Articles – Page 143 – Religion Online

Reverence for Our God, Faith in Another

Is it heredity, is it fate, is it the school of hard knocks? Somewhere along the road of life one develops a predisposition to believe or to doubt. St. Thomas Aquinas, in his monumental work Summa Theologia, offered five proofs for the existence, not the nature but the existence, of God: Proof from Efficient Causality, Proof from Contingency, Proof from Grades of Perfection, Proof from Order. These proofs, even in the face of science, can not be dismissed. They are persuasive but they require the "right" disposition. If one is not vigilant, if one does not close one’s ears to the siren’s song, doubt may creep into the mind and heart unannounced. Then the struggle begins. In a strange way it is we, the doubters, who most avidly seek God. The faithful never doubted and the cynical are not looking.

The problem for many of the doubters is the nature of the God in whom we are asked to believe and in the multitudinous ancillary amplifications, i.e, an anthropomorphic god, a biblical god, a vengeful god, a jealous god, a multi-headed god. In this essay I am not going to reject our current perception but I am going to propose an alternative perspective. I am going to affirm my faith in a Supreme Being and acknowledge my total ignorance, my necessary and biologically evident ignorance, as to His nature and purpose. I am also going to propose that regardless of whether God exists in a metaphysical sense, He--or an imaginary construct--exists in a human and real sense. We have found Him in ourselves, in the faith of others, and from the beginning.

Before man sharpened his first flint-stone or stoked his first fire, he sought his first meal and hid from his first enemy. In his weakness, as hunter or prey, he may have commended himself to some greater power. Afterwards, with a full stomach, he may have slept and awakened in the dead of night to contemplate the magnificent star-spangled void above him. A great orb in the east rose to illuminate his little space, whether an oasis, mountain glen or broad savanna and, as it rose, it renewed the life around him. Such overwhelming grandeur must signify something and he, endowed with the capacity to contemplate the heavens and to reap nature’s bounty, must have a part to play. Thus man emerged in the light of time accompanied by emanations. He endowed these emanations with benevolent or malevolent intent and he named them. In his imagination he created a shadow world of gods and goddesses, fairies and goblins. Through poetry and song, through myth and ritual, man sought to manipulate this spirit world.

It was extremely important to do it right. The gods were not lenient. They were a quarrelsome and arbitrary lot. So many prayers or sacrifices went unanswered or worse brought calamity. As the generations passed from bare sustenance to meager surplus, a class of men emerged who were particularly adapt at manipulation of the spirit world. Over time, these men brought all the disparate imaginings of the people into one semi-coherent story, they formalized the ritual and they interposed themselves between the spirits and the common man. With the advent of religions, these men became priests. This is hypothetical anthropology; but, since every culture has its spirits and its priests, it is within the realm of probability. Whether metaphysical forces have any causal relationship to this anthropological hypothesis, and subsequent developments, is a question of faith rather than probabilities.

There can be as many perceptions of the supernatural world as there are human beings. Nevertheless, there seem to be some broad perceptual categories: monotheistic or pantheistic, anthropomorphic, organic, animistic or astronomic, moral, amoral or immoral, benevolent, arbitrary or malevolent, ethnocentric or universal. And sometimes all of the above in great multiplicity. For example, Will Durant cites an official Babylonian census of the 9th century B.C. which enumerated 65,000 gods. (Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, p. 234) Some were just household gods, many were imprisoned in the bodies of animals, mountains, rivers or maybe a single palm tree. Others protected particular towns and villages. Then there were the great gods: Shamash the sun god, Nannar the moon god, Baal the earth god. These then morphed into Ishtar and Marduk. The soul, or the individual spark of life, leapt across all boundaries, manifesting itself in ghosts and goblins, flora and fauna. The Egyptians and Indo-Aryans worshipped a similar menagerie of divine spirits. From the Himalayas to the Andes, from the Baltic Sea to the Indian Ocean, man was surrounded by spirits good and bad. In his imagination he identified these gods and spirits with the accidents of nature and fate. Thus at childbirth he prayed to the household gods, at planting to the god of rain, in war to the god of his village, in death to the spirits of his ancestors, in moments of beauty and reverie, he sensed the company of the gods.

Given the universality of man’s primary needs, these primitive pantheons were universally similar; but, with time, each culture endowed its gods with peculiar characteristics, engaged them in different myths and enlisted them in the realization of their particular needs and aspirations. The various tribes marched to war behind their various gods and, in victory, imposed their gods upon the defeated. Thus on the one hand the number of gods increased with the number of tribes and on the other decreased with the victory of one tribe over others. History and theology marched arm in arm. Many ancient gods, and ancient cultures, died in military defeat. Cyrus of Persia may have been the first to adopt an imperial policy regarding religion. The Greeks and Romans would be equally tolerant of local gods and local customs. In exchange for toleration, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans expected subjugated people to respect the imperial gods. Then, as now, tolerance may have correlated more with an absence of fervor than with a broader more universal perception of God.

In many cultures the Sun was the uncaused cause. Iknothan sought to reorient Egyptian worship in accordance with this austere perception. His idealism was rewarded with military defeat and a short reign. In Babylon a real or imagined Zarathustra proclaimed the supreme moral force of Ahura Mazda, Such a supreme moral force, however, could not meet more immediate needs such as rain, or victory, or good health. Meanwhile, a tribe wandered out of Babylon with a different god. The God of Abraham was supreme but he was also human and he took a special interest in Abraham. Abraham could talk to Him, he could bargain with Him, he could even catch glimpses of Him. Faithful Jews, Christians and Moslems worship this God, or evolved versions thereof, to this day.

As harsh as daily life might be, and it was invariably harsh for all but a very few, it was lightened for the Israelites by the conviction that they were part of some divine plan and that there was one divinity, their God, in charge of it all. Among all the creatures and things of the earth, man was qualitatively and obviously very different. Since man is purpose oriented, since the stimuli we receive invariably elicit some response, existence itself, so it would seem, must have some purpose. With his innate self-absorption, man assumed that he himself was the purpose of all creation. For the Israelites, the primary purpose was the fulfillment of Yahweh’s covenant to raise Israel above all the nations of the world. For Christians, the primary purpose would be redemption and reunion with God in an afterlife.

For thousands of years, these hopes have been sustained by the world’s three monotheistic religions. In fact, they carried the faithful, through revelation and ritual, beyond hope to conviction. Men knew God and knew His purpose. Nothing but the limits of man’s imagination and, of course, mutual animosity, challenged the various metaphysical perceptions. Questions concerning free will, predestination, transubstantiation, grace, the dual nature of Jesus, the Trinity, aroused armies of scholars wielding Biblical citations. In the last few centuries of the Age of Faith, armies inspired by biblical injunctions to kill the heretic, (see Deut. 13: 1-9), marched across Europe to impose this or that expansion of the basic premise. We blame these religious wars upon intolerance, but they were also symptomatic of the gradual loss of papal prestige, a shift in the scope of temporal power and, or course, the early Renaissance.

Then, into the mix of sectarian confusion, Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, et. al., introduced a few fundamentally destabilizing concepts. Science did not offer a different world-view, but it challenged the religious view. Rather than assuming God, accepting scripture and deducing therefrom, science asked questions—not necessarily at random—and sought evidence. Over the last five-hundred years science has found universes far beyond our imagination, it has broken the framework of the Judeo creation myth and traced the evolution of life out of some primordial muck. Suggesting, therefore, that man’s ephemeral presence on this bit of spatial debris is neither consequential nor important. Some of us have ignored this evidence and clung to faith; others, on the basis of the evidence, have renounced God; yet most of us have become schizophrenics. That is, we hang onto our ancestral faith and we celebrate the advance of science. We do not want to admit to ourselves and especially to our children that there is no Santa Claus. So we prevaricate. My purpose here is to escape this lubberland. I propose a flexible approach. One that accommodates reverence for the God of our ancestors—a shadow which we have cast upon the sky--and humility before the Power which we infer lies beyond that which we can not see—the magnificence behind the shadow.

I begin by giving unto science that which belongs to science and unto faith that which belongs to faith. If there is evidence and the evidence tips hypothesis toward fact, give the benefit of doubt to science. Acknowledging, nevertheless, that the scientific method itself is dependent upon faith in the amenability of evidence to scientific inquiry and supposition. If there is evidence and the evidence tips toward faith, give the benefit of doubt to faith. William James, in Varieties of Religious Experience, while not denying scientific evidence, validates the integrity of the religious experience on the basis of the most extreme manifestations of such encounters. He is not distracted by suspicions of neurosis, psychosis or malnutrition but focuses on the fruits of the religious experience. If St. Paul’s epiphany on the road to Damascus bore good fruit, then St. Paul within the confines of his own being was in the presence of God. In the course of time there have been many such God possessed men and women, and these moments of divine communion have been real within the context of the individual experience. Unlike scientific experiments, these experiences can not be replicated. They accumulate, however, and give testimony to the presence of God in the hearts and minds of men and women. This understanding of God, which has accumulated through man, I call the God of Man.

Between scientific experimentation and personal revelation there is a great void. In this void there is room for a power beyond our cognizance. Science, as it penetrates the unknown, seems to raise more questions than it answers. Although science refutes many biblical and/or theological details, it can not replace the overall vision with anything approaching the fullness and satisfaction of the ancient faith. Only faith, a human construct, conforms to the mind of man. At the most basic level, human appetites impose some direction toward fulfillment upon our mental processes. Thus, we are hard-wired for expectancy. This may be the ultimate scientific proof of the validity of faith within, not necessarily without, the human context. However, let us be careful here, let us not construct castles in the air. A power or a God may infuse this vast unknown; but, beyond suspicion we can not go.

Language itself is a barrier. We have all seen thunderstorms. They attack the senses from all directions and in many ways; they have natural effects far beyond our perception and they defy description. Our words do not encompass the overwhelming enormity and impact of a thunderstorm. Much less can our words encompass the overwhelming enormity and impact of a supreme, unique, universal and unknown power. Nevertheless, in so far as we perceive the effects of such power, we can infer—within the limitations of language—some of its necessary attributes. For this purpose I quote John Henry, Cardinal, Newman. "…I speak then of the God of the theist and of the Christian: a God who is numerically One, Who is Personal; the Author, Sustainer and Finisher of all things, the Life of Law and Order, the Moral Governor; One Who is Supreme and Sole; like Himself, unlike all things besides Himself which are all but His creatures; distinct from, independent of them all; One Who is self-existing, absolutely infinite, Who has ever been and ever will be, to Whom nothing is past or future, Who is all perfection, and the fullness and archetype of every possible excellence. The Truth itself, Wisdom, Love, Holiness; One Who is all powerful, All-knowing, Omnipresent, Incomprehensible." (See "A grammar of Assent", Image Books, 1955; p. 95) Significantly, I think, the citation ends with "incomprehensible". Upon such an inference, minus much biblical baggage, I accept Pascal’s wager but at even odds.

Blas Pascal, an illustrious French mathematician and philosopher, was a believer; and, in "Provincial Letters", he argued persuasively in defense of his faith against the onslaught of the Enlightenment. However, for those who could not be persuaded either on the basis of revelation, scripture or logic he offered an irresistible wager: either God exists and eternity awaits us or God does not exist and this is the only life we will ever know. Do you want to bet and what odds do you want? If you choose God and you win, your gain is immeasurable; and, if you choose God and you lose, what do you lose? Well, it depends on how serious was your bet and how sincere your faith. If your faith was sincere, any privation whether ultimately rewarded or not, even martyrdom, might be borne in joy. If your faith was not so robust, yet you restrained your natural impulses and raised your bet at every opportunity, you deprived yourself of a life of debauchery and immorality. If you do not choose God, you may win and enjoy a life of wine, women and song without remorse; but, if you lose, your loss is immeasurable. Thus the odds on a bet for faith are, according to Pascal, irresistibly favorable. Whether God on Judgement Day would welcome such a punter is, of course, outside the scope of the wager.

This concern is also outside the scope of my wager. I am betting even odds. The odds are even because I do not expect to be rewarded, if I win, with eternal life. (I don’t reject a divine purpose, I just don’t expect it to involve me personally.) Aside from the purely physical difficulties which come to mind regarding Heaven and Hell, aside from the theological difficulties implicit in Hell, I have enormous difficulty imagining what I would do and who I would be. As a good Moslem, and male chauvinist, I might enjoy a harem—if I am reincarnated before wisdom moderates imagination; but, as a Christian, I can not see myself playing the harp endlessly or simply absorbing the effulgence of God’s presence. How old will I be, how smart, how will I look, will everybody look the same, will I eat well or even eat, will all my friends and family be with me, what will we do? Admittedly, these questions reflect a very limited spiritual aptitude; but they also suggest that whether or not there is some spiritual existence after death, it will have absolutely nothing to do with life as we know it here and now.

Having reduced my perception of God and his purpose to the bare essence without any theosophical definition and having renounced any expectation of an eternal reward with any connection to my current mode of existence, is my affirmation of a supreme being and a supreme purpose meaningful? Does it recapture the "fullness and satisfaction of the ancient faith"? No, it does not. It is tentative, it lacks passion and it is lonely. At best it is way-station, a place between inanity and possibility. It is, however, reinforced by reverence for my ancestral faith. Furthermore, in so far as our tranquility and self-esteem require some connection to a divine purpose, this bare essence affirmation plus reverence does preserve some pragmatic advantages.

Religious pragmatism may not be inspirational but it has a long and useful history. The Code of Hamurrabi, carved upon a diorite cylinder sometime between 2123 and 2081 B.C., shows Hamurrabi receiving the laws from Shamash, the Babylonian sun god. Moses, so the Old Testament says, received his laws direct from Yahweh. It is unclear how much was engraved upon the tablets and how much was simply dictated to him; but, in any event, all the laws, all the ritual and the various sacrificial offerings, all the directions for the construction of the Tabernacle and the fabrication of the vestments and adornments originated with Yahweh. All this has been further sanctified by time and amplified by so-called oral law transmitted through generations of rabbis and elders. Just as there are traces of the Code of Hamurrabi in Leviticus, etc., there are traces of Leviticus in current civil and criminal law. The founding fathers of our republic were for the most part God-fearing men, or at least Masons,. They assumed a divine benevolence and purpose. In short, our commitment to charity, our respect for the law, our sensual restraint, our social contract come to us across the generations, imbued and fortified by the faith of our fathers.

This allusion to the past brings me to the bridge from vague affirmation to reverence for a faith which we have built concept by concept over milenia. The God we have known is our God, we have created Him. He is alive and He is in our image, His purpose is our purpose. (I use the masculine singular pronoun out of respect for convention. My conception of God would best be captured by the pronoun "it". Although fashionable among the cultural arbiters of our time, such a genderless pronoun would, however, be unnecessarily offensive to the great majority.) Whether the God we have created relates in any way to the God that Cardinal Newman infers, or whether Newman’s inference is itself insubstantial, is unknown to us. Our God, in His numerous manifestations mentioned above, is our greatest achievement. To deny such a god would be to deny the essence of who we are. Our task then is to consolidate this achievement and to continue to build upon it.

Let us recapitulate. We have confounded the God of our ancestors with an unknown power way beyond the reach of our imagination. In other words, we have approached God on two separate paths—one toward the God we know and one toward the God we do not know. We have affirmed our reverence for the God of our ancestors and opened our hearts and minds to the possibility of a supreme being way beyond our reach. Crossing the bridge towards reverence, we must recognize how far we are going and how far we are not going. The God I reverence, I do not say proclaim or affirm, conforms to a Catholic perception of divinity. The God you reverence may conform to a Methodist perception or He may well be the God of Judaism, the God of Islam or a pantheon of Hindu gods. The important point, the one that unites us all, is that we reverence the God of our forefathers, our cultural construct of God and we acknowledge that a god beyond these cultural constructs lies beyond the reach of any of us.

Is the god I reverence overly encumbered by Catholic dogma? Catholic dogma is not as dogmatic as we may think. The God of my old Baltimore catechism ruled Heaven, Hell, Limbo and Purgatory. According to Sr. Marie Estelle, only good Catholics—with the possible exception of good people who had heard absolutely nothing about Jesus—went to Heaven. God had a merit system based on good works and indulgences. He had very strong views regarding right and wrong behavior. He had incarnated Himself in Jesus to redeem mankind and he had perpetuated His presence through the Holy Spirit to guide His Church. Although less so than Protestant churches, the Church took a fairly literal view of the Old Testament. I could go on but this is enough to suggest the extent to which the Catholic Church, often misperceived as the most authoritarian of Christian churches, has evolved over the last 60 years. Today one hears almost nothing of Hell, Purgatory and Limbo. The Church expects all people of good will, through the grace of God, to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The Church still defines and denounces sin but it does so far less definitively and less rigorously. Within the Church, between the schools of theology and the laity, there is a broad range of views. For example, John L. McKenzie,S.J., sees the Old Testament as a mythological hypothesis, deductively determined based upon the state of knowledge two or three thousand years ago.

Paradoxically, this most hierarchical of churches nurtures vigorous theological debate. At the same time it proclaims the inviolability of its doctrine. A quotation from Karl Rahner, S.J., an observer at Vatican II and an influential theologian, may help to unravel the paradox. "In these (new mission fields and changing social structures) and other respects even the Church’s unchanging dogma can have a history and can change in spite of its immutability. It cannot change backward, it cannot be abolished. But it can change forward in the direction of the fullness of its meaning and unity with the one faith in its totality and its authentic grounds." (See The Christian of the Future, at Religion-online.org) Fr. Rahner suggests recent amplifications and clarifications regarding the doctrine of papal infallibility as an example of such change. The point, for me, is that the Church can and does adapt. It is not locked to a literal interpretation of the Bible. Yet, through the pope and church councils, it retains an anchor to windward. This anchor bothers some but consoles many more.

In previous paragraphs I suggested the evolutionary nature of Church doctrine. Such evolution does not change the fundamental features of the Catholic faith. Jesus remains the primary focus of our worship. Through His death we have been redeemed. Only a priest can change simple bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. Through communion we become the body of Christ and through His Church, His instruments on earth. The Holy Spirit guards the Church from error in that which defines doctrine concerning faith and morals. Reverence for the Virgin Mary imbues the church with maternal love. Regardless of our sins, Mary will hear our prayers and intercede for us. The faithful will enjoy life everlasting.

Right here, for me, is a stumbling stone. Belief in life everlasting lurks behind all the other beliefs. It is the quid pro quo of faith. Without this hope, so say some, what is the point? The point is the difference between nihilism and optimism. Faith in a supreme being and in a supreme purpose, although vague, is not without hope. Reverence for the name of Jesus, for His mother Mary and for the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church unites one with the past and the future in the hope of some ultimate fulfillment. Is this enough to sustain a spiritual life in the Church? I think so. I can contemplate the beauty through which man expresses his faith. I can receive communion and unite with the body of Jesus on earth. Prayer is more problematic. It fulfills a deep need in times of crisis and distress. However, the assumption that the supreme power of which we have spoken, as distinct from our cultural construct, has an immediate interest in each of us personally, that He is prepared to tweak the divine plan upon our supplication, is an assumption I can not make. The best that I can do is celebrate, and seek to harmonize with, the manifest glory of God.

What are the options? One could pursue a spiritual life outside of any organized church; but, given that my spiritual commitment is based on reverence for a specific religious heritage, such lonliness would be unsustainable. One could transfer one’s allegiance to science and deposit one’s faith in "progress"; but that would impose faithful adherence to the dictates of science, such as the doctrine of natural selection. Moral restraint could only be introduced outside of science and outside the fortress of the ancient faith. Thus the third option, faith in the perfectibility of man, the wellspring of such ideologies as fascism and communism. No, I prefer to stumble along within the framework of my religious heritage—a heritage that goes back to the dawn of man.

One final thought. The God we revere has not been the same over time nor is He the same now from place to place. The God whom the Christians of sixteenth century Spain worshipped is not exactly the same as the God that the Christians of second century Egypt worshipped. The God of the Jews of today is not exactly the same as the God of modern Moslems. Thus the God of our fathers differs as do our fathers. However, we are equally ignorant concerning the God who lies behind that which we can not see, the One who lies outside of our myths and rituals. Perceiving as we do the same natural phenomena, we could all probably infer the same or similar attributes as does Cardinal Newman and ascribe them to this God that our imaginations can not encompass. Might it be, in the fullness of time, we will all revere the same God and that He, whom we perceive so dimly, will turn out to be the shadow of Him who lies beyond our reach. Probably too marvelous to be true. But possible.

The Golden Calf

The human race is a work in progress. Man’s perception of his world changes with each generation. What one generation knew to be right, another discovers to be wrong. For a thousand years the Bible was a work in progress. The world as perceived by Jeremiah is not the world as perceived by Ezra. The muse that inspired the Book of Job is not the same muse that inspired the Book of Ruth. The letter of Paul to the Romans projects God’s love more broadly than does the Canticle of Moses in Deuteronomy. Ecclesiastes limps toward the final Judgement while St. John in the Apocalypse celebrates an explosion of evil. Isaiah I is not the same as Isaiah II. In short, a multiplicity of voices enrich the Bible. They do not all speak the same language, they don’t all convey the same message. This is the power of the Bible--but it is two thousand years old. The message is out of context yet it dominates the popular perception of God, confuses Him with Yahweh.

In the Director’s Corner , p. 2, of the Anti-Defamation League newsletter of Jan. 1994, we have an example of such confusion. Mr. Abraham Foxman, at the time national director of the ADL, wrote, “The Holocaust is a singular event. It is not simply one example of genocide but a near successful attempt on the life of God’s chosen children and thus, on God himself.” “Not simply one example of genocide”, the “Holocaust” has unique and sacred significance. It transcends WW II and the millions upon millions of non-Jewish dead were collateral victims in an elemental struggle between the forces of darkness and “God’s chosen children”. This astounding and obliquely offensive assertion requires no objective justification. It is offered, to a sophisticated readership, as revealed truth; and, so it is. It is the endlessly redundant message of the Old Testament. Common sense and historical experience suggest that this message engenders an acute sense of self-awareness, if not arrogance, on the part of the purportedly chosen and stifled, yet potentially explosive, resentment on the part of the purportedly non-chosen.

The sad history of inter-tribal, international and ideological conflict attests to the power of the conviction of divine selection to arouse the ugliest passions. For example, in his 2001 Passover sermon, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the Ultra-Orthodox Shas party, called upon God to annihilate all Arabs. “Evil ones, damnable ones...May the Holy Name visit retribution on Arabs’ heads and cause their seed to be lost, and annihilate them, and cause them to be cast from the world”. (The Times, London, Apr. 10, 2001) As inflammatory as these remarks may be, as distressing to the vast majority of Jews as they may be, they can not be dismissed as the rantings of a deranged racist. The rabbi is on firm Biblical ground, his views accord with a literal and static conception of the Torah, the 5 books of Moses, the foundation of Judaism. In fact, they are restrained if compared to Psalm 137:8,9. They are, however, in conflict with many other psalms and contrary to a dynamic conception of the Bible in which our understanding of divinity evolves as God reveals Himself to man through the Holy Spirit. The future of Judaism, of Christianity and of Islam hang between these two perceptions of God--static or dynamic, between whether there is a chosen people or people who choose God, whether the Promised Land is a place or a metaphor. These are the basic parameters of our faith, they should unite us rather than divide us.

As in other ideological confrontations, the extremists have a tactical advantage. There is only one literal interpretation of the Bible and many allegorical interpretations. Furthermore, the fundamentalists in all sects are most numerous, most committed and most easily aroused. They ignore evidence that the Bible is a compilation of often contradictory testimonies in various stylistic formats and insist it is God’s word, through divine inspiration, in every jot and tittle. (Kabbalists find mystical significance in esoteric combinations of jots and tittles.) The strategic advantage, however, belongs to the other side. There are simply too many positions for the fundamentalists to defend. Most of these positions have no real religious significance, they are myths which had some cultural relevance 3,000 years ago, in a geocentric universe, and at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea. (Myths are not necessarily “ahistorical” just as history is not “amythical”, but history does have, at some level, objective evidence. Both are abused in the service of dubious causes.) In the course of defending these positions, the fundamentalists lose sight of the theological mountain. For example, it is impossible to defend the Book of Genesis in detail; but, the Biblical concept of life as purposeful, as related to some divine purpose, is eternally attractive. That man is responsible for his own fall from grace, not necessarily in the Garden of Eden, elevates man among God’s creatures. That the divinity is omnipotent and omniscient and will reward and punish man according to his just deserts, saves us from the arbitrary destiny of a fundamentally tragic or Manichean world. These are the strongholds of our faith and they are unchallenged by scientific theory or scholarly research. If we are to maintain the strongholds, however, we must abandon the vulnerable positions. One of these, buttressed by extensive Biblical detail, periodically reinterpreted and reinforced by various claimants to divine selection, is the premise of a chosen people. The problem begins with Noah, our righteous forebearer.

Following the Flood, according to the Bible, Noah built an altar and offered a holocaust unto Yahweh. Yahweh then blessed Noah and his sons Jepheth, Ham and Shem. The Gentiles, including his grandson, Ashkenaz, would descend from Jepheth. They disappeared into the northern mists. From Ham would descend the Egyptians, the Canaanites and the peoples of the Upper Nile. Shem’s descendents would inhabit the land between the Nile and the Euphrates and down the Arabian Peninsula. With Noah, Yahweh made his covenant never again to destroy the world by flood and he placed a bow in the sky as a reminder. From this high drama we descend abruptly to earth, to Noah in his tent and drunk on wine. When Ham entered the tent, he saw his father naked; but, rather than cover him, he revealed his father’s shame to Jepheth and Shem. They then backed into the tent and covered their father’s nakedness. Consequently, and somewhat inexplicably, Noah placed a curse through all generations on Ham’s eldest son, Canaan. Henceforth, Canaan would be a slave to Jepheth and Shem. (Genesis 9:20-27) In this unfortunate scene, as banal and incongruent as it seems, Noah enlists Yahweh to his service, he demotes the universal god of creation to a Hebrew god and, with suspicious foresight, introduces the irredeemable enemy.

This must be blasphemy. What god could surrender his magnificence in the service of such a drunken curse? No stretch of allegorical interpretation can accommodate this curse. But there it is, in the Bible, in the first book of the Torah, along with many similar passages of dubious moral or theological value either literal or figurative. These messages of hate and tribal zenophobia contaminate the message of love and piety found in the Prophets and in the New Testament. They echo through the ages and poison our faith. How many wars have been fought, how many people have suffered, how many minds have turned away from this god in disgust? If it were just a remnant of a forgotten mythology, it would be hidden in some museum among other examples of tribal lore and man’s insatiable thirst for understanding. For good or bad, the Bible is one of the pillars upon which we have built our civilization. In so far as western civilization is dynamic, however, the Bible must also be dynamic if it is to remain relevant.

Fundamentalists impose a level of credibility which defies common sense. They might reply that the Bible is uncommon wisdom beyond the reach of common sense. However, even within the limits of fundamental interpretation, the Bible is alive with conflicting myths from various sources and over different periods of time. It stretches back and forth from Abraham to Christ, from the time of the Pharoahs to the Romans, with various Judaic and foreign dynasties in between. Over these centuries there were enormous political, cultural and social changes. 1 Samuel, possibly the first book reduced to written form, probably by scribes dependent upon King David, exemplifies the often ambiguous perspective of the scribes. It glorifies David, associates the worship of Yahweh with his house and in his city, portrays him as bereaved by the death of his rivals; but, 1 Samuel, chapter 8, warns of the tendency of kings to interpose themselves between the people and their god. It foresees the tension that evolving political institutions, in this case a monarchy, will introduce between king and God and people. (This warning echoes today in the State of Israel). Genesis, the first book in the order sanctified by custom and chronology, draws from several traditions and combines scribal entries from the time of King Solomon, from the dual monarchy and from exile in Babylon. It introduces the basic tenets of Judaism: one God, a Chosen People and a Promised Land. The following four books, which are probably contemporaneous with some of the scribal entries in Genesis and which could most accurately be called the books of Ezra if Ezra had not attributed them to Yahweh speaking through a man called Moses, make the second and third tenets conditional upon the fulfillment of Yahweh’s 613 laws. In their mind-numbing attention to law and ritual, these books, along with Ezra, Nehemiah and Ezequal, reassert the authority of the priests. Threatened by other gods and other cultures, the priests built an impregnable wall around the faithful. It was as hard to escape as it was to enter. Within these walls, real for many centuries, time and human nature created space for interpretation and hypothetical application. Paradoxically, Judaism flourished in the Talmud and the people, the law and ritual survived the destruction of David’s city. With every generation, the Jews breathed new life into the Bible.

The books of the Prophets Amos, Hosea, Isaiah 1 and Jeremiah, written as powerful enemies pressed upon the disintegrating Judaic mini-kingdoms, foretold impending doom because Israel, through its kings, had turned its back on God. The militant theocracy of post-exilic Judaism was engulfed by Greek culture and Roman power. By the time of Jesus, an Idumean convert dynasty ruled by Roman sufferance and Judaic society was in turmoil. Sadducees, Pharasees, Essenes, Zealots, each convinced of its inerrant version and/or interpretation of the holy books, added to the malaise and divided the people along sectarian lines. Jesus rose above these divisions and proclaimed a New Testament. He extended God’s love to all people and reduced the 613 laws to two: love God and love thy neighbor. The New Testament lives as long as this message resonates.

While Christians find the nexus between the New and the Old Testaments in Jesus, the idea of a new and old testament, or of one Bible suggesting a fulfillment in Jesus, is offensive to many Jews. They do not accept the New Testament and they do not ask Christians to adopt the Old Testament, nor Yahweh, nor Jehovah by a different transcription. Although Christian and Moslem reverence for the Old Testament serves to validate the biblical premise, there are Jews who resent the intrusion of non-Jews. Yahweh is their god, his covenant is with them, they are his chosen people, the Old Testament is their story and they do not welcome converts. Jacob’s sons, with dubious ethical sensitivity, encouraged the Sechemites to circumcise themselves and then annihilated them three days later. This Yahweh of the Torah does not want his children defiled by the heathen. Although such acts of treachery make them “stink in the land”. (Genesis 34:30)

Christians and Moslems join the biblical story with the New Testament or with the Koran. As far as the Jews are concerned, these are apocryphal books. The period of prophecy and revelation ended long before Jesus or Mohammad. Consequently, they are false prophets and certainly, in the case of Jesus, not the Messiah. (This term is a good example of the difficult voyage that words make over the centuries and across language barriers.) In fact, the concept of a messiah is beyond the Torah and only intimated in periods of despair when the Jews await a leader to lead them not to eternal life but back to the Promised Land. From this perspective, Christians, and to a lesser extent Moslems, are at best mistaken and at worst apostates. Their shift in focus from this life to the next, from a specific people chosen by God to a god for all people, contradicts the basic premise of the Old Testament. By implication, Jesus and Mohammed renounce Noah’s terrible curse and affirm that God’s chosen people are all those who believe in Him. This seems to be a simple concept but it has proven to be just the opposite. There is little value in being chosen unless others are not chosen.

Let us return to the glorious God of creation. We catch glimpses of Him throughout the Bible and in other sacred texts.. Such a god, by definition, is beyond human understanding, beyond doctrinal argument and far beyond national or ethnic boundaries. By His fruits we know Him. We taste of these fruits through the prophets, through the messiahs. We know the true ones because they lead us away from evil and discord. Such a god might reveal himself over the generations and in accordance with the realization of human potential. This is no revolutionary creed; I think that modern man, whether Jew, Moslem or Christian, is already a believer. He is simply restrained by biblical baggage. The challenge we face is to renounce the baggage without renouncing our affective allegiances. Renunciation may be too strong a word. There is no need to renounce the Bible, but we do have an obligation to look upon it from a broader perspective than did the scribes of ancient Judea. The Bible, as the recorded search for God, must remain open to the voices of the Holy Spirit.

Just as the lines drawn on a map to separate nations are in reality superficial blemishes on the land. Occasionally in conformity with some geological inconformity but more often not. Just as currencies and languages and political ambitions are superimposed within these notional boundaries; so too have religious allegiances been superimposed upon man’s memories. These cultural differences divide us but they also give our lives special meaning. Are the Scots prepared to ignore Hadrian’s wall? Are the French eager to speak English? Are Catholics indifferent to the beauty and promise of Mass? Have the laws of Moses ceased to unite the living with the dead and the yet unborn? Are the Buddhists disposed to accept just one chance at Nirvana? No, but an ever increasing number of individuals, in an ever increasing number of places, are less dogmatically committed, more tolerant and more inclined to separate themselves from the bombast of the past.

In so far as Jews, Moslems and Christians share the Old Testament, they confront the same challenge; but, in so as Judaism restricts itself to the Torah, with extensive commentary and exegesis, it faces the greater challenge. A step, a leap perhaps, in the right direction might be the “dedeification” of the Bible. Such a step, obviously, confronts the issue of faith but failure to take it corrodes faith itself. The god of Joshua simply can not be the god of Isaiah. The sectarian parochialism of Ezra can not be reconciled with the concept of a universal god. The very process by which the kernel of Mesopotamian myth tumbles down to us through the ages, in the mouths of innumerable bards, in the various dialects of wandering clans, over the centuries of exile and servitude and into the hands of a pious yet jealous elite as the arbiters of divine purpose, to then be endlessly transcribed and translated, carries the number of divine intermediaries beyond any rational definition of divine inspiration.. At about the same time as the Aramaic Bible but in a different place, Plato lamented the tyranny of the written word, the death of living myth and the cold grip of dogma.

In the fog of ancient myth, before either priests or law, the Hebrews of Exodus were a heterogeneous and rebellious lot. They may have emerged after forty years in the desert as an alliance of warrior tribes in thrall to a warrior god; but, in spite of the many reported manifestations of Yahweh’s power and favor, they began assailed by doubt and fear. For example, after Yahweh had laid nine plagues upon the Egyptians and killed their first born while sparing the Hebrew children, after he had disposed the victims to joyfully give their movable wealth to the departing Hebrews, after he had parted the Red Sea and closed it upon the Pharoah’s chariots, after he had dropped bread from the heavens and drawn water from rocks, after he had defeated the Amalekites through Moses' uplifted hands, after he had descended from Mount Sinai in fire and smoke, after he had commanded the Hebrews to have no gods before him and to make for themselves no idols, just three months and forty days after all this, while Moses was on Mount Sinai legislating with the Lord, the Hebrews feared that they had been abandoned. Aaron, from whom would descend the high-priests of Isreal, instructed them to bring him the gold they had carried out of Egypt and he made a golden calf for them to worship. When Moses came down from the mountain, he found Yahweh’s people debasing themselves before the golden idol. (Exodus 32:1-6) As the Bible says, this was a stiff necked people; but, doubt is part of faith just as sin is part of forgiveness.

This abbreviated recital of incidents as recorded in Exodus makes my point. By worshiping a golden calf, the ancient Hebrews may have offended Yahweh but they affirmed their faith in the concept of a divine power. We Christians do not deny God because we portray him as man on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Neither Jews nor Christians deny God because they cherish the Bible. For many of us, however, the Bible has become our golden calf. It has become an obstacle, a diversion, on the path toward ultimate union with God. Whereas the golden calf reduced God to the dimensions of a plastic image, a static Bible confines the perception of God to a time far remote from our own. Let us see the Bible as a book, as a great book, as two great books, but not as God. It is the height of presumption to suggest that the Old Testament premise is God’s premise. Unless our God is everybody’s God, He is just another god but with a capital “G”.

Advent Preaching: Burden and Hope (Rom. 8:24-25)

I write this in my parked car at Half Moon Bay, 30 miles south of San Francisco. It is a warm and beautiful late-fall day, with sunbathers getting their last tan of the season. Russian nuclear submarines are sitting somewhere out there beyond the horizon. If Californians are lucky, the submarines are just outside the 100-mile limit. That way the missiles could not come down soon enough after launching to hit Fremont. Their first possible target would be Salt Lake City; however, there is slight satisfaction in knowing that the Mormons would get wiped out before the rest of us. The Russians are more likely to be a few hundred miles off the coast, which should allow us about five minutes to leave our change of address at the Post Office and join the gridlock on Interstate 680.

The Soviets have recently put more nuclear submarines on our doorstep in response to our installing the Pershing II in Western Europe. The cruise missile, which is also being installed in Europe, is considered by the Russians to be a first-strike weapon, so they will send still more submarines to our doorstep.

Russian subs have been out there for years, but I have never thought much about them -- even though one of our members at First Lutheran in Palo Alto used to fly antisubmarine patrols from nearby Moffett Field. It is impossible to think about the unthinkable with any degree of regularity.

William Ury of Harvard notes that the world has 50,000 nuclear weapons, and that it would take only a fraction of these to destroy the world. A freeze or even a 50 per cent reduction seems meaningless. But instead of accepting even a symbolic freeze, we and the Russians continue to increase our stockpiles, thereby multiplying the chances of an accident. George F. Kennan maintains that we are doing this stockpiling “helplessly, almost involuntarily . . . like people in a dream, like lemmings heading for the sea.”

It is difficult to draw any conclusion other than that nuclear war, either by accident or because of uncontrollable escalation, is not likely to be prevented. Jimmy the Greek gave two-to-one odds that some power would use nuclear weapons within the next ten years. That was two years ago.

We have always seen life as a linear journey from birth to the grave in 70-plus years. Those of us who served in the armed forces in World War II did so with the kind of optimism reflected in the refrain, “Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me, ‘til I come marching home.” We knew that some unlucky ones would not make it, but we thought that we would not be in that number. We could return home to sit under the apple tree, marry, go to school on the GI bill and raise a family. We gave little thought to the fact that our sons might have to fight another war. Korea and Vietnam were just dots on the map. Besides, we believed that the United Nations, enlightened self-interest and our elected leaders would somehow get us through. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki frightened us, but we considered them necessary casualties in ending the war.

In the past 40 years destructive power and the chances of a nuclear accident or of uncontrolled escalation have increased immeasurably. Since all civilization and all creatures are sitting on nuclear death row, we must find new ways to think about the future. So far the executioner’s noose has failed to focus our minds, except for those of the pre- and postmillennialists. Nor has the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which has moved the hands of its doomsday clock to five minutes before midnight. Are we simply to run out the clock?

Prophets are in short supply today. The few who speak out are ignored, or people do not know what to do with the words they hear. Nothing seems to be able to rouse a nation whose leader has “healed the wound of my people lightly” and cries, “Peace, peace, where there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14). Any Jeremiah who seeks to warn us is dismissed as a pessimist at best or as a dangerous radical at worst. Paul Tillich, in The Shaking of the Foundations (Scribner’s, 1948), describes the terrible anxiety in a prophet’s soul:

[Prophets] have an invisible and almost infallible urge to pronounce what they have registered, perhaps against their own wills. For no true prophet has ever prophesied voluntarily. It has been forced upon him by a Divine Voice to which he has not been able to close his ears. No man with a prophetic spirit likes to foresee and foresay the doom of his own period. It exposes him to a terrible anxiety within himself, to severe and often deadly attacks from others, and to the charge of pessimism and defeatism on the part of the majority of the people. People desire to hear good tidings; and the masses listen to those who bring them [p. 8].

When Tillich wrote these words in the late 1940s he could not have imagined the extent to which the false prophets and television would join together. By equating religious beliefs with political platforms, Jerry Falwell and others have moved from apocalypticism to politics. They are reserving box seats for Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, while the honored guest tests the microphone by announcing that the bombing of Russia begins in five minutes. Has Falwell become the politician and Reagan the eschatologist? Challengers of these religious patriots are called defeatists and enemies of the country. The new wave of patriotism has little sympathy for wimps like Jeremiah.

What should a modern Jeremiah do who finds himself or herself with a message “forced upon him by a Divine Voice to which he has not been able to close his ears”? How does he or she speak this message to a world where people are, as in the days of Noah, “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage . . . until the flood came and swept them all away”? People did not even want to hear Walter Mondale’s talk about raising taxes, to say nothing of his warnings about the arms race. How do pastors preach to congregations whose members voted overwhelmingly for Ronald Reagan and the status quo? How do professors address the current generation of students whose overriding concerns seem to be their careers and financial success? (One bumper sticker reads, “The Nuclear Holocaust: Damn, there goes my career!”)

In the midst of a rapidly diminishing market for prophets, these thoughts are offered:

1. Eschatology and/or the Second Advent deals not only with last things, but with ultimate things. God’s plan for the world is a present, not simply a future, reality. Jesus announced God’s ultimate plan: “And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent” (John 17:3). Since eternal life is a relationship to the only true God through the Son, this moment can be the eschatological moment. One cannot know the day or the hour, because the moment takes place whenever God chooses to break into our lives. “Therefore you must also be ready, because the Son of man is coming [present tense] at an hour you do not expect” (Matt. 24:44).

Einstein’s theory of relativity holds, in part, that absolute time cannot be measured and must therefore be excluded from physical reasoning. Centuries earlier the psalmist and later the writer of II Peter wrote, “Do not be ignorant of this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as one day” (3:8). In the same way, Jesus’ coming is both today and in a thousand years.

2. “This present darkness” is too powerful for any human solution, yet God works through the human. Our answer and hope come from beyond the humanly possible, yet they come in human form. “Nothing can save us that is possible” (W. H. Auden). Christmas is God’s impossible possibility for us all, disguised as a helpless infant.

3. The birth of every child -- but primarily the birth of God’s Son -- is a sign that God has not given up on his world. And because he has not given up, we find the strength not to give up either. No matter how elections go or how difficult the struggle for peace and justice, we are called only to be faithful. Because of the incarnation, we can be incarnate in the struggle for peace and justice in Central America and elsewhere. We do so knowing that no political act can save us; at best they can only point to what can save us.

4. We work as though this city is the only city there is, yet God gives us his city in his time and in his fashion. We cannot hurry him, even with our bombs. “For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:9-10).

5. The city or Kingdom of God is also immediate. It is “in, with and under” the city of people. Reinhold Niebuhr best sums up this paradox:

Jesus answered Pilate: “My Kingdom is not of this world.” The only kingdom which can defy and conquer the world is one which is not of this world. The conquest is not only an ultimate possibility but a constant and immediate one. . . . The kingdom which is not of this world is a more dangerous peril to the kingdoms of the world than any competing worldly kingdom [Beyond Tragedy, Scribner’s, 1937, pp. 284-5].

6. The most radical peace and justice people are not those who have moved the most toward the left, but those who have moved closest to the eschatological moment. It is from this ultimate moment that lasting change and hope can come.

The tension between our moment and the eschatological moment must be retained. For instance, when speaking eschatologically about the nuclear arms race, a preacher would refer to such things as the blasphemy of destroying God’s handiwork and the idolatry of the bomb, not simply to a nuclear freeze. And those eschatological statements are, in fact, more realistic about the nature of the present darkness than is any political solution.

“Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” The ancient Advent cry offers the only hope for us. Because Emmanuel’s coming is not “possible,” only it can save us.

For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience [Rom. 8:24-25].

Foot Washing and Last Things (John 13:1-20)

Jesus’ act of washing the disciples’ feet has been called "the sacrament that almost made it." It contains both the earthly element and the divine command which constitute a sacrament. Yet except for Catholics on Maundy Thursday and a few sects, not many Christians wash feet. Perhaps Jesus made his point about doing menial service all too clear.

It’s probably just as well that foot washing never became a sacrament. Church property committees would not take kindly to pans of dirty water on the new carpet in the chancel. If theologians had gone to work on the question, we would still be embroiled in endless debate as to whether the feet should be immersed or sprinkled. Liturgists would argue whether the right foot or the left foot should be immersed first. Others would speculate on the symbolism of baptizing heads or feet. It’s always easier to follow Jesus in our heads than it is to follow him with our feet on the Via Dolorosa.

John 13:1-20 is included in the Maundy Thursday pericope of many churches. It is common for the preacher to emphasize the Servant role. But there is a significant passage, the content of which precedes and undergirds Jesus’ actions: "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel." Before Jesus did anything, it was necessary for him to affirm who he was. For Jesus, being came before doing, eschatology before ethics.

When Jesus’ origin and destiny were established, these became his reference points. He did not have to concern himself with the question that haunts many people today: "Who am I?" Because this identity was given to him in his baptism ("Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased"), he was free to get on with his life and ministry.

The knowledge of where he came from and where he was going formed the boundaries of Jesus’ life, much like the banks of a river. A river without banks becomes a flood, while a river with firm banks becomes a source of power.

Without a beginning or an end, the middle becomes muddled and meaningless. It is difficult to sustain a task, particularly a seemingly hopeless one like world disarmament, without an eschatology. How else can we keep at a task that is doomed to failure by all historical precedents? Inspection becomes comical when a cruise missile can be hid on the back of Uncle Ed’s pickup truck.

Those who believe that our origin and destiny lie with God find a source of courage to keep at the impossible. We are totally responsible for ending the arms race; the life of the whole planet is at stake. Yet our ultimate hope is not affected by how successful we are. We work for peace and justice, not because of the probability of success, but because we have been commanded to do so.

An eschatology without ethics is futuristic and irrelevant. Ethics without an eschatology is desperate and futile. But joined together, they can produce the power to wash feet and sustain Peter’s rebuke; to live fully today because God is in the present as well as in the tomorrow, and to work for the impossible because with God all things are finally possible.

Birth Defects: Are We Doing Enough?

Major birth defects or congenital anomalies occur in approximately 8.3 per cent of all live births. One out of every 12 people one meets is likely to have a congenital anomaly. It might be something visible like a cleft palate, or something invisible like diabetes.

Records of infant mortality have been kept since about 1850 for Massachusetts, and since about 1915 for the nation as a whole. The peak occurred in 1870-1874, when deaths reached a level of 170 per 1000 live births. During the next 100 years. infant mortality in the United States decreased to its present level of 20 per 1000 live births. This decrease is due primarily to the development of vaccines and antibiotics, which help control infectious diseases. Currently, the major cause of infant mortality is birth defects and congenital anomalies. Since the United States is a rich, powerful, humanitarian country, it might seem that the rate of 20 deaths per 1,000 live births were a threshold that could not be lowered. But Sweden. the Netherlands, Iceland, Norway. Finland, Switzerland, France, Taiwan, Israel, West Germany, Belgium and Canada have all done a consistently better job than we have of reducing that rate.

The federal agency charged with primary responsibility for collecting incidence data about birth defects is the Birth Defects Branch of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. It uses two different but complementary data bases. The first, the Birth Defects Monitoring Program, is a voluntary data-collection system using approximately 882,660 live births in approximately 1,049 hospitals in the United States. This system is not based on population or on a random sample of births. Since its sample represents only 29 per cent of all births in only 16 per cent of all United States hospitals, its usefulness as illustrative of the whole country is limited.

The other data base used by the Birth Defects Branch is obtained from birth certificates by the National Center of Health Statistics. Theoretically, this, information should be more nearly complete (and therefore more representative and useful), but there are some significant problems with it.

Although its accuracy has never been examined nationwide, three recent studies conducted in Iowa, New York and Texas reveal some of the data base’s weaknesses. In the most comprehensive analysis, conducted in Iowa, the Public Health Services Congenital Anomalies Section (a predecessor of the Birth Defects Branch) compared 1963 birth certificates with hospital records. It found that only 39 per cent of the major defects reported in the records were also entered on the birth certificates. Of this number, only 72 per cent were recorded accurately. Thus, only 28 per cent of defects detected at birth and recorded in hospital records were accurately reported on birth certificates, the data source for the National Center for Health Statistics and the Center for Disease Control. Two out of every three children born with major defects, then, are missed by this system. The New York study, conducted in 1972, found that only 12 per cent of the defects reported in hospital records also appeared on birth certificates. The Texas study, conducted in 1981, traded the level of reporting of only one particular birth defect, spina bifida, Although spina bifida (“open spine”) is easy to detect, less than half of the birth certificates reported the condition.

Second, when newborns have multiple anomalies, the most severe is often the only one recorded. The level of reporting varies widely from locale to locale and from time to time. For example, a recent study by the National Center for Health Statistics showed Delaware recording 364 birth defects per 100,000 live births in 1973, while New Mexico reported 1,943 per 100,000 in 1974. During this period, New Mexico claimed a 68 per cent increase in the incidence of birth defects while 11 other states reported increases of 20 per cent or more, and 12 reported ten to 20 per cent.

Third, even if the current system for collecting these data were working efficiently, we would still miss the majority of children with congenital anomalies since many are not detectable at birth. A recent study by the National Foundation -- March of Dimes found that only 33.6 per cent of major defects were recognizable at birth. Approximately two out of every three children born with major anomalies are missed. When added to the inefficiency of our reporting system, this means that we actually have records of only from four (based on the 12.1 per cent rate of reporting found in the New York study) to nine (based on the 27.9 per cent accuracy of reporting found in the Iowa study) out of every 100 children suffering from birth defects.

Clearly, the usefulness of these data is limited in estimating the actual incidence of birth defects; establishing the temporal and/or spatial increases or decreases in these incidences; determining if there are isolated epidemics” of specific anomalies that might be due to certain environmental agents; and providing useful data for finding the causes of and/or preventatives for birth defects.

Although we do not know what brings about most birth defects, we do know that our environment is becoming increasingly contaminated, and that some defects are caused by environmental agents called teratogens. Most teratogen-induced imperfections are caused by exposure to the agent during the first trimester of pregnancy, when most of the major organs and systems are being formed. Probably the most infamous teratogen is thalidomide, a tranquilizing, anti-nausea and sleep-inducing drug. In 1956, when it was introduced in Europe, it was heralded as safe, effective and almost without side effects. While thalidomide apparently is relatively safe for adults, it can have disastrous effects on developing embryos. Doses as low as 54 milligrams in an average-sized adult female (far less than a quarter of a teaspoon) can cause an increased risk of phocomelia -- a decrease in the size of the upper limbs. For some time, no one suspected that thalidomide was the cause of the significant increase in the incidence of phocomelia.

It required the brilliant retrospective studies of Drs. W. Lenz and N. G. McBride to determine that the drug was at fault. That thalidomide was not approved for sale in the United States was more of a bureaucratic fluke than anything else. If it were to appear today it might be approved for use, since the animals that we use to screen for teratogens are relatively insensitive to its effects. Of the thousands of chemicals that we release into our environment every year. most have not been screened as possible carcinogens, or as possible teratogens or mutagens.

We do know that several very common drugs and environmental agents are potential teratogens. For example, alcohol, even in relatively modest amounts (two or three mixed drinks per day), can cause the fetal alcohol syndrome, characterized by abnormalities of the face and head, growth disturbances and mental deficiency. Smoking can also bring on problems. Children born to mothers who smoke tend to be smaller than their peers and may have abnormal reflexes. Something as ordinary as aspirin may be a teratogen. When more than the recommended dosage is taken, it is associated with an increased risk of cleft palate.

Ionizing radiation (as in X rays) can harm the fetus during the first and last trimesters. In the first trimester, it acts as a teratogen (the exact defect is determined by the time that exposure occurs); in the last, it acts as a mutagen.

Unfortunately, we do not know how most teratogens work. Although thalidomide has been the subject of hundreds of studies, we still do not know exactly how it causes its effects. Furthermore, we do not know the causes of several hundred of the birth defects that have been described in scientific literature. And congenital anomalies vary widely in incidence. Some have occurred only once or twice, while others, such as spina bifida, are relatively common. Based on the best statistics available, in the United States spina bifida appears approximately once in every thousand live births. In some countries. such as Great Britain and South Africa, the incidence is as high as one in 250 to 500 live births.

Birth defects do not respect ethnic, religious or socioeconomic backgrounds. The first and most basic step in research leading to their prevention is accurate knowledge of how often, when and where they occur. Since the existing system for collecting such data, even if it were working perfectly, would still miss two out of every three babies born with defects, it seems wise to modify it. The current method is handled state by state and is essentially voluntary. Although providing inaccurate or incomplete information on a birth certificate is a class C misdemeanor in Texas, it is unlikely that a county or district attorney would actually bring a physician to court over such an issue.

The first step in improving the system is to fund a carefully designed multistate study to determine the level of mis- and/or underreporting. At the same time, federal legislation that would mandate the collection of complete and accurate information should be enacted. This legislation should stipulate realistic penalties for noncompliance by the responsible physician, hospital or county clerk. It should also require enforcement officials to make random. unannounced comparisons of hospital records and birth certificates.

The second step should call for a one-year certificate to be filed for each child on the anniversary of his or her birth. A responsible professional, such as the, primary physician, would be required to complete a form for each child with a congenital anomaly, giving specifics about the defect, the place of birth and other pertinent information. Although we might miss some people, such as those who die or do not visit a physician, we would greatly increase the accuracy and comprehensiveness of our information.

Collecting accurate data about the spatial and temporal distribution of birth defects is the first step in isolating causes and beginning prevention. For example, one could detect localized areas of high incidence and search for teratogens. Possessing accurate data could help the United States to take its place as a leading nation on the World Health Organization’s list of countries with a low incidence of perinatal morbidity and mortality. That is where we should be.

The Revival of Religion and the Decay of Ethics

It has been virtually axiomatic in Western society that an organic link exists between religion and ethics. In fact, those who find the tenets of religion intellectually unconvincing often defend it on the grounds that it is essential in order to preserve the moral fabric of society. This is basically the position of Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Practical Reason, and the standpoint of the friends in the Book of Job. It is therefore a striking paradox in our day that “the revival of religion” in Christianity and in Judaism has been accompanied by a sharp decline in genuine ethical concern.

Given the distinct religious traditions of Christianity and Judaism, it is no wonder that the revival of religion takes different forms in the two religious communities, exemplified by “born-again Christians” and the ba ‘alei teshuvah, “penitents” or “returnees,” in Judaism. It has not been sufficiently noted that while the divergences between the two groups are real, since they are rooted in varying historical circumstances and expressed in special lifestyles, the two movements are essentially parallel in nature. They both arise in the same postmodern society to which they react in largely similar terms, and they exhibit comparable psychological traits and ideological attitudes.

In Judaism one monstrous event has played a fundamental role: the unspeakable horror of the Holocaust, which brutally exterminated 6 million Jews -- men, women and children -- and left deep scars on the Jews who survived. The inexplicable annihilation of six out of every seven Jews living in Europe before the rise of Nazism destroyed the faith of many Jews in a righteous God, and drove some of them out of the Jewish fold completely.

For others, however, the suffering visited on the Jews was seen as a divine punishment for having strayed from the faith of their fathers. For them, the Holocaust became the starting point for a process of repentance for insufficient piety. The “new life” of the returnees expresses itself negatively in a rejection of the ideals and convictions as well as the culture and customs of the modern world, and positively in a meticulous observance of the manifold rituals in traditional Judaism. The “returnees” seek to recapitulate the lifestyle of the East European Jewish shtetl, or village, of the 18th and 19th centuries. They are to be seen in the major American cities and even in the smaller towns; the men are easily recognized by their long coats, black hats, beards and sideburns.

In addition to the direct survivors of the Holocaust and their families, there are thousands of American Jews who have been drawn to these circles because they seek a safe harbor from the stormy sea of modernism, with its fears, doubts and uncertainties. Many of them are young and all of them welcome the reinforcement provided by a self-assured, dogmatic world view, in order to break with the drug- alcohol- and sex-centered culture in which they have been immured. For them, as for their Christian counterparts, religion and irreligion are simple affairs: “Where there is no faith, there are no answers; where there is faith, there are no questions.”

Obviously, the Holocaust experience and its aftermath have had little impact on the life and thought of Christian religious groups, both mainline and sectarian. Perhaps, as A. Roy and Alice Eckardt, Franklin Littell, Edward Flannery and Rosemary Radford Ruether have urged, it should have. The fact is, however, that the Holocaust is a searing reality only for Jews and for a relatively small number of sensitive non-Jews.

The impact of the Holocaust and the special lifestyle of the Jewish returnees aside, the similarities between Christian and Jewish fundamentalists are striking. Both groups reflect the sense of helplessness felt by the average individual in seeing himself or herself crushed by the Behemoth of power represented by all the levels of government bureaucracy, the wealth of massive corporations and the ubiquitous impact of the press, the radio and television. One is overwhelmed by the new, potentially dangerous technology, and feels outraged by the unfamiliar “permissive” patterns of behavior of the younger generation today. The idea that modern behavior patterns are immoral emerges directly from the fundamentalist reading of the Scriptures. For both Christian and Jewish fundamentalism, the biblical text is the cornerstone.

The foundations of Hebrew philology and biblical exegesis were laid by Jewish scholars in the early Middle Ages, and carried forward by Christian scholars from the Renaissance to the present. Today Protestant, Catholic and Jewish scholars are united in the historical-critical study of the Bible and the use of the comparative method, which has given us a vastly enlarged understanding of the Bible, its background and its meaning.

But Christian and Jewish fundamentalists do not share in this greater understanding. They are at one in maintaining the literal character of revelation and the inerrancy of Scripture, its seamless uniformity and its universal applicability -- often with an assist by the particular interpreter. Moreover, they assert, the received text has been transmitted perfect and error-free.

This identity of view with regard to the nature and authority of the Bible leads fundamentalists in both groups to use the same technique as they turn to the Bible for guidance on contemporary concerns. For them, the Bible is not a collection of inspired books that reflect the spirit of their authors or speakers, be they Moses or Jesus, Amos or Paul. In fact, for fundamentalists the biblical book qua book does not really exist; rather, the Bible is an unsystematic anthology of individual verses or short passages that are unrelated to their Contexts and to the larger works in which they are embedded. The Bible is a storehouse of proof texts into which the believer may dip when seeking “biblical warrant” for his or her own views on current issues.

Several decades ago a manufacturer testifying in Washington declared that the five-day week was prohibited by the Bible, which commands, “Six days shalt thou labor.” More recently, when space exploration became a reality, one influential religious leader pronounced it a violation of God’s will, since the Bible teaches, “The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth has he given to the children of men” (Ps. 115:16). In the present supercharged atmosphere surrounding abortion, Christian fundamentalists find the biblical basis for their blanket condemnation of the practice in the inexplicable and palpably mistaken translation by the Greek Septuagint of Exodus 21:22, 23.

This congruence between Jewish and Christian fundamentalist approaches to the Bible is striking, but there is a difference as well. For Jewish fundamentalism, it is not the literal meaning of the biblical text that is normative, but the rabbinic exegesis embodied in the Talmud and the Midrash. Because the concern of the Talmudic sages was basically not the original meaning of the Bible, but its practical relevance to the radically changed conditions prevalent in the Greco-Roman world of their day, the rabbinic interpretation often differs widely from the “plain meaning” of the text. For Christian fundamentalism, the literal meaning of each verse may be applied to any circumstance, anywhere and always.

For both groups, scientific biblical scholarship is an enemy of true religion, a temptation to sin, a dangerous heresy to be fought and, if possible, suppressed by every available means.

Here a divergence in method also makes itself felt. Christian fundamentalism has adopted the strategy of confrontation; Jewish fundamentalism prefers the tactic of insulation. Thus Christian fundamentalists find that they cannot ignore the challenge to the literal reading of Genesis posed by evolution. They have carried on an all out battle against the teaching of the theory of evolution in the public schools. As a first step, they are now waging a war for the introduction of “scientific creationism” as an “alternative” to scientific theory. The next stage is clearly foreshadowed in Texas, where Mel and Norma Gabler are spearheading a campaign to prevent the Texas school textbook board from buying any book containing the term “evolution” or mentioning the name of Charles Darwin. And there are publishers eager to please and to profit who are surrendering to this economic pressure.

Jewish fundamentalists also reject evolution as contradicting the Book of Genesis, but they rarely subject it to a frontal attack. Instead, they prefer to insulate their adherents from any contact with ideas like historical change or psychoanalysis, and try to prevent any contact by their disciples with persons advocating such notions. They oppose their devotees’ seeking a higher secular education, except for vocational purposes. Mathematics, physics, chemistry and, above all, technology are relatively “safe,’’ but social, historical and humanistic studies are rightly regarded as most inimical to fundamentalist dogma, and therefore forbidden. In the field of Judaica, virtually every discipline is ruled out as inimical to the faith. Hebrew language and literature, Jewish history, modern Jewish theology and philosophy, even undue absorption in the study of the biblical text -- all are proscribed as evidence of defection from Torah-true Judaism.

In some modern orthodox Jewish circles, natural science is taught, with the result that the piety of these groups is highly suspect. But in those institutions, the effort is made, as a distinguished spokesperson put it, to make sure that the “science of the students is not influenced by their religion and their religion is not affected by their science.” To be sure, the tactic does not always work out as expected and defections are not uncommon; not everyone is capable of the “compartmentalized mind.” Some go over to the modernist enemy but others remain within the group, repent of their sins and develop various degrees of intellectual schizophrenia.

Having arisen out of a profound aversion to the modern spirit, fundamentalism finds “humanism.” “modernism” and “secularism’’ all equally pernicious. Since all three terms are equally vague in meaning, they lend themselves admirably to denunciation. Yet in a deeper sense, fundamentalists cannot escape their environment. They too are “children of modernity,” though alienated children, to be sure. Many of their peers have been overcome by a sense of despair and have sunk into cynicism; others have embarked on the mindless pursuit of pleasure and physical sensation; while still others exhibit unlimited and uninhibited aggression and violence in society. Even more than their ‘‘unbelieving” contemporaries, the fundamentalists, living in a world of terrifying change, have lost hope of being able to deal rationally and effectively with their problems by their own intelligence and activity. But unlike the majority of their generation, the “penitents’’ have consciously adopted a way of life that protects them against the perils of decadence -- and the term includes virtually all modern life and thought. But not quite everything.

In one crucially important regard, the fundamentalists and their opponents are at one: in embracing the philosophy of “making it” as the goal of existence, with economic success as the highest good. In addition, fundamentalism offers a bonus: eternal life or salvation in the world to come, to be won by taking refuge in a salvific Christ who needs only to be believed in, or in an unchanging Torah that needs only to be obeyed.

Once the decision has been made, the Jewish returnees find communities of like-minded believers available and eager to receive them. The nucleus of these communities is often a remnant of Holocaust survivors. They fall under the spell of one or another charismatic rabbi (or “Rebbe”), a phenomenon for which a precedent already existed in the century-old Hasidic communities of Lubavitch, Satmar, Belz and other less well known East-European centers. Other non-Hasidic “penitents” are frequently enrolled as students in a Yeshiva or Talmudic academy, either in Israel or in the United States. Each master offers the authoritative exposition of God’s truth -- eternal, unchanging, infallible and fully available only to his own adherents.

The ideological factor is one side of the coin; the other is psychological. Modern men and women may lament the sense of alienation, loneliness and anomie that seems to be their destiny, but they often feel powerless to effect a change in this regard. These communities of believers offer a remedy. In a society increasingly technological and nonhuman, anonymous and impersonal, each sect brings to its devotees the psychological support of a closely knit community marked by a warm sense of fellowship, family love and mutual responsibility.

Unfortunately, these attractive intragroup qualities are generally accompanied by hostility, contempt and, at times, even by outright violence toward those outside the circle of true believers. This antagonism is displayed not only toward modernist groups like Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and secular Jews, but also toward those who share the same body of beliefs and practices, but look to another father figure as their leader.

Careful and not unsympathetic observers in the general community have pointed out that Christian fundamentalists manifest precisely the same attributes: a tendency to fragmentation and bitter partisanship, the result of an unshakable conviction that one’s particular group and it alone has the saving truth, and that all others, whether “secularists,” humanists or non-Christians, on the one hand, or followers of different and competing fundamentalist preachers, on the other, are either deluded or deceitful.

Christian fundamentalists are often linked to particular television preachers like Jerry Falwell or Oral Roberts, so that the sense of community is much less marked among them than among Jewish fundamentalists, for whom the community is the central fact of life. But for both Christian and Jewish fundamentalists, their faith, which is a bulwark from within, serves as a barrier from without.

Hence a concern for those outside the charmed circle tends to become muted or to disappear completely in favor of a Binnenmoral, “an inner-group morality.” This attitude is neither hypocritical nor dishonest; it is the logical consequence of the fundamentalist siege mentality which dictates the principle that “he who is not with us is against us.” Thus there emerges the paradoxical result that the revival of religion has been accompanied by a decay in ethical consciousness.

In Christianity, the tendency to downgrade ethical conduct in favor of religiosity may find proof texts in the New Testament. The classic theological argument regarding the efficacy of faith as against works as the requisite for salvation had been decided long ago in favor of faith, the Epistle of James notwithstanding. Fundamentalism builds on this foundation: since all are sinners, the precise degree of sinfulness of the individual is unimportant. Since it is only faith in the power of Christ that saves, the level of ethical conduct is secondary at best. Nor is the material well-being of men and women the first consideration; what matters is their spiritual condition.

Hence, in an age of massive social and economic problems, most Christian fundamentalists have eliminated social concerns from their agenda. Decades ago, S. Gresham Machen, who has been described as the founder and intellectual leader of American fundamentalism, publicly denounced laws that sought to prohibit child labor.

Jerry Falwell, the founder and leader of the Moral Majority, has urged the elimination of unemployment insurance: “When the bums get hungry, they’ll look for jobs,” he said. A well-known political figure identified with these groups proposed taxing unemployment benefits so as to make unemployment “less attractive” for the millions of Americans without work.

No doubt the fundamentalist hostility to social-welfare programs also derives from a belief in the myth of “the good old days.” The rugged individualism of 18th-and-19th century America now poses to us the image of a simpler and more manageable age. But in very substantial degree, the dismantling of the social-welfare system undertaken by the Reagan administration with the blessing of fundamentalist preachers and their followers reflects the atrophy of the ethical conscience and the growth of self-centeredness, the hubris of the successful and their scorn for those less adept at ‘‘making it.” Poverty, illness, squalor -- these are regarded as the just punishment for the failures in society of those who by definition are sinners.

Many of the adherents of Christian fundamentalism are themselves older people, but they and their leaders remain silent in the face of the chipping away at the Social Security system. Mass poverty and need, reflected in the millions of American families living below the poverty level, leave them unmoved.

There is a striking paradox in the fact that Christian fundamentalists, who believe in the Prince of Peace, and Jewish fundamentalists, who cite the rabbinic dictum that God’s greatest gift to the world is peace, are noticeably absent from the various peace and antinuclear movements. As Harvey Cox points out in .his book Religion in the Secular City, “In our day while the fundamentalists attack all that is wrong with the modern soul, they almost never mention the advent of nuclear weapons with their capacity to end human life on the globe. Ironically, the conservative critics do not dwell on this awful nuclear uniqueness. They leave it mainly to the radicals.”

Only two elements of traditional morality remain alive in fundamentalism. The first expresses itself primarily in a call for private charity for the “truly needy” and for the particular church making the appeal. That many of those who loudly call for “reliance on the private sector” are not conspicuous on lists of donors may be purely accidental. It suggests, however, that their slogan is a technique for arguing against the importance of child-care centers for working mothers and reducing assistance for college students of lower class or minority origins, curtailing medical care for the poor and the aged, and cutting Social Security payments down, if not out.

The second element of social morality in fundamentalism applies almost exclusively to sexual behavior. Fundamentalism, both Christian and Jewish, is dedicated to a code of rigid sexual mores, marked by a pronounced hostility to “permissiveness” as the root of all evil. Birth control, divorce, homosexuality, abortion and extramarital relations, for all their complexities and the vast differences among them, are all lumped together and excoriated as the works of the devil. It is ironic that the Jewish tradition is much more sympathetic to several of these modern practices (such as divorce, birth control and even abortion) than contemporary Catholic and fundamentalist Protestant doctrines. But this fact is carefully suppressed by the spokesmen for Jewish fundamentalism, who ignore the evidence or misinterpret it, in order to make it agree with their current attitudes. They denounce all who derive different conclusions from the sources in the tradition. Only loose sexual morals seem to arouse the concern and the wrath of fundamentalist religious leaders. One is tempted to repeat the wise comment of a Hasidic teacher: “Why do you worry about my soul and your body? Worry instead about my body and your soul!”

In contemporary Judaism, the decay of the moral sense takes yet another form. In the Jewish tradition, faith in God is expressed by the meticulous observance of the Mitzvot, which include both ethical and ritual commandments. However, since ethics is universal, being common to all people, ritual is seen as more specifically “Jewish’’ in character. Hence, scrupulous observance of each ritual prescription, rather than adherence to the ethical injunctions, is the touchstone of piety.

The “returnee” is unconcerned with broad social problems, which are human in origin, hence transient and ultimately unimportant. The major emphasis on moral conduct inculcated in biblical and rabbinic literature is ignored. The ethical imperatives are not expunged, but they tend to be applied largely, if not exclusively, to the members of one’s own circle. Isolated passages are dredged up from the Talmud to give the appearance of Halakhic legitimacy to behavior toward “outsiders” that is dubious at best and downright dishonest at worst. For all the adulation bordering on idolatry that Jewish fundamentalists lavish upon the rabbis of the Talmud, their modern disciples are light years away from the Talmudic sages who dared put into the mouth of God the prayer, “Would that men forgot Me but kept My law”!

In sum, the Jewish and Christian forms of fundamentalism, though deriving from distinct sources, are more alike than they are different. They represent the same response, at once truculent and fearful, to the challenges of the modern age. Our society, which no longer feels the need to disguise (let alone control or subdue) its aggressiveness and materialism, finds in the various fundamentalist versions of religion an imprimatur for its anti-intellectualism and indifference to human needs. Fundamentalism is a faithful expression of the goals that seem to dominate our age. That may well prove to be its epitaph.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago (Harper & Row, 1974) has been celebrated as a refutation of Marxism, a revision of Russian political history, a warning to the West, even a tour de force of literary realism. Rarely has it been recognized as a contribution to moral philosophy. And yet. In other words, he has reinterpreted the traditional Christian truths in a work of art whose poetics is more philosophically inclusive than that of either dialectical systems or modernism.

Solzhenitsyn’s moral and aesthetic contributions have been difficult to gauge in part because we have no one to compare him with. His roots are idiosyncratic, and few contemporary novelists are as thematically ambitious. But if we read the Gulag as an antitext to Jean-Paul Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason. the unique qualities of Solzhenitsyn’s moral genius become more apparent This may seem like a peculiar way to proceed, since Sartre’s text is itself eccentric. Yet Sartre’s Critique does present, with unusual fullness and systematic purity, the sweep and power of what has come to be called “the hermeneutics of suspicion.” His work epitomizes a peculiarly modern way of dealing with moral problems: debunk, deconstruct and dissolve them by treating them as products of sociological pressures and ideological mystifications. The Gulag Archipelago is the antithesis of this form of moral reasoning. Solzhenitsyn debunks, deconstructs and dissolves “the hermeneutics of suspicion” by demonstrating how its assumptions lead to a misreading of the empirical realities of history. Then he goes beyond this deconstruction to found a postmodern ethic that affirms human dignity in the face of state terrorism. The two works treat the same philosophical problems in opposite ways.

Like the Gulag, Sartre’s Critique is an encyclopedic work that examines the foundations of social order and attempts to think beyond cultural relativism to a new ethic based upon a universal conception of humanity. But Sartre’s book seeks a sophisticated aesthetic frame for its attempt to revolutionize human experience by exposing class distortions. Solzhenitsyn’s work takes such sweeping dialectics to task as symptomatic of the modern predilection to reduction through abstraction.

But unlike many contemporary structuralist and deconstructionist thinkers, he does not move behind Sartre’s Marxism to reveal its disguised conventions. Instead, he presents the perspectives of those people imprisoned in the Russian labor camps who have resisted the triumph of dialectical thinking as it is embodied in the Soviet state philosophy. Thus, Solzhenitsyn’s work offers a plurality of insights into the metaphysical hegemony embodied in the Soviet system. But more than this. Solzhenitsyn argues that the general overview -- born from this witness -- is more highly logical than dialectics because it contains more “reality.” That is to say, it is more inclusive and offers a more compelling explanation of how the world really works.

Both Sartre and Solzhenitsyn agree that Marxism is the philosophy of our age, but each sees quite different reasons for this. For Sartre, Marxism provides the most reasonable framework for articulating a universal history. He admits that it lacks a coherent theory of human subjectivity, but his Critique is designed to help correct this deficiency. Similarly, for Solzhenitsyn, Marxism is the philosophy of our time because -- unlike most other modern philosophical schools -- it has remained true to the Enlightenment quest for a universal history. Fidelity to this quest provides a context within which modern humanity can work out its own self-definition. But Solzhenitsyn sees this quest as tragically flawed.

Because the idea of a universal historical perspective leads to a totalizing role for philosophy, any search for a world-historical philosophical order contains the seeds of a secular state religion. Georg Lukacs’s claim that dialectical materialism is the culmination of Western humanism would strike Solzhenitsyn as all too true, for dialectical materialism makes explicit post-Enlightenment humanity’s quest to remake the world in people’s false self-images as creatures of reason. Thus Solzhenitsyn believes that to remain intellectually honest, humanity must find some way of understanding its place in history without basing that understanding upon any world-historical absolutes. In other words, we must seek to order history without letting history order us.

To show how this might be done. Solzhenitsyn attempts to rewrite the Russian people’s history from the point of view of those banished from it -- the political prisoners and victims of the totalitarian state. In the process he discovers that such a counterhistory is possible only as literature. Or to put it in more contemporary language. “literariness’’ becomes his counter to dialectical reason. He tells the stories of hundreds of lives in order to bring home in a way that outstrips any ideological explanation the complex meaning of what has taken place. Moreover, he builds his art upon a vision of humanity’s capacity for fellow feeling -- what he calls the “solidarity of solitudes.” This solidarity, by its mere expression, supplies its own critique of dialectical reason.

Sartre’s Critique is essentially modernist. Following Pound’s dictum “Make it new,” he refurbishes Marxism from the inside -- exploding its formal categories while recovering its aims. He seeks a new formulation of an old program, a more experiential definition of a familiar revolutionary project. Solzhenitsyn, on the other hand, has given up seeking the theoretical high ground from which to build a new philosophical system and instead articulates a strategy of resistance against any and all metaperspectives. Sartre asks, “Can there be any ethical action in a world divided by class?”; Solzhenitsyn asks, “Can there be any ethical action in a world dominated by a global philosophy?” While Sartre ponders the fate of ethics should revolution fail to eliminate class distinctions, Solzhenitsyn ponders the fate of ethics if revolution succeeds. Sartre’s theory of essembles, so deftly spelled out in the Critique, reflects the radically determined historicity of perception and meaning; Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag embodies the search for an ethics after history has been exposed as a power play. In this sense, Solzhenitsyn’s work parallels prehistorical thought (myth) and extrahistorical thought (mysticism), and yet it is neither because its main concern is with particular, concrete events in all of their manifest historicity. In other words, Solzhenitsyn’s writings are based on his life experiences, showing how he has moved from a theoretically tainted world view to a more direct perception of the truth. He traces the process of suffering that has made him into an artist. As with most modernists, Sartre’s work, on the other hand, derives from his belief in the power, genius and virtuosity of his system.

While Sartre attempts to explain the mechanisms of dialectical reasoning in its social context, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag sets a limit to dialectical thought by demonstrating its ultimate moral failure. Unlike Samuel Beckett or Jorge Luis Borges, who provide a modernist critique of dialectical hubris by parodying the infinite regress of its logic while never going beyond that logic themselves, Solzhenitsyn claims to have learned how to move beyond the absurdities born of an unbridled rationalism, since he, and the rest of his fellow zeks (prisoners), have suffered dialectic’s most extreme miscalculation. In the Gulag, the dialectical imagination was given power to bend and shape not only literary form, but society itself. In the Soviet state, the excesses and amorality of the ideological imagination are revealed.

In contrast to the European avant-garde, which Sartre once led, Solzhenitsyn does not seek out the “cutting edge” of thought as a way of situating himself intellectually. After all, the latest aesthetic journals seldom make their way into the Gulag. Instead, he looks to the “ordinary brave man’s” active and ideological resistance to the state philosophers in order to discover for himself what progressive values are. Marxism, according to Solzhenitsyn, blinds humanity to authentic moral illumination because, like many other modern aesthetics, it values experience primarily as food for theory, and it values theory primarily as a means to progress. Such thinking does not esteem life as an end in itself, nor can it account for the human being’s irrational will -- what Sartre might call his or her “thrownness.” This will, Solzhenitsyn argues, cannot find happiness in serving any abstraction, even one so grandiose as heaven on earth. Marxism only links people’s personal ambitions to a global drama, and so inflates their own neuroses under the cover of moving toward moral perfection.

But the surprising truth revealed to Solzhenitsyn in the camps was that one can harness the will through a process that reverses this movement. One can have the worldly significance of everything one does taken away. One can have one’s pride and future annihilated. One can become ahistorical and politically anonymous -- erased from society by those in power. When this happens, one’s will is no longer fueled by personal ambition or the demands of the historical moment. Instead, those who survive become quiet, solitary resistance fighters -- combating the universal internal evil that wants to subject life to its own tedious projects. Solzhenitsyn even blesses his prison cell for having purged him of the confusion of his age, for once on the other side of history -- free from the petty progressive notions of one’s time -- one enters history in a new way, as a witness to the inner force that intuitively resists oppression born of the human will to power.

Solzhenitsyn does not celebrate suffering as a good in itself; he merely appreciates its purging effects. His message is that human beings will not, perhaps even cannot, attend to the world without petty self-seeking until all their illusions and ambitions are stripped away. Once people give up, or are forced to give up, their pride, they acquire a strange new fearlessness, and life partakes of a new presence or grace. This new presence can make us brave, and bravery -- even more than theoretical acumen -- is the antidote to oppression because acts of bravery lead to new perceptions; in contrast, acts of shrewdness, even when they are subject to correction, lead only to new tactics and so cannot adjust their essential aims or lead to new empirical discoveries about the world.

In the early pages of the Gulag, Solzhenitsyn asserts that he is not the author of this book; he has merely compiled, from many sources, the true history of the philosophical and political occupation of his people. He recounts one concrete event after another. Rather than combining to form a single plot, these stories resist any thematic appropriations, demanding to be taken on their own terms as special instances. Each one is a unique testimony to the many faces of oppression, to the many modes of moral and spiritual resistance, and to the many brave men and women who died standing up to the tyranny of an empowered dialectical scheme.

By contrast, Sartre’s text is a structure made up of coined abstractions and stipulative definitions. His sentences turn themselves inside out in order to express the most subtle revolutions of reflection upon reflection. He searches for the most inclusive -- and therefore the most theoretical -- generalizations. His is the rhetoric of a policymaker or administrator.

Sartre’s work embodies the modernist notion that the thinker must stand outside the immediacy of life, viewing it from invented aesthetic frames that remake, renew and redeem it from bourgeois existence. Solzhenitsyn’s work, on the other hand, expresses the artist’s capacity to stand in the shoes of others. Where Sartre seeks to recoup humanism through a methodology that allows him to debunk any competing ideology, Solzhenitsyn seeks to recover human integrity by attending to the particulars of history as part of a larger, if hidden, spiritual drama that must be lived to be understood. This, however, is not the premodern story of a humanity redeemed by the church, but the postmodern drama of a humanity whose redemption is still in the balance. Strange as it may seem, on this point Solzhenitsyn is the more existential of the two thinkers. He admits, for example, that we do not yet really understand grief or happiness. Both works contain glossaries: Sartre’s is a listing of all his invented terms and their relationships to one another; Solzhenitsyn’s is a list of names.

The philosophical foundation of Solzhenitsyn s Christianity is the plebian’s mythopoetic conception of religion as the practice of virtue (as opposed to Sartre’s modernist idea of it as a kind of mystified ideology). Plebians, like primitives, believe in the transcendent as a way of making sense out of their own resistance to the ways of the world -- not as a means of justifying their privileges, indulging in the irrational, or dismissing contemporary problems. For the common people, beliefs are survival techniques (necessities), and the incredible premise of a prime mover is their trump card against all the power brokers and social Darwinists of this world who would define them in terms of their own projects and ambitions.

This is why Solzhenitsyn finds the inspiration for his postmodernism in the zek of the Gulag, not in the West’s modernist masters. In creating their new mythologies, the modernists did not begin with the plebians incredible premise of a divine order behind the flux of experience. Instead, they moved further into the flux itself in order to destabilize the tottering status quo. For Solzhenitsyn, such a strategy played into the state philosophers’ hands and proved too thin to deal meaningfully with the reality of the camps and the triumph of dialectics. The magnitude of the suffering he witnessed demanded an aesthetic which could somehow break through both the intellectual impotence of the dying order and the reductionism of the ascending methodologies. What was needed was a new expression of moral presence. To allow us to pull free from the ascendant nihilism, someone had to testify to the presence of something outside dialectical redefinition.

In the camps, Solzhenitsyn discovered the absolute upon which to found this moral presence: the sanctity of individual conscience. But personal integrity was no longer considered a birthright, and could not be assumed to belong to every mortal soul. In Solzhenitsyn’s postmodern world, integrity had to be won back, earned and re-created. The experience of the camps taught him this shocking truth. Just as Heidegger argued that the real problem of modernity is not that we have forgotten the question of Being but that we have forgotten that we have forgotten the question of Being. Solzhenitsyn came to the equally startling conclusion that not only has modern humanity lost its moral center, but it has lost its awareness that it has lost its moral center. In other words, the triumph of dialectics has established amorality as a form of higher consciousness, although it actually represents the triumph of the will to power over the intellectual conscience. In the West many critics assume modernism to have won out over the positivisms of the early 20th century. But modernism itself may simply be another manifestation of the positivist desire to conquer life via theory -- only now theory masks itself as art.

For Solzhenitsyn, moral reasoning can be won back only by those forced through suffering to perceive the lie that forms and ideas, not people, are the ultimate reality. Both dialecticians and modernists like Sartre possess a misguided commitment to formal principles in a world in which ideas are at best, tools -- at worst, traps. Solzhenitsyn respects and uses ideas to further a truth that, for him, must always remain beyond ideas and, therefore, forever outside philosophical regimes. For Sartre, thinking is the way to ground the ideal in the real. And though he would never put it so crudely, thought as theory is his true absolute. It explains power, regulates actions and dictates morality. In its rhetoric and in its themes, the Gulag attempts to refute this presumption; to the extent that it succeeds, it is postmodern.

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Solzhenitsyn: Postmodern Moralist

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