Because I was invited, I have been attending an Alpha course with my wife, who is a Christian. The Alpha course, for those who don't know, is a Christian outreach program. It consists of weekly sessions to persuade people into becoming more devout Christians. It purports to offer a "safe" place for raising doubts and questions about Christianity, but--if my experience is typical--it's really an ongoing sermon conducted in "free" dinners, worship songs, DVD lectures, and small group discussions.
In my participation in the course, I have sought to be neither the token Jew nor the token atheist. Certainly, if anyone is under the impression that I may turn Christian, s/he is quite mistaken. After all...facts are facts, and no doctrine or dogma will make me give up on facts. And the facts are against Christianity as they are against Judaism, Islam, and all other theisms.
I may post later on my experiences in Alpha. My double background--Jewish and atheist--may add something new to other perspectives on the course that are already available. For now, though, I want to talk about the Holy Spirit. In the course, we seem to be building up to a focus on the importance of believing in it and venerating it.
My life as a medievalist and as an American has given me some access to the idea of the Holy Spirit, but now that I must face it by itself, squarely, I must ask: How is it that that we can talk about a holy spirit and not have the sense that we're just making shit up? I don't mean to be rude, but...come on! A fucking spirit? Are people serious about this?
Of course they are serious. I understand the importance placed on believing in or denying the Holy Spirit. I wish, however, that someone would attempt to justify the concept to me. More than most anything else in Christian doctrine, the Holy Spirit demonstrates that the power of religion comes from its stimulation of the individual psyche.
Let's look at a few pronouncements on the Holy Spirit, and remember also that for many faith demands belief in the Holy Spirit. Hear it again: Faith demands belief. Faith does not entail belief or lead to belief or point to belief. It demands and requires belief. Believe it or else you are not one of the faithful. If you disbelieve, you are not one of the godly and one of the church. If you disbelieve, you are an opponent of God and an enemy.
The basics of the belief are:
- The Holy Spirit is one "person" in the triune god. There's God the dad, Jesus the boy, and the Holy Spirit.
- The Holy Spirit shares the same essence as God and Jesus but is distinct: think of three separate impressions made in wax. Same substance, distinct forms.
- The Holy Spirit is not material but is rather perceived within a person as having emanated from God.
It's clear, however, that no justification for the concept of the Holy Spirit exists outside the NT and the Christian interpretive tradition. We cannot apprehend the Holy Spirit through the senses or through instruments. Yet we can get in big, big trouble for not believing in the Holy Spirit. This is the sin that will not be pardoned according to the Synoptic Gospels. And people scoff at Bertrand Russell for having said fear is the foundation of religion.
If you think religion is about intellectual or even emotional arguments, you are only partly and secondarily correct. The psyche, the motivational part of the mind, is the the endgame of religion. Religion is all about supplying motives and about motivating. The Holy Spirit is, ultimately, a metaphor for motivation: motivation against reason, motivation against intellect, motivation against interest.
I began thinking I didn't know what the Holy Spirit was, but I realize now that I get it perfectly. What's more, I get what Christianity uses it for.
I hope you do post your experiences with the Alpha course.
ReplyDeleteI might, but my experiences are becoming increasingly negative. At first, I thought it might be a good opportunity for dialogue, even though I have understood all along that the program goal is to prompt people into Christian belief and practice.
ReplyDeleteOver the weeks, however, I have found the session topics to be more restrictive and less tolerant of admitting doubt/questions. For example, last week's topic was on reading the Bible. The passage for discussion was the parable of the sower in Luke. The point of the passage is that only the true believers (and true actors upon the beliefs) of the Word gain the kingdom of God. The non-believers and imperfect believers...well, fuck all them.
It was the first time I had felt uncomfortable in the course. I don't think it will be the last. I didn't speak up last time and register my displeasure (I will not say offense). I will speak up from now on.
I wish I could join the course. We could sit snicker in the back, and raise our hands at untimely moments when someone is in the middle of some conviction filled profession of faith... and we could ask, "Why? How do you know! What if you're wrong?"
ReplyDeleteAnd then sit back and wait for the onslaught of bad apologetics.
And we could repeat this line of questioning until we got expelled for... well... attempting to make them think.
What fun that would be!
Tristan,
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you could join a course, if you wanted. I had a week or two of challenging the assertions people made, but I lost my taste for it when I saw that folks were looking for ways to be better believers not for ways of complicating belief.
I expanded on these thoughts in a new post, dedicated respectfully to you.
http://larrytanner.blogspot.com/2011/11/prepare-to-lose-for-tristan-vick.html
The Old Testament's notions about the Holy Spirit are very different from the New Testament's. Contradictions abound everywhere. The OT claims God will bestow the Holy Spirit on all his people in one fell swoop, after they return as a group from the Babylonian Exile of 70 years. The NT claims the Holy Spirit can be obtained only a case by case basis of individuals' confessing Jesus is the son of God and the Messiah, no one else gets the Holy Spirit! The OT claims once all of Israel has the Holy Spirit there will be no more sin found in Israel for evermore and she will never go into exile again for sinning, for she CANNOT SIN, she has God's Holy Spirit that will not allow sin to happen, versus Christianity's notion that the Holy Spirit cannot stop a person from sinning. See the OT Book of Ezekiel for details. In Ezekiel's Messianic Age the Messiah has to provide bulls to the priests, whose shed blood forgives the peoples' (nation's) sins as well as the sins of the Messiah himself, versus the NT saying Christ's shed blood ends the use of bulls' shed blood for forgiveness of sin. Such profound contradictions between the OT and NT I never seen brought up by Jews and Christians on the internet. I wonder why?
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Holy Spirit there is one sure way to tell if an individual really possesses it. If they are bitten by poisonous snakes they will suffer no harm, if they drink deadly poison they will suffer no harm. How many Christians can pass these two tests? If all Christians took these tests Christianity would be dead within 24 hours like the Reverend Jim Jones group that took poison to be with God in heaven.
ReplyDeleteSo glad I found this post.
ReplyDeleteI sure hope none of my relatives sees this comment. Though I’m not an atheist per se, my refusal to bury my head quite deep enough in the sand has created a vast rift between myself and them. I believe those who have felt “overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit” are either experiencing sole sort of delusion (which is common among humans—I’m sure I’m delusional about some things too), or are young and have developing minds, and so don’t know exactly where their self-concept begins or ends, and, mistaking an emotion-laden thought for reality, it becomes permanently etched into their young minds as a belief. I mean, you can eat mushrooms and feel the Holy Spirit pretty strongly—and also see purple elephants. Does that make them both real?