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Mystic Maybes
- Fordham University Press
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Mystic Maybes K E V I N H A R T I. Matthew Arnold ‘‘objected to our carrying on a flirtation with mystic maybe’s and calling it Religion.’’1 Why should Augustine Birrill’s words, occasioned by the death of Arnold, come to mind when I read Richard Kearney’s The God Who May Be? Perhaps because Arnold and Kearney share a common purpose: dissociating metaphysics and the Bible. In Literature and Dogma (1873), Arnold seeks to show us that ‘‘when we come to put the right construction on the Bible, we give to the Bible a real experimental basis, and keep on this basis throughout.’’2 In so doing, he thinks, we distance ourselves from metaphysics: we do not have to base our faith on an ‘‘unverifiable assumption to start with, followed by a string of other unverifiable assumptions of the like kind, such as the received theology necessitates ’’ (LD, 151). Over a century later, and responding to different pressures, Kearney tells us that he proposes to explore and evaluate ‘‘two rival ways of interpreting the divine—the eschatological and the onto-theological’’ (GMB, 1). The latter yields the God of metaphysics, while the former, which Kearney warmly endorses, ‘‘privileges a God who possibilizes our world from out of the future, from the hopedfor eschaton which several religious traditions have promised will one day come.’’ Where is this eschatological deity to be found? In the Bible, Kearney assures us, and he analyzes four biblical passages— 208 Moses and the burning bush, the transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor, the Shulamite’s Song, and God’s pledge in Matthew 10—to justify his claim. Like Arnold, Kearney has no doubt that the language of the Bible is literary, not scientific. Or, more precisely, he holds that the Bible is best approached by way of narrative theology rather than metaphysical theology. For Arnold, what remains of the Bible once we submit it to the higher criticism is a canon of literary texts that are capable of improving us morally. Religion is mostly about our behavior in the world. Christianity is not essentially a matter of believing in the coming of the Son of Man, miracles such as the Incarnation and the Resurrection , and the triumph of the saints. That is just so much Aberglaube, ‘‘extra belief,’’ and, quite frankly, no modern person can possibly credit it, Arnold argues. He agrees with Goethe: der Aberglaube ist die Poesie des Lebens, ‘‘extra belief is the poetry of life’’ (LD, 212). Those fairy tales are beautiful, and so long as we do not mistake their metaphors for literal truths, they can aid belief. Yet ‘‘it is impossible even to conceive Jesus himself uttering the introduction to the Fourth Gospel; because theory Jesus never touches, but bases himself invariably on experience’’ (LD, 297). Arnold’s speculations about religion are loosely grounded in critical philosophy and, accordingly, they tell us next to nothing about God. We intuit something ‘‘not ourselves ,’’ he readily admits, for which insight we must thank the Jews, but this revelation is only ‘‘needed to breathe emotion into the laws of morality’’ (LD, 215). Arnold is far more interested in Jesus than Kant ever shows himself to be, for Christ transforms ‘‘the idea of righteousness,’’ and ‘‘to do this, he brought a method, and he brought a secret’’ (LD, 286). Christ’s method is repentance, and his secret is dying to the world and affirming the Kingdom of God. Like Arnold, Kearney is also interested in the Kingdom that is to come, regarding the Bible as fundamentally orienting us to ethics, and he, too, is less than easy with the dogmas of the Church. Listen as he answers the question D’où parlez-vous?: ‘‘Religiously, I would say that if I hail from a Catholic tradition, it is with this proviso: where Catholicism offends love and justice, I prefer to call myself a JudeoChristian theist; and where this tradition so offends, I prefer to call myself religious in the sense of seeking God in a way that neither excludes other religions nor purports to possess the final truth. And where the religion so offends, I would call myself a seeker of love and justice tout court’’ (GMB, 5–6). An unfriendly critic might quip, ‘‘Here I stand, but I can do other,’’ or cite William of St. Thierry on Mystic Maybes 209 [34.229.223.223] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 03:32 GMT) those who equivocate...