God as an unassailable construction

We have seen and considered Kierkegaard's dismissal of "approximations" as demeaning towards God. More than that, it is also a distraction for humans, because overtly relying on

145 Vaags, Ralph Henk. Min vei fra ateisme til kristen tro, med filosofi og apologetikk som hjelpere. YouTube video, 44:35. 02.03.2018. Accessed November 26, 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_a-uFLL0uQ

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the power of reason may make us lose sight of God, or else get bogged down in intricate distractions of pseudo-intellectual kind and conditional love. But perhaps another danger deserves just as much consideration: the risk of turning our focus away from God, the creator of the universe and a mystery beyond all comprehension, and into "God": a perfectly logical and neatly built up construction inside, made by and for our own

imagination. By this I mean that the implicit goal of apologetics is to protect religious faith from attacks from sceptics and/or other religions. This however can quickly degenerate into protecting personal pride from critical examination and ridicule, and the quest of explaining God can become a quest of protecting personal intellectual unassailability, yet at the same time insist on faith in a fundamentally supernatural and unfathomable being. When seeking to understand, and even more defend God through reasoning, what are we then defending?

When facing questions that we cannot answer, either because we do not have the necessary knowledge¹⁴⁶, or because what seems to be contradictions in our religious framework are pointed out¹⁴⁷, what is the appropriate reaction? If one does not wish to be exposed to potential ridicule, or even experience personal doubts, it seems that the easiest path is to think of counter-arguments, constructing logical explanations for why it must be

so-and-so, or why such-and-such really is no contradiction at all.

Now, in and of itself this is of course a perfectly legitimate endeavour, but it may bring with it an unpleasant and disturbing implication. Is it truly God we seek to understand and comprehend, or is the goal of reasoning simply to present the world with an unassailable construction no one can attack us from worshipping? It seems rather peculiar, even intellectually dubious when, if confronted with critical arguments (be it from others or our own minds) of which the faithful have no good answer, the response is to temporarily step back while trying to drum up some sufficiently convincing or at least unassailable

counterargument. Having done that, our idea of God is then restructured to fit in with the new, improved argument, and thus will it continue until another challenge comes along, and the entire process is repeated once again. Is the purpose then still to get closer to God? Or is it rather to make our own belief-system as iron-clad as possible? Even if managing to

successfully defeat or at least evading, all possible challenges, what, in the end, is gained? It

146 Perhaps the true nature of communion and the Eucharist.

147 The discrepancy between the often harsh and wrathful God of The Old Testament versus the all-loving and forgiving God in The New Testament.

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seems to me eminently possible that the God such an endeavour will end up with is a man-made one, constructed by a human mind to be as intellectually, and maybe ethically, impregnable as possible. What it will not be is God Himself, He is a person, not a

construction. A person Christians must believe is real and autonomous, in fact, more real and autonomous than any human person could possibly be. But is this what the apologetic has gotten closer to? Is it not at least as possible that what he ultimately is left with is an imitation of what he and others think to be the most logically sound deity? A construction that ultimately exists in said apologist's head, and nowhere else? I do believe this is to be an important part of Kierkegaard's hostility towards reason-based religion. The very word he uses about the discipline, approximations, seems to imply that a temporary sketch of God is supplanting God Himself. To be certain, it is the hope that the approximation eventually shall match God, fully resemble Him. The honest apologist does not stop before there can be no doubt that the approximation fully matches the real God, the two of them

interchangeable. But even if something like that was possible, and Kierkegaard states rather clearly that he does not think that is the case, what are we left with in the meantime? An imitation, that the Christian apologists nonetheless insists is worthy of devotion and

worship. The worship is conditional, it is only required until someone can spot a weak link in the logical chain that invalidates the approximation. Then, another approximation will supplant it, and the whole process will start anew. At best, the apologist will get no closer, at worst, and more likely, she will end up getting further away from God, because it is not God she works towards, but a homemade idol, created in her own head, to suit the apologist's immediate needs and scope of thinking. Kierkegaard would probably say that most apologists are in the realm of the aesthetical rather than ethical. The God(s) they construct may be impressive logical features, spectacular enough, as personal works of art, but they are personal contractions, made so that the individual philosopher need not feel embarrassed by his faith, but can safely present it to the world in the wrappings of scholarly epistemology.

Kierkegaard's rejection of approximations entails a rejection of such idolatry. The goal of the person wanting to become a truly religious person is after all to discard all earthly

pretensions, distractions and illusions. That which is common and associated with the

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loathed multitudes.¹⁴⁸ In order to know God, we must seek Him out, not create a fantasy image. In order to get to know God, some of the same that applies to getting to know anyone else, applies, namely that He must be sought out without prejudice. And then He must be interacted with be an open mind. The religious person does not simply go boldly forward into the unknown, but does so without any equipment. It is first when all

intellectual defences are being willingly discarded that a human may truly see God. In the approximations, we find a deeply held, and very understandable, fear of doing so. Choosing to trust God is frightening, as it always is to trust someone. And no trust can be more

frightening to give than to God, because the stakes of the bet are so very high; our immortal souls. Approximations serves as a precaution towards having to make the frightening leap of faith.¹⁴⁹ In this lies the paradox: it is first when we give up understanding God that we may begin to have any hope of understanding Him.