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Saving God: Religion after Idolatry
In this book, Mark Johnston argues that God needs to be saved not only from the distortions of the "undergraduate atheists" (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) but, more importantly, from the idolatrous tendencies of religion itself. Each monotheistic religion has its characteristic ways of domesticating True Divinity, of taming God's demands so that they do not radically threaten our self-love and false righteousness. Turning the monotheistic critique of idolatry on the monotheisms themselves, Johnston shows that much in these traditions must be condemned as false and spiritually debilitating.
A central claim of the book is that "supernaturalism" is idolatry. If this is right, everything changes; we cannot place our salvation in jeopardy by tying it essentially to the supernatural cosmologies of the ancient Near East. Remarkably, Johnston rehabilitates the ideas of the Fall and of salvation within a naturalistic framework; he then presents a conception of God that both resists idolatry and is wholly consistent with the deliverances of the natural sciences.
Princeton University Press is publishing "Saving God" in conjunction with Johnston's forthcoming book "Surviving Death," which takes up the crux of supernaturalist belief, namely, the belief in life after death.
A central claim of the book is that "supernaturalism" is idolatry. If this is right, everything changes; we cannot place our salvation in jeopardy by tying it essentially to the supernatural cosmologies of the ancient Near East. Remarkably, Johnston rehabilitates the ideas of the Fall and of salvation within a naturalistic framework; he then presents a conception of God that both resists idolatry and is wholly consistent with the deliverances of the natural sciences.
Princeton University Press is publishing "Saving God" in conjunction with Johnston's forthcoming book "Surviving Death," which takes up the crux of supernaturalist belief, namely, the belief in life after death.
216 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 13, 2016
When 81 percent of white evangelicals and born-again Christians cast their ballots for Donald Trump, and 60% of white Catholics did the same, this turns out not just to be a really good book, but a really timely one, as well.
That Mr. Trump's religious supporters see no conflict between the faith they profess and a vote for that pettiest of nihilists--that some of them even insisted that vote was a religious obligation--seems like it would have to be a telltale of the real object of their worship. Not the God they claim, the God of Jesus Christ. That God is dead to them--let alone the Most High, than which nothing greater can be conceived. Rather, Trump would seem to be, in fact, the image of their invisible God, this moral sloven of a man, parading self-righteousnessness as if it were genuine rectitude. This man who seems to have no sense of the beauty of every person, no regard for just community, no trust in a common good. A man who can say in the course of a single interview, without any apparent sense of embarrassment, that “I want a country that loves each other. I want to stress that," and then, when asked whether he thinks his rhetoric had gone too far in the campaign, says, “No. I won.” (http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-tr...)
But I digress.
Johnston argues that we all are inescapably caught between the necessity and obligation to lead our own lives, on the one hand, and our entwinement in and obligation towards the lives of others, on the other. And we all are adept at finding ways to try to escape this tension, the burden of the dignity of being human. The idolatrous lure of ready-made self-righteousness, in other words, constantly tempts us, tempts us to throw over the effort to live authentically in the midst of life's deep, ineradicable difficulties, for a slogan or superficial image.
Most religion is so much spiritual materialism. May we find our ways beyond it.
That Mr. Trump's religious supporters see no conflict between the faith they profess and a vote for that pettiest of nihilists--that some of them even insisted that vote was a religious obligation--seems like it would have to be a telltale of the real object of their worship. Not the God they claim, the God of Jesus Christ. That God is dead to them--let alone the Most High, than which nothing greater can be conceived. Rather, Trump would seem to be, in fact, the image of their invisible God, this moral sloven of a man, parading self-righteousnessness as if it were genuine rectitude. This man who seems to have no sense of the beauty of every person, no regard for just community, no trust in a common good. A man who can say in the course of a single interview, without any apparent sense of embarrassment, that “I want a country that loves each other. I want to stress that," and then, when asked whether he thinks his rhetoric had gone too far in the campaign, says, “No. I won.” (http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-tr...)
But I digress.
Johnston argues that we all are inescapably caught between the necessity and obligation to lead our own lives, on the one hand, and our entwinement in and obligation towards the lives of others, on the other. And we all are adept at finding ways to try to escape this tension, the burden of the dignity of being human. The idolatrous lure of ready-made self-righteousness, in other words, constantly tempts us, tempts us to throw over the effort to live authentically in the midst of life's deep, ineradicable difficulties, for a slogan or superficial image.
Most religion is so much spiritual materialism. May we find our ways beyond it.
July 31, 2011
It seems this book was largely written for the author’s academic peers, which is fair enough. However, it did mean that long stretches are quite dense as he builds his philosophical arguments. Despite this there are sections of greater lucidity in which he launches some blistering attacks on theistic notions of a personal God who intervenes in the lives of us mere mortals. Interesting to read that he has little time for the new atheists either and opts for a Panentheistic position.
This is certainly one of the more sophisticated and reasoned interventions on the “God debate” I’ve seen over the last ten years, but it’s not always an easy read. Maybe he’ll also write something for a wider readership; it seems to me there is plenty of room in the market for something along those lines, minus the straw men and polemics we‘ve seen in so many other offerings.
This is certainly one of the more sophisticated and reasoned interventions on the “God debate” I’ve seen over the last ten years, but it’s not always an easy read. Maybe he’ll also write something for a wider readership; it seems to me there is plenty of room in the market for something along those lines, minus the straw men and polemics we‘ve seen in so many other offerings.
April 1, 2015
Mark Johnston here applies the monotheistic critique of various forms of pagan idolatry to the monotheistic traditions themselves.
The likes of Yahweh and Allah began as one God to be worshipped among many others. Gradually, as the other cults were brushed aside and the Gods of the Abrahamic religions gained preeminence, they became the sole and universal objects of worship, while the "pagan" gods were denounced as mere idols. As Johnston points out, however, even after becoming the sole God of worship, Yahweh/Allah retained many of his idolatrous characteristics.
As the general capriciousness of God as he is presented in the Old Testament shows, God was still to a large extent merely the reflection of the human characteristics of his worshippers, even while those worshippers declared to the world that he was the "Highest One", the God of all, the creator of the universe, the great "I AM", and so on. If we were to apply the same rigorous hostility to idolatry to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God that those religions apply to the classical pagan belief systems, we would find that even the God of the so-called monotheisms would fail the test.
Johnston brings out several ideas on how we can reconceptualize God in a non-idolatrous manner. Namely, the way he thinks this is possible is through a Panentheistic view of God; not to be mistaken for Pantheism, which is merely the identification of God with the natural universe, i.e., God actually is all of the matter that comprises the universe.
In Panentheism, God is infused in everything, but also somehow beyond it. By rethinking our concept of God in this way, we can move beyond the primordial idolatrousness that lies at the heart of human nature, and move toward what Johnston posits as the end goal of human spiritual development: the triumph over the oscillating evils of self-love and false-righteousness.
The likes of Yahweh and Allah began as one God to be worshipped among many others. Gradually, as the other cults were brushed aside and the Gods of the Abrahamic religions gained preeminence, they became the sole and universal objects of worship, while the "pagan" gods were denounced as mere idols. As Johnston points out, however, even after becoming the sole God of worship, Yahweh/Allah retained many of his idolatrous characteristics.
As the general capriciousness of God as he is presented in the Old Testament shows, God was still to a large extent merely the reflection of the human characteristics of his worshippers, even while those worshippers declared to the world that he was the "Highest One", the God of all, the creator of the universe, the great "I AM", and so on. If we were to apply the same rigorous hostility to idolatry to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God that those religions apply to the classical pagan belief systems, we would find that even the God of the so-called monotheisms would fail the test.
Johnston brings out several ideas on how we can reconceptualize God in a non-idolatrous manner. Namely, the way he thinks this is possible is through a Panentheistic view of God; not to be mistaken for Pantheism, which is merely the identification of God with the natural universe, i.e., God actually is all of the matter that comprises the universe.
In Panentheism, God is infused in everything, but also somehow beyond it. By rethinking our concept of God in this way, we can move beyond the primordial idolatrousness that lies at the heart of human nature, and move toward what Johnston posits as the end goal of human spiritual development: the triumph over the oscillating evils of self-love and false-righteousness.
January 1, 2012
"To comprehend one's own religion is not just to comprehend its dogmas and rituals. It involves bringing into clear view the religion's characteristic ways of resisting the Divine." (24)
This is one of the most intelligent books on religion and the meaning of life I have ever read. Johnston understands idolatry as the "attempt to domesticate the experience of Divinity, to put it to some advantage in a still unredeemed life" - something that all monotheist religions - which make idolatry a concern in the first place - do to some extent. "Idolatry is, then, invariably the attempt to evade or ignore the demanding core of true religion: radical self-abandonment to the Divine as manifested in the turn toward others and toward objective reality." (24)
There are beautiful, plain-spoken passages here about self-abandonment, about turning toward others and about unconstrained inquiry, and devastating critiques of various kinds of idolatry (in addition to "the display of idols and the associated dominance of a priestly class"): the occult idea of God as a powerful patron who might be won over to our side, the idea of an afterlife as the endless satisfaction of aquisitive desire, and the idea of a looming Apocalypse that will explode upon the world of the unbelievers.
"We are, in a certain way, fallen creatures; our wills are utterly compromised by self-will, and, left to our own devices, we at best live out adventitious and conventional conceptions of the good, conceptions that are in many ways parodies of the ethical, properly understood. The only thing that can set us right is a katalepsis, a seizure by grace, something transformative entering from outside our fallen natures. If that is granted, then the first question of monotheism, the question of whether there is one God, must be rephrased in an urgent practical form. do the various forms of grace--the various ways in which human beings are captured by something that at the same time overcomes the centripetal force of the self and turns them toward the ethical--have a common source?" (81-2)
I don't have to agree that the answer to that question is yes, to find most of what Johnston writes utterly convincing and personally compelling.
This is one of the most intelligent books on religion and the meaning of life I have ever read. Johnston understands idolatry as the "attempt to domesticate the experience of Divinity, to put it to some advantage in a still unredeemed life" - something that all monotheist religions - which make idolatry a concern in the first place - do to some extent. "Idolatry is, then, invariably the attempt to evade or ignore the demanding core of true religion: radical self-abandonment to the Divine as manifested in the turn toward others and toward objective reality." (24)
There are beautiful, plain-spoken passages here about self-abandonment, about turning toward others and about unconstrained inquiry, and devastating critiques of various kinds of idolatry (in addition to "the display of idols and the associated dominance of a priestly class"): the occult idea of God as a powerful patron who might be won over to our side, the idea of an afterlife as the endless satisfaction of aquisitive desire, and the idea of a looming Apocalypse that will explode upon the world of the unbelievers.
"We are, in a certain way, fallen creatures; our wills are utterly compromised by self-will, and, left to our own devices, we at best live out adventitious and conventional conceptions of the good, conceptions that are in many ways parodies of the ethical, properly understood. The only thing that can set us right is a katalepsis, a seizure by grace, something transformative entering from outside our fallen natures. If that is granted, then the first question of monotheism, the question of whether there is one God, must be rephrased in an urgent practical form. do the various forms of grace--the various ways in which human beings are captured by something that at the same time overcomes the centripetal force of the self and turns them toward the ethical--have a common source?" (81-2)
I don't have to agree that the answer to that question is yes, to find most of what Johnston writes utterly convincing and personally compelling.
July 3, 2025
Mark Johnston attempts to "save" the concept of God from what he argues is its most damaging form: idolatry. His central thesis is that the conception of God in Western monotheism—a supernatural, person-like, interventionist being who exists separate from the universe (what he calls the "Thean" God)—is a philosophical and spiritual mistake. So Johnston tries to dismantle this idolatrous concept and replace it with a philosophically robust, non-idolatrous alternative. An interesting quest no doubt. But a failed one no doubt as well. And that's why.
Johnston's attempt begs the question: Is This Really God? It seems more like a philosophical principle (like Plato's Form of the Good) than a living God. Also the problem of evil—which drove him for this quest to solve— persists! While Johnston dissolves the problem of a personal agent allowing evil, he still must explain why a reality grounded in a "Highest Good" contains so much horror, suffering, and "badness." His answer is that the good is a potential that we must struggle to actualize, not a controlling force, but this is not satisfying at all.
Johnston's attempt begs the question: Is This Really God? It seems more like a philosophical principle (like Plato's Form of the Good) than a living God. Also the problem of evil—which drove him for this quest to solve— persists! While Johnston dissolves the problem of a personal agent allowing evil, he still must explain why a reality grounded in a "Highest Good" contains so much horror, suffering, and "badness." His answer is that the good is a potential that we must struggle to actualize, not a controlling force, but this is not satisfying at all.
April 6, 2024
“Could the holiness of the world not ... consist just in the sheer givenness of the world—that is, in its existence and disclosure—so that true piety requires that we be willing to let go of anthropomorphic concepts of God, which, however they might be idealized and transcendentalized, obscure the true nature of the Divine?”
This book makes a compelling case that:
“This world, properly seen, is the outpouring and self-disclosure that is the Highest One. This outpouring and self-disclosure, this kenosis or self-emptying of Being that envelops everything, is the site of the sacred. So we're 'already on holy ground'”.
A refreshing read. I highly recommend it.
This book makes a compelling case that:
“This world, properly seen, is the outpouring and self-disclosure that is the Highest One. This outpouring and self-disclosure, this kenosis or self-emptying of Being that envelops everything, is the site of the sacred. So we're 'already on holy ground'”.
A refreshing read. I highly recommend it.
August 16, 2011
An accounting of religion and God that asks the question "if there is a God, what must he be like?" To Johnston, the major monotheistic religions are guilty of a fundamental idolatry (by their own terms), creating versions of God and religious sensibility that are forged from human acquisitiveness, and a desire for worldly salvation ("spiritual materialism") that God can't satisfy. "God", here, is the continuous outpouring of existence: There is no contradiction between God and the nature of the world as disclosed by nature and reason, nor is God a cosmic agent of justice.
As such, Johnston's case is for a God that's relatively easy for an atheist to accept, and that eludes (some of) the counter-arguments of popular atheist writers, such as Hitchens, Dawkins, etc., whom Johnston derides.
Saving God is not afraid to strike a bold note, and some of those notes do much to upend the standard accepted practices of believers, such as the ecumenical default argument that considers the divinities of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism to be one and the same, or the deeply-ingrained supposition that God intervenes in life to punish the wicked and reward the virtuous. Yet Johnston's description of the ultimate goal of religious belief--the ultimate ideal of any worldview, perhaps--achieves a sense of universality: "salvation" through an acceptance of, and non-resistance to, the "large-scale defects of human life": coping with loss, ageing, dying.
As such, Johnston's case is for a God that's relatively easy for an atheist to accept, and that eludes (some of) the counter-arguments of popular atheist writers, such as Hitchens, Dawkins, etc., whom Johnston derides.
Saving God is not afraid to strike a bold note, and some of those notes do much to upend the standard accepted practices of believers, such as the ecumenical default argument that considers the divinities of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism to be one and the same, or the deeply-ingrained supposition that God intervenes in life to punish the wicked and reward the virtuous. Yet Johnston's description of the ultimate goal of religious belief--the ultimate ideal of any worldview, perhaps--achieves a sense of universality: "salvation" through an acceptance of, and non-resistance to, the "large-scale defects of human life": coping with loss, ageing, dying.
February 11, 2010
Fascinating book about "natural religion" (religion without all the supernatural bits) by a philosopher and logician from Princeton. I loved this book while I was reading it, but then couldn't remember why I was so excited just a few weeks later. I'm going to tackle the companion piece "Surviving Death" next week.
Read
March 17, 2011Had to put this aside for awhile. It's tough going.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews