Atheism for beginners

I’ve been reading the book of Isaiah.

The what? That is, the book of the prophet Isaiah that is found in the Jewish and Christian scriptures.

It’s a fascinating thing. And if you thought reading James Joyce or Derrida or Heidegger or Hegel or Levinas was hard, this is up there too. It’s complex and clever, it’s subtle, it changes pitch on you without telling you, leaving you to figure out retrospectively what’s happening.

As I’ve been reading it, I’ve been thinking about atheism. Get this: Isaiah is an atheist. How’s that go down for a prophet? His book is constantly on about how the gods of the nations of the world are just blocks of wood and carved metal. How can something a man has made control history, create the world, etc. Of course, it’s absurd.

Which makes you think, why then is Isaiah claiming to be relaying the word of God (the God who says he is the only God, that is, an atheist God)? Would Isaiah not be inconceivably stoopid to be making up a dialogue where God talks about how the gods are not gods at all, and that only he is the one true God?

It gets better. Isaiah’s book – or rather, the God in Isaiah’s book – predicts events that happen over 100 years after Isaiah dies. With startling accuracy. He even names names. In fact, Isaiah’s atheist God even cites this as a proof test for the fact that he is the only God, and that all the blocks of woods are, well, blocks of wood. Aaah, you say, but it probably wasn’t Isaiah writing it. It was probably someone else, a couple of hundred years later. OK, but would then this second person also be inconceivably stoopid for proposing a test of predicting the future and making it come about, all the while knowing that they were actually simply retrofitting their narrative? Would they not be laughed out of the house?

So what is one supposed to do with this book? Do you suppose that the whole thing – one of the greatest acts and foundational moments of literature in the Judeo-Christian history – was drummed up by a bunch of idiots, or do you have to accept the suggestion that something weird is going on here? Are there any other alternatives?

Filed under: Christian, Isaiah, atheism, literature

Not standing idly by

My heart cries out over Moab;
her fugitives flee as far as Zoar,
as far as Eglath Shelishiyah.
They go up the way to Luhith,
weeping as they go;
on the road to Horonaim
they lament their destruction.

This is a passage from the book of Isaiah. Isaiah foretells the destruction of Moab (by Assyria, I believe), a nation that was once a part of Israel (we’re talking 8th Century BC here). Even as Isaiah, speaking for the Lord at this point, weeps over Moab, it is still him holding out judgement as well, because of their overweening pride. And yet, Judah is also to care for Moab’s refugees:

Let the Moabite fugitives stay with you;
be their shelter from the destroyer.”
The oppressor will come to an end,
and destruction will cease;
the aggressor will vanish from the land.

In love a throne will be established;
in faithfulness a man will sit on it—
one from the house of David—
one who in judging seeks justice
and speeds the cause of righteousness.

Judgements do not come without tears, nor without help and hospitality to those who flee towards the hope of justice and faithfulness. Even as there are small hopes in view of the larger hope – just as refuge for the Moabites conjoins with a messianic hope – there are small disasters in presage of a final conflagration. But this does not mean that we stand idly by, but precisely because of this, we are motivated by that same hope.

A bit of a logical leap, but this makes me think of the UN… and that hoping for guns to be tied in knots is no bad thing. To repeat Byron’s quotation from Jurgen Moltmann, “Christian eschatology is the remembered hope of the raising of the crucified Christ, so it talks about beginning afresh in the deadly end.”

Filed under: Isaiah, eschatology