A Thinking Reed

Category: Theology & Faith

  • In and out

    Christopher has a post on universalism that pretty closely approximates my own view. In short: we believe salvation is through Christ, but we don’t know how far that salvation extends. We can hope–but not know–that it extends to everyone.

    One other point I’d add is that Christians usually presume we’re on the “inside,” and the question is whether non-Christians get “in” too. But an Augustinian account of grace would remind us that we don’t know, definitively, who’s “in” or “out” in this life. The line between the city of God and the city of man isn’t given to us to discern. In the Bible, it’s often the outsiders who demonstrate, in surprising ways, their closeness to God, and the insiders their blindness.

  • Smith: animal rights=idolatry

    Wesley Smith is shocked and appalled (surprise!) by Humane Society president Wayne Pacelle’s recent column on Michael Vick’s efforts to rehabilitate himself.

    First, Pacelle:

    In a civil society, there must be accountability for grievous actions. But there also must be an embrace of people who are willing and ready to change – even in tough cases, like Michael Vick. We are all sinners when it comes to animals, and we can all do better.

    Smith, weirdly, asserts that this reveals the “religious” nature of the animal rights movement:

    We have all sinned against animals? Substitute God for animals in this piece, and you have a classic Christian message. Yup. animal rights is religion and Wayne Pacelle a high priest of the faith.

    Um, does Smith realize that in Christian terms it makes perfect sense to talk about sinning against beings other than God? As in, “If your brother sins against you…” (Matt. 18:15)?

    So how much of a stretch is it to talk about sinning against animals, especially when we’re talking about the kind of sadistic abuse Vick was guilty of? Sure, Kant and some other philosophers said that we have no direct duties to animals, but they were wrong! Pacelle is simply using religious language to point out that we all, to some degree or another, seriously wrong the animals who share our world.

    It’s a staple of conservative anti-environmental and anti-animal rights rhetoric that those movements are ersatz religions. But actual religion already teaches us not to sin against our fellow creatures, including the most vulnerable ones.

  • The cosmic prodigal son

    I’ve been reading a book called Created from Animals: the Moral Implications of Darwinism by the late philosopher James Rachels. The thesis is that Darwinism does have far-reaching implications for morality, even if not the ones commonly thought. This is in contrast to those, like Stephen Jay Gould, who tried to erect an insuperable wall between the realm of “values” and scientific fact.

    Rachels’ long opening chapter, in which he reviews Darwin’s life and the basic argument of the Origin of Species, is extremely clear and compelling, and worth the price of the book alone (well, at least in my case—I picked it up used for around five bucks). Subsequent chapters delve into the more properly philosophical argument about how Darwin’s findings might be related to ethics.

    What Rachels is trying to show is that Darwinism pulls the lynchpin of “human dignity” out of our existing moral framework by undermining crucial beliefs that support it. He agrees with many other philosophers that you can’t get an “ought” from an “is”—that is, statements of fact do not logically entail statements of value. But, he argues, our belief in human dignity—by which he means the view that human life is uniquely sacred or valuable—derives its support from certain beliefs about the world and our place in it. Chief among these are one religious belief and one secular philosophical belief: that human beings were specially created (in some sense) in God’s image and that human beings are uniquely rational.

    If, as Rachels believes is the case, Darwinism undermines the grounds for these beliefs, then the corresponding normative belief in human dignity will be undermined, even if it is still logically independent of those beliefs. In other words, we could still retain the belief in human dignity as a sheer judgment of value, but without the supporting beliefs (or some substitute), it’s not clear why we should.

    So why does Rachels think that Darwinism does in fact undermine these beliefs? For the purposes of this post, let’s focus on the imago dei doctrine. According to Rachels, the traditional view that human beings are created in the divine image means that “the world [was] intended to be [humanity’s] habitation, and everything else in it given for [our] enjoyment and use” (p. 86). The evolutionary picture of the world, Rachels contends, undermines this for several reasons. First, there have existed long stretches of time–billions of years, far and away the vast majority of time–where human beings did not exist and the universe got along just fine without us. Second, Darwinian evolution undermines the view that all things in nature have the form they do in order to serve some human purpose; instead, it sees the forms of creatures as an adaptation to their environment. Finally, the path of evolution doesn’t require us to posit a god to explain the emergence of human life; on strictly scientific grounds, we aren’t required to believe that the existence of human beings is anything other than a fortuitious (for us) outcome of a blind process.

    It’s possible, Rachels says, to say that God is the “first cause,” the one who sets up the basic laws of the universe, but whose further intervention isn’t required to explain the emergence and development of life. But even if this is accepted (and he’s not sure that it should be–why not just say that the universe is uncaused?), we’re a long way from the God of the Bible or Judeo-Christian tradition. Such a deistic god doesn’t possess nearly the same religious significance as a more traditional one. At that point, it’s not clear why we’d insist on hanging on the word “god” at all.

    Regular readers are probably not terribly surprised to learn that I have some sympathy with Rachels’ argument. Like much of the best atheist and agnostic thought, Rachels’ argument provides the opportuntiy for a purification of religious thought and for smashing a few idols. And surely one of the great idols of the Christian tradition has been precisely the view that creation was made just for us and all other creatures were given for our enjoyment and use. While there are certainly parts of the Bible that support such a view, modern biblical scholars have pointed out that a “humano-centric” interpretation of the Bible (as distinguished from a theo-centric one) is profoundly distorting.

    The Bible is clear in many passages that creation exists not for our sake, but for the creator’s sake. God creates all that is and calls it “good” (not “good for us”). After the flood in Genesis, God makes a covenant with all flesh, not just with humanity. The Psalms tell us repeatedly that creatures of land, air, and sea praise their creator in their own language, without the mediation of human beings. God’s admonition to Job is that the creator’s purposes encompass far more than parochial human interests. The apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon praises the mercy and love of the Lord: “you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned.” Jesus insists that our heavenly Father cares for the lillies of the field and the sparrows of the air. St. Paul contends that “all things” are reconciled in Christ and that the entire creation is groaning for liberation from bondage.

    Rachels isn’t wrong to see the anthropocentric interpretation as the dominant one in Christian history. This may have been encouraged by a secular philosophy that defined the imago primarily as reason and free will, thus emphasizing the distinction between human beings and other creatures. A more “functionalist” understanding of humanity’s role as caretakers or gardeners of the earth, by contrast, emphasizes our embededness in and responsibility to the rest of creation.

    If this alternate narrative is right, then the evolutionary story can be seen in a different perspective. Human beings are one among millions of species in whom God takes delight. The story of creation is more of an open-ended process than a static, once-and-for-all act, one that gives rise to a multiplicity of beings that reflect some facet of the divine goodness.

    And the creator has many purposes, or many stories to tell. The overarching story is that of God’s overflowing goodness in creating other beings, beings with whom God wishes to share God’s self. Within that story are sub-plots, like that of humanity. Instead of seeing humanity as the jewel of creation, maybe a truer story would be that we are the prodigal son of creation, the ones who go off and squander the riches left to us by our Father. But the Father is constantly calling us back, willing to mend the broken relationship between us so that we can be restored to our proper place in the household. This isn’t a measure of how great we are, but of how great God’s love is.

    I’m not claiming to have solved all the problems evolutionary thought poses for religion (far from it!), but in this case I think a better understanding of the natural world can actually point us to a deeper understanding of our faith. (I’ll likely have more to say about Rachels’ moral project in a later post.)

  • Yes, Virginia, the pope believes in global warming

    Apparently some right-wing Catholics have interpreted the fact that the words “global warming” or “climate change” do not appear in Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical to mean that the pope is a global warming skeptic of some sort. Neil Ormerod, a Catholic theologian in Australia, attempts to set the record straight.

  • Prayer for a squirrel

    Christopher has a terrific piece up at Episcopal Cafe on how prayer can and does connect us with our fellow creatures:

    …to bless God for the life of just one animal, who has been a friend and companion, begins to have us think anew about our fellow creatures, about creation, about ourselves, about God. Such a gesture may be small, but it is significant step toward recognizing our coexistence with, our reliance upon, and our shared flesh as fellow creatures.

    Amen!

    UPDATE:     Also via Christopher comes this wonderful sermon for the annual service of the
    Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals.

  • She Who Is wrap-up

    I’m not going to offer a blow-by-blow account of the rest of Elizabeth Johnson’s She Who Is, mostly because I don’t think I could do justice to the many nuances and illuminating insights it contains. It’s definitely changed how I think about these issues. Also, it’s a highly readable book for academic theology, and anyone who’s interested should have no trouble getting their hands on a copy. I highly recommend it. But I thought I’d offer a few more thoughts.

    The balance of the book contains discussions of, inter alia, the Trinity, Christology, God’s relationship to the world (classical theism vs. pantheism vs. panentheism) and divine power and (im)passibility that are quite good. Johnson’s taken on the last topic, in particular, strikes me as very worthwhile. Some contemporary theologians, in reacting against the classical view of God as omnipotent and impassible, go to the other extreme and define God almost exclusively in terms of weakness, suffering, etc., as though these were good in themselves. But as Johnson points out, a passive, suffering God can reinforce patterns of victimization just as an omnipotent, impassible God can seem like an overbearing and uncaring tyrant. It’s also not clear what the religious value is of a God who is only “fellow sufferer.”

    What’s we need, Johnson argues, is a way of thinking about the power and suffering of God that avoids both extremes. She points out that there are different kinds of suffering: some, like the suffering experienced in childbirth, are means to a good end and and can be retrospectively seen as contributing to the wonderful gift of new life. Others, like extreme sexual or physical violence and degradation, are impossible to fit into any scheme in which they can be seen as contributing to some greater good. So we need to be careful in making these distinctions lest the “suffering God” end up valorizing victimization. Johnson even offers a feminist reinterpretation of God’s wrath: “the wrath of God in the sense of righteous anger is not an opposite of mercy but its correlative” (p. 258).

    Johnson does affirm that God is present and shares in creaturely suffering. “The compassionate God, spoken about in analogy with women’s experience of relationality and care, can help by awakening consolation, responsible human action, and hope against hope in the world marked by radical suffering and evil” (p. 269). But God is also empowering her creatures to resist violence and victimization, and actualizing possibilities for more bountiful life. The cross and resurrection, in other words, are inseparable. Johnson doesn’t pretend to offer any “solution” to the problem of evil, but if God is thought of more in terms of relationality, both within the triune life and in its relationship to creation, then God’s power needn’t be defined as the unilateral ability to determine everything that happens:

    Sophia-God is in solidarity with those who suffer as a mystery of empowerment. With moral indignation, concern for broken creation, and a sympathy calling for justice, the power of God’s compassionate love enters the pain of the world to transform it from within. The victory is not on the model of conquering heroism but of active, nonviolent resistance as those who are afflicted are empowered to take up the cause of resistance, healing, and liberation for themselves and others” (p. 270)

    This is more suggestive than fully fleshed out, but it highlights how feminist concerns to counteract a God modeled on the aloof, solitary patriarchal male who is able to impose his will on a recalcitrant world dovetails with contemporary efforts to re-think divine power and action in light of both the problem of evil and a scientific understanding of reality. Developing a new understanding of power and new ways of speaking about God as “almighty” is still an urgent theological task, especially when the all-determining God of classical Calvinist theology seems to be enjoying something of a resurgence in popularity.

    The opposite danger, though, is reducing God’s power to a moral example or ideal. While Johnson, I think, would deny that this is her intention, she does say things that seem to point in this direction. For example, she says that speaking of the suffering of God is valuable primarily because it “facilitates the praxis of hope” (p. 271), that is, motivating action by and on behalf of those who are oppressed. While this is certainly an important task for Christians to take up, I’m left a bit uncertain about the role of eschatology in her theology. Doesn’t hope, in the Christian lexicon, ultimately have as its object something that God will bring about? While Johnson mentions the resurrection life in a few places, the resurrection of Jesus doesn’t seem to play a pivotal role in her theology, and she says little to indicate that it’s ultimately God who will bring about the final emancipation of creation, not human efforts to build a just society, necessary as those are. I’m certainly on board with much of the program developed in She Who Is, but Johnson’s strictures about idolatry also apply, surely, to any tendency to annex God to a political agenda, no matter how worthy.

  • Many names

    After discussing the role of experience–specifically women’s experience of affirming themselves as fully human and valued by God, equally created in the divine image–Elizabeth Johnson turns to the Bible and classical theology as sources for feminist theological discourse.

    It’s no secret that the Bible was written by men in patriarchal cultures and reflects the presuppositions of those cultures. Johnson argues that these aspects of scripture are incidental and don’t pertain to what is necessary for our salvation (just as Vatican II affirmed that historical or scientific inaccuracies in the Bible don’t affect its core message). “It is most emphatically not salvific to diminish the image of God in women, to designate them as symbols of temptation and evil, to relegate them to the margins of significance, to suppress the memory of their suffering and creative power, and to legitimate their subordination” (p. 79)

    Moreover, there are “trajectories” in the Bible that allow for speaking about God with female metaphors. Chief among these are Spirit, or Shekina, God’s holy presence with God’s people; Sophia, the personification of divine wisdom; and Mother. All of these images or names are licensed by scripture and all use female metaphors for God. Johnson finds Sophia to be particularly potent, being both explicitly female and invested with divine attributes. Sophia, who looms large in the books Protestants refer to as the Apocrypha, may even represent some healthy borrowing from nearby goddess cults:

    The controlling context of meaning remained the Jewish monotheistic faith with borrowings being assimilated to that faith. At the same time, through the use of new categories, Jewish beliefs about God and God’s ways with the world were expressed in a way that matched the religious depth and style of the goddess literature and cult and counteracted its appeal. The wisdom literature, then, celebrates God’s gracious goodness in creating and sustaining the world and in electing and saving Israel, and does so in imagery that presents the divine presence in the female gestalt of divine Sophia. (p. 93)

    The importance of the figure of Sophia is further reinforced by the New Testament’s identification of Jesus with divine wisdom (i.e., Sophia). A “wisdom” Christology can, consequently, provide a corrective to a “logos” Christology understood in excessively masculine terms. “Since Jesus Christ is depicted as divine Sophia, then it is not unthinkable–it is not even unbiblical–to confess Jesus the Christ as the incarnation of God imaged in female symbol” (p. 99).

    Turning to the tradition of classical theology, Johnson focuses on the divine ineffability and the long tradition in Catholic theology that language about God is, necessarily, analogical. That is, we can’t speak about God in literal terms, but we aren’t left speechless because certain attributes belong to God in a “more eminent” way than they do to creatures. For instance, we apply “good” to God because we first experience goodness in creatures. But “good” must be qualified and even in a sense negated when applied to God. It points us in the right direction, but it doesn’t provide anything like a literal description of what God is like.

    For Johnson, a renewed emphasis on the analogical nature of all divine language can loosen the grip that male names and metaphors for God have had on the Christian imagination. Even when the analogical nature of all theological language was recognized, the insistence that male language was the only fully proper language reinforced sexist attitudes. But if we appreciate anew the analogical nature of theological language and recognize the full and equal humanity of women, then we can affirm the appropriateness of female names and metaphors for God, including those drawn from under-appreciated parts of the biblical tradition.

    Indeed, Johnson emphasizes the need for many names for God. Because of God’s infinity and incomprehensibility, we need a kaleidoscope of names and images for pointing to that reality. This can prevent certain images from becoming fixed and reified, which can tempt us to idolatry. Paraphrasing Augustine, “If you have understood, then what you have understood is not God” (p. 120).

  • Feminist conversion as a source of theological speech

    In part II of She Who Is, Elizabeth Johnson discusses the sources she’s going to use for her project of theological reconstruction, or as she puts it: “resources for emancipatory speech about God” (p. 61). These are women’s interpreted experience, the Bible, and classical theology. It’s hard not to be reminded of Hooker’s “three-legged stool” of reason, scripture, and tradition or Wesley’s quadrilateral of reason, Scripture, tradition, and experience. The idea is that theology and the life of faith draw from multiple sources, though there is debate about which of these, if any, are the controlling factor.

    Regarding experience, Johnson writes:

    Consulting human experience is an identifying mark of virtually all contemporary theology, as indeed has been the case at least implicitly with most of the major articulations in the history of Christian theology. Listening to the questions and struggles of the people of an era, their value systems and deepest hopes, gives theology of the most diverse kinds an indispensable clue for shaping inquiry, drawing the hermeneutical circle, revising received interpretations, and arriving at new theological insight. (p. 61)

    It follows straight away that theology is always, to some extent, provisional. The questions, struggles, values, and hopes of one era and place will be different from others. Theology is always, therefore, to some degree “contextual.” Only an extremely simplistic understanding of the theological task would deny this.

    To complicate matters further, though, Johnson points out that there is no simple and universal “women’s experience” to which we can point. Johnson doesn’t take a strong stance on the nature/nurture debate, but it’s clear that women’s experiences and how they interpret them vary widely across social, cultural, religious, and other locations.

    However, there are common, if not universal, experiences to draw on. Johnson focuses on what she calls the experience of “conversion,” by which she means “a turning away from trivialization and defamation of oneself as a female person and a turning toward oneself as worthwhile, as in fact a gift, in community with many others similarly changing” (p. 62). Following Karl Rahner, Johnson interprets the self as being in an inextricable relationship with the other, including the Divine Other. Therefore, changes in how one perceives oneself will change how one perceives the other. Consequently, when women come to experience themselves both as victims of oppression and as persons of value with moral agency, this is bound to affect their understanding of religious symbols and language. “The shock of the negative in traditional, internalized devaluations of women, known in the surge of self-affirmation against it, is at the same time new experience of God as beneficent toward the female and an ally of women’s flourishing” (p. 66).

    Johnson goes on to discuss some of the implications of feminist thinking for ethics and for the doctrine of the imago Dei. A feminist ethic of relationship and mutuality will have different implications for how we characterize divine perfection than a traditional ethic of rights that defines the self over against the other. The recognition that women are created in the image of God just as men are gives impetus to using female images for God.

    One might worry here, as has often been worried about “liberal” theologies, that “experience” becomes an independent source and norm for theology and threatens to crowd out revelation. I think Johnson’s answer is indicated by her statement that “the experience of God which is never directly available is mediated, among other ways but primordially so, through the changing history of oneself” (p. 65). We can’t step out of our own skins to achieve an unmediated experience of the divine. Our theologies are always colored by our experience, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill. To the extent that women “reject the sexism of inherited constructions of female identity and risk new interpretations that affirm their own human worth” (p. 62)–and to the extent that men join them–their understanding of God will be affected.

    The question comes down to whether the Christian tradition should be thought of as a hermetically sealed ark of salvation, which contains all truth and outside of which is only darkness and chaos, or as a more porous vessel–a tradition that can be nourished by insights originating elsewhere. I think it would be historically dubious to assert that advances in moral thought–not only feminism but abolition, civil rights, animal welfare, and others–owe their success primarily to Christian theological truth. While these movements can certainly claim religious support and sanction, Christianity was often late to the party if not actively resisting. And not only did these movements change Christian moral practice, they often changed the way Christians thought about God.

    But I don’t see why this should be particularly worrying. If, as we believe, people are God’s good creation, then we should expect that they are capable of attaining moral and spiritual insight, even outside the boundaries of the church (and sometimes in spite of the church). And rather than distort, these insights may open to us new ways of understanding the tradition, discovering truths that were previously obscured by an equally context-bound interpretation of faith.

  • Tradition as a source for liberating speech about God

    Granted my theological reading is pretty spotty to begin with, but a particular hole I’ve been meaning to fill has been feminist theology. So, when I saw a copy of Elizabeth Johnson’s She Who Is at a local used bookstore I decided to pick it up–and I’m glad I did. Not only does Johnson make a compelling case for revisiting how Christians speak about God in light of feminist insights, she writes clearly and straightforwardly, without dumbing down her material.

    I think among feminist theologians Johnson is probably considered to be somewhat conservative in the sense that, while acknowledging that the Christian tradition has played a major role in oppressing women, she also thinks that it has rich resources for liberation. Other feminists think that a wholesale reconstruction, or even rejection, of the tradition is called for, but Johnson is able to mine it in surprising ways, and uncover long-neglected truths.

    Johnson’s main thesis is that Christian speech about God has been deformed by patriarchal social structures and that theological discourse has tended to elevate masculine language for God to a normative and even literal status, despite official disclaimers to the contrary. This not only relegates women to second-class status, but is theologically inadequate, and even idolatrous. Since all speech about God is inherently analogical and God’s mystery eludes any of our attempts to name or describe it, insisting on one set of images presumes that we have captured God in our conceptual or linguistic net. Johnson shows this most clearly when she points out that any deviation from masculine language about God is thought to be in need of justification, which implies that such language is more “proper” or “appropriate” for speaking about the divine.

    But Johnson argues persuasively that this, in effect, denies the full personhood of women. Women are created in the divine image, just as men are, so it follows that feminine language can represent God just as adequately (or inadequately) as masculine language. In fact, both types of language (along with more “cosmic” language drawn from the realm of nature) are necessary if we are to avoid idolatry and recover a more holistic way of speaking about God. The criteria for adequate speech about God, from a feminist perspective, is “the emancipation of women toward human flourishing” (p. 30). No theological language or system that oppresses and dehumanizes can be religiously true, adequate, or coherent.

    Johnson rejects some common attempts to correct the exclusive use of masculine language. One such solution is to avoid personal language for God altogether. The problem with this is that it has the effect of denying personality to God. While God is certainly “supra”-personal in that God transcends personality as we know it in human beings, God is not less than personal.

    Another strategy Johnson rejects is that of attributing “feminine” qualities to some aspect of the divine. The Holy Spirit is the usual candidate here. The problem with this approach is that it usually leans on stereotypes of men and women and associates the “feminine” aspect of God with qualities like nurturing, compassion, etc., while the other more “masculine” qualities are attributed to other aspects of God. Not only does this perpetuate stereotypes of men and women, Johnson argues, it introduces a kind of division in God. (Indeed, Johnson argues that in the West many of the feminine qualities were, in practice, transferred to the figure of the Virgin Mary, creating another de facto mediator between us and a wrathful, “masculine” God.)

    What Johnson proposes instead is that women and men can both–in their diversity and complex fullness–point to the inexhaustible reality of God:

    The mystery of God transcends all images but can be spoken about equally well and poorly in concepts taken from male or female reality. The approach advocated here proceeds with the insight that only if God is so named, only if the full reality of women as well as men enters into the symbolization of God along with symbols from the natural world, can the idolatrous fixation on one image be broken and the truth of the mystery of God, in tandem with the liberation of all human beings and the whole earth, emerge for our time. (p. 56)

    To tackle this task of enunciating a more adequate language about God, Johnson draws on three sources: women’s (interpreted) experience, scripture, and classical theology. I’ll try and say a little about each in a future post (or posts).

  • Hebblethwaite on natural and revealed morality

    In his book Christian Ethics in the Modern Age, British philosopher-theologian Brian Hebblethwaite offers a nice summary of what I tend to think of as the classic Christian understanding of the nature of ethics:

    Christians certainly believe that all goodness stems from God and reflects both God’s own nature and His will for man. But recognition of this comes in two ways: the good for man is built into human nature and can be discerned, however fragmentarily and incompletely, in what makes for human relationship and human flourishing. This ‘natural’ recognition of the good can be affirmed despite the ‘fallen’ state of man. But the true good for man is further revealed, so Christians believe, through the saving acts of God, culminating in the story of Jesus and his Resurrection. (p. 13)

    Hebblethwaite goes on to point out that both of these ways of knowing are subject to distortion and in need of correction:

    Here too there is no guarantee of freedom from distortion in the human media of revelation or in man’s understanding of divine revelation. So it is quite possible for the two channels of moral knowledge, human experience of goodness and human response to the revelatory acts of God, mutually to illuminate and correct each other. Moral criticism of religious revelation-claims is possible because natural human morality is itself a reflection of the image of God in man. Christian morality’s criticism and enhancement of natural human morality are possible since they reflect the definitive revelation of God’s nature and will through His saving acts.

    And yet there is only one moral truth:

    But the two channels, on this view, cannot be ultimately incompatible, since it is the same divine nature that is reflected, however hazily, in human goodness, as is reflected most clearly, on the Christian view, in the character of Christ. But the divine revelation, including the character of Christ, has itself to be understood and applied correctly by men and women down the ages; they may get it wrong, and thus be open to moral criticism.

    Where Hebblethwaite may depart from some classical views is in recognizing the context-bound nature of our understanding of revelation. Even if God reveals his will and nature to us, that revelation still has to be mediated through human language, concepts, and understanding. These will (inevitably?) produce a kind of distortion. This is why Hebblethwaite can say that our natural morality can act as a corrective on “revelation”: because no revelation is sheerly self-authenticating. A purported revelation that outright contradicted some tenet of natural morality would for that reason be highly suspect.

    This also allows Hebblethwaite to say that Christian morality can be not only confirmed, but enriched by insights from other sources. We can see, both in other religions and in secular movements, aspects of God’s goodness reflected that may not have been so clear in our own tradition. Christians may be compelled to reject insights that flatly contradict the Christian revelation, but they needn’t believe that they all ready possess the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. For instance, it seems clear that Christian theology and practice have been enriched by the insights of such movements as feminism, Marxism, and environmentalism, insights that are compatible with the essential tenets of Christianity, but which Christians previously weren’t able to derive from the resources of their own tradition. Similarly, other religions can reveal aspects of the truth that Christians might not otherwise have been aware of.

    On this view, explicit belief in God is not necessary to discover the conditions of human flourishing, but those conditions are–ontologically speaking–rooted in or derived from God’s creative will and goodness. Thus the revelation of that will in Christ gives a fuller and clearer picture of the good. Just as importantly, Hebblethwaite argues, the work of Christ, the sending of the Spirit, and the formation of the Church provide resources for embodying that good in our lives and communities that transcend natural human capabilities.