Athens and Jerusalem

[johngh]

I recently started reading the book Athens and Jerusalem by Lev Shestov upon the recommendation of my Philosophy of Religion professor. Shestov was a Russian Existentialist and was a very devout Jewish man throughout his life.

I personally have to say that I find his viewpoints put forth in the book to be fascinating, and I feel like they really resonate with me.

His main point of the book is that religion has been corrupted by reason, and that the two are essentially incompatible. His reasoning for believing this has its roots in Genesis. Whenever people talk about Genesis it seems they tend to focus on the fact that Eve disobeyed God, and that this was the reason for the fall. Shestov instead says that disobedience was not the cause of the fall, but the desire for knowledge was. I kind of have to agree with this. Eve did not eat from the tree of knowledge just because she wanted to disobey God, but because she desired wisdom of good and evil, and desired to be like God. By pursuing this knowledge they were cast out of the garden and forbidden from eating of the tree of life anymore.

Probably the most important aspect of this is it effects how you see God. In our modern world (and for a long time actually) people tend to look at God in the Greek way. We don’t see God so much as a King and a person but as an invisible force. Yes Christians say things like “have a personal relationship with Jesus” but when you look at other ways we talk, it seems we are rather Greek in our line of thinking (the whole western world is pretty much, not just in religion). Shestov says that the God put forth by the Greek line of thought is NOT the God from the Bible. The Bible presents God as a person, and prior to being kicked out of the garden, Adam and Eve had a very PERSONAL relationship with God. But by eating of the tree of Knowledge (aka pursuing wisdom), they were kicked out and were separated from God.

One important thing to note however is Shestov does NOT say that reason is a bad thing. He says that it is quite useful in our every day lives (technology, medicine, etc. ) However he says it is disastrous when applied to religion, and will do nothing but lead you away from God.

Also another important thing about Shestov is he rejects Necessity and says that since everything is possible with God, there is no such thing as Necessity, and to claim there is would be to subject God to something and not accept Him for what He truly is.

Personally I find this entire line of thought to be fascinating and it is really changing how I look at a lot of things. Obviously the more scientific oriented people here will probably be terribly offended by this line of thought, but I really want to know what you all think of it. And if you think you have a good reason to refute this, what is it?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I recently started reading the book Athens and Jerusalem by Lev Shestov upon the recommendation of my Philosophy of Religion professor. Shestov was a Russian Existentialist and was a very devout Jewish man throughout his life.

I personally have to say that I find his viewpoints put forth in the book to be fascinating, and I feel like they really resonate with me.

His main point of the book is that religion has been corrupted by reason, and that the two are essentially incompatible. His reasoning for believing this has its roots in Genesis. Whenever people talk about Genesis it seems they tend to focus on the fact that Eve disobeyed God, and that this was the reason for the fall. Shestov instead says that disobedience was not the cause of the fall, but the desire for knowledge was. I kind of have to agree with this. Eve did not eat from the tree of knowledge just because she wanted to disobey God, but because she desired wisdom of good and evil, and desired to be like God. By pursuing this knowledge they were cast out of the garden and forbidden from eating of the tree of life anymore.

Probably the most important aspect of this is it effects how you see God. In our modern world (and for a long time actually) people tend to look at God in the Greek way. We don’t see God so much as a King and a person but as an invisible force. Yes Christians say things like “have a personal relationship with Jesus” but when you look at other ways we talk, it seems we are rather Greek in our line of thinking (the whole western world is pretty much, not just in religion). Shestov says that the God put forth by the Greek line of thought is NOT the God from the Bible. The Bible presents God as a person, and prior to being kicked out of the garden, Adam and Eve had a very PERSONAL relationship with God. But by eating of the tree of Knowledge (aka pursuing wisdom), they were kicked out and were separated from God.

One important thing to note however is Shestov does NOT say that reason is a bad thing. He says that it is quite useful in our every day lives (technology, medicine, etc. ) However he says it is disastrous when applied to religion, and will do nothing but lead you away from God.

Also another important thing about Shestov is he rejects Necessity and says that since everything is possible with God, there is no such thing as Necessity, and to claim there is would be to subject God to something and not accept Him for what He truly is.

Personally I find this entire line of thought to be fascinating and it is really changing how I look at a lot of things. Obviously the more scientific oriented people here will probably be terribly offended by this line of thought, but I really want to know what you all think of it. And if you think you have a good reason to refute this, what is it?

I haven’t read his work, so perhaps I shouldn’t say anything. While I would tend to agree that the Greeks were very much tied to rationality, as were the Romans, that was never totally true, and at times it was very untrue.

One thing that has always fascinated me is the rapidity with which Christianity swept the Hellenic and Hellenistic worlds. Part of that was due to the fact that Greek philosophy had “hit the wall” in a way. In a way similar to the way astrophysicists today run aground on “singularities”, Greek metaphysics had run aground on “first cause” and “purpose” or “end” as they expressed it. They referred to it sometimes as the “Logos”; the “word” which untied the knot. It is for that reason that the “Last Gospel” begins with “In the beginning was the Word…” Christianity, which one would have thought hopelessly oriental to the Greeks actually unwound the Gordian knot of philosophy.

So, Christianity was not totally “non-rational” from the beginning.

Later on in the Greek world, Orientalism became more and more the norm, in religion as in everything else. It could be said that ultimately, the Romans were the only “Greeks” left; a legacy which they passed to the West. I have seen it remarked that a reasonably educated man in Edinburgh is more “Greek” than the Greeks, now.

But I think it would be a stretch to say that the West, and Christianity have somehow departed from the “personalism” of the bible, though that is certainly a tendency. Even St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the great “rational writers” who ever lived, emphasized that faith has primacy over reason when it comes to thinking about God. He never claimed that reason could unravel the mysteries of faith; only that faith was not contrary to reason, much as some writers today maintain that faith is not incompatible with science. Faith necessarily implies a personal relationships, being almost coextensive with “trust”.

I think sometimes people who talk about “necessity” are engaging in word games without meaning to. People like Steven Hawking hunt for mechanistic explanations for everything and Hawking himself averred that if man could discover the astrophysical mechanics before the Big Bang, he would know there was no God; but if no intelligible laws prior to that could be discovered, it would prove that God is “free” and therefore that He exists.

But that has seemed shallow to me (upstart that I am in questioning Hawking) because what we may see as “necessity” and may well be “necessity” from our point of view, may be only an aspect of God’s thought, and perhaps a minor one at that. We might well think we have plumbed all aspects of God’s thought as to, say, astrophysics, but that might be nothing more elevated than discovering a particular atom in one of the hairs on a human arm. It wouldn’t explain very much about the human, and certainly not about the boundaries of his freedom.

Still, I am sure the book is worth reading. And I would agree that it is imperative for us to think of God as a person; a very personal person. Not as some kind of impersonal force.

 

[punkforchrist]

Ridgerunner:

And I would agree that it is imperative for us to think of God as a person; a very personal person.

Three persons, actually.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Three persons, actually.

Rightly said.

 

[James_S_Saint]

“partaking of the fruit” means “using what you learned”.

It doesn’t mean merely “wanting to learn”.

The “tree” was the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (consciousness of how right and wrong is established). Partaking of the “fruit” of that knowledge means using your conscious knowledge of how right and wrong come about. Once you see that knowledge, it is very tempting to use it so as to be the dictator of right and wrong, to be “as God”.

 

[Katholish]

This line of thinking is terribly opposed to the Church Fathers and the very fundamentals of the Christian Faith. While their needs to be a proper acknowledgment of the limitation of reason, to suggest that its application to faith (which is by definition theology) is harmful is silly. To ask for a refutation of such a position also seems silly because it implies that reason does have an important role in such questions.

The title, “Athens and Jerusalem” is an illusion from a quote of Tertullian, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” and he is one of the only Fathers that even dares question this relation, and ultimately as Jerome points out, Tertullian is “not a man of the Church” because he left it to persue heresy.

We are intellectual beings, and without the intellect applied to sense data, we know nothing. The very fact that we read Genesis implies the application of reason because reading is an intellectual pursuit.

 

[johngh]

This line of thinking is terribly opposed to the Church Fathers and the very fundamentals of the Christian Faith. While their needs to be a proper acknowledgment of the limitation of reason, to suggest that its application to faith (which is by definition theology) is harmful is silly. To ask for a refutation of such a position also seems silly because it implies that reason does have an important role in such questions.

The title, “Athens and Jerusalem” is an illusion from a quote of Tertullian, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” and he is one of the only Fathers that even dares question this relation, and ultimately as Jerome points out, Tertullian is “not a man of the Church” because he left it to persue heresy.

We are intellectual beings, and without the intellect applied to sense data, we know nothing. The very fact that we read Genesis implies the application of reason because reading is an intellectual pursuit.

Yes reason is useful, and it’s nice that we can read the Bible obviously. However I think it’s very important to acknowledge the fact that were were not CREATED for using reason. We were created to have a personal relationship with God, and when Eve betrayed God for the sake of knowledge, mankind was cast out of that direct link to God.

Also one only needs to read the history of philosophy and the history of religion to see that the early chuch fathers were heavily influenced by the Greek line of thought, and the Church has gone down that path ever since. I think it’s an important question to ask whether trying to fit Christianity into the Greek line of thought is a good thing or not. Yes it is what we are used to, but is it really such a good thing to try to force God into our own criteria? Throughout the years, Christians have been willing or at least almost willing to abandon things such as God’s omnipotence simply because it didn’t make logical sense to them. This is us trying to force God to be what we want Him to be, instead of accepting what we were told in the Bible. At the very least I think such an attitude should be examined.

 

[Katholish]

We were indeed created for using reason!

We were created to know, love, and serve God. I wonder what you think Heaven is if it is not the direct percetion of God and the eternal contemplation of His Nature?

Also one only needs to read the history of philosophy and the history of religion to see that the early chuch fathers were heavily influenced by the Greek line of thought, and the Church has gone down that path ever since… This is us trying to force God to be what we want Him to be, instead of accepting what we were told in the Bible. At the very least I think such an attitude should be examined.

If you throw out the authority of the Church Fathers (and hence the Church) you also throw out the authority on which we accept the Bible as inspired. You cannot seperate the Scriptures from the Church, so no, it certainly isn’t an attitude that needs to be examined provided that intellectual inquiry is always guided and checked by the Deposit of Faith (Scripture and Tradition) as preserved by the Church.

I know I must sound rather forceful in my presentation of this point, but it really is beyond my comprehension to question the unity of faith and reason, because it would seem to always lead to an absurd conclusion.

 

[MindOverMatter]

Yes reason is useful, and it’s nice that we can read the Bible obviously. However I think it’s very important to acknowledge the fact that were were not CREATED for using reason. We were created to have a personal relationship with God, and when Eve betrayed God for the sake of knowledge, mankind was cast out of that direct link to God.

Perhaps Adam and Eve ignored what was reasonable in order to get what they desired, and that’s why they got thrown out?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have seen it opined that the “knowledge” of good and evil was not “knowledge” in the sense of “gained intellectual understanding”, but in the sense of “canoodling”. Sort of “don’t knock it until you’ve tried it” kind of thing.