{"id":130,"date":"2016-07-15T10:48:07","date_gmt":"2016-07-15T10:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realisticliving.org\/blog\/?p=130"},"modified":"2016-07-15T11:10:24","modified_gmt":"2016-07-15T11:10:24","slug":"july-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realisticliving.org\/blog\/july-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Mono-devotionality"},"content":{"rendered":"

The word \u201cmonotheism\u201d has experienced some disrepute among recent theologians and secular philosophers.\u00a0 Nevertheless, H. Richard Niebuhr gave this old term \u201cmonotheism\u201d some new life in his breakthrough book Radical Monotheism and Western Culture<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Too often overlooked is Niebuhr\u2019s insight that the word \u201cGod\u201d in biblical writings does not point to \u201ca being,\u201d but to \u201ca devotion\u201d\u2014that the word \u201ctheism\u201d or \u201cGod\u201d is a devotional word, like the word \u201csweetheart.\u201d\u00a0 Niebuhr holds that the Hebraic Scriptures and the New Testament, as well as Augustine, Luther, and thousands of others use the word \u201cGod\u201d to mean a devotion to a source of meaning for our lives.\u00a0\u00a0 Luther was very explicit about this: \u201cWhatever your heart clings to . . . and relies upon, that is properly termed your God.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, if we view the syllable \u201ctheo\u201d in the word \u201ctheology\u201d to mean a devotion rather than a being, then \u201ctheology\u201d might be termed \u201cdevotionology.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cMonotheism\u201d becomes \u201cmono-devotionality.\u00a0 \u201cPolytheism\u201d becomes \u201cpoly-devotionality.\u00a0 And \u201chenotheism\u201d becomes \u201cheno-devotionality.\u201d<\/p>\n

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According to Niebuhr, monotheism, polytheism, and henotheism are three different devotional attitudes toward the whole of life.\u00a0 I will describe these devotional attitudes beginning with poly-devotionality.<\/p>\n

Both Augustine and Mohammed conducted a severe critique of the poly-devotionality<\/strong> that dominated their surrounding cultures.\u00a0 Gods like Venus and Mars are about devotions to real realms of life\u2014in this case love and war.\u00a0 It is understandable that both of these devotions can exist in a single life, along with many other devotions: family, work, nation, race, sex, gender, virtue, personality, etc.\u00a0 Niebuhr points out that each of these many temporal devotions can make an ultimate claim upon our lives.\u00a0 And when they do, we experience our lives being torn apart among these many claims.\u00a0 Perhaps we have experience this tension between our family and our work, or between other meaning-givers of our lives.\u00a0\u00a0 Niebuhr calls this \u201cthe war of the gods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Niebuhr also points out that each temporal god-devotion is doomed to disappoint us.\u00a0 Each of these temporal \u201cgods\u201d (devotions) will disappoint us because each is temporal.\u00a0 None of these \u201cgods\u201d can endure as an ultimate devotion.\u00a0 Our family can die or abandon us.\u00a0 Our work can end or bore us.\u00a0 Our nation can embarrass us.\u00a0 Our strong body can become old and fragile.\u00a0 Any one of these god-devotions can cease to be a devotion that renders our life meaningful to us.\u00a0 Niebuhr calls this \u201cthe twilight of the gods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Niebuhr\u2019s radical mono-devotionality<\/strong> resolves these poly-devotionality short-comings.\u00a0 A fully radical devotion to the ONE INCLUSIVE REALITY relativizes all the many devotions.\u00a0 It provides a context of devotion within which these sub-level devotions can have a place, a place that is not ultimate, but a relative place rendered so by that ONE devotion to the Final Source and Final Terminator of all the temporal gods and god-devotions.<\/p>\n

Heno-devotionality<\/strong> is an attempt to resolve the poly-devotionality short-comings, but it does so in an incomplete manner.\u00a0 The \u201cheno\u201d idea points to a cultural pantheon like a nation or peoplehood\u00a0 that holds the many devotions in some socially prescribed order.\u00a0 Nativism or nationalism is a form of heno-devotionality, rather than a mono-devotionality, for it does not include a devotion to every other nation, as well as to our own nation.\u00a0 Similarly, a devotion to life, the life of all animate beings, is a heno-devotionality rather than the mono-devotionality, for it does not include a devotion to the inanimate as well as to the animate, to the processes of dying as well to the processes of living.\u00a0 As the Sufi poet Rumi said, \u201c Life and death are two wings on the same bird.\u201d<\/p>\n

These reflections allow us to see the fully radical nature of mono-devotionality.\u00a0 Mono-devotionality turns out to be a complete form of realistic living.\u00a0 To quote a phrase from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this faith means a lived life in which \u201cthe good and the real come together.\u201d\u00a0 If something is real, it is good.\u00a0 If something is going to be viewed as good, then it must be real.\u00a0 \u201cEvil\u201d from this perspective becomes all those humanly invented value-universes of delusion, escape, and substitution for what is real.\u00a0 Radical monotheism (mono-devotionality) is a radical realism of the most thoroughgoing sort.<\/p>\n

This means that the findings of the scientific approach to truth are good to whatever extent they are real.\u00a0 For example, if the evolution of life on Earth is real, it is good.\u00a0 If the climate crisis is real, it is good\u2014facing this crisis demands our full attention and our full responsibility toward ending our dependence upon greenhouse-gas-producing energy sources.\u00a0 We can have vigorous debates about our various interpretations of the facts and their meaning, but making up our own facts to support our greed-based biases is selling ourselves to the dark-side.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the findings of our contemplative inquiries into the essence of our own human consciousness is a valid approach to truth, and if such findings are true, they are good, requiring our ethical obedience and loyalty.\u00a0 For example, if we find that bigotry, racism, nationalism, sexism, and other oppressive views are not in accord with our reality-based humanity, then those attitudes are a \u201cfall\u201d from a true mono-devotionality.\u00a0 This fall does not change the essence of our true humanity, but it sets up a split in the self that we can call \u201cdespair.\u201d\u00a0 This fall is a fall into abject hopelessness, because in the final outcome, the real always wins over the fabricated.\u00a0 If our devotionality is attached to the fabricated, then we are trapped in the losing side of the real drama of life.<\/p>\n

It is not an accident that the mono-devotionality religions, at their best, have espoused and lived a thoroughgoing devotion to the Real, as well as to an unconditional love for our real selves and our real neighbors.<\/p>\n

For more on this topic check out this longer essay:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.realisticliving.org\/UR4\/10RadicalMonotheism.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

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