Peace and disquiet

The stillness of God's world, Nicholas Lash claims, may sometimes seem unbearable. But if we shout, we will hear neither the mystery that calls us, nor each other. Having worked my way through some very fine turns of phrase and richly convoluted sentences, I was aware Lash does not shout and I would have to work to hear his answers to questions concerning the nature of theology. It was worth the perseverance and the listening. "We have made the world a single, swift and dangerous chariot, but there is little wisdom in the charioteer."

Lash's main claim is that the "modern" world of the 18th-century Enlightenment, characterised by the central position of reason, is drawing to an end. "Dualism", Lash believes, distinguished this world, and it was set in motion by the inquisitive nature of 17th-century Europe, the "brave new world" which had given birth to a particular method of enquiry. Knowledge now was gained primarily through the study of nature and objects. Such an approach had serious implications. It affected the way "divine revelation" was understood because now a distinction was made between natural and revealed religion, and God was studied in much the same way as the natural world was studied - as an outside object.

Our modern minds, driven by the same passion to explain and understand, are still marked by this spirit-matter dualism, taking Descartes' notion of the separation of mind from body as the starting point. Newtonian mechanics emphasises the same notion, but of the many forms dualism takes it is the one, Nash feels, between God and the world, which has done such damage to the relationship between ourselves and the world. Creaturely dependence has vanished. Lash demonstrates how Karl Barth's view of the Enlightenment's rule of "pure reason" represents a dissociation of reason from imagination, head from heart and faith from reason. It is our elevation of reason to an attribute of God, Lash persistently insists, which must now come to an end - and in this book covering many aspects of religion and therefore appealing to those interested in theology, philosophy, the history of ideas or the philosophy of mind - he shows how the end of religion is indeed reason for its beginning.

What form should the new religion take? The world is finite, but in the division between things of the mind and things of the body, things of the body have been regarded as secondary in importance. This view, Lash urges, must be revised.

The great religions still have a key role to play. They remind us that although the impact of dualism may have caused religion to be excluded from the area of public truth, the secularity of our culture is actually a dangerous illusion. Without the great religions our tendency towards idolatry - whether it be of materialism, people, ideas, forces or even ourselves - is left unrestrained. The great religions have checked our propensity towards idolatry and sought to wean us away from our destructive bondages, not to suppress our desires but to purify them, and release us from chains that bind us to "egotism's nervous and oppressive grasp".

As well as respecting what Lash calls "particularity", which Christianity educates us to respect, we must also revere "difference" with a readiness to admit that no one religion should lay claim to theoretical finality over another. What is now important and urgent is that Jews, Christians and Muslims should discover a sense of shared responsibility for "all the families of the earth". If Judaism, Christianity and Islam are descended from Abraham, Abraham stands behind Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. Although in Christianity, the Word speaks the world into existence, Lash warns that we must be careful not to remain frozen in reverence for this Word, which could find expression in fundamentalism, traditionalism or nostalgia. Yet he is an advocate of Christianity, asserting that it begins and ends with peace, with God the Spirit as "gift-breathed bearer" of that peace's promise.

If, having unravelled his meaning, we are left more clearly with a sense of how we should address the dark and respond to the silence of God's voice, knowing that God is not a thing who offers himself for observation, then so be it. We have understood that our spoilt mentality fostered by an attitude born in the 17th century is responsible for the silence of the deity's word seeming unbearable. It seems unbearable precisely because this view tells us it is unreasonable.

Maryanne Traylen holds a PhD in literature, University of Wales.