Since when do you believe in God?

In the film (movie!) Four Good Days, a story of the tragedy of addiction, Ash asks her mother:

“Mom. Since when do you believe in God?”
“Since not believing didn’t work.”

This sums up the experience of many including myself. Materialistic atheism didn’t work intellectually (not a problem for everyone, but it was for me) and it didn’t work in terms of meaning and value (the spiritual or the human).

Atheism however remains a challenge. Despite New Atheism failing to achieve its goal of getting rid of religion. The religious need is unsatisfied and atheism does not satisfy. There is now a move towards re-enchantment.

Does this mean that there is no longer a challenge from atheism? I think not. Atheism emerged from the Enlightenment divorce of reason and faith and its obsession with the finite stuff of the material world (to which we do owe the massive progress in science and technology). The infinite, the realm of God, meaning, value, the good, the true and the beautiful, was banished to an unknowable beyond, putting it beyond rational knowledge.

Within the bounds of a rationality limited to the realm of the material and the finite, what kind of religion or spirituality is possible? Emmanuel Kant’s limited reason in order to leave room for faith; his idea of God and the beyond was as a necessary postulate (a non-rational leap of faith or even a kind of thought experiment) to sustain morality. Religion as a support for morality is neither convincing nor nourishing. Another kind of religion available after rationality is limited to the finite is experientialism whether of the charismatic or the mystical sort. The error of both is when they fall into a quest for an experience, a narcissism with a veneer of spirituality. Just the kind that Teresa of Avila warned against.

The mode of thinking that produced atheism has also removed the rational anchorage for spirituality and meaning. Meaning is found within. The rise of irrationalism in the church (turning to either morality and ultimately wokism, or esoteric ego centred experience) is echoed in both the search for meaning in gender identity and the rise of interest in the occult. We see both church and wider society yearning for a re-enchantment. But re-enchantement without a foundation in a rational and trinitarian Christian faith is left exposed to dehumanising and oppressive forms of religion or spirituality. What is needed is a Christian faith that offers both rationality and enchantment. For this, the church, or theology, must address the false epistemology and metaphysics of the Enlightenment that has left us captive to the finite, to the material world of things. For this, a rational understanding of the incarnation and by implication the Trinity is key. The incarnation is the revelation of the unity in difference of the world and the divine, the finite and the infinite.

The other need is re-enchantment, and here again the incarnation is central. It is the focus of Christian devotion. The Christ that is God become man ends up on the cross that reconciles all humanity to God, giving us new life through the resurrection and the outpouring of the God’s Spirit.

The object is a faith that is affective, experiential, mystical AND rooted in a rationality that articulates the relationship between God and the world.