We get another big swatch of Jennifer Hecht’s Doubt today in A&S, from the Romans and Christians to Hypatia to Zen. The sheer volume of erudition here is dizzying.
Paul of Tarsus, publicist for Jesus (though they’d never met) and founder of Christianity as we know it, gets his 15 seconds. So, this deserves a reprise…
Paul developed and evangelized some of the amazing new ideas that were brewing in the Judaism that raised him. But his biggest ideas, belief in belief and belief in eternal life, were not central to the Jewish tradition.
Jesus was himself a doubter, but Paulian Christianity comes to view doubt as an obstacle to salvation and an impediment to faith rather than a critical tool for seeking evidence and truth (and exposing their absence, in the spirit of Socrates).
Like Socrates, we get Jesus at 2d, 3d, and umpteenth-hand. He wasn’t a writer. The first three Gospels were written about half a century after he died. So maybe he was a Cynic, a doubter and a dedicated thorn in the side of the establishment.
His last words did indeed imply that he was expecting something that did not seem to be happening. The message to the flock ever since, though, seems to have been that it’s ok to doubt so long as you don’t finally act on your doubt. Keepers of the faith have done an impressive job over the centuries of glossing Jesus’ expectations and ours that either something happens or it doesn’t. Looks like it didn’t. Again and again.
But the end-times keep coming back, and belief without evidence turns out to have incredible magic powers to compel assent (or at least stifle dissent). “Everything is possible for him who believes. Help me overcome my unbelief!” As Jesus told Doubting Thomas: “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” A virgin birth, water-walking, sea-parting, resurrection, eternal life in paradise… no problem. Just believe. “I do believe in magic. I do. I do!” You don’t? What’s the matter with you?? Not enough faith, or– like Augustine, who gets too little credit for paving Descartes’ way– not enough resistance just yet to the seductions of corporeal existence.
This is all so un-pragmatic, this separation of belief from action. (See C.S. Peirce: beliefs are ideas we’re prepared to act on, and “what is more wholesome than any particular belief is integrity of belief… to avoid looking into the support of any belief from a fear that it may turn out rotten is quite as immoral as it is disadvantageous.”)
And not just un-pragmatic. Un-American, even, and of questionable sincerity. But there it is. As Tim McGraw’s dad used to insist: ya gotta believe, if you want to win the game of life.
But let’s go back, before we go forward. Cicero‘s wonderful dialogue with a Skeptic, a Stoic, and an Epicurean would have been fun to join. “Cotta” says it all: Are you not ashamed as a scientist, as an observer and investigator of nature, to seek your criterion of truth from minds steeped in conventional beliefs? The whole theory is ridiculous… I do not believe these gods of yours exist at all, least of all the uninvolved, uninterested ones like the Epicurean-inspired Disinterested Deist Deity. If this is all that a god is, a being untouched by care or love of human kind, then I wave him good-bye.
If you want truth, you have to avoid making up anything.
Lucretius (our first selection in the Hitch anthology, from De Rerum Natura) was another Epicurean, but he downplayed the god-talk. The finality of death and the absence of the gods did not seem depressing; indeed, they seemed to add to the sweetness of life.
Marcus Aurelius, as close to a philosopher-king as the West would ever know: “I am a part of the whole which is governed by nature.” He had a Big Picture cosmic perspective. From a vantage “raised up above the earth,” consider life’s brevity and our common humanity. We are one species, as Carl Sagan liked to say, and our time here is brief. Don’t squander it in fear, worry, malice and meanness.
Now, fast forward (past those refreshingly-strange gnostics and their contempt for the creator God) to Boethius, “last of the Romans, first of the scholastics.” His Consolations of Philosophy “completely ignored Christianity.” That’s really hard to do.
Finally (today) the tragedy of Hypatia. Her alleged killer Cyril nearly killed philosophy and science and civilization as well, and was rewarded with Sainthood. What else is new?
Tags: Cicero, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Jesus, Lucretius, St. Paul
Up@dawn 
February 16, 2010 at 9:12 am |
Paul wrote more than 80,000 words to the Church. His letters are largely what we know of the history of Christianity. This is problematic though, as Paul doesn’t seem to know of important things Jesus’ history. He only claims to know Jesus through a vision. Paul never knew of Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, Herod, Jesus’ miracles, Pontius Pilate, or the virgin birth. He never quote’s anything Jesus said.
It’s no wonder he was ridiculed by the philosophers of the time.
February 16, 2010 at 1:05 pm |
But, like our last president, he knew exactly what he believed.
February 21, 2010 at 7:44 pm |
There’s so much to chew on in this post. Paul was pretty arrogant, by all accounts, and yet there are points of his to which I can relate. But, like you said, you can’t just make stuff up to support your argument; even Martha Stewart went to jail.
I sort of think that Jesus’ doubt well explains his final thoughts. What if (taking certain things as givens for the sake of the story and not claiming this as historical, just wondering) God only ever told Jesus part of the story, without any of the supporting evidence, and he only ever had the same story the rest of us had, which would certainly be more harmonious with the point of his being “one of us”? What if all God told Jesus was that he’d have eternal life, too? I would think that Jesus would absolutely be expecting some sort of show right then in the last seconds and may have been extremely surprised when it didn’t happen. (Of course, the lesson I always take from that is the extraordinary forgiveness for people doing such awful things to you, and unjustly at that…not forgetfulness, just forgiveness.) Anyway, if the whole point is what goes on AFTER you die, then the effect is way better if he rouses Jesus 3 days later, and even Jesus didn’t see it coming! This is my usual quandary…is it stronger evidence against, or evidence for? It is sad that doubt got place so purposefully in the way of faith, because I don’t think faith can exist in a vacuum, that it can really exist in anybody without doubt, the way courage can’t exist without fear, yin/yang, good/evil, that kind of thing. I think that faith is a natural product of doubt.
AND (rolling up into Islam for a second, too)…I also think that organized religion and capitalism function on basically the same tenets: get more, get ahead, burn the others, in a nutshell. I suspect it’s how that veiling business got so out of hand, snakes introduced as a worship staple, services increased to 3 or 4 days a week or more. It’s all about the competition, but, ironically, often without the same ethics laws applied in the business world. Who believes the most? Who has the MOST faith? If “modesty” is a virtue, imagine the spiritual interest you earn by covering everything but your eyeballs!