A Thinking Reed

Category: Theology & Faith

  • The trouble with tradition

    Lutheran theologian Robert Benne laments the ELCA’s departure from the “Great Tradition” of marginalizing gay people and its descent into the dreaded “liberal Protestantism.” The problem, it seems, is that the ELCA hasn’t given sufficient weight to the opinions of white male pastors and theologians.

    One thing I’ve noticed is that whenever someone makes an appeal to tradition (or Tradition), there will always come along someone else who’s more traditional than thou. Some of Benne’s commenters are already pointing out that the real problems began when Lutherans abandoned biblical inerrancy (or broke away from Rome). It’s also worth pointing out that some of our most outspoken “traditionalists” on gay relationships are “liberals” on questions like women’s ordination. And almost no Lutherans take the traditionalist position on artificial birth control. One man’s traditionalist, it turns out, is another man’s liberal–or heretic.

    Which isn’t to say that it’s impossible to be a consistent traditionalist. But such a consistency would have to be purchased at the price of plausibility. Why, after all, should we think that all the interesting moral or theological questions were already answered in the first (or fourth, or thirteenth, or sixteenth) century? The Bible itself contains passages where people are wrestling with–and revising–their received tradition (e.g., the fifteenth chapter of Acts). This seems necessary if tradition is to be a resource of wisdom and inspiration and not an ideological rationalization of power and privilege.

  • Natural theology or theology of nature?

    Following up a bit on this post…

    In his book Religion and Science, which is based on his Gifford Lectures, Ian Barbour distinguishes between natural theology and the theology of nature. Natural theology tries to prove God’s existence by appealing to some feature of the created order. Barbour denies that natural theology can achieve its aim, but still sees a positive role for it:

    I do not believe that design arguments of this kind are conclusive when taken alone. However, they can play a supportive role as part of a theology of nature. (Religion and Science, pp. 246-7)

    A theology of nature differs from natural theology in that it offers a religious interpretation of the natural world by incorporating the picture of the world revealed by science into theology. Barbour continues:

    Instead of a natural theology, I advocate a theology of nature, which is based primarily on religious experience and the life of the religious community but which includes some reformulation of traditional doctrines in the light of science. Theological doctrines start as human interpretations of individual and communal experience and are therefore subject to revision. Our understanding of God’s relation to nature always reflects our view of nature. (p. 247)

    A theology of nature tries to relate, in an intellectually satisfying way, the findings of science to theology. For example, as I pointed out before, the “limit” or “boundary” questions raised by modern cosmology may not provide proof of God’s existence, but they may shed light on the relation between the Creator and creation. Similarly, the conclusions of evolutionary biology provide an opportunity for re-thinking ideas of human nature that Christians have inherited from their tradition. As Barbour argues, an evolutionary perspective blurs, or at lest softens, the sharp distinction between humanity and the rest of nature that the tradition sometimes tried to draw (by, for example, insisting that human beings alone had “immortal souls”).

    Such a theology of nature allows both science and religion to shed light on each other without trying either to deduce scientific conclusions from religious doctrine (as fundamentalists do) or derive theological doctrine from science (as more zealous proponents of the “God hypothesis” might like). It also entails that theology will always be, to some extent, provisional, requiring revision as our understanding of nature changes.

  • Science, faith, and the “God hypothesis”

    Kim Fabricius has another set of provocative theological propositions at Faith & Theology–these ones on what he calls the “God hypothesis.” By this he means the attempt, by various religious thinkers, to take on the “new atheists” on their own turf and argue for God’s existence on “scientific” grounds.

    As usual, Fabricius definitely scores some points, but some distinctions are in order. Sure we can agree that “God of the gaps” arguments–like those offered by proponents of “intelligent design”–are misconceived. But there are still boundary questions like Why is there anything rather than nothing? or Why does the universe have the particular set of fundamental laws and properties that it does, which have given rise to intelligent creatures who can ask questions about God? These fundamental questions, many contemporary theologians have argued, may point to a creator. At the very least, they suggest that modern cosmology is consistent with such an idea.

    Part of Fabricius’s distaste for this enterprise seems to be motivated by a Barthian-Wittgensteinian “Nein!” to any natural theology, even a modest attempt to “relate the observed cosmos to traditional religion.” But, assuming that religion and science don’t occupy hermetically sealed intellectual compartments but are rather purporting to offer perspectives on the same universe, then why shouldn’t we look for ways to relate them? Granted that the primary material of the religious life consists of the experiences, stories, rituals, and practices of a religious community, does it follow that the findings of science have no bearing on it? Has God left no traces of the divine nature in the book of creation?

    In my view, a more fruitful approach is offered by the likes of Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke, and Keith Ward. They neither seek to “prove” God’s existence from the findings of science, nor to cordon off science from theology or reduce them to incommensurable language-games. Instead, they seek a theology that is informed by our best contemporary understanding of the world, as theologians have always done.

  • Creation Sunday

    The ELCA and other churches have adopted the tradition of observing the Sunday closest to Earth Day as “Creation Sunday” (or Care of Creation Sunday).

    To some this no doubt seems like another in a long line of mainline capitulations to political correctness. The reality, though, is that care for God’s creation should be a central component of Christian faith.

    You can read the ELCA’s social statement on the environment, which is actually pretty good as this kind of document goes, here.

    After setting forth the theological vision of creation, sin, and redemption, the statement asks church members to commit themselves to a series of principles:

    – participation: recognizing the right of all people and all creatures to have their interests taken into consideration;

    – solidarity: acknowledging our interdependence with all other people and the rest of creation;

    – sufficiency: giving priority to meeting the basic needs of all human beings and other creatures;

    – sustainability: providing an adequate standard of living for present generations without compromising the well-being of future ones.

    The statement further asks Lutherans to commit to upholding these principles as individuals and congregations, in personal lifestyle changes and in advocacy in the private and public spheres.

    The anthropocentric orientation of much traditional theology and religious practice needs to be replaced by a properly theocentric orientation that roots the human community firmly in the soil of the created world. And the gospel, far from being a privatized message of individual deliverance from the world, is a message of freedom from anxious self-seeking that turns us back toward the needs of the world around us.

  • McLaren and the mainline

    A while ago I posted about the controversy over Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. I noted that it seemed McLaren and his critics were recapitulating a battle waged over a century ago between Christian modernists and fundamentalists.

    This review of McLaren’s book in the Christian Century seems to confirm that hunch:

    The central thesis, to which McLaren returns frequently to indicate its wide implications, is that Christian faith was terminally skewed when it was distilled through the Greco-Roman (imperial) worldview. This worldview resulted in a version of Christianity that was at once triumphalistic and reductive—a Christianity that was mainly about what happens after death. McLaren argues that the central message of Jesus, the kingdom of God and the life it entails, was lost or overlooked. There is important truth in this argument, perhaps especially for the world of American evangelicals, among whom it does sometimes seem that a version of Paul has eclipsed Jesus. I am less sure that it is helpful for the Protestant mainline and liberal Christianity.

    I can imagine that some of the young evangelical students I have taught as an adjunct professor at Seattle Pacific University (a Free Methodist school) would experience McLaren as enormously helpful and freeing. He would enable many to disentangle their faith from a limited Republican political agenda and rethink theology and scripture in ways that might feel like water for a parched soul. McLaren offers some fine biblical interpretation in relation to his ten questions.

    But when the audience is, as I suspect it often will be, mainline or self-described progressive Christians, I’m less sure that McLaren’s message is the thing that’s needed. The tendency in mainline or progressive circles has long been to say that the problem is outdated, outmoded Christianity. The project has been to redo theology, revise language and creed, update imagery and practice, all with the idea that if we can just make Christianity fit into our present world, all will be well. In a fair number of churches this revisionist project has gone on for so long that there simply isn’t much left to revise—or to sustain the dwindling numbers of the faithful. Where this updating project has so long prevailed, a slightly altered version of Shakespeare’s line from Julius Caesar may be apt: the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our paradigms, it is in ourselves, that we are sinners.

    To be sure, there is always a need to engage and question received faith and tradition, to sort out the precious from the expendable, but as McLaren develops his quest for a new kind of Christianity, I worry that it is too much about our quest and not enough about God’s.

    This seems right to me, and the author of the review, Anthony Robinson, adds some further words of wisdom:

    The result may be yet another movement that promises that if only we jettison old ways of thinking and believing, which are the source of all our problems, we shall enter into a new time of liberation and meaning. I tend to think that the challenge is not so much to distance ourselves from the past as it is to discover what in our past and inheritance remains of enduring value and has the capacity to transform and renew the church for the world in our time. Yes, we do desperately need to find new ways of being and doing church, ways that are less about church as an institution existing for its own sake and more about church as community, relationship, spiritual practice and service. This may entail less emphasis on our quest and more on God’s quest for us.

    I’ve noticed more churches making a point of welcoming people “wherever they are in their faith journey.” While this spirit of hosptiality is a good one, I worry that what such churches may be inviting people to is nothing more than an open-ended process of exploration. Surely Christian communities ought to have a more concrete and specific identity than that.

  • McLaren’s “heresy”

    I’ve never read anything by Brian McLaren, but the dust-up in some evangelical circles about his new book A New Kind of Christianity is interesting for what it reveals about the presuppositions of at least significant swaths of American evangelicalism. Nothing McLaren says, at least going by the summary offered in the story linked above, will seem shocking to anyone with a passing familiarity with contemporary theology, whether Catholic, Protestant, or whatever. Indeed, a lot of it has gone from being shocking “heresy” to taken-for-granted truism. For instance:

    • The Bible is not inerrant and does not offer precise scientific information on the age of the world, the development of life, etc.
    • The Bible reflects changing, sometimes inconsistent, views of the nature and character of God.
    • Jesus’s ministry was not limited to a determination to die as a sacrifice for sin, but included a positive social vision.
    • Non-Christians are not destined for hell.

    I think it’s safe to say that these points would be regarded as uncontroversial by nearly all mainstream theology, at least outside the more conservative precincts of evangelicalism. That doesn’t, by itself, prove that they’re correct, of course, but there comes a time to move on from arguments that were largely settled at the dawn of the 20th century. If anything, it seems odd that McLaren is presenting these conclusions as new and daring, since much of it seems to recapitulate 19th- and 20th-century liberal theology. (I say that with the caveat that I haven’t read his book!)

    I’ve complained about the fundamentalist hangover before, and it’s depressing how we can continually get sucked back into fundamentalism’s orbit. This is true even in mainline churches, where fundamentalism seems to be the big Other that we’re constantly defining ourselves over against. My personal view is that, rather than continually re-fighting the modernist-fundamentalist debate, we need a theology that moves beyond it, without discarding tradition or the genuine insights of liberal theology.

  • Good Friday reading

    I recommend Christopher‘s meditation at the Episcopal Cafe.

  • The marginalization of the mystical

    Luke Timothy Johnson writes on keeping the “exoteric” (legal, moral, ritual) and “esoteric” (mystical, devotional) aspects of religion together. Both, he says, are necessary for the religious life to flourish, but western monotheisms–Islam and Christianity particularly–have become too focused on the exoteric.

  • “Reason” vs. reasons

    I want to zero in further on one small part of the John Polkinghorne interview excerpted below:

    I think that the fundamental question about something, whether science or religion, is not, “Is it reasonable?” as if we know beforehand what is reasonable, or what shape rationality has. The better question is, “What makes you think that might be the case?” If you are going to propose something surprising and counterintuitive to me, then you need to produce evidence, something to persuade me that that might be the case, perhaps experiments. That is motivated belief.

    I think this is important. Too often “reason” is used as a cudgel to whack positions that are deemed “irrational.” But reason, in this abstract sense, is pretty hard to pin down. How can we say a priori what counts as “reasonable”? It’s hard to see how we can, at least with any great specificity.

    A more promising route is to look for reasons for believing something. What counts as a good reason will depend largely on the subject matter and context. As Aristotle pointed out, it’s foolish to expect the same kind of proof in ethics as you would in mathematics.

    Much contemporary Christian theology has criticized “Enlightenment reason,” sometimes excessively. But there is a legitimate point to be made. I think if you take, for example, Descartes’ criteria of absolute certainty (or indubitability) as something that any belief must meet to count as knowledge, you’re going to end up drawing the circle of knowledge very narrowly. That’s because he takes a criteria that may be appropriate to one subject area (mathematics, say) and tries to make it the foundation of all knowledge.

    But repudiating a one-size-fits-all account of knowledge doesn’t mean that we can’t offer reasons for accepting particular religious truth-claims. Rejecting Cartesian foundationalism doesn’t imply that all bets are off epistemically speaking. In making the case for Christianity, for example, you could make an appeal to a variety of reasons: historical plausibility, logical consistency, moral attractiveness, experiential confirmation, etc. You’re never going to get to an air-tight, irrefutable case, but you’re also not going to be left with a sheer leap of faith. This is the zone in which most of our believing–including that with the most existential import–takes place. There’s no particular reason to demand that religion meet a bar of certainty that we wouldn’t expect in other areas of life.

  • Proof vs. “motivated belief”

    I liked this interview with physicist/Anglican priest John Polkinghorne. In particular, his distinction between proving a belief and having a belief that is well motivated is worth highlighting:

    Is it important to be able to prove the existence of God?

    Well, I don’t think it’s possible to prove the existence of God. There are many things I don’t think you can prove in an absolutely cast-iron, logical way. You can prove that two plus two equals four; you can’t prove the foolishness or falseness of ridiculous assumptions. I could maintain that the whole world came into existence five minutes ago and that our memories of the past were created at that moment. I don’t think you could defeat me in logical argument about that, though we all know that would be an absurd thing to say. So proof, cast-iron proof, is pretty limited and not actually a very interesting category of things. I believe in quarks and gluons and electrons. I believe that’s the most intelligible, economic, persuasive interpretation of a whole swath of physical phenomena, but I don’t think I’ve proved their existence in the two plus two equals four sense — just as I can’t prove the existence of God. What we need, I think, is beliefs that are sufficiently well-motivated for us to feel that we can commit our lives to them, knowing that they may be false, but believing that they are the best explanation. I’m very sold on motivated belief but I am not sold on knowledge through proofs either in science or religion, or anything in between.

    What is motivated belief?

    I call myself a bottom-up thinker. I try to move from experience to understanding, to look at experiences, which may be our own experiences or accounts of others; in fact, in the religious case, they are very extensively accounts of experiences other people have had which we believe are being truly described to us and which support particular beliefs we are seeking to embrace. It means that we don’t just sit and dream things up out of our heads. It’s very important that we deliver ourselves from fantasy. You see, I think that the fundamental question about something, whether science or religion, is not, “Is it reasonable?” as if we know beforehand what is reasonable, or what shape rationality has. The better question is, “What makes you think that might be the case?” If you are going to propose something surprising and counterintuitive to me, then you need to produce evidence, something to persuade me that that might be the case, perhaps experiments. That is motivated belief. It contrasts with top-down thinking. Top-down thinkers have certain big ideas, clear and general ideas, which, if you grasp, they have the key to understanding everything. I think it’s the other way around. I think you should start at the bottom and the ideas will grow out of experience rather than being imposed upon it.

    Except for a brief period when I was convinced by a version of the ontological argument, I’ve never thought that God’s existence can be proved. But, as Polkinghorne says, that doesn’t leave us in the realm of pure fideism. The universe as we experience it is, as philosopher John Hick says, “religiously ambiguous.” That is, there are facts and experiences that incline us to a religious (and specifically theistic) interpretation of our experinece, and there are others that point toward an a-theistic interpretation. No one has provided a knock-down argument or piece of evidence that one of these must rationally be preferred to the other. Plus, different people may give different weight to various pieces of experience in forming their beliefs. Religious experience, for example, is undoubtedly a widespread phenomenon, but it’s far from obvious what it shows or how much weight we should put on it. The same goes for moral, aesthetic, and other forms of experience that seem to point beyond a clockwork, materialist world. On balance, I’m persuaded that these experiences provide insight into a genuine transcendent reality and that a broadly theistic worldview provides the best available way of conceptualizing that reality. But I can’t claim that this interpretation forces itself on all rational observers.