83. The Nature of Human Beings | Series: Two Philosophers Wrestle With God | Dialogue 7 [Part 1]

Join host Scott Langdon as he connects Dr. Richard Oxenberg and Dr. Jerry L. Martin in Where Two Philosophers Wrestle with God, to discuss God's revelation to Jerry about the nature of human beings and how humans and God relate. 

Is God geocentric- focused on what's happening on the Earth? Is God anthropocentric- focused on the development of human beings? To answer these questions, this dialogue also delves into Darwinian evolution (with a teleological dimension), consciousness, identity, infinite worlds, Leibniz, and Sri Aurobindo. 

The Atman, or Self behind the Self, is united with Brahman- fundamental reality, the Divine, or God. God's consciousness flows and develops in response to humans' discovery and perception of the Self behind the Self, or Atman. Explore humans' intimate connection with God as a co-partner in a shared world of creation.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin is a philosopher and author of the true story, God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher. He has served as the head of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Colorado philosophy department and is the founding chairman of the Theology Without Walls group at the AAR.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg is a professor at Endicott College. He has studied philosophy and ethics of religion and has published numerous articles on these subjects, including his book: On the Meaning of Human Being: Heidegger and the Bible in Dialogue.

Read God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher.

Begin the dramatic adaptation of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher

Related Episodes: [Two Philosophers Wrestle With God] The Problem of Evil [Part 1] [Part 2]; The Big Picture [Part 1] [Part 2] [Dramatic Adaptation] God Explains The Self Behind The Self

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Scott Langdon [00:00:17]  This is God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. A dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin. He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him. Episode 83. Hello and welcome to Episode 83 of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. I'm your host, Scott Langdon. With Episode 83, we return to our series Where Two Philosophers Wrestle With God to bring you part one of dialogue number seven between Drs. Jerry L. Martin and Richard Oxenberg. So far in these dialogues, Richard and Jerry have talked in-depth about the nature of God. In this episode, they discuss God's revelation to Jerry about the nature of human beings and how we and God relate. Remember, you can hear the complete audio adaptation of the book any time by beginning with episode one of our podcast and listening through Episode 44. Here now is part one of dialogue number seven. We begin with Jerry speaking first. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Where do we start today's dialogue, Richard? 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg So, I thought we were-- the last few sessions, I guess, we were talking about the nature of God. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And I thought that today we might focus on the nature of human beings. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes! 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And human life. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And see, you know, and then talk about how that relates, because your book has something, you know, a great deal to say about that. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And there are, you know, and I, you know, I just would sort of like to go through it. I find-- there are some passages that I find puzzling and maybe we can discuss some of those. But just let's do what we've been doing, which is try and get the broad picture and try and grasp what its implications are. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And I guess the place where I thought we'd kind of begin is, I believe, on page 76 of the book. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Well, I should get my book. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Is where-- yeah. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin You'd think I would have thought of this beforehand. But, you know... Page 76.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg 76 God starts talking about, of course, we've already talked about how God Himself has emerged out of the God beyond God. Right? 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes, yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And now, starting around page 76, God starts speaking about the creation of the world. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right? And, you know, I noticed, I don't know if you've given any thought to this, Jerry, but the book is very geocentric, right? In the sense that it's very focused on the Earth. Right? 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg I mean, you've got this vast universe with many galaxies, and so forth. But there's very little in the book, or nothing, in fact, there's stuff in the book about other worlds, but not about other galaxies, or other planets, or lifetimes. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin But the other worlds are more like other universes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin The other worlds are like parallel universes or something like that. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right. And I mean, you know, that's just one of the things that I've never been quite sure what to make of- that God is very both geocentric, focused on what's happening on the Earth-- 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And anthropocentric, focused on the development of human beings. You know, which we can talk about more I suppose, as we continue. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg But I guess the book paints a kind of broad evolutionary picture. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right? So there's an evolution of life that at least is similar to the notion of Darwinian evolution, except there's the teleological dimension to it that, I guess, Darwin-- that isn't included in classical representations of Darwin's theories, right?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin It's evolution in the sense that Darwin described it, but not necessarily in the sense of Darwin's explanations for it. Which are entirely mechanical, random, and so forth. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right, right. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin But yeah, there is a movement forward through time of the sort that Darwin made familiar to us. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right, and there's a teleological direction going on. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin There's a direction to it, which was not for Darwin. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right. And we're moving toward-- What's that?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin For Darwin it's all chance. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg It's all chance. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin And natural selection, and some things make it, and some don't. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin And, so, it's not trying to get somewhere. It's just that there are survivors and losers, and therefore some hardening, you might say, of the species. And they do seem too complexify. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Yes, right. But in--

Dr. Jerry L. Martin But that's a whole story in itself. But it's that sense of direction, and it, some goal, some sense of goal, or sense of direction...

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Yes. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin That's the right direction in God: An Autobiography. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And the direction seems to be-- the direction seems to involve a kind of development of consciousness. Right? 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg A further development of consciousness, but it starts out with sort of primitive levels of awareness, I guess, at the vegetative level. Right? 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yeah, yeah. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And I think on page 76, God says-- let me see if I can find this quote.  "Remember that I am learning all the way. I do not know what the final product may be. Man, as he now exists, is not the final product– only the future will tell us, including Me, that.” Right? So there is this-- 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin God doesn't know. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right, God doesn't know, or at least didn't know. You know, because, I find, this is one of the things, you know, to get-- If we think about the simultaneity of time that gets expressed at some other point then there's some sense in which God would know or could know, but perhaps, I suppose what we're getting that God's consciousness is also in the process of developing. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. Yes.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right? So, I mean, that might be the way to reconcile this notion that God is saying at this point, I didn't know where it was heading, but maybe now God does?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Well, we don't know. I didn't ask that question, and there's a great stress, in fact, on unpredictability, both probably because of elements of, you might say, free will, freedom on God's side and on our side, and maybe elements of unpredictability, the way everything is unpredictable. You know? 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Things are complex and there is a lot of random aspect, and then the creative element, you know? That may not be directionless, you know, that may have some sense of direction, but the sense of direction always seems to be inside emergent possibilities rather than a pre-planned destination and route for getting there. So, these--

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right. Yeah. There's a general sense of- there are higher levels to be attained. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And ultimately there is a thrust that is leading toward these higher levels. Matter of fact, at one point-- where is this? I think this is on, again, page 77. God says, “Consciousness developed very slowly…Whitehead and Teilhard are on the right track in this regard. Leibniz is not.”

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Right, right. (Laughing)

Dr. Richard Oxenberg What do you take that to mean? 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Read that again. I'm sorry, I turned my sound up. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Yeah, so, He's talking about the development of consciousness and, in some sense, the evolution of consciousness. Right? And He makes reference to Whitehead and Teilhard- Teilhard de Chardin. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yeah. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right? And saying that they're correct and Leibniz somehow got it wrong. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Right. Right. Well, what they have is a sense of creative possibility and nature moving forward in a direction. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Emergent possibilities would be very much Whitehead-y in language. Teilhard has a somewhat different sense, he was a great evolutionist himself, he was a paleontologist, I believe. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right- Teilhard? 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin  Yeah, yeah- Teilhard was a student of the stages of life and saw it advancing toward a much higher stage of consciousness, which he outlines in his writings. Leibniz just sees multiple worlds, you might say--. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Yes, hmmm. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin You know, each consciousness. Consciousness is the basic nature of reality for aliveness, but it's just different consciousness mirroring the whole world, and of all the possible worlds, this is the best one already. You know, and there's no dynamic understanding in Leibniz.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Yeah. I guess the other thinker I might throw into the mix here is (I don't know if you're familiar with him) Sri Aurobindo, the sort of Hindu-Indian thinker. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Well, actually, Aurobindo is quoted in the book somewhere. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Who also has-- Aurobindo? 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yeah, Aurobindo. Yes. Considered the-- 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg He also has a sense of life developing in this evolutionary process for higher and higher levels of consciousness and awareness. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Oh, I see.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Very similar, in some ways, to what we get here. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Okay. That's interesting. So, that's someone, a big thinker from the Hindu tradition. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Yes. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Maybe their greatest thinker of the last hundred years. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Certainly one of them, yeah. And, I was just (sort of) also interested in another quote which says something, and I'm not sure just what to make of it, but it's now on 82- I think it starts on page 82, at the bottom of page 82. And it's-- God is saying, and he now describing himself at the time of prehistoric man, just as prehistoric man comes into development. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Okay, very early. Yes, yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And God is saying, “I do not quite know I have a personality, an individual personhood.” God is now describing Himself, He means passed through my consciousness. Right? So in other words, where God is not at this point a being who is deliberating, right? I mean, because in order to deliberate, you have to have a sense of self. A sense of distinction between self and other. It's almost as if God has not fully awoken to himself at this point, right? He says, “I have a sense of My intelligence pervading the world, of fulfilling a universal telos. I feel a spiritual rapport with life. But none of that constitutes a sense of personhood, of an I standing opposite a You." And he only learns of himself as a person in the context of observing human person, or being in relationship to human person. Would that-- 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Exactly. You can't get a sense of yourself as an I in relation to a You unless there is a You for you to encounter and relate to. It's not unlike accounts of neonate consciousness where at first there's just a world, and then the neonate, and mother, and everything surrounding is just one flow of consciousness. And only slowly does the little baby kind of realize, Oh, this is me and that's mom, and so forth, you know? And this is the world, you know, these are physical objects. This is my body. It's different from the chair. All of that evolves. Well, God is at this early stage, you know, think what that would be. He's born, He's burst into the universe in that creation section with the universe, is part and parcel of the universe, and it's all just happening. He does have that early sense- well, I've got to put order in this universe, I've got to move it in a direction. But that's all just kind of happening, and there's no sense of- Oh, I'm a personality. That concept wouldn't even have a role yet, or a concept of a self, because that implies another self. And that happens a little bit with animals, but they're so limited that it doesn't happen in a fuller way until there are other human beings, the prehistoric human beings come about. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg So God goes through a long kind of gestation period. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right? I mean, because if we think of the Big Bang as having happened, what, 20 billion years ago, or something. Right? And the emergence of human life is having happened only maybe a million years ago. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Ahuh. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg There's a pretty long process here before God has fully come into His own as a person. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yeah, yeah, yeah. Long by our measures, we don't know what that would feel like to God, but-- 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right, right. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin He's not marking time. He's not bored, you know, the way we might be. Yeah, but yes for many years God is just busy with the physical universe. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg So, you know, then the next thing that sort of is interesting is (and of course, quite different, I think, from the way that we ordinarily think of God in the Western tradition) God's sense of interdependency- almost sounds like an understatement. There's a way in which there's an intimacy between the nature of God and the nature of human development that coincide with one another. In other words, God is developing, He says this on a number of places, God is developing through human beings. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes, yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right? Now I'm looking at page 95. God is saying-- if I can find it here. "I cannot move at a pace greater than the human reactions.”

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right? "That is why it is important for you to tell My story, My history of interactions with humans, from My side. You will see that a development in God is really a response to, (and) conditioned by, the development of men (human beings) and their response to me." 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And that, once again, there's, you know, some of these things just, you know, you read them and you move on and then you read them again and you say- what? And that is a development in God is a response to, in other words, it's almost as if human beings are taking the initiative. Right? God is developing in response to human beings responding to God. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Well, yes. I hadn't thought about the initiative, but, I-- 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg You know, or at least it's a dialectical, it's a tightly integrated dialectical relationship. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin It could be that, in a sense, they're simultaneously, like--. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right. Right

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Two people have been left alone on desert islands suddenly meet one another. Then they are going to start being defined as social beings by that encounter, and in fact develop social capacities, realize aspects of themselves that they didn't realize before. You know, how they react to someone else staring at them or smiling or, you know, or shaking their hands, which we're not supposed to do these days. But anyway, they start learning about not only the other, they start learning about themselves. What it is to be a person in the social mode, which on a desert island, they of course had no opportunity to even think about. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Yeah. I mean, and then on page 103, we get God saying,  “I understand My nature better as I articulate it or, better (a better way to put it), as humans hear it, process it, and articulate it.”

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. Yes.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Once again, you know, I was struck by the fact that I articulated, and humans articulated, in a sense, coincide. In other words, God seems to be saying that My articulation of it is the human articulation of it, and as human articulate it, I am more made more aware of it. I mean, almost as if God is riding along with human- the human mind. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. Well, again, if we go back to our two guys on the desert islands, who then meet each other. I say something and you laugh, and I suddenly realize, oh, I'm funny. I didn't know I was funny before that, I may not have even had a concept of being funny, but the laughter shows here's another aspect of me, aspect of our interaction. Now I'll, you know, listen, and maybe you'll say something funny sometime. So we're expanding ourselves precisely by, and learning about ourselves, by how the other is responding to us. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin And again, that would parallel the literature on babies and first childhood. You know, how does the kid, how does the child learn about love? Well, it's from the mother's love. And, you know, we all learn all of these things through interacting with other people. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin God is in the same mode. God is developing, learning from us and what you say is very striking. That's a lot of the point of, you know, in the book, I was told to read the ancient scriptures of the different religious traditions. And, well, what are those scriptures? What are those? They're narratives of precisely what you're talking about, Richard, of what you read about, of people reacting to God, or to the divine as they are experiencing it, thinking about it, writing about it, and articulating it, and often in prayers, and songs of praise, and so forth. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg It's almost as if there's this process of differentiation that is taking place. I guess I'm trying to, you know, I'm constantly trying to envision what this is, and I guess what I'm getting, in a way, is that prior to the development of life, and prior to their to the development of human beings, it's almost like there is not a clear differentiation between God and everything else. I mean, everything-- But on the other hand, there is no sense of I-ness within God, Himself. Right?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Right. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And God is saying,  I do not quite know I have a personality, an individual personhood. Events pass through My consciousness. I have a sense of My intelligence pervading the world, of fulfilling a universal telos. I feel a spiritual rapport with life. But none of that constitutes a sense of personhood, of an I standing opposite a You. The protohumans gave Me that, or I developed it or became aware of it in relation to them.  events flowing through My consciousness.” Right? 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And so out of those events flowing through God's consciousness comes the development of human beings on the one hand, and the development of a God who is responding to human beings on the other hand. Right? And the human being, you know-- it's almost as if the human being develops in such a way that it requires a God, and God develops in such a way that It has to be the response to the human requirement of that God. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. Yes.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right? And there's a kind of teleological evolutionary process behind all of this that neither the human being nor this God is actually responsible for initiating. Right? 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Right. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg They're both a product of the process, not the initiators of the process. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. Yes.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And what we would have to say is that this process itself is emerging out of the God beyond God. Right? That's where, that's the initial impulse that is producing all of this. Right? And it's only at a certain point that even God becomes a truly self-conscious entity. Right? And then trying to figure out what His role in all of this is. Right? That seems to be the way it's developed. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Right. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And, you know, again, I found it interesting, and I guess this is now, all the way now on page from page 326, right, where there's a discussion about Hinduism, and the development of Hinduism, and that God discovers that there is an Atman in the course of human beings discovering that there is an Atman. Right? So once again, the quote here is-- 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin I didn't pick up on that. That's interesting. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg The quote here, it's on 326, “From India, I learned another side of Myself. Long before Lao-Tzu had written about the inner attitude to the Tao, the seers who wrote the Upanishads had made a major discovery. They had succeeded in contacting Me through their inner selves. They had discovered the Self behind the self, and they had discovered– and I discovered, when they connected with Me in this way– that the Self behind the self, which they called the Atman, is Me, which they called the Brahman.  “The Atman is the Brahman. This was a revolutionary step in the human understanding of the divine reality, and it was a critical evolutionary step in My self-understanding.” 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes, yes. Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg So God is once again, it's almost as if... I think it says, perhaps too, dualistically to say that human beings are discovering God for God. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Since we're also part of God. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right. Right. That it is a process of self-discovery that is taking place, both on the human side and the God side simultaneously, together. And it is a process that must take place together. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. Yes. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg And I guess then that makes some sense of, you know, there are places where God, I think this has to do with some questioning you have of God I think that took place in the Old Testament times. Right? And God says, well, maybe I was wrong. What's that?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin I'm sorry. Maybe I should pause for a moment, since we don't know if people viewing would be so familiar with the concept. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Okay. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin And although you sort of said it, and what it called in my mind, was the very early experience I had before I was thinking Atman, or any such thing, I was told to blanket out. the outer world. And okay, I kind of knew how to do that. And you blank it out the outer world. You have your own internal moods and so forth, and your bodily sensations, you know, you become aware, more acutely aware of where your arms are, the weight of your body on the chair beneath you, and so forth. And then I was told, and here I didn't quite know. What is that? What does that mean? Told- okay, now blanket that out. Oh, okay, well, yes, I always do it, these things, I don't quite know what that means, but let's give it a try. And that's when I had this sense, oh, behind that self in the sense of the empirical flow of consciousness and of embodied consciousness, there is a further dimension of self that is sort of observing almost that ordinary personality sense of self, and has rather different characteristics of sort of stillness and dispassion, yet is kind of benign and interested but not interested in a sense that root causes it to be striving. And that was my, you might say, toehold on understanding the Atman when we come to the Hindu context. And a good translation of it always is kind of self behind the self and I usually capitalize that because it seems kind of special. And it's that self behind the self that I was experiencing that is united with what the Hindus call Brahman, the more fundamental reality, what we might call God or a divine presence, and that it's sort of through that. And back to the part you're highlighting, Richard. God says it was through the human discovery of the self behind the self and the human perception. Oh, that self behind the self is identical in some sense to the divine or some aspect of the divine that God sort of- you're right! You know? Really? Yeah. That's amazing. You're right. And okay, that's another way God discovers God relates to people as part of people, which is in a sense different from just we're all part of creation. God and us are all part of the God world that comes into being at the creation. There's this further intimate connection through the self behind the self that's virtually without pushing concepts of identity and so forth, but virtually an identity. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Right. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin You know, type connection. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg So this was this was something you felt you had a real experience, then? 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin Yes. Well, I describe that experience to the extent, somebody, I've never asked a Hindu to certify as that's the Atman, but it's my avenue into understanding the Atman, and I had that experience early on vacation. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Do you still feel connected to that level, Jerry? When you-- 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin I did not, at that point, I felt the self behind the self. 

Dr. Richard Oxenberg Yeah. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin And it didn't occur to me at all, oh, that's also then in turn connected to the divine. I had to go read about the Hindus before that thought came into my mind, and I don't recall going back and trying to- oh, can I. But I had mystical moments not long thereafter, but they weren't terribly connected to this experience of the self behind the self. 

Scott Langdon [00:28:51]  Thank you for listening. To God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. Subscribe for free today wherever you listen to your podcasts and hear a new episode every week. You can hear the complete dramatic adaptation of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin, by beginning with episode one of our podcast and listening through its conclusion with Episode 44. You can read the original true story in the book from which this podcast is adapted. God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher, available now at Amazon.com, and always at godanautobiography.com. Pick up your own copy today. If you have any questions about this or any other episode, please email us at questions@godanautobiography.com and experience the world from God's perspective as it was told to a philosopher. This is Scott Langdon. I'll see you next time.