von Wachter, Daniel

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Review of: Mark Johnston,Saving God: Religion afterIdolatry, Princeton UniversityPress, 2009*Daniel von Wachter**3 January, 2011The content of the bookThe thesis of this book is that religions, such as Christianity, whichassume that there is a God who sometimes intervenes in the uni-verse and who wants to give man a meaningful life and and afterlife,is idolatrous, childish, and naive, and that instead panentheism istrue, ‘God in all, and all in God’ (119). In the preface, Johnstonwrites that the book ‘contains some philosophy but is not a work ofphilosophy’. That means that he often declines ‘the philosophicallyinteresting pathways that branch off from what’ he says, and thathe does not interact much with the philosophical literature.*This is a preprint, forthcoming in Dialectica.**International Academy of Philosophy, Santiago de Chile, http://von-wachter.de, epost@ABC.de – replace ‘ABC’ by ‘von-wachter’.1The book starts with the question ‘Is your God really God?’(1) That means: is your faith and trust directed ‘to the one whois in fact the Highest One’ (9)? ‘The achievement of believing inGod can come about only in the wake of God’s self-revelation.’ (9)‘What we need, in order to clarify the meaning of “God” thoughtof as a descriptive name, is a conjunction of descriptions, call itD, such that it no longer seems a substantial question whether Dis God.’ The reader might expect after reading this that Johnstonwill develop a clear description of the nature of God or analysealleged revelations. But in fact Johnston develops a revisionaryconception of God based on metaphorical descriptions of God.The reason Johnston gives for rejecting traditional monotheismis that it is ‘idolatrous’. The basic form of idolatry is ‘worship oflifeless idols’. (20) The idol worshipper assumes that ‘the god ishere, somehow contained where the idol is’, embodied in the idol.Another aspect of idolatry is that the wrong gods are worshipped,but Johnston dismisses this understanding of idolatry as ‘narrowethnocentrism’ because it means that it is always the others whoare idolaters. (28) He suggests that the mistake of idolatry is the‘attempt to domesticate the experience of Divinity, to put it tosome advantage in a still unredeemed life. And then the true Godslips away.’ In the end, of course, Johnston’s view also amounts tosaying that it is the others who are idolaters, namely those whobelieve that God intervenes in the course of events or gives a manan afterlife. Johnston does not argue much for this claim. It isbased on the tacit assumption that there is no such God, becauseon the assumption that there is such a God one would not callbelief in such a God ‘idolatrous’.Although the subtitle of the book, ‘Religion after Idolatry’, maybe taken to suggest that the charge of idolatry is the key argumentagainst traditional monotheism, Johnston’s claim depends more onhis rejection of supernaturalism. Supernaturalism Johnston definesas ‘belief in invisible spiritual agencies whose putative interventionswould violate the laws of nature, at least as those laws are presently2understood.’ (40) He calls this a ‘mantic worldview’. (41) The claimthat interventions in the course of events, such as the resurrectionof Jesus, would be ‘violations of the laws of nature’ Johnston doesnot defend. He simply assumes that science has shown that thereare no, or cannot be, interventions. This, like many aspects ofJohnston’s book, reminds the reader of German liberal theology.For example, Rudolf Bultmann famously claimed in the same vain:‘It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to availourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at thesame time to believe in the New Testament world of daemons andspirits.’ (Bultmann 1961, p. 5)And like Bultmann, instead of rejecting Christianity, Johnstonreinterprets religion to fit naturalism, or replaces it by somethingwhich he does not call ‘atheism’ although it entails that there isno God as usually understood. Johnston assumes that every event‘flows with a certain probability from previous events, as a matterof natural law’. (48) ‘Our world is closed under purely natural caus-ation.’ Johnston also assumes that there are no immaterial things,such as souls. (184 and 127) So Johnston presupposes naturalism.He also says, as German liberal theologians typically said, thatGod ‘is not another efficient cause alongside the physical causes’(118), although of course theism claims that God sustains all thingsin being and is thus not just another efficient cause alongside thephysical causes.Johnston defends his position with an argument for naturalismfrom ‘true religion’. True religion entails that ‘we should hope thatontological naturalism is true. For ontological naturalism would bea complete defense against the supernatural powers and principal-ities that could otherwise exploit our tendency to servile idolatryand spiritual materialism.’ (51) He must mean by this that beliefin divine interventions is idolatrous and that belief in naturalismis incompatible with this belief.Another argument which Johnston gives against supernaturalismis that it leads to violence. He suggests that there is ‘religiously3required’ (160) violence. Christianity, he claims, ‘allegedly bornfrom the gospel of love, has fallen into the violence of crusades andinquisitions, and the vengeful threats of apocalypse and hell’. ‘Sac-rifice, atonement, apocalypse, crusade, jihad (in the baser sense),all this followed by the exquisite tortures of hell’ are natural out-comes of supernaturalist theism. By mentioning atonement andhell here, he seems to suggest that saying that Christ atoned forour sins or that some will be punished in hell is an act of violence,as if the punishing were done not by God but by the preacher whosays that there is a hell. In another chapter Johnston offers anexplanation for religious violence: If someone believes that he hasbeen told by God how to live, then he will naturally also believethat God legitimates and cooperates in his ‘violence against theinfidels’ (169). No further defense of these claims is given. Whyshould a theist not believe that he has no right to kill infidels?While it is possible that some religions teach us to kill infidels, thisdoes not seem to follow in any way from classical theism. To thecontrary, theistic belief induces a desire to live a good life becauseGod is believed to be good, and that excludes killing other men.And Johnston’s reference to crusades and inquisitions is not backedup by any historical evidence nor by any discussion of the ques-tion whether possible wrong actions in the name of Christianitywere really carried out by Christians and whether they were donedespite rather than because of the Christan faith.A central claim of classical theism, which Johnston rejects, isthat God is the first cause of the universe and that hence the uni-verse is distinct from God. Johnston argues against the existenceof such a ‘separate creation’. (95)Suppose that there is something created by the HighestOne, but nonetheless distinct from the Highest One, inthat it is not some part, aspect, principle, or mode ofthe Highest One. Call this other thing ‘the separatecreation’. If there is such a separate creation, then we4would expect the perfections of the Highest One to beto some extent reflected in that separate creation. Con-sider, then, the joint reality made up of the Highest Oneand the separate creation. It would seem that this jointreality might be a more appropriate object of worshipthan the subpart of the reality that is the Highest One.[. . . ] But only the Highest One deserves worship. Sothere is no separate creation. What is called creation issome part or aspect or principle of mode of the HighestOne. That is why a worshipful attitude to the whole ofreality is not idolatrous. (95)So if God creates something, then that thing deserves to be wor-shipped too. Johnston’s ‘worshipful attitude’ towards creation re-minds the reader of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s (1799, p. 38) ‘con-templating and feeling the universe’. As everything that deservesworship must be a part of God, there cannot be a separate creation.The objectionable premise in this argument is of course that whatis created by God deserves to be worshipped. God can perhapscreate a being that deserves worship (as Christianity claims thatthe Father brought into being the Son and the Spirit, who alsodeserve worship), but why should everything that God creates de-serve worship? God could create a rabbit, a golden mountain, or asun, which would not deserve worship because, although they aremade by God, they are not God. But Johnston is content with theargument as it stands.This leads Johnston to panentheism, the view with the motto‘God in all, and all in God’. (119) He wants to distinguish thisfrom pantheism, defined as the view that God and ‘the naturalrealm’ are identical.Against such pantheistic identification of God and thenatural realm, the panentheist will assert that God ispartly constituted by the natural realm, in the sense5that his activity is manifest in and through naturalprocesses alone. But this reality goes beyond what iscaptured by the purely scientific description of all theevents that make up the natural realm. (119)How is God more than the natural realm, ‘a causal realm closedunder natural law’ (120)? The answer must lie in the followingidentification:The Highest one = the outpouring of Existence Itself byway of its exemplification in ordinary existents for thepurpose of the self-disclosure of Existence itself. (120)As everything exemplifies Existence or God, understanding some-thing amounts to understanding the Divine Mind:At the idealized limit of this process of deepening un-derstanding, we would come to grasp those modes ofpresentation of reality that are fully adequate and com-plete, and so reveal the nature of what they present. Inthis sense, we would be conforming our minds to theDivine Mind, which may be construed as the totalityof fully adequate and complete modes of presentationof reality. (155)So the Mind of God is ‘the totality of fully adequate modes ofpresentation’. Somehow, God is more than the natural realm ascaptured by the purely scientific description because that descrip-tion fails to capture the presentational aspect. However, presenta-tion is not another realm:Reality is Being-making-itself-present-to-beings, not asort of conjunction or fusion of two realms, the realmof sense and the realm of nature. [. . . ] The beings,that is, each and every creaturely thing that exists, arethemselves exemplifications of Being. (156)6In order to justify saying that there is a God while at the sametime ruling out interventions and denying that there is a separatecreation, Johnston says that speaking about God is ‘analogical’,i. e. non-literal.The Love of the Highest one was analogized as its out-pouring in ordinary existents, its Will as self-disclosure,its Mind as the most revealing presentations found inthe realm of sense, and its Power as the totality of thelaws of nature. In these respects, the Highest One hasby analogy the characteristics of a person, but a personfar removed from ordinary personality. [. . . ] These ana-logical ways of speaking are] chosen here because theyexplicitly discourage the idolatrous hope for a CosmicIntervener who might confer special worldly advantageon his favorites. (158f)The last chapter of the book, ‘Christianity without SpiritualMaterialism’, seeks to offer a reinterpretation of, or alternative to,Christianity. Throughout the book there are several criticisms ofChristianity: supernaturalism is childish and naive and incompat-ible with the results of science; Christianity requires violence, suchas the ‘crusades and inquisitions’ (160); the Christian doctrine ofpenal substitution is ‘morally incoherent’ (161); the belief in Jesus’resurrection is ‘mystical theology’ (43); belief in ‘the afterlife, theother worlds, and so forth’ is an ‘idolatrous substitute for genuinefaith in the importance of goodness’ (124); and Judaism is ‘a higherreligion’ because it is relatively indifferent ‘to the very idea of an af-terlife’ (176). But nevertheless Johnston does not want to say justthat Christianity is wrong but wants to reinterpret it. While ori-ginal Christianity teaches that salvation consists in the forgivenessof sin (Col. 1:14) and leads to a desirable life after death, Johnstonsays that salvation ‘is the grace of finding a way to live that keepsfaith with the importance of goodness and love even in the face of7everything that can happen to you’ (180). Our original sin ‘consistsin self-will combined with the aspiration to possess the knowledgeof how to live’ (168). Eve’s mistake was her hope that knowledgeabout how to live could be possessed by human beings. AlthoughChrist did not really rise from the dead, Christ was resurrected inthe sense that ‘those who are truly good’ win a ‘collective victoryover death’ (186).EvaluationLet me indicate three areas where Johnston’s book invites objec-tions. First, Johnston’s rejection of supernaturalism is defendedonly by affirmation, not by argument. Johnston wants to rejectsupernaturalism not by discussing the usual arguments for the ex-istence of God but by taking the shortcut of claiming that inter-ventions are impossible or incompatible with science. He just relieson calling an intervention a ‘violation of the laws of nature’ andthen assumes that science has shown that there are and cannot beinterventions. This approach has been thoroughly criticised againand again ever since David Hume made it popular, for exampleby George Campbell (1762) and recently by Robert Larmer (1988)and by John Earman’s book with the telling title Hume’s AbjectFailure: The Argument against Miracles (2000).It is certainly not obvious that miracles are ruled out by thelaws of nature or by science. Suppose that God moved a stonefrom position A to position B. Even if we assume that the determ-inistic Newtonian laws of motion are the ultimate ones, this doesnot contradict these laws. They say what forces there are actingon the stone. In particular, the law of gravity says that there isa certain force between the stone and the ground. Is that law vi-olated if God moves the stone from A to B? It would be violatedif God thereby abolished the force, but there is no reason to as-sume this. Which law then would be violated? Johnston should8tell us. He has given no reason for rejecting supernaturalism andhence no reason for preferring panentheism to theism. So John-ston calls supernaturalism childish and naive, although he gives noarguments against it and does not discuss even a single text fromthe enormous contemporary literature defending the coherence oftheism.Secondly, Johnston needs for his defense of panentheism thethesis that speaking about God is analogical. Without this, heshould simply say ‘There is no God’. Discussing the doctrine ofanalogy he mentions Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas’ reason for sayingthat predications about God are analogical is this: To say of a manthat he is just is to say that being just is amongst his properties.By contrast, being just is not amongst the properties of God but,according to Aquinas’ doctrine of simplicity, God is identical withhis being just, as well as with his being omnipotent, etc. There-fore Aquinas says that speaking about God is very different fromspeaking about a man. Johnston has no reason like this for say-ing that speaking about God is analogical. He only says that thisthesis ‘discourages the hope for a Cosmic Intervener’. (158) Butnot every view can be expressed analogically or metaphoricallywith the words ‘There is a God’. It is wrong simply to take one’sview about ultimate things and say that it is the analogical mean-ing of ‘There is a God’. Whether a sentence has an analogical ormetaphorical meaning and what this might be is not something thespeaker can decide, but it is determined by the context. Johnstondoes not show that ‘God’ actually has the meaning which he wishesit to have. And who means by ‘God’ something remotely similarto what Johnston means by it? Nobody except a few theologians.It is therefore wrong to express Johnson’s view by saying ‘There isa God’. Doing so is at best poetical and at worst just confusing.Thirdly, Johnston’s panentheism seems to be incoherent or mean-ingless. Johnston calls God ‘almighty’ (49), but also excludes thepossibility that God can intervene in the course of events. Thatseems incoherent because being almighty entails being able to in-9tervene. Further, Johnston writes that God reveals himself, butalso says that God does not do anything for us (20). Further,Johnston’s description of God as ‘the outpouring of Being by wayof its exemplification in ordinary existents for the sake of the self-disclosure of Being’ (158) and of God’s mind as ‘the totality offully adequate modes of presentation’ (156) seems to be incompat-ible with his claim that God is a person who has love, will, mind,and power (158). Further, Johnston’s thesis that ‘God is partlyconstituted by the natural realm’ (117) is incompatible with histhesis that there is no separate creation, because the latter, asJohnston seems to understand it, implies that neither God nor apart of God is distinct from nature. Johnston’s reply is that allspeaking about God is analogical. But has he succeed in givingmeaning to sentences about God which is clear and coherent? Isthere a possible belief that one could express by saying that thereis ‘the outpouring of Being by way of its exemplification in ordin-ary existents for the sake of the self-disclosure of Being’ (158)? Ifnot, then Johnston’s description of what he wants to call ‘God’ or‘the Highest One’ is meaningless. The belief which comes closestto what Johnston is getting at can be expressed clearly by saying‘There is no God’, but Johnston does not want to say that.I cannot say that this is a book that deserves our attention. Itis a rant against supernaturalism and Christianity, puts forward ameaningless view, and gives no reasons for preferring this view toeither theism or atheism.ReferencesBultmann, Rudolf (1961). ‘New Testament and Mythology’. In: Kerygma andMyth. New York: Harper & Row. URL (cit. on p. 3).Campbell, George (1762). A Dissertation on Miracles. Edinburgh: Kincaid &Bell. URL (cit. on p. 8).Earman, John (2000). Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument against Miracles.Oxford UP (cit. on p. 8).10Johnston, Mark (2009). Saving God. Religion after Idolatry. Princeton Univer-sity Press.Larmer, Robert A. (1988). Water into Wine? An Investigation of the Conceptof a Miracle. McGill-Queen’s University Press (cit. on p. 8).Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1799). Über die Religion: Reden an die Gebildetenunter ihren Verächtern. Göttingen: Vandenkoeck & Ruprecht. URL (cit. onp. 5).11

Review of: Mark Johnston, Saving God: Religion after Idolatry, Princeton University Press, 2009

Subject of this essay are the following terms of Lacan which will be discussed freely with the help of Saussure's theory of the symbol: "langage" and "speach of the unconsciousness" ("competency to symbolize", "origin and effects of the true subject" or the "Significant One").

Above all, the author refers to Lacan's conception of the human competency to symbolize, with regard to Saussure's "langage"

Review of: Mark Johnston, Saving God: Religion after Idolatry, Princeton University Press, 2009

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