Psychology & The Cross

(0:00) Donald Carveth: Maybe it’s just my naivete, but I feel thankful that I’m spared having to deal with these difficult theological metaphysical concepts, because there’s a fundamental sense in which I do not believe in God. If God is love, I believe in love. But the idea of an omnipotent God, some kind of supernatural God, some kind of creator God—I have no relationship with that at all. I don’t understand it. I don’t feel the need for it. And so I’m left with a religion of love and I’m left with a religion of sacrifice, the man, the Christ on the cross, the sacrificial element. Human beings, we live in this culture of narcissism. Nobody understands that it is necessary for people to sacrifice. Of course we have to distinguish masochistic sacrifice from creative sacrifice. But I find it surprising that, say, I could be in such agreement with you on so many levels, Sean, but I think you and I have this radical difference in that I just have no use for concepts of a creator-omnipotent God who acts as a person acts. I can’t relate to this at all. I find it surprising there can be so much agreement. I feel—I feel very in sync with the Christian tradition in so many ways. And to a point that either Jakob or you made earlier, about the need of the Christian tradition for psychoanalysis, completely: It’s psychoanalysis that brought me back to my Christian roots. And it was in the course of analysis, and the analysis of my dreams, that I recovered my connection to Christianity. So certainly I agree with that.

(1:54) Sean McGrath: Well, you’ve drawn us into completely different terrain there, Don.
I wonder if I’ll succumb to the temptation to take it up, or stay on safer ground talking about Jung and God sending the devil.

(2:08) Donald Carveth: Well, maybe we could reserve this one for another time, maybe.

(2:10) Sean McGrath: But I don’t mind saying something quickly, that I can agree with you that God doesn’t exist. And yet I believe in him.

(2:21) Donald Carveth: Mmm-hmm.

(2:24) Sean McGrath: So lately, I’ve been reading a lot of Buddhism. Particularly Shin Buddhism. And there’s a concept in Shin Buddhism that I’ve really—I’ve really grown to like, very much. And it’s the concept of provisional names. The Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, generally speaking, regards everything to be empty of self and therefore any names that we attach to things are somehow arbitrary, because there is no, you know, there is no separate entity that corresponds to the name. And it’s these names which create this discriminating consciousness which becomes attached to things in the wrong way and stands deluded and outside of the light, so to speak. And so dropping the names is kind of the key, but in the Shin tradition, they sort of went a step further, and they said, well, yes, that’s entirely true, but we still need provisional names. And so that means we need to be able to name things, while recognizing the inadequacy of our names, the inadequacy of naming.

(3:30) Donald Carveth: Hmmm.

(3:31) Sean McGrath: For me this is very close to the mystical medieval tradition, which is my inspiration, or the tradition of negative theology, that one has to be able to use a term imprecisely. It’s like a precise—precise—deployment of an inadequate term. It’s actually what we do when we’re doing other kinds of indirect statements—it’s like when using metaphors in poetry or speaking indirectly in the Zen kōan or something. It’s a very precise deployment of a vague term. And for me, that is what we—that is—God is a superb example of this, this kind of provisional name. It’s entirely inadequate to what we’re naming. And so too is love, by the way.

(4:14) Donald Carveth: Well, the Jews write God “G-D,” right? I mean it’s always appealed to me for that reason.

(4:22) Sean McGrath: Exactly. Yes, the Jews are—the Jewish tradition is, you know, from the get-go, [it] forbids any kind of speculative effort to control this terrain to render it knowledge. So God is who God says he is, you know, and he’s got a personal name in a certain way, which is like saying, you know, “he’s X” or “he’s Bill.” But, you know, what is he? We don’t know. And this puts this, this continues right into Aquinas. So Aquinas’ five proofs, which are usually trotted out as the height of medieval hubris, if you look at them carefully, at the end of each proof, he says, “and this is what we, this is what most people call God.” And then you read the proofs in conjunction with his doctrine on the divine names. And you find this proposition: “We know that God is; we do not know what God is.” And when we use names of God, we use names in a very strange way. We are actually naming something that we cannot in principle understand. So, I thought, here I’ve found a lot of convergences with different traditions. When we come, we come to this mystery which resists our precise use of language, which is nevertheless not so empty of meaning for us that we could ignore it. You know, like the Buddhists are very interesting in this regard, because of their emptiness, shunyata, and so on, but nothing is more affirmative than this claim that all things are empty of self. It is from there that they find their moral energy and it’s an extremely moral tradition. It’s from there that they find their courage to transcend the darker sides of the Id, and so on.

(6:04) Donald Carveth: Well that’s all compatible with the biblical critique of idolatry.

(6:08) Sean McGrath: That’s right. That’s right.

(6:12) Donald Carveth: That’s very helpful, Sean. That’s quite helpful, thank you.

(6:16) Sean McGrath: But there’s another way in which we sort of make this claim. And maybe this comes back to Jung. To have recognized the provisionality of our names, which is to elevate ourselves above the business of naming, to have to assume this kind of meta-perspective, this metahuman perspective, we transcend the tradition, and we don’t need it anymore, because we have a higher standpoint. And what I’m intrigued by is the critique of that position as hubris. In other words, higher than this meta-perspective is the perspective that says, “I’m stuck with my names and they’re not adequate.”

And therefore, and this is liturgy, right? You go to the liturgy, and your mouth and your ears are filled with all of these symbols, not a single one of which you could properly define. And they carry, they just carry you into the space of the sacred. The liturgy of the mass, for example, it just—it just tears me. For a long time, I tried to live without it. I thought, ah, for heaven’s sakes, I don’t need liturgy. You know? I’m beyond that. And then I realized not too long ago that actually I really do need the liturgy. I think I need to be carried by these symbols into a space that’s beyond me and my reason and my hubris to be able to command this terrain from some kind of safe, rational position.

(7:44) Donald Carveth: Mmm-hmm.

(7:44) Sean McGrath: But I don’t want to just go anywhere. I don’t want to just go nuts. I want to go somewhere, that I want others there too, and not just the people around, but I want the whole democracy of the dead, as Chesterton put it, instead of the oligarchy of those who happen to be walking around.

I want to be carried by the saints, I want to be with Paul and Thomas Aquinas, John of the Cross. I don’t want to be just with the folks around me, and it’s through that [inaudible] of that shared symbol.

(8:11) Donald Carveth: Yeah, you want to be with the right folks who are carrying you in the right direction. You know, it’s possible to have ecstatic experiences by swallowing certain drugs or twirling and doing all kinds of things. But I understand entirely what you’re talking about in terms of the liturgy. I hadn’t been to church in a long time, but we bought a new house. We went to the local church; it was an evensong service. Man, it lifted me right up, but, you know, because it’s being lifted up within the context of the right tradition.

(8:49) Sean McGrath: Yeah, that’s a difficult question. Of course, what tradition is right, and how do we choose, and so on? And that’s a whole other issue. But I think the most important point is that we need to be freed from our rational—[from] surveillance and control of the domain. There’s a kind of ecstasy that we want, and the psilocybin—you know, I gobbled lots of it when I was in my twenties or not, well, teens. And I’m absolutely not interested. I’m very, I’m very happy to hear that people are finally understanding these wonderful plants and how to use them, but I don’t need that kind of mechanical push into a state of transcendence. I’d much prefer to have something that’s new or aligned with my consciousness, my ethical orientation, that’s compatible with my daily life and not a kind of complete rupture from it.

(9:44) Donald Carveth: Right.

(9:45) Sean McGrath: For this reason, I don’t even want a big mystical experience, you know? I’ve been thinking about that. I actually don’t want any big experience. I’d much prefer—I was asked in a class on philosophy and mysticism, by a student, she said, “Have you had a mystical experience?” It was day one of the fall term, right? I had difficulty answering that. Of course, I’ve had experiences in the past, but they’re so trivial, it seems to me. What matters to me is that religion has become a sustaining [German word] as the Germans say, rather than [German word] news. It’s right. It’s just, it’s actually become a pattern of life rather than a momentary disruption of the day-to-day by something that I don’t understand.