Salvation in an Age of “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”
Mark Thiessen Nation
“Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”: this is the wonderfully provocative term given to us by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton in their recent book, Soul Searching.1 Many of you are undoubtedly familiar with this book which summarizes the results of an extensive survey of the religious beliefs of American teenagers. Smith and Denton encapsulate what they discovered through the following five-point creed:
- A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
- God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
- The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
- God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
- Good people go to heaven when they die.2
This is, in brief, what Smith and Denton mean by “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”. They are careful to say that the book (and this brief creed) is their attempt to summarize what they discovered through surveys and interviews, not that it is a precise representation of the beliefs of any or all of the teenagers that were studied. Nonetheless, they do believe that this “creed” fairly represents a summary of what they found to be the general drift not only of the beliefs of the teenagers, but also probably those of their parents. One also has to wonder whether or not these parents (and perhaps to a lesser extent the teenagers) did not get these beliefs from the churches within which they worship.
There are many things one could say about this creed and the convictions it attempts to summarize. In this brief essay I hope only to offer initial soundings, suggestions for future lines of theological reflection and exploration. I will do this in three steps. First, I will briefly indicate that anyone who has been paying attention to cultural trends will not be especially surprised by the findings of this survey. Second, I will indicate that one way to challenge elements of this creed is to undermine certain therapeutic interpretations of Paul’s theology through a re-framing of issues regarding justification by grace through faith. And third, I will briefly name some of the practical implications of these issues.
Forty years ago sociologist Philip Rieff famously announced The Triumph of the Therapeutic in American culture.3 Rieff, an expert in the writings of Sigmund Freud, was a keen cultural critic. In 1966 he was noting trends that were well under way. In fact, historian Jackson Lears has documented ways in which the advertising industry and religion joined forces at the end of the nineteenth and into the early decades of the twentieth century to shift the American culture from one that encouraged self-denial to one that fostered a preoccupation with self-fulfillment.4 By the mid-1960s Rieff was noting cultural patterns that were developing at an accelerated pace. In 1979 historian Christopher Lasch famously dubbed the growth in the preoccupation with an affirmation of the self as The Culture of Narcissism.5 Five years ago historian Eva Moskowitz trumpeted her claim regarding our present culture through her book title: In Therapy We Trust: America’s Obsession with Self-Fulfillment.6 Moskowitz shows the evolution from 1850 to 1980 that has led typical Americans to have a therapeutic approach to life. Among other conclusions she claims (1) that “today Americans turn to psychological cures as reflexively as they once turned to God” and (2) Americans believe “that happiness should be our supreme goal”.7 Numerous historians, sociologists and cultural critics echo Moskowitz’s critique of American culture.8 But perhaps within the Christian world it is the results that were published in 2005 by sociologists Smith and Denton that most clearly hold up a cultural mirror to the church in the United States.
If, in fact, “moralistic therapeutic deism” has invaded the church, the question is: why? Adequately to answer that question is beyond the scope of this essay. Such a task would include listening to the Rieffs and the Moskowitz’s, as they help us critically reflect on the cultural waters within which we swim. But within this essay I am simply focusing on one theological theme—justification—and attempting to show how it might have some relevance to this topic.
I believe the emphases of The Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective on salvation, including the brief comments on justification, are basically right.9 But I also think that the statements there (and the teachings typical within the discipline of systematic theology) could be strengthened by drawing more fully on some of the vast Pauline scholarship of the last thirty years. My own journey in this regard began over twenty-five years ago as a student at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary when I was assigned the book, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles by Krister Stendahl.10 Recently I have found N. T. Wright and Michael Gorman most helpful in articulating a view of justification that holds together God’s gracious initiative, the covenantal community, human trust and faithfulness and hope of final acquittal. But before naming the corrective let me name the proto-typical Lutheran way of understanding justification, the approach that I believe comports, in our day, with a therapeutic approach to things.
Let me begin with a brief discussion of Luther. Luther was an Augustinian monk at the beginning of the sixteenth-century. By his own account, as a monk Luther was plagued by guilt, believing that he was never good enough, never righteous enough to please a God that demanded that he be righteous. Then in 1515 or 16, through a fresh reading of Paul’s letter to the Romans Luther had a breakthrough. He believed that for the first time he truly understood Romans 1.17: “For in [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed.” Let’s listen to Luther:
I hated the expression “the righteousness of God,” for through the tradition and practice of all the doctors I had been taught to understand it philosophically. . .—righteousness through which God is just and punishes sinners and the unjust. But I could not love the righteous God, the God who punishes. I hated him . . . I was very displeased with God, if not in secret blasphemy, then certainly with mighty grumbling, and said: should it not be enough for miserable sinners eternally damned by original sin to be oppressed by all sorts of calamity through the law of the Ten Commandments? Must God add suffering to suffering even through the Gospel and also threaten us with His righteousness and His wrath through the Gospel too? . . . I pondered incessantly, day and night, until I gave heed to the context of the words, namely: “For [in the Gospel] is the righteousness of God revealed, as it is written: ‘The just shall live by faith.’” Then I began to understand the righteousness of God as a righteousness by which a just man lives as by a gift of God, that means by faith. I realized that it was to be understood this way: the righteousness of God is revealed through the Gospel, namely the so-called “passive” righteousness we receive, through which God justifies us by faith through grace and mercy. . . . Now I felt as if I had been born again: the gates had been opened and I had entered Paradise itself.11
N. T. Wright summarizes the popular understanding of justification by grace through faith inspired by Luther’s insight:
People are always trying to pull themselves up by their own moral bootstraps. They try to save themselves by their own efforts; to make themselves good enough for God, or for heaven. This doesn’t work; one can only be saved by the sheer unmerited grace of God, appropriated not by good works but by faith.12
Now of course there are better and worse, more and less sophisticated ways in which this message is communicated. It is, for instance, articulated in a very sophisticated way through the systematic theology of my friend, Joe Jones.13 It also serves as the framework for influential writer, Max Lucado’s book on Romans.14 But it seems to me the core of this message is not only heard through popular Christian authors such as Max Lucado but also from more than a few Mennonite pulpits. In a day when the Gospel is often transposed into a therapeutic key and our belief in God is much less vivid than Luther’s, is it any wonder that a central focus on individual salvation apart from good deeds can virtually equal self-esteem and can lead the average teenager, according to Smith and Lundquist, to imagine it is quintessentially Christian to believe that “the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself”? Is it this stream of thought that leads Joel Osteen, popular television preacher and author, to imagine that he is summarizing the Gospel when he encapsulates his own message by proclaiming: “Happiness is a choice. This year make it yours.”?15
There would be many ways to respond to this, a number of theological avenues one could take. I believe, for instance, that Marsha Witten is correct that the parable of the prodigal son often underwrites a move toward an overly simple, monochromic approach to grace, especially if one can portray the Pharisees as the paradigmatic legalists.16 Nonetheless, the approach I am going to take is to re-frame our understanding of grace or of justification by grace through faith by borrowing from one of my favorite Pauline scholars, Michael Gorman. On one level this is quite simple. But I believe the implications are quite profound.
Gorman begins one of his simpler definitions by reminding us that “the term ‘justification’ is part of the same word family as the word ‘righteousness’ (Gk. dikaiosyne). As used by Paul, this rich term draws on three primary spheres of meaning for its significance: (a) God’s character and activity (righteousness, holiness, fidelity, salvation); (b) the covenant (the expectation of just or righteous conduct); and (c) the law court (the notion of a verdict of acquittal).”17
I believe it is precisely the way in which Gorman (summarizing the Apostle Paul) holds these three together that both challenges many other (especially therapeutic) interpretations of grace or justification and offers rich possibilities for understanding the fullness of the Christian life. Let us look at each of these in turn.
The first is simple, yet vital: God is the central actor here. We believe our God is a righteous, just and holy God who may be relied upon to be a God of love. Those of us who are God’s people know this God as a gracious God who has taken the initiative to restore broken relationships, loving even His enemies—because that is who this God is. As Paul put it: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” ( Rom. 5.8). And it’s not as if once we know this we can simply carry on—more or less as if God is irrelevant. No, we gather regularly to worship, to worship this God who not only made (in the past) but makes (in the present and future) our lives possible. Continually we are reminded who this God is. Continually we are called to “love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength”. As Patrick Miller tells us, this greatest and first commandment, as Jesus referred to it, reminds us not only of the worthiness of our God but also of the constant temptation to worship, to shape our lives, around the wrong god or gods.18
Of course it is not just that God has a certain reliable character. God also acts. This is already implied when we refer to righteousness, holiness, fidelity and love as character traits of God. But perhaps the best all-encompassing word for God’s activity in the world is salvation. Salvation is a wonderful word that immediately recalls the center of our lives—God and His redemptive activity. Having said that, we must strenuously avoid reductionistic accounts of salvation that would forget it is an expression of God’s redemptive desire for the whole world and encompasses every dimension of life, including the need to destroy sin and the forces at work against God’s good purposes.19
The second element of Paul’s understanding of justification which Gorman names is the covenant. As he says,
Justification, then is about reconciliation with God and membership in God’s covenant community. For Paul, this takes place by God’s initiative and grace, to which humans respond in faith—trust, obedience, and public confession. Faith is not merely a onetime act of response to the gospel but an ongoing covenantal relationship with God that is itself a kind of crucifixion and resurrection, so that the covenantal obligations can now be fulfilled.20
The truth in the Luther-inspired interpretation of justification is that the covenant we have with God we have because of “God’s initiative and grace”. Moreover, it is God, through the Holy Spirit, who continues to make our covenantal life in Christ possible. We forget this at our own peril. But, if we are to understand the fullness of the Gospel we must understand that indeed justification includes the covenantal community. And within this community God expects our response to His graciousness to be attitudes of the heart and conduct befitting our relationship with a just, righteous and holy God. We are to be faithful in our relationship to God and to others, as defined by our covenant with God within the body of Christ.
It seems to me that this second element is what saves our understanding of justification (and salvation) not only from being individualistic, which is obvious, but also from any tie to the worry about “works-righteousness”. It is simply the case, as Paul says repeatedly, that our faithful response is expected by God from those of us who are in a covenantal relationship to God.21 Walter Brueggemann helps us understand this in his wonderful essay, “Duty as Delight and Desire”.22 He notes that we are tempted to refer (frequently?) to God’s “unconditional love”. But as he says, “‘conditional/ unconditional’ and ‘law/grace’ are unworkable categories for understanding our most serious and treasured relationships.”23 He continues, “our most serious relationships, including our relationship to the God of the gospel, are at the same time, profoundly unconditional and massively conditional.”24 Brueggemann goes on:
We may take as emblematic of such relationships that are neither conditional nor unconditional, as do the Old Testament texts, the relations of husband-wife and parent-child. In either of these at its best, it is clear that the relationship is unconditional, that is, there is no circumstance under which the relationship will be voided. And yet in these very same relationships, there are high and insistent ‘expectations’ of the other that shade over into demands. And when these expectations are not met, there may be woundedness, alienation, or even rejection, even though the wounded party is powerfully committed. The truth is that there is something inscrutable about such relationships that are both conditional or unconditional; or perhaps we should say neither unconditional nor conditional. If one seeks to make one term or the other final in characterizing such relationships, we destroy the inscrutability that belongs to and defines the relationship.25
This seems about right, to me. It importantly enriches and personalizes Gorman’s discussion of Paul’s views of the covenantal community—that it is made possible by God’s initiative and grace, that it is sustained by God’s Spirit and that we as members of God’s covenantal community are expected to respond in fidelity.
The final component of Gorman’s summary of Paul’s notion of justification is the juridical one, the law court. His main emphasis here is on our “certain hope of acquittal on the day of judgment”.26 There are two problems many today often have with this element of Paul’s thought. First, when focused on final judgment, this easily becomes a selfish move. I know I am among the righteous, the redeemed; I am not at all sure about them (whoever the “them” might be). But I think Lesslie Newbigin frames this just about right:
The whole discussion, if I am not mistaken, is [often] focused on the destiny of the individual’s soul after death. But that is not at all the focus of attention in the Bible. Attention is focused on the final event in which God will complete His purpose for all humankind and all creation. The urgent question is not: How shall I be saved? But: How shall God’s name be hallowed, His Kingdom come, His will be done on earth as in heaven? The focus is on knowing and doing the truth now, so that we may be partakers of the corporate and cosmic consummation at the end. . . . [In fact] Jesus forbids us to suppose that I know in advance who are the saved and who are the lost; warns me that that day will be a day of surprises; summons me to remember that if I have been called to be a disciple of Jesus, it is not just for the sake of my salvation but that I may be a witness to the world; informs me that it is I who must live in the awareness that there is a fearful judgment awaiting the unfaithful steward.27
The other component that is problematic for us moderns/postmoderns is simply the notion that God judges. I will make two comments about that. First, it is a thoroughly biblical idea, including in the writings of Paul.28 Second, it is hardly surprising in an age of “moralistic therapeutic deism” that we would have problems with this.29 Simply put the central questions are: Who is God? How do we know who this God is?30
But let us end this brief discussion of justification by again quoting Gorman’s summary:
Justification, then is about reconciliation with God and membership in God’s covenant community. For Paul, this takes place by God’s initiative and grace, to which humans respond in faith—trust, obedience, and public confession. Faith is not merely a onetime act of response to the gospel but an ongoing covenantal relationship with God that is itself a kind of crucifixion and resurrection, so that the covenantal obligations can now be fulfilled.31
And let me end the essay by naming a number of practical implications that I would imagine could flow from this more adequate understanding of justification.
- “Pastoral”. Having a more adequate understanding of justification, often perceived to be a key doctrine of the Christian faith, might help us to avoid the temptation to see the pastorate as quintessentially a helping profession. If I were to say that John Rempel, in a specific situation, was being very “pastoral” to Ted Koontz, what would most people think I meant? Probably that he was being sensitive or caring. That is what the word “pastoral” has come to mean. Why? Robert Wilken, in a recent essay reflects on how Bishop Ambrose in the fourth century confronted the Emperor about encouraging idolatry.32 Why is that act not quintessentially what it means to be “pastoral”? Might I suggest it is because a therapeutic mindset has invaded the Church.
- Discipleship. Seventy years ago Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned of the dangers of “cheap grace”. The dangers of which he warned then, if anything, are simply more pronounced now. Not only should our understanding of justification not underwrite an easily embraced “cheap” form of grace, but our life of discipleship needs to be fully integrated into a holistic and richly theological understanding of the Christian faith and life. This should include, but not be limited to, our commitment to matters of peace and justice.33
- Spirituality. Spirituality is a hot topic today. But many of the writings on the subject are reductionistic (a combination of being therapeutic, individualistic and inadequately theological). I would never pretend that this situation can be “fixed” if we have a more adequate understanding of justification. But, along with other re-thinking, it would be helpful.34
- Salvation. This has already been stated earlier. But, because it is so important I want to name it again. A more adequate understanding of justification will connect well with a full-orbed comprehension of salvation within the Scriptures.35
- Ethics. Though the subject of ethics has already been implied, let me say something else. A more adequate understanding of justification and salvation—which includes but is not reducible to our awareness of serving a gracious God—may help us avoid the temptation to reduce ethics to the notion that “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other” (point 2 of the creed). Knowing that we serve a wondrous, gracious and living God we may be able to embrace the particulars of our God’s call upon us to live faithful, righteous and holy lives in our Lord’s presence.36 Maybe then, in the company of brothers and sisters in Christ, we can say, with Bonhoeffer: “Discipleship is joy.”37
Let me end with one last way of saying what I have attempted to say in this lecture. The richness, fullness and complexity of Paul’s language about justification can help us continue our journey into this new century—knowing the grace of God, while never imagining that God’s relationship with us relieves us of the responsibility to lead lives of righteousness, justice and compassion in a world too often wracked by violence and pain.38
Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987; original 1966). This book has been in print continually since 1966. A fortieth anniversary edition has just been issued, with a new forward by Christopher Lasch’s daughter, Elizabeth Lasch-Quinn, a historian. Rieff has other writings that also offer insightful cultural critiques. Perhaps most anticipated among these is a trilogy, the first volume of which, My Life Among the Deathworks, has just been published.
T. J. Jackson Lears, “From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culutre, 1880-1930,” in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880-1980, ed. Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 3-38, 213-218. See a parallel account in: Keith G. Meador, “‘My Own Salvation’: The Christian Century and Psychology’s Secularizing of American Protestantism,” in The Secular Revolution, ed. Christian Smith ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 269-309.
Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Warner Books, 1979).
Eva S. Moskowitz, In Therapy We Trust: America’s Obsession with Self-Fulfillment ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
Moskowitz, In Therapy We Trust, 1, 2.
See the bibliography in Moskowitz, In Therapy We Trust, 311-326. Also see Joel James Shuman and Keith Meador, Heal Thyself: Spirituality, Medicine, and the Distortion of Christianity ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) and Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture ( London: Routledge, 2003).
Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1995), 35-38, with one paragraph, on p. 37, on justification.
Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976). This book includes Stendahl’s landmark essay, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West”. This essay, though flawed, is prescient in a way that is similar to Philip Rieff’s, The Triumph of the Therapeutic. It was the following year, 1977, with the publication of Paul and Palestinian Judaism by E. P. Sanders, that the “new perspective on Paul” really began in earnest.
Quoted in Heiko A. Oberman, Luther Between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New York: Image Books, 1989), 165.
Tom Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997), 113.
Joe R. Jones, A Grammar of Christian Faith, Vol. 2 ( Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), esp. pp. 511ff.
Max Lucado, In the Grip of Grace (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1996). See his “parable of the river” with which he opens the book.
Joel Osteen, “Have an Inspired 2006!” Guidposts (January 2006): 34-38. The two brief sentences, quoted here, appear as captions on page 34. Also, Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential ( New York: Warner Faith, 2004).
See Marsha G. Witten, All Is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).
Michael J. Gorman, Apostle of the Crucified Lord ( Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004), 138. For Gorman’s fuller discussion of justification by faith see: Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001, 95-154; ; cf. Tom Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997), 45-62, 113-133, 151-165.)
Patrick D. Miller, The God You Have ( Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004).
See: “Salvation,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 5, ed. David Noel Freedman, et al. (New York: Doubleday, 1992), s.v. and Joel B. Green, Salvation ( St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2003). Also see writings by and about Karl Barth on salvation.
Gorman, Apostle of the Crucified Lord, 138. Among systematic theologians probably no one understands this better than did Karl Barth.
See, e.g., Kent L. Yinger, Paul, Judaism, and Judgment According to Deeds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Walter Brueggemann, “Duty as Delight and Desire: Preaching Obedience That Is Not Legalism,” in The Covenanted Self (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 35-47, 129-133.
Brueggemann, 36, emphasis his.
Gorman, Apostle of the Crucified Lord, 138.
Lesslie Newbigin, Signs Amid the Rubble, ed. Geoffrey Wainwright ( Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003), 71, 73.
Among much literature on the subject see: Kent L. Yinger, Paul, Judaism, and Judgment According to Deeds and David Powys, ‘Hell’: A Hard Look at a Hard Question: The Fate of the Unrighteous in New Testament Thought (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 1997).
At least for those of us who also see the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a call to live nonviolently, I wonder if Miroslav Volf, a Croatian theologian, may be onto something when he says: “The certainty of God’s just judgment at the end of history is the presupposition for the renunciation of violence in the middle of it. The divine system of judgment is not the flip side of the human reign of terror, but a necessary correlate of human nonviolence.” (Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace ( Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), 296, 302. As he points out, this can be understood as the logic of the writer of “Revelation” and seemed true for more than a few sixteenth-century Anabaptists. I also wonder if he is not correct to say that those who are unwilling to see this have a theology in which one can “smell a bit too much of the sweet aroma of a suburban ideology.” (Volf, 296) Also see: James A. Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
Again let me say that I believe Barth continues to be helpful in this regard. For two good, recent summaries of his theology see: Joesph L. Mangina, Karl Barth: Theologian of Christian Witness ( Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004) and Eberhard Busch, The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth’s Theology, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley, et al. ( Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004). See also the systematic theologies of Joe R. Jones and Robert W. Jenson.
Gorman, Apostle of the Crucified Lord, 138.
Robert Louis Wilken, “A Constantinian Bishop: St. Ambrose of Milan,” in God, Truth, and Witness: Engaging Stanley Hauerwas, ed. L. Gregory Jones, et al. ( Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2005), 73-87. I don’t mean to suggest, by using this provocative illustration, that challenging idolatry is necessarily central to what it means to be pastoral. However, it is a vivid reminder that truly to be pastoral is to be holistic in relation to the Gospel, which certainly includes elements of necessary confrontation for the sake of the Gospel.
Here I would mention writings by Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, Mark Thiessen Nation, and many other writers inspired jointly by Yoder and Hauerwas.
On this see writings by Michael Gorman, Eugene Peterson, Linda Woodhead, L. Gregory Jones, Ellen Charry, Marva Dawn and Rodney Clapp.
One provocative response to the current challenge in this regard is: D. Brent Laytham, ed., God Is Not. . . Religious, Nice, “One of Us,” An American, A Capitalist ( Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2004). Among other writings I would point to: Stanley Hauerwas, “On Keeping Theological Ethics Theological” and “Reforming Christian Social Ethics: Ten Theses,” in The Hauerwas Reader, ed. John Berkman and Michael G. Cartwright ( Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 51-74, 111-115. Also see other writings by Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Mark Thiessen Nation and recent writings on Barth’s ethics.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss ( Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 40.
I am conscious of the fact that my lecture has mostly dealt with the “therapeutic” dimension. I hope to speak more fully, in the future, to the “moralistic” and “deistic” dimensions.