Editor's Note: I am currently enrolled in seminary class called “Moments in Ancient, Medieval, and Postmodern Mysticism.” The course is designed to explore writings about mysticism found throughout the ancient, medieval and postmodern worlds, with a focus on the underpinnings of mysticism in the contemporary church. Through a theological survey spanning centuries, the course explores rich, sophisticated and compelling literature which has helped to shape Christian life and theology in every century to the present. And it attempts to answer the following question: Can today’s modern Christian understand the religious mysticism that was prevalent in ancient and Medieval times, or has the Western church obliterated any chance of resurrecting this theological gift? ... Here is essay No. 3 from that course.
Relevant Readings:
Well, if getting Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and theologian, and John D. Caputo, the philosopher/theologian, into a room for one discussion would be entertaining for the presumed fireworks that would ensue.
I would equally enjoy getting Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest and professed modern day mystic, and Caputo in the same room afterward because I believe they would find solid theological ground together in Rohr’s grounding in the ancient mystics and Caputo’s postmodern philosophy/theology.
While Rohr’s sunny disposition and firm belief in the goodness of being human might seem contrary to Caputo’s sternness and dim outlook on humanity, the two seem to be in firm agreement that our very existence is based in love. The love of creation and of creation. The love of God in Rohr’s case, and the love of the insistence of creation (God) for Caputo.
“Very importantly, the risen Christ is beyond any limits of space and time, as revealed in his bilocation …,” Rohr writes in “Immortal Diamond” on Page 183. “He is a universal connection, intimate with everything. The one and the many have become the One. We operate now as a part of the ‘the biggest ecosystem’ and not alone anymore.”
Whereas Caputo’s description seems to lean more heavily on a less divine creation, he nonetheless feels that there is a timeless, immortal love that ties all things living or nonliving together. On Page 237 of “The Insistence of God,” Caputo writes: “So, too, life happens and we find ourselves within it, and any why we would come up with would itself be already contained within the sphere of life, would just be more life. We love life because we love the rain on our faces even as we also love sunny days and the difference between sun and rain, but what is that except life (God and/or love*) itself? We love life because life is life, because we love life, and this tautology, by saying the same, says everything. Loving life is our best theory of everything (God and/or love*).” (*The emphases in italics are mine.)
Ironically, Rohr emphatically contends in his book “Immortal Diamonds” that he is not a deconstructionist, distancing himself from such a label as if today’s church folks would label him a radical if he didn’t. But, of course, Caputo embraces such a label, and gleefully dangles it in the face of his readers. But both writers’ work attempts to achieve the same end: To dismantle what the Western Christian church has built as the gospel. Both recognize that what passes for religion nowadays has strayed a long distance from the early Christian fathers in the first couple of centuries after Jesus’ death. And both attempt to rebuild that religion after dismantling the cheap church most faithful accept for the gospel today.
As Rohr writes on Page XVII: “Because far too many religious folks do not seriously pursue this ‘reverence humming within them,’ they do not recognize that something within them needs to be deeply trusted and many things must be allowed to die -- not because they are bad, but because they perhaps cannot get them where they want to go. Spirituality tends to be more about unlearning than learning. And when the slag and dross are removed, that which evokes reverence is right there waiting!”
Caputo, as is his nature, is more critical: “The investors in a certain religion expect eternal returns; they concentrate their entire portfolio in one fund, betting that death pays off in perpetuity, in a truly ‘perpetual annuity.’”
In short, it can be said that neither writer/theologian thinks there is much right with the state of today’s church or the cheap religion in which it deals.
Finally, both writers also would likely draw the ire of most of today’s faithful by their steadfastness belief of a weak God. This premise could be considered the foundation of Caputo’s work, but might be surprising to be found in Rohr’s writings.
Caputo often describes God as a creative insistence, famously writing that God doesn’t “exist” but rather “insists.” Caputo would argue that God is less of a being and more of a force than Rohr might, but their sentiments arrive at the same point: God is not the menacing master developed by Western patriarchal societies, all knowing, all powerful. But rather the One, or the Creator, is rather a weak god who is in need of relationship with its creation as much as its creation is in need of it.
For many Catholics, they might be astounded to read Rohr’s words on Page 155 of “Immortal Diamond”: “God’s total commitment to love becomes a total commitment to freedom, which means God had to give up all enforcement and control. God is clearly not a policeman. This is a huge price for God and us to pay, which might well be revealed in the broken body Jesus itself. But there is no other way for God to act, for God is love itself, which seems to be the only kind of power God uses now, after the original omnipotence of creation itself.”
It may seem strange that Rohr suggests that we pay for God’s weak insistence, rather than God being the one on the losing end, but any quick study of today’s American Christian church will reveal quickly what we’ve lost by constructing the image of the tyrannical God. We’ve lost decency, civility and the oneness with all of humanity. We’ve constructed a demanding God that creates outsiders and insiders and a race toward false piety that wreaks havoc on this earthly creation.
Caputo and Rohr may seem like unlikely allies in their effort to dismantle the church today, but while their diverging theological backgrounds get them there using different paths, their intentions are the same. A reemergence of an ancient Christian church that worships the One, a creator present in and among each and every being, human, animal or otherwise. Both attempt to enlighten the faithful and unfaithful alike, unveiling the corrupted version of what passes for religion today.
It gives me hope that if two of today’s leading theologians can see through the veneer of what passes as church today, that more church leaders will get there. Rohr insists in his book that there is a mass movement of believers toward a mystical understanding of God. He’s more optimistic about the current state of faith across the entire church than I am, but he gives me hope nonetheless.
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