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Eagelton

God is trouble for the status quo

Process theologies and Liberation theologies both provide a valuable resource – even for those who do not subscribe to them wholesale.small nyc logo

You don’t have to be an adherent of these approaches to hear the critique that they raise and allow those questions to interrogate the given order of things.

In the forward to their famous book Process Theology: an introductory exposition, Cobb and Griffin outline a number of conceptions of God that Process does not affirm. The fourth example they provide introduces the problem:

 God as Sanctioner of the Status Quo. This connotation characterizes a strong tendency in all religions. It is supported by the three previous notions. The notion of God as Cosmic Moralist has suggested that God is primarily interested in order. The notion of God as Unchangeable Absolute has suggested God’s establishment of an unchangeable order for the world. And the notion of God as Controlling Power has suggested that the present order exists be­ cause God wills its existence. In that case, to be obedient to God is to preserve the status quo. Process theology denies the existence of this God.

It is going to be important to hear the questions this raises: is God primarily concerned with order? Is God the source of that order? Or is God providing something else that challenges those established structures which limit and take away people’s ability to live fully and prosper?

They introduce the Process notion of God:

And, far from sanctioning the status quo, recognition of essential relatedness to this God implies a continual creative transformation of that which is received from the past, in the light of the divinely received call forward, to actualize novel possibilities. Although this divine power is persuasive rather than controlling, it is nevertheless finally the most effective power in reality. In Whitehead’s words: “The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe.” (Adventures in Ideas 354.)

To classic virtues (properties of being) like truth, beauty and goodness, Process adds adventure and zest precisely because of who God is! The addition of adventure and zest speak to movement (change), progression and novelty. Process, if nothing else, fully recognizes the validity of time and change.

Hence, no type of social order is to be maintained if it no longer tends to maximize the enjoyment of the members of the society. Also, it is impossible for any form of social order to continue indefinitely to be instrumentally good. God, far from being the Sanctioner of the Status Quo, is the source of some of the chaos in the world. “If there is to be progress beyond limited ideals, the course of history by way of escape must venture along the borders of chaos in its substitution of higher for lower types of order.” (Process and Reality 169.) (God is said to be the source of only some of the chaos, since only some of it can in principle lead to a higher type of order and thereby a richer form of enjoyment.)

God, in a Process perspective, provides – indeed is the source of – some of the chaos that calls into question the status quo and challenges the established order that limits the prospering of creatures.

If you think that God likes the way things are and wants to keep them the same … you may not be worshiping the God of the Bible.

This was brought to my memory when I encoutered an interesting nugget at the back of another book that had nothing to do with Process thought. Terry Eagleton in After Theory illuminates an interesting Biblical concept.

In a revolutionary reversal, true power springs from powerlessness. As St Paul writes in Corinthians: `God chose what is weakest in the world to shame the strong … even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.’ The whole of Judaeo-Christian thought is cast in this ironic, paradoxical, up-ending mould.

The wretched of the earth are known to the Old Testament as the anawim, those whose desperate plight embodies the failure of the political order. The only valid image of the future is the failure of the present. The anawim, who are the favoured children of Yahweh, have no stake in the current set-up, and so are an image of the future in their very destitution. The dispossessed are a living sign of the truth that the only enduring power is one anchored in an acknowledgement of failure. Any power which fails to recognize this fact will be enfeebled in a different sense, fearfully defending itself against the victims of its own arrogance. Here, as often, paranoia has much to recommend it. The exercise of power is child’s play compared to the confession of weakness.

Terry Eagleton. After Theory (Kindle Locations 1882-1892). Kindle Edition.

What do we do with those aspects of the established order which don’t fit – or even shame – the established order? Do we want to sweep the anawim off the streets and hide them from view in order conceal the fact that the current system does not work for everyone?

Do we put down the dissenters? Do we turn a blind eye to ‘the poor’ so as to not acknowledge that the bell-curve is inverted and seems to be more of a trough?

Before doing so, we may want to consider this:

The authors of the New Testament see Jesus as a type of the anawim. He is dangerous because he has no stake in the present set-up. Those who speak up for justice will be done away with by the state. Society will wreak its terrible vengeance on the vulnerable. (Kindle Locations 1893-1894).

This idea cast a strange light on the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ when it talks about God’s will being done on earth and forgiving debts …

Eagleton uses the Book of Isaiah to make his big point about the failures of the system:

The Book of Isaiah is strong stuff for these post-revolutionary days. It is only left in hotel rooms because nobody bothers to read it. If those who deposit it there had any idea what it contained, they would be well advised to treat it like pornography and burn it on the spot.

As far as revolution goes, the human species divides between those who see the world as containing pockets of misery in an ocean of increasing well-being, and those who see it as containing pockets of well-being in an ocean of increasing misery. It also divides between those who agree with Schopenhauer that it would probably have been better for a great many people in history if they had never been born, and those who regard this as lurid leftist hyperbole. This, in the end, is perhaps the only political division which really counts.

(Kindle Locations 1916-1920).

 In response, I would ask:

  • What if ‘the poor’ are not an exception to a good system but are actually an indictment of it exposing the flawed gears in the machine?
  • Is God interested in turning over the established order or in preserving it?
  • Is God there for those who are wounded and needy or is God ashamed of them?
  • Is our current system mostly good with some bad exceptions that we just need to work on and tweak? Or is the system itself flawed and in deep need of re-formation and renovation?
  • Is God interested in change or simply stasis? And if so, what does God provide for that work?

These are questions that both Process and Liberation theologies ask that need to be evaluated even if one does not subscribe to those schools of thought.

The answers will impact both how one views God and how one participates in the world.

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3 things many Christians may not know (but should)

originally published as “I’m not sure most Christians know that“

I was reading a fascinating article by Terry Eagelton where he was reviewing Dawkin’s book (the God Delusion) specifically and refuting the new atheist en mass. He took them to task for not knowing much about theology – which, in his mind, is a major problem if one is writing a book about God. He takes an interesting tone, nearly mocking at points, regarding their lack of sophistication and wherewithal in theological understanding and categorization.

Here is a sample (which, by the way, it reads MUCH better in a John Oliver delivery style):

Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.

I was struck by his attitude and I caught myself thinking “I’m not sure that most Christians know that.” He kind of treats these antagonists with a dismissive “duh” but I am suspicious that the atheist aren’t the only one who aren’t aware of the categorical mistake of calling God a ‘person’ just because knowledge of God can be ‘personal’.

There are two significant implications of this:

  • the new atheists (Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris & Dennet) have a stinging criticism that continues to impact those on the margin of the faith and those wrestling with seasonal Christian commitment. Neither the Atheists nor those they seduce know that we don’t mean what they say we mean.
  • Many Christians continue to repeat the Creeds and Catechisms in rote repetition without comprehending the way in which language is being utilized. This concerns me as I continue to wrestle with (and against) the work of Lindbeck, Hauerwaus and MacIntyre.

Here are 3 things that I have learned over the past 5 years that I’m not sure most Christians know. In fact, as I have transitioned from an evangelist-apologist to a theologian, I’ve had the opportunity to converse with and introduce people to these ideas and ,for almost everyone, it is the first time they are hearing the distinction.

God is a Person: When we say that God is a ‘person’ we are not saying that God is like a big you (or me) in the sky. God is not a person in the way that we are a person. You almost have to think about it as a placeholder. It’s a verbal placeholder because whatever God is not exactly a person.
This is where accusations personification and anthropomorphism come in. Folk and Pop brands of christianity are very vulnerable to this charge.

God in 3 Persons: It gets really confusing when we say that there is ONE god but 3 Persons. Gregory of Nyssa, in the 4th century, said:

We can grasp this by reference to a single instance. From him, I say, who is the source of gifts, all things that share in this grace have obtained life. When, then, we inquire whence this good gift came to us, we find through the guidance of the Scriptures that it was through the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But though we take it for granted that there are three persons and names, we do not imagine that three different lives are granted us-one from each of them.

Most explanations I hear about how ‘God is One’ but can also be ‘3 persons’ reek of modalism. I was being too kind: they are modalism (one God in 3 modes). But who can blame them? Elizabeth Johnson is right when she says that it is nearly unavoidable when you start with One – then go to three (all of which are boys) … and claim that it is monotheism and not polytheism. It’s confusing as hell! She, instead, starts with a perichoretic reality and says we do the best we can to express it well.

Jesus is fully God and fully human: We don’t have space to get into  the ‘substance’ confusion about how Jesus could be fully two different things and how 98% of the explanations I have heard make it impossible that there actually was an incarnation. We still have to talk about the difference of God as a ‘being’ and God as being. Then we can deal with the nature of language and gender pronouns for God and all sorts of other stuff.

I also am not blaming people for the explanations they have been handed on these issues – they can be difficult to comprehend and even tougher to defend.I am suspicious that many of our former explanations are incomprehensible and so we simply say they are ‘mystery’ when in reality they are untenable.

What I am concerned about is that theologians not take on a ‘duh’ attitude toward those who are unfamiliar with the categorization employed within the theological endeavor. When our language is a) specific and b) different than the common use, it is we who are obligated to bridge the gap if we want others to understand what we are saying.

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