If the clergyman in his role as scholar has both the right and obligation to participate in the public discourse or public use of reason in examining anything, including religion, Kant was persuaded it would be unthinkable and even criminal for any group of clergy or church assembly to attempt to impose heteronomy or stifle the public discussion, thereby making doctrine unalterable, and perpetuating an endless guardianship and ignorance. Kant insisted that immaturity in matters of arts and sciences is repugnant, but “immaturity in matters of religion is not only most noxious but also most dishonorable” (139).
The real difficulty, of course, is to figure out what that clergyman could say or should not say as he applies Kant’s standard of it not being “inconceivable” that the doctrines contain “some elements of truth.” Can he retain his self-integrity? Is this assuming that his scholarly disclosures would never be known by his church? Or does it suppose that he should hide one from the other? But if the religious institution itself cannot impose heteronomy and stifle the public discussion, should not the entire church be made aware of this so that they are not left out of the conversation?
To differ just a bit with Kant, what I am suggesting is that obviously at some point the public use of reason and private use of reason do overlap. The public discourse or exchange among scholars itself engages only a very limited audience of participants, and the discussion filters down, at best, in rather piecemeal fashion, willy-nilly, to the nonscholarly world or general public. On that level, where the laity or general public hear of it, they may hear only the results or conclusions without much of the arguments or evidence, or they may for the most part hear only extreme reactions of other nonexperts’ responses to the conclusions. This is common experience not simply in religious matters but discourse on politics, science, economics, and so forth.
To resolve this gap of credibility, it is no answer to resort to the old heteronomy or trusting only the authorities. The general public too cannot be expected to be expertly informed in all vital concerns of life. One cannot escape the question of self-integrity. A society must simply safeguard the public freedom for public discourse, encouraging even greater scope and more diverse involvement in the discourse. All citizens must find confidence to both inform themselves as much as possible about the public discourse, and also to trust the authorities or experts, the more they confirm that they are personally disinterested, that is, have no more vested interests than anyone within the general public. Hopefully the latter will not be too insurmountable a problem. But everyone in the picture must remain flexible rather than turning judgmental of others.19
In the following chapters, as I pursue the simple thesis I have sketched, if it seems that I give only brief and rather negative space to positions that are heteronomous, it is because I do not believe one should or even can turn the clock backward. Heteronomy and authoritarianism can only exacerbate exclusivity and ill feelings between disparate religious communions and social, ethnic, political, and national entities. History supplies a sickening plethora of examples of the results of this divisiveness. Further, it is no longer possible to live as an integrated and realized self if one wants to be autonomous in certain realms of his or her life, while opting for total heteronomy in others. It is no longer possible for the scientist to be on the cutting edge of science, with its methods of openness, experiment, and public discussion, and then one day a week, while at church, mosque, synagogue, or just with one’s religious colleagues (or at least in the remote recesses of one’s mind) still profess some authoritarian, literal, or unreasonable religious beliefs that entirely contradict his or her scientific assumptions, methods, view of the world, and results. Cognitive dissonance is not the desired ideal life. The destructive nature of such cognitive dissonance seems to be even more sinister than the state of denial most people take toward their own deaths of which Heidegger was so critical.
Reason, trust, faith, or truth cannot be meaningful in contradictory areas with presuppositions that are incompatible—whether the scientist posits some idea of “God” “beyond” all time and space while holding to a finite and exponentially expanding universe and human evolution, or the religious person insists that while the ancient dinosaur bones and human bones or those of their predecessors, and various strata of our earth and other astrophysical data seem to indicate that our universe is 13 billions of years old is actually just God’s way of fooling people who do not want to believe that God really created it all just 6,000 years ago.20 To try to straddle between such incompatible worldviews as well as theologies creates a schizoid existence, the very opposite of the deeper goal of most religions and the nonreligious—the integrated self.
As I explore the possibility of a mutual self-realization as a legitimate primary goal of religion, even the Christian religion with which I am most familiar, I will attempt to show how that shift of emphasis can reform some traditional ideas, that is, those traditions or doctrines, in Kant’s terms in which it is not inconceivable that they still bear some truth and are not inimical to “inner religion.” I do not feel that some supranatural, eternal intelligence drives me to some abstract reinterpretation of Christian symbols; rather, the mutual self-realization I experience in my empowering relations with significant others in my life leaves no option. But Kant was right when he saw that the Absolute metaphysics per se has no inherent or obvious moral significance, we could add, no more than mythologies, superstitions, reifications, or an apotheosis of someone.
If we return to Updike’s novel, the Reverend Wilmot had been trained to think of religion as absolutely divinely revealed doctrine, but it eventually contradicted reality as he understood it. His actual faith manifested itself in his moving beyond his pseudo-faith, in his attempt to retain or rediscover his true self, in his relation to others. This demanded honesty enough to at least openly shed his old doctrinal and ecclesial identification and restraints. Even if he found relief from the final year’s ministry of sweaty and speechless sermons in which his wife had to assist by reading the sermons for him, we are still left to doubt that he ever realized any benefit or virtue of his new self-awareness, or ever found lasting peace with himself. It appears that his rigorous self-censure to retain self-integrity supplied very little if any sense of wholeness or unity with all others, probably because he could not rationally be more inclusive. He had even cut himself off from the limited community he had, eventually even alienating himself from his own family. Of course, that reminds us of the previous chapter. His admission of his loss of faith demanded by his self-integrity as a religious leader fell for the most part on deaf ears. But even his self-integrity was a casualty as well when he was unable to understand that mutual trust rather than a dogmatic creed is the humanizing element, and the humanizing element could well be the primary if not only point of truth of the religious consciousness.
In any case, each survivor of his family faced similar challenges from different starting points, challenges to find themselves, whether with or without any trappings from any religious institutions. Some led somewhat egocentric and tragically self-destructive lives at times, but there were also significant moments of self-realization, which opened new paths for them. Some experimented for years, looking for their true selves, while others seemed to know early on who they were. But ultimately to find that self-awareness, they all had one or more crucial persons in their lives to whom they sooner or later entrusted themselves and found the risk rewarding them by supplying new horizons of meaningfulness. In this finite life it is difficult to hope for more. But why did the well-intentioned Reverend have to create such an “earthquake” of negative effects whose shaking would not only destroy him but adversely affect so many others? Is it not that supposed Absolute, which Jacoby described in that beginning quotation, the Absolute behind “a religion that issues orders about the most trivial as well as the most important activities of daily life”? The presupposed, learned Absolute that one does not question.
Self-integrity and Mutual Trust vs. Religious Conceptual Rigidity
The self-integrity that is experienced