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I met Richard Oxenberg at Endicott College where I have taught for 15 years. Oxenberg, a professor of philosophy at Endicott has a new book out Two Philosophers Wrestle with GOD: A Dialogue.

 The book concerns a series of conversations that he had with another distinguished philosopher Jerry Martin. Martin has claimed he had an actual conversation conversation with God. Oxenberg and I have talked about his book on a number of occasions; so I decided to interview him.

Doug Holder: Could you say a little bit about how this book came about?

Richard Oxenberg: Yes. I first met Jerry Martin at an American Academy of Religion conference in Atlanta in 2010. He was facilitating a group discussion called Theology Without Walls, which I attended. The participants were considering the question of whether and how it might be possible to do theology outside of traditional confessional boundaries; in other words, to develop a theology that would draw from multiple religious traditions rather than be confined to one. I was intrigued by the idea and later googled Jerry Martin’s name to learn a little more about him. I discovered a website in which Jerry told a strange story of having engaged in a series of conversations with God. I read it with some fascination and, of course, not a little skepticism. Part of what lent it credence, though, was that Jerry Martin had some very impressive credentials. He had spent years as the chairman of the philosophy department at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and had served as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington.

Sometime later I ran into Jerry again at another American Academy of Religion conference, this time in Boston. We ended up talking with one another for quite some time about our views of religion and about some of Jerry’s experiences. He was very friendly and affable and we remained in contact. Eventually, he published a book of his conversations with God, called God: An Autobiography as Told to a Philosopher. After reading it, I again had many questions. At some point we decided to sit down together and record our conversations about his experiences. This book is the result.

DH: In your book God: A Dialogue you discuss a conversation you had with a noted philosopher Jerry Martin, who claimed to have had a conversation with this almighty deity. Did you ever feel that Dr. Martin was pompous or unstable?

RO: So, no, my strong impression of Jerry is that he is an earnest, highly intelligent, rational person who has had an extraordinary experience and is doing his best to report it as he experienced it. What actually accounts for these experiences is another question. In Jerry’s book, he writes as if he and God are just two people having a simple conversation with one another, and I’m sure that’s how Jerry experienced it. My own suspicion, though, is that what is actually going on is something more psychologically and spiritually complex. We explore some of these questions in the second dialogue in the book.

DH: Have you ever heard voices which might have been from another dimension or realm?

RO: No, I’ve sometimes had what I’ve come to think of as “epiphanies” – moments of insight when I feel I’ve come to understand something at a profound level. But I’ve never heard otherworldly voices.

DH: Dr. Martin claims that we are ‘instruments of God.” If we are instruments of God, does that imply we have no free will? An instrument to me seems like a puppet.

RO: I don’t recall Jerry ever speaking of us as “instruments of God.” Actually, he speaks of us as partners with God. The way it is presented in Jerry’s book, God depends upon us for God’s own development and even self-awareness. At one point, God says to Jerry, “I live through each individual life – inspiring, guiding, being blocked, whispering, coaching, feeling joy, and suffering.”

Jerry then says, “So one dimension of your story is the personal co-partnering.” And God responds, “Not just one dimension – the crucial dimension.”

At another point, Jerry says to God, “I want a strong sense of Divine Providence,” and God responds, “No, you have to give that up. I do not write the script. We are all players trying to discover our lines. I have a very special role and it involves guiding the human players toward the right action.”

So, as envisioned in Jerry’s book, we are not at all like puppets. God is working with us and through us and, in some sense, even in dependency on us, to achieve a good result. We definitely have free will, and the way we exercise it determines how successful the world will be.

DH: God, according to Martin, talked about the arrogance of “human reason.” Does this imply that reason is a hindrance to a strong connection to God?

RO: It is not reason that is a hindrance, but arrogance. The phrase “the arrogance of human reason” refers to the presumptuous notion that only what human reason has thus far come to understand can possibly be true. Authentic reason is not arrogant but humble and aware of its limitations. Until Einstein, Newton’s theory of gravity was the best understanding of gravity that human reason had thus far arrived at. Then Einstein came along and developed another and superior understanding. And it seems to me entirely likely that at some point Einstein’s theory will itself be replaced by something even better.

So, it is foolish to think that what we now know is all there is to know. Indeed, there are many mysteries that modern science has yet to resolve. Perhaps the most significant of these is the relationship between mind and matter, sometimes called the “mind-body” problem. Modern science has given us a highly materialistic view of reality that takes no account of features of mind that we know through introspection, such as thought, feeling, desire, and volition. An “arrogant” rationalism, rooted in modern science, might be inclined to dismiss the subjective dimension of reality, given that scientific reasoning has thus far been unable to find a place for it. And indeed, we have philosophers who refer to the mind as an ‘epiphenomenon’ of the brain, in other words, just a strange side-effect of neurological processes without substantial reality. In this way, they basically dismiss all that is meaningful in life.

So, it is not reason that needs to be overcome but arrogance. The model for this in philosophy is Socrates. Socrates was certainly a great devotee of reason, but at the same time he was famous for saying, “I know that I don’t know.” In fact, it is reason itself, properly applied, that should prevent us from becoming arrogant. Authentic reason is aware of its own limitations.

DH: It seems that God agrees with scientists that the Universe was created through the “Big Bang.” And in fact, he created the Universe because of the loneliness of the void.

RO: Yes, one of the basic themes of Jerry’s revelations has to do with what philosophers sometimes call “the paradox of the One and the Many.” At the very foundation of reality is a primordial Unity that expresses itself in almost infinite diversity. As Jerry’s book presents it, what scientists know of as “the Big Bang” is the emergence of our diverse universe out of this more primordial divine Unity.

A distinction is made in Jerry’s book between the God of this world, who is the one who primarily speaks to Jerry, and what comes to be called the “God Beyond God,” which is the primordial Unity itself. The God of this world is an instantiation of the God Beyond God, but unlike the latter, which is eternal and quiescent, the God of this world is temporal and engaged in a project.

As Jerry’s book presents it, among the first experiences of the God of this world upon emerging from the God beyond God is an experience of loneliness. When I first read this, it seemed very strange, especially in light of our common conception of God as fully self-sufficient. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. After all, loneliness is an experience we all have. If everything arises from God, then loneliness itself must have its roots in something about God. As I came to think of it, loneliness might be recognized as resulting from the fragmentation of the divine Unity that occurs when the One gives rise to the Many. Each separated individual feels itself bereft of the eternal Unity it enjoyed prior to individuation. That sense of separation is experienced as loneliness, and this loneliness gives rise to the desire for love, through which we seek to overcome the division between self and other and return to an experience of unity. So, the God of this world emerges with a project, which is to create a loving world.

DH: God remarks that there is a ” God Beyond God”– so behind God is a sort of mentor. So, is God, the creator, an apprentice?

RO: This is related to my answer to the last question. I’m not sure the word “apprentice” is quite right, but the God of this world emerges with a project arising from the God Beyond God. In Jerry’s book, God says at one point, “This is the ultimate story, the ultimate meaning of it all … I have a project to complete … It is in the nature of reality that the world, the totality of worlds plus Me, is here for a purpose. There is a goal … The goal is completeness, connectedness, to create the many and pull them back into the one.”

So, this is God’s job, so to speak, God’s essential project. As presented in Jerry’s book, it is necessary for the primal Unity – the “God Beyond God” – to create the many, for it is only through creating the many that it is able to fully actualize and express itself. But the creation of the many presents a problem, as it leads to discord, alienation, conflict, loneliness, and all forms of suffering. This problem can only be resolved through the establishment of a loving world, a world that functions in harmony with itself. This is the ultimate goal.

As Jerry and I discuss in our dialogue, when God says that the goal is to “create the many and pull them back into the one,” God does not mean to bring them back into the original primal Unity, but rather to establish a harmonious, loving, concord among the many, as opposed to a conflictual discord. And this is an ongoing project. It is not a project that is going to come to an end at some point in time, but a project to be pursued at every moment of time. Every moment presents us with opportunities for furthering concord or discord and we fulfill ourselves (and God fulfills Godself) as we promote concord.

DH: What are God’s greatest wishes for humanity?

RO: Well, it may sound a little trite, but the ultimate wish of God is for a loving world. In Jerry’s book, God says to Jerry, “Love is what fully actualizes a thing. A person comes into full personhood only in a loving relationship, in loving and being loved. That is true of the whole world, and of Me as well.” In another place, God says, “Love is the basic force of the universe. I enter the world out of love. The world yearns for Me, and turns to Me, out of love. Love forms the bond between man and woman, one neighbor and another, and the orders of nature. It is love that pulls all of nature upward, and heals the soul and repairs the breaches in the world. Even on the level of physics, it is love that holds the world together and provides its energy.”

So, God’s wish is for a world fully integrated in love. According to the God who speaks in Jerry’s book, this is what all the different religions are pointing to in their various and imperfect ways. One of the great theological challenges of our time is to recognize this about the different religions and have them move from a posture of hostility toward one another to a posture of mutual respect for one another, and, beyond this, to a recognition of their commonality. And this brings us back to my answer to the first question. As I said, when I first met Jerry he was facilitating a group discussion about a project he was calling, “Theology Without Walls.” According to Jerry, it was God who asked him to initiate this project. Its purpose is to have the diverse religions come to recognize their common ground and common purpose. Ultimately, that purpose is to foster a loving world.

DH: Why should we read your book?

RO: This book is really a companion piece to Jerry’s original book, God: An Autobiography as Told to a Philosopher. That book is fascinating because of the picture of God it presents. I’ve tried to give an idea of that picture in my previous answers. As Jerry’s book presents it, there is a single divine reality underlying all the world’s religions. This God has a project, which is ultimately to foster a loving world, although that may express it too simplistically. Part of this project, and consistent with it, is the fostering of justice, beauty, artistic creativity, education, intellectual advance. The ultimate project is to fully actualize the potentialities latent in reality itself, potentialities that are only fully actualized through harmony and love. So, this is a basic theme of Jerry’s book.

One drawback of Jerry’s book is that its ideas are not presented systematically. Jerry was intent on recording his conversations with God just as he experienced them, and as a result – though Jerry’s book is very readable –the overall message of the book may seem a little obscure. What I tried to do in my dialogues with Jerry was to ask questions and make proposals that would help us bring out the underlying message of Jerry’s book in a more systematic way. I think this is one of the values of my book with Jerry.

I think anyone interested in thinking deeply about religion and spirituality would find both Jerry’s original book and my book of dialogues with Jerry worthwhile. As one commentator wrote about my book with Jerry, “This collection of both candid and profound conversations will delight any reader with an interest in spiritual matters and the big questions of life’s meaning and purpose.”

I think that about says it. Thanks for your questions, Doug!