On First Things (Part Three - The Holy Ghost)

Read Part One here.
Read Part Two here.

Implicit in the Christian concept of a “new covenant” is the possibility that at a particular point in history the parameters of the relationship between God and humanity may be redefined. To put this in terms of the parent-child relationship favored by so many theists, we could think of the way a parent will offer more autonomy and expect more responsibility as a child develops the capacity to handle those things.

The belief that God has intervened in history (through the prophets and through Christ) in order to teach us implies that God never intended to hold our hand forever. If we are taught something it is because we are expected to learn something. We are expected to evolve and change intellectually. Perhaps God does not change, but humanity clearly does. This means our relationship to God will change.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer believed humanity was outgrowing our adolescence and he understood profoundly the experience of the inaction of God. Setting aside his pacifist beliefs to join a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, he was imprisoned by the Gestapo. While waiting for his execution he wrote, in a letter dated July 16, 1944:

So our coming of age leads us to a recognition of our true situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world and on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.

Bonhoeffer was executed, no miracle saved him. The Third Reich was defeated, but not by a miracle, and not before unspeakable atrocities were committed. Our experience in the Second World War not only demonstrated that we cannot rely on divinity to prevent atrocity, but also that the apocalyptic power once ascribed to God was now in our hands. The atom was split and self-extinction became a real possibility. In the wake of this development the stakes would appear to be higher than ever.

Through the lens of a superstitious belief in God’s intervention these events demonstrate the callousness of a God who is disinterested, even cruel. Though a purely materialist lens, these horrible things have no larger meaning and are simply bad things that happened; there is no Truth that can prevent them on our behalf. Through Bonhoeffer’s lens, however, these events demonstrate to us that God trusts us and believes in our potential to solve our problems on our own. The onus is on us. On this point, a Bonhoeffer-theist and a humanist-atheist agree. It’s not easy for a parent to allow a child to make mistakes, but if we aren’t allowed to make mistakes we are eternally helpless.

"Pushed out of the world and on to the Cross"

(The Crucifixion, as depicted by St. John of the Cross)

Many Christians object to this view and call for us to put our trust In God, but to deny our ability to reason, to deny our ethical imaginations, and to deny our autonomy and freedom, is to insult God. To demand that God be our benefactor in worldly affairs, the solver of our problems and the fulfiller of our needs (when we are completely capable of doing these things for each other) is to trivialize God and to neglect our responsibility.

To trust God is to trust that God’s inaction confirms the value of our ability to reason and solve problems. The old chestnut about the Earth being the center of creation was a symptom of the belief that the purpose of creation is to give humanity a home. We were not made for it, it was made for us. As arrogant as this view is, if lifted out of its pre-modern cosmology, it charges humanity with a tremendous amount of responsibility. We have to take what we have learned from our respective God-experiences and leave the nest. We have to let go of things. We have to forsake and be forsaken, as Christ was forsaken. Christ points the way out of the Temple, away from the insulated world of cultic practice and sacred laws, and into the fullness and richness of the human experience.