The unfortunate persistence of “fear of the Lord”
Recently I linked, as I frequently do, to something Bill Vallicella posted on his Maverick Philosopher blog. Vallicella quoted the philosopher Thomas Nagel as saying that “I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”
I went on to comment that this suggested that Nagel entertained “a very primitive notion of God.”
I have since regretted that turn of phrase, not only because it is an insult to primitives everywhere, but also because it is simply wrong. Nagel’s notion of God is in fact all-too-civilized.
What we call civilization came about when cities began to be built and empires to spread. A certain notion of God seems to have accompanied this development, the notion of God as some everlasting Ashurbanipal, a fearsome despot on a cosmic scale.
This notion must certainly have been convenient for whatever Great King held sway at any given moment back then, his ghastly penalties justified as but faint reflections of God’s very own.
Unfortunately, the notion has persisted to this day, even in the mind of someone as intellectually sophisticated as Thomas Nagel, and “fear of the Lord” still plays a large role in many people’s religious sensibility, even those who claim to believe that God is love.
So-called primitive peoples, however, often seem to have had a more sophisticated sense of deity, what Rudolf Otto in The Idea of the Holy called the numinous — a “non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self.”
Perhaps the best description of this is to be found, in of all places, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, in the chapter titled “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” in which Rat and Mole, while searching for Otter’s lost son, encounter the Great God Pan:
Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror — indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy — but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. …
Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fulness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
‘Rat!’ he found breath to whisper, shaking. ‘Are you afraid?’
‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid! Of HIM? O, never, never! And yet — and yet — O, Mole, I am afraid!’
Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.
Surely this is a better depiction of that transcendent presence many of us feel we have had a brush with from time to time. We are told that God loves us and that we should love him in return. But passing judgment and imposing penalties hardly figures in genuine love. Atheists may do God a disservice by declining to believe in him, but many who think themselves religious may do him a graver disservice by turning him into a cosmic Inspector Javert, relentlessly tracking down one Jean Valjean after another.
One of my heroes, the Abbé Mugnier, was once asked at a party if he believed in Hell. He replied that of course he believed in Hell, it was a doctrine of the Church, he was obliged to believe in it. But, after just the right pause, he added, “I don’t necessarily believe anyone is there.”
The so-called faithful spend too much time worrying about sin, especially those committed by others. True, it makes sense to feel that something is seriously wrong with a world in which the innocent are made to suffer, and to hope that the moral discord arising from ill deeds will somehow be ultimately resolved. In fact, a fundamental component of faith is that God will deal with such matters. But it is not our role to advise him on that, let alone to gloat over the torments we expect will await evil-doers.
Our role, as St. Augustine suggested, is to love God — and to sin bravely.
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Hi Frank,
Sometimes I think, rather than “primitive people” being more attuned than we are, or less attuned, that they were just people. Some were atheists, some fundamentalists, some tolerant, some not so tolerant–and some others on different dogmatic or non-dogmatic spectral paths and plains. Plus, everyone was different from each other “back then” just as everyone is different from each other now and from way back when.
Some experiences we have, our ancestors could not have had, and vice versa. What we all share anyway, is what we are at essence, perceiving and thinking beings (at least), who then go onto discerning and processing mundane and confounding experiences against the backdrop that we each have individually, and then try to communicate them across the world that we find between us, this present world and span of history that both separates us and brings us together.
Would there have been people, way back when, who would have appreciated the communication of Rudolf Otto, and the description by Kenneth Grahame–assuming a reasonable translation could take place? Surely.
And so your entire article is timeless in that sense. If we could somehow translate this article’s blogging and readership experience, say to a campfire, or a central meeting place in an ancient village, then we might only have a different audience. The article would send those people from way back when into their own internal tangents. Of course for the people “way back when,” they would be considering whether the people from “way WAY back when” were primitive.
When we look at scripture, for instance, we know that there were laws against doing certain things, like killing people or committing adultery, say, and that the only reason to have such a law, is that people did such things. No sense having a law against people destroying perfectly good planets in neighboring galaxies, as people do not do this.
This same logic applies to when scripture urges people to believe in a god or a set of gods, and what to believe about them. And I include here the spectrum of the highest mystic to the lowest dogmatic thoughts, and whatever falls in between for whatever reasons. These are used to educated people, to open their eyes, but also to argue against those who do not believe or believe just so. So if scripture was written way back when, and even derives from way-way back when, then there must have been the spectra of people from atheists to fundamentalists, and plains to include all types of thought that would deviate from what was being written.
Excellent points all, Rus! I especially like being reminded that people back then were is some many ways just like us, with wide spectrum of outlooks and views.
Frank, your discussion reminded me of those Christian leaders who attributed the Haitian earthquake, and the ensuing troubles, to God’s wrath over a pact the Haitians had made with the Devil.
Frank — You mention the idea of loving God in return. I always have found this a fascinating notion, since childhood. Maybe the use of the word “love” in that context is as open to question as the world “fear”. I remember asking my mother, after I was told in CCD that I should love God, how you could love someone you never met. She had no answer. Maybe it is easier to fear someone you have never met. (Years later I posed the same question to a very devout friend of mine who said she wept for joy, every time she prayed, because she loved God so much. I believe that about her, but I still didn’t get an answer.)
A great piece — thanks!
I once saw a philosopher discuss fear of the Lord on a terrible British TV show called The Brains Trust or something like that. He offered a highly nuanced interpretation of what the phrase ‘Fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom’ meant, the precise details of which escape me fifteen or so years later, but his basic idea was that fear- in the sense of awe and humility- before an omniscient and omnipotent creator made a lot of sense.