Highfield God, Freedom and Human Dignity

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8308-6450-8
Verlag: InterVarsity Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 229 Seiten

Does God's all-encompassing will restrict our freedom? Does God's ownership and mastery over us diminish our dignity? The fear that God is a threat to our freedom and dignity goes far back in Western thought. Such suspicion remains with us today in our so-called secular society. In such a context any talk of God tends to provoke responses that range from defiance to subservience to indifference. How did Western culture come to this place? What impact does this social and intellectual environment have on those who claim to believe in God or more specifically in the Christian God of the Bible?Professor of religion Ron Highfield traces out the development of Western thought that has led us our current frame of mind from Plato, Augustine and Descartes through Locke, Kant, Blake Bentham, Hegel, Nietzsche--all the way down to Charles Taylor's landmark work Sources of the Self. At the heart of the issue is the modern notion of the autonomous self and the inevitable crisis it provokes for a view of human identity, freedom and dignity found in God. Can the modern self really secure its own freedom, dignity and happiness? What alternative do we have? Highfield makes pertinent use of trinitarian theology to show how genuine Christian faith responds to this challenge by directing us to a God who is not in competition with his human creations, but rather who provides us with what we seek but could never give ourselves. God, Freedom and Human Dignity is essential reading for Christian students who are interested in the debates around secularism, modernity and identity formation.

Ron Highfield is Blance E. Seaver Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University and is the author of Great is the Lord and coauthor of Four Views on Divine Providence .

Autoren/Hrsg.

Highfield, Ron

Leseproben

2

Defiance

The Promethean Dimension of the Modern Self

We view some things as means to happiness and others as barriers. Friends, a good job and a winning lottery ticket beckon as ways to happiness. Illness, lack of money and enemies stand as obstacles in our path. But most of the time the same thing works as both means and barrier. Friends can betray, family can restrict and money can corrupt. It seems that nothing is so conducive to our happiness that it does not limit us in some way. Does this pattern apply to our relationship with God as well? Along with the advantages the existence of God brings, might there also follow disadvantages? Indeed, some people view God in a largely negative light. Many wish to put the thought of God out of their minds and immerse themselves in the search for pleasure, wealth or power. Others may be tempted to doubt or deny God’s existence. A few even hate the thought of God. They view God as the ultimate enemy and guard their freedom and dignity against encroachment with flinty defiance.

Prometheus: The Myth

The Greek god Prometheus descended from the race of the Titans, the gods that ruled the world before the reign of the Olympians, who were headed by the ruthless Zeus. The playwright Aeschylus portrays Prometheus as a friend and protector of humanity against the enmity and tyranny of Zeus. Zeus wanted human beings to remain in their primitive and powerless condition, lest they eventually overthrow Zeus, just as Zeus subjugated the Titans. But Prometheus defied the will of Zeus by bringing fire and civilization to human beings. For his “crime,” Zeus had Prometheus fastened to the face of a granite mountain and sent a giant eagle to tear at his insides. His executioners Hephaestus and Kratos debated the justice of his punishment, but both gods agreed that the will of Zeus was inescapable and that

All things are a burden, save to rule

Over the Gods; for none is free but Zeus.[1]

Prometheus views the situation differently. He admits that he provoked punishment with his actions but denies that his punishment is just. Prometheus rejects advice from friends to moderate his accusations and admit wrongdoing, telling them,

Go thou and worship; fold thy hands in prayer, 

And be the dog that licks the foot of power! 

Instead of submitting to Zeus, Prometheus proclaims his hatred of Zeus and “all gods” all the louder. He knows he is doomed but remains defiant. He will not give Zeus the final victory of breaking his spirit. He cannot resist omnipotence, but he will never admit that omnipotence can be free from the demands of justice. Zeus rules sky and earth, land and sea, gods and men and beasts, but he cannot force Prometheus to believe that Zeus is right. The will that defies unjust rule is the last preserve of dignity.

The figure of Aeschylus’s Prometheus excites our sympathy and admiration. Whatever the playwright intended to communicate to his contemporaries, it is almost impossible to resist seeing humanity—and consequently ourselves—symbolized in Prometheus. The play constructs a world in which God and humanity are defined as competitors (“For none is free but Zeus!”). Humanity could realize its great potential if only it were released from the tyranny that keeps it in check. Even if humanity is crushed by ruthless omnipotence, it can maintain its heroic dignity and inner freedom by refusing to acquiesce to the order that demands subservience. Hence, Prometheus has become the patron saint of those who dare defy God (or fate or chance) in the name of human freedom and dignity.

Prometheus: The Metaphor

Prometheus and his character type appear over and over in Western dramatic and epic literature. In Paradise Lost, for example, Milton develops the character of Satan on the Promethean model. Defeated by God, Satan finds himself in hell surrounded by his fellow conspirators. Surveying his new realm, he begins to rally his troops with infinite defiance against God’s “tyranny”:

What though the field be lost?

All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield:

And what is else not to be overcome?

That Glory never shall his wrath or might

Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace

With suppliant knee, and deify his power.[2]

Knowing that he cannot overcome God by force, Satan determines to work by deceit. He resolves to rid himself of any remnants of goodness. From now on he will study only evil and war against all goodness in hopes of overthrowing divine providence. Satan thus proclaims the infinite creativity of his iron will:

Hail, horrors, hail

Infernal world, and thou, profoundest Hell,

Receive thy new possessor: One who brings

A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Here at least

We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:

Here we may reign secure, and, in my choice,

To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n.[3]

Having lost heaven’s “happy fields,” Satan rejoices in what he retains. He preserves a space inside his mind unconquered and unconquerable even by the Almighty. In that retreat he can will, imagine, hate and plot without limit. In hell, where God dare not enter, Satan finds true freedom. Cast from the heights, Satan discovers a new kind of dignity in an inner sanctuary where he refuses to “bow and sue for grace.”

Satan’s theology bears a striking resemblance to that of Prometheus. For Satan, the Almighty is just another will that desires to dominate all things; the only difference is that God has unlimited power to enforce his will. In other words, Satan believes that God is like him at heart and would be nothing without subjects and power to dominate. Even if Satan now has to admit that he is not God’s equal in power, he will not admit that he is God’s inferior in will. He thinks of God’s power and goodness as accidental features of God’s being. God’s essential being and core identity is pure will no different from Satan’s essential being. That God is almighty rather than Satan is the result of mere chance. In refusing to bow the knee, Satan thinks he can impose some limit on God’s sovereignty: “Here at least we shall be free.”

Of course, Milton does not want us to admire Satan, but despite our efforts to resist we find ourselves admiring the arch rebel, vanquished but still defiant. We are stirred by his determination, by his refusal to accept defeat and especially by his assertion of inviolable dignity and inner freedom in the face of a greater force. Satan pictures God as an almighty tyrant and contrasts himself as a tragic, heroic figure. Milton knows very well that Satan’s picture of God is false and hence that his heroic self-understanding is also false. The poet reminds the reader of this during Satan’s speech by explaining, “So spake th’ Apostate Angel, though in pain, / Vaunting aloud, but rackt with deep despair.”[4] But Milton also knows that deep in the human heart lies suspicion that God really is a tyrant, that rebellion is heroic and that subservience to such a power-being is demeaning. By putting these eloquent lies on Satan’s lips, perhaps Milton hopes that we will recognize the source of these thoughts when they arise in our hearts. By allowing us to feel the lure of Satan’s heroic rhetoric and then see what comes of it, we will be armed against the devil’s wiles.[5]

Near the end of the eighteenth century, at the height of the Romantic movement, some readers of Milton began to find his picture of Satan enduringly attractive despite Milton’s later subversion of that initial impression.[6] It was no coincidence that at the same time Prometheus became the patron saint of Romanticism, especially of its atheist wing. The young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a poem titled “Prometheus” (1773), in which Prometheus obviously symbolizes himself and humanity come of age, and Zeus symbolizes the idea of God. Goethe taunts the gods for their rage, envy and poverty, and expresses admiration for Prometheus’s spirit of defiance. In the following lines Goethe’s Prometheus ridicules Zeus for thinking himself worthy of worship, for Zeus cannot escape “almighty time and eternal fate” any more than lesser beings. Prometheus then predicts a future Promethean age, no doubt Goethe’s own, in which mature humanity will put the childish thought of God behind it:

And I should reverence thee?

Wherefore? Hast thou ever

Lighten’d the sorrows of the heavy-laden?

Thou ever stretched thy hand, to still the tears

Of the perplexed in spirit?

Was it not

Almighty Time and ever-during Fate,

My lords and thine—that shaped and fashion’d me

Into the man I am?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Here do I sit, and mould

Men after mine own image—

A race that may...