Reflections

Consciousness, Value and Experience of God

Recently I have been spending most of my time on the subject of philosophy of mind. Questions concerning the nature of human beings are fascinating but have immense ramifications for our value and teleology.

Paramount to any morally and intellectually sensitive person is this: what makes a human being valuable? Human beings are evidently material beings. Theists and non-theists may go back and forth on whether that tells the entire story about human beings. Nevertheless from our basic epistemic starting point, we are material beings made of the physical stuff that comprises the world. But we have no reason to think that material things or organisms bear inherent value. That is to say, it is not clear that physical stuff should be deemed inherently valuable.

What then makes a human being valuable? We may rephrase this: what grounds the value of human beings? If you’re not clear on what this means, perhaps envision a thought experiment where the lives of human beings are at stake. You are tasked with saving the lives of these people. One would go great lengths, think through various possibilities, and weigh the costs of what it would take to save those lives. The question remains why?

For a non-theist answers may be grounded in rationality, or capacity for loving relationship, capacity to experience pleasure or pain. Typically, for theists, both Jewish and Christian this question finds its answer in doctrine of the imago dei. Human beings are created in the image of the divine. But does this answer the question? It remains in dispute what the image of God actually is, positions can be roughly divided into functionalist and structuralist camps. Functionalist accounts describe the image of God as a vocation or function that is carried out. Structuralist accounts describe it as some feature of human nature (freedom, moral agency, rationality etc…).

Notice however all these play an important part in human nature as much as they feature in our conscious experience. I take it as self-evident that conscious experience is valuable in and of itself.1 Our power to exercise freedom (to make the world other than it would have been), or power to exercise moral agency (to bring about good or perform a moral duty) are conscious acts. These require deliberation and apprehension. We should be clear that these are distinct from consciousness itself, and so while they require consciousness to make them realizable they cannot be collapsed into consciousness.2 In the way of speaking, everything we take as immediately real, we do so because it plays a role in our conscious experience.

But can consciousness itself ground human value? Most can agree that consciousness is supremely valuable. But it cannot ground human value. Suppose I am knocked unconscious or fall into a dreamless sleep. Surely I have not lost my value! This helps sharpen our observations. For in those moments, I retain the capacity for consciousness. This is what is common for all human beings, despite whether they are able to make important moral choices or are significantly hindered in exercising freedom. It is our capacity for conscious experience and action that grounds our value not conscious experience or action itself.

Most people recognize that the experience of going for a fall hike, or enjoying a delicious steak, or receiving an act of kindness are goods in themselves. However in Christian theism boldly claims that there is a good that outstrips all of these.3 It is a conscious experience of God. Participation in God or union with God is under girded by conscious experience of God. Perhaps this is what grounds human value as exceptional,4 our capacity for conscious experience of God.

These thoughts are by no means novel, and are more of a rough plotting of an idea than a final answer. But I believe they touch on something that is fundamentally true. Neither do they remain to be some abstract philosophical pondering. For how many people have wondered in their darkest moments, what makes us valuable? You may even be at the end of the road, thinking, why am I valuable? Because you have a supreme gift, the capacity for conscious experience. That is no small thing. And above that, you have the capacity for conscious experience of God. That above all, makes life supremely worth living.

* * *

[1] This also leaves out whether consciousness is something which can be accounted for by physical facts or must be something non physical. It does require that mental properties are real, contrary to the eliminativists. 

[2] Think for instance of an artificial intelligence that is created to perform all of the same tasks that human beings can. Maybe it looks exceptionally human too. Not only this, but it is programmed with the same responses appropriate to those situations. It seems that human beings remain much more valuable. The differentiating factor is that we have a mental life, whereas the machine does not.

[3] Obviously this may apply to theism more broadly, but Christian theism focuses on union with or knowing God. This is especially accentuated in the idea of theosis.

[4] Surely the same would follow for other beings who might have the same capacity.

Divinity and Humanity: Reflections on the Incarnation

Each year Christmas rolls around, along with it comes the age old recurring posts about the true meaning of Christmas.For some, it is having to explain that contrary to some popular claims, Christmas is not a pagan holiday. Additionally, there are those who subtly remind us (as if in fact it were shocking news), that Jesus was not born on December 25th. Skeptics of the New Testament throw out the annual article reminding us why the infancy narratives are merely later developments of legendary flavour and have no bearing in history. And so on, and so on. It’s easy to get caught up in it all, and that’s not to deny the importance of these questions. However, we often forget, or at least, fail to focus our attention on a bigger story that the story of Christmas is telling. It is one of cosmic proportions. It is the story of Incarnation, “God becoming human”.

In the past year there has been plenty of room for doubt in the world and the events that have taken place. From our frame of human experience, the world can look as if it is buried beneath deep dark clouds of turmoil. But the story of the Incarnation is one that gives hope in the midst of despair. It reminds us that God has not left history to spiral into irreversible destruction.

This a reflection of the theme of divinity and incarnation, and what it means that God took on human nature in Jesus of Nazareth. Here I say, what it means rather than merely what it meant, because the Incarnation’s cosmic significance is the centrepiece of God’s acting in the world. From the moment that God’s culminating act breaks loose into our space of human history, it can then no longer be a past event that withers away as something God merely did. It becomes a concrete reality. For the Incarnate one, is the Crucified one, and the Crucified One is the Exalted one.

Surprising and Yet Anticipated

Modern people have real trouble wrapping their minds around how God could become human. It is no wonder that philosophers and theologians debate over these profound questions. We tend to think that the ancients were different. But perhaps not so. No doubt this is what drove the earliest debates on Christology. Even pagan monotheists like the critic Celcus, struggled to understand what it is that Christians thought had happened in Jesus of Nazareth[1].

What is it that makes the Incarnation such an unbelievable feat? The key is in understanding God’s unsurpassable uniqueness. In second Temple Jewish thought, a way to depict God was to envisage him enthroned in the vast heights of heaven, spatially separated from mortals on earth[2]. The early Christian claim of Incarnation might come as surprise, but not merely as a surprise but a shock. One that was, in the words of Paul, “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.

The Incarnation is then, something surprising. But it may be that the seeds of Incarnation are already there, laying dormant only to flower into full bloom with the Son’s entry into the world. The incarnation is anticipated and consistent with God’s redemptive acting. Here’s how.

The early chapters of Genesis depict God planting a garden. This is not any ordinary garden which one simply keeps on your property, but it is Eden. For the ancient reader it stands out because it is a sacred space where God chooses to dwell. God doesn’t spend his time alone here. He invites humans that he has made, to dwell with him in this sacred abode, a place where heaven and earth are completely unified. In the ancient world, temples were not merely some places to worship deities, but they were where the gods dwelt. In Eden God comes to dwell with humans. Eden is a temple. It was always God’s plan to dwell with humanity.

Even after the things go sour and humans forfeit this chance, God pursues them even further. His plan is to dwell with them. Exodus tells the narrative of Yahweh redeeming Israel, and instructing them to build a sacred dwelling space so he can live among them. God instructs Solomon to build a temple so that God can dwell with humankind but time and time again, humans make a mess of things, and yet God’s goal remains the same. This motif of temple and divine dwelling anticipates the surprise of the Incarnation. It is in this light that John can say that, the “Word dwelt among us.” How? By becoming human and residing in our flesh and blood reality, fully partaking in it. The Word becomes flesh.

Not to Be Used for His Own Advantage

The sober truth of humanity is that we are ‘made from dust.’ This is a metaphorical way of speaking of our fragility and mortality. We are created and transient. Yet this aside, we are capable of immense feats and monumental accomplishments. From our place in the dirt we look to the stars to take our place among them. We grasp at power and status, but not for some noble cause. We grasp for exploitation and selfish gain.

In the ancient world, a common way to conceive of deities or heavenly beings was to understand them as celestial bodies. The sheer brilliance and heavenly luminescence of the sun, moon and stars is at least prima facie, one obvious reason to see deities in terms of celestial bodies. They are also seated high above in the heavens. The human pursuit however is not mere worship of those who reside in the heavens, but to take their place among them. It is no surprise then that humans throughout history seize at the chance to become gods. This manifests itself in ruler cults throughout the ancient world where kings or emperors were regarded as divine or the embodiment of a deity. Most common perhaps was in ancient Rome where an emperor might be declared a god at his death through deification or even declared a god in his lifetime. Being a god of course, meant that he ought to receive worship.This was on account of exalted status and immense power. The drive for self-divinity is one that arises and culminates from self-seeking desire and ambition. To dominate those below and in the words of Jesus “to lord it over them.” It is the Incarnation that critiques and brings down the human drive for self-deification. Not only this, but it also critiques these false forms of divinity that manifests in oppressive power and perpetuated violence.

One of the earliest Christian texts is preserved for us in Saint Paul’s letter to the Philippians. This text is an early Christian hymn which captures for us the christology of the early Jesus movement[3]. It says that Jesus, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped…” Then it continues with a surprising twist, “but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,being born in the likeness of men…[4]”

Jesus, pre-existed holding equality with God, yet divinity did not constitute something to be exploited for selfish gain and accrual of power to dominate sinful humanity. Jesus acts in embodying his divine character by emptying himself taking on the form of humanity. True divinity is expressed in selfless love. It was in true divine character that Christ takes the form of a slave and takes his place among those in the dust, for the fragile, the mortal and the broken. It is here that we can understand the Isaianic language to describe the kenotic act of Christ “he poured out his life unto death” as the full expression of Incarnation and complete undoing of false divinity. 

The Incarnation shatters all false forms of divinity that acclaim status and oppressive power, and reveals the nature of true divinity. For it was God who moved towards humanity showing their hopes for self-deification for what they truly were. But to those who received him “he gave the right to become children of God[5].”

God Made Visible

One of the most perplexing realities of the human story is perhaps the seeming absence of God. No doubt this is one of the most common objections to Christian theism. While not only mounted as a reason to be skeptical that God exists, many Christians I suspect deeply struggle with this. It is this fact that often puts one in the position of a painful epistemic angst. Why is God so distant? Why is God so absent amidst the pain and suffering of real life? You shudder at the thought.. Perhaps it is because he is not there.

It is easy to affirm propositions in the midst of doubt and deep isolation, but it is another to know them. It is another to believe them. It can seem as if, at the end of the day, that we are truly left to the limits of our material existence. Caught in the shadows of our doubt, we may think we are no more than cosmic orphans left to the blind forces of the universe. 

There are plenty of myths in which Gods take on human form and appear to humans. Rarely however do these claim to have any historical bearing. They are stories, and nothing more than that.

The Incarnation tears the curtain open so to speak, for the Incarnation means God visible. God lays claim to time and space in a flesh and blood history. He does not merely take on the appearance of humans, but unites himself to human nature, body and soul.  And so Athanasius can say “he entered into the world in a new way, stooping to our level in his love and self-revealing to us[6].” Jesus, the Son crosses through the dark shadow of our alienation and comes to have visible fellowship with us. The author of 1 John describes the reality of the Incarnation as that “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched[7].” God with us, is God visible. The crucifixion of Jesus then is by no means at odds with God taking on human flesh. It is a full and direct expression of God visible, for he plunges down the depths of human predicament. He hangs in solidarity with broken humanity. His suffering and death is the visible demonstration of the depths of God’s love for humanity. 

Becoming Human Through the Incarnate God

We often like to think that the greatest problem that exists our enemy, our flesh and blood foe. This is true, but not in the immediate sense. Self deceived, we rarely wish to admit that deep within us, our nature is at its root, corrupted . The enemy is within us. As mentioned in the previous section, our desires are self seeking and gravitate towards exploiting others for our own gain. 

Sometimes people make awful decisions and yet we are able to extend some sympathy by saying “they’re just human!” And yet when we read a story of someone who has committed some heinous and grisly crime we see it as utterly dehumanizing and sub-human. Within all of us we know what it is to be truly human, but the condition we find ourselves in is one that has, we might say, been dehumanized.

The darkness runs deep within us. It may be tempting in face of the full recognition of such reality to recoil in horror and believe that the only redemption to such creatures would be abandonment

In the Incarnation God moves toward humanity and through taking on human nature it is the very act of the remaking of humanity. It is through taking on human nature, that Christ completely renews human nature by expressing the full and true capacity of human nature. God shows us what it is to be truly human in the Incarnation. Instead of self-deception, greed, unfaithfulness, malicious anger, cowardice, coercion and violence, Christ demonstrates his full humanity through generosity, fidelity, compassion, self-control, culminating in unsurpassed selfless love. Where death and sin have ruined human nature and birthed twisted acts, the Son of God heals the wounded and maimed. He extends compassion to the outcast leper. He drives out the demons of those enslaved by evil. It is the remaking of humanity in the face of the tyranny of evil. Often we isolate redemption merely to the death of Jesus, implying that gospel stories are just filler for a more interesting narrative. But the life of the Son of God is the heart beat of his renewal of humanity. And if to be truly human is to perfectly love God and neighbour, then self sacrificial death is to be truly human, undivided from his life. It is the recreation of the Image. 

But why through the Incarnation? Saint Athanasius here contends that: 

“Men could not have done it, for they are only made after the Image; nor could angels have done it, for they are not the images of God. The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father Who could recreated man made after the Image[8].” 

For Athanasius we are renewed by Christ “the Image of the Invisible God[9],” to be transformed into his Image, from death to life. This was enacted and fully realized through the historical reality of the Incarnation. For Paul, it is through participation in Christ, the Incarnate One that our nature is renewed. Through participation in faith, we begin to reflect bit by bit the Image. Through Jesus, we become a new humanity.

More Than a Theology

What is taken into consideration throughout these four interconnected themes is the orthodox understanding of the person of Jesus. It shows that this foundational tenet of Christianity celebrated by Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox is not something merely to be left to dusty academic libraries or the ivory towers of theologians and philosophers. It is something that changes the history of the world. 

The Incarnation is a reality that gives hope. It is one that has waited in the narratives woven together in the Old Testament. It is one that reveals to us the true nature of God, who expresses true power in weakness. It is one, that when we are left to shadows of doubt, declares the visible God in Jesus. It is one that says God has taken on human nature to renew and remake it.
If you are reading this, perhaps you may find yourself in the shadows, wondering if the world will be left in darkness. Perhaps you wonder if God has left the world. Perhaps the ‘gods of this age’ will triumph. But in what can seem like a vast darkness, there is a flicker of light. For in the Incarnation “the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, and the ones who sit in the land and shadow of death, a light has dawned on them[10].” The story of the Incarnation is the story of Emmanuel. It is the reality of Jesus of Nazareth, one who seemed as though an insignificant prophet in the back roads of a vast empire. He was a king, who had taken the form of a servant, not in spite of being a king but because he was a true king. He was truly God who had taken on flesh. He is the Incarnate one, and therefore the Crucified One. It is because of this, that he is also the Exalted One[10]. The story of the Incarnation is one of glory clothed in humility, and triumph through servanthood.

Notes

[1] Bird, Michael. The Eternal Son 61. Eerdmans

[2] Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and The God of Israel164. Eerdmans

[3] Hurtado, Larry. How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? 82-85. Eerdmans

[4] Philippians 2:5-6

[5] John 1:12

[6] Athanasius. On the Incarnation 21.

[7] 1 John 1:1

[8] Athanasius. On the Incarnation 29.

[9] Colossians 1:15

[10] Isaiah 9:1; Matthew 4:16

[11] Philippians 2:9-11

And Some Doubted

At the end of the Gospel according to Matthew we find this line, almost somewhat as an afterthought: “When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted (28:17).” And some doubted. If you’re trying to make your hero look good, this is isn’t usually the kind of thing you include.

These eleven disciples had been called by Jesus, and experienced his life changing and divine power. They watched him cast out demons, heal the disfigured and diseased, command the powers of nature and even some witnessed his awesome transfiguration. After all this, they abandoned him when the authorities came to arrest him. Not long after, they watched as he was shamefully executed by the Roman state. And yet three days later they hear news too good to be true, Jesus of Nazareth was alive, raised from the dead! And yet we are told that some worshipped… and some doubted.

Doubt is painful, precisely because it is the feeling of being uncertain. Feelings are deeply tied to our emotions. We hope something is true, and yet cannot be certain of it; this causes immense tension and anxiety. To be clear, doubting a blind faith may be a good thing. But this type of doubt is one that arises amongst reasons for one’s belief, in fact strong reasons for one’s beliefs. And you would expect for men who had seen the things they saw Jesus do, that they would have no doubts. And yet they did. The fact that the author of Matthew includes this, gives us good reason to think that he wasn’t just making stuff up. And as we claim God is the divine author, it’s safe to say he didn’t make a mistake by including that verse, he intended it. He also didn’t want robots, he wanted flesh and blood disciples who wrestled with doubts so that they would come to a deeper relational trust in their king. The gospel is an astoundingly divine story of God rescuing his world, it is also a deeply human story.

Jesus does not tell them, “Sorry you’re unqualified, you need to fix your doubt problem first.” No. He commands them go and be his witnesses, to make disciples and teach the very things he taught them. He has entrusted to them the mission, and it has just begun. Not only that but he says “And surely, I am with you always until the very end of the age.”

You may doubt, you may be uncertain, but Jesus invites you into his mission. The incarnate God welcomes you to his table. If he ate with sinners, he will surely eat with those who doubt. Even those who doubt are called to be a part of a community of disciples. This is the nature of discipleship. Doubt is not ideal; but it is the reality of wrestling with the tension of belief and experience. You may waver between worship and doubt, but you are called by the crucified and resurrected king Jesus to follow him. Follow him in the midst of doubt. The goal is Jesus and nothing less. You must pursue him, until you like Thomas come to encounter the scars of the living God. And until that day, you are called to be a witness and ambassador, proclaiming the victory of God in Christ, a shameful death which has blossomed into an emblem of victory. And even there in the midst of your doubt, he is there with you until the end of age.

The Cruciform God

Have you ever wondered what makes Christian God different? What sets the God of Christian Theism apart from all other conceptions of God?  Perhaps you think, well it’s because he’s loving. Or perhaps you think, it is because he is infinite as opposed to the gods of ancient pantheons. Then you think a little harder and you say, well maybe it’s his Trinitarian nature? Maybe it’s because of his grace? Maybe it is because he is wholly independent from his creation and yet personal, unlike the pantheistic conceptions of God. The list may go on and on. But what if I told you that the truly definitive way in which the God of Christian Theism is different, is this: God has scars.

In this simple statement is bound up the very truth of infinite and divine Love. The God of the Bible is the same God, who in Christ, entered into flesh and blood history and died. There are many conceptions of God in the world, but none as scandalous as the one Christians claim to worship. The famous poem of Edward Schillito captures the heart of this claim. He wrote this poem in the wake of destruction brought on by the horrors of the first world war. Someone like Schillito could only wonder how on earth one could still believe in God, let alone a God of love, after suffering the carnage and death of the first world war. Yet in his poem, Jesus of the Scars, he writes:

If we have never sought, we seek Thee now;
Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars;
We must have sight of thorn-pricks on Thy brow;
We must have Thee, O Jesus of the Scars.

The heavens frighten us; they are too calm;
In all the universe we have no place.
Our wounds are hurting us; where is the balm?
Lord Jesus, by Thy Scars we claim Thy grace.

If when the doors are shut, Thou drawest near,
Only reveal those hands, that side of Thine;
We know today what wounds are; have no fear;
Show us Thy Scars; we know the countersign.

The other gods were strong, but Thou wast weak;
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.

In Jesus of Nazareth, we see the scandal of the Incarnate God, who allows the very creatures which he formed and made, to put him death. Immanuel, God with us, allows the very hands which he delicately formed in their mother’s wombs to drive spikes through his body and crucify him on a Roman cross. It is a scandal to the Muslim and a joke to the atheist. It is an offense to the Jew and foolishness to the Greek. And yet it is in the blood that is poured out in his death, that he bears the world’s sin. He dies for them. In the horror of the crucifixion, he takes upon himself the suffering and pain of the world. He experiences ultimate god-forsakenness. Humans would never come to him. They hated him. They betrayed him. Yet he did not abandon them. He came to find them. They put to death the one who loved them. And yet in this, the heart of God is set on full display. His infinite and holy love bleeds through the shameful death on a tree. He bears the scars given to him by ones whom he made in his own image. This my friends, is why the God of Christianity is different. He is cruciform. He is not indifferent to human history; he has entered into a world torn apart by sin and enslaved by death. He would endure death to know the ones he made and give them life abundantly. Though our sin has fractured his world and destroyed our fellow image bearers. He would die for us. He would take our death. He would suffer for us. He would suffer with us. “And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.” This is cruciform love of God.

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