Karen Armstrong on the ‘unknowing’
'although I tried a number of different careers, doors continually slammed in my face until I settled down to my present solitary existence, writing, thinking and talking almost all day and every day about God, religion and spirituality.’ (from The Spiral}
‘We are talking far too much about God these days, and what we say is often facile.’ Karen Armstrong has never been one to dodge calling a spade a spade, and last week at Friends House London, without a note, she gave a dazzling, scholarly and inspiring address on what is wrong with lots of God-talk today, and what might lead us to more joy and peace.
About 500 Friends and members of the general public flocked into the main hall. But that’s nothing compared to her audiences in America and the Islamic world. In Islamabad, when 700 people were invited to hear her speak, 3000 turned up.
Last week, within a few minutes, it was clear why since 9/11 she has probably been given more airtime on the American media on fundamentalism and Islam than almost any other scholar in the field; and why in the first UN session ever devoted to religion, she was one of three scholars invited to speak. Her theological range is huge, she has something to say, and she says it.
Her weighty intellectual book The Case for God came out last year in a context of an increase in strident dogmatism around the world, not only religious, but also secular.
It is not that she rejects all the criticisms of religion made by Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. Indeed her book makes clear that some of their criticisms are valid. The problem in the view is that their analysis is not only intemperately expressed, but disappointingly shallow. They insist that fundamentalism constitutes the essence and core of all religion. Her response is that fundamentalism is a defiantly unorthodox form of faith that frequently misrepresents the tradition it is trying to defend.
Besides, there is another context – a growing appreciation of the value of the long spiritual tradition of unknowing. That is what she wanted to share last week. Her talk was a veritable Cook’s tour of insights from the world’s great religions stressing the importance of recognising the limits of our knowledge and the value of silence, reticence and awe. For instance:
• the Dalai Lama discomforting a gathering of learned people by answering a question by saying ‘I don’t know’.
• Thomas Aquinas saying after the had clarified his famous five proofs of the existence of God that ‘all we have proved is the existence of a mystery’.
• St Augustine saying that if a text in scripture seems to contradict science, then we must look for an allegorical interpretation.
• A cardinal in Galileo’s time commenting that ‘Scripture tells us how to get to heaven, not how the heavens go’
• A Hindu spiritual competition in which the winner is the priest who leads the others to silence.
One could add our previous recording clerk’s parting advice to the Religious Society of Friends to remember that it is the Holy Spirit that discerns, not this or that committee.
To anyone tempted to think that surely everyone knows what God is: the Supreme Being, a divine personality, who created the world and everything in it, Karen Armstrong has a firm answer: God is not a being at all, and we really haven’t a clue what we mean when we say that God is ‘good’, ‘wise’ or ‘intelligent’.
Taming and domesticating God’s otherness is not helpful. Just as it is unhelpful to imagine that people have always thought about God in exactly the same way as we do today. Earlier ages had a far better grasp of symbolism, allegory and myth.
In the Middle Ages, the word ‘belief’ did not mean an intellectual assent to a particular proposition. It came from the Middle English bileven, which meant ‘to love; to prize, to hold dear’.
She emphasised religion as a practical, not a theoretical, discipline. Something that teaches us to discover new capacities of mind and heart. Something, like art, that helps us live creatively, peacefully and even joyously, despite realities we cannot easily explain and problems we cannot solve.
Like any skill, it requires perseverance, hard work and discipline.
For all the great religions, she reminded us, the ultimate test of a true and authentic spiritual quest is whether it leads to compassion – doing unto others what we would have done to ourselves.
Time and again, her words resonated with Quaker experience. Some would have liked her to have recognised those links overtly. But when ranging round the great world religions, our tiny sect might not seem a priority for study.
We had some silence together. And wish her well.
Rosemary Hartill
Karen Armstrong’s talk can be heard on www.londonquakers.org.uk.
Karen Armstrong will be speaking on ‘What is religion’ at the British Museum on 24 June at 19.30. Free.
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