New Theology and American Politics

Rollie Smith November 2019

We in America are distressed. We are not sure what we have become or are becoming. We have turned our nation over to a man most of us do not like, who is crude, who tells us lies, and whose actions are hurting us here at home and throughout the world. Many of us did this because we did not like the way our nation was going. We did this because we wanted a change. We find ourselves at war with each other, calling others evil who are not like us, naming and blaming, doubting the goodness that is in us all. We hear the politicians, the pundits, the pastors, the preachers, the polemicists ranting and raving on radio, on TV, and on the internet.[1] How did this happen? How can we understand our way to go?

At an earlier time of profound confusion, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, imprisoned by the Nazis for complicity in an effort to bring down Hitler, called for a “new theology in a world come of age[2].” One of my mentors, Dr. Martin Marty, took up his cause after Bonhoeffer’s execution near the end of WWII with a series of books which Marty named New Theology[3] in which I had the privilege of participating.

Bonhoeffer and Marty were considering the relevance of Christianity to modernity. As persons of faith in the Christian tradition, they recognized that the Judeo-Christian tradition was begun in the context, language, and cultures of antiquity and developed in medieval times utilizing the language and thought structures of Hebraic-Greco-Roman civilizations. They realized that the Enlightenment, modern science, and the industrial and republican revolutions provided a new concrete situation for their faith. Thus, they engaged with others from many traditions in rethinking and applying the insights of their Christian tradition to modernity.

Modernity itself, however, must be questioned, not merely adapted to, as Bonhoeffer recognized in the threat of authoritarian populist nationalism which is one of its consequences. As did Marty and H Reinhold Niebuhr in their reflections on American politics and its capitalist economy. Moreover, American politics today illustrates the contradictions in modernity in an age that may be characterized as transmodern as we deal with these contradictions.

That is my thesis which I will explicate by 1) giving a brief history of ideas up to the modern American idea, 2) indicating the role of theology and politics in American life, 3) demonstrating the contradictions in American modernity and 4) presenting the choices that will shape America beyond modernity. The rest is up to us.

1. A Brief History of Ideas

Ideas matter. These products of mental imaging of reality, things in the universe, shape our behavior personally, socially, and politically.[4]

There are three kinds of ideas: Ordinary ideas which we discover in our common sense or ordinary language. They make up our “conventional wisdom,” “self-evident beliefs,” or “convenient truth.” Critical ideas we discover in philosophy and science. These are ideas that have undergone inquiry. In science that inquiry is rigorous and methodical using experiment, evidence, and peer review to verify. In philosophy, clarity and consistency is sought as well as the context that make ideas meaningful. Big ideas provide the context, ground, and purpose in reflective consciousness for our ordinary and critical ideas. They are expressed in metaphors, stories, and rituals that bond tribes, nations, and civilizations. These are of special focus for the theologian.

In the development of a human person and in the process of human history, we can discern progress and decline relating to the ascent and descent of these three kinds of ideas.

In infancy, we are born into a language through which we accept the categories and analogies that help us perceive and connect objects.[5] These categories help us order our world so we can adapt to our environment and, even more, adapt our environment to ourselves. Words and images, language and art, stories and maxims guide us day to day. They indicate matters of fact, things that are what they are. They help us anticipate and plan as we go about living in the real world.

In our prehistoric clan existence, when we see a striped orange and black movement or hear a growl, a word answers our question “what is that?” A tiger. “What will it do to me?” Kill or maul me. “How can I deal with it?” Run, standoff, spear. A bison? Kill and eat; but this is easier if you coordinate the hunt with others. Lightening, a storm, a volcano happens. Forces of nature. How do we deal with forces? We project our own experience of acting on things and personify the forces that make the events. We try to control them perhaps by supplication. We use words and pictures. Verbal and visual gestures and then stories and rituals to teach our children how to live and survive in a world of things and forces we must use and avoid.

The ability to think through symbolic forms like words and pictures, gives us ability to control our environment. We learn to grow and herd food and make the utensils that help us plow, seed, water, and harvest the land. And the weapons to protect the land and its produce from raiders. Agriculture, the gathering and settling of clans, creates civilization. In civilization, bartering and trade is established. Special functions and roles are assumed or assigned. Writing is invented to keep track of roles and exchanges. As well as to pass on the stories and maxims that all adopt. [6]

The personified forces of nature we need to control are brought together in a unified story. A chief god over all the other forces of nature is linked to the chief ruler that oversees all the elements of the society. A holy rule of nature and human society — a hierarchy — is instituted. In civilization, two contrary inclinations are in tension: 1) domination — the tendency to expand the land and also to keep people in check and 2) civility — the tendency to collaborate by working together for a common good. The golden rule confronts the rule by force. Both are sanctified and censured by religion.

Critical ideas showed themselves often in great civilizations throughout the ancient and medieval periods. Wise men in moments of leisure wondered beyond matters of fact to why. Past the conventional wisdom. Even past the unknown personal forces attributed to be in charge of events. Socrates and Heraclitus questioned what seemed to be real. Plato invented the idea of the idea and wondered how ideas were mirroring the world while also obscuring the real behind it.[7] Epicurus inquired into the nature of things anticipating the theoretical science to come. Aquinas questioned accepted religious doctrines while trying to accommodate them to the conventional everyday language of the day through Aristotelian philosophy and science.

Religion and its study in theology has been woven into the journey of homo sapiens from the beginning up to modern times. It is not clear whether religion and theology will survive our modern times.[8]

2. Theology and Politics

Politics consists in making and behaving by rules to coordinate efforts by which humans can live and act together.[9]Theology consists in giving meaning to these rules of behavior. Theology delivers the big ideas that afford the context and grounding for these rules. Theology does this by telling a story of origins, of heroes, and of triumph that gives meaning and purpose to persons working together.

America is an experiment in modernity (some would argue the first) in which diverse, and seemingly irreconcilable, theologies supporting diverse politics came together by employing the insights and beliefs of modernity stimulated by the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance of Greek, Roman, and Arabic philosophy, the Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution. Through the theology of modernity other theologies could be accommodated and subsumed in a politics that could forge a public interest beyond, but including, narrow self-interests. A civic religion without supernatural dogmas, Thomas Jefferson concluded, would hold the country together while allowing individuals and groups to believe and practice in private what they wanted.

There were and are remnants of religious righteousness that would emerge in great awakenings to challenge the notion that Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, and Eastern religions could operate under the civil religion of modernity that championed science, pluralism, tolerance, free speech and movement, and secular humanism. The civil religion supported universal public liberal education, democratic government encouraging acquisition of property yet opposing extensive inequities in wealth, free associations of workers, women, descendants from slaves, dissenters, poor folk and other outsiders confronting government caught in the influence of rich corporations. And a nation extending boundaries, overcoming dissolution, protecting major institutions, all through the acceptance of the civil religion.

Reaction has always been a part of American politics even to the point of civil war, urban riots, and social withdrawal. Recently the religious right or righteous religions have been asserting themselves in politics, especially through the Republican Party. They have aligned themselves against women’s right to choose, evolution, human responsibility for climate change, genetic explanations for homosexuality, and, in some cases, against critical thinking[10] as attacks on their religion.

America has also witnessed religious souls who, using their holy scriptures and traditions, recognize the failures of modernity. They recall the prophets and sages who have pushed the rulers, managers, and priests to face up to their complicity with injustice, their oppression of the common folk. They have promoted the message of social justice in the civil religion in line with their own traditions, stories, and language of golden rule, compassion, forgiveness, universality, and cooperation. They confront the idolatry, arrogance, and inequities within modernity and its religion. These are not the religious right, greedy televangelists who have cast their lot with the rich and dominant. These are sincere seekers who understand that our social order is not fair and the civil religion of modernity must be challenged. They are advancing a religion of transcendence over a religion of conventionality.

3. Modernity and its contradictions.

Socialism attacks contradictions in free-market individualism. Capitalism attacks contradictions in central planning for social goals. Democracy attacks the contradictions of aristocracy. Educated and prosperous elites attack the contradictions of populism. Humanism attacks the contradictions in legal fundamentalism. Rule of law attacks the contradictions in legal relativism. Conservatism attacks the contradictions in moral relativity and the inevitability of progress. Liberalism attacks the contradictions in unconditional expression and universal perspectives. All contribute to human understanding and decision-making.

Transcending religious consciousness comprehends the contradictions in human existence, a dynamic interaction of organism and environment, that generates a continual tension of consciousness and world, soul and body, spirit and matter, individual and community, history and anticipation. Transcending religious consciousness expose and criticize the contradictions in the present culture of the political economy. The culture of modernity.

Eras or epochs (antiquity, dark ages, middle age, modernity) are fabrications, the categories of historians and philosophers attempting to understand human process, thought, and behavior. They try to describe the uniqueness of the imaginative structure or paradigm, the big idea, that contextualizes the general thinking and behavior of that era. Cultural observers start where they are (whether they realize it or not); that is, in the midst of the crises that prompt inquiry into their culture. Crises are points of decision that advance or impede the human prospect from the perspective of the observer-questioner.

Modernity, with its cult of human progress, was reckoned complete in the latter 18th century and fully established in the 19th and early 20th. Its decline can be traced to the World War in all its phases (great War, World War 2, Cold War). I would argue that we are now on the cusp of a transition from modernity to a new paradigm and are assessing how to deal with its contradictions and crises. I label this moment of transition “transmodernism.” To what that transition is leading, i.e. the postmodern future, is not yet clear because we are in the process of deciding it.

The characteristics of modernity have been well studied. These include:

• Objectivistic rationalism to overcome the superstitions of premodern culture.

• Skepticism towards mystery, miracle, and the supernatural.

• Unity of systems in a model for human understanding of all there is.

• Reality as objectively knowable through scientific method.

• Science as the ultimate arbitrator of truth and good for humanity.

• Dualism between body and mind, empiricism and idealism, individualism and socialism.

• Progress and its inevitability through evolution.

• Nationalism that divides the world into competing nation-states rooted in diverse cultures.

• Industrialism with technology expanding geometrically.

• Rational economy based on self-interest in an unfettered free market.

Modernity, its rationalism, objectivity, immutable laws, and reductionism has benefitted humanity with property and wealth, appliances for reducing the toil of living, means of faster mobility and communication, techniques to reduce illness and extend life, creative individualism and democracy. But it has also led to competitive nationalism, devastating weaponry, economic inequality, a warming earth, and poisonous atmosphere, all threatening mass extinction.

A new story is being written that is undermining many of the assumptions of modernity. Humanity is on the verge of a new postmodern era by making the choices now in responding to the crises and contradictions of modernity.

The transition arises out of both the prospects and threats of modernity. New findings and theories in the advancement of science conflict with the assumptions of modernism. Culture and religion are reassessed in relation to biological and psychological evolution. Political-economic alliances and struggles are restructuring since the World Wars. A rapid advance of digital technology makes it conceivable to build new worlds and a new humanity.

In philosophy, the pivot can be traced from the rationalism of Descartes and Spinoza, through the composition of big systems (Kant, Hegel, and Whitehead), and into pragmatic, existential, and phenomenological essays (Neitsche, Dewey, Sartre, and Rorty). Postmodern philosophies abandon big systems, practice ongoing criticism, and eschew absolutes and the illusion of a fixed and certain reality.

A central insight for the transition beyond modernism is that the human way of encountering the environment and knowing the world occurs by way of symbolic constructs. These constructs are images, language, mathematics, models, starting with categories, analogies, and metaphors within a social context. This insight of the philosophy of mind is verified through the findings of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology.

Science is abandoning certitude and determinism (Newton and the early Einstein) for the indeterminism and probability of relativity, quantum, and information theories.[11] The evolution of life is understood not as directed by any immutable law or will but by random mutations of genes that will be naturally selected as more advantageous in a concrete environment. There is no certain history to be “on the side” of. Unpredictability is no longer considered a limitation of the human mind, but as a characteristic of reality itself. And the uncertainty of nature is not a mystery that can be solved by appealing to or adding something outside of nature.

Moreover, culture including language, science, art, and religion evolves through a random selection of memes that are produced through symbolic behavior. And the study of symbolic behavior has given rise to the notice of a non-rational, subjective aspect of reality, i.e. a consciousness which cannot be objectified. And furthermore, after many worldwide wars, genocides, mass destruction, growing inequality, and the threat to the earth as a condition for human life, we no longer think progress is as inevitable as the modern mind once assumed. The slogans of “liberty, equality, and brotherhood” or “freedom and justice for all” become hollow.

This major shift of the imagination, as crucial as the paradigm shift that made modern science possible, has affected not just new science, but also art, language, philosophy, and everyday living. The modern mind is pivoting to a new mind. This new mind no longer accepts absolutes in thinking or behavior. It challenges traditional boundaries of nation-states, of ethnicity and race, of biological species, of truth and falsehood, of religion and science, of individuality and social systems.

The transition from modernity is unsettling and frightening. Our personal and interpersonal response will shape the epoch and the species of the future. And that is a lot of responsibility.

4. American Responses: Reaction, Reformation, Revolution, Renovation

Reaction.

Reactionaries long for an earlier time idealized as it never was. I remember reading a book entitled Thirteenth: The Greatest of Centuries.[12] It described the culmination of the Holy Roman Empire, the building of the great cathedrals, the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas, and the development of the universities. It left out the plight of the serfs, the feudal wars, clerical domination, great plagues and other such pleasantries. Today traditional Christians return to the Fathers of the Church of the 2nd to 5th centuries as the time of true interpretation of the Holy Scriptures on which the true Church was built.

American reactionaries today recall ideal times in the 1950s after the triumph of America in WWII and the domination of the US in the economic, political, and even cultural spheres. This was a time of economic progress for dominant white European-American men many of whose descendants no longer enjoy these benefits. Some revert to the libertarian “don’t tread on me” attitude of rebels against the English monarchy when frontier land was plentiful, civil rules were few, and physical strength and proficiency with arms established order.

Reaction should be distinguished from the Conservative tradition of Edmond Burke to Russell Kirk which resists political ideology and progress as history. Nor should it be identified with the Republican Party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Dewey, Eisenhower, and even Nixon — all of whom were considered progressives aiming for a liberal economy and social order.

That is until recently when the Party initiated its strategy to pick up southerners who wanted to return to the pre-bellum days of white supremacy. And until the Party made its pact with evangelical fundamentalists who wanted to restore the Christian Bible as the base of law for the nation when abortion was forbidden, women had their place, homosexuality was an abomination, and science stayed with physics and engineering and would not conflict with religion and morality. Opus Dei Catholics recalling the days when the Church exercised greater control on the state and Orthodox Jews longing for the return of the Israel of David and Solomon have also found refuge in the new movement of reaction.

The mission of reactionaries is to repeal and replace the policies of progressives especially in economic and cultural spheres. Reactionaries look back on the imagined time of Pleasantville when family values were protected in schools and neighborhoods were protected from other kinds of people and thought; and when family rule-breaking and community crime was prevented through harsh punishment. They equate political freedom with economic liberty meaning the unregulated use and control of property as any individual wishes.

Reformation

America has responded to the problems of its modern state and economy primarily by reinforcing modernity but also reforming it by curbing or eliminating negative consequences through regulation and incentives. Often this means paying off the institutions whose practices are causing inequalities in housing, finance, income, and services to “do the right thing.” This is done by subsidies, tax incentives, and government funded projects.

Thus, Teddy Roosevelt in the Progressive Age confronted the excesses of the Gilded Age by busting their trusts. Franklin Roosevelt confronted the Great Depression by massive government programs including World War II that put people to work. Both are considered saviors of American Capitalism except by libertarian reactionaries and free market fundamentalists who want to return to those good old days of rugged individualism.

Reforming the modern state and economy maintains the existing paradigm and the system of institutions that it supports — the nation-state, the balance and separation of powers, separation of Church and State, the free (minimally regulated) market economy, representative democracy through a limited popular vote, labor as a requirement of income, rights and opportunities for deserving citizens. But it does not radically reconstruct the existing social order and the world view that sustains it.

Revolution

Revolutionaries, as the name suggests, often have a cyclical view of history as do reactionaries but their focus is on a future utopia rather than a past one. They want to disrupt, even destroy, the old order (the establishment) and bring in a radically new one. They are imprisoned in apocalyptic or eschatological thinking by which they view human history and nature.

Apocalyptic thinking in many religious traditions portends a New Age after a war to end all wars between the good guys and the bad guys with inevitable victory of the Good in a world made and directed by Theos, Hashem, Allah, Brahman, God. Apocalyptic thinking sees the future as a fundamental break with the present. Eschatological thinking asserts an end to human history to which history is directed by Law, divine or natural, a sort of inevitable progress that leads to a new Humanity.

The Puritan Revolution in England, the Revolution and subsequent Terror in France, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, National Socialism in Germany were all instances of this thinking in modernity as was Manifest Destiny, America First, and the War to End All Wars in America. Populist Right-Wing Nationalism that is in global ascendency and an intellectual pillar of the current US administration promotes a national-state with impermeable borders, national and ethnic identity, its own currency, and strong military — not unlike the National Socialism of the 20th century.

Another variant of this kind of thinking is the inexorable geometric advance of technology towards the Singularity[13]and Homo Deus[14] by which there will evolve a new human species on an earth that is already in the throes of the sixth mass extinction because of a climate change that has already passed the point of no return. Some see this event as a utopia, the scientific triumph of immortality, power, and knowledge. Others see it as a dystopia in which there will be a return to barbarism and slavery with homo sapiens subservient to homo deus.

Both apocalyptic and eschatological thinking, left wing and right wing, affirm an inevitability to the human process and advocate “being on the side of history.”

Renewal:

Renewal does not tear down the house to build an entirely different one. But neither does it merely paint over the cracks and avoid the structural faults that must be corrected to stop the cracks from occurring. To renew humanity, the social order, and the earth requires anticipation and planning, but not a plan that is fixed for all time by some master architect in the past or that will appear in the future after a total break with the present.

Renewal is not anti-modern. It is not anti-science and technology. It is not trying to undo modernity or go back to a time before it. Like reformation, renewal recognizes the bad consequences of modernity, but rather than merely attempting to treat those consequences, it attempts to adjust the very structures in modernity and rewrite the story that justifies them. It reconceives modernity by acknowledging the fundamental uncertainty of nature and the importance of imagination, emotion, and passion along with the intellect and reason.

Renewal accepts the what-is with all its virtues and vices. It transforms not by destruction or denial of the present, but by engagement with it. In the modern idea are the seeds for its transformation. For instance, to overcome the residual remnants of tribalism and xenophobia in nationalism, the renewal strategy is not to demolish or reject the nation-state but to go through and use the nation-state towards a more cooperative planetary mentality and practice. To overcome poverty and inequality, it reconceives the free market as accessible to all in a system where all are responsible for the basic needs of life for all.

Key to the strategy of renewal is comprehension of the relational rather than the relative or the absolute. Renewal recognizes that individuality requires sociality; innovation requires learning from others past and present. The real is the relational. Most of all, renewal shuns absolutes by accepting one of the most important of modern ideas — that of the evolution of genes by natural selection and of memes by moral selection and the interdependency of both in the human experiment. It is a vision of human existence as social organic beings continually transcending in interaction with the universe.

Conclusion for a world come to age

Humanity and its world is in crisis, that is, at a point of decision. It always is. But this time most of us who value and practice critical thinking sense that the stakes are higher. What road shall we take? Reaction: yearning back to an earlier and more perfect moment before modernity. Reformation: reaffirmation of the assumptions of modernity with a tinkering around the edges to reduce some of the immediate negative consequences. Revolution: annihilating the present with anticipation of a new creation from outside. Renewal: engaging the present to work towards a new creation for which we personally and collectively take responsibility.

My analysis of the situation we face today exposes my own values and prescriptions which in turn informs my analysis. From this you can tell who I like to hang around with, what story of the universe I want, my hopes for my grandchildren and theirs. “Alternative facts” has been a joke of American politics with its “post-truth” view of the world. I do not want to fall into the trap of absolute relativity in morality or politics. But at the same time, I do recognize that facts and truth require questioning and verification which are values of modernity. I also realize that the finding of facts and the pursuit of truth arises from a faith that accepts uncertainty and so surpasses all beliefs — religious, political, and scientific.

Reaction and Revolution played a major role in the victory of the Republicans led by President Trump and is guiding the policies of the new administration. The theologian of reaction is Pat Robertson, advisor, supporter, and publicist for Donald Trump in relation to the evangelical fundamentalist community. The theologian of revolution is Steve Bannon of Breitbart News, key advisor to Trump especially in the rationale for populist nationalism.[15]

Liberal benefactors, following the establishment trend of American politics present a reformers agenda and do not go deep in their analysis or prescription through extensive policy analysis and prescription. The theologian of reformers might be Paul Tillich. Harvey Cox, Elie Weisel, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt might also be good candidates of those who stressed the social justice aspects of their religions.

Renewal theologians are those that accept modernity, science, the secular, but want to develop a more radical worldview to critique many of modernity’s contradictions, a worldview that includes the uncertainty of relationality without absolutes. By rejecting the stories of an ideal past or ultimate future out there to be achieved and by rejecting the stories of an inevitable progress because of some absolute or supreme law or guide to the universe, the onus belongs to us personally and collectively. We must take responsibility for who we are and who we will become. That pushes modernity beyond itself. Liberation theology of Gustavo Gutierrez, Alan Boesak, Martin Luther King, Paolo Freire in dialogue with Marx, Whitehead, and Dewey have started to write this new story.

There are other R-words: resistance and rebellion. Resistance is the first step of renewal. What must be resisted is the righteous and absolute mind-set of reactionary and revolutionary thinking and its policies. But that is not enough. As we resist, we construct. We see wonderful instances of resistance occurring in response to the negative immigration, health care, and environmental policies of the present administration. But these resistances have to build into local community-based organizations with positive policies, lasting organizations constituting a civil society that will hold government and the institutions of society accountable to new standards for social justice, economic equity, and inclusive participation.

A note of hope to conclude: This period of anguish and fear, due to the way through modernity that we are taking, is presenting the choices we might make much clearer. We can, if we choose, learn and do better. To renew the earth is to renew ourselves as a questioning, cooperative, and faithful species and thereby allow the earth to renew itself. This is a faith in transcendence with or without a Transcendent.[16] The project of new theology, started by Bonhoeffer and continued by Marty along with so many others, is essential to the enterprise.

[1] Mishra, Pankaj. The Age of Anger. Ferrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017.

[2] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. Macmillan, 1972.

[3] Marty, Martin (ed.), Peerman, Dean (ed.). New Theology 1–10, McMillan, 1966.

[4] My understanding of thinking has been influenced by many philosophers of mind, neuroscientists, and evolutionary psychologists, notably Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Richard Rorty, A.N. Whitehead, Daniel Dennet, Steven Pinker, Michael Gazzaniga, V.S. Ramachandran.

[5] Hofstadter, Douglas. Surfaces and Essences. Basic Books, 2013.

[6] Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind. Harper Collins, 2015.

[7] Whitehead, Alfred North. Adventure of Ideas. Free Press, 1972.

[8] Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion, 2006) leads in the crusade to rid the world of religion because of it negative effects in human history. Richard Rorty (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity 1989) teaches that the days of grand systems of thought including theology are over.

[9] My notion of politics is influenced by Hannah Arendt. See her Between Past and Future, Viking, 1972. And Francis Fukuyama. See his Political Order and Political Decay, Ferrar, 2014.

[10] Strauss, Valerie. “Texas GOP rejects critical thinking skills. Really,” Washington Post, July 9, 2012.

[11] Prigogine, Ilya. The End of Certainty. Free Press, 1996.

[12] Walsh, James. Thirteenth: The Greatest of Centuries. Dossier, 1942.

[13] Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Viking, 2005.

[14] Harari, Yuval Noah. Homo Deus: A Brief History of the Future. Harper Collins, 2015.

[15] Spadaro S.J., Antonio and Figuero, Marcello. “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism in the USA: A surprising ecumenism,” La Cavilta Cattolica, 1017.

[16] “Transcendence without a Transcendent.” This provokes me to speak, with reluctance, about God. After all, theology is also translated as talking about gods or God. Another of my mentors, Bernard Lonergan (Insight, 1978), on his way to transmodernism, took on the Bonhoeffer project in dialogue with Kant, Thomas Aquinas, and modern science and concluded with a “notion” of God in the experience of the infinite, unrestricted human desire to know. A notion is different than a “concept” which is more objectively provable. But then Lonergan finished by “proving” the existence of God as an entity outside of nature in reconciliation with the Hebrew Biblical stories and Catholic Doctrine. AN Whitehead (Modes of Thought, 1938), indicated the “transcendent aim” in the human process; and theologians followed him in talking about God as Process of the Universe which is more than the sum of its parts. That notion is more compatible with the transmodern mind. I follow theologians, more of a pragmatist or existentialist bent, who probe the intentionality and transcendence of human consciousness in the world and discover its potential in all things and the universe as a whole. The point is to have faith in human transcendence beyond the beliefs of theism, atheism, or nontheism as a new interpretation of Pascal’s Wager. For many transmoderns, God-talk can be forgone. Faith is engagement in transcending activity in the world of culture, politics, and economy, not a belief in a supernatural entity in heaven.