The Redeemed Christian Church of God [1]
What becomes of divinity when it reveals itself in icons,
when it speaks to us through machines?
I.
This Saturday, as every Saturday, three African women in brightly-coloured dresses stand on a nearby street corner, smiling and spreading the Gospel. Because they are so friendly - and because it seems impolite to just walk past ignoring them - I invariably say hello and accept the leaflet being offered.
This week, it reads: JESUS is for REAL! And that naturally got me thinking once more about the latter as a philosophical concept ...
For our Christian friends, the Real is essentially the same as the True and the Good and it exists as the Ideal foundation of existence. God is Real and his reality includes not only all that is and has ever been but all that will be; i.e., it includes both the actual and the potential.
I'm not a theologian, but I think that's a fair summary. God is conceived as a huge Universal Mind and Reality is dependent upon his Will.
II.
But what about Jesus? What can we say of his reality?
I suppose that depends on which aspect of Jesus one wishes to discuss.
For example, there's the historical Jesus, a 1st-century preacher from Galilee to whom we might accord mortal reality and an all-too-human existence.
But then, on the other hand, there's the figure whom believers think of as the Christ: a semi-divine being who transcends his human reality and historical time and place; an Ideal Jesus who has eternal reality.
For non-believers, this is a mytho-fictional figure born of the religious imagination; one who occupies a virtual space and exerts a powerful cultural influence even though they may lack any objective reality.
I suppose if I'm interested in Jesus at all, it's in the latter. I'm particularly fascinated with the way in which the image of Jesus as a religious icon is mediated in contemporary culture - a subject discussed by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard ...
III.
In America (1986), Baudrillard briefly mentions Jesus, observing how marble statues of Christ in Salt Lake City were all copied from Thorwaldsen's famous work of 1833 and made him "look like Bjorn Borg" [2]; i.e., a popular contemporary figure from the world of sports rather than a transcendent historical icon.
In other words, Baudrillard argued that the modern image of Christ reflects the present ideal of the perfect man and functions as just another part of the hyperreal landscape; religious art merging seamlessly with mass-media aesthetics.
His thinking here developed earlier ideas found in Simulacra and Simulation (1981) [3]. In this crucial text, Baudrillard analysed the role played by religious icons in the simulation of God, eventually replacing the original reality they were intended to represent.
Here's how the game works in four easy to follow stages:
(i) Start with early Christian signs and symbols, artworks and images: these were thought to embody and reflect a profound reality: God is all-powerful and ever-present and Jesus was His Son.
(ii) Eventually, however, the evil genius of the image [4] begins to disguise and corrupt this reality. Art begins to depict Jesus not as he was, but as the Medieval mind wanted to see him; i.e., less Middle Eastern Jew and more Aryan superman used to justify crusades and European imperialism. Nevertheless, if pushed, everyone still agrees that an underlying reality (tied to Truth and Goodness and Beauty) still exists.
(iii) In phase 3, the image - now mass produced within modern secular society - masks the absence of any such reality (Baudrillard calls this an act of sorcery). Jesus is seen everywhere, but his likeness no longer means anything and is no longer connected to a spiritual truth, nor even a historical reality. It mostly exists to trigger a consumerist response (think of the multiple gift shops located in the Vatican).
(iv) Finally, we get pure simulacrum in the age of hyperreality; the image bears no relation to any reality whatsoever. Jesus is now merely a meme on social media or an AI chatbot designed to give comforting advice to those in need. Jesus is now just a copy of a copy of a copy; he refers only to other media images and functions completely independently of history, theology, or reality.
Baudrillard was right here as he was right so many other times in so many other places: the religious iconoclast didn't destroy images because they were afraid such might insult or offend God - but because they intuitively understood that such images would ultimately prevail over God and succeed in making him untenable.
Who needs Jesus to be for real when you can simulate his existence - and even his presence - with digital technology? A blessedly large language model trained on biblical writings and other religious texts can create a theo-algorithmic echo chamber so perfect that one might almost describe it as heavenly [5].
Notes
[1] The Redeemed Christian Church of God is a Pentecostal megachurch founded in 1952 by Pa Josiah Akindayomi in Nigeria. Today, it is one of the largest church denominations in the world with over nine million members located in almost 200 countries and territories. After Akindayomi's death in 1980, pastor Enoch A. Adeboye, a former university lecturer, became the RCCG's General Overseer.
[2] See Jean Baudrillard, America, trans. Chris Turner (Verso, 1989), p. 2.
[3] See Jean Baudrillard, 'The Precession of Simulacra', in Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (The University of Michigan Press, 1994).
[4] Playing on Descartes's concept of the malin génie, Baudrillard suggests that the image is a diabolical force that doesn't innocently reflect a pre-existing reality; rather, it ultimately works to replace the real via a process of simulation.
'The Evil Demon of Images' was originally a paper delivered by Baudrillard at the University of Sydney in July 1984. It was first published three years later by the Power Institute of Fine Arts and can be found in The Jean Baudrillard Reader, ed. Steve Redhead (Edinburgh University Press, 2008), pp. 83-98.
[5] Baudrillard died in 2007 so didn't live to see the rise of the Ask Jesus AI chatbot, but it fits perfectly into his hyperreal scheme of things. Users claim to find the instant, personalised responses of the AI more comforting or emotionally validating than reciting traditional prayers or reading ancient scripture.
That is why they actively participate in the illusion, even whilst knowing they are chatting with a machinic intelligence and not communing with the Holy Spirit. What it might mean for the future of faith and organised religion when divine authority is outsourced to code, I don't know, but D. H. Lawrence warned long ago that man will first come to worship his machines, then come to resemble them.
See the essay titled 'D. H. Lawrence Against the Machine', by Micah Paul Veillon, in The European Conservative (17 June 2023).
