I think that Sellick paints a realistic picture of the state of Christian theology in his opening paragraphs. His last two sentences of the article are (no doubt unintentional) a bit arrogant, don't you think?.. Not a good way to end! "If you have ideas, give 'em, and don't pretend that you somehow are the keeper of truths unrevealed" is what I would say to him...

I note that Peter does not deal with religious belief in a pluralist sense, but that's OK. Sticking to Christianity, his starting point is the Jesus of the Gospels - that's OK except that he immediately confounds the issue with Trinitarian issues that make little sense to the 'modern rationalist' described in his first few paragraphs.

Christology starts with the immediate assumption, correctly stated by Sellick, that 'the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.' Somehow I doubt that a leap of faith required by such a comment could be made by the "kind of person, rational, self reliant, individualist" that he talks about in his opening paragraphs! You can't have it both ways - categorise the modern individual with that descriptive language, and then leap in with a Christological statement that requires deep faith... Is that supposed to sway/convert/have meaning for the modern agnostic?

By the way, in ending, may I say some very kind (but not patronising) words about Peter's articles; They are always challenging, always interesting, and very thought-provoking! So please keep them coming!

Yuri K.

Interesting article. The reasons given for the Christian church's declining numbers and influence sound about right.

Although I'm an agnostic (borderline atheist, in fact), I do feel that religion plays an important role in our society that no other institution has successfully duplicated. So I find it troubling that religion seems to have lost the battle with modernity.

If I can be excused a moment of melodrama, it appears to me that Mammon has beaten God. Who needs divine providence when the market provides all our needs?

On the other hand, the demise of religion has been incorrectly predicted for a very long time, and I don't think it will disappear entirely anytime soon.

I have characterised Peter's apophatic faith in the past as "God doesn't exist, but he's REEEELY important." Nothing in this article leads me to change that summary.

Yuri
I agree, it’s nice to have Peter back. I don’t always agree with him, but I always enjoy his articles.

Peter
Welcome back!. I think your article raises lots of valid points, but I’d ask a couple of questions.

We can have Trinitarian theology without God as ‘first cause’, but we cannot have it without God as creator. To modern minds, the two are synonymous. How do we distinguish the two?

Recent Trinitarian thinking places more emphasis on the relational aspect of the trinity (perichoresis), as distinct from the three ‘persons’. Do you accept this? How does this speak to a society of atomised individuals?

What all beings require is Divine Compassion, Love and Blessing, the thread of Communion with the Living Divine Reality made certain and true and directly experienced.

Christians are by self-defintion sinners.

Sin is the active presumption of separation from the Divine Reality

To be a sinner is to be 100% God-less.

There is no Real existence until sin is transcended. All actions states of knowledge and experience are empty, painful and problematic, until the presumption of separation from the Divine Reality is utterly transcended.

There is no truly human life without Divine Communion, or the surrender of the entire conscious and functional being to the Absolute Divine Reality within which it appears, on which it depends completely.

Without that Divine Communion, there is no true humanity, no responsibility, and no real freedom. Without Divine Communion the individual is simply a fear-saturated functional entity living the an unconscious bewildered adventure in the midst of functional relations. There is thus no sacred or Divine plane to his or her awareness.

In our time the naive essentially childish "faith" of old time conventional religion has been destroyed by the triumph of the scientific materialism worldview and the establishment of the method of scientific enquiry as the paradigm of legitimate knowledge.

The scientific method is a non-participatory, abstracted, anti-psychic and anti-magical approach to life that actually operates by creating an artificial separation in what is truly an indivisible seamless reality.

In this age of scientific materialism, doubt of the intrinsic Fullness of Being is the only certainty and the only substance of mind. Therefore, people in this age are profoundly crippled in their ability to grasp matters of higher certainty, or to relate to subtler mental, magical or psychic processes. Likewise,they have been wounded at the core of their feeling-psyche wherein we are naturally and spontaneously moved toward Truth (rather that what is merely and temporarily factual and true).Therefore, this is an age in which people demonstrate little ability to understand and practice Real or Spiritual Religion.

Such is obviously the case with Peter.

In short Peter is entirely God-less, while pretending otherwise.

What an extraordinary and rather unkind comment by Daffy Duck! Certainly belongs to the "Looney Tunes" category, that's for sure.

Dear Mr Duck, you are certainly entitled to your narrow and myopic views but I will say that I find your comments to be neither restrained nor relevant to any of the points made by Peter Sellick in his thoughtful article.

Maybe in re-reading your own pernicious ending, you might remember to "judge not, lest you be judged."

Yuri K.

"The writers of the New Testament were certainly surrounded by pagan religions but they were not surrounded by a population that believed in nothing at all beyond their own desire, individuals who have no understanding of what it means to live in community and whose horizons are entirely limited by their own perspective."

Is it just me, or are other people getting tired of the endless, casual, unsupported slander pouring out every day from the priests of the old religions? The Prime Minister's partner makes a casual reference to Asian women and the media explodes with outrage: meanwhile people like Peter are telling us daily, over and over again, that we're mean-spirited and weak and not a patch on the brave old bigots of the Victorian age.

Get with it, Peter: this is the wealthiest, healthiest, most compassionate, highest-taxed, strongest safety-netted society that has ever existed in history, and that's precisely because we no longer rely on the personal preferences of the religiously inspired to tell us who needs to be helped and who needs to be stoned. If you have any doubts then I suggest you spend a year in the outback with a Aboriginal tribe on walkabout, and see how much compassion and community they show when their members get sick, injured or hungry.

I propose the first test case of the new anti-discrimination laws be brought against the collective churches, for hate speech against humanity.

Finding myself in agreement with 95% of a Peter Sellick article is an unusual experience for me. Perhaps I am finally growing up.

Alternatively, it could be a confirmation of the opinion I have always held, which is that our Mr Sellick is still searching for some genuine meaning in his own interpretation of Christianity. On the evidence of this piece, he is getting very close indeed, but the conclusion is unlikely to make him particularly happy if his livelihood depends upon being a believer.

His analysis of the intellectual failings of what we might call "traditional" Christianity are right on the mark. Having identified its disease with such accuracy, I am genuinely looking forward to his action plan...

"The church growth movement has been a failure. We are in a situation that is unprecedented. What to do? I have some suggestions, but they will have to wait for another time."

Such a tease.

In our normal everyday dreadful sanity we are propagandized by all of our media to presume that we are these mortal meat-bodies.To identify I/ME as a mortal meat-body is to be saturated with hell-deep fear-and-trembling because we all know that meat-bodies (and therefore I/ME) can be snuffed out in any moment, and will inevitably die.

This hell-deep fear-and-trembling is at the root of all of our religion, and our usual dreadful sanity. Believing in Jesus makes no difference to this hell-deep fear. Indeed it only reinforces it.

The inevitable death of bodies becomes a philosophical and "theological" matter that causes untrust, distrust, and fear, a matter that fills us with philosophical and "theological" propositions that are Godless, Ecstasyless, Blissless.

As a matter of fact, the cosmic domain is just like Mother Kali. Exactly so. It is full of death, full of klik-klik process, full of changes. Changes that are completely indifferent to the well-being or survival of I/ME based meat-bodies.

Ecstasy requires trust and the utter acceptance of death!

Therefore, True Religion must retire to Light!
The heart must be permitted to achieve a universal feeling-ecstasy!

Meanwhile sin, or the active denial of the Living Divine Reality is the worst cancer in the universe. It is the worst sickness. It is the most horrific disease. Its implications cover the entirety of everyone's life (even while prattling on about 'Jesus'). The world is filled with its symptoms and reeks with its torments and potentials, coming from all directions, most of which people cannot even see.

Rhian,

Good question; “We can have Trinitarian theology without God as ‘first cause’, but we cannot have it without God as creator. To modern minds, the two are synonymous. How do we distinguish the two?”

When I alluded to the vestiges of classical theism to be found in some Trinitarian theology I was referring to the practice of seeing the Father as creator. However, in the NT it is the Word that is the creator as in the prologue of the gospel of John and it is Christ ho is the creator of all things in Coll. 15. Clearly, any theology of creation cannot disregard all of the persons of the Trinity acting in unison. Our problem in this regard is that we understand creation as an act that produces an object, the universe. There is a causal sequence. However, creation has a different meaning in a world that does not look for causal sequences. Creation cannot be separated from salvation. What the Word creates is a new creature and a new world order, Israel and the Church. Creation is another way of talking about resurrection, the dead are raised from their graves; the dry bones become a living nation. Creation is not about nature, creation is about those dead ones who become the living.

Certainly the world that we live in is addressed as the abode of the creature, but it comes under the sway of God in that it is a natural thing. That is, it is not inhabited by spirits and demons as in pantheism. This is the great contribution of the Priestly account of creation.

Colin Gunton addresses some of these issues in “The Triune Creator.”

Peter Sellick

Ps. For a while there I thought that Daffy Duck was onto something.

All "God"-ideas come from the fear-based ego. "God"-ideas not only reflect the ego itself, but, altogether,"God"-ideas, being mere ideas, reinforce and console the state of ("God"-less) egoity, and, in fact, SUBORDINATE the Real Divine to the ego and the ego's search and purposes (both individually and collectively).

All modes of human "religion" and "science" are systematic patterns of mind that are impulsed to acquire or assimilate all human subjects, in order - by objectifying, naming, categorizing, symbolically representing, and systematically enclosing them - to appropriate, exploit, control, replace, and, ultimately, eviscerate and annihilate them.

All modes of human "religion" are tribal artifacts of the human ego of presumed separate identities, which are used to dominate all subjects, both individual and collective, that are conceived and perceived as threats to collective (and, by implication, individual, and even personal) survival, pleasure, well-being, and independence.

All modes of human "religion" are artifacts of the human ego-effort to protect and extend the local interests of human collectives, by means of IDEA-INVOCATION, wherein and whereby Reality Itself is identified as an opponent, objectified as an other, invoked as an ally, indulged and exploited as a captive, and, at last, desecrated and destroyed as a convicted criminal and victim.

Such is the nature of the UNIVERSAL scapegoat game wherein the middle is systematically, even deliberately killed off. Of which Christianity is the world's most "successful" example.

The search for "knowledge", whether "religious" or secular, is hunter-gatherer behavior, based on the ancient pre-"civilized" brain.
The search for"knowledge" always leads to Scapegoat or object-in-the-middle rituals, in which power is ALWAYS exercised over the "middle" - even to the degree of destroying it.

Which is exactly the situation that Western "civilization" with its drive to obtain power and control over everyone and everything has created.

All "creator"- God religion is a form of pious and essentially childish consumerism - full of posturing, bargain-hunting, haggling, and deceitful practices of all kinds - whereby the separate self, or the client-like ego , whether as an individual or a socially defined cultural collective, seeks to acquire what, from the egoic point of view, is desired, or whatever objectively-defined condition, thing, or state the proprietary "God" can provide to satisfy the wanting and demanding ego itself.

The "religious" form of the consumer ego wants and seeks, as if in a marketplace, what it can beg, take, somehow earn, or otherwise acquire from the presumed storeowning shopkeeper "God".

The consumer ego uses "religious" means to seek and demand what the parent-like "God" can do for the alternately childish and otherwise adolescent ego in the midst of its vulnerable and unsatisfactory conditions of life.

All "religion" is a playful effort to consoleby means of deception - much as parents do with young children (by exercising the facultues of fantasy, until the child grows up, and, inevitably, and rightly, ceases to believe in the nursery stories of childhoods time of nurturing.

The proposing of "religious" myths and illusions has a traditional function in the domain of childhood - but the world of truly and responsibly adult life requires a mature and truly civilized culture, founded in Reality.

The culture of illusionism promoted by "religion" is a culture of make believe, engaged for the purpose of pacifying primitive, or infantile, human emotions, especially the infantile fear of death.

All illusionists voluntarilly and strategically deceive others, and themselves too, on the basis of a culturally ingrained (brainwashed!) acceptance of the principle of the compassion rationalization - such that they are willing and able to believe and act AS IF doing FALSELY is doing GOOD.

All who believe and accept such illusions, volunteer to be thus tricked and deluded. And they do so for their own uninspected, reasons, but, in general, because it makes them feel beeter.

Your "God", DSM, is a construct much like Huygens luminiferous aether, totally unnecessary. The same applied to Bohr's construct that electrons orbit the nucleus, which didn't fit the known and facts about atomic spectra.

In other words, after enough observations, constructs gave way to better theories. That happened to ID/creationism a long time ago.

'To be a sinner is to be 100% God-less.' Daffy Duck, you are 100% wrong. In the absence of god there is no such thing as sin. Ask any atheist. Sin is what props up religions: the concept of sin and forgiveness, as mediated through its clergy, is the source of power in the catholic church. The threat of punishment for sins and the lure of forgiveness is the core of the god business model. If 'sinners' were cast out of their congregations there would be no-one left.