44. God Tells Me About A New Age Of Spiritual Development | Dramatic Adaptation Of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher [Part 44] [Book Finale]

"You stand on the threshold of a new spiritual era, a new axial age, in which, for the first time, spiritually attuned individuals will draw their understanding of spiritual reality, not just from the scriptures of their own religious tradition, but from the plentitude of My communications to men and women.

The upshot will not be a bland acceptance of all so-called scriptures and theological traditions, as if they all said the same thing. As you can see, they do not. But the more accurate of them can be fitted together in a meaningful way.

This is not just a conceptual puzzle-solving, as if the challenge were purely intellectual: how to fit the largest number of pieces into a single coherent story. It is, most fundamentally, spiritual: how to sense which writings and experiences are truly sensitive to the divine reality and how to put them together in a way that is spiritually meaningful, whether or not it seems *logical.* "

Thank you for listening to the dramatic adaptation of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin.

Please, continue to enjoy the book through the ongoing discussion in later episodes.

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

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Transcript

Scott Langdon [00:00:04] This is God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. A dramatic adaptation 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 44. 

DRAMATIC ADAPTATION GOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, AS TOLD TO A PHILOSOPHER

Jerry Martin - voiced by Scott Langdon

The Voice of God - voiced by Jerry L. Martin, who heard the voice

Jerry L. Martin [00:01:06] Religious historian Wilfred Cantwell Smith spoke of religion in the singular. It is a mistake, he believed to think only in terms of separate religions that come in complete packages. Religions are not and never have been hermetically sealed. He gives a simple example of the interpenetration of religions, the sojourn of Saint Josaphat. He was a Christian saint- or was he? In his confession, Leo Tolstoy reported that his spiritual awakening was sparked by reading the lives of the saints, especially the story of the saint known to Latin Europe as Saint Jehosaphat. The Russian version of his life was taken from a Greek source. It is the story of a young prince who renounces worldly power and wealth and wanders in the wilderness in ascetic piety. The Greek version was actually taken from a source in Georgia where it had been transformed into a Christian version from an Islamic source. The Muslims had gotten the story in Central Asia from the Manichees, who had absorbed the stories of several traditions, this one from the Buddhists. It was, in fact, the story of the Buddha and the name Jehosaphat, derived by transpositions in several languages from the word bodhisattva. Thus, Smith concludes, "For a thousand years the Buddha was a Christian saint." Smith is not debunking Saint Jehosaphat, on the contrary, he is asserting the historical fact that the living truth of this story is woven into the texture of many religions. Smith's point, which he illustrates with many examples, is that we should think of religion in the singular as an encompassing reality that involves all religions in the plural. And he draws a further conclusion evident in the title of his best known book, Towards a World Theology, that theology should likewise be more encompassing, not just the articulation of a single tradition. Lord, what about the idea of a world theology?

The Voice of God [00:03:44] Yes, that's great.  

Jerry L. Martin [00:03:46] Theologians often define theology as the interpretation of a canonical body of scripture of one's own tradition. The idea of a world theology seemed to take this idea one step further. Lord, would this then be a theological interpretation of a more comprehensive body of scriptures, including sacred texts from multiple traditions?

The Voice of God [00:04:11] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:04:12] This is an exciting idea, and it fits my philosophical turn of mind better than this project of telling your story. 

The Voice of God [00:04:19] Well, don't go off on your own. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:04:22] You mean a collection of texts is just a collection of texts, and me or someone else elaborating on them is just a human product?

The Voice of God [00:04:30] Something like that. You must pray at every step of the way, and you must make no bones about it to the reader that that is what you are doing. The collection itself- the selection of texts must be inspired, guided. And so was the interpretation, the highlighting of those parts of the text that are truest. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:04:55] Suddenly I had a different reaction. I had put a lot of time into preparing God: An Autobiography. Is that project now to be replaced with one quite different, Lord? 

The Voice of God [00:05:06] I would like you to do both, at least for now. Continue work on the autobiography, but with an eye to the other project down the line. 

 Jerry L. Martin [00:05:16] Lord, this really seems like the spiritual project for the 21st century. 

The Voice of God [00:05:21] Yes, that is exactly right. Your job would be to get the debates started. The old walls between religions would collapse in a minute. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:05:33] The following fall, I was told to give a talk that included some of these prayers. I chose a meeting of the American Academy of Religion, but could I really quote the voice of God in a paper to a group of scholars? I could barely make myself do it. I set selected prayers in the context of what philosophers call "the problem of the diversity of revelations." Put simply, if there is one God, why are there so many religions? I argued that the aim of theology should be to understand as much as we can about God or the ultimate spiritual reality. If so, then the theologian should take into account all self-revelations of the divine reality, not just those in a single tradition. I dropped the term "world theology" because it sounds like an effort to impose a single religion on everyone. Instead, I spoke of "theology without walls" as a kind of exploratory theology. When I started quoting the prayers and it became clear to listeners that this was supposedly God talking, they shifted uneasily in their chairs. After some restless minutes, they seemed to relax and just take it in. Nervously, I battened down the hatches and invited questions. A young Chinese woman had her hand up. "I am so glad to hear this," she said. She was now studying Catholic theology, but complained that her Christian teachers had condemned the tradition in which she was raised and had tried to alienate her from her Chinese family. "I value the wisdom of my elders," she said. Someone else asked if what I had said was right, what is the next step? How should we worship? I had only prepared for hostile questions- this one took me by surprise, but the answer came to me immediately. "You worship where God finds you." After the meeting, I prayed about exploratory theology or theology without walls. 

The Voice of God [00:07:44] I want you to share with the world what I have told you- My story. Your task is not to start a new project, that is a sideline, a byproduct, an offshoot. Your job is to tell My story as it is told to you. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:08:02] I felt somewhat reproached, as if I had been going off on a tangent all my own, and I protested. Lord, You were the one who told me to give this paper. 

The Voice of God [00:08:13] Remember that your job is just to do or not do whatever I ask of you each day. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:08:21] Okay, Lord. What is my assignment today?

The Voice of God [00:08:25] The world needs to hear My story anew. That has many aspects and can be done in many ways. One of those ways is theology. I want you to write My story as a story, as I tell it to you. I've given parts of the story to different people at different times. The whole now needs to be told. Theology is another way to tell my story in non-narrative or less narrative form. It will be valuable too. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:08:56] Do You want people to piece the whole together out of the parts? 

The Voice of God [00:09:01] What I most want is for people to listen to Me. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:09:06] And to listen to what You have told various people over the ages?

The Voice of God [00:09:10] Yes. That is part of listening to Me. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:09:13] Doesn't theology without walls fit with that? 

The Voice of God [00:09:16] Yes, but the listening is also important. This is not the place to discuss continuing revelation, but that is what it amounts to. Not just your efforts, but those of others, even normal theologians who do not hear God's voice in their ear. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:09:34] The reason for putting some prayers at the end of my AAR presentation was to provide examples of listening?

The Voice of God [00:09:41] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:09:43] As a lifelong agnostic, I had not been paying attention to what was happening in religion. When I looked around, I saw the walls already coming down. Interfaith dialogue is no longer just peacekeeping. Participants are sharing spiritual truths with one another. People who are turned off of doctrinal religion are finding a new kind of spirituality that draws on multiple traditions. Spiritually attuned individuals are looking over the walls and finding genuine insight in other faiths. In The Seven Storey Mountain, Catholic, Thomas Merton reports finding spiritual wisdom in a Buddhist monastery. Bede Griffiths, a Catholic monk who lived in India for 25 years, concluded in The Cosmic Revelation: The Hindu Way to God, that, "The modern Christian view needs to be complemented with the constant awareness which the Hindu has of the eternal dimension of being." Religious philosopher Raymond Poincare considers himself both a Christian and a Hindu, each without reservation. Irving Greenberg holds the astounding view for an Orthodox rabbi that Jesus was indeed resurrected, but God veiled the eyes of the Jews so they would reject Jesus. In his view, God needs both religions. One emphasizing the horizontal, partnering with God in history, the other the vertical, the relation to the word that is with God and is God. Lord, the walls are collapsing already, but without anything clear to put in their place. 

The Voice of God [00:11:26] Yes, that is right. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:11:29] But then I wondered if perhaps the task is simpler. We don't need to have a comprehensive theology taking in the truths of all religions, but just to recognize the contribution of each religion. That would not require that we surrender or even revise our current religions. 

The Voice of God [00:11:46] Your two alternatives are identical. Once you say that one religion captures the horizontal and the other the vertical and that both are essential, then you have a comprehensive conception that goes beyond a single religion. That is a different question from the question of devotion, ritual and the like. The same theological truth can be celebrated and lived in different ways. The division of labor among the different religions can even continue with people selecting the vocation that fits their talents or history or calling, but understanding it in a new way not as the exclusive path, but as an essential path contributing to the whole. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:12:34] Following instructions, I had read and prayed about Jesus, but not subsequent Christianity. Buddha, but not Buddhism, and so on. Lord, am I still supposed to stop at that cut off point? 

The Voice of God [00:12:48] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:12:50] But Your story continues beyond that, doesn't it? 

The Voice of God [00:12:53] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:12:55] Will there be a sequel? 

The Voice of God [00:12:57] Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe by someone other than yourself. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:13:02] Am I being fired? 

The Voice of God [00:13:04] No, of course not. But I have already given you a very big task. And we have talked about more than one book. So don't bite off more than you can chew. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:13:16] What about the idea of an expanded canon encompassing a selection of the world's scriptures? 

The Voice of God [00:13:23] That is still a great idea. You need to just pick out the parts that you find most meaningful, truest from our conversations, and that will be a guide to seekers. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:13:35] Now I have another worry, Lord. It's one thing for me to tell Your story, quite another thing to initiate an effort at theology without walls. 

The Voice of God [00:13:45] Why would they be incompatible? 

Jerry L. Martin [00:13:48] The methods are opposite. Theologians give arguments. They don't claim that they heard it directly from God. 

The Voice of God [00:13:55] What if listening to Me is part of the method? 

Jerry L. Martin [00:13:59] Well, I suppose any theology or a formation of a scriptural canon must be inspired in some sense. Otherwise, it would be like developing a science without ever looking at data, or writing a history of art without looking at any paintings. You need an eye as well as a mind. Another current development is the emergence of comparative theology. Theologians from one tradition study others to gain spiritual insights that will help them become better theologians within their own faith. Lord, where are You leading me with regard to comparative theology? 

The Voice of God [00:14:36] You know the answer to that. This is the next stage in My relation to mankind. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:14:42] Since people will be looking at the same texts with the same mental frames, why think they'll come up with anything different? 

The Voice of God [00:14:50] You know, both of those presuppositions are not true. They will look at a broader range of religious experience and they will look at it with more relaxed theological frames and fewer vested institutional interests. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:15:06] Doesn't the autobiography relate somewhat oddly to the Theology Without Walls project? On the one hand, I will be posting a question for theological inquiry how to best understand the wider range of revelations. On the other hand, I will already be answering the question by reporting what God, Himself, has told me. Lord, what is the relation of the autobiography to Theology Without Walls? 

The Voice of God [00:15:32] God: An Autobiography gives a kind of model for how it might be done. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:15:38] Because theology cannot just be an intellectual enterprise but requires spiritual attunement?

The Voice of God [00:15:44] Yes.  Jerry L. Martin [00:15:46] What we need is not the right theory about God, but to figure out how we are supposed to respond to God. 

The Voice of God [00:15:54] Yes, that is exactly right. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:16:06] The next time I prayed, before I could ask questions, God spoke. 

The Voice of God [00:16:29] You stand on the threshold of a new spiritual era, a new Axial Age, in which, for the first time spiritually attuned individuals will draw their understanding of spiritual reality, not just from the scriptures of their own religious tradition, but from the plenitude of My communications to men and women. The upshot will not be a bland acceptance of all so-called scriptures and theological traditions, as if they all said the same thing. As you can see, they do not. But the more accurate of them can be fitted together in a meaningful way. This is not just a conceptual puzzle-solving, as if the challenge were purely intellectual- how to fit the largest number of pieces into a single coherent story. It is most fundamentally spiritual. How to sense which writings and experiences are truly sensitive to the divine reality and how to put them together in a way that is spiritually meaningful, whether or not it seems logical. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:17:41] Lord, are the world's religions converging on the cutting edge of spiritual development? 

The Voice of God [00:17:47] Yes, that's right. It's time for them to come together, not merely putting the pieces together, but in a dynamic way, a way that lends itself to forward development. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:17:59] What do You mean? 

The Voice of God [00:18:01] As people from different traditions take in elements from other traditions, they will make something of that. It won't just be a passive reception. It will be a creative, very dynamic process. For example, as a Christian takes in the "truth" of the Atman- truth in scare quotes, because the Hindu truth of the Atman is not the final truth. It leaves the Christian perspective out, for example. Understanding the Atman will be shaped, and expanded, and connected to other elements not present or not so fully present in the Hindu tradition. As the Hindus or Chinese fully take in the personal God of the Old Testament, as they take in the reality of Jesus, they will be transformed. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:18:53] Resulting in a single world religion?

The Voice of God [00:18:56] There is no way human beings will all subscribe to a single religion any more than all philosophers agree, but they will no longer be hermetically sealed, looking at one another over tall, thick walls, sending bullets, or, when you're lucky, flowers back and forth. It will be a creative ferment in which religions borrow freely from each other and individuals borrow from all religions and create their own creeds and rituals. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:19:27] Will this mean the end of the old religions? 

The Voice of God [00:19:30] Of course not. The early Christians absorbed Greek philosophy and still remained Christians. There are many other examples of religious syncretism. Some resulted in new traditions, others were fully absorbed by an existing tradition.

Jerry L. Martin [00:19:46] Once religions and individuals take in truths and revelations from each other, will that be the end of the process? 

The Voice of God [00:19:54] Of course it won't be the end. There will be new developments and new communications from My side, and new developments, and events, and consciousness from the world side. The cutting edge of spiritual development will continue. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:20:42] We had left Washington and of course, no longer spent late afternoons on the Bank of the Potomac. But on a visit to the city, I returned to the spot where I had first met God. While it is a beautiful setting, it does not have the aura of a sacred place. Instead, one hears the clicking of wheels on the bicycle path, and the shouts of kids throwing frisbees, but it is still a good place to think. And I ask myself- what do you know when you know God? After all my prayerful experiences, the central assumption of my training as a philosopher no longer seemed adequate. I was taught that knowledge consists of propositions. For example, Maria knows that the proposition Paris is the capital of France is true. So here is Maria and there is Paris, or a fact about Paris. One thing, Maria, standing in a cognitive relation to another thing, Paris. The relation is based on a third thing, a body of evidence. It is a distant and purely intellectual relation. Most arguments for or against the existence of God assume this model of knowledge, but is that the correct model for knowing or understanding God? The knower and the known, God and the person experiencing God, attuned to God, are not quite so separate, so distant from one another. And the knowing or understanding relation is neither abstract nor purely intellectual. It is existential, participatory and transformative. It is a saving or liberating relation. One of the existential facts about relating to God is that in spite of His reassurances to the contrary, He seems hidden. Even when He is most available, most fully present, it is not the way across the river,  the Lincoln Memorial, is present. Some call it a matter of faith, but that sells the experience short. It is not groundless belief. It is just that, to use Saint Paul's phrase, the evidence of things unseen is elusive, hard to nail down. The life of faith is living in light of that divine presence that one never captures, never holds in one's hand. Perhaps it is precisely this elusiveness that makes the knowledge of God transformative. To be aware of God at all, you have to reorient your life. Is this right, Lord? That what one knows when one knows God is not an inert fact. It is a living reality that places demands on us and transforms us. 

The Voice of God [00:24:04] Yes. 

Jerry L. Martin [00:24:08] As if this were Your sole reason for being. 

The Voice of God [00:24:16] Yes. 

Scott Langdon [00:24:37] Hello, I'm Scott Langdon, creative director of God: An Auttobiography, The Podcast. Thank you so much for listening this far. Episode 44 is the conclusion of our adaptation of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher. And our season three finale, but it's not the conclusion of our podcast. In season four, we'll change format slightly, bringing you new types of content, like interviews with the cast on the making of the podcast and God's impact on our lives during the process. Commentary on each episode, interviews with listeners, new insight into God's continuing revelation, and so much more. So, join us next week for season four and episode 45. We'll meet right back here. Can't wait to be with you.