A Thinking Reed

Category: Theology & Faith

  • John Macquarrie’s dialectical theism

    In his Gifford Lectures, published in 1984 as In Search of Deity, Anglican theologian John Macquarrie develops a view of God that he calls “dialectical theism”–to provide an alternative to what he calls “classical theism.”

    According to Macquarrie, classical theism has over-emphasized certain attributes of God, resulting in a less-than-satisfactory concept of divinity from both a philosophical and religious point of view. For instance, he contends that it has over-emphasized divine transcendence, resulting in a “monarchical” picture of a God who is removed and aloof from creation. “The intellect demands a more dialectical concept of God, while the religious consciousness, too, seeks a God with whom more affinity can be felt, without diminution of his otherness” (p. 31).

    This is not an unfamiliar criticism, but instead of simply swinging to the other extreme and positing an “immanent” God, Macquarrie argues that an adequate concept of God requires holding certain seemingly opposed attributes in a “dialectical” tension. Hence, “dialectical theism.”

    Macquarrie describes a series of six “dialectical contrasts”, each side of which he thinks we need to attribute to God in order to have a more adequate concept of deity:

    –Being and nothing: God is being, or as Macquarrie prefers to say, the power of “letting-be.” At the same time, God is not an existent in the same way that particular things in the spatio-temporal world are. So it is true, in a sense, to say that God does not exist. God is not “a thing” or “a being” alongside other beings, but that which gives to other things their being.

    –The one and the many: God is one (or maybe better, beyond numbering) and is the ultimate unity that grounds the multiplicity of things. But there are also reasons for thinking that there is a kind of differentiation within the being of God: a divine “abyss,” and intelligible self-manifestation, and a drive toward unity or communion (echoes of the Trinity).

    –Knowability and incomprehensibility: Because God expresses himself in creation, God is knowable, “intuited in the world as a presence or as its unity.” But this knowledge is indirect, mediated by symbols, and the inexhaustible being of God transcends what we can know about him.

    –Transcendence and immanence: God is independent of the world in the sense that the world depends on God for its existence. But God is also deeply involved in the world, intimately present to the processes that make it up. Images of “making” and “emanation” provide complementary ways of picturing the act of divine creation.

    –Impassibility and passibility: Because God transcends the world, the suffering in the world cannot overwhelm or destroy him–or ultimately defeat God’s purposes. But God experiences what happens in the world and it affects him–the world matters to God. Its history makes a real contribution to the divine life.

    –Eternity and temporality: God transcends the succession of past, present, and future and “remains constant and faithful, neither his power nor his love is diminshed by the passage of time” (p. 182). But God is also involved in the movement of time, “engaged in the struggle,” “an active participant.” “God is himself in the events of history and is concerned about their outcome” (p. 182).

    Macquarrie acknowledges that his view is similar to the “panentheism” often associated with Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, but he prefers to avoid the connotations that this term might have of “pantheism.” He also thinks his dialectical theism preserves a more robust sense of divine transcendence than one finds in Whitehead. You could say that Macquarrie’s version of theism is a characteristically Anglican “both/and” approach that tries to affirm the kernel of truth in seemingly opposed claims.

  • Some extremely belated observations on Rob Bell’s “Love Wins”

    With my unerring penchant for striking while the iron is stone cold, I read Rob Bell’s Love Wins over the weekend. I liked it–Bell has a knack for getting theological concepts across in friendly conversational prose without dumbing them down. He homes in on the heart of the Christian gospel–God’s abundant, overflowing love–and conveys it in a way that, I suspect, non-Christians might find quite appealing. It is, in short, “good news.”

    But what struck me most was the orthodoxy of Bell’s views. Given all the hubbub surrounding the book, I was expecting something a little more envelope-pushing. But Bell, notably, does not deny the existence of hell, doesn’t say that everyone will be saved, and doesn’t deny the unique, salvific importance of Jesus.

    I’d call Bell’s view “hopeful universalism.” He thinks that God leaves us free to reject God’s love but hopes that ultimately the persistence of that love will reconcile everyone. His understanding of heaven and hell and the cosmic scope of redemption is drawn from such radical theological sources as C.S. Lewis and N.T. Wright. His understanding of the work of Christ seems fully orthodox, even though he (rightly, in my view) sees different theories of Atonement as mutually complementary metaphors for that work.

    As I suspected, in fact, the controversy over Bell’s book says a lot more about the self-appointed heresy-hunters and boundary-enforcers in contemporary evangelicalism than it does about him. There is a vocal minority that wants to define a simplistic version of Reformed evangelicalism as constitutive of the gospel–complete with insisting on “conscious eternal torment” for unbelievers and the monstrous doctrine of double predestination. And they have, unfortunately, had some success. But the Christian tradition is far wider than that. And while I don’t agree with everything he says, Bell’s book fits comfortably within the mainstream of that tradition.

  • Support for same-sex marriage from unexpected quarters

    High-profile U.K. evangelical minister Steve Chalke describes how he came to an “affirming” position on same-sex relationships. Folks familiar with these arguments won’t find much new here, but Chalke provides a lucid overview of the bibilcal issues, and he frames the debate in a sensitive and sensible way.

    Meanwhile, farmer-poet-novelist-essayist Wendell Berry, who’s always been difficult to classify politically but has been embraced by some religious conservatives, expands here on his support for civil marriage equality.

    I’ve long thought that same-sex marriage could be seen as conservative in a “small-c” sense. Insisting that gay people, simply in virtue of their sexual orientation, remain celibate is pointlessly cruel. Far better to include them in an institution that provides for stability and fidelity and which can facilitate both their flourishing and ability to contribute to the well-being of the wider community.

  • Paul Tillich’s proto-“new perspective” on (the other) Paul

    Luther believed that his was a restatement of the New Testament, especially of Paul. But although his message contains the truth of Paul, it is by no means the whole of what Paul said. The situation determined what he took from Paul, that is, the doctrine of justification by faith which was Paul’s defense against legalism. But Luther did not take in Paul’s doctrine of the Spirit. Of course, he did not deny it; there is even a lot of it in Luther, but that is not decisive. The decisive thing is that a doctrine of the Spirit, of being “in Christ”, of the new being, is the weak spot in Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith. In Paul the situation is different. Paul has three main centers in his thought, which make it a triangle, not a circle. The one is his eschatological consciousness, the certainty that in Christ eschatology is fulfilled and a new reality has started. The second is his doctrine of the Spirit, which means for him that the kingdom of God has appeared, that the new being in Christ is given to us here and now. The third point in Paul is his critical defense against legalism, justification by faith. (Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought, pp. 230-1)

    Like proponents of the “new perspective” on Paul, Tillich, Lutheran theologian though he was, saw the limitations of the traditional “Lutheran” interpretation of Paul’s theology. Tillich doesn’t deny that justification by faith is present in Paul’s thought–indeed it remains very important for Tillich’s own theology. But also important is the idea that Christ inaugurates a new age and that Christians “participate,” through the Spirit, in the life of the risen Christ (or the “new being,” to use Tillich’s preferred term).

  • The Gospel as the basis of prayer

    The good news of the Gospel is that God in Christ meets us where we are and accepts us as we are, that God has come to us when we could not go to God, that we are right with God through God’s gift in Christ, that we are justified by faith, by trust in God’s grace in Christ. Therefore, we can come before God as we are, because God sees us as righteous in Christ. This is why even as beginners in prayer we can offer our simple, real, honest prayers to God through Christ, because God in Christ has opened up a new way for us to come in the presence of God as we are. — Owen C. Thomas, “Prayer in Anglican Practice,” Christian Life & Practice, p. 94

  • Models of God and the Christian life

    I’ve been thinking a lot lately–partly inspired by my recent reading of Schleiermacher and my re-reading of Paul Tillich–about how the way we “model” God affects our understanding of the Christian life.

    As is well known, Tillich defined God as “the Ground of Being” or “being-itself.” These, he said, were the only non-literal terms applicable to God. Everything else, including personal categories, were symbols that do not apply literally to God.

    Along similar lines, philosopher of religion Wesley Wildman has in several essays distinguished between what he calls “determinate entity” theism and “ground-of-being” theism. The former pictures God as an entity–usually personal in nature–with a definite character. The latter tends to portray God in more impersonal, mystical terms–as the non-anthropomorphic ontological “ground” or “abyss” that gives rise to the empirical world. Each way of thinking about God has its problems, but Wildman opts for ground-of-being theism.

    The Christian tradition has always included both approaches. Wildman argues that the high medieval synthesis of Thomas Aquinas was in fact an attempt to articulate a personalistic theism within a mystical, neo-Platonic ground-of-being conceptual scheme. (He is skeptical that Thomas actually succeeded, calling this synthesis “paradoxical.”)

    This isn’t just a theoretical issue; it has profound effects on how we understand the religious life. To paint with a somewhat broad brush, personalistic “determinate entity” theism tends to characterize the religious life in relational and moral terms. Salvation is being brought into a correct or restored relationship with God (for Christians this happens through the mediation of Christ), and expresses itself in concrete, public actions to serve the well-being of the neighbor. By contrast, “ground-of-being” theism sees the relationship to the divine in more impersonal, mystical terms–and emphasizes a more inward, contemplative approach to the religious life. (To oversimplify greatly, these can be understood as broadly “protestant” and “catholic” approaches.)

    As I’ve said before, my general religious orientation is toward the personalistic, relational approach. This is in part because it seems more consistent with religious practice as I understand it. It’s very difficult for me to understand how one is supposed to pray to or receive a moral demand from “the ground of being,” for example. I’ve also been influenced here by John Wesley’s insistence that Christian holiness is social holiness–a journey outward into the world of the neighbor’s need, not an inward journey to the depths of the self.

    But as Wildman notes, ground-of-being theism avoids certain problems that plague more personal understandings–such as the problem of evil. And “ground-of-being” metaphors help highlight the need to avoid excessive anthropomorphism in our thinking about God–which can exacerbate our tendency to create god in our own image. So are these necessarily exclusive ways of understanding God, or can they complement one another?

  • Reading highlights of 2012

    This was the year I finally got into Civil War history. My reading of McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, mentioned in the last post, was a follow up to reading Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery earlier this year. I really enjoyed Foner’s book, but felt that I lacked an understanding of the broader context of the war, which led me to McPherson’s book. Now I’m looking forward to moving on to James Oakes’ The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics, a copy of which I received as a Christmas gift.

    On the theology front, Friedrich Schleiermacher loomed large this year. I read his systematic theology, The Christian Faith, and it has had a significant effect on how I think about theological questions. I supplemented it with Terrence Tice‘s and B.A. Gerrish‘s introductions to Schleiermacher–the latter was particularly helpful. Currently I’m working through F.S.’s On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers.

    I’ve also been revisiting the work of Paul Tillich. I read a lot of Tillich in college, but hadn’t paid him much attention in years. This year I read two collections of his sermons–The Shaking of the Foundations and The New Being. Right now I’m just over halfway through his History of Christian Thought, and I have The Courage to Be and Theology of Culture on deck. I’ve discovered that I still find Tillich’s approach to theology helpful, even if I may not agree with all his specific conclusions.

    Fiction-wise, the high point of my year was Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Great Expectations (which I read late last year) was my first foray into Dickens, but Copperfield edges it out in my estimation. While Expectations is more tightly plotted, Dickens’ famous knack for generating larger-than-life characters is on fuller display in Copperfield. I’m thinking about finally tackling Tolstoy in 2013–possibly Anna Karenina.

    What were your favorite books this year?

  • Communion as a means of conversion

    “Open communion”–or what is sometimes referred to more precisely as “communion without (or prior to) baptism”–has become something of a hot-button issue in mainline Protestant circles. In this article at the Christian Century, Boston College theologian Charles Hefling provides the best overview of the issue that I’ve seen.

    Drawing on John Wesley’s notion of communion as a “converting ordinance,” Hefling says that there is a case for seeing communion as a means by which some people are drawn to Jesus. “The drawing may go unregarded, but on the other hand a readiness to receive and follow it may also be nurtured by deliberate practices, among which is participation in the Lord’s own supper.” Thus it may be wrong for the church to insist on baptism as a prior condition for receiving. But this isn’t simply a matter of being “inclusive” or welcoming–it’s an invitation to enter more fully into the Christian life, with the commitments and sacrifices that entails. Hefling goes on to suggest that any practice of open communion should be accompanied by a robust program of catechesis and a more explicit linkage of communion and baptism. “Communion never is irrespective of baptism, although possibly it may in certain circumstances precede it.”

    He concludes:

    The recommendations do not in themselves resolve the question of whether an open table policy is theologically justifiable in general or pastorally appropriate in any particular instance. They are not meant to. They do, or would, give concrete expression to a conviction that if the Eucharist is to be regarded as a means of Christian formation—and that is arguably the surest ground on which to build a case for open table communion—then eucharistic worship needs to belong to a larger pattern and process. A visitor who experiences a communion service as a discrete, one-off event, like a tour of the Grand Canyon, has missed the point, or else the point has not been made clearly enough.

    That point, the embeddedness of this liturgical action within an all-inclusive, corporate turning to God, is one which has been made, negatively and somewhat mechanically, by insisting on “no communion without baptism.” There seem to be serious reasons for thinking it would perhaps be better made by saying, in many and various ways, “We are glad to have you join us in our pilgrimage. Please know that you are very welcome. Please know too that to join, you have to be prepared to join, to take the plunge, literally.” In that context, the question is not whether a ritual requirement for receiving communion may at times be waived for individuals who are indeed so prepared. The question is whether opening the communion table to them now is the most appropriate way to prepare them further.

    Whether or not open communion is the best policy–and I’m still somewhat on the fence–I think this provides a good framework for thinking about it.

  • Guns, civil society, and peacemaking

    In the wake of the horrific massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, last Friday, a common reaction among some conservative/pro-gun folks has been that we should “arm the teachers.” This is consistent with responses to previous such events, like the movie theater shooting in Colorado this summer, when some gun proponents argued that if only someone else there had been armed, they would’ve been able to stop the shooter.

    But apart from the logistical and safety issues this would raise, the more important reason this is a bad idea was well articulated today by two different writers. At the New York Times Opinionator blog, philosophy professor Firmin DeBrabander writes that “an armed society — especially as we prosecute it at the moment in this country — is the opposite of a civil society.” What he means is that if your solution to gun violence is to arm more people, in more places, more openly, you’ve replaced a society based on mutual trust and cooperation with one based on fear.

    At the American Conservative, Alan Jacobs offers a similar thought:

    But what troubles me most about this suggestion — and the general More Guns approach to social ills — is the absolute abandonment of civil society it represents. It gives up on the rule of law in favor of a Hobbesian “war of every man against every man” in which we no longer have genuine neighbors, only potential enemies. You may trust your neighbor for now — but you have high-powered recourse if he ever acts wrongly.

    Whatever lack of open violence may be procured by this method is not peace or civil order, but rather a standoff, a Cold War maintained by the threat of mutually assured destruction. Moreover, the person who wishes to live this way, to maintain order at universal gunpoint, has an absolute trust in his own ability to use weapons wisely and well: he never for a moment asks whether he can be trusted with a gun. Of course he can! (But in literature we call this hubris.)

    Is this really the best we can do? It might be if we lived in, say, the world described by Cormac McCarthy in The Road. But we don’t. Our social order is flawed, but by no means bankrupt. Most of us live in peace and safety without the use of guns. It makes more sense to try to make that social order safer and safer, more and more genuinely peaceful, rather than descend voluntarily into a world governed by paranoia, in which one can only feel safe — or, really, “safe” — with cold steel strapped to one’s ribcage.

    There can and should be vigorous debate about what kinds of gun control measures are desirable and practicable, but we also need to think about what kind of society we want to live in. The character of a society in which everyone walks around packing heat, Old West style, would be very different from one in which most of us feel safe enough to go about unarmed. There’s no question in my mind which is preferable.

    In her sermon this Sunday, our pastor reminded us that Christians are to act as peacemakers as part of their calling to “bear the life of Christ” to the world. But there is peace based on fear, and there is peace based on love (or at least mutual respect). We’ll probably never eliminate the need for some “fear-based” policies, but the proper Christian stance, I submit, is to nudge social relations  in a “love-based” direction. By that standard, a more heavily armed and militarized society would be moving in the wrong direction.

  • Half a gospel

    I sympathize with the spirit of this post at Patheos by David Henson–it is weird and creepy to talk about the infant Jesus as having been “born to die”–suggesting perhaps that a child sacrifice would’ve done the job of saving the world just as well. More seriously, it’s just bad theology to separate Christ’s death from his life. This has been a recurring problem in popular Christian piety and even among theologians who should know better.

    That said, Henson veers a bit too far in the other direction when he writes that “it wasn’t his death and crucifixion that set things right in the world. Rather it was his incarnated life that shows us what a world set right might look like.” I’d argue that the writers of the New Testament certainly thought that Jesus’ death (along with his resurrection) were acts by which God went about setting things right in the world. Without the cross and resurrection we seem stuck with the old liberal Jesus who’s primarily a good role model. (Or as Paul would say, if Christ has not been raised, our faith is futile and we are still in our sins!)

    I haven’t blogged much about my switching from attending a Lutheran church to a Methodist one, but one of the things I’ve come to appreciate about Wesleyan theology is that it tries to maintain equal emphases on Jesus’ death and his life, and on our justification and sanctification. Wesley had a very “Lutheran” doctrine of salvation by grace through faith, but he insisted that the acceptance and forgiveness we receive through Jesus’ cross and resurrection laid the foundation for continuous growth in love of God and neighbor. According to Theodore Runyon, the keynote of Wesley’s theology is the restoration of the image of God in humanity, which allows us to reflect back to the world the love which God has shown us. From this perspective, to downplay the life and teachings of Jesus or his cross and resurrection would be to settle for half a gospel.