The Theism-Atheism Dialectic

This chapter looks at the effort Shaw and Ricoeur make to provide moderns who reject otherworldly religion, but nonetheless seek the numinous, with a credible faith they can affirm. Membership in this group is steadily rising as traditional belief systems grounded in the supernatural continue to wane at a brisk pace. The genocide of Jews and other unspeakable obscenities have made it increasingly more difficult for reflective individuals to trust in the biblical OmniGod. For them, too much injustice, suffering, and death give the lie to the notion that a beneficent, omniscient, and almighty deity governs the universe inerrantly. Nevertheless, these disaffected worshippers refuse to surrender to total denial or indifference. They yearn to connect with the holy; it bestows meaning, purpose, and significance on their lives. The painful dilemma they face is palpable. On the one hand, the spiritually shaken find the strain on their credulity too onerous to bear, yet phenomenologically they do not feel comfortable in a world shorn of divinity, on the other. Thus, it is precisely for the disenchanted questers among us that Shaw and Ricoeur—who themselves are devout searchers—dialectically synthesize atheism and theism to generate a supratheism (from the Latin supra, in the sense of beyond the limits of) that productively amalgamates and surpasses the two opposed viewpoints. The result is a blended credo that is Jesusian in substance and terrestrial in orientation. I call this supratheistic religion, Jesusianism. The designation signifies that the Nazarene Shaw and Ricoeur revere is the Jesus of history, the dialectical prophet, not the Christ of theology, the expiatory offering. The former is fully a human being whose teachings are potentially redemptive, and the latter is a fictional creation projected by a vulnerable religious community under Roman persecution. In this instance, the mundane supplants the supernatural.