August 25, 2013

Rational Religion: Gülen’s Middle Way

Howard Wettstein*

This paper explores “the middle way.” Talk of a middle way harkens back to Aristotle’s Golden Mean, and in my own Jewish tradition to Maimonides. I explore the synthesis, if that is the right word, between the extremes that the middle way represents. I delineate two models of integration, the first, theoretical compromise. The second way, which I prefer, leaves the extremes and the truths they emphasize in place.

Consider the alleged conflict between science, in the broadest sense, and religion. The problem with religious fundamentalism and also what we may call “scientism” is the claim to the exclusive possession of the truth. My approach is to leave in place what seems plain, that both sides possess truth, and to see the middle-way as a practical-reason project, one that emphasizes context. A parallel example is the apparent conflict between ethical universalism and particularism. Rather than decide between these, or produce a theoretical third position, we should give great weight to universalism ⎯ seeing all people as of equal value and ethical significance ⎯ and particularism ⎯ with its attention to our families and ethnic and religious communities. The idea is to give appropriate weight to each of these depending upon context, and allowing each to call a halt to the dominance of the other. Finally, I apply my approach to the middle way to basic theology, to the discordant scriptural anthropomorphic characterizations of God. I propose that we use these diverse images in a practical way, to nurture religious development, to stimulate growth in our relationship to God. What the religious traditions give us, or so I argue, is not so much a theory of God, as a route to holiness.…

“…just as God wove the universe like a lace on the loom of love, the most magical and charming music in the bosom of existence is always love.” (F. Gülen)

Fethullah Gülen has made a major contribution to “Islamic Modernism.” My project here is to generalize to a view one might call religious modernism, or even better, rational religion. I have been stimulated by Gülen’s thought to reflect in some of the ways indicated in this paper. Needless to say, Gülen is not responsible for the directions my own reflections take me. But I am grateful for the stimulation, and for all the good that the Gülen movement has stimulated during these dark times.

My own orientation is traditional or even Orthodox Judaism. But “orthodoxy” is the wrong expression for the sort of wonderful constellation of backward and forward looking thinking that Gülen advocates and with which I feel great sympathy. The idea of a middle way of course brings to mind Aristotle’s talk of the Golden Mean, and in the context of Jewish thought brings to mind the great medieval Aristotelean, Maimonides, who would feel much sympathy I think for Gülen’s middle way.

… Science in the broadest sense ⎯ and as Gülen emphasizes, this includes the social sciences as well ⎯ are the key to unlocking the nature of nature, including human nature. Of course we do find in Scripture some claims about matters of fact, historical events and the like. But such claims, as I see it, are, as we say in philosophy, “defeasible.” This attitude expresses itself dramatically in Maimonides radical ⎯ too radical for many ⎯ attitude to creation ex nihilo. Maimonides roundly criticizes the Aristotelian proofs for the eternity of matter and espouses a belief in the religious tradition’s conception of creation ex nihilo. But he adds the thought ⎯ this is the radical part ⎯ that if the Aristotelian proofs had really been good, he Maimonides would have immediately accepted them and would have proceeded to reinterpret scripture. The scriptural characterization of creation would have remained crucially important for Maimonides ⎯ there would be much to learn from it about the universe and our place in it ⎯ but we would no longer read it as an account of the actual process of creation.

So what we know by human reason is what we know, and religion does not come to tell us otherwise. Again this is not because religion loses some battle with science but rather because the world ⎯ and not only Scripture ⎯ is God’s book, and we have been given the (of course fallible) gift of reading the book of nature. But values are another matter. Of course there are some values immediately implicated in science’s reading of God’s book of nature, values like intellectual honesty and integrity, openness to new ideas, and the like. But broader ethical, moral, and personal values are another matter. The modern world ⎯ I gratefully live in a liberal democracy — emphasizes values like (as in the American constitution) life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Not for a moment to belittle these, what about the values that are focal in the religious tradition, like awe, love, and gratitude? Those of us who have tasted God’s love and who live with a sense of awe as a background condition of our lives, who attain with God’s help a sense of centeredness, who feel God’s providence ⎯ we know what religion provides. This is no replacement for something science provides, not at all. It is perhaps a replacement or, better, a supplement to what modern culture provides. But we need not feel any sense of bifurcation between the religious sides of our lives and our interest in science and more broadly our interest in the gifts of modern culture. These too ⎯ including music and the arts ⎯ are God’s gifts.

If there is any sense of priority here between science (and we might include the other products of modern culture) and religion, I would distribute it. With respect to facts on the ground, including the nature of the natural world, priority goes of course to science in the broadest sense. Not because it ever achieves the final word, but because it is our God-given guide to nature. With respect to values in the broadest sense, with respect to providing a framework for life, priority goes to religion.

What I’m advocating ⎯ and without being a Gülen scholar, I hope that what I say is at least broadly in his spirit ⎯ is unfortunately far removed from what is perhaps the dominant trend, certainly in Orthodox Judaism, and other forms of emphatically traditional religion. What I find is a gap: those who share the sort of attitude towards western culture I’ve been espousing tend to either reject religious tradition outright or else exhibit weakness in their religious practice and knowledge of traditional religious texts. Those who are steeped in the traditional texts ⎯ and in Judaism that means (at the highest level) Talmud ⎯ tend to a fundamentalist outlook, a lack of appreciation of the value, even the religious value, of western culture; it also often means a parochial attitude with respect to “the other.”

*Professor of Philosophy at University of California Riverside

Excerpted from the author’s paper presented at the international conference entitled "Peaceful Coexistence: Fethullah Gulen's Initiatives for Peace in the Contemporary World", Erasmus University of Rotterdam, 22-23 November 2007.

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