Science, Religion, and the Human Experience

the complementarity of science and religion 151

Religion comes to us as mythical discourse and the language derived from
it. The aboriginal sources of religion are dramatic mythical narratives. They
image reality as relatedness. They are symbolic discourse about the symbolic
world. They achieve this as dramatic narratives that “character-ize” experience,
that is, set it forth in characters. The stories are staged, that is to say, they
intend an audience. What they portray is what Urs von Balthasar called the
drama of existence. He had this to say about drama:^30

Nowhere is the drama of existence demonstrated more clearly than

in stage drama; we are drawn to watch it, and initially it is immate-

rial whether in doing so we are searching for or fleeing from

ourselves, immaterial whether the performance is showing us the

serious- or play-dimension, the destructive or the transfiguring as-

pect, the absurdity or the hidden profundity of our life. Probably no-

where else but in this interplay of relationships (which is the

essence of theater) can we see so clearly the questionable nature not

only of the theater but also of existence itself, which the theater illu-

minates.

The myths do not intend to make declarations outside of the parameters
of the stories about the “reality” of the characters. This means that all the
characters of mythical drama have dramatic reality. To say more about their
reality transcends the limits of the story. We may be tempted to do this nev-
ertheless, but we thereby approach myths with an alien intentionality. This
happens when we reify the characters into realities transcendent of their dra-
matic home, whether human or divine.
The reification of religious characters is the result of taking these stories
literally rather than symbolically. This claim applies equally to the divine and
the human characters in the stories. When we lose sight of the dramatic context
of these characters, whether of gods or humans, we are tempted to portray
them as realities outside of the stories. We then say things like, God is tran-
scendent or immanent, or both, or neither, and engage in debates about the
divine nature as we transgress the boundaries of myth. “God created the world”
is mythical discourse, not wholly unlike that of Israel’s neighbors in the ancient
Near East. If we take these words literally we approach them with an alien
intentionality. We are then tempted to say theological things like “God gives
us faith,” when it more germane to say, with the Japanese philosopher, Daisetz
Suzuki, that it is “faith that gives us God.”^31
I would argue that it is more appropriate to speak of God as the eminent
other of the myth, but here, from a relational perspective, “other” means mu-
tuality, not nonmutuality. God is the divine presence in the stories. To take the
stories literally leads us into problematical assertions, such as “God is super
agent,” or “God is the Absolute Subject” (Barth). This problematic underlies
many of the statements of philosophers, such as “God has a primordial and a