The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Michael McClymond on Universalism

Thanks guys. I’m not trying to create suspense here – it’s just hard to know exactly what to say. But here’s a start.

First ‘reality’ - which includes civilisations, societies, and indeed human nature and consciousness – is subject to a process of historical change
Kant‘s view of human nature is that members of the human species always have been and always will be divided/torn between their reason and their animal passions. Following Plato (and also Aristotle in a different way) European philosopher’s before Hegel were interested in talking about the general, the essential, the unchanging. Well Hegel from his examinations of different cultures/ societies and epochs contested this view of human nature as fixed. He pointed out that in ancient Greece – at least prior to the time of Socrates – people were not conscious of the conflict between their desires and their reason in the same way that they are today and that human nature seemed more harmoniums to them (although we should not envy their naïveté – see next post).

Perhaps Heraclitus amongst the Greeks anticipated Hegel and there were three medieval thinkers who anticipated him in their own way when speculating on the three ages of history governed by each person of the Trinity in their processional turn. A sense of the past as radically different from the present had been growing in Western consciousness since the early Florentine Renaissance. But Hegel was the first person to introduce a clear sense of the historical into philosophy. He argued that our ideas are not purely abstract but rather embedded in ways of life that change.
I will give more detail about Hegel’s view of the harmony of Greek society and the drawbacks of this harmony in my next post about dialectic. In the meantime - are there any questions?

I told you - this is not gonna be exciting :laughing:

I see. Not. :laughing: But look forward to elucidation thereof!

Keep me on my toes Dave because I’m out of my depth as you know :smiley: . I can only give you general knowledge answers here. Hegel is hugely abstract in one sense but he doesn’t talk about ideas in terms of unchanging Platonic abstractions. I’ll drop ‘ways of life that change’ for the moment and talk instead about changes in consciousness.

Hegel was a German Idealist – so for him Geist (which means both mind and spirit) is the primary reality. I know he engaged in the normal arguments on this one so I’ll take it as a given and put it beyond my scope - I wont even bother to agree or disagree with him :laughing: .

When Hegel talks of Geist/Mind/Spirit he’s talking about what can be known from human historical experience. He’s not a dogmatic theologian – so he doesn’t speculate about First things and Last things beyond the scope of human history (which is why it is stupid to refer to him as a Christian Universalist). He affirmed that he was an orthodox Lutheran – but as a philosopher he is not concerned with dogmatic revealed theology but rather with human thinking and its history. Confusingly his does use religious language in a poetic way to talk about – but this is only ever to do with what happens within history, not what happens outside of it.

His Geist/Mind Spirit is human consciousness in history, gradually developing from unconsciousness and sates of consciousness in which it is divided against itself into self awareness and freedom in which mind comes to know itself. I think it would be a mistake to conflate Hegel’s Geist with God in transcendence, or with an impersonal pantheistic blob of a God into which we all merge. Rather Geist when fully realised is what emerges in individual minds when they are free – so it is in this sense personal – and it is something that is shared between free minds. In a theological sense Geist is God immanent in creation as Spirit.

If I try and blow away the guff and take away something that little old me can fully grasp here with an example it is… Well take revelation in scripture obviously there is a development in Christina sacred history between the Old and the New Testaments which some like Luther have termed the two fold dispensations of laws and Grace, while others like Joachim of Fiore (and modern dispensationalists) have seen as a threefold dispensation of Law (Father), Grace (Son), and Love (Spirit). One way of looking at these epochs is to say that it is purely God that establishes them and ends them. Another way of looking at these epochs is to say that there is substantial change in human beings in each epoch. Take the example of judgment – in the early books of the Old Testament this falls indiscriminately on whole peoples as the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. After Jeremiah there is a turn - now we are only held accountable for our own individual sins. A Hegelian would see this as evidence of shifts in human awareness to greater awareness. OS here the idea of ‘judgment’ here is not abstract and unchanging - it is embedded in developments in human understanding

Erm – take the wheat and let the chaff be still :laughing:

Even in plain english, it ain’t easy! The quote above - can you tell if he is talking about the individual person’s self-awareness, or does he think it is an Absolute (whatever that means) Mind becoming aware of Itself?

Man, it just makes my head hurt. Next to Facebook, I hate Hegel next. :laughing:

Thanks for the continuing efforts my good man!!

That’s what so horrible about Hegel - I think he probably means both and leaves the way open for those who argue he means neither :laughing: I’ll return to that one after I’ve attempted to discuss dialectic and alienation :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: What fun!

The Dialectical Process

Hegel argues that historical change is fuelled by ‘the dialectical process’ – thesis, antithesis, synthesis (although he does into actually use these specific terms, but rather more exciting and obscure Germanic terms for the same).

Thesis

An example he gives is Ancient Greece. He regarded Athenian culture before Socrates as embodying a simple harmony between reason and animal desire where there was an unquestioning acceptance of the social norms validated by the ‘gods’ (as we find in the tragedies of Aeschylus for example). There was harmony between the individual and the sate because individuals did not conceive of themselves as having any being apart from the collective mandated by the gods.

Antithesis

Along comes Socrates asking questions – ‘What is justice’, What is virtue’, What is good’ etc casting doubt on all of the traditional norms and inviting people to judge for themselves as individuals. Of course he has to die for this (and other figures in the axial age like the Hebrew great prophets one might add) begin a process that eventually leads to the rise of the individual conscience and consciousness.

Synthesis

Hegel sees the rise of the individual consciousness - the antithesis of the thesis of original collective harmony - reaching its peak in the Reformation, especially in Luther. But this stage proves unstable also and leads to the destruction and terror of the French Revolution. Hegel was hopeful of the signs in his day of a new synthesis that would combine collective harmony with the individual conscience through the development of institutions that could successfully validate both and negotiate between both. In the synthesis rather than destroying each other the thesis and antithesis are absorbed into the synthesis. Hegel called the synthesis the ‘negation of negations’ (the double negative that yields a positive). I think Dr McClymond actually says ‘ the negation of negations’ referring to Hegel’s view of the atonement.

Any questions? – and I didn’t say it was interesting :smiley:

Oh but it IS interesting Dick!! That dialectical method is, according to Francis Schaeffer, the reason why one generation (boomers) could not understand their children. The kids think dialectically, the parents do not. Now we all do, and we don’t really recognize it - there is no Truth for modern man, just truth. All is relative. And, I might add, etc. :smiley:
That may be much of the reason there is so much animosity toward the bible - a fixed, steady authority just cannot be tolerated - the truth is MY truth or it is not truth at all - more a European thing, I get the impression, than American, or should I say more explicitly expressed by Europeans.

Anyhow, this is your gig and I’m enjoying it, thank you.

Hmmmmm…

Was Francis Schaeffer right Dave? He was a hard biblical fundamentalist – so respect for the bible meant insistence on the absolute literal authority of the Bible mediated by Reformed orthodoxy.

I remember him blaming this shift to which you refer on Hegel in ‘The God Who is There’. Once upon a time , he was writing in the sixties and he was talking about the 1930’s – in America people would have absolute disagreements with each other particularly over religion – but these days people say ‘well I can see a little bit in what you are saying and I respect your right to differ from me etc.’ Hmmm – well I think he’d lived his life in a subculture – honourable disagreement has a long history In America certainly, and in my country the Church of England is based on it. The idea that there are absolutes but we fallible human beings only grasp the absolute in part –including our view of the bible – goes back a long way. It is present in Erasmus long before Hegel.

The ‘can’t be bothered’ relativism of which he seems to be speaking is something rather different I think. Has Hegel really been that influential in the USA - even at a high cultural level percolating downwards - with its tradition of philosophic pragmatism and its general abhorrence at continental baroque philosophising (an abhorrence I have sympathy for)?

I’m not sure that Hegel’s dialectic is the same as relativism. He talks about emergent, dynamic truth But the truth is still truly truthful, it just happens to manifest itself in a process rather than being encoded in a set of cast iron propositional truths (which is what Francis Schaeffer thought and he actually disowned his son in law for taking a less fundamentalist though still very conservative view of the Bible.

Yeah I think Schaeffer was right, Dick. His distinction between Truth and truth is a valid one and can be traced, though not in those words, in the history of philosophical thought, and least in what I have read. The seeds for Hegel were always hanging around, but since he developed the idea most fully, there has been a change of consciousness in the world.

Yes, but that’s just because of the ongoing dialectical process…right? :smiley:

Doubtful imo.

Oh, Dave…I think the cat in your Avatar just said that! :laughing:

What I’d say Dave is that -

‘Truth’ to Francis Schaffer meant propositional, literalistic/inerrant understanding of the revealed truth of the Bible. If that in any way is questioned our entire criterion for Truth falls apart because we have to assume this to have any confidence in knowing anything truthful. He wouldn’t approve of your view of how to interpret the Bible properly according to Channing’s methods. That in itself would be ‘relativistic; to Schaeffer, as would universalism.

I think there has been a change in the consciousness of Western civilisation since the early renaissance – that is a heightened consciousness of ‘change through time’. In the Middle Ages it was generally thought that people in the past were pretty much the same as they were in the medieval present. That King David was a feudal monarch for example. There is a shed load of evidence for this. Then in the Renaissance and Reformation this falls apart. Lots of reasons for this - partly the rapid pace of social change as the old absolutist monarchies fall to bits and the monarchical authority of the Catholic Church comes into question. Also because of Reformation and Christian Humanists scholarship – the urge for Reform leads to a re-assessment of the earlier sources and a close look at the Church Fathers and the original texts of the Bible which lead to a heightened awareness of historical difference. And there is a new movement towards intellectual freedom and the individual rights of human beings – and awareness that this is a new departure. Hegel in his convoluted way was just trying to make sense of this in retrospect.

:laughing: :laughing: :laughing: (for Steve)

Schaeffer was not wrong about EVERYTHING, ok? :laughing: He had a pretty good grasp of the history of philosophy, much more so, than say, Jack Lewis, and there was much more to the man than the ‘fundie’ part. He’s not a hero of mine or anything, he’s not my mentor, but I respect his learning and many of his opinions.

Anyway, I’m sorry to have run us off the tracks here - we have a disagreement, I think, on the nature of Truth and all that ‘heavy’ stuff - but maybe we can get into that some other time? I’m much more interested in your production on the topic at hand. :smiley:

OK- here goes:

The Unhappy Consciousness and the Atonement

One of the chief maladies of human beings as consciousness develops is a state that Hegel terms ‘the unhappy consciousnesses’. This is an internally divided state of mind and a form of inner servitude that robs the individual of their self confidence and inner freedom. For Hegel consciousness is relational – we only become self conscious through our awareness another– who can either affirm or worth or deny our worth. This played out in history in societies of masters and slaves – where both are dependent on each other but neither can validate the worth of the other – a state of affairs that will always be unstable given the basic drive for individual worth in each of us. But it is also an internal state in which a person is divided against themselves. And in this state they will see God – however God is conceived in their culture – as a divine despot; an alienated being set over and against them undermining their self confidence and desire for freedom and ability to question the given order – however unjust it may be.

Hegel understands the origins of Christian faith in the Incarnation as a remedy for the unhappy conociuness – even if conventional Christianity has often become an incubator for the unhappy consciousness… I quote from Andrew Shanks now (because I’m lazy) -

(Andrew Shanks, ‘Anglicanism Reimagined’ pp. 60-61)

This is getting me close to what Dr McClymond says about Hegel (at last :laughing: )

Hegel talks of an immanent Trinitarian movement within history – a dialectic of the spirit. In the incarnation, on cross, and in resurrection the Father and the Son are reconciled (at least humanly speaking – what Hegel seems to me to be talking about is a healing/atonement that takes place within human consciousness) God was never a divine despot – but that falsehood is overcome in the Christ event which is a negation of negations of divine transcendence as the spirit is poured out as God indwelling each human being - or something a bit like that.

I leave aside whether or not this is good theology, or perverse obscurity (and I’m not a great fan of Hegel by the way). I’ve taken you on this journey to assess the question – what has this got to do with Christian universalism and why is Dr McClymond so interested in drawing this link with Hegel? The simple answer is – because it is defamatory by feeding into prejudices – but I will try and give a more complete answer.
I’m glad that it is over with - the rest should be a lot easier for me at least.

By Jove, well done!! :smiley:

(I’ve never actually said “By Jove” out loud in conversation, but I’ve been reading Sherlock Holmes recently)

Nice, Dick…that mostly made sense to me, i think!

Thanks chaps :smiley: - my brain hurts (by Jove old beans) :laughing: But I will complete this one when I’ve some time :slight_smile: