Sacred and Secular

Responses to Life in a Finite World

Donald A. Crosby

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781438486604
  9781438486598
• eBook ISBN:
  9781438486611
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

Explores distinctions between the sacred and the secular in a variety of religious traditions, and proposes ways in which their relationship can be mutually beneficial.

The sacred and the secular-or religion and secularity-differ from one another in many ways, but they must also frequently interact with and can instruct and benefit one another in today's world. This is especially so when neither is reduced to an uninformed distortion or stereotype by the other. Careful analysis of their relationships is needed. Such analysis is especially important in the contemporary world, where the two are being challenged, reshaped, and reformed by the sheer number of changing religious and secular perspectives-all of this taking place within the ferment of an increasingly global society. This book explores past and present ways of distinguishing the two with which Donald A. Crosby either takes issue with or finds to be congenial. It also proposes ways in which the two are not only meaningfully distinguished from one another, but also where their mutually beneficial relationships can be highlighted. A particular conception of the nature of religious faith is compared and contrasted with some influential types of secular faith.

Chapter One

Finite Earthly Time

We can … describe religious and secular faith as two different motivational structures. If I am motivated by religious faith, the goal of my striving is to rest in peace. I may never achieve such peace, but if my desire were fulfilled I would be free from all care. My ultimate concern is to have no concern.

In contrast, if I am motivated by secular faith, being concerned is part of what I strive for. Even if my desires were absolutely fulfilled—even if I lived in the midst of an achieved social justice, blissfully happy with my beloved, and with my work flourishing—I would still be concerned, since everything I care for must be sustained over time and will be lost. Moreover, the risk of loss is why I care, why it matters to me what happens, and why I am compelled to remain faithful.

—Martin Hägglund (2019: 77)

I argued in a previous book (2011) that there are two major types of faith, namely, religious and secular faith. I developed there a theory of the nature of faith, showing how faith thus described can have religious and secular forms. It is wrong, therefore, to identify faith or communities of faith solely with religious outlooks and commitments. The present book is dedicated to further analysis of the two kinds of faith and of their relationships. Such analysis is required because the natures of the two and their interrelations are often, in my view, mischaracterized and misconceived. Overlaps of the two, I shall argue, are important and revealing, not just the differences between them. The two kinds of faith can have shared beliefs, values, and commitments despite their differences. But the essential differences also need to be made as clear as possible.

I shall in due course in this book explicate and defend a religious view of the world that owes much to present-day secular culture in its many manifestations and that is in many ways deeply indebted to the natural sciences while not being uncritically bound to or reducible to them. In doing so, I shall show why a view of the world that may be judged in many of its respects as exclusively secular can in fact be avowedly and distinctively religious. The pivot point of this claim, and of the arguments on its behalf, is the crucial concept of the sacred. The term sacred is employed in various ways in secular discourse, as I shall readily acknowledge, but I also argue for its profound specifically religious meanings and for the central place of these meanings in religious visions of the world.

The focus of this chapter is on the relations of secular and religious faiths to the finitude, risks, and uncertainties of our lives in time—lives that begin with the dates of our births and end in the dates of our deaths. In the epigraph to this chapter, Swedish scholar Martin Hägglund, professor of comparative literature at Yale University, draws the distinction between secular and religious forms of faith entirely on the basis of their different ways of responding to time.

Secular faith, he argues, affirms the finitude of time, with all of its threats and dangers, and with its ultimate end in death, because only in the face of such finitude is there reason to care about anything or anyone. All kinds of religious faith, in contrast, at least by his reckoning, have as their ultimate goal escape from temporal existence and release from the often anxiously demanding and fretful care that is the necessary accompaniment of life in time. For secular faith, a life without care would be pointless and absurd, while for religious faith, an individual life without care is the ultimate goal. According to Hägglund, a life without care, a life of total immunization against the conditions, threats, responsibilities, and concerns of finite temporal existence, would be no life at all. Without awareness of impending death, life would lose its sense of urgency and responsibility. With the prospect of a future of endless tomorrows, we would be lulled into complacency and seduced into putting off indefinitely the performance of difficult choices and actions (2019: 12–13).

Thus secular faith resolutely affirms the finitude of time and of life in time, while religious faith passionately hopes for blissful release from the ravages and cares of time. This is Hägglund’s way of drawing the fundamental distinction between what it means to live with secular faith as opposed to a life guided by religious faith. He is no friend to religious faith understood in this manner. He is convinced that no thoughtful person should be either. Finite life in finite time, life that stretches between the alpha and omega of birth and death and is subject to the challenges, gifts, burdens, and vicissitudes of time should be welcomed rather than deplored.

For Hägglund, this is the gist of the secular outlook and creed—a creed that courageously accepts and affirms the opportunities and constraints, the joys and sorrows, the gains and losses, of temporal existence. A life freed from the burdens of time is for him no life at all. It is therefore futile to strive or hope for such a “life,” here on earth, as in the quest for nirvana (51–52), or beyond the grave. Life without care, immortal existence without risk, need, or concern, is for Hägglund anything but a desirable goal. The idea of it is a contradiction, an implicit rejection of life itself. Religious people may unthinkingly yearn for it, but secular people see it for what it is, a will-o’-the-wisp without form or substance.

As he puts the matter in this chapter’s epigraph, “the risk of loss is why I care, why it matters to me what happens, and why I am compelled to remain faithful.” Without the risk of loss, without the fervent hope of desirable things being “sustained over time” in the face of the uncertainties of life in time, there would be no point or purpose in caring. Everything would then be timelessly or everlastingly what it is with no prospect of death or deleterious change, meaning that there would be no need or use for my efforts or strivings or for those of anyone else. There is nothing to be concerned about, nothing that requires timely attention or care. My decisions and actions are in this way superfluous.

This scenario is for Hägglund the direct opposite of a meaningful life and, indeed, of life as such. Those who aspire toward timeless eternity, absence of care, and final rest as the ultimate goal of life on earth—and for him, this group encompasses all persons of religious rather than secular persuasion—suffer from a grave delusion. They yearn for a personal existence beyond their deaths that is freed at last from the yoke of time. But they fail to notice that timeless or endless “life”—when properly analyzed—is not only the negation of all possibility of leading a purposeful life; it is also indistinguishable from total annihilation or death.

I am in full agreement with Hägglund’s argument in two respects, but I firmly disagree with him in another. I agree that yearning for timeless or endless existence is misguided and futile, and that such existence is a contradictory idea. I shall indicate my own reasons for thinking these two assertions to be true. But I strongly disagree with his notion that it is in the very nature of having a religious outlook on life and the world to aspire ultimately toward a timeless afterlife or some other kind of deliverance from temporal existence. I grant that many religious people and traditions do give prominent voice to such an aspiration, but I reject Hägglund’s claim that all religious persons and traditions do so or must do so in virtue of their being religious. To draw the distinction between secular and the religious kinds of faith on this basis is a mistake that suffers from too narrow an understanding of religion and too simplistic a conception of the relations between secular and religious stances.

I want to examine further and defend Hägglund’s commendable idea that not only is timeless life wholly undesirable, but that there is no possibility of there being any such thing. It is therefore futile to yearn for and aspire toward an imagined timeless life. I shall defend this case on these two fronts. First, such existence is not even desirable, not something to be intelligently sought for as the chief aim of life. Second, even if it were desirable, it is not really possible or conceivable.

Then, third, I shall take issue, among other things, with Hägglund’s contention that it is in the nature of all types of religious faith that they zealously seek for some kind of ultimate release from finite time, a risk-free, carefree mode of existence, whereas secular faith by its nature accepts and affirms the cares and concerns of finite temporal life. This way of distinguishing secular from religious faith—the central concern of the present book—must be rejected, and for compelling reasons.

Finally, I shall argue in a fourth section that belief in everlasting life or life without impending death—as distinguished from timeless life—is also untenable. But, again, I do not think that commitment either to timeless or everlasting existence marks a decisive dividing line between religious and secular forms of faith.

Undesirability of Timeless Life

We sometimes, and especially in times of great sorrow or stress, dream of becoming immune to the demands of life in time—of entering into some kind of completely restful, peaceful, undisturbed, and forever imperturbable state. But as Hägglund warns us, to wish for such a state is the height of folly. I want here to develop reasons supplemental to his for drawing this conclusion. There is no past or future in an eternal or timeless state. We could not reflect on the past and draw lessons from it concerning our actions in the present. There would be no malleable present with which to respond to the influences of the past. There would be no future for us to look forward to and plan for, and no undesirable aspects of an envisioned future for us to seek to avoid.

With no future, there would be no role for hope. In his best-selling and frequently reprinted book Man’s Search for Meaning, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl emphasizes the prominence of the possibility of hope for the grievously suffering and inhumanely treated inmates of the concentration camps of Hitler’s Germany—among whom he was one—and for human beings in general:

Any attempt at fighting the camp’s psychopathological influence on the prisoner by psychotherapeutic or psychohygienic methods had to aim at giving him inner strength by pointing out to him a future goal to which he could look forward. Instinctively, some of the prisoners attempted to find one on their own. It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future. … And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task. (2006: 72–73)

A so-called timeless life offers no prospect of hope or of the striving toward the possibilities of an envisioned future that is essential to sane and healthy human life.

Also, with no future there would be no possibility of future-oriented, genuinely free decisions and actions. Not only would free acts be impossible in the absence of an open future, but there would be no way for us to make any difference by means of such actions. Freedom requires a future amenable to change, and a timeless realm is a fixed realm, impervious to change. We can hope to contribute to the betterment of the world only if aspects of it still need improvement, and only if we are free. But if it is already timelessly perfect, then our actions can make no difference. So decisions of any kind would not only be unintelligible but ineffectual even if they were somehow possible, that is, they would be unable to bring about any kind of change in a changeless world. In other words, we humans could have no autonomy, responsibility, use, or beckoning goals in a timeless state of being. Not only would our putative acts have no consequences, but they would no longer be available to us because acting takes time. Thus, there could be no such thing as purposive striving or ongoing development of our personal characters and contributions. We would be frozen solid in an unchanging and changeless present.

At another place in his book, Frankl observes that “mental health is based on a certain degree of tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being.” This tension is nothing other than the human being’s “will to meaning” (as Frankl terms it), and he cannot conceive of a healthy human life without either its latent or its developing presence (104–5). In a timeless world, such searching and striving toward the future for personal realization of existential meaning and value could not exist.

We would, in effect, lose our individuality and integrity in a timeless state of being. We could no longer be the unique, particular persons we were on earth. It would therefore not be we humans plaintively imagined to survive and thrive in a timeless state but—if at all—some phantasmagoric shade of our past existence. To strive for such a timelessness and absence of care and concern in the future would be foolishly to wish to trade challenging, meaningful adventure for bland, supine safety, the safety of nonentity, inaction, and lack of hope for anything different from what already is and must unchangeably and everlastingly be. Such a static state, even if possible, would be one of unbearable tedium, a condition stripped of any desirable reason for continuing to exist. It would thus be pointless and absurd. To long for ultimate escape from time is to mistakenly long for the annihilation of the integrity and meaning of our earthly personhood, not, as we might imagine, for a fullness and completion of our true being.

Thus Hägglund is entirely right to dismiss such yearning as a desirable goal and to be deeply critical of religious outlooks that hold up such a goal as humanity’s ultimate aspiration and destiny. I agree with him entirely in this respect and have mounted a similar critique of one prevalent religious conception of an imagined perfect world and blissful afterlife in my book Living with Ambiguity (2008: 25–32). A supposed timeless heaven or nontemporal state of being is in fact an ominous vision of hell, a forfeiting of all that can give point and significance to human life. It is implicitly a rejection of life itself.

The conception of it, when subjected to unblinking analysis, turns out to be a kind of gross, pervasive, thoughtless nihilism—hardly something to be ardently sought for and desired. But I shall contend in the third section of this chapter that this conception does not constitute the dividing line between religious and secular visions of life—as Hägglund believes—because it is not true that all religious outlooks are necessarily committed to it as the ultimate aim of human life. I shall argue that it is not in the very nature of religion as such to do so. Some religious stances closely match his portrayal, to be sure, and he shows this to be the case by extensive and intriguing analysis of the thought of notable religious thinkers such as Saint Augustine and Søren Kierkegaard. He cites the Buddhist goal of nirvana as another case in point. But not all religions or religious persons yearn for some sort of ultimate timeless state or must do so in order to be truly and fully religious. Hägglund confuses a part with a whole of which it is only a part.

He thinks that religious faith, in order to address the real requirements and needs of life in the temporal world, and in order to expose and fight effectively against the many bastions of social injustice,” must be converted into secular faith and be devoted to social justice as an end in itself” (2019: 332; my italics). This statement exposes a far too narrow understanding of the history of religions—erroneously seeing all religions and all versions of particular religious traditions as revolving around the goal of ultimate timeless existence as the sole end in itself—and a far too broad understanding of what it means to have a secular kind of faith, as if only secular faith fervently concerns itself with social justice as an inherently important end. I shall defend this analysis in the third section of this chapter, but now I want to show that the goal of ultimate timeless existence is not only a thoroughly undesirable but also an impossible and thus a delusionary goal.

Illusion of Ultimate Timeless Existence

I argued at length in a recently published book (2020) that time is primordial, meaning that it is not reducible to something more fundamental than itself, it cannot have an absolute beginning or ending, nor can there be some realm of existence of any kind that is outside of time or immune to the effects of time. I argued further that varying rates of change in different inertial frames are not identical with what underlies those changes and is presupposed by them, namely, time itself. Hence, what is measured by differing rates of change is not reducible to them. Moreover, the history of the universe and of the earth is commonly marked by specific dates, and these tacitly acknowledge a nonrelative temporal sequence of events applicable to the universe as a whole. There are agreed-on probable dates among scientists for the Big Bang, for example, another for the beginning of cosmic inflation, one for the beginning of the formation of stars, one for the origin of the solar system, and one for the beginning of life on earth. A universal passage of time is in this way thought to be essential to an emergent and ever-emerging universe such as ours demonstrably is.

By all the available evidence, existent being as such is becoming and changing. There is no such thing as static existence anywhere or anywhen. I contend in the 2020 book that arguments for the denial of the ultimate reality of time set forth by many contemporary physicists fail to be plausible for telling reasons, including those of inconsistency with the qualitative, time-saturated character of everyday firsthand human experience, due recognition of the mistake of interpreting time as a creature of change instead of correctly seeing change as presupposing time, and the coming into being and passing out of being of everything that we encounter on every hand and that affects all existing creatures and things without exception. The “without exception” includes the physicists themselves, who in the fullness of time are born, mature, grow old, and die, as well as philosophers and others who presume to deny the ultimate reality of time. The blend of varying degrees of continuity and novelty essential to the nature of time is essential to all that exists in time, and this means everything that can properly be said to exist.

Restless volatility and ceaseless process mark the quantum realm as it is currently portrayed and whose mysteries are at least partially understood by today’s physicists, and it ultimately characterizes everything on earth as well as everything in the farthest regions of intergalactic space, as each of these regions is currently described by such sciences as those of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Finite Earthly Time
• Chapter 2 Fallible Human Knowledge
• Chapter 3 Science, Secularity, and Religio
• Chapter 4 Ambiguities of Nature
• Chapter 5 An Urgent Common Cause
• Chapter 6 Characterizing Religion
• Chapter 7 Reconciling the Sacred with the Secular
• Chapter 8 Western Theism and Ontological Sacredness
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• Back Cover