Zero Theology

Escaping Belief through Catch-22s

John Tucker

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532675201
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología cristiana

In ZeroTheology, John Tucker argues that not only can one be a Christian without holding any traditional beliefs but that one can only be a Christian by getting out of religious belief altogether. Utilizing the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, John offers a way of escaping the belief/disbelief trap that explains why believers and unbelievers cannot understand each other and why neither understands the alternative religious path that the author promotes. Tucker addresses many of today's most pressing religious questions and introduces his own: Why do evangelicals believe that homosexual fidelity is more harmful to marriage than heterosexual infidelity? Why are believers so bothered by science and so impressed by miracles? What if Sin and Grace are synonyms? What if Jesus is sinless in an ironic way? What is the difference between making judgments and passing judgment? Why does the literal versus metaphorical debate completely miss the point of religious language? Using Catch-22s, ZeroTheology offers a new way of looking at Christian religious life that emphasizes the non-reasonable transcendent choice over the perfectly reasonable choice of belief or unbelief.

Eighth Catch

You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

The Eighth Catch describes the human condition as a tragedy not because our lives are controlled by fate but because our choices preclude the possibility of having the freedom to not cause pain. To see the human condition as a tragedy is to weep like a miraculous religious statue or to feel utterly forsaken by one’s concept of a present and caring God. In ZeroTheology, it is the theologian’s job to put words to the tears and forsakenness rather than trying to convince people that the human condition is not really a tragedy at all.

The Eighth Catch does not promote a comforting theology, but it sets the trap that creates the possibilities of despair and transcendence. It is a descriptive claim that one can affirm regardless of one’s religious proclivities. It is the description to which a theology responds. Before I give a theological response to the grief encountered in this catch, I will first describe why we are trapped within it. To do that I will introduce two concepts that are distinct but related. Those concepts are called relational space and ethical space.

Relational space describes the network or interconnected web that all human beings inhabit. I choose relational space as an analog to Wittgenstein’s logical space because whereas logical space was a way of conceptualizing all possible relationships between propositions and facts in the potential world, relational space refers to all possible relationships between groups and individuals in the interconnected world.45 Ethical space, on the other hand, refers only to those relationships within the interconnected web for which an individual or community feels ethically responsible. This feeling of ethical responsibility refers only to those with whom the individual or community identifies as intentionally impacted by its actions or inactions.

Relational space is characterized by three conditions. The first two are spatial (the space in relational space). The first is radical or small-world interconnectivity. The second is the unpredictability of butterfly effects in systems that are radically interconnected. The third is the opportunity costs of inhabiting such an interconnected and unpredictable network within the limitations of time.

Because it is both intuitive and has been supported by research from people like Stanley Milgram and Mark Granovetter, radical interconnectivity is now commonly accepted, not as prophetic poetry or ethical argument but as sociological fact.46 The connections that tie us together are illustrated in the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, which is an example from what is known as small-world theory. This theory demonstrates that it typically does not require a high number of relationships to connect any two individuals. Each individual is a node in the network of human interconnectivity. Nodes are connected to each other through relationships.

One important implication of the small world of relational space is that individual nodes impact each other in both intentional and unintentional ways. Individual persons or nodes may stand in direct or indirect relationship with each other. Whether a relationship is direct or indirect is determined by whether nodes interact with or without intermediary nodes. This means that while there may be a correlation between close proximity and direct relationship, close proximity and direct relationship are not guaranteed. One individual node may be directly connected to another node on the other side of the world and only indirectly connected to a node across town. This is the way human relationships work.

Presumably, one might have more control in direct relationships. Experience, however, tells us that there is often a gap between intention and consequence even in the most direct relationships. Still, it is easier to conceive of the possibility that directness and control stand in closer relationship than indirectness and control, even if that closer relationship offers no guarantee. In indirect relationships, one is less able to target these less connected nodes with one’s intentions even on those rare occasions when one is aware of which indirect nodes will be impacted. This inability to control the impact of one’s intended actions and how this plays out in the web of relational space is described in what is known as the butterfly effect.

Though based on previous work by Henri Poincaré, the butterfly effect was first introduced by MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz, in a 1972 talk at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science entitled “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”47 The butterfly effect refers to the fact that even the slightest change in initial conditions can lead to significantly different outcomes. The fact that initial conditions in the real world can never be fully accounted for means that we can never be completely confident of any description, much less prediction. It is often thought, incorrectly, that every slight change generates dramatic consequences. Not all slight changes are equal, so some slight differences do not impact complex systems in significant ways. However, in relational space, as in weather patterns, we do not know which slight differences will prove consequential and which will not. For the purposes of ZeroTheology, it is sufficient to accept the fact that any action could impact others in relational space and that the impact could be consequential, though in most cases, we will never know which action led to which consequence. In other words, each moment is a renewed set of initial conditions and each action may impact other nodes anywhere in the network.

That human beings are connected and that individual actions have both intended and unintended consequences on both intended and unintended targets has become what can almost be described as a basic belief where doubt is impossible to imagine. Unless one is a member of a native tribe living in isolation, most people understand the interconnectivity of human relationships. Granted, there are political forces that seek to deny this reality. The emphasis that some place on personal responsibility and isolationism leads them to conclude that we can retreat to a point where our actions do not impact any unintended targets, but even these ideas are reactions against the reality of interconnectivity. They are the ethical arguments of some within a culture wanting to contract or limit the boundaries of ethical space. These arguments have no impact on the descriptive reality of relational space. Even if we could retreat and become like an isolated tribe our actions would still have unintended consequences to both intended and unintended targets within our own tribe.

Because we live in a radically interconnected and unpredictable web of relationships, every action we take incurs opportunity costs. Whenever you choose a particular option, you lose the ability to gain the benefits that could have come from choosing from a host of other options. In economics, opportunity costs are only considered important when one is making a choice between mutually exclusive alternatives. In the dynamic world of small-world interconnectivity and unpredictable butterfly effects, every action incurs opportunity costs. This is because in addition to the complexity of relational space, human beings also exist in time.

I can only spend the next minute in so many ways. Any way I choose to spend that minute precludes the possibility that I could spend it doing other things. It is in the minutes of time that people decide to get married, eat a hot dog, go for a walk, read a book, or visit a friend. All of these decisions incur opportunity costs. All of these decisions could impact others in the interconnected web. Some obviously do so (getting married or visiting a friend). Others potentially do so (going for a walk may mean missing an emergency phone call or cause an automobile accident). Every action, regardless of whether an impact is noted in the actual world, incurs the counterfactual costs of what may have happened had that time been utilized differently. This is to say that while an action I take in the privacy of my own home may play a necessary but insufficient part in a nonlinear causal nexus that leads to some actualized impact elsewhere, it always incurs the counterfactual opportunity costs that come with the limitations of time. I am unable to predict whether my private act will cause an impact in the actual world or not. If it does, I will probably not know what role my private act played in bringing about that impact. Interconnectivity, butterfly effects, and opportunity costs comprise much of what it means to be human. If one is prepared to doubt any of these things, one cannot make any claims about the nature of human relational life.

Because time is the medium in which interconnectivity, butterfly effects, and opportunity costs take place, the present is always a consequence of the past and a precursor of the future. We are who we are, what we are, and where we are because of when we are. Genealogies tell us how we came to be and they accentuate the contingencies of life. If my wife’s father had died of the snakebite he received as a young boy, my wife would not exist and neither would my two children, nor any subsequent generations of the family I have in this timeline. If the movie It’s a Wonderful Life tells us anything, it is that the actions taken or not taken within an individual’s life also have butterfly effects in the lives of others. Therefore, all the butterfly effects resulting from the actions taken or not taken by my wife and children and subsequent family generations would also be erased.

What is not addressed in It’s a Wonderful Life are the negative consequences of George Bailey’s life that would have also been erased along with the positive consequences. Because of the realities of living in relational space, any action one takes results in positive and negative consequences. I allow the driver in the other car to merge in front of me as an act of kindness. That merger plays a necessary but insufficient role in creating a series of events that leads to a fatal accident three miles down the highway. This kind of complex causal chain is beyond doubt. This is why our legal system differentiates between ultimate and proximate causes. The reckless driver, if he were temporarily granted omnipotent hindsight, may offer the reasonable explanation that it was my allowing him to merge that ultimately caused the fatal crash, but our legal system would not justify his subsequent recklessness by blaming the accident on my prior act of politeness.

If we live in a world where positive and negative consequences flow from any action an individual node may or may not take, then we lack absolute freedom. We may have a limited freedom when it comes to intentional choices, but we lack freedom when it comes to controlling the consequences that result from those choices. This is why differing schools of ethics focus on different parts of the process with virtue and deontological ethics focusing on choices while consequentialist ethics focuses on results. Regardless of which ethical theory one prefers, the fact remains that each of us causes unintended pain to others, whether the causal connection is identifiable or not. When we focus on the suffering that human beings cause each other we are focusing on one kind of circumstantial grief. Taking into account that everyone who is born into the network of relational space already participates in the inherited circumstantial griefs caused by prior iterations of the causal web, no person can claim to be immune from the causal inheritance. Once in the system, each person or individual node also causes unintended circumstantial grief to others due to small-world interconnectivity, butterfly effects, and opportunity costs.

In such a world, theology can no longer trivialize sin as the intended unethical actions of individuals. Even though the Hebrew Scriptures occasionally describe unintentional sin (Lev 4–5; Num 15), they still construe it as a morally culpable act that rises to consciousness after the fact rather than as a consequence of inhabiting relational space. When we live in relational space, every action, regardless of intention, causes negative consequences to others. There are no perfect choices for anyone who inhabits relational space.

One distinction between relational and ethic...