“When we speak of God we are babbling incoherently and
must fall into an embarrassed silence.”
Denys the Areopagite
LIBERATING GOD
A New Theism for a
New Era
INTRODUCTION
The question of God is one of the most important
questions facing humanity today. [1]
Yet
it may strike the reader as strange that I begin by referring to “the question of God.” “God,” grammatically,
is merely a noun It is not a question. In
ordinary parlance a noun by itself does not constitute a question. Yet God is
very much a question for a great many people today. In fact, the concept “God”
is in crisis today. People all over the world struggle with what it means to
utter that word. In the United States a
substantial majority of people say they “believe in God;” yet in my experience
very few people can articulate in any clear fashion or with any depth what the
statement “I believe in God” means. Many people in our predominantly secular
Western culture find any belief in God naïve at best and pernicious at worst. People
in all religious traditions commit atrocities in the name of God and claim that
they are doing God’s will when they do. One image that comes to the minds of
many when they hear the word God is an Islamic terrorist screaming “Allahu
akhbar!,” “God is great!,” as he blows himself up in a crowd of innocent
bystanders or as he flies a fully loaded jetliner into the World Trade Center. Or
perhaps they think of the followers of the lunatic Fred Phelps screaming “God
hates fags!” and demonstrating at the funeral services for American service men
and women killed in Iraq, saying that their death is God’s punishment of
America for our minimal toleration of homosexual people.
For many Americans, perhaps particularly for those who
came of age several decades ago and for members of some very conservative
churches, God is some sort of personal being much like a human only much more
powerful. In this popular view God may be “the Supreme Being,” but God is still
a being alongside other beings, alongside creation. The formula “God is the
Supreme Being” is, in reality, only a somewhat less unsophisticated statement
of the image of God as an old man with a gray beard sitting on a cloud up in
the sky somewhere. This “Supreme Being” is usually ascribed a number of
attributes, the most important of them beginning with the syllable “omni”: Omnipresent—universally present;
omniscient—all knowing; and, most commonly, omnipotent—all powerful. Perhaps
the most common adjective applied to this God is “almighty.” This God is called “the Almighty” so often
that what started out as an adjective becomes a proper noun and functions in
effect as the name of God.
The nearly universal nature of this image of God among
us has led to a revolt not only among nonbelievers but among Christian
theologians. This revolt is usually
presented in terms of an argument against “theism,” the term most commonly
applied today to the traditional view of God. Sometimes what theologians are
revolting against is called “classical theism,” but sometimes it is just called
theism. The prolific writer John Shelby Spong has created quite a sensation on
some occasions—something he seems far from averse to doing—with his vigorous
rejection of theism. Other writers, like Marcus Borg, agree generally with
Spong’s theology but reject his terminology on the reasonable grounds that
rejecting “theism” makes one an “a-theist,” that is, an atheist, which Spong
clearly is not. We will have much more to say about the rejection of what Spong
calls theism and Elizabeth A. Johnson calls classical theism in the course of
this work. For now we need only say, as the subtitle of this work indicates,
that we will here retain the word theism. After all, “theism” only means
“God-ism,” that is, the word simply means an acceptance and acknowledgement of
the reality of whatever it is that we call God.
The purpose of this work is in fact to rescue the
concept of theism in our context. As we begin, that phrase “in our context”
requires explanation. It is commonplace in contemporary Christian theology in the
tradition we used to call mainline that all theology is contextual.[2] All theology is written from a context. It is
written from a particular cultural, political, socio-economic, and religious “Sitz im Leben,” a particular place in
life. No author is or ever has been entirely free from her or his context. I
write as and from the perspective of a white, well-educated, middle-class,
heterosexual, able-bodied, Protestant male who is part of what is still the
dominant culture in North America. I write to people whose context shares at
least some of the features of my own socio-cultural-economic-religious context.
I write for people, both male and female, who are part of that still-dominant
North American culture. It is that context in which Christianity and the
concept of God are in particular crisis today. Much of the rejection of the
very idea of God among us occurs within that context. It is that context that I
hope primarily to reach and the concerns of which I primarily hope to address.
Yet I hope that my work may be helpful to people in
other contexts as well. I am a Protestant; but I received my seminary training
at a Catholic university, and I hope that what I have to say will resonate with
a Catholic audience as well as with Protestant ones. I am not a feminist theologian
because I am not a woman.[3]
Yet I consider myself to be an ally of feminist theologians, and I hope that
what I write will resonate with women as well as with men. I am not a gay
theologian because I am not gay. Yet I consider myself to be a straight ally of
gay and lesbian people in their struggle for equal rights and equal dignity,
and I hope that what I write will resonate with gay people as well as with
straight people. I am not an African-American theologian because I am not African-American.
Yet I consider myself to be a white ally of African-Americans in their struggle
for equal rights and equal dignity, and I hope that what I write will resonate
with African-American people as well as with white people. In short, I strive
to be aware of my context. I strive to be aware of the multiple privileges I
enjoy without even thinking about them because of the various unchosen but
vital aspects of my humanity that many other people do not share. I strive to
be sensitive to what that context means for how I relate to people of other
contexts as well. I cannot change my context, nor do I apologize for it. I do
hope that my words speak out of my context to people in many contexts. Whether
or not they do is for the reader, not me, to say.
What then is the project of this book? As the title suggests, it is nothing short of
liberating God. That perhaps shocking statement of course requires explanation,
and the fullness of what I mean by it unfolds in the pages that follow. It is
obvious that on one level God hardly needs me to liberate God. Quite the
contrary. I need God to liberate me from many things. God seeks to liberate all
people from whatever it is that binds them and keeps them from the abundant,
whole life that God desires for every single person. On another level, however,
God very much needs liberating today. In particular the concept “God” needs liberating. It needs liberating from a great
many misunderstandings. Above all it needs liberating from classical theism.
Liberating God from the shackles of classical theism
raises many issues. It raises the issue of the appropriateness of all of those
“omnis” that I mentioned above. It raises the issue of whether God is a Being,
even a Supreme Being. In classical theism God is generally said to be sovereign
over events on earth, and that claim is understood to mean that God controls
what happens on earth and intervenes, at least on occasion, directly and
powerfully in human affairs to shape the course of history. Liberating God from
classical theism raises the question of the appropriateness and viability of
this understanding. In classical theism God is generally said to be “out
there,” with “out there” understood to mean some physical location in the sky,
or beyond the stars, that is, to be somewhere in a physical sense. Liberating
God requires us to reexamine that simplistic understanding. Liberating God from classical theism raises
the question of the proper understanding of God’s relationship to creation,
with “proper” understood to mean corresponding to the human experience of life
and of God and facilitating human life by facilitating the human connection
with God. In classical theism, the word “God” is understood to be a word like
other, ordinary words, even if it refers to a “someone” who is hardly ordinary.
Liberating God from classical theism raises the question of the nature of the
word God itself and indeed of how, if at all, human language can be used to
speak a meaningful word about that reality that we call God.
The subtitle of this work also requires some
explanation right at the start. It
refers to formulating a new theism “for a new era.” What do I mean by “a new era?” I mean the era that is often and vaguely
referred to as “post-modernism.” I
believe that we are indeed living at the dawn (the dawn at least in popular
awareness) of a post-modern era. Yet
calling this new era “post-modern” doesn’t communicate in any effective way
what the nature of that era is. As the
name suggests, any discussion of what “post-modernism” is must begin with a
definition of that of which post-modernism is “post.” It must begin, that is, with a definition of
“modernism.”
By modernism I mean the world view that developed
during and after the Enlightenment in
western Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is the worldview of rationalism. It is the worldview of secularism. It is characterized philosophically by materialism. Its defining epistemology is the scientific
method. Consistent with that method, it
understands truth only in factual terms.
For modernism in its purest form only facts are true, and only those
facts are true that can be established by the scientific method.
Beyond all that, I mean by modernism the understanding
of human reality that I heard the great Russian/British historian/philosopher
Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) articulate in a seminar at the University of
Washington back in the nineteen seventies.
Berlin said that the Western worldview, by which I understand him to
have meant the modernist worldview, is characterized by three foundational
convictions. The western, modernist
worldview is convinced, he said, of these three things: that every question has an answer, every
question has only one correct answer, and it is possible (for humans) to know
that answer. Taking Berlin’s statement
to be a definition of modernism, I understand post-modernism to be a worldview
that rejects those three foundational convictions.[4] Post-modernism knows the limits of human
understanding in a way that modernism did not. It knows that there are questions which have,
or may have, no answers. Because its
epistemology is grounded in subjectivism, post-modernism knows that there are
questions to which there are or may be multiple correct answers.[5] And post-modernism knows that there may be
questions that have a correct answer but it is not possible for us to know that
answer. At the present time, for
example, the structure and dynamics of the universe a tiny, tiny fraction of a
second before the big bang seems to be beyond the capacity of human science to
discover.
This work, like Liberating
Christianity, is an exercise in post-modern theology. It does not claim to have the truth about God. It does not claim that there is one truth
about God. Like Liberating Christianity, it is grounded in subjectivity. It is grounded in human experience and in the
limitations of human experience. It uses
human reason, but it is fully aware of the limitations of human reason. Like Liberating
Christianity it seeks to offer an
understanding, not the understanding,
of God, one grounded in experience and reason but one that does not claim
universal and absolute validity. Like
post-modernism generally, it offers an understanding for others to consider, to
hold up to their own experience and their own discernment, and to judge as
valid or invalid for them. As an exercise in post-modern theology, more
it cannot do and cannot claim to do.
We begin in Part One with a discussion of the failure
of classical theism. In Chapter One we will sketch an understanding of
classical theism, of its major assertions about God. Then in Chapter Two we will
delineate its failures, the ways in which classical theism is unbelievable and
unacceptable to many people in our context.
In Part Two we take up the nature of theological
discourse itself. This discussion is necessary because we claim to be saying something
meaningful about God, and all language about God is likely to be misunderstood
unless certain things about the nature of all language about God are made clear
right at the beginning. In Chapter Three we will reaffirm the ultimate
unknowability of God. In Chapter Four we will discuss how we humans are
nonetheless driven to speak of the unknowable God. We will assert that, as
Elizabeth Johnson so powerfully expresses it, “the God symbol functions.” What we say about God matters. It matters a
great deal. We will look at why this is so. In Chapter Five we will consider
the nature of all language about God and establish both that all such language
is symbolic and mythic, not factual and literal, and that such symbolic, mythic
language far surpasses in depth and power any literal, factual language about
God. Indeed, it is our context’s tendency to take all language as factual that
makes the concept “God” so difficult for so many people to accept. We cannot
liberate God for our context without overcoming our limited understanding of
language and truth as literal and factual.
Part Three, the real heart of the book to which the
first two parts lead, offers an alternative to classical theism under the
heading “God and Creation.” Apart from
its literalism much of what is unconvincing about classical theism flows from
its understanding of God’s relationship to creation. In classical theism God is
in control. God controls events on earth. Yet in classical theism God is mostly
a force from beyond the earth. God is in God’s heaven and intervenes in
creation as God wills from outside creation. In Chapters Six and Seven we will
examine how the traditional Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the
Incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth contribute to a better understanding of God’s
relationship to creation and argue for retaining them in the new theism despite
their difficulties. In Chapter Eight we
will explore the concept of “panentheism” as a more convincing alternative to
the external God of classical theism. In Chapter Nine we will deconstruct the
claim of classical theism that God controls events in creation. In Chapter Ten
we will tackle the thorny problem of theodicy, the justification of God in the
face of evil, suffering, and death, a problem for which classical theism, frankly,
has no answer. Finally, in Chapter Eleven, we will propose an alternative to
classical theism’s God of control. We will propose that rather than control
events on earth God is an active but non-controlling presence in those events.
We hope in all of this to outline a new theism for the
new era in which we live. In other
words, we hope to overcome some of the major obstacles to people’s acceptance
of the reality that in our context we call God.
Yet perhaps it is important to say something here about why we should
try to preserve belief in God at all. I
believe that there are two parts to the answer to that question, one general
and universal and one specific and personal.
First comes the general and universal answer to the
question of why we should preserve belief in God. An experience of the reality of God is a
universal human experience. Every
culture that we know of has had its ways of expressing that experience. Cultures express the human experience of the
reality of God through their mythologies, through their stories of the gods, or
of God, their stories of how the gods, or God, relate to them and to all
creation. Not every individual human
experiences the reality of God, of course; yet every human culture reflects
that reality in its religion, that is, in its system of myths and symbols that
seek to express the experience of God and to say something meaningful about God
to the people of the culture. Western
European culture since the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries is the only culture we know of in which the leading intellectual and
cultural elements of the population have come to deny the reality of God.[6] That denial is prominent among us. We hear it all the time. Militant atheists make the best seller lists
with their attacks on religion, always of course the religion of classical
theism, which seems to be the only religion they know. Yet that denial’s minority status among the
world’s cultures should give us pause. That
denial rejects the validity of the experience of the vast majority of humans
who have ever lived. It certainly
rejects the testimony of humanity’s cultures across the globe and across the
millennia. The universality of the human
experience of God is of course not enough to convince skeptics in itself, but
it should be enough to cause us seriously to consider whether our minority
voice may in fact be misguided.
Yet more important to me is the specific and personal
reason that I have for arguing for retaining a belief in God. I know that God is real because I have
experienced God in my own life. I
recounted some of those experiences in Liberating
Christianity, and I won’t repeat them here.
The important thing here is that those of us who have known God in our
lives can’t imagine living without God. With
Marcus Borg and many others when I hear people say they don’t believe in God I
always want to say: Tell me about this
God you don’t believe in. I probably
don’t believe in that God either. The God that people don’t believe in is
almost always the God of classical theism.
That God is indeed unbelievable.
That God is not the God I know and love, and who I know knows and loves
me and all people. The purpose of this
book is to introduce an understanding of God that is believable to people in
our context, especially to people who have rejected all belief in God because
the only God they know is the God of classical theism. My hope and prayer is that in some small way
this book may help someone, anyone, find an understanding of God that works for
them. If they can find that God, I know
that they will find the peace, comfort, courage, challenge, and strength that I
have found in the God I know. That God
is definitely not the God of classical theism.
The God of classical theism is dead, or at least is dying, the limited
popularity of classically theistic faith among us to the contrary
notwithstanding.[7] Theology such as that presented here is an
intellectual exercise, but it has a much broader and deeper motivation and
intent than mere intellectual understanding.
Its motivation and intent is nothing less than liberating God from the
shackles of classical theism not for abstract, theoretical reasons but so that
God may once again be a life-saving, life-transforming reality among us. To that task we now turn.
[1] This book is the third in
a series. It follows on the author’s Liberating Christianity: Overcoming Obstacles to Faith in the New
Millennium, (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, Oregon, 2008) and the as yet
unpublished Liberating the Bible. It is not necessary for the reader to have
read either work before reading this one. Nonetheless, Liberating Christianity in particular is a good introduction to the
author’s thinking, and it covers important subjects not covered here.
[2] See in particular the work
of Douglas John Hall, especially his book Thinking
the Faith: Christian Theology in a North
American Context, (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1991).
[3] The great Elizabeth
Johnson told me once personally that I cannot be a feminist theologian because
I am not a women. I asked her what I
could do. She said be an ally, and that
is what I try to do.
[4] Although I did not
articulate this understanding of modernism and post-modernism in the first book
in this series, Liberating Christianity: Overcoming Obstacles to Faith in the New
Millennium, that book is an exercise in post-modern Christianity in the
sense of post-modernism outlined here.
Liberated and liberating Christianity, as it is developed in that book,
does not believe that every question has an answer. It accepts God as ultimate mystery, a notion
that I will develop further in this work.
It accepts that questions may have more than one correct answer, as when
it accepts all religions as true to the extent that they connect people to God
and that to which they connect people is truly God. And it accepts that there are questions to
which we may not be able to know the answer, as when we acknowledge that our
attempts to understand God and God’s ways are always and necessarily preliminary,
partial, and incomplete.
[5] For a discussion of the
subjectivity of post-modern epistemology see Liberating Christianity, particularly Chapter Four, The Nature of
Religious Truth.
[6] For a brief review of the
rise of our culture’s philosophical materialism, with its rejection of the
reality of the spiritual dimension, see Liberating
Christianity, op. cit., Chapter One.
[7] I refer of course to the
Fundamentalist and conservative Evangelical and Pentecostal churches among us
that are usually described as successful and who claim that their relative size
establishes the truth of their teachings.
Some of those churches are indeed very large. Yet they appeal only to a relatively small
minority of people in our context; and they do not appeal to the thinkers,
writers, artists, and teachers who in the long run determine the shape and
content of our culture. Their relative
popularity does not contradict the statement that classical theism is dead or
dying among us.
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