Although There Isnt a God Up Above

Holland - Austria The Latin American Agenda, in the series that it sponsors, called Tiempo Axial, has published the book Another Christianity Is Possible, by Roger Lenaers, which has been very successful throughout Latin America. Encouraged by this, the author has just written the book Although There Isnt a God Up There Above, developing the same topic. This is a synthesis of the book written by the author. It is worthwhile to debate it.

Roger Lenaers

This book builds on the previous one, Another Christianity Is Possible, and it therefore supposes that we have already said goodbye (at least in theory) to that representation of God in which we were educated, and which is from the biblical tradition. This traditional representation is purely heteronymous: our world, imperfect, transient, powerless...depends entirely on the other world, which is perfect, eternal, almighty...from where a more or less anthropomorphic God governs us. But it is not enough to say goodbye to such a representation in theory. We need to draw out the practical consequences. Given that modernity is characterized by an awareness of the autonomy of the cosmos and human beings, we need to separate ourselves from everything which an heteronymous vision implies. But even when we reject heteronomy, we continue to unconsciously think and act as if that other world continues to be real and active, providing knowledge and shaping our actions. This question is a simple and clear approach to see where we are unconscious victims of this error: does this opinion or practice presuppose the action or existence of that other world? Sometimes it will require careful analysis. If, for example, I am opposed to euthanasia because it violates the prohibition to touch a human life, I am referring, at base, to a commandment, the fifth, and I am therefore under the influence of another world, one which I had thought I had said goodbye to. Or, for example, thinking that Eucharistic species actually change, or that Jesus has left the tomb on Easter morning, or the multiplication of the loaves is a fact...all of these postulate the intervention of a supernatural force in the dominion (autonomous!) of nature. This new book undertakes a cleanup task. In the first part, the author examines the field of ethics. Traditional Christian ethics is an ethics of law, and given that this law is from above, it is heteronymous, although we do not realize it. In general, what
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the law requires is good, and it favors the process of humanization. For law to survive the death of God, and hence the disappearance of its source, lamented by Nietzsche, there needs to be another foundation and a new justification. Here enters the theonomy of a God who is primordial and transcendent Love that is expressed in the evolution of the cosmos, in the form of a calling and an impulse to love. The ethics of theonomy (the modern Christian faith) is an ethics that is guided by the demands of love. These demands are partly identical to those of traditional ethics, but not without their weaknesses and gaps. The weaknesses of an ethics of the law are, among others: always allowing loopholes, responding to the problems of a certain time, and losing its meaning when times change. Its great weakness is that it requires sanctions: the fear that such sanctions inspire takes the place of the free acceptance of the good sought by the law, thus undermining the ethical value of human acts. Sanctions are a means of domestication, and they degrade the human being to the level of animal. The author examines in more detail three specific weaknesses of traditional ethics, and shows how it is possible to correct an ethics of love, fortunately. First, sexual ethics, which is totally unsatisfactory; the author examines the causes and shows how an ethics of love maintains all that was good in traditional sexual ethics, but releases the dead weight that comes with it. Masturbation, homosexuality, premarital sex... are then seen under an entirely different perspective. Conjugal love leads the author to examine more closely the indissolubility of marriage, which rests on a heteronomous conception of the relationship between spouses, and to criticize the absurd practice of ecclesiastical annulment of marriage. The second weakness is the absence of guidelines for the use of money. This gap has opened the door to the shameless capitalism we are living. An ethic of love, inspired by Jesus ethics, which rejects all forms

of greed, would have led to a completely different economic world. The third weakness of this ethic is that freedom has been sacrificed--an indispensable good for the human being that the Christian should live in fullness, like Jesus--on the altar of obedience to institutions that cannot be justified except from a heteronymous viewpoint. The author tries to find a balance between the need to act as free people and to act as members of the body of the Church, complementary and sometimes contradictory demands. The second part of the book is of a dogmatic nature and discusses four major themes in six chapters, in which the unconscious mixture of heteronomy and autonomy, that is, water and fire, against which this book was written, is clearly demonstrated: the relationship between creation and evolution, death, the Bible, and the Eucharist. How do we approach these issues if we do not appeal to the existence of another world? 1. Creation. In Rome it is said that creation and evolution are not opposites. But if, with Rome, creation is seen as an act of God above, there is the implicit acceptance that he can intervene at any time. This is why the neo-Darwinists like Dawkins reject a Creator God, even if he does nothing else. Moreover, what role can that God from above still play when the laws formulated by Darwin and De Vries adequately explain the process? The chapter responds to this double objection by presenting the cosmos as an evolving expression of Mystery, which completely transcends us and which is Spirit. It is never necessary to resort to an intervention by the God up there. A comparison with a Mozart sonata illustrates this view of the creative act and clarifies the origin of life, animal consciousness, and the human spirit, intractable problems if seen from a purely materialistic viewpoint. 2. It is clear that death can no longer be understood as the passage from this world to another, because this other world has disappeared. But tradition has imbued us with its conceptions so strongly that even those who profess autonomy find it very difficult to release the certainties of the past: trial, heaven, purgatory, hell, and limbo, for which there is no longer any place in theonomy. The chapter tries to find an answer for these problems then. For example: what is left of us when we die? What if there is no punish-

ment and no reward...if how one lives doesnt impact this? What then remains of the Justice of God? Even though we do not have fully satisfactory answers, it would be wrong to seek refuge again in heteronomy: we would live in contradiction with ourselves. 3. As for the Bible, the Church actually reads it like Muslims read the Quran, as words directly from the mouth of God-up-there-above. Two chapters deal with the problems for the modern believer regarding the phrase Word of God. Although God the transcendent Mystery may not speak, it does not cease to express itself in the evolution of the cosmos and in the profundity of those who are open to its inspiration. When they formulate their inspiration, the result is a human word, marked by the culture and psychology of the author. But these human words resonate with an encounter with the Absolute. This explains the ambivalence of the Bible. Like the Quran, the Bible has inspired both humanization and crimes against humanity. In any case, it is a dangerous and completely heteronymous exaggeration to reverence it as sacrosanct, utilizing it to justify whatever we want to think or do. 4. For all the sacraments, it is important that from the beginning they have been interpreted in a heteronymous manner: the God-up-there-aboves grace would descend at the moment of a particular human action. Regarding the Eucharist, this action of combining would make invisible changes that call to mind magic, especially transubstantiation, and as a consequence of this, the real presence (understood as the physical body) of the risen Jesus. This interpretation is the result of a heteronymous way of reading the Bible, from a pre-modern vision of the cosmos and its laws. The interpretation of the Mass as sacrifice- another fully heteronymous concept--and which is restricted to privileged male officiants, completes the picture of the problems that beset the modern believer who wants to participate in this ritual. In two chapters, the book shows what actually happens in this ritual and important role it can have in the life of faith. The book concludes with a chapter that demonstrates that modernity, departing from its axiom of autonomy, necessarily leads to atheism...but that this atheism, if understood correctly, opens our lives up to the God-Mystery that is transcendent Love. q

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