An Act of Free Will: Faith, Intellect and the Divine Paradox - Assignment Example

An Act of Free Will: Faith, Intellect and the Divine Paradox A belief, even a true belief, is worth nothing if it is only rooted in the mind. 1 Cor. 2:4-7 The notion that theism and existentialism are mutually exclusive is a limited perspective. Theistic existentialists contend that God created the Cosmos as an open system in which actions and events are not preordained, not fated to unfold in a specific sequence or within a given time frame. Strict theism precludes the possibility that reason and self-determination can not only help explain the divine (or at least one’s understanding of it), but that it can also be a determining factor in charting one’s own spiritual destiny. If free will is a gift from God, then it is part of that same open system that God set in motion to follow its own course. There is the possibility that what atheistic existentialists take to be an accident is actually the seeming chaos of a free system, created by an entity, animated - not governed - by free will. The idea that theism can be compatible with non-theological concepts has gained currency in recent years. The Episcopal Church, for example, has adopted the idea that the rational can help aid one’s understanding of what God is because reason itself is a gift from God. Name 2 One need not cancel out the possibility of the other. Faith doesn’t have to be the only resource because man has other gifts, other intrinsic capabilities that he can use in concert with others. The theistic philosopher Henry Rogers wrote, “The truth is, that both Reason and Faith are coeval with the nature of man, and were designed to dwell in his heart together. They are…reciprocally complementary; - neither can exclude the other” (Rogers, 339). The great existentialist philosophers, by their actions and inclinations (perhaps even subconsciously), have tended to bear out this assertion on those occasions when they stepped out of their natural roles as “question askers” and attempted to offer up answers to the problems of human existence. “Whenever existentialists give answers, they do so in terms of religious or quasi-religious traditions which are not derived from their existential analysis” (Tillich, 25). When it came to giving answers, to looking beyond the suppositions of existentialism, Kierkegaard’s tendency was to fall back on his Lutheran background, Pascal from an Augustinian system of belief and Sartre and Nietzsche from the humanist school, of which they were to a large extent the product (Tillich, 25). For Kierkegaard, the search for answers was a striving for transcendence, which resulted from the realization that one is responsible for one’s own condition. Personal freedom lies at the heart of this position. One has the freedom to choose despair or strive for self-actualization. “Either possibility requires that the self moves toward transcendence, reliance on God’s help, according to Kierkegaard” (Gray, 279). As such, the subject engages in a kind of selection, a choosing of salvation or of a personal fall. The subject “comes to renounce its Name 3 immediate self and choose its eternal self. It accepts the paradox of the God-man, and through this qualitative leap free itself from despair and reach salvation” (Stewart, 138). For Kierkegaard, theism is the vehicle through which the individual arrives, subjectively, at the fullness of his meaning as a human being. The individual works through this alone as the sole possessor of his own ethical and aesthetic reality, ultimately leading him to a state of grace. Kierkegaard and many of those who followed his precepts believed that Christianity, and other monotheistic religions, were expressions of hypocrisy that taught pure love but practiced a creed that seemed to believe this purity was the special reserve of a privileged few; specifically, of the wealthy and powerful. The Christianity they observed around them drew from a shallow moral well, one that provided dubious spiritual sustenance from its manifesto (the Bible) and an objective Euro-centric morality. This contradicted the existentialist notion that existence precedes essence. For theistic existentialists, such as Kierkegaard, true religion proceeds from the heart of the individual. Seen in this light, Christianity is first and foremost a matter of consciousness rather than of the hollow blandishments offered up to a one-dimensional deity by a self-righteous few. Theistic existentialists, then, refute the idea that mouthing a well-worn litany, bereft of meaning, and following a prescribed code of conduct falls far short of true religious belief. Rather, it is the heartfelt acting out of a profound feeling that motivates one to show love to others. In this way, and only in this way, can an individual become connected to other “true believers,” and to God. In other words, if one doesn’t truly feel divine love, one doesn’t truly practice divine love but a pale substitute. Kierkegaard and other adherents of what some call Name 4 theistic existentialism thus show that the two can co-exist not on a faith-based level, in which one feels compelled to prove God’s existence, but on a temporal level where understanding what God teaches inspires the individual to pass on true Christian feelings of love. It is a subjective matter because the individual must through his own intellectual and perceptive resources (i.e. existence first) arrive at a fully evolved and subjective understanding of God. This is what existentialists mean by creating one’s own reality. Without it, there could be no such “coming” to God. If one does not come to God on one’s own terms and through one’s own understanding, there can be no true religion. Kierkegaard makes a powerful case for the compatibility of theism and existentialism in what he referred to as having faith in the absurd. He posited that it is not necessary to trouble about the seeming incongruity between obviously flawed temporal phenomena and the idea of a divine will. The presence of mystery in the world, even of those things that prima facie appear to repudiate the existence of God, can be resolved through a theistic existentialistic paradigm. If one could see through the veil of mystery and, by objective observation, comprehend the meaning behind the prevalence of war, murder, disease and other worldly scourges, would not the very ability to do so marginalize the role of the divine, perhaps even render it superficial and disposable? For Kierkegaard, such a deity would prove far too insignificant. Consequently, it is easy to understand why there is room for faith in Kierkegaard’s existentialism. For him, having faith not only in spite of the absurd but specifically because of the absurd was key. Man must come to his own understanding of God, a thing that cannot come to pass within the context of a Name 5 worldly appraisal. In other words, one cannot (and surely wouldn’t want to) understand God by reading The New York Times, or by watching CNN. For many Christians, even those who subscribe to an existentialist perspective, the philosophy that asserts a reason-first-faith-second orthodoxy is unconvincing because it precludes the idea that true faith must come from God’s teachings, from Scripture: one reads Scripture, one internalizes its teachings and becomes a believer. Far from nullifying the subjective explanation, the existentialist rejection of this credo strengthens the co-existence of the theistic and the existential. Understanding God by such objective means is contradictory to the existential belief system. True understanding comes from within. From there, the individual can interpret and act upon Scripture in a manner consistent with one’s subjective understanding of God. It is difficult to conceive of a world, created by God, in which the exercise of rational thought and logical deduction should be made negligible. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church persecuted individuals for reading, for simply seeking knowledge because the church taught that blind faith was all God required. In modern times, logic and reasoning are generally accepted as gifts from God and, as such, ought to be used to the fullest. If this is the case then, logically speaking, there is more than ample reason to believe in the dual importance of faith and intellect. Name 6 Works Cited Ahmad, S. Existential Aesthetics. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors. 1991. Gray, C.B. The Philosophy of Law: An Encyclopedia. Garland Library. 1999. Rogers, H. Reason and Faith, and other miscellanies of Henry Rogers. Boston, MA: Crosby, Nichols and Company. 1853. Stewart, J. Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Receptions and Resources, v. 3. Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. 2009. Tillich, P. Systematic Theology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 1957. Read More