III THE CONTEMPORARY EXPERIENCE OF THE DIVINE

To many contemporary theologians as well as others interested in understanding the religious dimension in life, the question 'Can common human experience lead to religious language?' is simply an empirical statement of a much deeper question, namely, 'Is God related to the world?' (6) If God is not related to the world, then the religious dimension in man's life makes little sense in the context of authentic existence. But the Christian believes that God clearly related himself to the world in the person of Jesus Christ and therefore the Christian cannot believe that given the whole content of the Christian message, this was a once and for all event. On the contrary the Christian believes that the relation of God to the world is constantly present and therefore that common human experience of necessity will lead to a recognition of that expression in religious language.(7) Therefore, the Christian puts forth his logical paradigm 'If A, then B' in the statement ‘If there is common human experience, then there will be religious language.’ And it is this proposition that he must subject to the scrutiny of the analytic tradition of philosophy because above all the Christian holds this proposition to be meaningful in the context of the real world.(8)

Three theologians will be used to illustrate this point. The first, Langdon Gilkey, is a Protestant theologian in the tradition of process thought. His basic experience is in the American cultural context. The second, Karl Rahner, is a Catholic theologian well-known to anyone with even a slight knowledge of theology in the contemporary Catholic context. His basic experience is in the European cultural context. The third, Chu Mei-Fen, is a Chinese Catholic theologian profoundly interested in the thought of Mao Tsetung. Although her theological education was received in the United States where she was strongly influenced by process thought, her basic experience is in the Oriental cultural context.

IV THE THEOLOGIANS' POSITIONS

Langdon Gilkey's reflecting man is the average intelligent American. When he reflects upon himself as a person, he sees that he is faced with choices and decisions he must make concerning his life. And yet these choices and decisions cannot be made in a vacuum; he must have some referent, some model after which he can pattern himself. Without this a responsible decision process is impossible. Because of this, he sees that he is not free to escape norms and values entirely, since implicit in any decision is a necessary, an ultimate to which he must refer his actions－some goal that he must have if he is to choose what kind of a person he wants to become. Next, his experience forces upon him the realization that even though he chooses what kind of a person he wants to become, he has a good deal of difficulty in incarnating his model into his life. In short, the model seems to refuse incarnation into his life and so he comes into contact with a dimension of ultimacy over which he does not have complete control. There is indeed a gap between the way he lives and the way he thinks, the dimension of ultimacy which he chooses and the dimension of ultimacy which he practices. When he expresses these insights vocally, he has entered the realm of religious language.(9)

For Langdon Gilkey, religious language is simply ordinary language, but ordinary language used in an unusual way. The unusual use is its referent to the ultimate, the unconditioned, in short the necessary in our lives rather than the finite, the contingent, the transient to which our language ordinarily refers. Thus, religious language looked at in itself has three distinctive features by which it can be distinguished from other types of language. First, it refers both to the finite world and to the untimate world that is manifested through the finite. Second, it is concerned with the ultimate issues of life, that is issues which center around security, meanings, frustrations and hopes of our existence both individual and social. And finally, it provides necessary models or norms by which life is directed and judged. Thus through reflection on ordinary experience a man is brought to an understanding of the ultimate in his life and thus to the use of religious language.(10)

For Karl Rahner the reflecting man is a European intellectual doing his thinking within the context of his own historical-cultural milieu. Paramount in this milieu is science which presents him with a picture of himself which is never fully himself but only an image of himself. The reason is that he is the creator of this image－even though he follows all the scientific canons that make the image in many ways an exact image－and as creator of the image he is above and beyond it. Thus while the image is an object, he himself is subject and person. While reflecting on this he begins to understand the experience of transcendence in life. In short, he sees that as subject and person his horizons are unlimited while as an object he is limited by place, time and history. Try as he will, he can never put off completely the experience of the gap of transcendence between aspiration and reality because eventually he will die and at that point the gap reveals itself in an unavoidable way.

In the experience of transcendence the reflecting man intuits his freedom and responsibility. He is free to choose options that are open to him and within these options he is responsible for his own becoming. Yet neither his freedom nor his responsibility is absolute because he really has no power over his final disposal. That is not something he controls but rather something controlled by place, time and history. He is, therefore, dependent.

The total experience of the reflecting man－the paradox of the experience, you might say－brings him into the presence of mystery. Mystery is basically the vast silent darkness of what is beyond the feeble light of his attainment. At this point, any expression of his experience will be couched in religious language.(11)

Chu Mei-Fen's reflecting man is Mao Testung, an avowed Marxist and therefore presumably one who would deny a religious dimension to life. Chu's thesis is that even though Mao was not explicitly aware of it (as far as we know), there was a strong religious dimension to his experience and this is seen clearly in his thought and in his writings. This religious dimension expresses itself in the following ways; self transcendence, dimension of depth, standpoint of the whole of reality or untimate concern. An example will serve to illustrate how she deduced the religious dimension in Mao's thought and experience.

Mao gave great priority to social development and in 1955 he described his dissatisfaction with the way economic development was progressing in China. As a result, he began to formulate what came to be known as THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD POLICY. However, by the time of the third five-year plan, focus was shifted to the priority of lessening the gap between industry and agriculture, between urban and rural areas, and between intellectual and manual work. In this decision, Chu sees a religious dimension present in the thought and action of Mao in so far as the fear he expressed－namely that the worker-peasant alliance might break up－indicates a stepping out of the concrete situation and a viewing of it from the standpoint of an ultimate concern. Strictly from the economic point of view, there was no apparent reason for Mao to make such a decision since China was then high in international rankings of economic growth. Thus, that at that precise moment Mao should have been dissatisfied and afraid indicates that his understanding of reality reduced economic growth to a preliminary concern. Given his numerous statements revealing his wish and his effort to speed up the process of industrialization, the ultimacy of his concern stands out even more clearly. The imperative to alter the trend of development, then, must arise from the standpoint of the whole of reality. For such a viewpoint, life is no longer seen in quantitative terms but quality becomes more important. Thus, Mao's position in this issue would clearly indicate a totality of view, a sense of mutual dependence of structure and meaning and an ultimate concern that transcends all other concerns. At this point he is expressing himself in religious categories.(12)

It is easy to see that even in these thinkers of such wide cultural-historical divergence, the common human experience they are talking about is strikingly similar as is their contention that talking about such experience on reflection is indeed to use religious language. First of all, each recognizes a religious dimension as a natural dimension in human life. This should be emphasized here because the classical conception of a religious dimension in human life is usually limited to the supernatural. And as we shall see later, it was this classical conception－namely talking about the supernatural－that the analytic tradition declared to be meaningless in the context of the real world.(13) And second, each states that reflection on this common human experience of necessity leads to the recognition of this natural religious dimension in human life, a fact that can be demonstrated experientially whether any given particular individual recognizes it or not.

5)Cf. John Macquarrie, PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1977), p. 124.

6)Cf. Walter E. Stokes, 'Is God Really Related to the World' PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION, 39 (1965) 145-151.

7)Cf. Karl Rahner, THEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS Vol. 1 (Baltimore: Helican Press, 1961), pp. 86-88.

8)Cf. Ian T. Ramsey, RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1957), pp. 11-38.

9)Cf. Langdon Gilkey, NAMING THE WIRLWIND: THE RENEWAL OF GOD LANGUAGE (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), pp. 365-413.

10)Cf. IBID., pp. 284 and 295.

11)Cf. Karl Rahner, FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH (New York: The Seabury Press, 1978), pp. 24-43.

12)Cf. Chu Mei-Fen, 'The Religious Dimension in Mao Tsetung Thought' THEOLOGY ANNUAL 2 (1978) 130-148. This is an article based on an unpublished doctoral dissertation of the same title at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.

13)Cf. John Macquarrie, PRINCIPLES OF GHRISTIAM THEOLOGY, p. 124.