442 becoming more human by becoming more godlikeand the historical time in which any eff ort to change the social order
succeeds or fails. Call this third part of the proposal the reconstruction
of society, or just the reconstruction.
Th e fourth element in this argument about the content of a future
spiritual revolution has to do with what it promises. At many moments
in this argument, I have described this promise in diff erent but equiva-
lent words: the enhancement of life, or possessing it more fully; living
for the future in a way that overcomes our estrangement from the pres-
ent; broadening our share in some of the attributes that we ascribe to
God; enacting the truth of embodied spirit as transcendent over the
contexts of life and thought that it builds and inhabits; and dying only
once.
In the previous section of this chapter, I off ered a summary view of
this promise as it is expressed in four domains of existence: our re-
sponse to the institutional and conceptual structures that we ordinarily
take for granted; our dealings with one another; the relation of each of
us to the settled form of his own self— to his character; and our way of
the seeing the world around us and of answering the prompts of per-
ception and experience. It was no more than a summary; the vision of
this promise runs through the entire argument of this book. Call this
fourth part of the proposal the reward.
No simple combination exists among the four elements of the proposal:
the overthrow, the transformation, the reconstruction, and the reward.
Th ere are disharmonies among them. From the disharmonies, risk and
suff ering result. Th ese disharmonies and their consequent risks and suf-
ferings have to do with the nature of our existence. Th e irreparable fl aws
in the human condition are their ultimate basis. We should recognize
them for what they are and refuse the theoretical sleights of hand that
would explain them away. In so doing, we renew the marriage of vision
and realism on which any religion of the future must draw.
Th e contradictions— if so we can call them— have a pragmatic resi-
due: they ensure that our spiritual future, like all other aspects of our
personal and collective experience, is open. In denying us harmony,
they also rescue us from closure.
First, there is a clash between the reward and the overthrow. Th e
unending confrontation with the certainty of death and with the truth