As is now well known, Mother Teresa of Calcutta suffered severe spiritual afflictions through much of her remarkable life: “This terrible sense of loss – this untold darkness – this loneliness – this continual longing for God.” These first emerged in 2001, but were only fully disclosed with the 2007 publication of her private writings and correspondence in Come Be My Light, edited by Fr Brian Kolodiejchuk MC, the postulator of her cause for canonization.

In these writings, Teresa describes to her confessors and spiritual directors how over long periods, ultimately stretching to over 40 years with only fleeting respites:

"Darkness is such that I really do not see – neither with my mind nor with my reason. – The place of God in my soul is blank. – There is no God in me. – When the pain of longing is so great – I just long & long for God – and then it is that I feel – He does not want me – He is not there…"

Given these startling and graphic admissions from one who whose canonization on Sunday – 19 years after her 1997 death – will be one of the swiftest of modern times, the level of popular and media interest has been considerable. Understandably, Teresa’s words have been widely interpreted as proving her to be an atheist, pure and simple.

The truth is, as ever, far from being so straightforward. And yet there is a qualified, analogical sense in which one can indeed speak of Teresa’s experiential “atheism”. This is the “atheism” of one who acutely, and painfully, perceives God’s seeming absence. Somewhat similar experiences, of one sort or one another, are far from unprecedented within the Christian spiritual tradition. Some of the greatest of saints – John of the Cross, Gemma Galgani, Paul of the Cross, Thérèse of Lisieux, Padre Pio – all reported periods of spiritual desolation or abandonment.

Among the many striking things about Teresa’s “atheism”, particularly noteworthy is quite how early in life she was afflicted by such darkness. While still a Loreto Sister in 1937 – and, indeed, a full nine years before the “call within the call” which would ultimately lead to her founding the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 – she wrote to her former confessor in Albania:

"Do not think that my spiritual life is strewn with roses – that is the flower which I hardly ever find on my way. Quite the contrary, I have more often as my companion ‘darkness’. And when the night becomes very thick – and it seems to me as if I must end up in hell – then I simply offer myself to Jesus. If He wants me to go there – I am ready – but only under the condition that it really makes him happy."

This early statement is far from being as detailed, or as heart-rending, as some of her later ones would be. However, we do see here one of the hallmarks of Teresa’s “atheism”, which will endure alongside even her most tortured avowals of faithlessness to come: an abiding trust in, and abandonment to, the will of God.

Arguably, Teresa’s strongest and most eloquent statement of her darkness, and of the intense suffering which it caused her, comes from 1959:

"Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? […] I call, I cling, I want – and there is no One to answer – no One on Whom I cling – no, No One. – Alone. The darkness is so dark – and I am alone. – Unwanted, forsaken. – The loneliness of the heart that wants love is unbearable. – Where is my faith? – Even deep down, right in, there is nothing but emptiness & darkness. – My God – how painful is this unknown pain. – It pains without ceasing. – I have no faith. I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart – & make me suffer untold agony. So many unanswered questions live within me – I am afraid to uncover them – because of the blasphemy. – If there be God, please forgive me. – Trust that all will end in Heaven with Jesus. – When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven – there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my soul."

And yet, even here, in the midst of a string of prima facie atheistic statements, one cannot escape from the fact that one is reading a text that is consciously, and unmistakably, a prayer. This much is especially clear from her concluding paragraph:

"If this brings You glory, if You get a drop of joy from this – if souls are brought to You – if my suffering satiates Your Thirst – here I am Lord, with joy I accept all to the end of life – & I will smile at Your Hidden Face – always."

In precisely the same way that Jesus's address to “My God, my God” undermines his own declaration of having been “forsaken” (Mark 15.34), Teresa’s paradoxical choice of genre undercuts any unthinking identification of her as an unbeliever.

This realization is not in any way intended to diminish the force of her harrowing experiences. Having at other times in her life felt Jesus’s joyful and loving presence, his subsequent and sustained absences from her interior, spiritual life were all the harder to bear. The same is true, of course, for some of the other mystics mentioned above.

The 16th-century Carmelite poet, St John of the Cross, described his own experiences in similarly evocative terms:

"When this purgative contemplation oppresses a man, he feels very vividly indeed the shadow of death, the sighs of death, and the sorrows of hell, all of which reflect the feeling of God’s absence, of being chastised and rejected by Him, and of being unworthy of Him, as well as the object of his anger. The soul experiences all this and even more, for now it seems that this affliction will last forever."

John famously termed his sense of godforsakenness the “dark night of the soul”, a phrase that is commonly applied to all such episodes within the Christian tradition.

It is worth noting, however, that Teresa herself denied that her own, seemingly similar experiences, were accurately so designated. For Teresa, her own abandonment was not for the purposes of her spiritual purification (as she understood “dark night” to imply), but was instead both an identification with Christ’s passion, and a form of solidarity with the unwanted, unloved, abandoned, and bereft.

What is beyond doubt, though, is that it was her thirst for Christ that motivated and sustained her courageous life of service and devotion. Not finding him in her interior life, she sought out Christ both on the altar and “in His distressing disguise”. Hence as she once put it:

"To those who say they admire my courage, I have to tell them that I would not have any if I were not convinced that each time I touch the body of a leper, a body that reeks with a foul stench, I touch Christ’s body, the same Christ I receive in the Eucharist."

For as Teresa herself once told the superiors of her communities, without alluding to her own experience: “It often happens that those who spend their time giving light to others remain in darkness themselves.”

 
 
This article is adapted from Stephen Bullivant’s “Christian Spirituality and Atheism”, published in Peter Tyler and Richard Woods’s The Bloomsbury Guide to Christian Spirituality. It appeared originally at the Catholic Herald.

This is part two of a two-part series, adapted from Stephen Bullivant's new book, The Trinity: How Not to Be a Heretic (Paulist Press, 2015). Read part one here.

"A time to speak"

I ended my last post in this short series with the apparent affirmation that silence is the only appropriate mode for Christian thought and prayer. This is what is known as apophatic theology, the “negative way”, or – as I like to call it – the via Alison Krauss-a.

Far be it from me to denigrate this manner of adoration: it has a long and distinguished history within the Christian tradition. The angel Gabriel, for example, prescribed Zechariah some silent time in preparation for his important task of raising John the Baptist (Luke 1:20). Moreover, popular piety has long imagined the “holy night” of the first Christmas to have been a “silent night.” Throughout Christian history, there have been holy men and women who, singly or together, have devoted themselves to long periods—sometimes even whole lifetimes—of silence. Shorter spells of silent prayer or meditation are practiced by many Christians, of many different stripes, throughout the world on a daily or weekly basis.

Silence certainly has its place, and being “lost for words” is undoubtedly a fitting expression of wonder and gratitude before the One who is “majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor” (Exodus 15:11). We human beings are pretty special ourselves, and our intelligence and language are among our greatest glories. Yet it’s still worth remembering sometimes that we ain’t all that. “So do not become proud, but stand in awe” (Romans 11:20).

On its own, though, silence is, in more ways than one, nothing much to shout about. Christianity just doesn’t work as a completely wordless religion. Some Christians can keep silent all of the time; all Christians should keep silent some of the time; but all Christians can’t (and mustn’t) keep silent all of the time. There may indeed be “a time to keep silence,” but there is also “a time to speak” (Ecclesiastes 3:7). Here we return to a point made earlier. Scripture itself is full to bursting with human words and ideas—our very own, flawed, not-good-enough-for-God words and ideas—about God. More to the point, it insists, time and again, that we should be so too:

"Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament!
Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his surpassing greatness!...
Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!" (Psalm 150:1-2, 6)

That is, I think you’ll agree, not exactly “shaddap you face.”

This is the great paradox of theology, indeed of Christian living as a whole. It is no wonder that those who have—or hope they have—received the Holy Spirit, whether as a gentle breath (John 20:22) or “like the rush of a violent wind” (Acts 2:2), feel moved both to “treasure and ponder [these things] in their hearts” (cf. Luke 2:19) and to “glorify and praise God for all they have heard and seen” (cf. Luke 2:20). They have also been positively commanded to “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). Naturally, it is nearly impossible to do any of these things without words, or ideas, or concepts. And yet...the only words, or ideas, or concepts we have to do them with cannot possibly come close to doing God justice. Tasty though McDonald’s food is, we can’t build a Heston Blumenthal meal out of McNuggets and McShakes. And “very good” though Creation is (Genesis 1:31), we can’t construct an accurate picture of our God out of creaturely categories: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8).

Another Parable

Speaking of pictures though, perhaps it is time for another parable—one that might rescue us from the corner into which we (with a lot of help from the scriptures) have painted ourselves.
What, do you suppose, is this?

I have shown this picture to a good number of different audiences over the past several years. Bemused amusement is the normal first impression. After some reflection, most people agree that the antenna-looking object on the right is some form of flower, perhaps a daffodil or something similar. There is little controversy over the two, worryingly large airborne objects: they are presumably butterflies—although, if your love is like one of those butterflies, it might be time to seek a relationship counsellor. But what of the strange figure on the left? I have heard many creative guesses—it is an alien, or a snowman, or perhaps a Peppa Pig—but no one is ever really sure. “They may indeed look, but not perceive” (Mark 4:12).

“But blessed are your eyes, for they see” (Matthew 13:16): it is a drawing of the delightful Norma Bullivant, my mother, by her youngest son, me. Neither of us can remember when it was drawn, though both of us hope it was a very long time ago.
Now, you have probably never met or seen a photograph of my mother. You’ll have to trust me when I say that this is not a perfect likeness of her. In fact, it is a truly terrible one. For example, she has arms, and hair, and eyebrows, and knees. Even in her thirties, when this was probably drawn, her legs were not quite that thin. On any estimation, it is an extremely inaccurate picture of her. If you happen to see my mother walking down the street, I doubt that you’ll now go up to her and ask, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Considered objectively, this picture is an insult to my mother. Imagine she and I were in a modern art gallery, and hanging there was this picture, but painted by some trendy young artist. Suppose I said, “Mom, why is there a photo of you in the gallery?” Or what if I did this picture for her now, in my thirties: “Look mom, I’ve made you this for Mother’s Day. I’m really pleased with it. Don’t you think it looks exactly like you? See how well I’ve captured your nose!?” Perfectly understandably, I think she would find those kinds of comments very hurtful indeed. If that really is the best picture I can draw of her, flowers or chocolates would be a better Mother’s Day gift. For that matter, so would nothing at all.

"You have searched me and you know me"

Why then has she kept this false, insulting image? Why didn’t she screw it up in hurt and anger, and bin it, all those years ago? Why instead has she lovingly kept it?

Most parents, I expect, have a cherished collection of similarly bad artistic efforts by their children. They have kept them because they were delighted to receive them. Infants are not brilliant artists by adult standards, but they put time, thought, effort, and care, into doing the very best job they can. Parents know this. They also know that the resulting pictures are far more than bad representations of what mom or dad look like; they are excellent representations of what their little children’s love and affection for mom or dad look like.

Look again at the image. One day, when I was very small, I decided to draw a picture. Of all the many exciting subjects I could have chosen, I picked my mother. I placed her in a garden, in spring or summer when the flowers are in bloom, and surrounded her with butterflies. I even put what I’m pretty sure is meant to be a big smile on her face. Someone who knew me well at that age—someone “acquainted with all my ways” (Psalm 139:3)—would understand instantly what I was trying to convey with my flawed, faltering, and false pen strokes—which is why she still has it after all those years.

"Queerer than we can suppose"

As we should have learned by now, even the best metaphor or analogy isn’t perfect. They don’t bear too much prodding or stretching, whether you are comparing love to a butterfly, “the LORD the God of hosts” (Hosea 12:5) to fine dining, or religious language to childish scribblings. Nevertheless, they do tell us something.

Our flawed and fragile thoughts and words are not up to the job of giving a full, wholly sufficient description of the Most High. It is God who is the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth (cf. John 14:6, 17), and not our witness statements about him. (Incidentally, this is not a failure specific to religious thinking and speaking. The great British biologist, J. B. S. Haldane, once famously said: “Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose”¹. If that is true of creation, how much more must it be true of the Creator?)

The life of our saintly medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas, illustrates this point rather well. Thomas wrote book after book of biblical commentary and theology, millions upon millions of words about God. Then towards the end of his life, he had a direct, mystical experience of God himself. After that he laid down his pen, mid-book, and never wrote another word. When asked why, he answered simply: “I can’t.... Everything I have written seems like straw by comparison with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.”

Those of us who strive to think about, speak of, and pray to God will do well to remember this lesson in humility. “For great is the might of the Lord; but by the humble he is glorified” (Sirach 3:20). In thinking theologically, we are getting better acquainted with who God is—who God has revealed himself to be. But Christians needn’t kid themselves that by the end of this or that book or Bible study program, or even by the end of our lives studying scripture and theology, we’ll know God as well as he knows us. That’s what heaven is for: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). For the time being, our sight is hampered by both our own short-sightedness, and the gloriousness of what it is we’re trying to glimpse. As another saintly medieval theologian, Anselm of Canterbury, once prayed:

"The truth is, I am darkened by myself
And also dazzled by you.
I am clouded by my own smallness
And overwhelmed by your intensity;
I am restricted by my own narrowness
and mastered by your wideness."

However, we mustn’t let that stop us trying – and most of our tryings will be done through the medium of words. God is indeed “more than words,” as St Thomas (like Extreme) well realized. But note, too, that God let Thomas write over seven million words about him before giving him writer’s block. After all, “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). God became man, and thought and spoke in human language. And we have it on the Holy Spirit’s authority that the languages of “every nation under heaven” can be used to talk meaningfully “about God’s deeds of power” (Acts 2:5-11).
 
 

 
 
(Image credit: News.com.au)

This is part one of a two-part series, adapted from Stephen Bullivant's new book, The Trinity: How Not to Be a Heretic (Paulist Press, 2015).

A Parable

Here’s a cheerful thought: imagine that the only food you have ever eaten has been bought from a McDonald’s. All your knowledge of eating and drinking, and all your taste experiences have come from Big Macs, McNuggets, McFlurries, and those little carrot sticks you can get with Happy Meals. Every word or concept you have to think, talk, or dream about food is patterned on fries, McShakes, and those strangely alluring oblong apple pies that come in a cardboard sleeve. “Happy are they...” (Psalm 1:1).

Now suppose that, one day, you are whisked away to the restaurant of one of the world’s greatest chefs: Heston Blumenthal, for example. In dish after dish you are introduced to flavors you had never dreamt were possible. Beetroot jelly, bacon-and-egg ice cream, salmon in liquorice, snail porridge...nothing in your previous culinary life could have prepared you for this. You are overwhelmed by these strange, astounding new experiences, like nothing you have ever tasted before. More to the point, they are like nothing you could ever even have imagined tasting.

The meal is wonderful, almost too wonderful in fact. Your senses have been overloaded. You are spent from striving to keep up, from trying to make the most of each new surprise. The coffee at the end of the meal therefore comes as a blessed relief. Chef Blumenthal makes excellent coffee, but so too do McDonald’s. Finally: something you can get your head, and taste buds, around without feeling exhausted.

But here comes Heston, suddenly appearing before you, dressed all in white: “Did you enjoy it? I put a lot of effort into these dishes, and it’s important for me to know how people find them. What was it like?”

***************

The meal was truly amazing, perhaps the peak experience of your life so far. Naturally, you want to tell him what it meant to you (and later, you’ll want to tell everyone you know just how great it was too). However, when you start working out how to put it into words, you realize you’re in trouble. After all, all your ways for thinking and speaking about food come from your experience of the McDonald’s menu.

One thing you could do, of course, is attempt to describe the meal in the terms with which you are familiar. You might say, “That bacon-and-egg ice cream was like a cross between the greatest ever Egg McMuffin and the most perfect McFlurry known to man.” Or you could say the snail porridge was as though “someone had distilled the tastiness of a trillion McChicken Sandwiches into every bite.” Or perhaps you would compare the liquorice salmon to “all the wonderfulness of a Filet-O-Fish sandwich, times infinity, and to the infinite power.”

It strikes you, however, that perhaps Heston may not take kindly to such a compliment. Even expressed in these superlative-laden terms (“the most perfect,” “infinite”), you are still comparing his Michelin-starred cuisine with everyday fast food. You are saying, in fact, that the difference between them is only one of degree. His food and McDonald’s food are effectively in the same league: it is just that Heston’s food is a million (or an infinite number of) places higher up. No matter how delicious McDonald’s food is, Heston might still consider having his food described in terms of it—even in such maxed-up terms—false and insulting. But what else can you do?

Well, you could try changing tack entirely. Rather than likening Heston’s meal to McDonald’s food, why not do the opposite? For instance, you could answer him by saying “That meal was nothing at all like a Supersized Extra Value McNugget Meal,” or “Your snail porridge was the perfect negation of the entire McDonald’s menu.” In stark contrast to your first attempt at describing the meal, this drives a clean wedge between it and your previous food experiences: the two are in no way alike. You don’t have the words or concepts accurately to describe the meal. And yet you still want to say something true about it. So the best you can hope for is to say what it is not.

However, once again, it occurs to you that this might not go down so well either, and understandably so. He has slaved away in a hot kitchen for hours on end, lovingly crafting a mind-bending array of delights, and all just for you...and the best you can do is say “well, it wasn’t like a McBacon Roll.” Seriously?

Now you really are in trouble. Heston Blumenthal stands before you expectantly, puzzled by the pause. You have no words to describe what you have just experienced. You could barely take it all in while you were eating it; you haven’t a hope of talking about it meaningfully and satisfactorily now. And then, suddenly, you realize that that might be the answer.

“Mr Blumenthal... I... I... I’m lost for words.” An awe-filled, reverential silence replaces the awkward one of seconds before. Heston smiles.

You say it best when you say nothing at all.

More Than Words

This parable tells us much—though not quite all—of what we need to know about talking, and not talking, about God.

The basic problem is this. The great bulk of our words, and thus our means of thinking and imagining things, are patterned on everyday, mundane, physical objects-in-space. As such, we find it reasonably easy to describe stuff in straightforward, literal terms. (“The black laptop I am typing on is sitting on a desk. To the left of it are a red pen, an open Bible, and a yellow USB stick,” and so on). However, as soon as we try to talk about more abstract things like ideas, concepts, feelings, or emotions, we swiftly begin to struggle. How often, for example, have we answered a question about how we feel about someone or something with “I’m not quite sure,” “I can’t quite explain it,” or “I find it difficult to put into words”? Certainly, I should find it impossible to fully describe what my wife and children mean to me in literal, direct words. Although I am, undoubtedly, the world expert on my own feelings about my own family (as you are about yours), I simply don’t have the right words to come close to communicating them.

What we often do instead is use figurative, metaphorical, poetic language to give some inkling of what it is we’re trying to talk about.

"Love is like a butterfly,
as soft and gentle as a sigh;
The multicolored moods of love,
are like its satin wings."

Fellow Dolly fans will agree that this does capture something of what love is, or can be, like: beautiful, fragile, and fluttery (although these are all still metaphors, of course). Nevertheless, “love is like a butterfly” is very far from being a direct description. Even as a simile (“x is like y”) the comparison breaks down very quickly: love is not, for example, what the Very Hungry Caterpillar turns into. Note also that this doesn’t just apply to feelings or emotions. The best science writing is full of metaphors and figurative images—unobserved cats in boxes, flies buzzing around cathedrals, computers made from meat, and so on—precisely because we find plain speaking and thinking such hard work.

If this is the case with things like food and feelings and atoms, what hope have we of saying something adequate about the “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16)? If we struggle when talking about creatures and created things, how dare we speak of the “Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible,” himself?

“God is above whatsoever we may say or think of him”

Maybe there isn’t any problem here. After all, scripture is the word of God, written in human words. And it uses them to tell us about God all the time. Here are just three examples, out of thousands and thousands:

"God is love." (1 John 4:8)

"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty! Who was and is and is to come!" (Revelation 4:8)

"Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond all measure." (Psalm 147:5)

Even more to the point, God appears to be perfectly happy using human words to describe himself:

"For I the Lord do not change." (Malachi 3:6)

"I the Lord your God am a jealous God." (Exodus 20:5)

"No one is good but God alone." (Luke 18:19)

The problem is that our understandings of words like “love” or “almighty,” or “great” are again patterned on our earthly, creaturely experiences. We might have a rough idea of what it means to have a “great cat,” to eat a “great hotdog,” or to be a “great football player” (although there’s still huge scope for disagreement as to what counts as true greatness in any of these areas). Yet surely, whatever it means for a cat, hotdog, footballer, or any other created thing to be “great,” that must fall insultingly short of what it means for “the Lord your God” to be so too. So while we can be sure that God is great, with our finite created minds, and limited earthly experience, we can have little conception of just how God is great, or just how great God is. “God is above whatsoever we may say or think of Him,” as St. Thomas Aquinas once put it.

The danger comes if we forget this. If we imagine that God is great, or loving, or powerful, or jealous in pretty much the same way that, say, a human being might be those things. By doing this, we end up creating a God, or rather an idol or “so-called god” (1 Corinthians 8:5) in our own image. We put ourselves on a pedestal, supposing that God is just like us, but a bit better. Nor can we avoid this by saying that, unlike us, God is super- or omni- or perfectly or infinitely loving or powerful or whatever. This is, remember, exactly what we tried to do in the parable earlier, describing Heston’s food as being like McDonald’s, but infinitely or perfectly or supremely more so. We risk ending up with a God who differs from us mere creatures—“all are from dust, and all turn to dust again” (Ecclesiastes 3:20)—only by degree. It is as though we could simply take the goodness of Creation (Genesis 1:31), and by turning it up to eleven, somehow reach up to the goodness of the Creator himself. Of course, we cannot do that, and scripture itself warns us against thinking we can:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)

"You say it best, when you say nothing at all"?

Since our thoughts and words are doomed to fail us, the highest, most fulsome praise we can give will always fall insultingly short of “the Most High” (Psalm 91:1). Can we then say nothing that is true or accurate about him?

Again, as we learned in our parable, there is something we can say. If all our words and concepts aren’t up to the job of describing God, let us just be honest about it. Why not just go through the dictionary saying what God isn’t? We can start with “God is not aa (a type of Hawaiian lava)” and end up with “God is not zymurgy (the study or practice of fermentation).” And if we get bored a few weeks in, we can even amuse ourselves by doing it Wayne’s World style for a couple of days: “God is a nonagon (a nine-sided shape)... not!”

On one level, this might seem like an improvement. For again, quoting St Thomas, “What God is not is clearer to us than what he is.” We’ve guarded ourselves against describing God in terms that are beneath him: well done us. Yet, on another level, all this feels very unsatisfactory. All we’ve done is given a long litany of God’s non-attributes. Talk about damning with faint praise. Is this really the best we can do?

Perhaps Alison Krauss—or for those of you with poor taste in music, Ronan Keating—was right all along. Maybe we do say it best when we say nothing at all. Rather than “heap up empty phrases” (Matthew 6:7), or tediously list what God isn’t, why don’t we just shut up?

“Be still, and know that I am God!” (Psalm 46:10)

 
 

 
 
(Image credit: Occupy Corporatism)

NOTE: The following post is an excerpt from the recently released Oxford Handbook of Atheism (Oxford University Press, 2013), co-edited by atheist philosopher Michael Ruse and Catholic theologian, and Strange Notions contributor, Dr. Stephen Bullivant.
 

Atheism and Ambiguity

 
The precise definition of ‘atheism’ is both a vexed and vexatious issue. (Incidentally, the same applies to its more-or-less equivalents in other languages: Atheismus, athéisme,ateismi, etc.) Etymologically, atheism is derived from the classical Greek a- (normally meaning ‘not’ or ‘without’) and theos (‘god’). Its first extant appearance in English occurs in the mid-sixteenth century, as a translation of Plutarch’s atheotēs (Buckley 1987: 9). Even from its earliest beginnings in Greek and English, however, atheism/atheotēs admitted of a variety of competing, and confusing, definitions — often bearing no straightforward relationship to its strict etymology. While these lie outside the scope of the present chapter, some of the more interesting definitions and applications are discussed elsewhere in this volume.

Even today, however, there is no clear, academic consensus as to how exactly the term should be used. For example, consider the following definitions of ‘atheism’ or ‘atheist’, all taken from serious scholarly writings published in the last ten years:

1. ‘Atheism [...] is the belief that there is no God or gods’(Baggini 2003:3)
2. ‘At its core, atheism [...] designates a position (not a “belief”) that includes or asserts no god(s)’ (Eller 2010: 1)
3. ‘An atheist is someone without a belief in God; he or she need not be someone who believes that God does not exist’ (Martin 2007: 1)
4. ‘An atheist does not believe in the god that theism favours’ (Cliteur 2009: 1)
5. ‘By “atheist,” I mean precisely what the word has always been understood to mean — a principled and informed decision to reject belief in God’ (McGrath 2004: 175)

Of course, these definitions share certain features: all regard atheism as relating, in a negative way, to a thing or things called ‘god’, and all but one describe this relationship in terms of belief. But beyond this, it is obvious that these authors are not all talking about the same thing at all. The first and second include gods; the final three specify only one (which the final two give a capital G). The fourth definition, moreover, restricts this scope even further. Definitions two and three regard atheism as simply being the absence of a certain belief; the rest, contrariwise, see it as implying a definite belief. Moreover, the fifth definition also demands a level of intellectual — and perhaps also emotional — conviction, over and above simple believing.

Though our focus in this chapter is on scholarly usage(s), it is worth pointing out that everyday speech is no more monosemic. This is, perhaps, partly to be expected: after all, English is very much a global language, and is the native tongue of approaching 400 million people. Nevertheless, even relatively homogeneous groups often display a notable lack of uniformity. For instance, a 2007 study of over 700 students — all at the same British university, at the same time, with a clear majority being a similar age and from the same country — found that, from a list of commonly encountered definitions of ‘atheist’, the most popular choice was ‘A person who believes that there is no God or gods’ (Bullivant 2008). This was, however, chosen by only 51.8 per cent of respondents: hardly an overwhelming consensus. 29.1 per cent opted instead for ‘A person who is convinced that there is no God or gods’, 13.6 per cent took the broader ‘A person who lacks a belief in a God or gods’, and 0.6 per cent answered ‘Don’t know’. Thirty-five respondents, eight of whom had already affirmed one of the suggested meanings, offered their own definitions. These included:

• ‘A person who lacks a belief in supernatural forces, without suggesting that they might exist’.
• ‘Someone who denies the validity of using the word “God” to indicate anything (other than a concept) which might be said to “exist” ’.
• ‘A person who has no belief in any deity and finds that religion is not an important part of their life’.
• ‘Someone who isn’t a member of any religion that believes in one God’.

Once again, despite general similarities, it is clear that the word is used and understood in a wide variety of different ways, even in so relatively uniform a group. (Note too the introduction of wider concepts such as ‘religion’ and ‘supernatural forces’, rather than confining themselves to just God/gods, into these definitions.) Thinking more widely, it is also worth noting that both ‘atheism’ and ‘atheist’ can carry a considerable number of overtones and connotations, positive and negative: even among people agreeing on a given abstract definition, calling someone an ‘atheist’ might well communicate very different things in, say, McCarthy-era Dallas, post-communist Krakow, or twenty-first-century London.

The Babel Handbook of Atheism?

 
It is important to recognize that plurality of usage, as sketched above, need not imply that some scholars are right and others are wrong. Atheism simply possesses no single, objective definition: it can be used correctly in a number of related, sometimes overlapping, and often mutually exclusive ways. This is not necessarily a problem, so long as one is always clear how exactly each author is deploying the term. (There is also a valid case to be made for certain disciplines to use the word in their own, highly specialized senses.) That is not to say, however, that all definitions are equally useful: a too-narrow definition may inadvertently airbrush out all kinds of interesting potential data, while a too-broad one may capture a large number of ‘atheisms’ with few meaningful connections between them. Alternatively, a definition that is too idiosyncratic, or culturally bound, may obviate comparisons with other work ostensibly on the same subject. Furthermore, and quite obviously, the sheer lack of agreement creates a great deal of, at best, time-consuming effort, and at worst, hopeless confusion, for all concerned. There is, therefore, a great deal of utility to be gained from finding a generally agreed-upon, serviceable (if not perfect), scholarly definition of the word atheism.

The merits of this may be grasped if one imagines this Handbook — drawing together dozens of scholars, from widely diverse disciplines, and several continents — as a microcosm of the scholarly study of atheism. Without a ‘standard’ definition, outlined and explained in a chapter such as this, each contributor would need to explicate his or her own definition at the beginning of their chapter — or else, as happens all too often, their readers would simply have to infer quite how he or she is using the term. The reader, of course, would need to remember this definition throughout the duration of the chapter, before consciously relearning and re-remembering what would probably (but not necessarily) be a different definition for the next chapter. With different authors defining the term in different ways, like-for-like comparisons between chapters would become next to impossible: the ‘atheists’ whose psychological tendencies one learns about in one chapter may well be a different (and possibly mutually exclusive) set of ‘atheists’ whose demographic trends are charted in the next. Such a collection would not, it must be said, be without value: each individual chapter could well constitute an exemplary and illuminating piece of scholarship. Furthermore, every single one of its definitions of atheism might be perfectly valid (if not necessarily, for the reasons mentioned above, optimally useful): clearly and precisely defined, with a weight of historical usage behind it, and having sufficient consonance with popular usage. And yet, viewed as a whole, The Babel Handbook of Atheism would be a frustrating morass of contradictions and cross-purposes. Such, writ large, is the state of the scholarly study of atheism today.

Throughout this volume, by contrast, and unless otherwise stated, ‘atheism’ is defined as an absence of belief in the existence of a God or gods. As with most mainstream definitions of the term, it is simply the fruit of two basic decisions: the meaning and scope of a-, and the meaning and scope of -theism. Neither decision, of course, is either straightforward or uncontroversial. So let me explain, explore, and defend each of them in turn, while giving special attention to the question of utility.

a- is for…?

 
According to this definition, a- signifies a simple absence, or lack, or ‘state of being without’. In Greek grammar, this usage of a- is called a ‘privative a’ (or alpha privativum/privans), and features in such English words as amoral, asexual, anarchy, and anaerobic. Hence anaerobic respiration occurs in the absence of oxygen, but it is not, in itself, necessarily opposed to oxygen; anarchy is a principally state of lawlessness, rather than a state of denying or opposing the existence of laws (although individual anarchists, having elaborated an ideology from the concept, may or may not do just that). By analogy, atheism thus becomes an absence of something called ‘theism’. Importantly, it does not require a specific denial or rejection of, nor any animus against, this ‘theism’ — although, also importantly, it does not rule it out.

While this interpretation of atheism’s a- is indeed consonant with its Greek etymology, that is not, in itself, a strong reason for advocating it. Actual Greek usage, in fact, was itself rather variable. For example, Liddell and Scott define atheotēs as ‘god-lessness’ (1869: 27), citing the comment in Plato’s dialogue The Statesman about those ‘impelled to atheotēs and to vaunting pride and injustice by the drive of an evil nature’ (308e; quoted from Hamilton and Cairns 1961: 1081). While this is indeed an instance of alpha privativum (being ‘without’ god in the sense of being ‘godless’ or ‘ungodly’), the meaning intended is evidently a moral one. The same is, for example, also true in Aeschylus’ Eumenides when Orestes is described with the adjective atheos (‘atheist’). However, atheos could also connote ‘one who denies or dishonours the God’ (as used of Socrates in Plato’s Apology), a sense that goes beyond a simple, privative absence of belief. Furthermore, irrespective of its Greek descent, atheism is now an English word, and has been in use for over four and a half centuries. There is a long tradition in English of understanding atheism’s prefix as demanding, not merely an absence of theism, but instead a definite rejection of it. (Hence McGrath’s definition, quoted earlier: ‘a principled and informed decision to reject belief in God’.) As noted above, this is arguably the most usual common-speech meaning (though it is far from ubiquitous), and it is well-represented in recent scholarly literature (among others, see: Baggini 2003: 3–4; Hyman 2007: 28–9; Cliteur 2009: 1; and Walters 2010: 171).

Nevertheless, and irrespective of any etymological arguments in its favour, a strong case can be made for preferring our interpretation on the basis of scholarly utility. Defining atheism as ‘an absence of...’ permits it to function as an umbrella concept, comprising a range of significantly related positions and phenomena. These may usefully be subdivided into different categories, at different analytic levels. It is common, for example, for advocates of this kind of definition to distinguish ‘positive’ (or ‘strong’/‘hard’) and ‘negative’ (or ‘weak’/‘soft’) varieties of atheism (Martin 1990: 464). On this schema — which the Handbook adopts — ‘negative atheism’ is consonant with our basic definition of an absence. It thus includes such positions as agnosticism (in both its classical sense of a specific belief that there is insufficient evidence either to believe or disbelieve in the existence of a God or gods, and in its more popular sense of not having made up one’s mind), and the view of some linguistic philosophers that the word God is literally meaningless (see Charles Pigden’s ‘Analytic Philosophy’). Any person who does not, at present, have a belief in the existence of a God or gods is thus a negative atheist. By contrast, a ‘positive atheist’ is someone who is not only without such a belief, but holds a specific belief (which may, of course, be held with varying levels of certainty or interest) that there is no God or gods. Clearly, anyone who holds that belief — unless they are very confused — thereby is also without a belief in God’s/gods’ existence. Thus positive atheism implies negative atheism, but not vice versa. Positive atheism too may be further subdivided into various kinds: Promethean antitheism, existentialist atheism, Soviet scientific atheism, New Atheism, and so on.

To adopt a zoological metaphor, it might be helpful to think of atheism as a ‘family’, divisible into two ‘genera’ (negative and positive), each made up of various ‘species’ (agnosticism, Promethean antitheism, etc.). This taxonomic approach to atheism permits exploration of a diverse range of stances and worldviews, united by their shared absence of theism. It encompasses, for example, the positive atheisms of the humanist Bertrand Russell, the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, and the Marxist Mao Zedong, but also the negative atheisms of the agnostic Anthony Kenny, the logical positivist A. J. Ayer, and some — but not all — of the secular ‘indifference’ of a large and increasing number of Westerners. It would also include any genuinely religious atheisms, as are sometimes identified in strands of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism (though see Jessica Frazier’s, Andrew Skilton’s, and Anne Vallely’s chapters later in this Handbook). Needless to say, the great bulk of this (coherent) richness and diversity — and with it, the potential for illuminating comparisons and correlations — is lost if atheism’s prefix is understood exclusively in the sense of a rejection and/or denial. Of course, scholars are not obliged to take into account all of atheism’s ‘endless forms’, whenever they want to write about a particular ‘genus’ or ‘species’: positive atheism, for example, is and will remain a discrete and significant focus of enquiry in itself. Nonetheless, there is clear value in being at least aware of how one’s specific topic relates to the bigger picture. One positive result, for instance, may be to reduce the data-skewing tendency of some students of religion to bifurcate people into ‘religious believers’ and ‘convinced atheists’, as though there were no possibility of anything in between.

Not insignificantly, this way of defining a- has precedents in both the writings of influential atheist writers, and in key works in the philosophical and social-scientific study of atheism (e.g., Flew 1976; Smith [1979] 1989; Martin 1990; Hiorth 2003; Hwang et al. 2009; Eller 2010). Furthermore, given the benefits of finding an agreed-upon definition among scholars of atheism (as outlined in the previous section), its recent employment in another major, multi-author reference work — The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (see Martin 2007) — is a key point in its favour.

One final comment: it is important to note that this definition of a- in terms of an ‘absence’ is intended in a wholly value-neutral, non-pejorative sense. It is not meant to imply that there is something ‘missing’ in the atheist that he or she ought either to have or to be (which is, of course, a separate question entirely). However, the possibility of the definition being (mis)taken to have negative connotations is indeed a troubling one. One might, of course, substitute ‘a lack of belief in the existence of a God or gods’ as a direct synonym. This would, moreover, lend an elegant symmetry to the corresponding definition of ‘atheist’ as ‘one who lacks a belief in the existence of a God or gods’. However, lack is susceptible to the same, or worse, kinds of misunderstanding: describing something as lacking normally implies a deficiency. Unfortunately, absence genuinely does lack such elegant symmetry when applied to the definition of ‘atheist’, creating the decidedly tortuous ‘one from whom a belief in the existence of a God or gods is absent’. Instead, it would probably be best to choose ‘one who is without a belief in the existence of a God or gods’ (which, unfortunately, results in the ludicrous, cognate definition of atheism: ‘a “without-ness” of a belief in the existence of a God or gods’). On balance, ‘absence’ for atheism and ‘without’ for atheist, while far from perfect, are probably still to be preferred.

The Meaning(s) of -theism

 
In the above discussion of a-, I have been glossing -theism with ‘belief in the existence of God or gods’. Yet, as with its companion, this too is the result of a conscious — and contentious — decision. Whereas defining a- is largely a binary affair (either it is understood as meaning ‘without’ or ‘an absence of ’, or as signifying a specific denial), -theism admits of a far wider range of credible options. So let me explain what I do and don’t mean by defining it as I have done, while once again comparing it with (and defending it against) some of its recent competitors.

Obviously, this understanding of -theism is contingent upon the individual meanings of ‘existence’ and ‘God/gods’. Equally obviously, there is no space here to give comprehensive accounts of either of these ideas. It will be helpful, though, to make a few brief remarks about ‘existence’, before commenting in more detail on the crucial category of ‘God/gods’ — upon which, as one might expect, the greatest disagreements among definers of atheism have centered.

‘Existence’ is not, perhaps, overly problematic. That is not to say that the concept does not present interesting philosophical issues and problems, but these are not specific to our current concerns. Admittedly, there are also strands within Christian theology which might want to deny, or at least qualify, the claim that God ‘exists’ (at least in the normal sense that everything within the universe is said to exist) — the influential fourth- or fifth-century theologian Pseudo-Dionysius could write that God ‘falls neither within the predicate of nonbeing nor of being’ (Luibheid and Rorem 1987: 141), for example — but this is a technical issue, beyond the scope of the present essay. That said, in the interests of precision, it is important to underline the role of the word ‘existence’ in defining atheism. Frequently, the word is omitted, resulting in definitions of (a)theism in terms simply of ‘belief in God(s)’. While this is fine as a handy abbreviation, as it stands the phrase is ambiguous: it can mean either belief that there is a God or gods, or faith/trust in God or the gods (Lash [1992] 2002: 18–21). In the vast majority of cases, including here, atheism relates only to the former sense (although an absence of that would, of course, ordinarily imply an absence of faith too). The presence of the word ‘existence’ also rules out those who might claim to ‘believe in God’, but only in some figurative, or anti-realist sense — in the same way that an adult, while not believing that Santa actually exists, might insist ‘I believe in Santa Claus!’ in order to affirm a general commitment to the magic of Christmas. These too, being without a belief in the existence of a God or gods, are still atheists on our definition.

The proposed definition draws on a conventional distinction between ‘God’ (singular, capitalized) and ‘gods’ (plural, lower case). According to this, the former normally signifies the ‘genre’ of God traditionally worshipped in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (the differences between or within those traditions notwithstanding): a supreme, personal, transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent Creator. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘Judeo-Christian God’, or the ‘God of Classical Theism’. ‘God’ can and does, though, also refer to the supreme beings of other monotheistic religions or belief systems — e.g., Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Neoplatonism — who may or may not conform precisely to the above description. Our second category of ‘gods’ is, however, rather harder to pin down: religious studies reference books are oddly reticent about giving a generic, non-tradition-specific definition of what a ‘god’ actually is. Certainly, most ‘gods’ are not simply multiple versions of the ‘God’ of classical theism. The Greco-Roman gods and goddesses, for example, are typically neither omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, nor transcendent (in the sense of being outside of creation). It may well be, in fact, that despite there being any number of widely accepted claimants of the epithet ‘God/god’—Nyami Nyami, Hera, Odin, Baal, Wakan Tankah, Pachacamac — there is no set of essential characteristics that all gods possess, and all non-gods do not. (Being immaterial, immortal, and possessing supernatural powers, for instance, are often also considered properties of beings not normally regarded as gods, such as demons or sprites. On this point, see below.) It may also be that our Western concept of ‘a god’ — arguably like ‘religion’ — is one that has been artificially foisted upon belief systems, and where it now sits uneasily. If so, then perhaps it would be best to adopt a Wittgensteinian ‘family resemblance model’ — such as has been proposed for defining ‘religion’ itself (e.g., Clarke and Byrne 1993) — for deciding what does or does not count as a ‘god’. This would acknowledge that there is no set of necessary and sufficient properties common to all putative ‘gods’ (thus recognizing the genuine ambiguities of the term’s real-world application), while preserving what is, after all, a useful and well-established concept.

The above considerations, while seemingly a little off-topic, are worth thinking about here. Partly because of the relative difficulties involved in defining ‘god(s)’ as opposed to ‘God’, some scholars insist on defining atheism solely in relation to monotheism, if not in fact, to one specific instance of it. Kerry Walters, for example, affirms ‘The God whose existence atheists reject is the deity worshipped by the three “Religions of the Book”: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. [...] Each of them proclaims what’s come to be known as “the God of classical theism” ’ (2010: 17). And for Paul Cliteur: ‘Atheism is concerned with one specific concept of god: the theistic god. The theistic god has a name and this is written with a capital: God’ (2009: 3). Relatedly, one commonly meets the claim that atheism’s definition is always relative to whatever form of theism happens to be dominant. In the words of Gavin Hyman: ‘atheism defines itself in terms of that which it is denying. From this it follows that if definitions and understandings of God change and vary, so too our definitions and understandings of atheism will change and vary. This further means that there will be as many varieties of atheism as there are varieties of theism. For atheism will always be a rejection, negation, or denial of a particular form of theism’ (2007: 29).

Certainly, there is some truth to this claim: positive atheism, at least, frequently expresses itself in opposition to some specific understanding of theism. In times and places where Christianity is prevalent, it would be strange to expend much energy critiquing the Neoplatonists’ One or Pharaoh Akhenaten’s sun-god Aten. And nor is it surprising that Western proponents of positive atheism should now direct their attentions to Islam, as well as to their traditional target of Christianity. But the fact that prevailing theisms condition the focus and expression of certain types of atheism, need not mean that either they or atheism in general have no wider referent. Even when specific attention is understandably given to one type of theism, this is normally accompanied and motivated by a general disavowal of all gods. (By analogy, an opposition party normally expresses itself against the policies of the government. But it would be something of a stretch to claim that, say, the essence of the Labour Party — or socialism itself — is defined exclusively by ‘what the Tories are not’.)

The practical disutility of such a definition can, moreover, be easily grasped. If atheism is defined exclusively in terms of (say) the prevailing Abrahamic monotheism, then all non-adherents in that society — including huge numbers of other types of theists, both poly and mono — are thereby made ‘atheists’. But not even the proponents of such definitions, in practice, use the concept in so broad and unwieldy a way. Furthermore, it becomes meaningless to speak of ‘atheism’ in times and places where this kind of monotheism is basically unknown: depending on one’s understanding of a-, either everyone in ancient Athens was an atheist (in the negative sense), or nobody was (in the positive sense). But again, even those proposing such ethnocentric definitions of atheism still want to single out specific groups of ‘atheists’ in classical Greece (cf. Cliteur 2009: 5).

At the other end of the spectrum, there are those who, rather than restricting the scope of -theism to one specific understanding of God, wish instead to extend it to encompass all supernatural beings, forces, and phenomena. James Thrower, for instance, distinguishes ‘relative atheism’ (such as we have just discussed) from ‘absolute atheism’, which he regards as synonymous with metaphysical naturalism ([1971] 2000: 4). Other scholars, while not defining atheism in terms of naturalism, nevertheless regard the two as intrinsically linked. Kerry Walters, for example, asserts: ‘The worldview that undergirds atheism is one whose deepest core belief is that the natural world is all that there is’ (2010: 36). He continues:

"[A]ll atheists are both methodological and what might be called ‘ontological’ naturalists. They don’t just insist that scientific hypotheses must be kept free of occult explanations. They argue that scientific explanations are legitimate because there is nothing in reality that can’t be understood ultimately in material, physico-chemical, naturalistic terms. For the ontological naturalist, there is nothing apart from nature, and nature is self-originating, self-explanatory, and without overall purpose." (ibid.: 37)

But while this may well be the worldview of many atheists, especially Western positive atheists (though I expect many of these would wish to qualify the above précis), there seems no need to regard this as being the atheist worldview. There are vast numbers of people who have no belief whatsoever in anything ‘theistic’, and yet believe in other supernatural beings or phenomena (see Eller 2010: 3, 10). These may include impersonal ‘forces’ or ‘energies’, nature spirits, dead ancestors, demons, sprites, or ghosts, as well as any number of paranormal possibilities such as clairvoyance, telekinesis, messages from beyond the grave, etc. Furthermore, this applies both to the followers of multiple non-theistic world religions, as well as to wholly nonreligious, self-defining ‘atheists’ in the secular West (see, for example, Lois Lee’s chapter on ‘Western Europe’). These cases, atypical and anomalous as they may (or may not) be, are certainly interesting, and there would seem to be little gained by defining such people as non-atheists out of hand. The same applies, of course, to other attempts to identify atheism-in-general with a specific worldview (such as, most commonly, humanism). The words of George Smith are worth recalling:

"From the mere fact that a person is an atheist, one cannot infer that this person subscribes to any particular positive beliefs. One’s positive convictions are quite distinct from the subject of atheism. While one may begin with a basic philosophical position and infer atheism as a consequence of it, this process cannot be reversed. One cannot move from atheism to a basic philosophical belief, because atheism can be (and has been) incorporated within many different and incompatible philosophical systems." ([1979] 1989: 21–2)

Yet again, the primary concern here is utility: the study of atheism has far too much to lose in terms of richness and diversity by artificially excluding great sectors of those from whom a belief in the existence of a God or gods is absent.

Conclusion

 
The purpose of this chapter has been to explore the troublesome question of what atheism actually means, and to elucidate and justify the specific way in which it is being used in this volume. After introducing a number of background issues — the variability of word’s historical and contemporary usage, and the benefits of a generally agreed-upon scholarly definition — the task was broken down into its two constituent parts: the definition of a-, and the definition of -theism. It was argued that the former is best interpreted in the privative sense of an ‘absence’. This permits atheism to function as an umbrella concept, uniting a wide (but coherent) set of positions and phenomena. It is then possible to construct a systematic taxonomy of different types of atheism — the most basic division being between negative (simple absence) and positive (specific denial) — to bring clarity to further researches. The discussion regarding -theism was more complicated, with a broader range of credible options. Here it was argued that the central idea should be ‘belief in the existence of a God or gods’ (without needing to define too sharply what does or does not count as a ‘god’, a concept lacking a certain clarity in the field of religious studies). This steers a course between confining theism to only a specific form of it (e.g., Abrahamic monotheism), and needlessly coupling atheism itself to a particular metaphysical or ethical worldview. The resulting union of these two decisions gives us the following definition of atheism: an absence of belief in the existence of a God or gods. Since it has been a key contention in this chapter that the definition of atheism is to be guided by the principle of scholarly utility — and not least the extent to which it helps, or hinders, the pursuit of interesting and genuinely illuminating research — then this particular one can, to a significant degree, be judged by its fruits in the rest of this Handbook.
 
 
Purchase your copy of The Oxford Handbook of Atheism.
 
 
(Image credit: Musasha)
Text used with permission of publisher, copied from Friendly Atheist blog.

NOTE: This is the third post in Stephen Bullivant's series on atheists and the Catholic Church, particularly what the Second Vatican Council taught about atheism. Be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2. Also, his new book on this topic, Faith and Unbelief (Paulist Press), debuts this week. Check it out!
 

 
In the last episode of my irregular 'Vatican II on atheism' series, we saw how a number of determined bishops - not least the Bishop of Rome - ensured that the Council took unbelief seriously. We now turn to the main fruit of this attention: articles 19 to 21 of Gaudium et Spes.

Let me be quite plain. If you really want to know what the Catholic Church has to say about atheism, then your first port of call should be Gaudium et Spes (GS) 19-21. Not Strange Notions. Not Brandon Vogt, Trent Horn, or Kevin Aldrich. Not even some off-the-cuff remarks of Pope Francis. Don't get me wrong: these would all be excellent second ports of call. But undoubtedly the place to start is GS 19-21 (as all the kids are calling it) itself. Though less than 1,500 words long, it is a detailed and nuanced statement, and is both theologically and historically significant. And more to the point, it carries the full magisterial weight of a general Council behind it. And if that doesn't entice you into wanting to read it, then what could?

Go on...here it is (just scroll down a bit). This is the Vatican’s own English translation, though there are several other—and arguably better—versions out there. However, since it’s this one that’s freely available online, it’s this one I’ll be using for my commentary. It’s worth remembering, though, that the only authoritative version is the Latin original—and so every so often we’ll be dipping into that too. As you'll know if you've already read it, GS 19-21 covers a lot of ground in a small amount of space. So in this post, we're only going to look at article 19. Articles 20 and 21 can wait till next time.

Before we begin, it's worth noting something about the document as a whole. Following the normal Church convention, Gaudium et Spes is just the text's nickname, taken from its opening words, which are Latin for 'joy and hope'. (As in: "The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ...") The text's proper title is normally given as the somewhat less zingy "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World," but this is slightly misleading. Strictly speaking, the title refers to "The Church in the World of This Time (huius temporis)'. It is worth bearing in mind that the Council Fathers are commenting directly on the world of the mid-1960s—they are not necessarily in the business, in this text, of making 'for-the-ages' pronouncements. Which is not to say there isn't a huge amount of timeless, enduring value in the document, both at the level of general principles, and right down in the details. But still, since the text is so up front about the fact it is speaking to a particular historical context, we should bear this in mind.

What Does Article 19 Say?

 
Here's how the nineteenth article begins:

"The root reason for human dignity lies in man's call to communion with God. From the very circumstance of his origin man is already invited to converse with God. For man would not exist were he not created by God’s love and constantly preserved by it; and he cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges [God's] love and devotes himself to his Creator."

These opening sentences situate the Council's comments on atheism in a very precise, theological framework. All human beings are, whether they know it or like it, in a relationship with their Creator. That is what humans are for. They are not, in Bertrand Russell's phrase, "a cosmic accident" (though they might, depending on one's views about divine Providence and contingency, be a kind of "cosmic accidentally-on-purpose"). Later on, in article 21, the text will sum up this theme with the famous quotation from St. Augustine's Confessions: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee."

So the Council begins its statement about atheists with a series of claims that an atheist, ipso facto, cannot possibly accept. To my mind, that's a fairly bold opening gambit. No softly, softly approach—"ease 'em in, then hit 'em with the God stuff"—here. Instead, the Church begins by laying its cards face up on the table: this is where we're coming from, this is what Christians believe about all people (not just atheists), and everything else we have to say about the subject has to be understood in this light. (Incidentally, this is the same approach that John Paul II takes to sexual ethics in his Theology of Body—what the Church has to say about sex cannot be divorced from who it believes humans are in the first place.) Furthermore, by situating its discussion of atheism within the context of "Christian anthropology" (as this branch of theology—considering who humans are, and what they are called to be—is known), the Council emphasizes that, whatever else the Church might have to say about atheists, it is talking about people who, first and foremost, have been made in "the image of God" (Genesis 1:27), and whom God invites to spend eternity with him. That's quite a compliment. Not, admittedly, one that those to whom it is addressed can readily accept, but a compliment nonetheless.

The article continues:

"Still, many of our contemporaries have never recognized this intimate and vital link with God, or have explicitly rejected it. Thus atheism must be accounted among the most serious problems of this age, and is deserving of closer examination."

Given the grand vision sketched above, the growth and prevalence of unbelief is obviously problematic for the Catholic Church. Technically though, the official Latin text (unlike this, and many other English translations) doesn't actually call atheism a "most serious problem." A more faithful translation of the Latin would be the less antagonistic-sounding: "atheism may be numbered among the most important issues of this time (atheismus inter gravissimas huius temporis res adnumerandus)." Either way, the Council is clear that it deserves a more thorough investigation.

Continuing on:

"The word atheism is applied to phenomena which are quite distinct from one another. For while God is expressly denied by some, others believe that man can assert absolutely nothing about Him. Still others use such a method to scrutinize the question of God as to make it seem devoid of meaning. Many, unduly transgressing the limits of the positive sciences, contend that everything can be explained by this kind of scientific reasoning alone, or by contrast, they altogether disallow that there is any absolute truth. Some laud man so extravagantly that their faith in God lapses into a kind of anemia, though they seem more inclined to affirm man than to deny God.
 
Again some form for themselves such a fallacious idea of God that when they repudiate this figment they are by no means rejecting the God of the Gospel. Some never get to the point of raising questions about God, since they seem to experience no religious stirrings nor do they see why they should trouble themselves about religion. Moreover, atheism results not rarely from a violent protest against the evil in this world, or from the absolute character with which certain human values are unduly invested, and which thereby already accords them the stature of God. Modern civilization itself often complicates the approach to God not for any essential reason but because it is so heavily engrossed in earthly affairs."

True to its word, there follows a long paragraph delineating the many different forms that contemporary unbelief can take. We needn't get bogged down in the details of this. Note, though, that GS favours a broad definition of atheism: including varieties of definite disbelief ("God is expressly denied by some"), plus forms of agnosticism, logical positivism, promethean humanism, indifference, and several more besides. Roughly speaking, in this GS foreshadows several recent scholarly works such as The Cambridge Companion to Atheism and The Oxford Handbook of Atheism which also argue for an inclusive definition. Note too, in the final sentence, a recognition of socio-cultural factors on the prevalence and plausibility of unbelief (i.e., it's not just about philosophical arguments). The first half of that sentence, at least, basically sums up classic secularization theory: "Modern civilization itself often complicates the approach to God."

Believers Responsible for Atheism?

 
Gaudium et Spes continues:

"Undeniably, those who willfully shut out God from their hearts and try to dodge religious questions are not following the dictates of their consciences, and hence are not free of blame; yet believers themselves frequently bear some responsibility for this situation. For, taken as a whole, atheism is not a spontaneous development but stems from a variety of causes, including a critical reaction against religious beliefs, and in some places against the Christian religion in particular. Hence believers can have more than a little to do with the birth of atheism. To the extent that they neglect their own training in the faith, or teach erroneous doctrine, or are deficient in their religious, moral, or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than reveal the authentic face of God and religion."

We come now to perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Catholic teaching on atheism. The Church here recognizes that, at least to some extent, unbelief arises "through [our] fault, through [our] fault, through [our] most grievous fault." As we saw in part two of this series, this was an idea that several of the Council fathers insisted upon. Three decades earlier, Henri de Lubac—one of the theological experts entrusted with drafting GS 19-21—had made a similar point in his hugely influential Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man. (Incidentally, there’s a whole chapter on this theme in my own, somewhat less influential Faith and Unbelief.)

GS is here echoing a point made by many nonbelievers (and former believers), one confirmed in sociological investigations of deconversion (see, e.g., Phil Zuckerman’s excellent Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion): Christians are not always God’s best advert. And this arises from their being both bad teachers and bad witnesses. This is a point to which the Council, and we, shall return in GS 21.

Notice what the text is not saying. It is not claiming that "bad Christians" are the only cause of, or justification for, unbelief. That would undercut everything else GS 19 has to say about the various types of atheism, and the explicit claim above that it "stems from a variety of causes." (It would also be extremely arrogant and exhibit a clear failure to take atheism seriously as a social, cultural, and intellectual phenomenon.) Significantly, it is also not implying any blanket "absolution" of unbelievers: "Undeniably, those who willfully shut out God from their hearts and try to dodge religious questions are...not free of blame (culpae expertes non sunt)." (Though even here, the very same sentence confesses that "believers themselves frequently bear some responsibility for this situation.") Faith and unbelief, GS 19 reminds us, remain matters of (eternal) life and death. This will be important for us to remember in later installments, when we look at the Council’s other key statement on atheism, especially the affirmation that "those who have not arrived at an express recognition of God" are nevertheless "able to be saved" in Lumen Gentium 14-16.

One Impressed Atheist

 
Finally, we'll keep with our tradition of ending these episodes with a quotation from an actual atheist. Today's words come from Jacques Berlinerblau’s 2012 book How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom:

"Whereas a student of church history might expect [GS 19-21] to anathematize the atheist, no such condemnations are forthcoming. Rather, what follows is a sober, fair and introspective analysis of the significance of nonbelief for Catholic thought...Not exactly a teary embrace of nonbelief. Nonetheless, the willingness to look at the problem, calmly and without rancor, is impressive." (pp. 100-1)

 
 
(Image credit: Spectator)

Welcome to the second post in my little series 'Vatican II on atheism'. As noted last time, according to at least one reputable commentator, the Council's primary statement on the subject "may be counted among [its] most important pronouncements". In future posts, we'll be looking at Gaudium et Spes 19-21, as well as the separate statement on salvation in Lumen Gentium 14-16, in some details. So - let's face it—we've all got plenty of exegetical fun to look forward to. This post, though, will be rather different. Its purpose is to set the scene, to explain the contexts out of which GS 19-21 and LG 14-16 grew. Think of it as being akin to a classic "How the Gang Got Together" episode.

Fact is, atheism could easily not have featured in the conciliar literature at all. The Council opened in October 1962. By the start of the Third Session, two years later, the most any of the draft documents had to say on the subject was a passing mention of "errors which spring from materialism, especially from dialectical materialism or communism" in the so-called 'Schema XIII'. Just 15 months before the close of the Council, then, one of "the most serious matters of our time"—as Schema XIII (i.e., the ultimate Gaudium et Spes) would come to describe it—wasn't looking quite so serious after all.

A combination of two things changed that: the bishops, and the Pope (which, incidentally, is exactly the right combination you want making things happen at an Ecumenical Council).

Among many other criticisms of the Schema XIII draft as a whole, its ignoring of atheism was time and again singled out in the bishops' plenary discussions. On the very first day of debate, the Chilean Cardinal Silva Henríquez spoke of "the need for dialogue with contemporary humanism", urging that "The Church must try to comprehend atheism, to examine the truths which nourish this error, and to be able to correspond its life and doctrine to these aspirations." The next day, the Belgian Cardinal Suenens had this to say:

"Atheism is certainly a terrible error...it would be too easy simply to condemn it. It is necessary to examine why so many men profess themselves to be atheists, and whom precisely is this 'God' they so sharply attack. Thus dialogue should be begun with them so that they may seek and recognize the true image of God who is perhaps concealed under the caricatures they reject. On our part, meanwhile, we should examine our way of speaking of God and living the faith, lest the sun of the living God is darkened for them." [These are my translations from the official Acta; for full translations of the speeches, see Peter Hebblethwaite, The Council Fathers and Atheism: The Interventions at the Fourth Session of Vatican Council II (New York: Paulist Press, 1967)]

Taking these comments (and many more on other topics) on board, the Council Fathers duly sent Schema XIII away to be rewritten. A new version—the so-called 'Ariccia text' for Vatican II buffs—was circulated the following summer, and met with much greater, general approval in the September 1965 debates. But yet again, the Fathers proved sticklers when it came to the statement on atheism; though much improved, it still wasn't up to scratch.

In the most powerful of the critiques, the Melkite Cardinal Maximos Saigh warned that atheists "are often scandalized by the sight of a mediocre and egoistical Christendom absorbed by money and false riches", adding: "is it not the egotism of certain Christians which has caused, and causes to a great extent, the atheism of the masses?" In the end, the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, Franz König, suggested that—with the close of the Council only months away—a whole new statement on atheism should be written from scratch. Helpfully, he offered the services of the newly-created Secretariat for Non-believers for this eleventh-hour mission. Which brings us nicely to Pope Paul VI...

Paul was the second of Vatican II's popes, having been elected following the death of John XXIII in June 1963. The following August, he published his first encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, in order to show how and why the Church and the world, as he rather sweetly puts it, "should meet together, and get to know and love one another" (art. 3). 'Dialogue' is the great watchword here, and much attention is given to the value of improving relationships with both non-Catholic Christian communities, and the other world religions. Crucially, atheists are not ignored either.

Paul's opening gambit might not, I readily admit, exactly warm the cockles of the hearts of my atheist friends here at Strange Notions. However, my aim here is not to 'cherry pick' the enticing, welcoming bits of the Church's engagement with unbelief (like you wouldn't see straight through that, right?). So here is what he actually says:

"Many [today] subscribe to atheism in one of its many different forms. They parade their godlessness, asserting its claims in education and politics, in the foolish and fatal belief that they are emancipating mankind from false and outworn notions about life and the world and substituting a view that is scientific and up to date. This is the most serious problem of our time. [...] Any social system based on these principles is doomed to utter destruction. Atheism, therefore, is not a liberating force, but a catastrophic one, for it seeks to quench the light of the living God." (Ecclesiam Suam, 99, 100)

There are a good few paragraphs more in this vein, for those wanting to read them. It becomes clear that the communist regimes of the Soviet Union and elsewhere—and the sufferings of Christians at their hands—are a large part of what Paul has in mind here. But I won't pretend that he explicitly confines his remarks to them alone.

In a certain sense, the above remarks make what Paul goes on to say about atheists all the more significant.

"We see these men serving a demanding and often a noble cause, fired with enthusiasm and idealism, dreaming of justice and progress [...] They are sometimes men of great breadth of mind, impatient with the mediocrity and self-seeking which infects so much of modern society. They are quick to make use of sentiments and expressions found in our gospel, referring the brotherhood of man, mutual aid, and human compassion. Shall we not one day be able to lead them back to the Christian sources of these moral values?" (Ecclesiam Suam, 104)

In my own atheist days, I suppose that I would have found something patronising and presumptuous in those words, not least on the subject of meta-ethics (and perhaps a part of me still does). I like to think, though, that I would have recognized at least as much sincerity and goodwill on the Pope's behalf (however much I thought him misguided on major points), as he is willing to grant to those unbelievers dreaming of 'justice and progress' (however much he thinks them misguided on major points). What do you think?

Paul ends his comments on atheism by expressing hope for "the eventual possibility of a dialogue between these men and the Church, and a more fruitful one than is possible at present" (art. 105). This hope was evidently a sincere one. Eight months later, in April 1965, the Vatican newspaper quietly announced Paul's creation of a Secretariat for Non-Believers. As its new secretary explained to Vatican Ratio, its purpose was not only to study atheism, but also "to organize groups of priests and lay people who will be well prepared to enter into a dialogue with atheists, should the occasion arise" (quoted in my The Salvation of Atheists, p. 70). As its president, Cardinal König, used playfully to point out, the Secretariat was named for non-believers, and not against them.

As mentioned earlier, it was the Secretariat's consultors who ended up drafting Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes 19-21. It's this we'll being looking at next time around. I made a point in my last post, though, of ending with a quotation from an actual atheist. While I doubt I'll manage to maintain that tradition for the whole series, here's another one.

It comes from a letter I dug up in the Secretariat's archives, now housed at the Pontifical Council for Culture, about five years ago. It was written by Tolbert H. McCarroll, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association, to Cardinal König, and is dated just five days after the Secretariat was formally announced. McCarroll welcomes this fact, explains a bit about the AHA (enclosing some literature), and cordially invites members of the Secretariat to meet with humanist representatives in the Netherlands that summer. He ends with sentence:

"This letter would not be closed without reference to the late Pope John XXIII. We may differ in our opinion as to the source of his humane concern, but we can join together in our admiration of this great model of humanity."

Pope Paul's desire for a "more fruitful dialogue" seemed like it might come true rather sooner than he had hoped.
 
 
(Image credit: Crisis Magazine)

"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun" (Eccl 1:9). This famous observation of the Book of Ecclesiastes applies, to a certain extent, to the recent upsurge of Catholic interest in and—more importantly, serious engagement with—atheism. Popes announcing that "there should be a dialogue with those to whom...God is unknown", and that atheists are capable of "doing good" and "are able to be saved"? The Vatican sponsoring major dialogue events between Christians and unbelievers? High-profile Catholic and atheist writers and intellectuals coming together to explore (mutually!) "strange notions"? It all leads us to ask the same question as the author of Ecclesiastes: "Is there a thing of which it is said, 'See, this is new'? It has already been in the ages before us" (Eccl 1:10).

I am referring, of course, to the period in and around the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). For those who don't know, "Vatican II" is the twenty-first, and most recent, ecumenical Council recognized by the Catholic Church, assembling all the bishops of the "inhabited world" (the oikoumene or ecumene, hence "ecumenical"). The first such Council was held in Nicaea, modern-day Turkey, in 325, and is where the Nicene Creed originated. On average, then, ecumenical Councils come along just under once a century; and in modern times, they come along even less frequently (there have been just three—Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II—in the last 500 years). Which is to say, ecumenical Councils are big deals in the life of the Church. What they actually have to say about things (as opposed to what people assume they have to say) are—or should be—taken very seriously indeed by Catholics. And that is especially true, of course, for those presuming to comment on "what the Church teaches about X."

As it happens, Vatican II had quite a bit to say about atheism and atheists, most of it contained in two documents: Lumen Gentium, articles 14-16; and Gaudium et Spes, articles 19-21. The latter, which contains the Council's dedicated statement on atheism, is particularly important. Almost fifty years later, it arguably remains the longest and most detailed statement of the Magisterium (i.e., the teaching authority of the Church) on what it regards to be "among the most serious matters of our time" (art. 19). According to the future Pope Benedict XVI, Gaudium et Spes 19-21 "may be counted among the most important pronouncements of Vatican II" (Joseph Ratzinger, in Vorgrimler [ed.], Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. V, 1969, p. 145).

This is the first post in what I intend to be a short(ish) series introducing and commenting on various aspects of the Council's engagement with atheism. Lumen Gentium 16 and Gaudium et Spes 19-21 will obviously get posts (perhaps several) to themselves. But they cannot, I think, be properly understood in a vacuum. Accordingly, my next post will instead focus on Pope Paul VI's debut encyclical on dialogue Ecclesiam Suam, promulgated in 1964 (and thus, in an important sense, "in the Council, but not of it"), and his creation of a "Secretariat for Non-believers" that same year. Both, as we will see, were very influential indeed on the Council's own pronouncements on atheism, as they also were on much of the Church's ongoing engagements with both atheism and, significantly, atheists in the decade or so after Vatican II (this too will be discussed as part of the series).

Inevitably, much of this series will consist of a Catholic talking about other Catholics talking about atheists, humanists, Marxists, and so on. But, of course, and I really hope that this has come across in some of my other posts, one of the main reasons I'm doing this, and the reason why I'm so pleased to be doing it at Strange Notions, is because I'm genuinely interested in what "the ones being talked about" actually think about what's being said. Obviously, I don't expect atheists to agree with everything, or necessarily very much, of what Vatican II has to say about them—since the Church is speaking out of worldview that atheists, ipso facto, don't share. But if atheists don't recognize at least something of themselves in what Christians have to say about them, then that probably suggests that Christians are missing the mark entirely—tilting at unbelieving windmills, so to speak. All which is, of course, a long way of saying: I look forward to our combox discussions.

On that note, it is probably a good idea to give the final words of this introduction over to a bona-fide atheist. The focus of this series is on Vatican II, and as such, I'll be saying almost nothing (except in passing) about the quite considerable Christian-atheist engagement in the decades leading up to it. Suffice it to say that much of the groundwork for the Church's constructive engagement with atheism (and vice versa!) in the 1960s onward was lain in the thirties, forties, and fifties, especially in countries like France and Italy. My favorite example of this—I quote it in my new book Faith and Unbelief: A Theology of Atheism—comes from 1948. The atheist philosopher Albert Camus was invited by a group of Parisian Dominicans to come to their Priory and give his honest views on Christianity. While the entire lecture is very much worth reading, I'd like to end by quoting just one passage, since I think it expresses something important about the kind of authentic dialogue this website exists to promote:
 

"I shall not try to change anything that I think or anything that you think (insofar as I can judge of it) in order to reach a reconciliation that would be agreeable to all. On the contrary, what I feel like telling you today is that the world needs real dialogue, that falsehood is just as much the opposite of dialogue as silence, and that the only possible dialogue is the kind between people who remain what they are and speak their minds."
("The Unbeliever and Christians", in Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays, [1948] 1964, p. 48)

 
 
(Image credit: Most Holy Family Monastery)

Picture the scene: it’s festival day in a provincial Roman city c. AD 156, and people have come from all around to see some local Christians being put to death. A young believer called Germanicus stands in the arena, not merely facing the savage beasts, but actively urging them on. Irritated by the youth’s composure, the crowd who have gathered to see him torn apart cry out: ‘Down with the atheists!’ Later, the old bishop Polycarp (whom ancient tradition assures us was a disciple of St John) is brought into the arena. He is ordered—on pain of death—to denounce his fellow Christians in the same way. Whereupon, we are told:
 

"Polycarp’s brow darkened as he threw a look round the turbulent crowd of heathens in the circus; and then, indicating them with a sweep of his hand, he said with a growl and a glance to heaven 'Down with the atheists!'" (Martyrdom of Polycarp, 9).

 
'Atheist' here is a translation of the Greek word atheos (pl. atheoi), which could be used as either a noun or an adjective (as in Ephesians 2.12, its only appearance in the New Testament, where it is often translated 'without God'). While atheos could carry a range of meanings and connotations, its usage here is reasonably transparent. In effect, we have the Christian Polycarp and the pagan crowd mutually denouncing each other as ‘infidels’. As far as the crowd is concerned, the Christians deny and dishonor the real Roman gods, while affirming their own false one. (At one point, the crowd cries out that Polycarp is a "destroyer of our gods, who is teaching whole multitudes to abstain from sacrificing to them or worshiping them"—Martyrdom, 12.) And as far as Polycarp is concerned, the crowd does precisely the opposite.

Throughout western history, from Socrates onward, the term 'atheist' has been bandied about quite liberally. Almost always, until comparatively recently, it was mostly an insult directed at other people. However, in the writings of St. Justin Martyr—one of Polycarp’s contemporaries, and himself a convert from paganism - this basic idea receives a somewhat different twist. Justin wrote a number of apologias (‘defenses’ rather than ‘apologies’; hence 'apologetics') to explain what and why Christians believed for his pagan contemporaries, and to correct common misunderstandings about them. The charge of ‘atheism’ was one of these.

Justin, however, novelly chooses to side with both Polycarp and the crowd, declaring in his First Apology: "We confess that we are atheists, so far as gods of this sort [i.e., the Greco-Roman ones] are concerned, but not with respect to the Most True God" (First Apology, 6). For Justin then, there is at least one, albeit qualified, sense in which Christians are, and must be, atheists.

A very similar idea, although expressed slightly differently, appears in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians. In the course of giving practical advice on the eating of food sacrificed to idols, Paul also distinguishes between the "so-called gods in heaven or on earth" and the "one God" (1 Cor 8:5-6). Paul seems to oscillate between implying that these so-called gods are simple fictions ("no idol in the world really exists"), and affirming that though real enough in themselves, these "many gods and many lords" certainly do not deserve to share the divine name. But regardless of whether they are demons or mere figments, Paul’s basic point is clear: "for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and through whom we exist" (1 Cor 8:4-6).

For Paul, as for Justin, Christians must therefore be atheists regarding "the gods". And nor is this a merely academic point for him. Rather, he is anxious that the Corinthians be vigilant against lapsing, or inadvertently causing others to lapse, into idolatry. Recent converts, in particular, might be fooled into thinking that "the so-called gods" are actually deserving of the name: "Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled" (1 Cor 8:7). (Hearteningly perhaps, this suggests that crises of catechesis are not a new phenomenon within the Church.) Hence, lest the practice of eating food sacrificed to idols, though in itself innocuous enough, become "a stumbling-block to the weak", Paul advises against it. Better to go without cheap meat than to confuse others about the distinction between the false "gods", and the Most (and Only) True one.

This point may be developed (much) further still. In fact, it is perfectly possible to turn Justin and Paul's arguments on their head. What if it is not the Greco-Roman gods who are misnamed, but the Most True 'God'? After all, let us not forget that the name God is itself a borrowed word: Hellenized Jews stole as a name for Yahweh the already-existing Greek descriptive noun theos. But, as Paul and Justin so rightly insist, the Judeo-Christian God is not literally ‘a god’ in the original Greco-Roman sense of the word (‘We confess that we are atheists regarding gods of this sort’). Hence, as Herbert McCabe, OP once put it:
 

"‘God’, ‘Theos’, ‘Deus’ is of course a name borrowed from paganism; we take it out of its proper context, where it is used for talking about the gods, and use it for our own purposes. This is quite a legitimate piece of borrowing and quite safe as long as it does not mislead us into thinking that the God we worship (or don’t) is a god. […] He is always dressed verbally in second-hand clothes that don’t fit him very well. We always have to be on our guard against taking these clothes as revealing who or what he is." (God Still Matters, Continuum 2002, p. 55)

 
If so, then there is an even deeper sense in which Christians are, and must be, atheoi.

There is a very great deal more that could, and should, be said on this topic—the problematic nature of all religious language—and in future Strange Notions posts I certainly hope to. (The basic problem is this: if I can't adequately put into words what I think and feel about my wife and daughter—and when I try, the best I can normally hope to do is resort to fairly weak metaphors and analogies—how can we possibly hope accurately to talk about the Creator of life, the universe, and everything [including me, my thoughts and feelings, and wife and daughter]?)

Now though—and almost completely gratuitously—I'd like instead to return to our original topic: the early Christians being denounced as 'atheists' by the Romans. While there's no shortage of examples, this one is my absolute favourite. It comes from the fourth-century Emperor Julian, who renounced his Christian upbringing in order to restore the old Roman gods. In a 362 letter to the pagan high-priest of Galatia, he complains about the (then) new evangelization:
 

"Why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the   graves of the dead, and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism [i.e., Christianity]?... For it is disgraceful that... the impious Galileans support not only their own poor, but ours as well." (Quoted in Novak, Christianity and the Roman Empire, Trinity 2001, p. 183)

 
 
This article is an edited extract from Stephen's forthcoming book, "Faith and Unbelief" (Canterbury Press, 2013; Paulist Press, 2014).
(Image credit: Women of Grace)

Is atheism a religion?

 
Let us deal with the question quickly: atheism is not and could not be a 'religion'. Religions are complex, three-dimensional things, typically involving—among much else—beliefs, moral codes, authoritative texts or people, rituals, customs, etc. Atheism, meanwhile, is simply an absence of belief in the existence of a God or gods.

(I'll argue the precise ins and outs of this definition in a later post. For now, suffice it to say this is the one favored in both The Cambridge Companion to Atheism and The Oxford Handbook of Atheism. Pretty much every other mainstream, scholarly definition would make the point just as well.)

For the very same reason, theism is not and could not be a religion either. Theism is a major component of many of the world’s religions. But simple 'belief in the existence of a God or gods' alone is not enough to constitute a religion—and nor is an absence of such belief. To suppose otherwise would be to commit a category mistake.

But if theism, while not itself capable of being a religion, can be a component of religions, might the same be true of atheism? Could there be a genuinely atheistic religion? It is traditional here to appeal to one of the eastern religions, usually Theravada Buddhism or Jainism. However, while I don't know that much about either of them, I do know several scholars of these religions who dispute (sometimes with great irritation, as I have discovered) these kinds of claims. Much hangs, I understand, on whether or not the powerful, supernatural beings (i.e. devas), affirmed in both classic Theravada and classic Jainism, are counted as being actual 'gods' or not. This is an interesting question, but one that won't detain us here. Let's be honest: most discussions about whether atheism itself, or else a particular atheistic worldview/movement, is a religion or not are not really concerned with the ancient East. What they're really concerned with is the modern West. So let us instead ask the question: is there, or could there be, a modern western atheistic religion? And to answer that, we first must briefly ponder the meaning of religion.

What is a 'religion'?

 
We've already alluded to the difficulties of defining 'atheism', but they're nothing compared to the difficulties of defining 'religion'.

Some sociologists argue for functional definitions: defining religions by what they actually 'do', such as binding groups or societies together, or fulfilling certain (alleged) psychological needs. At their broadest, these kinds of approaches end up discovering religion in all kinds of unlikely places—e.g., in the ‘secular liturgies’ enacted at football stadiums, or in the contemporary ‘cult of brand-names [which is] a form of icon veneration’, as I once read in a (very sincere) German article. Without denying the worth of exploring the genuine parallels such things might well have with religious practices (and vice versa), there is certainly a danger here of our definition of 'religion' becoming so broad as to be practically useless.

At the other extreme, lies an opposite danger: the elevation of a particular, substantive feature of some religion-contenders to the status of a necessary (or even sufficient) condition for 'religion' itself, thereby excluding a number of, otherwise apparently exemplary, examples. Belief in a God or gods would be a prime example. Even if Jainism turns out not to be theistic after all, it possesses pretty much a full complement of other religion-type indicators—why arbitrarily privilege this one, over all the others? Or suppose we decided that all true religions include some kind of hierarchical ministerial structure: that would exclude a number of Protestant congregations, among others.

For this and other reasons, other scholars of religion prefer a kind of Wittgensteinian 'family-resemblance' model (see, especially, Clarke and Byrne's Religion Defined and Explained). This recognizes that there are certain 'clear-cut' religions that pretty much everyone agrees are religions (i.e., most mainstream forms of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism, etc.). There are lots of similarities and overlaps between them, even if there is no single feature (or group of features) that all of them hold in common. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, of course, made the same point about 'games'. Chess, baseball, hopscotch, I Have Never, and Divinity: The Catholic Catechism Learning System are all considered to be games. However, it is probably impossible to produce a single, essentialist definition that is broad enough to fit them all, but narrow enough not to include lots of other things we don't regard as games.) On this model, membership of the genus 'religion' is not necessarily black and white (e.g., is Scientology a full religion, or a religion-like business; is Falun Gong a close niece or nephew of the family, or a black-sheep fifth cousin, three times removed?). While it also has its problems, my own view is that the positives of Wittgensteinian's approach far outweigh its negatives. (If anyone really cares about my reasons on this, then by all means ask below!)

With that in mind, let's get back to the question at hand: is there, or could there be, a modern western member of the 'religion' family?

The Religion of Humanity

 
Actually, like our very first question ('is atheism a religion?'), I think that this one admits of a fairly short, clear answer too: Yes.

Auguste Comte (1798-1857) was a French positivist philosopher, and is widely regarded—along with Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Freud et al.—as one of the founding fathers of the social sciences. For the atheist Comte: "While the Protestants and deists have always attacked religion in the name of God, we must discard God, once and for all, in the name of religion." In God’s place, Comte sought to install Humanity, ‘the Great Being’, as the object of worship for "the only real and complete religion." Nor did he intend this in any figurative or poetic sense. This was indeed to be a religion of humanity, including: scriptures and dogmas (from Comte’s own writings); liturgies, sacraments (nine of 'em!); private devotions; churches and cathedrals (Notre Dame was to become ‘the great Temple of the West’); saints and icons; missionaries and priests (Comte’s Catéchisme positive specified 100,000 worldwide); and even a Paris-based pontificate (with Comte himself as its first incumbent).

Though not as successful as 'Pope Auguste I' had hoped, la religion de l’Humanité was not without its followers. Largely-defunct chapels 'to humanity' can still be visited in France. In Brazil, where the Church still lives on, it even found its way onto the national flag (and is still there today). Regardless, I think a clear case can be made for counting the Religion of Humanity as a bona-fide member of the family Religion—not least because it consciously imitates Catholic Christianity in (almost) all respects.

St Vladimir Ilyich and Humanist Hymns

 
While Comte's bizarre experiment may be the most obvious example, it is not the only one. More controversially, it can certainly be argued that some manifestations of both Marxist-Leninism and Humanism come close to being at least distant family members of religion (the kind you only see at weddings and funerals). At various times, for instance, the Russian authorities tried explicitly to replace Orthodox customs with Soviet substitutes: 'Red Baptisms', a 'Great Winter Festival' (complete with red stars atop erstwhile Christmas trees), and—most obviously—the preservation of Lenin's corpse in the manner of an Orthodox saint, in a tomb bearing the inscription 'The Savior of the World', as an object of pilgrimage and veneration. (Some Russian scientists even looked forward to a time when Soviet science had advanced so far that he could actually be resurrected.) Humanists, meanwhile, may avail themselves of a range of liturgical celebrations (Baby Namings, Weddings, Funerals), and the ministrations of dedicated chaplains in colleges, hospitals, and the armed forces. They can even, should they so choose, literally all sing from the same (humanist) hymnbook: on my bookshelf I have a copy of Social Worship, published in 1913.

Does that also make Marxism-Leninism or Humanism modern western atheistic religions? I'm not sure—some minority strands of them perhaps. (At the very least, it would be easy to make a fairly full-blooded religion out of them, even though the vast majority of Marxist-Leninists and Humanists don't and wouldn't.) Like I say, the family-resemblance model isn't black and white—but then neither are religions or 'religion-ish' groups. There are other possible examples here, not least the self-identifying 'atheist churches' which have recently sprung up—apparently independently—in Britain and the USA.

Atheist religions?

 
Even though atheism itself is not, and cannot be, a religion, it does not follow that 'atheism' and 'religion' are necessarily mutually exclusive categories. This does not mean that all, or many, or any more than an unrepresentative handful, of modern western atheists are in fact members of modern western atheistic religions. But the above does, I hope, help us to think more clearly about both 'atheism' and 'religion', and the kinds of things they actually are (and aren't).
 
 
(Editor's Note: A much fuller (and properly referenced) version of the basic argument here can be found in Stephen's The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology (Oxford University Press, 2012).
 
 
(Image credit: Worship Matters)

In the Bible, Psalms 14 and 53 both open with the statement: “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’” Whatever this may tell us about unbelief in ancient Hebrew society, today it is not only, or predominantly, fools who are saying this. And they do not restrict their utterances to their hearts alone.

Especially in the United States and Europe—the historic heart of “Christendom”—there are large (and growing) numbers of intelligent, educated, reasonable people who reject Christianity and the God it proclaims. Many of these find Christian belief to be literally incredible—not just false, but ridiculously and grotesquely so. Some of these are high-profile public figures: scientists, philosophers, journalists, novelists, politicians, bloggers, and stand-up comedians. But most of them are just normal folks. They are colleagues, friends, relatives, and even, at least sometimes, a little bit of ourselves. Crucially, we ought not to forget that, particularly in the United States, these non-fools have likely been (and will ever remain) sealed by baptism; the Catholics among them will have been catechized, confirmed, and given first Communion as “true witnesses of Christ,” as the “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church” describes them (LG, 11).

These hard facts, especially when combined with rising levels of those “non-affiliated” with religion (most of whom are not, or at least not yet, actual atheists), present the Church with even harder questions. For the most part, despite the Second Vatican Council’s prescient observation in the “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”—“atheism may be numbered among the most serious matters of our time and merits more careful attention”—they are questions we have scarcely begun to formulate, let alone answer. Doing so is one of the most urgent tasks that Catholics face today.

Of course, there are myriad reasons (philosophical, psychological, social, cultural, moral) why a person might become skeptical toward the truth-claims of Christianity. Here I'll focus on just one. Somewhat perversely, this is a fundamental feature of the Christian message, yet one that atheists often grasp more intuitively than we do. Basically, the non-fools have realized something essential that we Catholics have been trying to forget.
 

Monstrous Claims

 
Let’s face it: The God of Christianity is an extraordinarily odd kind of being (if one can call God a kind of “being” at all). And the followers of this God subscribe to—or say they do—a list of seemingly ludicrous claims.

It is one thing to affirm a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, who created and sustains “all things visible and invisible.” That is in itself a fairly striking and radical claim—in its time, one that was revolutionary in human history and that the infant Christianity imbibed at the breast of Judaism. Yet it is quite another thing to claim that this God—or worse, one of three persons of this one God—took flesh, resulting in someone both fully God and fully human.

Consider, for example, Christianity’s most instantly recognizable (and thereby most easily ignorable) symbols: the baby Jesus and the crucifix. The first symbol proclaims that this God-man spent a significant amount of time doing things like suffering from colic and cradle cap, screaming in the night for no discernible reason, and weeing incontinently over his sleep-deprived (human) parents. Tears, tantrums and teething are thus the works of the one true God, just as surely as are “the heaven and the earth, the sea, and everything in them” (Acts 4:24).

The second symbol affirms that the God-man was tortured and murdered, subjected not even to some grandiosely superlative mode of suffering and death, as might befit a king, but to the tawdrily mundane form of execution to which the Roman Empire treated countless slaves, pirates and enemies of the state (a fact that in itself raises an interesting question about the kind of God we are dealing with).

It is perhaps fair to say that most believers do not quite realize the outrageous character of these most basic and taken-for-granted hallmarks of Christianity. (Is there not something at least a little strange about hanging around one’s neck a miniature corpse nailed to a tiny cross?) Irrespective of whether they are true or not, these are surely among the wildest and most monstrous claims ever proposed in human history. And if they are true, then they are, or ought to be, the most profound and world-inverting facts about life and the universe. Yet somehow, in the course of nearly 2,000 years, these claims have become so familiar, so tamed and domesticated, as to seem hardly worthy of comment, let alone wonder or puzzlement, among the great majority of those who profess them.
 

Foolishness to the Gentiles

 
Such was not, however, the case for those to whom the good news of Jesus Christ was first proposed. As Paul famously put it: “We proclaim Christ and him crucified, a stumbling-block to the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23). For the Jews, of course, the claim that the Messiah had come but had been crucified was blasphemously scandalous (skandalon being the Greek word for “stumbling-block”). And they were, it should be said, impeccably non-foolish in thinking so: No one was expecting a crucified-and-raised Messiah (hence, for example, Peter’s “satanic” rebuke to Jesus in Matthew 16:22 and the disappointment of those trudging along the road to Emmaus concerning him whom they “had hoped...would be the one to redeem Israel” in Luke 24).

For the gentiles, meanwhile—the non-Jews—the entire proclamation was manifest folly. The very idea that the king of the Jews—indeed, of the whole world—would hail not merely from a backwater of the Empire (Judea), but from a backwater of that backwater (Galilee), would arrive on donkeyback leading a motley assemblage of peasants and fishermen, and would be arrested and crucified as a common criminal before miraculously coming back to life a few days later as the savior of the universe—surely these were the ravings, as the pagan philosopher Celsus put it, of “women, slaves, and little children.”

But for those who have been brought up with this narrative and with the idea of a God who was truly a human being—however imperfectly or infrequently expressed or reflected upon—it is very hard indeed to be genuinely confronted with the Christian proclamation in all of its (apparently) scandalous foolishness. Whether one believes it all or not, it is very easy to nod along half-heartedly (a diaper-clad creator? Fine; a god who gets murdered? Sure; a carpenter who saves the universe? Whatever) as though these are the most boringly obvious facts one has ever heard. And it has to be said that all too often Christian preaching and apologetics simply reinforce this view.

By presenting “Christ and him crucified” as something platitudinous and uncontroversial—something to which all right-minded, non-obtuse people should naturally and non-problematically assent—we risk conditioning not just others, but ourselves, against ever taking this outlandish proposition truly seriously. It is an unusual person who would turn his or her life around for the sake of something platitudinous or commonsensical. And yet it is precisely such a turnaround (metanoia), or repentance, that Jesus thinks is required in order to “believe in the good news” (Mk 1:15).

In The Crucified God, Jürgen Moltmann remarks that the true import of Good Friday:
 

“is often better recognized by non-Christians and atheists than by religious Christians, because it astonishes and offends them. They see the profane horror and godlessness of the Cross because they do not believe the religious interpretations which have given a meaning to the senselessness of this death.”

 
In this light, consider these remarks taken from two of the New Atheists, that no doubt reflect the views of a wider group of non-fools. Richard Dawkins writes in The God Delusion:
 

“I have described the atonement...as vicious, sado-masochistic and repellent. We should also dismiss it as barking mad, but for its ubiquitous familiarity which has dulled our objectivity.”

 
And Sam Harris, in Letter to a Christian Nation, writes:
 

“Christianity amounts to the claim that we must love and be loved by a God who approves of the scapegoating, torture, and murder of one man—his son, incidentally—in compensation for the misbehavior and thought-crimes of all others.”

 
Now, as fair descriptions of the theology of the cross, these statements leave much to be desired. But as impressionist reflections on the kind of thing that the crucifixion is—a monstrous affront to, and interruption of, the normal workings of the world (“God’s foolishness,” as Paul puts it)—they are arguably onto something vital to which Christians have inured themselves. While wonderment and incredulity are not quite the same thing, an unbeliever may yet hear strains overlooked by those with ears grown “dull of hearing” (Mt 13:15).
 

Re-encountering the Gospel

 
Dawkins is correct that the problem lies with “ubiquitous familiarity”—not because it undermines our objectivity but rather because it limits our capacity to be shocked and astonished, and thus excited and challenged. It is one thing to believe that Christianity is true. It is quite another to feel amazement that it not only is true, but even could be so, and to (re)build one’s life around it. Many Catholics seem to focus on convincing people only of the former. Perhaps that is one reason why so many Catholics, having been raised and educated in the faith, are so easily able to drift away from it (often without really noticing they are doing so).

But for the growing number of people brought up outside of Christianity, or who have already drifted sufficiently far from it, the possibilities of encountering the Gospel in all its mind-bending splendor are more promising. A context in which the Christian Gospel can be received as scandalous foolery is, as the early church amply demonstrates, equally one in which it can be greeted with surprise as “all that is good and right and true” (Eph 5:9). Viewed in this light, Scripture’s cryptic preference for being hot or cold, as opposed to lukewarm, makes much more sense (Rv 3:15-16).

Naturally, in emphasizing the radical, paradoxical nature of the Christian proclamation, there is a danger of retreating into fideistic obscurity. This, too, is gravely to be avoided: Augustine and Aquinas both caution against (unnecessarily) giving rise to irrisio infidelium, or “the mockery of unbelievers.” My point is not that Christianity is actually foolish, or false or ridiculous—on the contrary! But rather that like so many profoundly true things, it should probably strike us as such on a first and cursory hearing. Compare, for example, the wonders of the universe revealed to us by modern physics: that everything in the universe was once packed into an infinitesimally small space; that the vast majority of a solid object is actually empty space; that there are perhaps a hundred billion galaxies in the universe, each with maybe a hundred billion solar systems and so forth. Popular science writers are adept at carefully explaining how and why all these things are true and the solid reasons we have for believing them. But they also revel in the scandalously foolish appearance of these claims, knowing full well that this is what excites and enthralls their readers.

The earliest Christians were no strangers to such strategies. The second-century apologist St. Melito of Sardis speaks of Christ as “treading upon the earth, yet filling heaven...standing before Pilate, and at the same time sitting with his Father; he was nailed upon the tree, and yet was the Lord of all things.” And as Augustine famously wrote in one of his Christmas homilies: “The maker of man was made man, that the ruler of the stars might suck at the breast; the fountain, thirst...strength, be made weak; health, be wounded; life, die.”

“A stumbling-block to the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles” this may be, but better that than a platitude to the “non-affiliated” and boredom to the baptized.
 
 
Originally published in America. It is taken from Stephen's forthcoming book titled Faith and Unbelief (Canterbury Press, 2013; Paulist Press, 2014).
(Image credit: Tutt Art)