Reframing the God debate: reflections by James McGrath

Dear James,

I really enjoy your blog, and this is why: you have the heart of a learner, you are always taking in new things, which means you are also a great teacher. I have three questions for you, a short interview if you will. Here is my first question, and thank you for your thoughtful answer herein included:

QUESTION

(1) In a fascinating post, you say: We must think about God differently than people did in the past. I’m sure that’s true, but I wonder: has the field of comparative religion and that of biblical studies provided us already with a clear understanding of what people in the past thought about God? Do we know what we are rejecting, if we do reject it?

REPLY

Let me begin by thanking you John for this brilliant blogathon /meme suggestion. I’d like to humbly suggest, since one may ask up to ten questions and be asked that many again in response, that this could be called the “Twenty Questions meme” or “Twenty Questions blog-a-thon”, which might be a memorable title (certainly more memorable than “Three Questions for James McGrath! J)

Here are my answer to the first question:

(1) I think it is often Biblical scholars who are most aware of how much the Biblical literature (and thus Biblical views of God) is intrinsically linked to ancient cosmologies, worldviews, culture, historical setting, and assumptions of various sorts. (I suspect that is why there is such a strong side interest in science fiction among Biblical scholars). As you point out in your question, there will always be much that we do not know about the past. There will also be much that a North American such as myself can never assume when reading the Bible or thinking about God. The same is true in Western Europe and Australia. The result is that the most prominent authors, preachers, theologians, scholars and bloggers talking and writing about the Bible are particularly challenged when it comes to having any hope of reading the text in the way a first century person living on the Eastern Mediterranean would. And so the idea that one can simply “read the Bible and understand it at face value” is extremely problematic – which is not to say that it may not nonetheless be a better alternative than having an authoritarian ecclesial monopoly on interpretation that is no more scholarly or culturally-sensitive in its approach, but that is another issue.

 And so, in part, my statements about thinking differently about God are merely observations about what must inevitably be the case. Even at that level, I suspect that there is bound to be resistance to this idea in some circles. But I do intend to go further and be prescriptive. I want to encourage us to actively and self-consciously think about God differently than people have in the past.

And I must confess that I am not persuaded that I have managed to follow my own advice as yet. Indeed, I’m not yet sure what it might mean to follow my own advice! For the most part, when I survey the different theological ideas that are proposed in response to our developing scientific understanding of the universe, I cannot think of a single clear instance of a genuinely new way of thinking about God that has been formulated in response to it.

In the “New Age” circles, one finds many people turning to Wicca or Eastern traditions. Among theologians interested in science and religion, there is a fondness of panentheism and process thought. But none of these are new ideas, but merely a recycling and reshuffling of older ways of thinking. Now it may indeed be the case that some of the older ideas and metaphors are more suitable to our present-day context. In most instances, however, it may simply be that because they are unfamiliar, these alternative spiritualities are attractive because they seem new.

I do not in any way object to such openness to other traditions and ideas; I simply want to point out that adopting ideas from another old tradition is not progress. Perhaps human beings have thought all the different kinds of thoughts we are capable of thinking about God, and all that remains is to reshuffle them from time to time to keep them from getting too stale and moldy. But I like to hope that genuine progress in religion is indeed possible. We’ve made ethical progress over the centuries, and science has progressed, and so why should theology be different? Whether it is Sallie McFague suggesting the image of God’s body, or Juergen Moltmann drawing on the Kabbalistic notion of zimzum, these are indeed helpful rediscoveries of neglected older ideas. But they aren’t new.

Do we not need new ways of thinking about God as so much new is discovered in other areas? Or have we exhausted all possible avenues of exploration and progress in theology? Singing “God of wonders, beyond our galaxy” is simply taking the old language of God being “higher than the heavens” and updating it, and the result is something different (since a God beyond the Milky Way seems far more distant than one residing just above the celestial dome) but not new. Or is the role of theology perhaps simply to keep us in dialogue with our past heritage, and to not forget the insights we’ve already had?

[Perhaps I’ll make one of my questions for you whether you can think of any genuinely new ideas about God? J]

UPDATE: Chuck Blanchard links to this interview on his fabulous blog.

Comments

[Bob MacDonald]

John - thanks for this great meme - it is a challenge to think of good questions and get out of the study mode which occupies me in the volume of blogs I have time for.

Re 'thinking' about God - My mother's favorite Bible verse was - there is nothing new under the sun - and I expect she did not know where to find it or perhaps even that it was from the Bible.

It is not new thinking that we need - but the same turning (for the non-religious) or repentance (for the religious) that Jew and Gentile are alike called to. The engagement is corporeal, active in love. It needs the right frame or it will act with good intention but false power. One such frame is the willed seeking of the good of another as in, for example, the self-giving of Jesus. Another such frame is the lesson of the Exodus - releasing the captives. So one question is: - to what are we captive and is it good for others?

Another question is: is this message in the particular canon and tradition we follow the right message for the world?

And while I am at it, q3: is it possible to talk or write and completely miss the reality even though you know the mysteries perfectly?