Re-Creating Easter II: Who Stood in the Center of the Easter Moment?

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 24 September 2015 1 Comments
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Question

I have been reading Mircea Eliade's Cosmos and History. What do you make of his premise that religious ritual is analogous to primitive practices meant to evoke a mythical time when God was physically present?

Answer

Dear T. Baines,

It has been a long time since I read Mircea Eliade's work. When I was exploring interfaith relations, I found him very helpful. There is little doubt in my mind that liturgical processes today reflect practices that would be more meaningful to our ancient religious forebears than they are to us. Religion in all of its organized forms is finally an attempt to guarantee that God will work for our well-being. That is its operating premise. The reason so much religious language makes so little sense to us today is that it does not transcend the theistic definition of God. This theistic symbol died with Galileo in the 17th century and needs to be replaced with other symbols of the divine. Most people do not, however, know of any other God symbol or God language to use, so we persist in the old patterns. That is why Paul Tillich, in my opinion the greatest theologian in the twentieth century, sought to get people away from thinking of God as a being, dwelling somewhere above the earth, possessed of supernatural power and designed to control for us the things we cannot control and to do for us the things that we cannot do for ourselves. We have turned God into “a being,” created in our own image, but lacking our limitations. We relate to this idol of our own making by pretending that if we are good enough or faithful enough we can force this God to do our bidding. It is a very immature way of imagining God. Tillich spoke of God not as “a being,” but as the “Ground of all Being.” That is a very different starting place.

The spiritual task today is to discover the infinite in the life of the finite. I seek oneness with God, not magical intervention by God. I think that is a goal that is not inconsistent with what Eliade was saying, but it might be a step beyond the conclusions that Eliade was able to reach in his generation. All of us build on the work of those who have preceded us, so I am grateful to him.

Thank you for your question.

John Shelby Spong

 

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