62. A Defence of the Faith Against A Philosophical Attack on God.

Dearly Beloved,

A stimulating part of Christmas is receiving unforeseen presents. This year my son-in-law gave me a book by philosopher Martin Hägglund entitled This life; why mortality Makes us Free. It is an attempt to set out how and why a secular life, defined by the limits of mortality, can be satisfactory and indeed rewarding.

As is my habit when dealing with philosophical tomes , I plunged into the middle of the book. Here I found a chapter entitled “Responsibility” which dealt with that knotty problem of Abraham's belief that God wished him to murder his only son, Isaac. Martin Hägglund's thesis is that our response to wanting to save Isaac is a secular response and that “God has nothing to teach you about moral responsibility, since he cannot even understand a moral problem” and that “God is completely irresponsible because he is not bound by anything other than himself.” (p.170)

Of course the underlying problem with Abraham and Isaac is that this incident has often been held up as Abraham's exemplary faith in God so that he became the worthy patriarch of the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The implication being that Abraham believed that God wished Abraham to kill his son.  .

Martin Hägglund seems unaware of any transition in the Bible to a more compassionate view of the deity yet a transition has already started in Genesis 22. Even in that episode God sends an angel to prevent Abraham committing the act. It is Abraham that needs to be constrained and God constrains him. It is man that is the problem, not God. That is reflected in the poem by Wilfred Owen used in Benjamin's Britain's War Requiem: 

"Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenched there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! and angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so,
but slew his son, -
And half the seed of Europe, one by one."

Hägglund seems to ignore the the transition to a more caring Abrahamic religion which is already evident in this story and also in Genesis (14:18-19) when Abraham, fresh from a military victory, is the recipient of the generosity of the priest Melchizadec. That generosity consists of the gift of bread and wine and a blessing (Genesis 14:18-19).

Chapter 7 of the Letter to the Hebrews 7 sets out and builds upon the significance of that meeting, claiming that Jesus's priesthood derives from the line of Melchizadec “Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizadec.” It is Melchizadec who is central to the progression in human morality as Hebrews states “...For such a high priest becomes us who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners and made higher than the heavens”.

Surely the tale of Abraham and Isaac marks, and is symbolic of, a belated cessation of human sacrifice and specifically child sacrifice by mankind? Agamemnon and Jeptha both sacrifice their daughters for victory in battle and the unspeakable Moloch lurks in myth and history too. 

Present day conceptions of God are very different to those expressed in Genesis 22. Any man today harbouring Abraham's belief that God had told him to kill his young son and is caught planning the act, would be quietly sectioned under the mental health act and Isaac would be taken into care. That surely is a good thing and it can be shown to be rooted in Christian teaching. Our human "secular response" is to kill as we can see in the present war in Ukraine

Hägglund's claim that God has nothing to teach you about moral responsibility is surely absurd. After all the second part of the Great Commandment set out by Jesus is one of the greatest and simplest moral statements ever made: “...Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”. That anchors our human egotism and self-obsession to the welfare of others. That commandment alone renders Abraham's plan to sacrifice his son an offence against God's moral teaching 

Peace,

Paul.

Completed 3 January 2022.

Wikipedia Public Domain,
 Anton Kaulbach Faust und Mephisto 

Martin Hägglund is Professor of Comparative Literature and humanities at Yale University.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  An Introduction to T he Manifold Letters. These letters were produced as part of a brilliant project managed by the Rev. Robert and Sarah Van de Weyer. During the Covid-19 pandemic. Letters were written every day for two and a half years by both ordained and lay members of the congregation of St Clement's Church in Cambridge and distributed to others both in the congregation and people outwith St Clement's as Dearly Beloved letters. (DB letters). They dealt with manifold issues including psychological survival during the pandemic, personal stories and experiences of life, philosophy and theology, music, the beauty of creation, wildlife and secular and church politics, the mysteries of the Christian faith and the exigencies of the pursuit of a Christian life. Each letter was accompanied by a photograph all of which can be enlarged by clicking on them. The Rt Rev. Rowan Williams was a contributor for six months whilst he worshiped and officiated at the St Clement's during...
Read more
Image
76. On The Anti-Christian Nature of the Small State Ideology. Nearly Beloved*, The first time I heard the cry for a “Small State” in the political context, it was uttered by those involved in a dispute over US grazing lands. The “s cofflaw” , Cliven Bundy, refused to pay the Federal Grazing Fees or recognise his obligations to the US government's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on whose lands his cattle grazed. In 2014 and 2016, the Bureau's response was to round up his cattle and remove them. That led to the congregation of armed anti-government activists, including the Proud Boys. These armed groups forced the BLM to back down because the Bureau was worried about the safety of its staff and of the public and felt unable to protect them. The US Government failed to support its own laws and regulation in the face of armed threat. This, and similar range land incidents, occurred prior to the assault on the US Capital by armed activists in an attempt to reverse the result of t...
Read more
Image
24. On War. Dearly Beloved, It is difficult for us to cope with a war in Europe so close to home, especially because it is a war within Christendom between Christian communities. Apart from the civil war in Herzegovina, there has been peace in Europe for 77 years. My father was 28 years old and my mother 22 when war broke out in 1939. My father was already in the Royal Navy and my mother joined the Auxillary Territoral Service. “The War” in my family continued in talk and discussion long after the fighting had actually stopped. It was the background to my childhood and was made more prominent when my mother organised her family to fly us out to Malta in 1953 where my father's ship lay in Sliema Creek. We lodged close by whilst he finished an extra year of service obligated by the Korean War. One my earliest memories is of looking down from a prop driven Vickers Viscount aircraft at the ships on the Mediterranean sea shining in the sun far below. That was the same Mediterrane...
Read more