“RELIGION, PARADOX, AND FRANZ BIBFELDT”
(NOTE: The sermon is introduced with a rather
extended “Reading,” which is not a reading at all, but rather a narrative
introduction to the legacy of Franz Bibfeldt.
The Bibfeldt story is important to tell as preparation for the sermon
which follows. The “
A READING (sort of)
about theologian Franz Bibfeldt
This “reading” section of the service is
a little different than usual. It’s not
really a “reading,” though I will offer some brief excerpts from writings. I will use this time explain about something
and set the context for the sermon, and doing it in the sermon might detract
from the sermon’s point. I’d like to let
you in on the most elaborate “inside joke” I know.
I would like to introduce you to a
famous theologian by the name of Franz Bibfeldt. This German-born scholar has, over the years,
had a tremendous influence on many students of theology. In fact, when I was a student at the
By
the way, the lectureship, it turns out, is entirely tongue-in-cheek. That’s because the theologian is too.
The joke began in 1947 when a student at
Concordia Seminary put off his research for a paper until the last minute. He was shocked to find out that the school
library was closed on Sundays, even if though his paper was due Monday. His only option, then, was to make up
footnotes, invent quotes and books and authors.
One of the footnotes was for an imaginary German theologian by the name
of Franz Bibfeldt.
His friend and fellow student, now a
highly esteemed religious scholar named Martin Marty, was intrigued by whole
process, and especially by the citation for Franz Bibfeldt. Eventually, the prank became well known, and
other students began quoting Bibfeldt in their papers. Then the whole thing snowballed. Some of the papers got published, and
Bibfeldt began being quoted in scholarly journals across the nation. The school librarian, who was in on the joke,
made up catalogue cards for books by Franz Bibfeldt, but claimed the books were
so popular they were always checked out.
The student’s friend, Martin Marty,
eventually finished his doctorate and when he began teaching at the
It seems that Bibfeldt’s doctoral
dissertation was on the topic of what he called “The Problem of the Year
Zero.” Bibfeldt was troubled by the fact
that it seems the Romans went from the year 1 BC to the year 1 AD, without
going through the year zero! An entire
year seems to have disappeared. Bibfeldt
scholars speculate that the reason no one has ever seen Franz Bibfeldt is that
his study on the year Zero has left him “calendar-impaired.” He shows up at any appointments either a year
early or a year late.
The
Here are some of the titles of actual
Bibfeldt Lectures:
“The Man Who Isn’t
There: Some Notes on the Quest
for
the Historical Bibfeldt.”
The Bibfeldtian
Origins of the Pseudo-Thomistic Literature.
And then there was “Franz Bibfeldt and
Pastoral Care: Theologian of the Dead,”
in which the speaker claimed that in the 1960s, while many activist religious
leaders spoke up for the plight of the oppressed, Bibfeldt came to the defense
of perhaps the most oppressed of all:
dead people. He claimed that they
were depressed and suffered from “incredible housing discrimination,” and
called for a specialized ministry for the dead.
The first Bibfeldt lecture I heard was
by Professor Robin Lovin, who was inspired by the then popular book called “The
Breakdown of Consciousness and the Origins of the Bicameral Mind,” which was
the first popular book describing the functions of the left-brain and the
right-brain. Lovin believed Bibfeldt,
instead of having two sides of the brain, was unique in having four distinct
compartments: left and right, upper and lower.
His lecture title was “Franz Bibfeldt:
The Breakdown of Consciousness and the Origins of the Quadrilateral
Mind.”
There is much more, and I could go on
and on: for example, there are the signed genuine photographs to Bibfeldt from
luminaries like President Jimmy Carter, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Mayor
Richard Daily, and the not-so-genuine copy of Time magazine with Bibfeldt on
the cover, always on display at the
Martin Marty, who was my favorite
professor when I was there, is of course the world’s greatest Bibfeldt
scholar. When Marty gave the Bibfeldt
lecture, he did so with a slide show. He
had a clicker in his hand to click from picture to picture, but there were no
pictures, just a continuous chain blank screens as he spoke.
Marty has summed the whole thing up this
way.
“Bibfeldt
is a reminder that a person need not exist in order to influence lives. .
. He shows that theologians – like gods
– are easier to control if we invent them.”
“RELIGION, PARADOX, AND FRANZ BIBFELDT”
A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear
Sunday,
All
I promised you I’d have more to say about Franz Bibfeldt’s theology. So let me begin there. Bibfeldt is best known for his ability to resolve paradox. A paradox is when two contradictory statements appear to be true (like “here is a square circle”), and Bibfeldt skillfully solves the problem by declaring they are both true.
For example, we all know the saying “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” Now how can that be? Common sense tells us that either things change or they remain the same, not both. Bibfeldt advocates the courage to embrace the paradox, accept both contradictory statements simultaneously as true, and voilá: you see there is no paradox. The more things change, indeed, the more things remain the same.
If you can grasp the insight on something like that, you can apply it to any paradox, especially in religions. Religions are founded on paradox. For example, on one hand they say that God is omniscient, knows everything, even knows what I’m going to do tomorrow. On the other hand God gave me free will to decide. Paradox: how can I have free will if I can’t decide other than what God already knows I will decide? Solution: both are true. God is omniscient and I have free will. It’s easy, Bibfeldt would say.
Christianity is based on a paradox that Jesus is fully divine and fully human at the same time. Others might say that something is either human or divine, but can’t be both. Bibfeldt, along with most of Christendom, finds little obstacle to embracing the paradox.
You get the
idea, I think. The early existentialist
philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote a classic book entitled Either/Or, in which he argued that the
essence of life is choice, and that to live with integrity means to make
difficult choices. For example, either
God exists or not, says Kierkegaard, and to live meaningfully means to decide. Bibfeldt responded to Kierkegaard’s book Either/Or through a journal article that
he entitled Both/And, saying you
never have to choose one or other, but embrace all. God both exists and doesn’t exist. It’s simple.
He expanded that article later into a full-length book responding to
Kierkegaard, and expanded his title, too.
It became Either/Or and/or
Both/And. A review of Bibfeldt’s
books appearing in the book review section of the New York Times (this is true:
But Bibfeldt’s most popular book carried the title The Relieved Paradox, in which he wrote that the mission of theology is to “make things come out right.” Thus, the paradox is relieved.
Remember the Bibfeldt lecture I mentioned on the “Quadrilateral Mind?” It was argued that while most of us have only a bicameral mind – with a right-side performing some functions and a left-side performing different ones, Bibfeldt was blessed with four compartments. Those of us with only two sides cannot easily embrace paradox, because the left-side and the right-side need harmony, contradiction produces mental stress. But with four compartments, such as Bibfeldt seems to have had, the upper left can harmonize with the lower right, and be unaware that a contradiction is filed in the upper right. The paradox is not only relieved, it is satisfactorily overlooked.
Bibfeldt's philosophy of "both/and" was obviously developed as humor, as a joke. And every time I run into paradox, I think of him. Paradox is riddled throughout religion and philosophy, and actually inspires some of the most profound ideas.
But religion and philosophy are by nature slippery and ambiguous. I wonder, though, what Bibfeldt would do with the relatively recent discovery of paradox in science?
It used to be an axiom of both science and philosophy that paradox cannot be true; that is, that two contradictory statements cannot both be true. It cannot both be true that a rock is solid and not solid. Either it is or it isn't. It cannot both be true that an object can remain still and move at the same time. This axiom that two contradictory statements cannot both be true has been very helpful to us in understanding how the world actually works.
The problem is that, as I read it, the axiom against paradox works fine in the day to day world we experience, but it breaks down when applied to the micro-world of subatomic physics. From what I have been able to discover, at that level, paradox is built into the way the world works. I’d like to spend a little time focusing on that level of life.
I don't pretend to understand what I read from the scientists. I can only report what I hear. I take their word for it, as we all do. Few of us, for example, have ever measured the speed of light, though I suspect all of us believe it when scientists who have tested it tell us light travels at 186,000 miles per second. I believe it, though I haven't tested it myself, nor have I the slightest idea of how to test it.
I say all this because I am about to tell you a number of things I don't understand. I want to tell you about paradoxes of subatomic physics, and though I report them to you as I read it, I have to confess I don't understand it anymore than I understand why the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. Please don't ask me to explain these things I report. I may report them in error, and I'll be glad to be corrected if I do, but they are the scientific paradoxes that I read about. And there are three in particular I wish to mention this morning.
The study of subatomic physics, it seems, is riddled with paradox. Here’s one, for example. Electron particles are constantly in motion. But if you want to observe them, you can identify either their location or their speed, but not both simultaneously. I am about to say something that makes no sense, but I’ll try to say it carefully. If the location of an electron particle is observed, there is no exact speed to be measured. Conversely, if the speed of an electron particle is measured, it has no location to be observed. It is impossible to know both “facts” about such particles at the same time. This is part of what has come to be called “the uncertainty principle” of quantum physics.
Again, I must emphasize I don't understand what I'm telling you. I am only telling you what I've read. In case you think it's a bit crazy, as it is, let me quote some scientists on this. First from Douglas Hofstadter, the Pulitzer Prize-winning popular science author who spoke from this pulpit last year:
"The uncertainty principle is more than a restriction on human observers; it is a reflection in the uncertainties in nature itself. It's not just that we cannot know a particle's position and momentum simultaneously; it doesn't have a definite position and momentum simultaneously."
Now let me quote from English physicist Paul Davies:
"[The uncertainty principle] says you can't know where an atom, or electron, or whatever, is located and know how it is moving, at one and the same time. Not only can you not know it, but the very concept of an atom with a definite location and motion is meaningless. You can ask where an atom is and get a sensible answer. Or you can ask how it is moving and get a sensible answer. But there is no answer to a question of the sort, 'Where is it and how fast is it going?'"
In the past, we have looked to science for knowledge. The paradox of this uncertainty principle is that at least at the level of subatomic particles, nature tells us that some things are unknowable, inherently uncertain. At this level, at least, there is no "knowledge."
I am comforted by the comment from physicist Niels Bohr who once said, "Anyone who is not shocked by Quantum Theory has not understood it." Well, I confess I am shocked. That is a bit comforting, I suppose.
So let me extend the “shocking” and paradoxical insights of subatomic physics. One reason measurement is so slippery is that unlike the rest of the world we are familiar with, the motion of electron particles is unpredictable. Its motion is random.
The world we are familiar with operates by predictable cause-and-effect. If we have enough information about an object, we can theoretically predict what will happen to that object.
At the subatomic level, though, it appears that laws of cause and effect are not reliable. At that level, subatomic particles move in random, unpredictable fashion. Here is how Davies explains it:
"From one moment to the next you cannot be sure what a particle is going to do. If for an event one were to choose the arrival of a subatomic particle at a particular place then, according to the quantum theory, that event has no cause, in the sense that it is inherently unpredictable. No matter how much information is available about the forces and influences acting on the particle, there is no way that its arrival at the designated place can be [predicted]. The outcome is intrinsically random."
So here we face yet another paradox: in our world, which is made up of predictable laws of cause and effect, the most basic components of nature, that is atoms, are not themselves completely subject to predictable laws of cause and effect.
Again I confess that I do not understand what I have reported to you. I simply tell you of bizarre claims made by particle physics, and I have no reason to doubt their truth any more than I have reason to doubt the speed of light. But the third paradox is even more bizarre, and in fact so bizarre it is difficult to put into language.
If we try to observe the activity of an electron particle, the very act of observation changes it. An unobserved particle exists in what is called a “ghost state” – it has no definite location, and it will move either like a wave moves or a particle moves, but it hasn’t yet chosen one or the other. When a scientist observes it, it emerges from that “ghost state” and it must then declare itself either a wave or a particle, and it must decide on a location.
Sure this all sounds crazy, but I didn't make it up. Hofstadter illustrates this phenomenon with an example he calls the "quantum water faucet."
"Imagine a water faucet with two knobs, one labeled 'H' for hot, and one labeled 'C' for cold, each of which you can twist continuously. Water comes streaming out of the faucet, but there is a strange property to this system: the water is always either totally hot or totally cold; there is no in‑between. [Hofstadter comments that 'this water faucet is sadly reminiscent of many a bathroom shower...']
“The only way you can tell [whether the water is hot or cold] is by sticking your hand in and feeling it. There is no other way. Actually, in orthodox quantum mechanics it is tricker than that. It is the act of putting your hand in the water that THROWS the water into [either hot or cold]. Up till that very instant, the water [hasn't determined which one].”
So we have yet another paradox. The mere observation of a subatomic particle changes the character and nature of that particle. Like Bibfeldt, science seems to say, at the subatomic level at least, nature embraces “both/and.”
These are the some of paradoxes of
subatomic physics that interest me today.
In fact, science provides many more paradoxes. One of the most famous, of course, is the
consequence of relativity theory on time, and the fact that time goes more
slowly when an object is traveling at a rapid speed than at a slow speed (and
the familiar paradox that an astronaut, traveling at a rapid speed, ages more
slowly than those of us on earth). This
may in fact be the explanation for the saying I’ve seen posted on many busy
office walls: “The faster I go, the
behinder I get.” (Surely somewhere this
statement is footnoted as coming from Franz Bibfeldt.)
I've taken a lot of time to report on the paradoxes of subatomic physics. It is a lot of time indeed, considering I want to talk with you about life, not atoms. What has this discussion to do with life as we know it? I must answer: very little. But the little pieces are important pieces.
Some people have tried to extrapolate the paradoxes of quantum physics into lessons about life. Often this is unjustified. For example, if we learn that atoms do not operate under the normal rule of cause and effect, it does not necessarily follow that psychics are able to violate the law of cause and effect, though that argument has been made. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that the macro world operates very differently from the micro world that I just described.
Nevertheless, I do believe that there are important implications from the paradoxes of subatomic physics. They have to do with new ways of looking at life. These lessons about life are not directly implied by the paradoxes of particle physics, but they do seem to share a consistency and harmony with these findings. (Bibfeldt’s embrace of paradox, by the way, came long before the discovery of paradox in the subatomic world.)
First of all, if these paradoxes are true, we must conclude that complete knowledge is impossible: we can never know everything. The uncertainty principle in physics – that is, that the activity of atoms is inherently unknowable and unpredictable – seems to confirm a more generalized principle of uncertainty.
Many of us have experienced the paradoxical truth that the more knowledge we gain of this world, the more we are aware of what we don't know. This was my experience as a student. The net result of learning about the world was a deep sense of humility about what I don't know. Such humility is, or should be, transferable to religious belief – convictions about life’s deepest puzzles.
In subatomic physics, there is a paradox that involves a trade‑off: either you can know the position of an electron, or you can know its speed, but you cannot know both. This reminds me of another interesting paradox. It seems that the more we know about life, the more complex it becomes, and the more difficult it is to make sense out of life. And on the other hand, people who are not concerned about the complex realities of the world often find it much easier to make life meaningful.
I don't believe this is always the case, but it often seems to be so. You can know, it would seem, that complex truth about life, or you can make life meaningful with a simple truth, but you can't do both. At least, it is difficult to find simple meaning in the midst of complex truth.
Unitarians seem to be interested in the quantum paradoxes I've described this morning. And I can understand why. These paradoxes all center on what science is calling the "uncertainty principle," and we Unitarians have a few uncertainty principles of our own. It seems to fit.
Uncertainty is built into the core of Unitarian principles. Our religion teaches an openness to new ideas and views. This, I suggest, implies an inherent uncertainty. If we were certain that we are right, why be "open," why search any further for new truths? It is the "search for truth" that we claim as our method.
I don't want to suggest that the new physics proves the validity of Unitarianism, but I simply suggest that it shows that an inherent characteristic of nature is its uncertainty. And this, I think, is amenable to the Unitarian quest.
It has long been a conviction of mine that there is no such thing as pure objectivity. As a result, I am cynical whenever the newspapers or the television news claim to present something objectively. I would much rather read a story written by someone who makes their biases known than by someone who claims to present "just the facts."
It has long been a conviction of mine that all knowledge is riddled with biases, and all opinions, all knowledge, is limited. When I read about the paradox of the scientist who must choose between knowledge of an electron's position and knowledge of an electron's speed‑‑for she or he cannot know both‑‑when I read about this limitation, it seems to be an analogy for life's greater issues. Knowledge always involves a perspective, a point of view. It is never completelyn objective, and certainly never complete.
Learning about the paradoxes of subatomic physics has made me more comfortable with paradox in general. That is, it was difficult for me to accept that some things in this world just don't make sense. Like most of us raised in this scientific culture, I assumed that there must be consistent answers to all of life's questions. All I needed was enough information. Now I am not quite so certain, knowing that paradox and inconsistency is part of the answer itself. Of course long ago, Emerson warned us that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” I’m sure Professor Bibfeldt would agree.
There is another lesson I draw from the paradoxes of particle physics. There can be no radical separation between mind and matter, between a person and an object, between you and me on one hand, and the world on the other. This derives from that third paradox, which spoke of the scientist, by merely making an observation, actually influencing and changing the object being observed. An electron does not have a position until the scientist forces it to decide by observing it. This paradox challenges our common-sense notion of the difference between subject and object.
In the words of David Bohm, a leading quantum theorist, "the primary emphasis is now on undivided wholeness, in which the observing instrument is not separated from what is observed." Werner Heisenberg, the man for whom the "uncertainty principle" is named, said this: "The common division of the world into subject and object, inner world and outer world, body and soul is no longer adequate."
This all leads us to what we call the “seventh principle” of Unitarian Universalism: "the interdependent web of existence." The paradoxes of particle physics point to an interrelatedness of all parts of a whole, including the interrelatedness of the scientist with the subject being studied. Paul Davies summarizes it by saying that, "In short, the world is not a collection of separate but coupled things; rather, it is a network of relations."
All of science seems to be demanding an essential unity of understanding. The paradox remains that the more we try to understand the separate parts which make up the universe, the more we are forced to recognize that the parts are not indeed separate, but interdependent with the entire whole.
So it’s all paradoxical, after all. Franz Bibfeldt was indeed philosopher and theologian before his time. He recognized, his interpreters tell us, that there is room for paradox in the world, and in fact on some level paradox is fundamental to the way the world works.
He may overdo the embrace of paradox by preaching the philosophy of “both/and,” but he was onto something with the insight that truth does not depend on consistency, and our understanding of truth is never complete.