The current issue of Cathedral Age, the magazine of Washington’s National Cathedral, has interviews with Barack Obama and Mitt Romney addressing the subject of faith and public life. The questions are not hard and the answers mostly anodyne. Here’s an example:
CA: How do you view the role of faith in public life?
President Obama: There are many ways to approach this question, but two clear aspects of the role of faith in public life come to mind immediately. First, faith has always provided a moral framework and vocabulary for this country to come to terms with its most pressing challenges. One of the great things about this nation is that it is a place where people from all walks of life can advocate on behalf of their faith and beliefs and be open about what drives and motivates them.
From slavery to the suffrage movement to civil rights, faith—and the moral obligations that derive from our faith—have always helped us to navigate some of our greatest moral challenges with a recognition that there’s something bigger than ourselves: we have obligations that extend beyond our own self-interest. We face big challenges in this country, and we’re coming to the point where we will decide if we’re truly in this together or if each individual ought just to fight for what serves them best. For me, and I think for many other Americans, faith tells us that there is something about this world that ties our interest to the welfare of a child who can’t get the health care they need, or a parent who can’t find work after the plant shut down, or a family going hungry.
Second, faith motivates people to do incredibly compassionate and good work that helps our nation thrive. Now, I’ve been familiar with this for a long time. One of my first jobs was as a community organizer where I was funded by a Catholic Church grant to help families on the South Side of Chicago who were struggling after the local steel plant closed. But I must say this has become even more real to me during my time as president. Through the letters I’ve read from individuals whose faith led them to serve in Joplin or Colorado Springs in the aftermath of a natural disaster, and the work of my faith-based office (which has done incredible work to strengthen partnerships between the federal government and faith-based non-profits to serve those in need), it is more apparent to me now than ever how integral faith is as a motivating factor for so much of what keeps our country moving forward.
Governor Romney: We should acknowledge the Creator, as did the Founders—in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places. Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our Constitution rests.
It’s hard, on this level of generality, to disagree with either answer. Surely, for example, many of us could agree with the President that “faith has always provided a moral framework and vocabulary for this country to come to terms with its most pressing challenges.” To be sure, we’d likely disagree about how that faith leads us to particular policy proposals, not to mention a general conception of the role of government in dealing with those challenges. Thus, for example, Mitt Romney cites Matthew 25:35-36 as his favorite passage from Scripture, but surely doesn’t take it to mean what someone like Jim Wallis would take it to mean. For Romney, it’s in the first instance a call to personal charity. For adherents of the Social Gospel, it’s a call to the creation of an effective welfare state.
Of course, if I wanted to picky and prickly, I could raise the following question about the President’s very wordy answer. Once again, the President:
From slavery to the suffrage movement to civil rights, faith—and the moral obligations that derive from our faith—have always helped us to navigate some of our greatest moral challenges with a recognition that there’s something bigger than ourselves: we have obligations that extend beyond our own self-interest.
How, I might ask the President, does someone who lacks faith come to such a recognition and to such obligations? Are we left with contingent communities of sympathy, identity, and solidarity that have to be constructed by those who happen to have power and influence (which communities, by the way, often exclude as well as include)? Or do we appeal to self-interest rightly understood, itself on the one hand not altogether rational or on the other not altogether persuasive?
If I wanted to be difficult, there are other questions I could ask about this and other elements of the interview, but (for the moment) I’ll leave it at that.
August 28th, 2012 | 12:20 pm
I pray that the LDS will come to conform their official theology to align with their general practice. Romney’s statement is a good example. He uses the term “Creator”. Which is good, but strictly speaking, Mormon teaching is that god is a mere re-arranger of pre existing matter, and hence not a Creator in the Judeo-Christian sense. May Mormons come to regard that which they love and worship as an All powerful, Eternal, Being, upon which all things depend, and Who has no beginning or end, Who’s atonement is complete and “finished”. Grant this Lord. Amen.
August 28th, 2012 | 12:46 pm
Which is good, but strictly speaking, Mormon teaching is that god is a mere re-arranger of pre existing matter, and hence not a Creator in the Judeo-Christian sense.
Pastor Spomer,
Isn’t that consistent with the Biblical account of creation? “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth— and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters . . . ” Clearly water and wind existed prior to God’s creation. Also, darkness existed. This was not creation ex nihilo.
August 28th, 2012 | 1:43 pm
Isn’t that consistent with the Biblical account of creation? “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth— and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters . . . ” Clearly water and wind existed prior to God’s creation. Also, darkness existed. This was not creation ex nihilo.
Dear David,
But please look again at the text which you quote. First, God created the heavens and the earth which were initially ‘without form and shape’. Then He begins to impose order. If water and wind existed prior to God, then we should not worship him, because he would not be God. We would need to continue our search for whatever the ultimate source of all things is. Fortunately, the true Creator has drawn near us-
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. Acts 17:24-25
For by him ALL THINGS were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1:16-17
And
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him ALL THINGS were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. John 1:1-3
I’m not suggesting that you believe that God is less, but that He is more, that His is omnipotent, that in principle, there is no conceivable rival to His power. This understanding of God is essential to the various proofs saints offer to His existence, such as Paul in Acts 17 and Descartes in his axiom that God is that of which nothing greater can be conceived.
God bless
August 28th, 2012 | 2:47 pm
Pastor Spooner,
The New American Bible says of the opening verses of Genesis:
The translation of the opening lines of Genesis from the Jewish Publication Society Study Bible is as follows:
A note to verse 2 says:
Both the New American Bible and the JPS Study Bible thus agree that when creation began, something already existed. I think it makes sense to say that in the account in Genesis, God does not create (or at least not create everything) ex nihilo. He brings order out of chaos.
August 28th, 2012 | 4:56 pm
David,
Very well for the moment, let us set aside exegesis. If what you say is correct. Then there is no God. This creature, whatever one calls it, took existing matter and rearranged it. You and I do this, and we are not God. This creature may have done it on a larger scale, but that is still finite with all of finitudes’ limitations. There are many such beings rearranging matter. I will worship none of them. Some of these beings may be unknown to that this creature. They may overcome him, as decay and entropy, or bad fortune overcomes every other finite thing which we’ve ever known. Since this god has changed over time, he could be changing still. Our experience of finite things indicate that time will make him worse, and weaker, not better.
If something is going to be a religion worthy of the name, it must address and account for the ultimate things, if I may, the First Things. Where did everything come from? What is there? Where is it going? If an answer to these questions is finite, then it is not an answer, and we must keep looking.
God bless
August 28th, 2012 | 6:50 pm
Pastor Spooner,
The Anchor Bible volume Genesis translates the opening lines as follows:
The editor, E. A. Speiser, points out the following:
In Volume I of the Schocken Bible, Everett Fox translates the opening lines of Genesis as follows:
The note for verse 2 is as follows:
If what you say is correct. Then there is no God. This creature, whatever one calls it, took existing matter and rearranged it.
I hardly think that the existence of God depends on Genesis saying God created the world (universe) from nothing.
August 28th, 2012 | 10:49 pm
While the original post was directed at the role of faith/religion in the public life as seen by both presidential candidates, we have jumped to Mormon teaching and exegesis of the text of Genesis 1.
In terms of Genesis (both Genesis 1 and 2) we need to carefully discern the difference between what is being taught as truth and the vehicle or mode in which the teaching is taught. Both Genesis 2 (the older tradition) and Genesis 1 (the ‘newer’ tradition use commonly held versions of ‘the beginning’ in their historical and cultural setting: First Millenium BC Palestine: [Genesis 2] and 6th century BC Babylon [Genesis 1]
More importantly however is the real difference between a god who or ‘brings order out of chaos’ or the God Who creates everything [heaven and earth; visible and invisible] ex nihilo.
This harkens back to the centuries old ‘debate’ on “God”. According to one vision, God is the Supreme Being, the Supreme example of “being” of which everything else that exists also shares. IN other words He is the Supreme Being among beings [He would thus 'refashion' pre-existing 'stuff' or 'bring order out of chaos'.
According to the other vision of God, God is 'above every other Name' [Philippians 2], “In Whom we live and move and have our being” [Acts 17] “greater than which one cannot conceive’ {Anselm] ‘the pure act of ‘to-be’ [Aquinas] God is and we can only approach Him through analogy. In this vision God needs nothing from anything or anyone. He acts in pure giving [ex nihilo]. Creation is love in action, rather than some form of ‘subduing chaos’ which is ultimately an act of violence.
If God is perceived to be a threat to creation and to our freedom, as was thought over the centuries, than ‘the role of faith/religion’ in a society would need to be proscribed or ‘limited’ However, if God’s act of creation is ‘ex nihilo’, an act of love (gift) then He is the Source not only of creation itself, but its beautiful order and our freedom as well. In this case, faith/religion would not be seen as a threat to the culture and political order but its enhancement etc.
August 29th, 2012 | 10:01 am
Botolph,
This may be heresy to some, but it seems to me that what is at stake is the meaning of the opening lines of Genesis, not the nature of God or of creation. If, in the cosmology of the time, “chaos” was thought of as the absence of “something,” then God bringing order out of chaos is the act of an Almighty Creator, not the act of something less than a God who can create ex nihilo.
The point of Genesis is that God created the heavens and the earth. The question of exactly how he did it is not the point of Genesis. Most Christians accept that Genesis is not a literal account of creation. God creates light on the first day, but doesn’t create the sun, moon, and stars until the fourth day. Where was the light coming on the first day? How were there days before the creation of the sun, since a day is defined by earth’s rotation and the apparent position of the sun in the sky?
Genesis is an account of the creation of the world couched in terms of the cosmology of the Ancient Near East. It isn’t a scientific account.
August 29th, 2012 | 4:15 pm
You then agree with what I wrote concerning the cosmology of the times. However I still ask, how is this question of the exegesis of Genesis 1.1 pertinent to the question of the essay?
August 29th, 2012 | 5:57 pm
Botolph,
Pastor Spomor, in the first comment, said the following:
I was commenting on his comment, not on the article itself.
By the way, apologies to Pastor Spomer for calling him Pastor Spooner several times.
August 30th, 2012 | 5:11 pm
That’s OK Dave. I get a lot of that, it’s a strange name.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact