Theology and the Future: Evangelical Assertions and Explorations 9780567378675, 9780567659637, 9780567191939

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: The Future of Theology and the Theology of the Future
Theology’s future
The Genesis of the book
From the lectures to the book
Overview
Part 1: The Future of Theology
1 ‘In Your Light Do We See Light’: The Self-revealing God and the Future of Theology
Theology and the future
Theology and biblical interpretation
Renewal through retrieval
2 Does God Have a Future? Theology and the ‘Future’ of God
The traditional language
Calls for revision
Heeding the call?
Conclusion
3 Theology and the Future of Global Christianity
The global church and its Catholicity of faith and theology
Global theology: Its publicity and dynamic of faith
Conclusion
4 Theology and the Future of Asia
Asian theology in context
The inadequacy of Asian contextual theologies
The biblical reality not so alien to Asians
Conclusion
5 Not a Wisdom of This Age: Theology and the Future of the Post-Christendom Church
Hauerwas and ‘systematic theology’
Post-Christendom Australia?
The Corinthians our contemporaries
What sort of community?
What sort of narrative?
Theology before and after Christendom
6 How I Th ink I Learned to Think Theologically: The Post-Christendom Church and the Future of Theology
An apology for myself
Practising practical reason
Back to the beginning
7 Attentive Judgement: Theology and the Future of Education
Modernity grows a tale
The end of persons in education
The end of theology: Teaching as a subversive activity
8 ‘Grace Builds Upon Nature’: Philosophy and the Future of Theology
Theology and words
The style of modern theology and philosophy
Nature and grace
The senses
Reason and right reason
Objectivity in a further sense
Philosophy and the future of theology
9 A Prophetic Proposal: Theology and the Future of Method
Theology as wisdom
Theology as science
Theology as art
Theology as dramaturgy
How do the metaphors guide theology?
Theology as prophecy
The prospect of prophetic theology
Part 2: Theology and the Future
10 Smith’s White Teeth and Paul’s Galatians: Theology and the Future of Humanity
What will become of us?
The human future in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth
Galatians and the future of humanity
11 Theology and the Future of Creativity
Creativity in crisis
The grammar of ‘creation’
Tikkun olam
The liturgy of the arts
12 Performance, Incarnation, Conversion: Theology and the Future of Imagination
13 Emergent Pantheism? Science, Complexity and the Future of Theology
The emergence of emergence
What is emergence?
Some cases of emergence
What does it matter?
Conclusion
14 Green Future: Theology and the Future of the Earth
Welcome to the Anthropocene
Biodiversity decline and habitat loss
Climate change
Delayed effects: The temporal challenge of climate damage
Global ecological change: An unavoidable context
An expansion of neighbourliness
Looking ahead: Anticipation, prudence and compassion
Expanding moral horizons
Beyond survivalism
On imagining the future: Human action as reaction
Conclusion
15 Envisioning an Alternative Urban World: Theology and the Future of the City
Strangers in the city
Th e violent city
The Stranger’s question
The Bible and the city
Theology and the urban future
References
Author Index
Subject Index

Citation preview

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Theology and the Future

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Theology and the Future Evangelical Assertions and Explorations Edited by Trevor Cairney and David Starling

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint previously known as T&T Clark 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 Paperback edition first published 2015 © Trevor Cairney, David Starling and contributors, 2014 Trevor Cairney, David Starling, and contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: PB: ePDF: ePub:

978-0-567-37867-5 978-0-567-66606-2 978-0-567-19193-9 978-0-567-62393-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Theology and the Future/ Trevor Cairney and David Starling p.cm Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 978-0-567-37867-5 (hardcover) Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain

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Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Notes on Contributors Introduction: The Future of Theology and the Theology of the Future Trevor Cairney and David Starling Part 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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viii ix

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‘In Your Light Do We See Light’: The Self-revealing God and 13 the Future of Theology Michael Allen Does God Have a Future? Theology and the ‘Future’ of 27 God D. Stephen Long 45 Theology and the Future of Global Christianity K. K. Yeo 63 Theology and the Future of Asia Miyon Chung Not a Wisdom of This Age: Theology and the Future of the 81 Post-Christendom Church David Starling How I Think I Learned to Think Theologically: The Post-Christendom 99 Church and the Future of Theology Stanley Hauerwas Attentive Judgement: Theology and the Future of 115 Education John C. McDowell ‘Grace Builds Upon Nature’: Philosophy and the Future of 137 Theology Paul Helm A Prophetic Proposal: Theology and the Future of 151 Method John McClean

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Smith’s White Teeth and Paul’s Galatians: Theology and the Future of Humanity Michael P. Jensen Theology and the Future of Creativity Trevor Hart Performance, Incarnation, Conversion: Theology and the Future of Imagination Alison Searle

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Emergent Pantheism? Science, Complexity and the Future of Theology Kirsten R. Birkett Green Future: Theology and the Future of the Earth Byron Smith Envisioning an Alternative Urban World: Theology and the Future of the City David Smith

References Author Index Subject Index

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Acknowledgements As the editors we are thankful to God for the collaboration and encouragement of the many friends and colleagues without whom the publication of this book would never have been possible. In the early stages of the project we were greatly helped by the support and advice of John C. McDowell and Kevin Vanhoozer, who offered enthusiastic encouragement and invaluable assistance in compiling the list of contributors and finding a suitable publisher. Anna Turton at Bloomsbury T&T Clark saw potential in the book and steered it through the process of scholarly review and contractual arrangements; we are most grateful to Bloomsbury T&T Clark for their faith in us and in the value of the project. Our most obvious debt of gratitude in a project of this sort is to the contributing authors, whose enthusiasm for the subject of the project overcame their limited knowledge of us as editors! Some of our authors joined us early and had almost 12 months to write their chapters, while others were invited much later and had greater time pressures. Several chose to be part of the book even though they had competing interests and personal challenges of varied kinds; we were deeply moved by the way in which a number of the contributors responded with such alacrity to our various deadlines and requests, in the midst of pressing and difficult personal circumstances. If this book is as successful as we hope it will be, it will be a testimony to the combined energy and commitment to the project from all authors. We also want to thank our respective institutions, New College (University of New South Wales) and Morling Theological College, for the support that each has given. Both of us enjoyed grants of sabbatical leave which were spent, in part, on developing the book and bringing it to completion. We are grateful to colleagues who have taken on responsibilities in our absence and who have encouraged us in our efforts. Finally, we would want to thank our wives Carmen and Nicole who are our most passionate and dedicated supporters.

Bible version Bible quotations unless otherwise stated are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

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Abbreviations AB ExAud ICC JETS JSNT JSOTSup JTC JTI JTS LCC LCL Neot NTS SBHT TS TynBul WBC WTJ WUNT

Anchor Bible Ex Auditu International Critical Commentary Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society Journal for the Study of the New Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series Journal of Theology and Church Journal of Theological Interpretation Journal of Theological Studies Library of Christian Classics Loeb Classical Library Neotestamentica New Testament Studies Studies in Baptist History and Thought Theological Studies Tyndale Bulletin Word Biblical Commentary Westminster Theological Journal Wissenschaftliche Untersuchen zum Neuen Testament

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Notes on Contributors Michael Allen is the Kennedy Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Dean of the Faculty at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is author and editor of several books, most recently Justification and the Gospel and (with Scott Swain) Reformed Catholicity. He serves as a series editor for the T&T Clark’s International Theological Commentary and Zondervan Academic’s New Studies in Dogmatics, and book review editor for the International Journal of Systematic Theology. Kirsten R. Birkett is Tutor in Philosophy, Ethics and Church History at Oak Hill Theological College, London, and is a Latimer Research Fellow. She has published a number of works in the area of theology and science, as well as other topics, and is currently researching the psychology and theology of happiness. She lives in London. Trevor Cairney is Master of New College and Professor of Education at the University of New South Wales (Sydney). His 9 books, 16 monographs and other publications are the outcome of research in pedagogy, child language and literacy development, text comprehension and community formation. His most recent book is New Perspectives on Anglican Education: Reconsidering Purpose and Plotting a Future Direction. Miyon Chung teaches Systematic Theology and Christian ethics at Morling Theological College (Sydney), having recently relocated from Torch Trinity Graduate University in Korea. She was born in Seoul, Korea, immigrated with her family to the United States in 1979 and returned to teach in Korea in 2002. Her international ministries include working with Baptist World Alliance, the Asia Pacific Baptist Federation, the Diaspora Track of the Lausanne Consultation on World Evangelism and the Global Diaspora Network, and teaching at Asian and African theological institutions. Her research and publication area includes Asian Christianity, soteriology and hermeneutics. Trevor Hart is Rector of Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church in St Andrews, Scotland. From 1995 to 2013 he was Professor of Divinity and Director of the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts in the University of St Andrews

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where he now holds an honorary Professorship. He has lectured and published widely on the relationship between theology and imagination, including his most recent works Between the Image and the Word: Theological Engagements with Imagination, Literature and Language (Ashgate, 2013) and Making Good: Creation, Creativity and Artistry (Baylor University Press, forthcoming). Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School. His work cuts across disciplinary lines as he engages with systematic theology, philosophical theology and ethics, political theory, the philosophy of social science and medical ethics. He is considered by many to be one of the world’s most influential living theologians and was named ‘America’s Best Theologian’ by Time Magazine in 2001. Paul Helm is a Teaching Fellow at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. He was Professor of the History and Philosophy of Religion, King’s College, London, 1993–2000. He is the author of a number of books including Eternal God, The Providence of God, Belief Policies and John Calvin’s Ideas. Michael P. Jensen is a theologian and author from Sydney, Australia. He has taught theology in Australia, Asia and in Europe and is the author of Martyrdom and Identity: The Self on Trial (2010) and My God, My God: Is it Possible to Believe Anymore? His research interests include theological anthropology, theology and literature, and Anglicanism. He left Moore Theological College recently after ten years teaching Doctrine and Church History. He has taken up the position as Rector at St Mark’s Anglican Church in Darling Point, Sydney. John McClean is Vice-Principal and Lecturer in Systematic Theology at Christ College, Sydney. He has published From the Future: Getting to Grips with Pannenberg’s Thought (Paternoster, 2013) and several journal articles on the thought of Pannenberg and Calvin. He was previously the minister of the Presbyterian church in Cowra, New South Wales for seven years. John C. McDowell is the Morpeth Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Newcastle (NSW), Australia. He is the author of Hope in Barth’s Eschatology (Ashgate, 2000), The Gospel According to Star Wars: Faith, Hope and the Force (Westminster John Knox, 2007), editor of Philosophy and the Burden of Theological Honesty: A Donald MacKinnon Reader (T&T Clark, 2011) and co-editor of Conversing With Barth (Ashgate, 2004). His current work includes Karl Barth as conversational theologian, politics in popular culture and eschatology.

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D. Stephen Long is Professor of Systematic Theology at Marquette University. Previously he worked at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, St Joseph’s University and Duke Divinity School. He is an ordained United Methodist and served churches in Honduras and North Carolina. He has published eleven books, of which his most recent publications include Christian Ethics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2010), Hebrews: Belief, A Theological Commentary on the Bible (WJKP, 2011) and Keeping Faith: An Ecumenical Commentary on the Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith in the Wesleyan Traditions (Cascade, 2012). Alison Searle is an Australian Research Council DECRA Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Sydney working on ‘Religious Nonconformity and Performance in Britain (c. 1620–80)’. Her monograph entitled The Eyes of Your Heart: Literary and Theological Trajectories of Imagining Biblically was published in 2008. She is preparing an edition of The Sisters (1642) by James Shirley for Oxford University Press. She is also co-general editor of a complete edition of Richard Baxter’s correspondence. Byron Smith is a PhD candidate in Moral Theology at the University of Edinburgh. His thesis offers a theological account of climate fears and how they can paralyse or illuminate ethical deliberation. He is a graduate of Moore Theological College and the University of Sydney. David Smith is Senior Research Fellow at International Christian College, Glasgow, Scotland. After ministry in Cambridge he served the Qua Iboe Church in Nigeria before undertaking postgraduate studies at the University of Aberdeen. He has taught mission studies and urban theology in various institutions in Europe, Africa and Asia and is the author of Seeking A City with Foundations: Theology for an Urban World (IVP, 2011). David Starling lectures in New Testament and Theology at Morling Theological College (Sydney). He is the author of Not My People: Gentiles as Exiles in Pauline Hermeneutics (De Gruyter, 2011) and is currently writing books on 1 Corinthians and biblical hermeneutics. K. K. Yeo is currently Harry R. Kendall Professor of New Testament at GarrettEvangelical Theological Seminary (Evanston, USA) and Visiting Professor at Peking University and Zhejiang University in China. He has authored and edited over twenty-five Chinese books and eight English books on cross-cultural biblical interpretation. He was born and raised on the Borneo island in Malaysia, and now lives with his wife Kungsiu and three children in Chicago.

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Introduction: The Future of Theology and the Theology of the Future Trevor Cairney and David Starling

Theology’s future Readers who are familiar with the recent history of theology (and who know that there is nothing new under the sun) will recognize the title of this introduction as an echo of Harvey Cox’s 1967 dictum: ‘The only future that theology has . . . is to become the theology of the future.’1 Amid the heady atmosphere of the late 1960s, Harvey Cox’s confident pronouncement had the aura of an axiom – perhaps the only axiom that theology required. The mood of the times demanded theologies that made a clean break with the past, taking full advantage of ‘the present Götterdämmerung of the divinities of Christendom’ to make an entirely fresh start, interring the corpse of the ‘dead God’ of metaphysical theism and awaiting the emergence of the new God who would replace him.2 Cox’s reference to ‘the theology of the future’ was in part a gesture in the direction of the eschatologically oriented theologies of Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jürgen Moltmann, which had just begun to make an impact in the Englishspeaking world.3 But it was also (and more basically) an expression of the perennial modernizing agenda of North American liberalism. The kind of theology that Cox and his contemporaries prescribed was a theology that surfed the waves of modernization and secularization, seeking to bring Christian faith into line with ‘the mode of consciousness which mankind, if not as a whole at 1

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Harvey Cox, ‘The Death of God and the Future of Theology’, in Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman (eds), New Theology No. 4 (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 243–53 (252). ‘The Death of God’, p. 252. 1967 was the year in which Moltmann’s Theology of Hope was first published in English translation. Pannenberg’s Jesus – God and Man and his co-edited collection, Revelation as History, followed the year after, but the writings of both had already begun to be widely quoted and discussed in the immediately preceding years. Cf. William P. Frost, ‘A Decade of Hope Theology in North America’, TS 39 (1978), pp. 139–53.

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least in respect of our own civilization constituting man’s cultural vanguard, has reached as a result of its historical and evolutionary development’.4 Half a century later, and with the gift of hindsight, it is not difficult to spot some of the points at which the ‘new theology’ of the 1960s turned out to be ephemeral, immature and presumptuous. We are less likely, for example, to speak of the post-Christendom West as ‘man’s cultural vanguard’; we are (one hopes) less inclined to turn our backs on the wisdom of the pre-modern interpreters and theologians, and we are slowly beginning to come to terms with the implications of the eastward and southward shift in the centre of gravity of world Christianity. The ‘postmodern turn’ has sharpened our suspicions about the grand narrative of modernity, further disabusing us of any naïve assumption that the future disclosed in the gospel of Christ can be unproblematically equated with the future that we see emerging from the processes of (Western) historical and evolutionary development. But the question about theology’s future has not gone away. The discipline of systematic theology is still confronted by a chorus of questions about its legitimacy and usefulness. Within the secular academy and in the public square, theology is either politely ignored or shrilly derided as an arcane and superstitious pseudo-discipline. Even within the church it is commonly (and perhaps increasingly) marginalized in favour of unreflective piety and pragmatism. In the face of these questions and criticisms, there are still good reasons to assert with Harvey Cox that ‘the fate of theology will be determined by its capacity to regain its prophetic role. It must resist the temptation of becoming an esoteric specialty and resume its role as critic and helper of the faithful community as that community grapples with the vexing issues of our day’.5 A theology that is faithful to the gospel and useful to the church (and useful beyond the church, in Christians’ wider conversations within the academy and the public square) needs to be both phronetic and prophetic.6 That is to say, it needs to offer a practical wisdom (a phronesis, to borrow Aristotle’s language) that sheds light on how individuals and communities ought to act in the present and make preparations for the anticipated future. And it needs to offer a prophetic wisdom – a wisdom 4

5 6

Leslie Dewart, The Future of Belief: Theism in a World Come of Age (New York: Herder & Herder, 1966), p. 9. Cox, ‘The Death of God’, p. 253. See especially the discussion in Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: WJK, 2005), pp. 324–59, and Miroslav Volf ’s comments on the importance of thinking ‘not only from the perspective of God’s future but also toward a new human future’. Volf, ‘A Queen and a Beggar: Challenges and Prospects of Theology’, in Volf et al. (eds), The Future of Theology: Essays in Honor of Jürgen Moltmann (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), pp. ix–xviiii (ix).

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that is radically distinct from the rationality that the New Testament labels as ‘earthly’ (Jas 3.15) or ‘of this age’ (1 Cor. 2.6), articulating in its place a way of understanding the world that is informed and determined by ‘what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived’ (1 Cor. 2.9). In at least these two crucial senses, a viable Christian theology must always be a ‘theology of the future’, and the question about theology’s own future is inextricably connected to its willingness to adopt that posture.

The Genesis of the book The origins of this book were in the 2011 New College Lectures series, on the topic of ‘theology and the future’, and the resultant publication of a themed issue of Case magazine.7 The New College Lectures have a history of stimulating public dialogue and debate about issues that confront Christians and the church as they engage with the world. The topic for the 25th lecture series in 2011 was chosen initially in response to the felt need of the Trustees to provide a platform for some younger Australian theologians. But we were also mindful of the view that we are living in times where increasing questions are being asked about the legitimacy and usefulness of theology in the public square. While it seemed appropriate to privilege the voices of younger speakers, we also felt that we should address the role that theology itself might have in the future, a future of which they and their audience would be a part. In essence, we asked our younger theologians what they saw as the challenge, hope and future for theology. At a time when religious belief is commonly seen as an irrational throwback, at worst dangerously oppressive and at best quaintly irrelevant, can a case be made for Christian theology’s rationality and relevance? What is to be its relationship to the modern university, the professions and the public policy debates of communities and states? Our harshest critics see theology as having no future. Religion is painted as a force that divides people, entrenches old hegemonies and leads to social division and strife, and theology is viewed suspiciously as a pseudo-discipline devoted to pondering the impenetrable mysteries of religion’s legitimating myths. The lectures were set against such claims and offered the counter-claim that theology has an indispensable contribution to make to our 7

Case is a quarterly publication produced by the Centre for Apologetic Scholarship and Education hosted by New College at the University of New South Wales. Case No. 28, September 2011 (available online at www.case.edu.au/) was devoted to theme ‘Theology and the Future’ and included the papers from all three lectures plus two invited papers on related topics related to the theme.

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understanding of reality, the world and its future. The combined claim they asserted was that there can be no more endeavour more critical to the way in which we imagine and help to shape the future than the theological task of understanding God and all things in relationship to him.

From the lectures to the book In previous years the New College Lectures have frequently been subsequently published as a book. Notable examples include Stanley Hauerwas’s After Christendom and John Polkinghorne’s Beyond Science.8 In the case of the 2011 lecture series, the format we chose lent itself to a larger project, and we decided to build around the three lectures presented in the series a collection of related contributions, adding up to a single, large-scale, multi-author volume focusing on the future of theology. Alongside the three original presenters of the 2011 lectures, all of whom were relatively young theologians working in Australia, we invited a range of other contributors, including several other young Australian or Australian-born theologians, and a number of already established and wellknown international scholars. In choosing the contributors, we aimed for a diversity of voices, working within a wide variety of social locations and academic disciplines, but united by the common evangelical conviction that theology’s fundamental source and norm is the message of the gospel, as it is made known in the Scriptures. We were particularly keen to see that the list of contributors included a healthy mixture of specialist systematic theologians and interdisciplinary thinkers whose work built bridges of thought between systematic theology and disciplines including biblical studies, hermeneutics, philosophy, history, science, political theory, ecology, aesthetics, literary studies, drama and sociology. We asked our writers to explore questions that they saw as significant within a framework of two very broad questions. 1. What future is there for theology as a discipline of thought and speech, within the church, the academy and the world? and 2. How might the content and concerns of Christian theology help us to make a wise and hopeful contribution to the conversations of our time about the future of humanity and the world? 8

Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom? How the Church Is to Behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991); John Polkinghorne, Beyond Science: The Wider Human Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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Overview The book is divided into two sections that reflect these two questions. The chapters in Part One (on ‘The future of theology’) are focused principally on the former question and the chapters in Part Two (on ‘Theology and the future’) are focused principally on the latter. Inevitably, however, the overlaps and interconnections between the two question mean that there is much in the first half of the book that addresses the concerns of the second half, and vice versa.

Part One: The future of theology Part One commences with chapters by Michael Allen and Stephen Long on God as theology’s source and principal subject. Michael Allen finds hope and a future for theology not in the ingenuity of theologians but in the goodness of the triune God. The textual instrument which God has set apart for this self-revealing work is the Holy Scripture, in which Christ speaks and by which the Holy Spirit illumines the understanding of his people; if it is to flourish, therefore, theology ought to take the form of ‘biblical reasoning’, meditating on what God has given rather than constructing its own edifice. If that is the case, Allen argues, the renewal of theology takes place not by revision or reinvention but by retrieval – a fundamentally receptive posture that submits to spiritual authorities and scriptural rules, with a humble and grateful awareness of its catholic context within the church. Stephen Long’s chapter focuses on the question of God’s own future, assessing and responding to the various calls that have been made in recent decades for revisions to Christian theology’s traditional teachings on the simplicity, immutability, impassibility and eternity of God. Without dismissing the concerns that prompt the modern questions, Long insists nonetheless that there is great wisdom in the traditional language that theology has used to speak of God, permitting us neither to say too much, nor to say too little in what we assert about God’s being and nature. Theology, Long argues, can continue to speak in that language and make those assertions without denying the dramatic character of God’s saving interaction with the created world (and indeed of God’s own inner life), or retreating into an abstract world of barren and irrelevant speculations. The chapters that follow in the remainder of Part One focus on the location of theology (within global Christianity, the church and the academy) and on its method. K. K. Yeo reflects on the impacts of globalization and the shifting centre of world Christianity, in the light of the biblical promises of a day when

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‘the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’ and the praises of God will be sung by ‘a great multitude . . . from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages’. His chapter calls for a theology that is both local and catholic, interpreting the Scriptures in round-table cross-cultural encounters, so as to assist the global church in understanding its identity and fulfilling its calling. The following chapter, by Miyon Chung, focuses on the particular challenges and opportunities of the Asian context. After a brief survey of the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary Asian contextual theologies, Chung argues for an approach that rejects the implicit premise that biblical faith is an alien, Western belief system that must be ‘contextualized’ for Asia; on the contrary, she argues, the Bible speaks to a world that Asians readily recognize, and Asian cultures (e.g. in their holistic world view and their predisposition to accept the spiritual and supernatural dimensions of reality) are fertile soil for the Christian gospel. The most promising future for Asian theology is to be found in an evangelical hermeneutic that finds its path to cultural relevancy in the Bible itself, read not as an expression of an ancient and alien faith in need of modernization but as an urgently relevant book for today.9 The chapters by David Starling and Stanley Hauerwas address the situation of the church in the post-Christendom West and its implications for the theological task. Starling’s chapter is a response to the charge (made by Hauerwas, among others) that the very idea of a systematic theology is a Christendom construct that has outlived its time. Arguing that the preChristendom context of 1 Corinthians provides an illuminating analogy to the situation of the church in post-Christendom Australia, Starling finds within the letter a trajectory towards theological systematization that offers strong support for the continuing legitimacy of systematic theology as a post-Christendom endeavour and some salutary warnings about how such theological systembuilding needs to be undertaken, if it is to be authentically an act of Christian faith, hope and love. Hauerwas, in his chapter, offers an apologia for his own way of thinking theologically, as a contribution to the conversation about how theology should be done after Christendom. Responding to the argument in Starling’s chapter, Hauerwas concurs that the ecclesial presuppositions and corresponding narratives that shaped Paul’s letter to the Corinthians provide the impetus and 9

In the original plan for the volume, Miyon Chung’s chapter on ‘Theology and the Future of Asia’ was to have been followed by one on ‘Theology and the Future of Africa’. Unfortunately, due to ill-health, the contributor of that chapter was unable to complete it.

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material for the theological systematization that emerged in the centuries that followed. He insists, however, that this is still no warrant for the ‘systematic theology’ of the modern era. Theology done as ‘letters to the church’ retains a concreteness that resists false universalizing tendencies; it jumps boldly into the middle of matters instead of indulging demands for prolegomena and systematic methodology, or the fantasy that it is possible to think and speak with a rationality that transcends situation and tradition. Theology properly understood, Hauerwas argues, is an exercise of concrete, polemical, practical reason, located within the polis of the church and informed by its particular narrative in the way in which it describes and addresses the world. Turning from the church to the academy, John McDowell looks at the past and the possible future of theological education: how it became detached from secular higher education, leaving behind a system increasingly subjected to the commodifying, individualizing and instrumentalizing effects of market forces (forces to which theological education itself was not immune), and how it might renew its presence within a pluralist, secular academy, offering an alternative humanizing vision. A theology capable of articulating such a vision would be grounded deeply and securely in the particularist convictions of Christian confession, but would ask its questions and embark on its reflections in a manner that posed searching, critical questions for consideration within a secular educational space in a religiously plural society. The last two chapters in Part One ponder questions concerning the method that theology is to follow in asking its questions and framing its assertions. Paul Helm contributes to the conversation as a philosopher, challenging the tendency of much contemporary theology to retreat into the conversational games of its own ‘charmed circle’, conducted according to conventions that exclude or defer the asking of questions about the referential success and belief-worthiness of its assertions. If theology is to be reinvigorated in our time, Helm argues, it needs to recover its confidence that ‘grace builds on nature’, taking seriously the objective character of theology’s subject-matter and the proper, instrumental use of reason and the senses in formulating its truth-claims. The ‘prophetic proposal’ offered by John McClean is not a prediction (speculating about how theology will develop) but a vision of theology itself as a form of Christian prophecy. Taking the book of Revelation as a guide, McClean sketches an outline of a theology that participates prophetically in the drama of the self-revelation of the triune God, sharing in the worship, testimony and sufferings of the church and summoning the church to imagine and anticipate the coming new creation.

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Part Two: Theology and the future Part Two opens with Michael Jensen’s chapter on ‘Theology and the Future of Humanity’. Engaging with Zadie Smith’s 2001 novel White Teeth, Jensen considers the competing metanarratives used to describe the future of humanity: the epic, the tragic and Smith’s own ‘comic-romantic’ vision. Arguing that none of these satisfyingly accounts for ‘actual human experience . . . without remainder’, Jensen turns to an alternative presented in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In Paul’s apocalyptic vision, the future of humanity has already invaded the present. At the cross, God founds a new humanity – a community bound in faith and formed because of the sacrificial love of God. Trevor Hart’s chapter explores and evaluates various notions of human creativity within the intellectual climates of modernity and postmodernity by situating them within the theological framework afforded by God’s own unique role and prerogatives as Creator. The chapter responds critically both to the hubris arising from the initial linguistic trespass of the Renaissance humanists in appropriating the verb ‘creo’ and its cognates to apply to human initiatives and achievements, and to the postmodern pessimism which underestimates the capacities of human makers and God’s call to them to participate actively and responsibly in the dynamics of his own eschatologically orientated and christologically focused divine project. The future of creativity, Hart argues, demands to be earthed in a religious narrative akin to those suggested, for instance, by J. R. R. Tolkien’s notion of artistic ‘subcreation’ and by the Jewish Kabbalistic doctrine of Tikkun Olam. The proper context for these, though, is a Trinitarian and incarnational account of God’s dealings with the world and its history. The following chapter, by Alison Searle, focuses on the role played by theology in shaping the Christian imagination (referring not only to the imagination that is exercised in endeavours of artistic creativity, but more broadly to the way in which all individuals’ performances of their public and private selves are informed by the future that they apprehend imaginatively). Taking as a case study the attempts of the seventeenth-century Quaker, James Nayler, to ‘perform Christ’ in his entry into Bristol in 1656, Searle argues that theology has a crucial role to play in serving the efforts of believers to ‘put on Christ’, inverting normative cultural understandings of beauty, decorum and truth and anticipating the coming Kingdom of God. If the first three chapters in Part Two interact (one way or another) with the creative and imaginative arts, the fourth represents a turn towards the sciences. In

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it, Kirsten Birkett ponders the current debate among scientists and philosophers of science about ‘emergence’ – the idea that organization and order can emerge spontaneously within organisms and systems at suitable levels of complexity – and its implications for the next phase of the conversation between theology and science. After surveying and assessing the various proposals that have been made regarding the implications of emergence for how we might understand God (and God’s relationship with the created world), Birkett applauds the antireductionist tendency of emergence thinking, but expresses scepticism about the claims that it necessitates a redefinition of God or renders the very idea of God redundant. Interesting as the science and philosophy of the emergence conversation have been, Birkett suggests that the most interesting aspect of all is the sociological one, including the way in which the reception of emergence thinking undermines the claims of epistemic purity frequently made by the prophets of scientific atheism. Ultimately, she argues, the debate has little to tell us theologically, except as a case study in ‘the age-old human impulse to make God in our own image’. Byron Smith’s chapter sits at the cross-roads between theology, science and ethics, focusing on the ecological crises that confront the present generation of humanity, and are likely to loom increasingly large in generations to come. Theology and theological ethics, Smith argues, need to wrestle further with this, not simply by developing a more robust doctrine of creation or creation care, but addressing the civilizational crisis into which we are heading. Theological reflection on the gospel, within the context of the present ecological crisis, calls for an expansion of neighbourliness, extending the horizon of anticipation, prudence and compassion, and a stance towards the future that combines humble receptivity with passionate concern and responsible agency. The final chapter of the book, by David Smith, brings the project to a fitting conclusion with an exploration of the role of theology in providing vision and wisdom for the task of imagining and building an alternative urban world. The growth of cities across the world, especially in the Global South, is widely recognized as a key feature of our times, and one that is unlikely to be reversed. At the same time, this phenomenon is accompanied by a series of converging crises which, taken together, pose enormous challenges for humankind, for the natural world, and indeed, for our fragile planet itself. While the city may rightly be seen as the supreme expression of human creativity and inventiveness, its darker side is evident in the era of globalization in ever-expanding slums, in the growing privatization and militarization of urban spaces, and in the existential crisis experienced by urban elites in cities bereft of a sense of meaning. In this

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context, contemporary urbanists recognize the critical role of the imagination in the creation of an alternative vision of the urban future. The challenge for theology is to re-read the Bible with urban eyes, and to allow the eschatological vision of the New Jerusalem to shape the Christian imagination in the urban world of today. This theocentric vision of the city provides a radical alternative to current urban planning and design, poses searching questions for urban churches, and opens spaces for genuine dialogue concerning human well-being in the century before us.

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Part One

The Future of Theology

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‘In Your Light Do We See Light’: The Self-revealing God and the Future of Theology Michael Allen

Theology and the future The future is uncertain for so many things. Pundits and predictions fail left and right. The Scriptures should have prepared us for such: ‘Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” – yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes’ (Jas 4.13–14).1 The mist appears, then like vapour (the very ‘vanity of vanities’ in Ecclesiastes) it vanishes. No, the future is not certain. Yet the future is bright for theology. By theology I adopt a definition roughly similar to that of Thomas Aquinas, who believed this intellectual study to involve God and the works of God (or, otherwise put, all things in relation to God).2 This kind of reflection has a promising future, where the complexities of modern life will need to be viewed in light of God’s luminosity and the challenges of humanity will require consideration from the perspective of God’s truth. 1

2

In this chapter Bible verses unless otherwise stated are from the English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Publishers). See, for example, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 1: Christian Theology (trans. Thomas Gilby; Oxford: Blackfriars, 1964), 1a.1.7, reply; on the relation of thinking ‘about God’ and ‘about all other things’, see Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of Thomas Aquinas (trans. Francesca Aran Murphy; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 41–43, 413–15. Early creedal summaries of the faith included ‘two elements’ that ‘remain constant’, namely, the identity of God and the exposition of the works of God (in particular, the gospel narrative), according to Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume One: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 117.

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The path of theology in the future is not owing to the intellectual sophistication or moral fortitude of theologians. A scan of the theological field over the last several decades includes a number of movements or emphases that have come and gone (e.g. the death of God theology). There have been hopeless detours and hapless mistakes, and even the most faithful of theologians err in their listening and testifying to God’s Word. Theology is always done East of Eden. The promise and potential of theology, then, cannot be premised on institutional vitality, academic sophistication, moral clarity or ecclesial power alone. The promise of theology follows from the electing love of the triune God. ‘How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light’ (Ps. 36.7–9). God is ‘the fountain of life’ – ‘in his presence is fullness of joy; at his right hand are pleasures forevermore’ (Ps. 16.11). The rest we find in God involves his illumining work that we might see and know him and life in him: ‘you will show me the path of life’ (Ps. 16.11); ‘in your light do we see light’ (Ps. 36.9). God brings life and light to our world – humans not only have hope for existence, but for knowledge being gained and truth being known. The goodness of the triune God gives promise and a future to theology. It is of this glorious one that we say ‘in your light do we see light’. The potential of human knowledge of God is entirely premised on the gratuity of God. We live in an ek-centric fashion, wherein we constantly receive life from the outside and live on borrowed breath. More specifically, we might say that we live in light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is alive and luminous: in his light we do see light. As John Webster has reminded us: ‘He is that from which we move, not that towards which we strive; he is not that which we posit (rationally, experientially), but the one whose unqualified self-existence posits us.’3 This Word is living and active. Karl Barth spoke of him as ‘eloquent and radiant’, reminding us that he compels with beauty, truth and goodness.4 Not only does theology have a future because of the triune God, but theology can help shape the human future more broadly. ‘Nature commends grace; grace 3

4

John Webster, ‘Resurrection and Scripture’, in Christology and Scripture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (LNTS 348; ed. Andrew T. Lincoln and Angus Paddison; London: T&T Clark, 2007), p. 141. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Volume 4: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Part 3.1 (ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance; trans. G. W. Bromiley; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), p. 79. For astute and poignant reflections on the prophetic office of Christ, see John Webster, ‘“Eloquent and Radiant”: The Prophetic Office of Christ and the Mission of the Church’, in Barth’s Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth’s Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 125–50.

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emends nature.’5 The communicative presence of God brings grace, and this grace transforms or transfigures human creatureliness in its particularity and specificity. Herman Bavinck expands on this idea: ‘Human beings are in every respect dependent on the world outside of them. In no area are we autonomous; we live by what is given, i.e., by grace. But, reciprocally, we are made and designed for that whole world outside of us and connected to it by a whole spectrum of relations.’6 Theology points to the ways in which God’s grace renews humans. Theology does so instrumentally: serving as a prompt and aid to the church’s testimony to the life-giving gospel of Jesus. It is Christian testimony in worship and witness that is the church’s primary calling. Theology serves as a critical tool meant to render this testimony more faithful and, hence, effective. The distinction between first and second order language proves helpful here: while the praise and proclamation of the church is first order language, the tools of theological analysis are second order language meant to help critique and shape the church’s primary calling. The primary way in which theology will serve the church is by offering critique of idolatry. Nicholas Lash views doctrine in this way: ‘one of the principal functions of doctrine, as regulative of Christian speech and action, would be to help protect correct reference, by disciplining our manifold propensity toward idolatry.’7 Further Lash identified this ‘stripping away of the veils of self-assurance by which we seek to protect our faces from exposure to the mystery of God’ as the prompt for viewing theology as a critical practice.8 Idolatry is nothing new – Israel of old and the ekklēsia of today are lured into its traps. Theology reflection serves as a prophetic check to this tendency of our religious culture and character.

Theology and biblical interpretation We have seen that God’s goodness is determined to fill all things with his glory. God’s sharing his life with us involves his shedding abroad the knowledge of his love. Thus, we have wonderful news to proclaim to the enslaved: because there 5

6 7

8

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena (ed. John Bolt; trans. John Vriend; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), p. 362. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena, p. 501. Nicholas Lash, ‘When Did the Theologians Lose Interest in Theology?’ in The Beginning and End of ‘Religion’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 134. Nicholas Lash, ‘Criticism or Construction? The Task of the Theologian’, in Theology on the Way to Emmaus (London: SCM, 1986), p. 9.

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is a living God revealed in Jesus Christ, there really can be life for those caught in the pangs of death. God not only promises such life, he sees fit to provide for our knowledge of this promise. The lord not only acts, but he speaks testimony about his deeds. In short: because Jesus is alive, theology has a future. God’s self-revelation has taken particular shape: among Israel, in Jesus of Nazareth, by his prophets and apostles. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was well aware of the need to consider God in his particularity: In Jesus Christ the reality of God has entered into the reality of this world. The place where the questions about the reality of God and about the reality of the world are answered at the same time is characterized solely by the name: Jesus Christ. God and the world are enclosed in this name . . . we cannot speak rightly of either God or the world without speaking of Jesus Christ. All concepts of reality that ignore Jesus Christ are abstractions.9

Bonhoeffer knew full well the danger of fuzzy religion and natural theology unconstrained by christological revelation and creedal convictions. He had seen the use of religious language in the Nazi propaganda, and so he was concerned that Jesus and the triune God shape our convictions and our very selves, rather than simply caring about our social formation according to the status quo of one’s religious pedigree or dominant religious subculture. Terms like kingdom, hope and righteousness have very particular meaning given by the Christian God. Human nature as well as divine being has been revealed in the face of Jesus Christ (Jn 1.18). Like the disciples on the mount of transfiguration, then, we are summoned to ‘listen to him’ (Mt. 17.5). Now we turn to find sustenance in the Word of God. ‘The holy, Christian Church, whose only Head is Christ, is born of the Word of God, abides in the same, and does not listen to the voice of a stranger.’10 Jesus Christ is alive and he speaks through his prophetic auxiliaries; Jesus Christ is risen and he sanctifies by his Holy Spirit. The Epistle to the Hebrews offers a concluding benediction that is apropos: ‘Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever’ (Heb. 13.20–21). Notice that the risen one is ‘the great shepherd of the

9

10

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (ed. Clifford Green; Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 6; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), p. 54. ‘The Ten Theses of Berne’, in Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century (ed. Arthur C. Cochrane; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), p. 49.

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sheep’ – there is gospel in the present tense here: he tends the sheep; he equips for every good work; he works in us that which is pleasing to his Father. And this benediction sums up the spiritual exercise of listening to or (now) of reading this apostolic scripture: it is in this auxiliary or instrument that Jesus exercises his pastoral care for his sheep. The Scriptures do not come to us bare; they are texts, but they are not mere texts. They have been sanctified by God for a specific calling; hence the tendency to refer to them as ‘Holy Scripture’.11 They function within a nexus of the triune God’s communicative presence. In discussions of dogmatic prolegomena, theologians often speak of the principles of theology to express this communicative matrix. Herman Bavinck is illustrative. He speaks of three foundations or principles of theology: ‘first, God as the essential foundation (principium essendi), the source of theology’; ‘second, the external cognitive foundation (principium cognoscendi externum), viz., the self-revelation of God, which, insofar as it is recorded in Holy Scripture, bears an instrumental and temporary character’; ‘finally, the internal principle of knowing (principium cognoscendi internum), the illumination of human beings by God’s Spirit’.12 He insists: ‘They may and can, therefore, never be separated and detached from each other. On the other hand, they do need to be distinguished.’13 God is the principle of being, and God’s agency as ‘source of theology’ functions in two ways: externally and internally. Christ speaks through his written Word, and the Holy Spirit illumines human reception of the same. Perhaps no passage of Scripture so exemplifies this location of the Bible in the economy of grace as 2 Tim. 3–4. Oftentimes this text is quoted for what it says directly of the Bible: ‘All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work’ (2 Tim. 3.16–17). Taking Paul’s reference to what we would now call the ‘Old Testament’ Scriptures (graphe) as extended to the apostolic ‘New Testament’ writings as well, theologians argue that this passage speaks of their inspiration and effectiveness. Notice, however, that the passage continues: ‘I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his 11

12

13

On language of the sanctification with respect to the nature of Scripture, see John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Current Issues in Theology; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 5–41. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena, 213 (see also pp. 505, 580). See also John Webster, ‘The Domain of the Word’, in The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (London: T&T Clark, 2012), pp. 3–31. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena, p. 214.

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appearing and his kingdom: preach the word’ (2 Tim. 4.1–2). Notice that the emphasis upon the written Word comes in the midst of a declaration that Paul and Timothy exist ‘in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus’. The scriptural embassy functions only in the administration of its sovereign speaker: the risen Christ. But because Christ is communicatively and redemptively present to us through these Scriptures, they are to be to us as a means of grace. When thinking about God’s work outside and inside us, it is helpful to reflect on our deep need. In an early letter Franz Kafka identified what we sorely lack and, if we are honest, should want: If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? Good God, we would also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill-fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.14

We need words of life. We require the burning coal placed to our lips and the transfigured glory presented before our very eyes. Like those who have traipsed through the temples of this age, we require a bath (baptism), a word (the Word of God) and a meal (the Eucharist). We need to be renamed, reclaimed, and resourced, and God provides for all these needs through his Word proclaimed and made visible in the sacraments. The key is that God does this: ‘For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness”, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor. 4.6). The future of theology is pegged to its close tie with God’s Word, because here God is present with all his sanctifying beauty. Here our desires and practices are recalibrated by God and to God. It is just this – our intentionality and our direction – that can go so terribly awry. Nicholas Lash has defined idolatry as taking many forms, yet ‘common to them all is setting our hearts on something less than God’.15 This takes shape in ‘getting the reference wrong: of taking that to be God which is not God, of mistaking some fact or thing or nation or person or dream or possession or ideal for our heart’s need and the mystery “that moves the sun and other stars”’.16 Our problem is not to lack passion for the divine or a

14

15

16

A letter from Franz Kafka (cited by George Steiner, Language and Silence [New York: Atheneum, 1970], p. 67). Nicholas Lash, Easter in Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience and the Knowledge of God (London: SCM, 1988), p. 258. Lash, ‘When Did the Theologians Lose Interest in Theology?’, p. 134.

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will to worship; our problem is an insistence in approaching God or the gods on our own terms and in our own way.17 A theology that will flourish constantly needs the presence of the communicative God. By his election Scripture is ‘the eternally youthful Word of God’.18 Scripture is that which is ‘living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword’ (Heb. 4.12). Therefore, theology that will flourish must take the form of what John Webster has termed ‘biblical reasoning’. Webster has distinguished between ‘exegetical reasoning’ and ‘dogmatic reasoning’, yet he argues that both are subsumed under this broader commitment to biblical reasoning.19 Whether specific exegesis of a given passage (‘exegetical reasoning’) or synthetic reflection upon the contours of the whole biblical canon (‘dogmatic reasoning’), theology is a positive and not a poietic science. It follows God’s revelation given to us now in Holy Scripture rather than fashioning its own object. The rule and boundaries given to theology by God’s Word are precisely what makes theology a free science. Karl Barth reminds us: ‘[T]his means that we shall be guided by the direction of Holy Scripture, that we shall not have to champion the thesis in our own strength or on our own responsibility, and that we may thus champion it without anxiety because it is not really exposed to the charge of arbitrariness.’ Theology is ‘guided’ and, thus, it can be practised ‘without anxiety’. Barth expands further: ‘The distinctive thought-form of the Bible is not something which is discovered in that way; it is demanded, enforced and indeed created by that which is attested, namely, by the lordship of Jesus Christ Himself.’20 The risen Christ directs and demands, enforcing and creating life, by the instrument of his prophetic and apostolic word. When theology is practised in this domain, his reign and his peace cast out all fear and anxiety. Emphasis upon the agency of the risen Christ by and through his Holy Spirit does not undercut or downplay the empirical agency of men and women who pray, think, read, question and so forth. Theology is done by humans. John Owen reminds us: ‘The Holy Spirit so worketh in us as that he worketh by us, and what he

17

18 19

20

Walter Brueggemann, ‘Foreword’, Journal for Preachers 26 (Easter, 2003), p. 1; see also Patrick D. Miller, The God You Have: Politics, Religion, and the First Commandment (Facets; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004). Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena, pp. 384–85. On these terms, see John Webster, ‘Biblical Reasoning’, in The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (London: T&T Clark, 2012), pp. 129–32. Barth, Church Dogmatics, Volume 4: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Part 3.1, pp. 95–96. For further reflections on how freedom is found in boundaries, see Reinhard Hütter, Bound to Be Free: Evangelical Catholic Engagements in Ecclesiology, Ethics, and Ecumenism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), esp. pp. 111–81.

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doth in us is done by us.’21 And the way in which we involve ourselves in this work is according to our humanity as such; again Owen is helpful: ‘That he acts nothing contrary unto, puts no force upon, any of the faculties of our souls, but works in them and by them suitably according to their natures.’22 Theological science is work, human work, that requires care, commitment and the development of certain competencies. But it is work that is always the gift of another – the loving triune God of eternity – who shapes and sustains its exercise and endurance.

Renewal through retrieval Theology has a future, and theology’s hope is premised upon its ever-fresh grace given in God’s Word to which it attends. Theology – like every facet of the church’s life – will live by grace alone or it will die. Knowing God’s promise, however, the real question is not whether or not it will have a future, but how it will receive the promised future which it has been pledged by God. Over and again we are told that Christianity must change or die. Its metaphysics must be recast, lest it appear oppressive and narrow-minded, reducing the many to the one. Its liturgy must be rethought, or else it fails to communicate and compel contemporaries. Its polity must be reshaped, or else it will not be positioned to meet the pressing challenges of an increasingly mobile, fluid, interactive, flat world. Its moral commitments must be revised, or else it will find itself on the back end of societal reform and be likened unto the imperialists, mysognists and racists. In these various ways, exemplified by everything from the emerging church to the revisionism of the Episcopal Church (USA), the future is to be seized by reinvention. Yet there is another way: a path to renewal by means of retrieval. This path expresses greater doubt in our own ability to manipulate circumstances and creatively meet challenges. This path demonstrates deeper reliance upon the 21

22

John Owen, Pneumatologia, or A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit (Works of John Owen 3; repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), p. 204. Owen, Pneumatologia, or A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit, p. 225. For further reflections on the nature of divine and human agency involved in theological work (or other historical events), see Antonie Vos and Eef Dekker, ‘Modalities in Francis Turretin: An Essay in Reformed Ontology’, in Scholasticism Reformed: Essays in Honor of Willem J. van Asselt (ed. M. Wisse, M. Sarot and W. Otten; Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 74–91; Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), pp. 2–3. These reflections from Reformed theologians follow a broadly Augustinian and Thomist approach to providence. Thomas’s own words are instructive: ‘During the whole of a thing’s existence, God must be present to it, and present in a way in keeping with the way in which the thing possesses its existence’ (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a.8.1, reply).

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wisdom of those who have faced analogous situations in centuries past and on continents far away. This path sees its calling not only in terms of effectiveness in the present but of faithfulness to the past. The approach of seeking theological renewal by way of retrieval is based on the very example of Jesus and his apostles. If ever there were charismatic leaders fit to start de novo, it was these leaders who served at the very founding of the Christian church. Yet when one reads the apostle Paul’s writings, it becomes immediately apparent that his arguments are shaped thoroughly by the scriptures of Israel and are cast in canonical terms precisely because Paul views himself as a thinker and practitioner regulated by Torah.23 Similarly, the anonymous author of the Epistle to the Hebrews saturates his writing with lengthy exegetical forays. He cannot engage in Christology without addressing the Psalms (e.g. Psalm 110), and he does not articulate an atonement theology but by reflecting upon the promises of the fiery prophet (e.g. Jer. 31.31–34). Indeed the very structure of his Epistle takes the form of a renewed Deuteronomy, wherein the scriptural matrix of the past is recontextualized for a new redemptive situation. Whereas Deuteronomy recontextualized the Mosaic law for the life in Canaan, Hebrews now recontextualizes the entire Old Testament for life this side of Jesus’ exaltation and heavenly session.24 A further scan of the apostolic writings (whether the use of Ezekiel and Daniel in the Apocalypse or the regular allusion to Exod. 3.14 in the gospel according to John) would provide further evidence for this wellattested reality: the apostles administered their charismatic leadership by means of stewarding their scriptural past for the ecclesial present. The New Testament provides other examples of biblical traditioning, wherein Scripture is the ultimate authority amidst a number of lesser yet no less divinely intended authorities meant to shape and sustain the faith and practice of the Christian community.25 For instance, when Paul writes to young Timothy about his pastoral charge, he does not merely urge him to follow in Paul’s path but also to maintain a catholic heritage. It is no small thing that he does call Timothy to imitate him and to minister as he has done so (see 2 Tim. 1.8; 3.10–11); this itself shows that a mentor has genuine authority, and it manifests Paul, the apostle of freedom, willing to call Timothy to follow his authoritative example. Still more 23

24

25

See especially Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London: T&T Clark, 2004); Richard B. Hays, The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). David M. Allen, Deuteronomy and Exhortation in Hebrews: A Study in Narrative Re-Presentation (WUNT 2:238; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2008). This paragraph and the next are taken from Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, ‘Biblical Traditioning’, in Reformed Catholicity: Renewal through Retrieval (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, forthcoming).

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notable, however, is Paul’s embrace of a wider pattern that both Timothy and he follow. ‘Follow the pattern of sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you’ (2 Tim. 1.13–14; see also 1 Tim. 6.20). The deposit here, and explicitly in 1 Tim. 6.20, precedes Paul himself; he has been deposited or given this pattern just as much as has Timothy.26 That which is to be guarded is not merely an object of study, but a particular ‘pattern’ of words. The church and her ministers, according to Paul, are committed not simply to a common conversational space or subject, but to a particular approach in communicating and confessing it.27 Paul not only notes this pattern of doctrine as something prescriptive – that which Timothy and he are to honour – but also as a pledge of God. I. Howard Marshall notes that 2 Tim. 1.12 has just insisted that the God whom Paul has believed is ‘able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me’.28 Paul expands on the way in which the triune God does guard this deposit entrusted to Paul (and now also, by extension, to Timothy) by pointing to the Holy Spirit in verse 14. The Spirit guards the apostolic deposit by preserving its transmission and communication from one generation to the next (à la Ps. 145.4). Some have suggested that this kind of portrayal of early Christianity might be termed ‘early Catholicism’, a departure from the vibrant Paulinism of other New Testament writings. Without engaging that historiographic debate here, we can point to the continued emphasis in these pastoral epistles upon scriptural authority as the final arbiter of Christian faith and practice.29 ‘All Scripture is

26

27

28 29

I. Howard Marshall with Philip H. Towner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (ICC; London: T&T Clark, 1999), 726–27; cf. 676. On Paul’s gospel as related to earlier oral tradition, see Peter Stuhlmacher, ‘The Pauline Gospel’, in The Gospel and the Gospels (ed. Peter Stuhlmacher; trans. John Vriend; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), pp. 156–66. Donald Wood has registered concerns on this front about how too often emphasis upon catholicity and the exegetical tradition skates lightly over the binding and authoritative nature of its primary form – the church’s creeds and confessions – in the interests of promoting an ongoing space for conversation (see ‘Some Comments on Moral Realism and Scriptural Authority’, European Journal of Theology 18.2 [2009], pp. 151–53; see also Oliver J. O’Donovan, ‘The Moral Authority of Scripture’, in Scripture’s Doctrine and Theology’s Bible: How the New Testament Shapes Christian Dogmatics [ed. Markus Bockmuehl and Alan J. Torrance; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008], pp. 165–75). For further reflection see ‘A Ruled Reading Reformed: The Role of the Church’s Confession in Biblical Interpretation’, in Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, Reformed Catholicity: Renewal through Retrieval (forthcoming). Marshall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, pp. 714–15. It is worth noting a recent argument that, without ever focusing upon this genetic or developmental question, nonetheless puts the lie to the argument that there was a marked shift towards an ‘early Catholicism’. It does so from the other side, however, by highlighting the traditioned or catholic nature of earlier texts rather than arguing for the ecclesiastical mildness of certain later texts. See Edith Humphrey, Scripture and Tradition: What the Bible Really Says (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), pp. 27–34, 43, 136–37.

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breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work’ (2 Tim. 3.16–17). Thus, Timothy is to ‘preach the Word’ (2 Tim. 4.2). The apostle Paul here envisions a ministry that focuses upon preaching the Scriptures and yet doing so cognizant of a vibrant and ongoing interpretative tradition that serves to provide authoritative parameters for expositing those sacred scriptures. Scripture and tradition are not mutually exclusive here – the former generates the latter, while the latter serves the former. One is reminded here of Zacharias Ursinus’s comments about how Scripture is meant to shape systematic theology which then informs catechesis; this is the order of being and of authority.30 At the same time, however, the order of knowing runs precisely the other way: one is catechized, then formed as a theologian, and finally capable of reading the Bible well. The apostles not only point to the truth of Jesus and the life found therein, but they demonstrate the way of Jesus. The path of the gospel is not one of innovation or ecclesial reinvention – charismatic or otherwise – but of biblical traditioning and inhabiting the catholic heritage of God’s people. In other words, we not only entrust ourselves to the triune God or to Jesus specifically, but we entrust ourselves to the triune God who in Christ has promised to provide for us through certain means. We live receptively, and that means that we submit ourselves to spiritual authorities, scriptural rules and our catholic context. This posture of receptivity runs against the tendencies of the modern and late modern (what is frequently termed the ‘postmodern’) eras. By and large theology has been practised in ways that run in a deistic manner. Indeed the common moniker given to the theological or doctrinal task today – ‘constructive theology’ – suggests the frequently poietic and anthropological nature of this intellectual calling. Humans construct a theology based on various assumptions, resources and needs. Inventiveness and creativity are high values in this schema. Three centuries after Kant, his moral concerns about deference to religious tradition remain sturdy: dogma, orthodoxy, confessions, creeds – these all symbolize intellectual oppression in the wider cultural sphere.31 This Kantian suspicion of the catholic past has affected biblical interpretation and theology.

30

31

Zacharius Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism (trans. G. W. Williard; Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1985), p. 9. For his attack on traditioned reasoning (at least in its Christian form), see Immanuel Kant, ‘An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?’, in Practical Philosophy: Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (ed. Mary J. Gregor; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 17–22.

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Mark Bowald has argued that ‘most contemporary accounts of biblical hermeneutics are deistic’.32 In modern biblical criticism the interpreter is construed as one given the task of getting back behind the accretions: whether they are historical and contextual or ecclesiastical and imperialist. The role of the interpreter is to prosecute an excavation, peeling back layer upon layer to get to something more pristine. The process is premised, at least in theological rather than strictly religious studies contexts, on the notion that God acted there and then, and we have only to get back to these primal events. In this essay we have sketched a radically different approach to theology. We do theology always in the wake of God’s agency, not merely in the past but in the present. We remember the wisdom of Jewish rabbis who always began their works on page two, cognizant that they spoke in the wake of God’s communication. Yet we do not embrace this dependence as a strictly chronological count, as if God acted and now we respond. Theology depends upon grace at every moment. This is not unique to theology, of course, for all things hold together in Christ (Col. 1.15). But theology should express greater cognizance of this dependence than other human activities. For theology to flourish it must regain its bearings as an exegetical discipline and a receptive practice. Our faith must be placed in the specific, particular ways wherein God promises to meet his people’s needs. Theology must be centred around the means of grace: they are word-focused, ecclesially bounded, and missionally aimed. We will briefly reflect on each of these aspects First, the means of grace for theology are word-focused, whether in terms of the reading and proclamation of the gospel itself or its visible demonstration in the practice of the sacraments. The scriptural writings are the authoritative auxiliaries of Christ’s ongoing speech to the church; sola Scriptura is meant to honour the final authority of Scripture over other valid authorities in the Christian and churchly life. The 1559 French Confession of Faith portrays the role of sola Scriptura in the life of the church: [I]nasmuch as it is the rule of all truth, containing all that is necessary for the service of God and for our salvation, it is not lawful for men, nor even for angels, to add to it, to take away from it, or to change it. Whence it follows that no authority, whether of antiquity, or custom, or numbers, or human wisdom, or judgments, or proclamations, or edicts, or decrees, or councils, or visions, or 32

Mark Bowald, Rendering the Word in Theological Hermeneutics: Mapping Divine and Human Agency (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 173. For further criticism of deistic approaches to biblical interpretation, see Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume One: Prolegomena (ed. John Bolt; trans. John Vriend; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), pp. 384–85.

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miracles, should be opposed to these Holy Scriptures, but, on the contrary, all things should be examined, regulated, and reformed according to them.33

There will be other authorities, councils, judgements, and wisdom, of course, and sola Scriptura is no denigration or denial of such realities.34 But God exercises his ultimate sovereignty over all ecclesiastical and theological practices by means of his scriptural ambassadors: the apostolic and prophetic writings through which Jesus Christ addresses his people. Second, the means of grace for theology are ecclesially bounded and, therefore, theological reflection does well to learn again from its ancestors the ways of life, lest it continue to flirt with the self-aggrandizing path to death. There are other authorities in the Christian life: there are preachers who proclaim the Word, there are pastors who administer the sacraments, and there are councils that govern the life and ministry of the church judicially and, one prays, theologically. One does not engage the Scriptures separate from this nexus of formative influence. The reader will be shaped, for good or ill, by their immediate context. Better to be cognizant of this cultural formation (both Christian and non-Christian and perhaps even outright anti-Christian) and to engage intentionally not only one’s immediate ecclesial environment but the wider catholic context of the church. Third, the means of grace for theology are missionally aimed. We will find that theology that seeks ecclesial renewal through catholic retrieval will be well placed to encourage the church’s contribution to the future of humanity in its fullness. Whereas modern and late modern theology has tended towards narrow focus, catholic theology has offered a much more holistic approach to the church’s witness. ‘Theological research, we are now prepared to say, is devotion to exploring the reality which exists in the presence of God’s name. It follows in the way, the trace, of the reality drawn in by this name.’35 All reality is so drawn in by this name – for it is the name of the majestic one – that theology will reach out in mission to address God’s grace for and claim upon everything.36 My conclusion is that theology will only have its end when God so determines to fulfil his promises. Until then theology will live on borrowed breath. Such 33

34

35

36

‘The French Confession of Faith (1559)’, in Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century, pp. 145–46 (article V). See also ‘The Geneva Confession (1536)’, in Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century, p. 120 (chapter 1). For engagement of misapprehensions (by friend and foe alike) of sola Scriptura, see Michael Allen and Scott Swain, ‘The Catholic Context of Sola Scriptura’, in Reformed Catholicity: Renewal through Retrieval (forthcoming). Hans G. Ulrich, ‘Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Reflections Toward an Explorative Theology’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 8.1 (2006), p. 53. For reflection on how theology addresses all reality without becoming a totalizing discourse, see Michael Allen, Reformed Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2010), pp. 156–77.

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is not its misery, but its freedom and glory. To journey well and to serve the church (and, indirectly, the wider world) faithfully, it does well to move forward receptively: scripturally and catholically. Its dependence upon Christ alone must manifest itself in focused attention to the places where he exercises his authority (the apostolic writings) and ministers his grace (the people of God). If theology does so, then it will journey well into its ancient future and manifest its calling to be a form of ‘biblical reasoning’ that serves Christian worship and witness.

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2

Does God Have a Future? Theology and the ‘Future’ of God D. Stephen Long

‘Does God have a future?’ poses a twofold question. First, will atheism, new or old, define the future? If the first ‘death of God’ did not do away with a God, perhaps the new atheism will? Such a suggestion produces anxiety among some theologians, prompting a second question: Should we speak of God having in God’s self a future? Perhaps God died, or will die, because, as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Harnack, Whitehead and others suggested, the traditional God of Christianity was lifeless, static and abstract. God was trapped in God’s own being, eternally impassible, nothing but a self-caused cause who could only love others by loving his own essence. The death of this God, so the argument goes, opens up a new future for God. If God is to have a future in the first sense, then God must have a future in the second. The future of God depends upon God having a future, which requires significant revisions to traditional teachings on God, especially simplicity, immutability, impassibility and eternity. The following essay first sets forth the traditional teaching, then examines the criticisms and the calls for revision. Finally, it assesses whether those calls should be heeded.

The traditional language Traditional Christian language states that God is simple, perfect, immutable (and impassible), infinite, eternal and one, language readily found from early church fathers through Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas into the Reformers and present in the authorized teachings of every church that has them. Aquinas was the great synthesizer of the traditional language; starting with God’s unique existence (God is), simplicity logically followed. If we do not divide God’s essence or

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nature and existence, nor apply to God other distinctions found among creatures such as potentiality and actuality, form and matter, genus and difference and substance and accidents, then God is perfect. God does not lack something that God must become or complete in order to achieve ‘God’. God does not have a ‘nature’ separate from God’s existence by which God could fail at being God. God is what God always is, the fullness of being. Therefore God is also infinite and eternal. There is no ‘space’ that escapes God’s presence, no khora or ‘chaos’ behind God’s back by which God forms or fashions worlds and universes; nor is there a ‘time’ prior or posterior to God. Such language pushes the limits of what we can say, setting forth as Aquinas affirmed, more who God is not than who God is. Nonetheless such language is more than a logical grammar; it tells us something about God, especially about God’s agency. God is ‘one’ as this God, without being a being among beings. When someone refers to ‘classical theism’, either in defence or critique, this language for God is usually intended. It must, however, immediately be set forth that no significant Christian theologian prior to the modern era ever used that term. As the Shema (Deut. 6.4) confesses, ‘God is one’, and Christian theology must use language that affirms God’s unity, but after the revelation in Christ, we must also speak of God’s tri-unity. God’s threeness never comes by denying God’s unity, nor God’s unity by denying God’s threeness. The language used to express God’s unity is, for Aquinas and nearly every Christian theologian prior to the modern era, never an end in itself. It is not the basis or foundation upon which one can then build, adding the mystery of the Trinity to a doctrine of God already known by reason alone. This teaching has been the common language of the Christian church for some time. However, as John Sanders rightly notes, ‘Modern theology has witnessed a remarkable reexamination of the divine-human relationship as well as of the attributes of God.’1 This ‘remarkable reexamination’ does not fit any prescribed theological or political programmes. It occurs among evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, liberal and magisterial Protestants. It can be found among theologians who delight in the scandal of heresy as well as theologians who affirm the core teachings of Chalcedon and Nicaea.

Calls for revision Most calls for revision arise from the perceived inability of ‘classical theism’ to answer the following questions: How can we solve the theoretical problem 1

John Sanders, The God Who Risks (Downers Grove: IVP, 2007), p. 160.

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of evil and still have a God worthy of worship (the theodicy question)? How can we affirm our and God’s freedom if God possesses the ‘attributes’ classical theism posits (the compatibilist/incompatibilist question)? How might we develop theology on a more adequate metaphysical foundation, one that no longer assumes a faulty ‘substance metaphysics’ inherited from the Greeks (the metaphysical question)? How might we incorporate non-Eurocentric voices into theology and hear their concerns about the traditional teaching, which some accuse of perpetuating racism and male, Euro-centric power, authorizing an allpowerful Sovereign, who then shares ‘his’ sovereignty with other select male candidates either in the church or the secular realm (the political and cultural question)? Still others find the traditional teaching needs revision through a more rigorous logical analysis of deity drawing upon the tools of analytical philosophy (the logical question). I will discuss each of these questions in turn, recognizing that not every theological movement, or theologian, discussed shares the same reason for revision or revises it the same way.

The theodicy question Process theology, which calls for the most thoroughgoing revisions to the doctrine of God, claims that the traditional language cannot resolve the theoretical problem of evil, but process theology can. David Ray Griffin sets forth the formal statement of the problem of theodicy in eight logical steps: 1. God is a perfect reality. (Definition) 2. A perfect reality is an omnipotent being. (By definition) 3. An omnipotent being could unilaterally bring about an actual world without any genuine evil. (By definition) 4. A perfect reality is a morally perfect being. (By definition) 5. A morally perfect being would want to bring about an actual world without any genuine evil. (By definition) 6. If there is genuine evil in the world, then there is no God. (Logical conclusion from 1 through 5) 7. There is genuine evil in the world. (Factual statement) 8. Therefore there is no God. (Logical conclusion from 6 and 7)2 Griffin’s first statement, ‘God is a perfect reality’, draws on the traditional language, but he significantly revises perfection, no longer associating it with simplicity,

2

David Ray Griffin, God, Power and Evil: A Process Theodicy (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), p. 19.

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immutability, impassibility and eternity. He fears those other terms contribute to steps 2 and 3, which lead intelligent persons inevitably to conclude, ‘There is no God.’ The only way to avoid this conclusion is reconceiving a perfect reality so it does not involve steps 2 and 3.3 To do so, simplicity must be jettisoned. Griffin rightly notes that simplicity renders impassibility, immutability and eternity intelligible.4 Simplicity is nonetheless the borer in the beams that topples the edifice of traditional theism. Divine simplicity leads to the third step on the way to atheism, ‘An omnipotent being could unilaterally bring about an actual world without any genuine evil’, because simplicity denies a distinction between God’s ‘knowing and causing’, a distinction that Thomas and every traditional theist sneaks into theology, violating divine simplicity.5 If we affirm God’s simplicity, then what God knows is what God wills. If God knows evil, God causes it. If we reject simplicity, we can attribute ‘process’ to God such that God’s knowledge and will are temporally distinguished.6 God wills a future, but neither has secure knowledge of it, nor insures its outcome. God ‘lures’ us towards it. Once simplicity and eternity are abandoned, impassibility and immutability must also go. God is affected by creatures’ actions and responds accordingly. That God must be so affected is a metaphysical principle ‘to which God must conform’, for every being who exercises power is an ‘actual entity’.7 No actual entity can act for another, and the presence of more than one entails that they are linked by a process within which one actual entity’s exercise of power sets conditions on that of another. God is no exception to this metaphysical principle, but must work within it. Evil then, is not willed by God, but is a byproduct of the metaphysical principles within which every actual entity, including God, works. God is not responsible for it, and is not able to remedy it.

The compatibilist/incompatibilist question Like process theology, open theism affirms God’s futurity. However, the driving force behind open theism is not the problem of evil, but the libertarian freedom of both God and creatures.8 If God and creatures are both to be free 3 4 5 6 7 8

Ibid., p. 95. Ibid., p. 75. Ibid., p. 82. Ibid., p. 94. Ibid., p. 297. Sanders, The God Who Risks, p. 261. As John Sanders rightly notes, ‘There is no single problem of evil. Process theology does not resolve the problem of evil; it makes evil irresolvable even by God. It generates a metaphysics that gets God off the hook for evil, but evil remains – perhaps for eternity.’

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agents, then ‘classical theism’ must be abandoned. Sanders states this position forthrightly: ‘The great classical theists . . . understood the interconnectedness between simplicity, immutability, impassibility, absolute unconditionedness and meticulous providence. These theologians understood that these doctrines are a package deal and you cannot, without being logically inconsistent, pick-andchoose among them as some do today.’9 If we hold to meticulous providence, then for a similar reason to that for which process theologians reject the doctrine of simplicity, we lose both human and divine freedom. God’s foreknowledge and will cannot be divided in classical theism. If God knows the future, God wills it. Like process theology, open theism rejects the Thomistic affirmation of secondary causality. For Thomas, God can will the future, even future contingents, and humans remain free agents. God’s meticulous providential will and human freedom are compatible. Process theology, open theism and much of analytic theology find secondary causality logically absurd. If God elects human creatures through a meticulous providence then creatures are not free. God and creatures are free only if they possess a libertarian freedom. William Hasker explains what is required for libertarian freedom: ‘A situation in which an agent makes a libertarian free choice with respect to doing or not doing something is a situation in which the agent might do that thing but also might refrain from doing it.’10 Freedom entails God and creatures have a power of acting or not acting in every temporal succession. Anything less is not freedom. Hasker goes so far as to argue that if the redeemed in heaven cannot sin, then ‘acts of this sort are not free in the very strict sense required by libertarianism’.11 Open theists’ defense of libertarian freedom reveals their decisive difference from process theologians. The latter condition God’s freedom through an overarching metaphysical framework. Open theists deny any such framework. If God’s future is not open and free, then, Sanders suggests, God would be captive to his own metaphysical nature. ‘God is not captive to an arche (exterior ruler); but if libertarian freedom is not predicated of God, then God is “captive” to his own nature in that God is not free to do otherwise than what he does. The divine freedom and contingency of the creatures are thus rendered suspect.’12 To ensure libertarian freedom, Sanders rejects classical theism, which he understands to be a late development beginning with Augustine. Sanders counters 9 10 11 12 13 14

Ibid., p. 196. William Hasker, God, Time and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 28. Ibid., p. 24, n. 9. Sanders, The God Who Risks, p. 185. Ibid., p. 148. Ibid., p. 197.

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it with a (re)affirmation of at least free will theism found in the Cappadocians.13 He sets out free will theism in nine points: 1. God is either atemporal (eternal) or temporal (everlasting) 2. Rejects pure actuality, for God does receive our prayers and worship. Rejects divine simplicity. 3. Weakly immutable. The character of God does not change, but God can have changing plans, thoughts and emotions. 4. Weakly impassible. God is affected by and responds to our prayers and actions. 5. General sovereignty. God ordains the structures of creation (our boundaries) and allows for human free will (libertarian freedom). Sometimes God acts to ensure that specific things happen. 6. God does not have a meticulous blueprint for everything that happens. 7. God does not exercise meticulous providence. The divine will can be frustrated for some things as God takes risks. 8. God is omniscient (knows all that is knowable). 9. God has either simple foreknowledge or dynamic omniscience.14 Open theism is a subset of free will theism. It differs in that it rejects the conjunctions in #1 and 9, opting for God’s everlastingness rather than eternity and dynamic omniscience rather than simple foreknowledge.15 Like process theology, open theism affirms God’s perfection in part but radically revises it. Because open theism also rejects simplicity, it can attribute different parts to God such as plans, thoughts and emotions that are other than God’s character, which allows it to affirm a weak version of immutability and impassibility. God’s ‘character’ does not change, but God’s ‘plans, thoughts and emotions’ can. God’s essence and existence are divided. God is weakly impassible in that God is not necessarily affected by creation, but given divine libertarianism God can voluntarily choose to be so affected at some moment, and it would seem, also voluntarily choose not to be so affected.

The metaphysical question Both process theology and open theism claim that the Christian tradition erred by incorporating Greek metaphysics. They join many others in raising the 15

For a more elaborate chart setting forth the similarities and differences between traditional freewill theism and open theism see Sanders, ‘Divine Suffering in an Openness of God Perspective’, in The Sovereignty of God Debate (ed. Stephen Long and George Kalantzis; Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2009), pp. 137–38.

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metaphysical question, which emerges from diverse sources such as the Lutheran tradition’s more biblical mode of theology, the liberal Protestantism of Adolf von Harnack and its project of dehellenization, the philosopher Heidegger’s opposition to ‘ontotheology’, the non-metaphysical theology of Reformed Barthianism and Alfred North Whitehead’s ‘philosophy of organism’. Whitehead was one of the first philosophers to identify and challenge ‘substance metaphysics’. For Whitehead, Aristotle’s ‘primary substances’ mislead us, tempting us to assume that the ‘“subject-predicate” form of proposition embodies the finally adequate mode of statement about the actual world’.16 Whitehead offers a different metaphysics based on the claim that everything existing does so as an ‘actual entity’. He states, ‘God is an actual entity and so is the most trivial puff of existence in far-off empty space. But, though there are gradations of importance and diversities of function, yet in the principles which actuality exemplifies all are on the same level.’17 That final statement, ‘all are on the same level’, is foundational for all subsequent process theology. Process theology would not work without this basic metaphysical assumption, God is an actual entity who can be known like other actual entities for they are related in a process that exists ‘on the same level’. Whitehead is rigorously consistent in his application of this foundational principle of actuality. Like all actual entities, God has a ‘primordial’ and a ‘consequent nature’. What God will be is not identical to what God is. God is the ‘outcome of creativity’, a future event that happens.18 The vast majority of theologians and theological projects that raise the metaphysical question, to some degree, agree with Whitehead’s diagnosis. ‘Substance metaphysics’ posits ‘substance’ as an unchanging source that identifies it with God, producing a static, lifeless deity who cannot be made to cohere with the dramatic, biblical God. Although many of them would reject Whitehead’s remedy, the metaphysical question brings them into a family resemblance . Jürgen Moltmann raises the question whether the traditional teaching can make sense of the God who becomes incarnate and suffers for us on the cross. If God does not suffer, he famously asserted, God does not love.19 Although not as dismissive of ‘classical theism’, the evangelical theologian, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen argues that Barth and Luther represent two crucial historical developments within, or beyond, it. Barth introduced ‘historicity’ into the Trinitarian God and

16

17 18

19

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Free Press, 1978), p. 30. As we shall see below, St Augustine echoed this concern about Aristotle in his Confessions. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 18. Whitehead states: ‘This is the conception of God, according to which he is considered as the outcome of creativity, as the foundation of order, and as the good towards novelty’ (ibid., p. 88). Moltmann, The Crucified God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1983), p. 230.

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Luther, like other Protestant theologians, ‘almost turned the tables with their dynamic view of God’. Luther’s doctrine of God cannot cohere with the classical theism of Anselm and the scholastics.20 Likewise, Bruce McCormack interprets Barth as placing Christology on a firmer foundation than Chalcedon with its dependence on substance metaphysics: [Barth’s] emphasis on the ‘becoming’ of the hypostatic union . . . is intended to supplant a conception of the hypostatic union by means of a traditional ontology of being that is controlled by the category of ‘substance.’ It was attachment to the category of ‘substance’ that, historically, caused the terms brought into relation in Christology (viz., ‘God’ and the ‘human’) to be defined in static terms rather than in terms appropriate to the lived actuality of their union.21

The Lutheran theologians Paul Hinlicky and Robert Jenson offer a more nuanced, but nonetheless significant revision, to the traditional teaching on God as well, especially with respect to simplicity and impassibility. They too base their criticism on the metaphysics underlying those teachings, and counter it by correlating all knowledge of God with the doctrine of the Trinity. Hinlicky writes: To think ‘God’ this way today entails disentangling the fateful but peculiar alliance of Christian theology with the cosmo-theological scheme of Greek metaphysical theology (thinking of God as the highest link or supreme cause within the cosmic chain of being), and more insidiously by means of the Platonic ‘axiom of impassibility’ (God is not what everything else is), otherwise known as the doctrine of divine simplicity (taken not as a rule for reverent speech but as an insight into the being of God).22

Hinlicky does not reject divine simplicity – as long as it is understood as a ‘rule of reverent speech’. But when it is used to express a ‘positive account of God’s being’, then it has gone too far. Hinlicky finds it used for this purpose in what he calls, ‘the more or less traditional notion that God is God as a timeless, spaceless, incommunicable, self-identical nature, especially when such divine essence is actually thought of as a “fourth” reality over against the Father and the Son in

20

21

22

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, The Doctrine of God: A Global Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), pp. 120–22, 128. Bruce McCormack, ‘The Being of Holy Scripture Is in Its Becoming: Karl Barth in Conversation with American Evangelical Criticisms’, in Evangelicals and Scripture: Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics (ed. Vincent Bacotre, Laura C. Miquelez and Dennis E. Ockholm; Downers Grove: IVP, 2004), pp. 55–75 (64, n. 12). See Thomas McCall’s discussion of McCormack’s claim in ‘Scripture as the Word of God’, in Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology (ed. Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 171–86 (173). Hinlicky, Divine Complexity: The Rise of Creedal Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), p. 19.

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the Spirit’.23 To avoid this error, Hinlicky complements simplicity with ‘divine complexity’, in which God’s being is ‘esse deum dare, that is, that for God to be God is to give’. God gives to us out of God’s future, out of the ‘event of the coming of His kingdom’.24 Hinlicky puts this baldly: ‘God happens or God is not; God comes and becomes our God or God is – really – dead.’25 The becoming or happening of God also entails a rejection of divine impassibility.26 Robert Jenson also seeks to correct the errors a faulty, non-biblical metaphysics produced. The error is the attribution of ‘identity’ between the triune Essence and Persons rather than ‘equality’, which lead to the common western assumption that any of the Persons could have hypothetically been incarnate. This loses the temporal differentiation of the Trinity and its significance for both the missions and processions. Jenson writes, ‘At this precise point, the Western tradition must simply be corrected.’27 The correction will occur through becoming more aware of the ‘gospel’s religious oddity and so also of its metaphysical oddity’. As we saw with John Sanders, eternity now becomes everlastingness and simplicity abandoned. The result, as it was for Sanders, is that God has a future.28

The political and cultural question In 1974 R. H. S. Boyd asked, ‘Can the western Church break out of its bondage to Greek philosophy, to the Latin language and to Roman structures?’29 He was not the first to pose the question; many of the 1960s liberation movements posed it. Colonial rule was being challenged politically and theologically. Was the traditional teaching implicated in that colonial rule? Some theologians decided it was and needed to be overthrown; some still do. Combining the third and fourth questions, the feminist process theologian Catherine Keller correlates the ‘substance metaphysics’ from the first two ecumenical councils with an ideology that seeks imperial rule. She writes: Classical orthodoxy, dependent upon Greek metaphysics, in fact systematically denies that God can feel with us. . . . The Christian God had gotten defined 23

24 25 26 27 28 29

Ibid., p. xi. Whether any theologian ever thought of God’s essence as a ‘fourth reality’ is certainly something that needs to be proven and not just asserted. Ibid., p. 210. Ibid., p. 220. Ibid., p. xi. Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 113. Ibid., p. 217. R. H. S. Boyd, India and the Latin Captivity of the Church (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. xiii. Cited by Choan-Seng Song, Third-Eye Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1974), p. 10.

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Theology and the Future very early in terms of Aristotle’s ‘Unmoved Mover.’ And Christian theology naturally enough absorbed this ideology as part of the hermeneutical process of translating the biblical witness into the language of empire.30

An impassible and immutable God was incapable of feeling our pain; such a God is only useful to emperors who intend, like this god, to remain distant and aloof in order to execute punishment without regret. For her, ‘classical theism’ expunged an older theology of chaos, which had a place for an other (tehom) to God in a way that classical theism does not. Classical theism’s destruction of this other resulted in racism, sexism, militarism and capitalism.31 Not every theologian concerned with the issues she raises (which of course should be every theologian) rejects the traditional teaching so readily. James Cone acknowledges the power of Keller’s question. He states, ‘The reality of suffering and evil challenges the affirmation that God is liberating the oppressed from human captivity. If God is unlimited both in power and in goodness, as the Christian faith claims, why does God not destroy the powers of evil through the establishment of divine righteousness?’32 Such unanswerable questions, he suggests, tempt the theologian ‘to deny either the perfect goodness or the unlimited power of God’. But he refuses to go either route. ‘Black Theology’, he affirms, can ‘weaken’ neither. In one respect then, it sides with the ‘classic theologies of the Christian tradition’. However, it adds something significant to those theologies by taking ‘the liberation of the oppressed as its starting point’.33 Cone may be in a minority among liberation theologians in refusing to reject the traditional teaching on God, but two major revisions characterize much of liberation theology. First, metaphysical questions about God’s simplicity or perfection should take a back seat to the more pressing question of the liberation of peoples suffering the yoke of oppression.34 Second, rather than debating whether ‘classical theism’ is true, its political and cultural uses should be subject to critical examination and revision. Liberation theologians like Cone and C. S. Song argue for a more central place for ‘social and historical context’ both in the questions posed and the answers provided, rather than pursuing metaphysical questions. Likewise, 30

31

32 33 34 35

Catherine Keller, On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), p. 125. For her assertion of these large claims see Keller, Faces of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. xvii, xix, 10, 23. James Cone, God of the Oppressed (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1977), p. 150. Ibid. Ibid., p. 13. For a similar argument, see also Choan-Seng Song, Third-Eye Theology, p. 19. V.-M. Kärkkäinen, The Doctrine of God, p. 301.

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after a thorough analysis of the emergence of new teachings on God from Asian and African contexts, Kärkkäinen concludes, ‘they reveal the contextuality of all God-talk, already visible in the Bible’s variety. Rather than a universal “world theology of God,” a locally contextual, salvation-historical, and socially as well as politically relevant interpretation of God is emerging to challenge more sterile, academic traditions.’35 Is the traditional teaching a sterile and academic tradition that is being supplanted by contextual, politically relevant theologies?

The logical question Much of ‘contextual’ theology assumes our language for God arises out of local, historical contexts. The language used is not scientific, or logically rigorous; it is metaphorical and poetic. Although it makes truth-claims about historical situations, it seldom makes truth-claims for God. The feminist theologian Sallie McFague argues theology is metaphor, analogy and fiction. It is, she states, ‘mostly fiction’.36 If theology is mostly fiction, then what is the status of its claims? Are they true? McFague finds such questions inappropriate. ‘The question we must ask is not whether one is true or the other false, but which one is a better portrait of Christian faith for our day.’37 The relatively recent movement of analytic theology finds such assertions abandoning the true task of theological discourse. More can be said about God than metaphorical and fictive language emerging from local, historical situations would admit. Randall Rauser, for instance, draws on Harry Frankfurt’s well-known essay ‘On Bullshit’, a term used to describe both popular and academic uses of language where the result, intended or not, is not to tell the truth, but to get us to do something – usually to buy, or buy into something, such as a commercial extolling a product as a ‘genuine facsimile’. Rauser cites another example, Martin Heidegger’s statement, ‘The nothing noths.’38 Such uses of language are, Rauser argues, ‘intentional bullshit’. Much modern theology falls within this category. He particularly takes McFague’s contextual, theological approach to task: McFague is little different from the used car salesperson who cares not about providing me with factual information on that rusty old Ford Cortina, but rather with getting me to buy it. Just as the salesperson’s job description ensures that closing the deal trumps truth telling, so on McFague’s view of ‘theo-poetic

36 37 38

Sallie McFague, Models of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1987), p. xi. Ibid., p. xiii. Rauser, ‘Theology as a Bull Session’, in Crisp and Rea (eds), Analytic Theology, pp. 70–86 (70).

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Theology and the Future persuasion,’ the theologian’s final obligation is not to inform but to persuade (even as she makes it appear that she informs). Whether or not you agree that this practice of depicting God in a variety of personas to facilitate transforming love is justified does not change the fact that it is intentional bullshit.39

Rather than the call for more attention to the cultural and political contexts that has dominated much of theology since the 1970s, analytic theology takes a very different approach. Michael Rea explains well what this new approach assumes. ‘Roughly (and I think that “rough” is the best that we can do here), it refers to an approach to philosophical problems that is characterized by a particular rhetorical style, some common ambitions, an evolving technical vocabulary, and a tendency to pursue projects in dialogue with a certain evolving body of literature.’40 Analytic theology is no more monolithic than contextual theology, but it does assume the following points: Theology should 1. be ‘formulated in sentences that can be formalized and logically manipulated’. 2. ‘Prioritize precision, clarity and logical coherence’. 3. ‘Avoid substantive (non-decorative) use of metaphor and other tropes whose semantic content outstrips their propositional content’. 4. ‘Work as much as possible with well-understood primitive concepts, and concepts that can be analyzed in terms of those’. 5. ‘Treat conceptual analysis (insofar as it is possible) as a source of evidence’.41 In some respects, analytic theology returns the discipline to an attentiveness to the use of language as can be found in Thomas Aquinas, which could lead one to conclude they would retrieve the more traditional language for God. So far this has not been the result. Many, by no means all, analytic theologians lodge the same criticisms against the traditional language as is present in the theologians and movements noted above. Alvin Plantinga has argued against divine simplicity.42 Richard Swinburne rejects the Thomistic teaching on eternity.43 Marilyn McCord Adams rejects immutability and impassibility.44 The method differs, but the results are not significantly other than many of the revisions 39 40 41 42

43 44

Ibid., p. 79. Michael C. Rea, ‘Introduction’, in Crisp and Rea (eds), Analytic Theology, pp. 1–32 (3). Ibid., p. 5. See Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980), pp. 37–61. Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977). Marilyn McCord Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), p. 85. Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 142.

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found among theologians who faulted the traditional language from answering the previous five questions posed to it.

Heeding the call? Should theologians heed the call coming from so many different, and even conflicting, theological voices to revise the traditional language? Here is what every theologian should heed from the disparate voices calling for revision: The biblical God is a dynamic triune actor who takes a risk in creating. In so doing, this God invites that which is not God, creatures, to participate in existence (being), and even make a contribution to who God is, which is to say God’s being is also a ‘received being’. Theological accounts of creatures’ contributions must also include attention to the diverse cultural and political contexts within which theology is done; the God who seeks to redeem a fallen creation summons creatures to participate in its redemption through works of mercy and justice. But nothing within this important summons requires jettisoning or significantly revising the traditional language. On the contrary, the traditional language heeds this summons better than the calls for revision, which may be why no church has yet adopted these revisionist theological programmes as their official teachings. Let me defend this assertion, and conclude the essay by making three points, one negative and two positive. First, the perceived limitations to the traditional teaching that prompted the modern questions are often caricatures that overlook something significant about it. Second, the traditional teaching has been forged over a long period of time and has the benefit, unlike the alternatives, of the cultivated wisdom neither to say too much nor too little. Finally, the traditional language can fulfil the legitimate concerns that prompt the modern questions.

Perceived limitations as caricatures The perceived limitations emerging from the five questions are these: The traditional teaching cannot resolve the problem of evil. It cannot express the dramatic character of revelation, denying God is love, and producing a static God. It inadequately expresses the Trinity. It is too speculative, diverting attention from pressing practical political and cultural issues. Are these perceived limitations accurate? Perhaps it is fair to accuse the traditional teaching with an inability to resolve the problem of evil. It would be unfair, however, to argue it has not addressed it. Thomas Aquinas addressed it in his first objection to the question, ‘Whether

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God exists?’45 His argument was straightforward. If one of two contraries is infinite the other cannot exist. God is infinite goodness, so evil cannot exist. His argument assumes either that the existence of evil would have to be a creation of God’s, which is impossible; or it would exist outside of God’s providence and therefore would exist alongside God, which is also impossible. His response is similar to Augustine’s. God permits evil in order to bring about good, but God does not will or directly know evil because it is not something that can be known. God only knows evil as the privation of the good God intends.46 It has no proper ‘ratio’ of its own and cannot exist as an exemplar in, or outside, the mind of God.47 St. Augustine made a similar argument, ‘The movement away from God does not come from God, so where does it come from? If you put the question like that, I must reply that I do not know. That may sadden you, but my answer is still right. There can be no knowledge of what is nothing.’48 In one sense, then, it is not a caricature to say that the traditional teaching cannot resolve the problem of evil. It does not posit ‘evil’ as a thing that must be accounted for. Process theology does. It is a necessary consequence of the metaphysical framework within which God must act, but Thomas is clear. If that is true, then there are two infinites, which is absurd. Atheism would be preferable; it resolves the question of evil better than process theology. For process theology does not ‘resolve’ the problem of evil; it ontologizes evil and makes it necessary for creation. That the traditional teaching denies God is love or teaches that God is a static being is a caricature unworthy of much discussion. Nowhere will anyone find Augustine, Anselm or Aquinas remotely teaching either that God is not in God’s essence and person love, or that God is an immovable substance. The latter can be easily dispatched. God is, for Aquinas, ipsum esse per se subsistens (the definition comes from Dionysius), which is how Aquinas explains that God’s ‘perfection is all-embracing, containing the perfection of everything else’. Perfection here is not a static potentiality to become, but the actualization of what is, even of creatures. Far from attributing anything ‘static’ to deity, God’s immutability and impassibility result from God’s perfection where God has no lack, no static potential moment that must be actualized. God is actus purus, and that entails that all God is and creates is not done from God’s perspective in a succession

45 46 47 48

ST I.2.3 obj. 1. All citations from Thomas come from corpusthomisticum.org. ST I.5.3 rep. obj. 2. ST I.15.3 rep. obj. 1. Quoted in Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, II: Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles (Ignatius: Crossroad, 1984), p. 127.

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of events that contain a static potentiality, chaos or tehom that must then be actualized. Only if the latter can be attributed to God or to a metaphysical realm within which God must act, would it be appropriate to speak of God as static, but it is the modern theologians (not the proponents of the traditional teaching) who affirm such potentiality and historicity in God. Moreover, both Augustine and Aquinas explicitly reject speaking of God in terms of the distinction between substance and accidents. Augustine affirms simplicity against a substanceaccidents metaphysics. He wrote, ‘I thought that everything that existed could be reduced to these ten categories [Aristotle’s], and I therefore attempted to understand you, my God, in all your wonderful immutable simplicity, in these same terms, as though you too were substance and greatness and beauty were your attributes in the same way that a body has attributes by which it is defined. But your greatness and beauty are your own self: whereas a body is not great or beautiful simply because it is a body.’49 Aquinas explicitly denied, also based on God’s simplicity, that the substance/accidents distinction is in any sense fitting for God.50 Nor is it appropriate to assert that the traditional teaching was unaware that God is primarily love. Aquinas states that ‘love’ is both a personal name for the Holy Spirit and it names God’s essence.51 He acknowledges that for us love is a passion because it moves the ‘sensitive appetite’, which is embodied. We love as creatures, and thus our passions move and change us. But God does not have body even though God has will and appetite. Thus Aquinas affirms that God is love, and in a more excellent way than we love, for God loves without the vagaries of the body’s passions. The two go together for him.52 The criticism that the traditional teaching denies God is love either assumes that God is embodied, which is another version of atheism that no one would affirm, or it assumes that the language of love and suffering must be univocally applied to God and creatures. If God must love and suffer as creatures do, then again we have a tacit argument for atheism for once again God cannot be distinguished from creatures. Both are conditioned by the same metaphysical structure; both are placed within a genus, and that is not what Christians mean by God. Does the traditional language deny God’s dramatic character? Is it speculation that ignores situations of oppression? Addressing these two concerns moves us into the second and third points. 49 50 51 52

Augustine, Confessions (trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin; London: Penguin Classics, 1961), p. 88. ST I.8.6 resp. ST I.37.1 resp. ST I.20.1 resp.

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The traditional teaching as the cultivation of wisdom The traditional teaching has a long history behind it, arguing with disparate voices such as Augustine, Boethius, Dionysius, Avicenna, Maimonides, Aristotle and Plato; it seeks neither to say too much, nor to say too little. It is a logical grammar of divinity, as David Burrell has argued, but as a grammar it also affirms truthclaims.53 It claims to know something of God, as Francesca Murphy has rightly argued. It denies reason can ‘comprehend’ God, but the word ‘comprehend’ means something precise. It does not mean that God cannot be known, but that God cannot be comprehensively known – placed in a category and understood without remainder. Catherine Keller, who cites Elizabeth Johnson, misuses the term ‘comprehend’ when she cites Augustine’s si comprehendis non est Deus and translates it, quoting Elizabeth Johnson, ‘If you have understood, then what you have understood is not God.’54 To tell us on the one hand God is like every actual entity ensconced in a metaphysical framework that God cannot overcome, and on the other that if we understand this we have not understood God is to tell us both too much and too little. It makes no sense. That the traditional language seeks to say what can be said without saying too much or too little does not result in an un-dramatic God. To the contrary, it seeks to set forth God’s dramatic character, which on the one hand refuses to turn God into one actor among many, and on the other refuses to cordon God off into a sublime realm where somehow we know nothing can be said of God at all. For this reason, the traditional language can accomplish better what these revisions call for.

Heeding the summons with the traditional language I do not deny that the traditional language has been, and can be, used to divert attention from concrete injustices, or even used for unjust purposes. The traditional language does not say everything that needs to be said; nor should any theology ever claim to have ‘grasped’ God in such a manner. But the alternatives will be worse for political possibilities. Either they affirm a Pelagianism where any future possibility is dependent upon our will, or they tacitly affirm a nihilism where evil has the last word. C. S. Song understands this well when he puts this question to the popular theology of God’s suffering. ‘If pain and wrath are absolute and constitute the essence of God’s being, how 53 54

Francesca Murphy, God Is Not a Story (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Keller, On the Mystery, p. 18.

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can they be overcome? For God to have done away with pain and wrath would amount to God doing away with his own being.’55 Only a non-suffering God can save us. If God suffers as we suffer, if God is as ensconced in history with all of its injustices and suffering, if God needs us for God to become what God will be, then there is no hope for remedying injustice. We are on our own, and our track record has not been good. If God, as God, is an actor in the midst of this injustice and suffering without losing who God is, then there can be hope. Far better than all alternatives, this teaching allows God’s dramatic engagement with God’s creation. As Thomas taught, ‘the limitlessness of a form undetermined by matter is perfect in character’.56 Interestingly, this perfection does not exclude for him the confession that God’s being is ‘received’. Thomas acknowledges God’s being must, in some sense, be received in his discussion of the triune processions. He lodges an initial objection against the term ‘generated’ for the Son because anything generated would be an ‘esse receptum’, which would not be fitting for a being ‘per se subsistens’. He then differentiates living things that move from potentiality to actuality and those that do not (God). The latter, he argues, makes possible an ‘esse receptum’ that is not received in a subject as our ‘received being’ is, and thus it is a reception that does not add to a subject, because there is no ‘subject’ to which some ‘accident’ could be added.57 So God, who is infinite, perfect and simple receives being in the procession of the Son without that reception adding to the subject. What could provide for a more dramatic structure to theology than this?58 It makes possible our own contribution through prayer, worship and discipleship without such a contribution in any way competing for space and time with God.

Conclusion David Burrell considers the term ‘classical theism’ to be ‘concocted’ as a ‘foil’ for philosophers and theologians who seek ‘to develop an alternative set of metaphysical categories to handle certain issues in natural theology’.59 In other words, ‘classical theism’ is a term used to caricature a position for the purpose of reacting against it in order to establish a different metaphysics than that 55 56 57 58

59

Choan-Seng Song, Third-Eye Theology, p. 62. ST I.7.1.resp. ST I.27.2 obj. 2, rep. obj. 2. Both Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar developed such a dramatic theology within the traditional teaching. David Burrell, Aquinas: God & Action (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 177, n. 3.

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found in traditional Christian reflection. What the above analysis demonstrates is not that ‘classical theism’ should be defended; for Aquinas at least it does not exist outside Trinitarian theology. Instead, the traditional language obeys the commandment not to turn God into a graven image by so using the term ‘God’ that it identifies one creature among many. The real issues that divide the traditional teaching of the simple, eternal God from the composite God who has a future are these: first, the traditional teaching better preserves the asymmetric relation between God and creation. God’s relation to creation cannot be the same as creation’s relation to God. Nothing could be more reasonable than to honour these different relations through how we speak of God. If the Christian God exists, then obviously God does not exist ‘on the same level’ as other entities. If our language does not preserve this reality, then it has failed. Creation is ontologically related to God, but God is not so related to creation; otherwise creation is the fourth hypostasis in a Trinity-become-quaternity. Few of the revisionist accounts honour this distinction, or do so well. Second, to honour the distinct relations, the theological ‘ratio’ by which theologians speak of God cannot draw on a univocity of language where the terms referring creatures to God can mean the exact same thing as to those referring God to creatures. If this difference is not observed, then surely something has gone wrong. To speak of God and creatures under a univocal common language is to bring them under a common genus, even if it is only done logically. Finally, only simplicity can truly express the doctrine of the Trinity. This acknowledgement may be one of Aquinas’s greatest achievements. How can we speak of God’s threeness without assuming composition or quantity? Simplicity guards against a failure of Trinitarian language that will inevitably become either modalism or tritheism once simplicity is abandoned, which is what the ‘social trinitarianism’ of so much modern theology built upon the above revisions does.60 Simplicity is a grammar, but it is more. It speaks of the God who has been revealed to Judaism. If Christians cannot identify this God, then it makes no sense to find him revealed in the Trinity. Lose simplicity and you will lose the doctrine of the Trinity. Does God have a ‘future’, in the sense argued for by the revisionists? We can only hope that God does not.

60

Francesca Murphy’s God Is Not A Story traces the inevitable decline of Trinitarian thought to modalism once God has a ‘future’.

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Theology and the Future of Global Christianity K. K. Yeo

Christian theology has always been called to orient its thinking towards a promised future when the scope of God’s people will be genuinely global and its composition truly catholic – towards a day when ‘the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’ (Isa. 11.9; Hab. 2.14), and the praises of God will be sung by ‘a great multitude . . . from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages’ (Rev. 7.9). The developments of our own day, including the decline in the number of Christians in the North Atlantic region and the rapid growth of Christianity in the Majority World, present an increasingly diversified and interconnected global Christianity that appears to be rapidly moving towards that promised eschatological future. The centre of gravity of Christianity has shifted, and the world is ‘shrinking’, due mainly to the economic and geo-political forces of globalization. Andrew Walls has written about the changing population-centre of the church,1 and Philip Jenkins speaks of Asia, Latin America, Africa (and Oceania) as the ‘Next Christendom’.2 Christians all over the world are now, increasingly so, able to share resources (and problems) with one another. As a global church, we can now see and live out the gospel of Jesus Christ more fully since our local, unique expressions of the gospel are affirmed and our blindspots critiqued by the others (who may be far away in distance from us but increasingly appear as neighbours). Our 1

2

Andrew Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996); also Jeffrey P. Greenman and Gene L. Green (eds), Global Theology in Evangelical Perspective: Exploring the Contextual Nature of Theology and Mission (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2012). Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), but see a critical view of Emmaneul Gerrit Singgih, ‘Any Room for Christ in Asia? Statistics and the Location of the Next Christendom’, Exchange 38 (2009), pp. 134–46.

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immediate theological task is to discern the identity of global Christianity and, in light of the complex relationship the church has with the forces of globalization, what the future of Christianity holds. As a discipline of thought and speech, theology’s task is to assist the church to be creative and clear in thought, powerful in speech and saving in action. The expansive love of God for the whole world must not be reduced simply to that of a tribal god concerned with trivial issues in a limited setting, resulting in a sense of alienation. Nor must our various understandings of the meaning of God’s gifts be conformed to a single authorized version, hegemonically conditioned by the dictates of the powerful, with the result that particularities are erased and a self-centred lifestyle prevails. If the church proclaims a message of alienation or domination, it ceases to be salt and light, and instead becomes distorted, parochial and ineffective. This chapter seeks to name the distorted speech of the church and explore the future of global Christianity in its two overlapping mandates and missions,3 that is to do ‘glocal’ (a compound of global and local, or global-contextual) theology and public theology. We take into consideration the impact and challenge of globalization forces and raise the question of how global-contextual theology can be done in harmony with the future of God (eschatology) and biblical Christology. The chapter also will examine how the global church lives out God’s missions in the world, as we draw insights from our discourse on ecclesiology and soteriology.

The global church and its Catholicity of faith and theology Thought and speech are twins. Confusing thought and cursing speech are two sides of the same coin. The theology of the church will not be catholic if it reaches for either of two extremes: a ‘flying-high’ theology that speaks to all places and all times, or a ‘pinhole’ theology that is so particular it cannot engage with, and is irrelevant to, others beyond its context. Our theological task at hand is not to construct one abiding and unifying principle from the four corners of the earth in order to arrive at a fool-proof systematic theology. Rather, we wish to 3

By the global Church I mean not any particular organization, denomination or branch of the Church, but rather all those persons everywhere who are followers of Jesus Christ. For many of the ideas in this chapter, I am indebted to my good friend, Terence C. Halliday, for years of breaking bread with me over the topic of faith and the public square, as we bounced ideas and collaborated on a research project on Christians and globalization. Dr Halliday is research professor at the American Bar Foundation and co-director of the Center on Law and Globalization.

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encourage faithful interpretations of the biblical witnesses in their polyphonic, yet harmonized, proclamations of Jesus Christ from and for diverse cultures.

Glocal theologies (contextual and interactive Christologies)4 That which makes the church global or catholic is its glocal theologies – which are a compound mission in thought and speech of contextual biblical interpretations in the global conferencing of the gospel of Christ. Consideration of the ‘four selfs’ (self-support, self-propagation, self-administration of the Chinese Three-Self, and Gonzalez’s addition of self-theologizing)5 calls for creative dialogue towards: 1) a catholic faith or theology based on the Scriptures that honours multiple and interacting world views; 2) a global theology that respects cross-cultural and shifting contexts in which faithful communities embody real-life issues; 3) a translatability of the Scripture that upholds various dynamic vernaculars and faithful hermeneutics; and 4) a round-table symposium on proclamation and worship of a biblical God portrayed in variegated Christologies. As the church returns to the richness and variety of, say, New Testament Christology, the church will be authentically catholic. The fact that we are given four Christologies in the gospels, based on the evangelists’ variegated and nuanced portrayals of the historical Jesus, reveals the cross-cultural and global hermeneutical task of theology in the lived experience of the first readers’ particular contexts. (1) The Gospel of Matthew’s biblos geneseōs (1.1, book of Genesis) helps the Matthaean Jewish-Christian communities in the midst of the Gentile world (Antioch, Syria) reread their Scriptures (Old Testament) in light of Christ in order to rediscover their new identity. Thus, the evangelist interprets for the gospel’s first readers that the New has fulfilled, rather than abolished, the Old. Christ – who is the new presence of God, the new Moses, the new David – has ushered in the new faithfulness of God and fulfilled the righteous requirement of the Torah, realized the expectations of the prophets and brought about the new reign of God. (2) The Gospel of Mark’s ‘good news’ (1.1) encouraged the persecuted, fearful Roman Christians in the 1960s. The evangelist interprets Jesus Christ as the crucified Messiah (8.29; 12.35; 13.21; 14.61; 15.32) of the Son of God (viz. the 4

5

For more, see Gene Green, Steve Pardue and K. K. Yeo (eds), Jesus without Borders (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming). For more on self-interpretation or self-theologizing, see Justo L. González, Mañana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), p. 49.

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fully human One; 1.1, 11, 24; 3.11; 5.7; 9.7; 15.39). This identity of Christ is demonstrated by his mission of suffering service (8.29; 10.45) and ransoming love for all (10.45; 12.33), thus Christ’s faith(fullness) – serving as a paradigm for the disciples – overcomes conflicts and fear (16.8). (3) In the ‘ordered narrative’ (1.1, 3) of the Gospel of Luke, Christ is portrayed as the universal Saviour (1.47, 69; 2.11). The purpose of the evangelist is to defend the legitimacy and goodness of Christ and the Christian faith to the Roman Empire. The evangelist also seeks to narrate the reign of God as recreating new communities as the gospel expands throughout the empire. (4) In the ‘book of signs’ (20.28–31) of the Gospel of John, the evangelist addresses issues in Pharisaic Judaism to the first readers so that they might believe in the name of Christ and his signs/miracles. Christ, the transcendent Wisdom (Logos, Hokmah), has tabernacled in human history, full of grace and truth (1.8–9). Christ is also the Great ‘I AM’ who has created and worked miraculously in the chaotic world and has taken away the sin of the world. The four gospels need to be read intertextually, so that besides an individual gospel’s particularity (diversity), readers also appreciate the canonical interaction of the four gospels, thus their engaging unity. This canonical hermeneutical principle can be applied to Asian Christologies so that authenticity of each contextual theology is affirmed, while distortions and blindspots are corrected as all share their interpretations of Christ from the round-table conferencing. Let me illustrate from the Christologies of Kwok Pui-lan and Enoch Wan. Kwok’s feminist ecological model uses natural metaphor and wisdom tradition, which ‘proposes to see Jesus as one epiphany of God. It accents Jesus’ teachings about right living, his relation with the natural environment and other human beings, his subversive wisdom on ecojustice, and his promise of God’s compassion for all humankind’.6 Kwok raises a critical question on theological method as she assumes that Chinese Christology should be comfortable and compatible with the Chinese linguistic pattern and world view only.7 Yet, while Wan’s Christology has much to learn from Kwok, Kwok’s Christology can be enriched by Wan’s SinoChristology which is Chinese in language but foreign in concept: 1) Jesus Christ as ‘heaven-human-unite-one-dao’ (‘tian-ren-he-yi-de-dao’) – the incarnate Jesus and the resurrected Christ is both personal being and theological dao; 2) Jesus Christ as ‘grace-passion-true-Lord’ (‘the en-qing-zhen-zhu’) – the relational (guan-xi) theologizing of Jesus’ work (salvation) as the reconciling humanity

6 7

Kwok Pui-lan, Introducing Asian Feminist Theology (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2000), p. 93. Kwok, Introducing Asian Feminist Theology, p. 90.

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to God and to fellow human-beings as mediator, redeemer and reconciler; and 3) eschatologically, Jesus as ‘perfect-beauty-revered-honour-Lord’ (‘wan-meijun-rong-zhu’) – Jesus’ work to Chinese ‘is both shame-bearer for sinners and honor-winner for believers’.8 A Chinese Christology does not have to simply translate a German Christology, for theological interpretation is indigenous in its translation but also seeking to allow biblical Christologies to fulfil the contextual needs and language system.

Diversity-in-unity ecclesiology (richness and strength) The biblical Christologies from the New Testament provide a standard lens for the global church to be diversified in unity. This identity of the global church will demonstrate its priestly strength and prophetic call in the world (thus transforming it), and as the church lives out the biblical mandate of preaching, translating and exegeting Jesus Christ in acknowledging the eschatological nature of Truth.9 Thus, the ontology of Christ ultimately is not significant in and of itself, but must be translated into the ontology of christological theology. In other words, Christ’s ontology enables ‘every tribe and language and people and nation’ (Rev. 5.9; 7.9; 13.7; 14.6; cf. Acts 2.1–13) to be ‘fully Christian and fully Australian/African’ in their theologizing that constitutes part of Christian worship of the global church. Jesus Christ is the Reality that makes all realities, cultures and meaning-systems true, beautiful and good. Jesus Christ does not speak in heavenly tongues in his revelation of God; Christianity does not have a sacred language. The gospel of the church is neither culture- nor languagespecific.10 Jesus is the Eternal Word enfleshed (Jn 1.14) as the gospel of Christ, and Christian doctrines always are proclaimed and understood ‘incarnationally’ or contextually, that is in their own cultures and contexts ‘linguistically’. In order to take seriously the composite horizons of the Chinese (whether in China or overseas) – which consist of multiple nationalities, regional groups and dialects, diverse cultures, pluralistic religions and sociopolitical realities – Chinese biblical interpretation addresses the various distinctions in the following examples: 8

9

10

Enoch Wan, ‘Jesus Christ for the Chinese: A Contextual Reflection’, Chinese Around the World (November, 2000), pp. 13–20. See also his Chinese works: Banishing the Old and Building the New: An Exploration of Sino-theology (Ontario: Christian Communication, 1998). K. K. Yeo, ‘Response: Multicultural Readings: A Biblical Warrant and an Eschatological Vision’, in Global Voices: Reading the Bible in the Majority World (ed. Craig Keener and M. Daniel Carroll; Peabody: Hendrickson, 2013), pp. 27–37. As Lamin Sanneh writes, Christianity from its beginning until now has been ‘a translated religion without a revealed language’. See Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion Is Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 69.

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1) debating the definition, purpose, goal and relationship of Sino-Christian theology; 2) reinterpreting the biblical understanding of revelation and reason especially in communist China; 3) Christian faith and its interaction with other faiths; 4) response to geo-political issues of the day such as Hong Kong’s relation with China, Chinese Marxism and end of history, secular humanism and Chinese Christianity, Christian-Confucianism interaction in modern China; and 5) Chinese feminist theology in diverse Chinese contexts.11 The humbling spirit inherent in the Christian virtue of moving from the global to the local is to be celebrated. Equally important is the lifting of a Christian consciousness from the local to the global, and that consciousness goes far beyond taking our package of beliefs and planting them in some foreign soil. When we venture openly and honestly into other cultures, we, the church, discover ourselves in cross-cultural encounters. These can have two rewarding results. On the one hand, we discover that ideas and practices we took for granted are not as ‘natural’ to Christians or to persons in other places as we may have thought. For white US Christians to dance in church, or to dance at all, for example, has been long frowned upon as improper. Yet large numbers of African Christians spill out into the aisles and move to the music as if they had just read joyous psalms of worship in the Bible. In other words, those considered ‘other’ have much to teach us, and they make the church first and foremost global and then strong, beautiful and healthy. The concept of ‘global’ has to be balanced with the biblical notion of God’s glory and beauty, otherwise understanding the church as global would make us vulnerable to the principality of self-glorification. There is much to be said about cultural diversity as a gift of God to humankind in the Bible; living in complementarity with others is a mutually rewarding and humbling process. Myriad kinds of sea creatures and animals and plants are created, according to Genesis 1, and God affirms the goodness of his work of diversity and beauty. The creation of the human race, people-groups (nations; see Genesis 10, 17) and God’s blessing of different languages and cultural practices (Acts 2.4; Dan. 7.14) are seen as reflections of God’s glory. This glory of God is manifest in various tongues, different musical instruments and diverse styles of worship, thus the global church is envisioned in Revelation as complementarity in diversity (Rev. 7.9). In order to see cultural diversity as God’s gift, each culture has to take a step outward and journey to the ‘other’, seeking to replace suspicion and fear with respect and trust. Cross-cultural encounters in a globalized space, in the 11

See He Guanghu and Daniel H. N. Yeung (eds), Sino-Christian Theology Reader (2 vols; Hong Kong: Institute of Sino-Christian Studies, 2009).

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midst of divisive and homogenous forces, can indeed be challenging, but can be promising as well if the church can proceed with the determination and grace to journey towards each other in mutuality and complementarity. There is an implicit arrogance and ignorance in the notion that all we need to know about God comes through one stream of history only – a creek of Judaism, which becomes a Greek and Roman stream, which merges into the river called Western civilization, which fertilizes all other cultures as it meanders around the world. This arrogance is portrayed by Luke in Acts in the Pentecost event as a sort of baffling ignorance regarding God’s creativity (Acts 2.5–11). If the church is ignorant of the ways in which the forces of the ancient Near Eastern milieu impacted the formation of the Jewish faith, its religious and cultural practices, then we presuppose Judaism and Jewish life as monolithic. It is a daunting task for Old-Testament textual scholars to understand the complex history and richness of Scripture. Yet, the apostle Peter is right in saying, ‘God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him’ (Acts 10.34–35). In addition, God’s blessing and the revelation of his work are impartial, especially as evidenced in the worldwide geographical and cultural diversity of the early Christian movement, from Jerusalem to Caesarea, Antioch, Turkey, Greece, Rome, Spain . . . and many that escape our radar screen. God sees no boundaries, and truth does not respect borders.12 There are other streams of history and culture, not least of which is a stream of Christianity that flowed east and south, west and north, but also a Christianity that arises from the soil of Africa in confluence and interdependence with the Palestinian context. In a chapter titled, ‘Whither Christianity? A Study in Origin, Thought, and Action’, Lamin Sanneh helps us wrestle with the multiple identities of early Christianity.13 As a Chinese Christian, one’s theological assumption of multiple identities of Christian will override one’s unifying cultural identity, which Hall and Ames called ‘the “myth” of the Han (Chinese) identity’.14 There is no ‘pure’ race, each ethnicity is a hybridized being. Holding to one origin anthropocentrically is not helpful to the truth of ‘be fruitful’ and ‘multiply’ (Gen. 1.28) or to the mandate to cover the world with the glory and beauty of the Source, that is the Creator God. The opposite of ‘fruitfulness’ is either barrenness or dearth. The opposite of ‘multiplicity’ is homogeneity or linearity. A theology that lacks diversity will quickly assert itself 12 13

14

See Green, Pardue and Yeo (eds), Jesus Without Borders. Lamin Sanneh, Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2008), pp. 13–56. David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, The Democracy of the Dead: Dewey, Confucius, and the Hope for Democracy in China (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 1999), 23–24.

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as the universal norm. We know that our finiteness, our limits of time and place, give us an incomplete understanding of the infinite God. Thus, the biblical logic does not retain the idea of ‘one origin’. The Bible does not speak of the Jews as the only people of God, or the only true people of God; in fact, the Bible constantly seeks to use a hybridized figure to redefine the Source. Paul’s theology of the people of God argues that there is no distinction between Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and barbarians (Gal. 3.28; Rom. 10.12). Rather than boasting of one’s hereditary lineage as Japanese or Chinese, one should know of salvation by God’s grace (Eph. 2.8) and therefore boast only in the cross of Christ (Gal. 6.14; 1 Cor. 1.29, 31). For example, Paul uses Abraham as the Father of both the Jews and the Gentiles – that is all who have faith (Rom. 4.16). Luke traces Adam as the Son of God in the genealogy of Jesus, because Adam the Son of God represents all human beings – Son of God means humanity. In that light, one can see celebrative readings of Romans 13 offered by different Asians because of their present political contexts: Ezra Kok and and Lim Kar Yong from Malaysia; Nozomu Hiroishi from Japan, K. K. Yeo from the United States.15 Theological vitality requires cross-cultural encounters and, so ecclesiology, in line with Christology, will be vital if it seeks the pilgrim ethos of wandering to strange lands and journeying to those who are ‘other’. As the Christian gospel from the West encounters the folk religions of arboreal Africa, new and fresh images of God breathe life into Western understandings. As the writings of Paul and James encounter those of Confucius and the Daoist philosophers, our readings of Galatians and the Epistle to James gain a fresh perspective.16 Emphases, themes, orientations we previously overlooked now seem plainly apparent. In this sense, globalization of the church enriches theology and amplifies our knowledge of God.

Global theology: Its publicity and dynamic of faith The two dimensions of glocal theology, as discussed above, will ensure that the church is clear and true in its identity, empowered and effective for its mission 15

16

See K. K. Yeo (ed.), From Rome to Beijing: Symposia on Robert Jewett’s Commentary on Romans (Lincoln: Kairos Studies, 2013), 7–18, 337–43, 427–34. Not to mention also other non-Asian scholars who join in such celebrative readings, for example, Verrecchia, Black, Derenbacker, Maier and Ekem’s contributions in the same volume. See K. K. Yeo, Musing with Confucius and Paul: Toward a Chinese Christian Theology (Oregon: Cascades Book, 2008); K. K. Yeo, Zhuangzi and James (Shanghai: Huadong Shifan Daxue VI Horae, 2012).

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in the world. Once the church is true to its identity and lives out its calling, then public theology is incarnated. Yet, the failure of the church to be salt and light of the world is often brought about by a ‘sacred/secular divide’ in the thought and speech of Christians. Rather than becoming the transformative agent of the world, the church will then swim or sink in the tides of globalization. Christians live in a world where global flows of ideas and money, people and disease, virtue and vice, provide a context for everyday existence. Twenty-firstcentury Christians have been called into this world to make a difference for the good. Like Jesus, we are expected to transform our world by living obediently in relationship with God and lovingly in relationship to our neighbours, who now comprise all peoples on all continents. The publicity and dynamic of the Christian faith can embrace principles that hold the impulses of globalization accountable to the standards of the kingdom of God, against which any movement, national or global, must be judged and ordered. Thus, Christians must develop public theology, to hold accountable not only their national rulers, but also all those institutions and individuals who shape global encounters.17 Christians are, first and foremost, citizens of the kingdom of God, and their theology is not associated with any particular region or country, but with the Word from above. On the basis of our citizenship in this kingdom, global processes can then be exposed to its standards and oikonomia.

Globalization for the church (ecclesiology for society) The phenomenon of globalization may be first a source of disorientation and then a source of renewal for the church, as the church considers what kind of public theology will shape who it is and, thus, the world. Conceivably, a faithful engagement with globalization is one of God’s ways to jolt Christians out of conventional and often ungodly ways of living and lead us to renewal. How can globalization, then, be an instrument of God for the church and thus to the world?

Compelling the church to live outward As our own horizons are pulled away from our immediate communities to tsunami in India, earthquakes in China, nuclear disaster in Japan, wars in the 17

See the work of Ng Kam Weng, a Malaysian Christian who engages with resurgent Islam in Malaysian politics, among other public issues. His list of writings can be found: http://www.cornerstone-msc. net/kairos/index.cfm?menuid=4

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Middle East and genocide in Africa, we are wrested away from our centripetal tendencies to linger in the comfort zones of the local and are propelled into the centrifugal tendencies to participate in the global. All Christians will recognize immediately the consistency of this orientation to the world with Jesus’ Great Commission – to ‘go into all the world and teach them to obey what I have taught you all’ (Mt. 28.18–20). The twenty-first-century global propulsion to all the world, however, involves much more than ‘preaching the gospel’ writ small. It involves encounters with God’s whole world, often in ways never anticipated. It relates to the building of a kingdom in all its institutional manifestations. The spirit of Jesus’ Great Commission is consistent with the Hebraic understanding of life as viewed backward (from the end/eschaton, signifying consummated shalom) and lived forward (towards the eschatological banquet), and touched inward (loved by God) and manifested outward (love our neighbours). Thus, the call of Abraham to leave his hometown (the city of Ur; Gen. 11.31), the wilderness-wandering of the Exodus generation, the exilic experience of the people of God in the Old-Testament periods (such as in the Babylonian captivity), and the diaspora of God’s people in the first century (such as addressed in 1 Peter and James), all confirm the pilgrimage lifestyle of being Christians. The author of the book of Hebrews makes the profession that, ‘we are strangers and foreigners on the earth . . . we desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one’ (11.13–15). The Christian life on earth is one that is to be lived ‘in, but not of, the world’ (Jn 17.14–15). The life of a disciple of Christ is not simply one of self-survival, as all these pilgrim biblical texts have shown. Rather, pilgrims or outward-living people of God are called to be transformers of the people and places they encounter. And the Mosaic laws and commandments are given to the Exodus generation to mandate care for their own, but also to remind them to care for their neighbours. Members of the dispersed community of James are charged with the ‘scandalous message’ of the Jerusalem apostle to go against the unjust economic and labour system of the Graeco-Roman world, according to the interpretation of Elsa Tamez.18 The community of Hebrews is asked not to resort to shame and pain but, despite persecution, to be confident that ‘God is not ashamed to be called our God; indeed, he has prepared a city for us’ (11.16). One can easily see from the titles of writings of Asian theologians (in the footnote) how significant the issues of migration, trafficking, liminality and

18

Elsa Tamez, The Scandalous Message of James: Faith without Works Is Dead (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002).

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resilience are in that part of the world.19 Asian Christians still find the biblical teaching of pilgrimage and wandering meaningful. The ‘church’ of Jesus Christ is not an often-misunderstood ‘calling-out’ (ekklēsia)20 of believers retreating from the world of affairs and institutions, but an ‘assembly of believers’ placed in a particular locale by God in order to serve the local community. Christians are called to be God’s beloved in Christ, ‘through whom [they] have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name’ (Rom. 1.5). Taking the word ‘apostleship’ functionally (and not officially – limited to the 12 apostles), one may apply the meaning of believers as those we are ‘sent-out’ by God, the Sender of grace, to bring about the reign of his kingdom values on earth.

Expanding our domesticated ethics Christian ethics, too, can become ‘nationalized’. A particular church in a particular country at a particular moment in history worries most about sexual sin, or about witchcraft, or sacrificing to ancestors. Globalization enables the church to open its eyes to the full panoply of ethical questions, of ways to behave, that constantly must be reflected upon and realigned to our faithful obedience in following Jesus. The teaching of Jesus is illustrative of this point, as he constantly pushes the edge of the envelope in terms of the rigid assumptions or stereotypical understandings of his listeners. To the Pharisees’ condemnation that Jesus associates with sinners and outcasts – the Pharisees’ concern for righteousness and justice – Jesus tells a parable regarding the righteousness of the sons and the justice of God (Lk. 15.11–32). The young son represents the sinners with whom Jesus spends time. This ‘prodigal son’ hits bottom in a foreign land and decides to come home. He is accepted by his father before he hears the son’s prayer of confession. In fact, the gifts the son receives from his father confirm the renewed righteous relationship he has with his father. On the contrary, the parable suggests that the older son is also a ‘prodigal’ one, one

19

20

Andrew Sung Park, The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993); Jung Young Lee, Marginality: The Key to Multicultural Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995); Choan Seng Song, Theology from the Womb of Asia (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1986); Sang Hyun Lee, From a Liminal Place: An Asian American Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010). See the exegetical fallacy of Greek words in New Testament studies in James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961); D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996). Note also the abundant use of the word ekklēsia in Acts and in the Pauline epistles.

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who works long hours in the field probably trying to earn his father’s love and possessions, not knowing that all possessions of his father are his to enjoy. Out of that understanding of ‘works righteousness’, he is bitter in his complaint that his father is unfair to receive the younger son (whom the older brother calls ‘your son’, not ‘my brother’) extravagantly. Jesus implies in the parable that the Pharisee’s ethic is ‘equality justice’ rather than the biblical understanding of ‘the more is given, the more is required’. The compassion/mercy (splagchna) of the father represents God’s mercy, who always seeks for the last, the least and the lost to be recipients of his justice (Lk. 15.20). Such expansive love of God is the foundation of Christian ethics.

The church for globalization: Public theology21 The church exists for society, thus, theology exists for the public square. Only in this way can the church be an agent of globalization and can theology assume its role on the global stage. The biblical wisdom of public theology lies in the relationship between Christian faith and the public square (Isa. 59.14).

Covenantal fidelity and the public square The fallout of ‘private faith’ in ultra-conservative Christianity is its tendency to be anti-intellectual and to keep faith compartmentalized. This is a death-blow to believers whose privatized faith is unable to have an impact on public life; as a result, the community of faith loses its mission. On the contrary, biblical faith is covenantal, and its saltiness moves the faith-community to serve the world. The peoples of God, in both the old covenant and the new covenant, are the creation of God based on his mercy and love. Because of the covenantal fidelity God has shown to his first fruit of creation, termed as the ‘royal priesthood and holy nation’ (Exod. 19.6; 1 Pet. 2.9), ‘God’s own’ or his ‘holy people’ are required by the same covenantal obligation to be faithful and impactful. History has shown that the God of the prophets and Jesus ‘abounds in steadfast love and faithfulness’ (Exod. 34.6; also Lam. 3.23; 1 Thess. 5.24; 2 Thess. 3.3), despite the infidelity and disobedience of God’s people (Hos. 4.1; Rom. 3.3).

21

For more on public theology, see John Atherton, Public Theology for Changing Times (London: SPCK, 2000); John Bolt, A Free Church, A Holy Nation: Abraham Kuyper’s American Public Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001); Duncan Forrester, Christian Justice and Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Jürgen Moltmann, God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999); Max L. Stackhouse, God and Globalization, Vol. 4: Globalization and Grace (New York: Continuum, 2007), pp. 77–116.

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In the long and robust tradition of Yahweh’s prophets, the text of Isaiah recounts in poetic style how the people of God have forgotten their identity and their purpose in life: Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public square, and uprightness cannot enter. (59.14)

While trust in, and worship of, God can result in personal connectedness and intimate joy for believers, such individual piety must also overflow into the public realm of life and be translated into social justice, communal righteousness and shining truth. James teaches that, ‘Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world’ (1.27). A few verses later in prose style, Isaiah reminds his readers how Yahweh remains faithful: ‘“And as for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the Lord: “my Spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouths of your children, or out of the mouths of your children’s children,” says the Lord, “from now on and forever”’ (59.21). James, in a few verses before 1.27, encourages readers to live out their faith in dynamic deeds because of the ‘generous act of giving with every perfect gift’ of the God of constant faithfulness. God is the ‘Father of lights’ (1.17) who is willing and able to shower upon the people his graces. The danger of compartmentalizing life and faith as private lies in truncating and dissecting life and faith. Through Moses, God has given the Ten Commandments so that the ‘priestly kingdom and the holy nation’ can follow the rules of life and live abundantly and zestfully (Num. 21.8–9; Prov. 4.4; 7.2; 9.6; Lk. 10.27–28). The challenge of Christian discipleship is that personal faith in God is not lived out simply in the private hidden spaces. Jesus’ wisdom is that, ‘No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house’ (Mt. 5.15; see also Mk 4.21; Lk. 8.16; 11.33). The publicity of faith and theology is rooted in the covenantal theology of neighbourliness and instrumentality or agency. In other words, we are blessed for the blessing of others (Gen. 12.2; 1 Pet. 3.11; 4.19). Peoples of God, old and new, are exhorted to be recipients of God’s goodness and to become agents or benefactors to others/neighbours: ‘Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.’ (Ps. 34.14; cf. Pss. 37.3; 119.68; 125.4)

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Theology and the Future ‘Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.’ (Isa. 1.17; cf. Jer. 4.22; Mic. 2.7) ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.’ (Lk. 6.27, 6.33, 35) ‘See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.’ (1 Thess. 5.15; also 1 Tim. 6.18)

Likewise, the book of Hebrews exhorts readers to public theology, ‘Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God’ (Heb. 13.16; cf. 1 Pet. 3.11; 4.19).

Church as the influential and formative force of culture Because religious values are the most important influential, formative and regulative force of any culture, the church as a force of globalization has a significant role in rebuilding any society.22 As citizens of the kingdom of God, we emphasize the significance of kingdom values – and use kingdom values to appraise globalization. For example, James says that friendship with the world means enmity with God (4.4), for the two value-systems are incommensurable. In a culture where advertising exerts persuasiveness and conviction, Paul translates the message of the ‘crucifixion of Christ’ as his point of boasting: ‘May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world’ (Gal. 6.14). Paul’s public theology is neither a simple dualism of retreating from the public square, nor is it about self-aggrandizement. Rather, it is about transformative engagement with public life, thus rendering powerless the sin-bound and evil-deceiving value system of the world (cosmos); that is, in Paul’s language: ‘the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world’. How do we save God’s creation from the destructive power of the world? By a regime change of being faithful (trusting) and loyal (obedient) to what God in Christ has done in ‘the new creation’ (Gal. 6.15). Paul exhorts Christians to do good to all, especially the household of faith, citing the cornerstone of public theology as: ‘It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified!’ (Gal. 3.1). 22

As Lawrence Harrison and Peter L. Berger have shown: Lawrence C. Harrison, Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York: Basic Books, 2000); Peter L. Berger, Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). See also the work of Frances Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002).

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David Tracy warns that the danger of Christians living in the world is, the ‘danger of becoming trapped in a purely “culturalist” or even “idealist” horizon unless the theologian [or Christian] can show the links between the cultural resources of a situation and the materialist (economic, social, political and technological) conditions of a society’.23 Public theology for the church involves being true to one’s localized context and yet allowing one’s Sitz im Leben to be transcended by the global vision of a full humanity.24 Exchanges and interactions between the church and the world are inevitable. For example, a church is impacted by the forces of globalization in its use of technology in worship. But a church that believes in public theology and its mission to transform the world will be aware of its mission when it sees the forces of globalization that create a homogenized, universal way of life and that erase local particularities (such as using English to replace indigenous languages in many parts of the world in worship). It is for this church to resist the global force of homogenization that displaces local uniqueness. The church needs to encourage cultural diversity in its worship, Bible study, Scripture reading, theological interpretation and contextual theology. The church needs to go beyond food and drink that superficially contextualizes local cuisines (such as that of Coke, McDonald’s, or KFC products) and help local Christians develop authentic cultural expressions of the Christian faith and their understanding of God and his work in local languages. The danger to the church in the midst of globalization forces is being coopted by an imperial logic. Addressing the question of empire is not simply about acknowledging the ‘greatness’ of a country; more importantly, it questions at what expense and at whose expense does a country become a great one (in accumulating wealth and consolidating political power). Shaping a culture is a daunting task, but it is a counter-cultural task, and the church must continue asking the question of how to shape a culture without imitating the empire’s logic. What does globalization mean to the church? Does it mean that the church is globally interconnected around the world? In our world today, globalization often means de-territorialization. But physical territory does not make one immune to the impact of global forces; events occur or are made possible by the increasing interconnectedness of cyberspace or made possible through technological means. Here lies the danger of imperial logic: this global 23

24

David Tracy, ‘Public Theology, Hope, and the Mass Media: Can the Muses Still Inspire?’, in Max L. Stackhouse, God and Globalization, Vol. 1: Religion and the Powers of the Common Life (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000), p. 233. Stackhouse, God and Globalization, Vol. 4: Globalization and Grace, pp. 114–16.

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infrastructure and interconnectedness on one hand links us yet, on the other hand, it is a ‘virtual reality’ that falls short of the incarnation (body and blood) or human touch. Social relationships may be accelerated, but often without an embodied relationship of interconnectedness. Perhaps re-examining what the Eucharist means to present generations, for example, will help us understand what the church as a force of globalization should be, and to live out the mission of the church to shape and transform the world, without being co-opted by its fallen forces. What makes the church ‘global’ is not simply that it is found all over the world, but that there is a force/spirit that draws diverse forms of the church together (unity; in 1 Pet. 3.8) through a mutual strengthening of connectedness powerful enough to be a saving force of globalization. The spirit that draws the church together is the spirit of humility – the sign of the Holy Spirit, who works pervasively and powerfully. The force or agent of globalization is positioned there by a divine mandate, which is expressed in one form as the Great Commission (Mt. 28.20) of Jesus, who is ‘gentle and humble’ (Mt. 11.29).

Conclusion Jesus the prophet seeks the justice of God on earth; his teaching is always inclusive and universal, drawing in those outside the boundaries. He challenges the privileged, calling them to repentance and care for the poor (materially and spiritually). The prophetic mission of Paul is true to the spirit of Christ, as he champions the dignity and rights of Gentiles, women and slaves within God’s eschatological reign. Christians are ‘little Christs’ in the sense that: 1) they are imitators of Jesus the Christ; and 2) they are sent to the world to be ‘agents’ of God, to bring saving grace to the world. The biblical narrative, both in the Old Testament and New Testament, leaves us rich resources for following Christ. The Old Testament in the Hebrew text has tripartite canonical sections – Torah, Prophets and Writings – which correspond respectively to Jesus’ work on earth as the Great High Priest, the Prophet, the Sage. In other words, as the Prince of Peace who bears witness to his Father the King on earth, Jesus’ priestly, prophetic and wisdom narratives in the New Testament are a rich legacy for his brothers and sisters. Jesus Christ as the kingly Saviour (cosmic power and right) is priestly (liturgical), prophetic (justice) and wise (practical living) in transforming the

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world. In imitating Christ, the Christian church has to engage the world with rich biblical resources. The church will have a future if it resists the temptation to read the Bible culturally; rather Christians should read the world biblically, using the masterprinciples discernible from the Bible (such as human dignity, equity, freedom as imago Dei, inclusive justice, self-offering love, etc). For example, Paul speaks of the kingship of Christ, and he warns that belief in all the powers and authorities at the end will have to answer to God (Ephesians). Thus, Christ as a King does not ride on a horse (dominating Ruler) but on a donkey (serving Master), indicating that his power is not from this world, but a power of the whole cosmos that only a self-sacrificial love can legitimize. The resurrection confirms that Christ’s kingly power of love and mercy is able to break the power of death, the bondage of sin and the domination of violence. The church, as it faces the forces of globalization today, can re-appropriate the paradigm of Christ.

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4

Theology and the Future of Asia Miyon Chung

Today, the majority of the world’s Christians reside outside of Europe and North America.1 According to Mark Noll, ‘the Christian church has experienced a larger geographical redistribution in the last fifty years than in any comparable period in its history, with the exception of the very earliest years of church history’.2 Identified as a ‘world’ or ‘global’ religion, Christianity is becoming increasingly diverse and complex in lived experiences and in written expressions through the contribution of non-Western Christians. In particular, the Asian continent has witnessed an astonishing growth of Christian population during the last century.3 Even so, Christianity faces a number of formidable challenges. First, Asians tend to view Christianity as a Western religion that infiltrated Asia via colonialism. The total population of Christians composes less than 10 per cent, most of whom come from non-major Asian religions.4 As the world’s most vast and diverse continent in geophysical, cultural-linguistic and ethnic makeup, Asia has perennially stood in the milieu of religious pluralism. As such, the environment in which the gospel confronts an individual is not agnosticism or atheism but variations of competing religious beliefs that are inseparably interwoven with the contemporary Asians’ ethnic, tribal and/or national identity. The assumption of the ‘foreignness’ of Christianity and intense loyalty to ancient religions creates multilayered obstacles in evangelism and mission. 1

2

3

4

Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, rev. edn, 2007), pp. 1–17. Mark A. Noll, The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith (Downers Grove: IVP, 2009), p. 21. For an informative accounting of the remarkable shift in the size and growth of the church, see Philip Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). The term ‘Asia’ is ambiguous because the demarcation of Asia is open to interpretation. In a broad sense, Asia encompasses the Middle East, Eurasia and Central Asia. In this chapter, the three areas will not be included for cultural and political reasons. Christian conversions in Korea and Singapore are exceptions to this rule.

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A second challenge springs from the need of constructing biblically sound and practically relevant theological reflections to address both the archaic and the newly emerging problems and tensions of the continent. Unlike the West, Asia has never walked through the collective experience of Christendom or encountered the paradigm shifts birthed by the Age of Enlightenment. Indeed, Asia is both ancient and dynamic, entrenched in long-standing complicated conflicts, all of which still condition contemporary life. Although European invasion was not Asia’s first encounter with colonialism, the aftermath of Western colonization engendered greater, more dramatic, irreversible and/or irreparable confrontations and changes. The third challenge is rooted in the distinctly Western philosophical and linguistic paradigms and contexts of theological development. On top of the epistemic gulf that exists between the West and East, Christian theology and the doctrines bequeathed by the Western mission enterprise are so imbued with philosophical baggage that even Christians find difficult to grasp. Consequently, the pervasive view of Asian Christians, who share an inherent proclivity for the intuitive and pragmatic religiosity, seems to be that systematic theology especially is impenetrable and mostly irrelevant for piety, and that theological systems imported from the West are elusive and foreign. Asian ecumenical theologians have produced voluminous works of contextual theologies during the last several decades. These works, however, are vulnerable to criticism as lacking biblical cohesion and failing to stimulate Asian spirituality on intuitive and ritualistic levels. The purpose and scope of this chapter, therefore, is to delineate the makings of Asian theology, with a view to assessing the place and function of Christian theology for the future of Asia. It is hoped that the analysis will provide an impetus for enhancing the theology and the lived experience of the global church.

Asian theology in context Although Christianity is often thought of as the ‘newest’ or ‘youngest’ major religion to have arrived in Asia from the West, ‘the faith moved east across Asia as early as it moved west into Europe’.5 That Christianity first entered 5

Samuel Hugh Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia: Volume I: Beginnings to 1500 (American Society of Missiology Series, 35; Maryknoll: Orbis, 2nd edn, 2009), p. xiii. Moffett’s introduction goes on to remind the reader that Asia, not Europe, was the context of Christianity’s earliest history, its first centres, its first New Testament translation, its first poets and (arguably) its first Christian state; Asia was also the base of missionary ventures unmatched by Western Christianity until after the thirteenth century.

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Asia through the Apostle Thomas, who carried the gospel to India soon after Pentecost, still stands as ‘one of the oldest and strongest traditions in church history’.6 The wider spread of Christianity occurred as the Nestorians carried the gospel to India, China and the Mongols in Central Asia. According to P. Y. Saeki, Nestorian Christians arrived in China no later than the early seventh century.7 Evidence shows that their mission not only flourished for several centuries but also produced contextualized Christian materials during the Tang dynasty, which ruled from seventh century to the brink of the tenth century. Christians also had exchanges with Buddhists along the Silk Road during the medieval period. Persecution from the Confucian elites from the mid-ninth century and the demise of the Tang dynasty, however, marked the termination of the Nestorian mission in China. By the end of the twelfth century, Christianity abruptly disappeared from Asia: ‘Like a sun in eclipse, Christianity in Asia moved so abruptly, yet so imperceptively, from its peaks of expansion down into the shadows of history, that it is difficult to pinpoint any precise moment at which progress turned into decline.’8 The causes of the abrupt dissolution of the Christian community are associated with and/or attributed to the rise of Islam and the death of Kublai Khan in 1294, who was the protector of the church in China after its assimilation into the Mongolian Empire. The visible resurfacing – which seems more akin to reintroduction – of Christianity in Asia occurred from the nineteenth century through the growth of missionary activity.9 For this reason, Christian theology in/from Asia cannot be considered independently from what we might label as the ‘Western Christianity’. Even today, the vast majority of Asian churches and seminaries rely on the West for graduate-level theological education. This brings several crucial contextual issues to consider when sculpting the parameters, methods and contents of Asian theology, precisely because Asian Christianity and its theological reflections have emerged in the milieu of interactions between Christianity and the historic Asian religions, Western colonization and Western mission endeavours. Hyun Kyung Chung pejoratively depicts the Korean Protestantism as being ‘literally frozen from the nineteenth-century American missionary theology, based on

6

7 8 9

Ibid., p. 25. According to Moffett, this view is reasonably well supported, although not without dissenting voices. See Saeki, The Nestorian Movement in China (London: SPCK, 1916), pp. 118–61. Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia: Volume I: Beginnings to 1500, p. 471. C. S. Song, ‘Asia’, in The Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture (ed. John F. A. Sawyer; Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 158–75 (173).

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biblical fundamentalism’.10 Although her statement echoes obvious liberationist and liberal bias, the influence of Western theological enterprise upon Asian Christianity cannot be dismissed. The starting point for the development of Asian theology, therefore, is intimately related to ‘the development of indigenization in the early twentieth century and the recent development of the concept of contextualization in missions’.11 The justification of contextualization comes from both the Bible and the inherited tradition from the West. Alister McGrath captures the dilemma of an Asian theologian: Why, for example, should an Asian feel in the slightest degree obligated to continue such a tradition? Is not the correct and obvious way ahead in the next century to develop theologies that arise out of her own engagement with the realities of the gospel, rather than accept what someone else – generally from a Western context-has bequeathed her? . . . The history of evangelicalism suggests that the success of the movement rests on its willingness to correlate Scripture with the context in which it finds itself, rather than simply reaching backward into evangelical history to draw out past correlations.12

Unpacking the presuppositions of McGrath’s assertion allows one to retrieve three important heuristic tools in dealing with the task of theology. One, Western thought is neither universally accepted nor necessarily valid. Two, the Bible lends itself to and must be interpreted within and communicate to different cultures and generations. Three, evangelicalism as held today has ties to both tradition and contextualization. In other words, contextualization derives its legitimacy not only from the task of mission but was also inherent in the frameworks of the Bible and Western theological tradition. Specifically, given the fact that God’s special revelation in the Scripture is delivered in the Jewish and Hellenistic cultures, the Bible must be translated into Asian cultures. The fact of universal revelation in nature and cultures also provides an impetus for contextualization of theology. Christian faith by no means is static, and the Bible does not point to a single culture as the normative

10

11

12

‘Theologian Takes on Establishment’, Joongang Daily, 24 June 2004. Quoted by Jenkins, Believing the Bible in the Global South, p. 19. Bong Rin Ro, ‘Asian Theology’, in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (ed. Walter A. Elwell; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2nd edn, 2001), pp. 106–8 (106). For a collaborative volume on Asian theologies, see John C. England et al. (eds), Asian Christian Theologies: A Research Guide to Authors, Movements, Sources (3 vols; Maryknoll: Orbis, 2002–04). Alister McGrath, ‘Evangelical Theological Method’, in Evangelical Futures: A Conversation on Theological Method (ed. John G. Stackhouse, Jr; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), pp. 21–38 (36).

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framework for receiving and transmitting the contents of God’s revelation. Anri Morimoto explains, The encounter of Christianity with Asian religious traditions must go through a complex process of negotiation, and it generates a host of creative amalgamation throughout the process. This is a recurring and inevitable process, inasmuch as the gospel is to take root in any given culture.13

In addition, given the fact that the conceptual frameworks of the East and West are inherently and markedly different, the value of expressing theological reflections from Asian contexts is vital.14 Indeed, during the last few decades, the Global South has produced an impressive volume of theological works that have been wrought by unprecedented, ‘radical theological perspectives’.15 A prototype theological contextualization or accommodation in Asian context was done by the Jesuit missionary of the sixteenth century, Matteo Ricci. He sought to explain Roman Catholic teachings by utilizing the indigenous Chinese cultural traditions.16 For example, Ricci employed the popularly recognized Chinese Buddhist term Tien Chu (the Lord of Heaven) as the name for God. Interestingly, Ricci’s translation of Catholic teachings into Chinese was read by a group of visiting scholars from Korea, which became the seed of their conversion into Christianity in the seventeenth century.17 Korean Catholics still use the term (pronounced as Cheon-Joo) to this day. Today, theologies from Asia by Asians are as versatile and complex as the continent itself. There is a vast array of Asian theologies, commonly classified as Indian theology, Indian dalit theology, Japanese theology, minjung theology, Burmese theology, Sri Lankan theology and so forth. One of the seminal works of Asia’s self-expression of the Christian faith is Kazoh Kitamori’s Theology of the Pain of God (1946). Kitamori’s work endeavours to relate God of the Bible to the post-Second World War situation in Japan. 13

14

15 16

17

Anri Morimoto, ‘Asian Theology in the Ablative Case’, Studies in World Christianity 17.3 (2011), pp. 201–15 (204). For a concise comparison of the thought patterns between the East and the West, see John C. England, ‘Cranes Ever Flying: Creativity and Continuity in Contextual Asian Theologies’, Asia Journal of Theology 21.2 (2007), pp. 242–60. See also Miyon Chung, ‘Working with Asians’, in Learning to Lead: Lessons in Leadership for People of Faith (ed. Willard W. C. Ashley; Woodstock: Skylight Paths, 2013), pp. 273–86. Jenkins, Believing the Bible in the Global South, p. 6. See Minho Song, ‘Apologetics of Matteo Ricci: Lessons from the Past’, Journal of Asian Mission 4.1 (2002), pp. 79–95. For a comprehensive review of Asian theologies of ecumenical as well as conservative orientations, see Hwa Yung, Mangoes or Bananas? The Quest for an Authentic Asian Christian Theology (Oxford: Regnum, 1997), pp. 123–220. Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia: Volume II: 150–1900 (American Society of Missiology Series, 36; 2 vols; Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2005), p. 146.

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Despite his persistent denial, however, the work is accused of patripassianism and consequently contributes to the contemporary discussion on divine suffering.18 In the last several decades, there has been a proliferation of the so-called Asian ‘contextual theologies’.19 The first Asian Theological Conference (ACT I) took place in Sri Lanka in January 1979, three years after the establishment of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT).20 Broadly, contextual theology considers seriously the local cultures, religions, situations and issues out of Asia. Ecumenical theologians who work with the World Council of Churches (WCC) are the main contributors. Asian contextual theologies can be schematized into two major categories.21 The first group represents attempts to synthesize Christian theology and Asian religions, which many Asian evangelicals consider syncretistic or pluralistic. The major proponents of contextual theology belong to ecumenical, mainline denominations. Kosuke Koyama, a Japanese missionary to Thailand, produced Waterbuffalo Theology – A Thai Theological Notebook (1974, 1999). Positing a Thai farmer’s daily life as the starting point of theological reflection and the cross as a theological criterion by which to appropriate the religiously pluralistic traditions of Asia, Koyama imaginatively tried to communicate God’s presence as being operative in non-Christian cultures and faiths in the world. Raimon Panikkar’s synthesis between the Bible and Hinduism resulted in The Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Towards an Ecumenical Christophany (1981). He argued that Jesus of the New Testament should be understood as a cosmic-Christ who already ‘indwells the heart of a Hindu and that the mission of the church is not to bring Christ to the Hindu but to bring Christ out of him’.22 Also widely recognized in ecumenical circles are C. S. Song’s narrative works Third-Eyed Theology: Theology in Formation in Asian Settings (1979) and Theology from the

18 19

20

21

22

Morimoto, ‘Asian Theology’, p. 208. The latest reprint of Kitamori’s work was in 2005. Todd S. LaBute, ‘Beyond Contextualism: A Plea for Asian First Level Theology’, Asian Journal of Theology 20.1 (2006), pp. 36–56 (43–44). The papers read during this historic conference in Wennappuwa, Sri Lanka are collected and published in Virginia Fabella (ed.), Asia’s Struggle for Full Humanity: Towards a Relevant Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1980). The division used here is a reduction from Bon Rin Ro’s four classification: syncretism, accommodation, situational theology and biblically oriented Asian theology – by which he means evangelicalism. See Ro, ‘Contextualization: Asian Theology’, in The Bible and Theology in Asian Contexts: An Evangelical Perspective on Asian Theology (ed. Bong Rin Ro and Ruth Eshenaur; Seoul: Word of Life Press and ATA, 1984), pp. 63–78 (68–75). For a brief overview of classifications with a suggestion for methodology, see Richard Ngun, ‘Contexts of Christian Theology in Asia: A Methodological Proposal’, Stulos Theological Journal 5 (1997), pp. 69–96. See also Sebastian C. H. Kim (ed.), Christian Theology in Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. i. Another Indian theologian, M. M. Thomas, also uses the motif of cosmic-Christ to relate the gospel to Indian culture, Secular Ideologies of India and the Secular Meaning of Christ (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1976).

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Womb of Asia (1986).23 Peter Phan in Being Religious Interreligiously offered a pluralistic theological foundation for interreligious dialogue from the Roman Catholic Church’s point of view.24 Modelled after these works, some Asian theologians have attempted to recast the doctrine of the Trinity in an Asian conceptual framework using Buddhist, Taoist or Hindu teachings.25 Whether these fresh articulations of the ancient Nicene Trinitarian formula are successful is doubtful at best primarily because they have not yet been widely accepted, even by Asian Christians. The next group of works is often associated with liberation theology because they address the particular and concrete situations of suffering that confront the churches in Asia. Specifically, they address the intertwined impacts that colonization, decolonization and globalization have had in Asia, across all the spectrum of life.26 Asians have not only suffered from colonization but also from the postcolonial demarcations of new national borders, tribal and people group conflicts, wars and communism. These already dire situations are exacerbated by the indigenous conditions of poverty, recurring environmental calamities, oppression and corruption that affect the vast majority of Asian continent. Taking the situation of colonization, decolonization and the ensuing Asian migration across the globe as the starting points of analysis, Asians are jointly producing a distinctive hermeneutical/theological genre of scholarship in biblical hermeneutics and theologies.27 Additionally, the rise of ecumenism and interreligious or interfaith dialogue has also fuelled the reshaping of theology from the vantage point of Asian religious heritages. Perhaps one of the best known of this type is the Korean exploration of han in minjung theology.28 Minjung theology itself is diversified precisely because 23

24 25

26

27

28

For a collection of Asian works dealing with Buddhism, see Kenneth Fleming, Asian Christian Theologians in Dialogue with Buddhism (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2002). Peter Phan in Being Religious Interreligiously (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004). See Jung Young Lee, The Trinity in the Perspective (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996). Lee contends that the doctrine of the Trinity, having been constructed in the Greek conceptual framework of ‘either/ or’ terms, is not feasible for Asians to relate. He, therefore, opts to use Taoism to recast the reality of the Trinity. The problem, however, is that Taoism as a philosophy has undergone considerable reshaping through history and contains much ambiguity for the contemporary East Asians. Founded on such a foundation (or sifted through such a sieve), Lee’s model fails to give clarity to neither the individuation nor the unity of the Trinity. For commentaries on the subject of Asian attempts to rearticulate the Trinity, see Paul S. Chung, ‘The Asian Pursuit of the Trinitarian Theology in a Multireligious Context’, Journal of Reformed Theology 3 (2009), pp. 144–56. A. A. Yewangoe, Theologia Crucis in Asia: Asian Christian Views on Suffering in the Face of Overwhelming Poverty and Multifaceted Religiosity in Asia (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987). R. S. Sugirtharajah is a leading Asian theologian of postcolonial explorations. See his Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); The Bible and Empire: Postcolonial Explorations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and The Postcolonial Biblical Readers (Malden: Blackwell, 2006). See Song, ‘Asia’, pp. 158–75. Andrew Sung Park, The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concepts of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993).

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its methodology allows the theologian to take the subjective experience of the suffering people as an interpretive and constructive key. Today, there is certainly no shortage of Asian contextual theologies, their main thrust being liberation of persons from social injustice, economic exploitation, political oppression and racial/gender discrimination.29 South Asia in particular has emerged as ‘one of the most fertile’ theological localities in contemporary times generating worldwide interests.30 A positive example, albeit not without caution, is illustrated in Michael Amaladoss’s The Asian Jesus (2006). He deconstructs the Europeanized depictions of Jesus and opts to highlight the ‘Asianness’ of Jesus’ context portrayed in the New Testament. Based on the many symbols of Jesus the New Testament bequeaths (e.g. ‘the King’, ‘Lamb’ and ‘Shepherd’), he gleans innovative images for Jesus Christ from Asia’s own religious traditions. They include ‘Jesus the Sage’, ‘Jesus the Way’, ‘Jesus the Guru’, ‘Jesus the Satyagrahi’, ‘Jesus the Avatar’, ‘Jesus the Servant’, ‘Jesus the Compassionate’, ‘Jesus the Dancer’ and ‘Jesus the Pilgrim’.31 In so doing, Amaladoss denotes how distant the Christology embedded in Greek metaphysics seems to Asians and reminds us that symbols more closely communicate the realities of Jesus to contemporary Asians: ‘Some people may think that symbols and images are not adequate means of exploring the significance of the person and life of Jesus. They feel satisfied only with dogmatic formulas.’32

The inadequacy of Asian contextual theologies According to Edmond Tang, contextual theologies – referencing the East Asian theologies from China, Japan and Korea – are not necessarily ‘determined by a 29

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32

See Virginia Fabella, Peter K. H. Lee and David Kwang-Sun Suh (eds), Asian Spirituality: Reclaiming Traditions (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1992). This book reflects a search for Asian spirituality of liberation and includes theologies from different countries in Asia such as Korea, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka. See also R. S. Sugirtharajah (ed.), Frontiers in Asian Christian Theology: Emerging Trends (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2010); Paul S. Chang, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen and Kim Kyoung-Jae (eds), Asian Contextual Theology for the Third Millennium: Theology of Minjung in Fourth-Eye Formation (Eugene: Pickwick, 2007); and A. A. Yewangoe, Theologia Crucis in Asia: Asian Christian Views on Suffering in the Face of Overwhelming Poverty and Multifaceted Religiosity in Asia (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987). Felix Wilfred, ‘Theologies of South Asia’, in The Modern Theologians (ed. David F. Ford; Oxford: Blackwell, 3rd edn, 2012), p. 502. Christian faith by no means is static, and the Bible does not point to a single culture as the normative framework for receiving and transmitting the contents of God’s revelation. Given the fact that the conceptual frameworks of the East and West are inherently and markedly different, therefore, the value of expressing theological thoughts within Asian contexts is vital. Amaladoss, The Asian Jesus (Maryknoll: Obis Books, 2006). Note also another Roman Catholic work by Peter C. Phan, In Our Own Tongues: Perspectives from Asia on Mission and Inculturation (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2003). Amaladoss, The Asian Jesus, p. 2.

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particular situation in which they are trapped or . . . its pale reflection’.33 Religion has had a central role in the above nations’ political life. Set in the background of such ethos, Tang analyses the interaction between Christianity as a minority religion in the three nations and the formation of the modern-state of the three nations. He insightfully characterizes contextual theology as an attempt to theologize the interaction between Christianity and culture, particularly the political enculturation of the above three nations’ formation as modern states. In doing so, Tang retrieves a noteworthy function of contextual theology: ‘The extent to which a theology is identified with the context is partly the extent of its ability to arrive at self-understanding and through self-understanding to acquire a critical function.’34 For the evangelical church, however, Tang’s assessment of contextual theology aforementioned is critically devoid of a specific reference to the Bible’s context which is prior and fundamental in theological reflection. Theological reflection must not be conditioned or eclipsed by cultural elements. The main purpose of theologizing lies not in the arrival of a given culture’s ‘self-understanding’ but in the formation and sustenance of the church’s faith that springs from God’s self-revelation in and through the Bible. Evangelical theologians, therefore, are especially apprehensive about the threat of marginalizing the fundamental biblical teachings and of syncretism during the process of contextualization.35 Unfortunately, Tang’s study of contextual theologies highlights their characteristically subjective and relativistic nature and scope. There is little consensus even in definition and implementation of methodology, much less in establishing the acceptable parameters of the content.36 As heuristically useful as they might be to raise a fresh or subversive theological perspective, the seemingly endless possibility for variation inevitably evokes the question of legitimacy and historical and cross-cultural continuity with the gospel and the past Christian tradition. Anri Morimoto provides an incisive verdict on the phenomenon: The drive for contextualisation is itself a cause of diversification. The more successful the contextualisation is, the more diversified the faith expressions will be, fine-tuned to each culture and sub-culture along with the dividing lines of gender, class, ethnicity, and the like. Some Asian theologians are forthrightly 33

34 35 36

Edmond Tang, ‘Theology and Context in East Asia – China, Japan, Korea’, Studies in World Christianity 1.1 (1995), pp. 68–79 (77). Ibid. LaBute, ‘Beyond Contextualism’, pp. 36–56 (44). David Hesselgrave and Edward Rommen’s Contextualization: Meaning, Methods, and Models (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989) is helpful in understanding the complexity of contextualization of Christian theology.

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Theology and the Future affirming what seems disquietingly close to a syncretistic compromise. What, then, constitutes the very essence of Christianity across all these different expressions of faith? Where is the line of demarcation to be drawn, outside of which no expression is accepted as belonging to the global family of Christianity?37

Moreover, writing as an Indian Roman Catholic theologian, K. P. Aleaz repudiates the very rationale of contextualization, variously categorized as indigenization, adaptation, contextualization and enculturation, because it is rooted in the presupposition that the gospel is ‘external and alien to’ Asians and that it requires a radical surgery of language for Asians to comprehend.38 He offers the further criticism that contextual theologies methodologically delimit the God of the Bible as a local God who is inherently foreign to Asians: Indigenization is a contradiction in terms because it is an artificial attempt to make indigenous that which is not indigenous. It implies a Christian theology which is ‘foreign’, that has to be translated in India. Theologically it is also branding God the Creator as a foreigner to one’s country and culture. We should not forget that God and Christian theology are always indigenous to our country.39

Lastly, an evangelical theologian Hwa Yung in his dissertation, Mangoes or Bananas?, discerns that Asian contextual theologies are not necessarily ‘Asian’. After reviewing the representative trends in Asian ecumenical and evangelical theologies, he claims that Asian Christian theology has not yet emerged because they are entrenched in the presuppositions, methods, and hermeneutical biases inherited from Enlightenment rationality and subsequent Protestant theological liberalism.40 Asian contextual theologies fail to engage the biblical portrayal of spiritual and supernatural reality with the complex cosmic and ancestral spiritual interfacing prevalently held by Asians; contextual theologies tend to be superficial and artificial in method and content. Instead, Yung argues that Asian theology must be like ‘mangoes’ (yellow inside and out) instead of being like ‘bananas’ (yellow outside but white inside). Vinoth Ramachandra also asserts that Asian contextual theologies are not accommodative to indigenous ways of thinking; rather, they are built on

37 38

39 40

Morimoto, ‘Asian Theology’, p. 204. K. P. Aleaz, ‘The Theology of Inculturation Re-examined’, Asia Journal of Theology 25.2 (2011), pp. 228–49 (245). Ibid. Yung, Mangoes or Bananas, pp. 72–74.

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uncritical acceptance of Protestant liberalism.41 They engage Asian religions and spirituality with biblical teachings, but their assumptions and methods are profoundly influenced by the legacy of Enlightenment thought. They are in essence localized or Asian-enculturated implementations of Western theological models.42 As such, although highly appraised by ecumenical scholars, they fail to inspire much interest outside of their own academic community. His critique is echoed in Philip Jenkins’s observations: Often, though, it can be difficult to tell which of these voices accurately represent the thought of the wider Christian community in those societies. Generally, attention focuses on academic or educated opinions, on the voices of professors, bishops, and church leaders, the sort of people who write books that get published in Europe or North America; but this emphasis can give a distorted view of global South traditions.43

The thrust of Jenkins’s depiction, of course, is not to underestimate or undermine the massive undertakings accomplished by Asian contextual theologians, but to reveal the vital perspective that academicians and ‘ordinary’ believers do not often have the same perception or proclivity in relation to what they consider spiritually significant.44 Bong Rin Ro’s statement tersely captures the occasion, background and nature of Asian contextual theologies: ‘Theological ideas are created on the European continent, corrected in England, corrupted in America, and crammed into Asia.’45

The biblical reality not so alien to Asians In Asia, evangelicalism is more popularly accepted than the so-called indigenized, contextualized theologies. As Simon Chan explains, ‘evangelicalism has much in common with the spiritual instincts of Asians’.46 Existentially, Asians tend to 41

42

43 44 45 46

Vinoth Ramachandra, The Rediscovery of Mission: Beyond the Pluralist Paradigm (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), pp. 24–30. For example, the ecumenical contextual theologies from Asia reflect Paul Tillich’s understanding of theology. He rightly saw theology as a ‘function of the church’ for the purpose of delivering ‘the needs of the church’. Like Tillich, ecumenical theologians of Asia tend to take the historical realities inscribed in the Bible in symbolic sense only. See Tillich, Systematic Theology: Existence and the Christ (vol. 1; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), p. 62. See also vol. 2, p. 154. Jenkins, Believing the Bible in the Global South, p. 7. Ibid., p. 8. Quoted in Ro, ‘Asian Theology’, p. 106. Simon Chan, ‘Evangelical Theology in Asian Contexts’, in Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology (ed. Timothy Larsen and Daniel Treier; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 225–40 (225–26).

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operate out of a holistic world view and are culturally disposed to accept the spiritual dimension of reality. As diverse and multifaceted as Asians are, Asian religiosity is in tune with the evangelical, holistic notion of salvation rather than the constricted notion of salvation fashioned by the heirs of the Enlightenment. Asian ethos, therefore, is a fertile ‘soil’ for evangelical preaching on ‘conversion’, the core of evangelical life: [Asians perceive] reality in its totality and affirms a spiritual world behind the worldview of observable reality. Such a world has closer affinity with evangelicalism with its emphasis on spiritual conversion (‘born again’) than with liberal Protestantism. It resonates even more deeply with the Pentecostalcharismatic world. 47

Philip Jenkins also affirms that Asian churches (in company with African churches) are ‘quite at home with Biblical notions of the supernatural’.48 Spiritual warfare, dreams, prophecy and healing need no naturalistic explanations or apology. Recognition of the supernatural creates anticipation of miracles such as healing, which is accepted as ‘integral part of the narrative of conversion and salvation’.49 In the 1980s a significant amount of literature and testimony was produced by Asian churches, reflecting their keen interest and ardent desire to experience miracles. For example, Andrew E. Kim’s study of the sermons preached in prominent Korean churches during the last two decades before the turn of the century exemplifies the observation. He verifies that ‘ethical or pedagogical themes remained relatively inconspicuous’, whereas sermons on the miraculous healings in the Bible as the manifestation of divine love and power – unfortunately, sometimes to ‘the level of magical potency’ – were prevalent.50 Asian churches (in company with African churches), therefore, are experiencing a visible ‘return to scriptural roots’.51 Asian church life demonstrates that where there is faith, God grants miracles (Mk 5.35; 10.52),52 and that this experience in turn confirms and reinforces the belief in the authenticity and relevance of the biblical narratives in contemporary lives. Indeed, to the 47

48 49 50

51 52

Ibid., p. 227. It has been said that Asian understandings of conversion come from those who hold a pre-modern world view. Chan, however, rightly repudiates that argument because the category was derived from the Western rationalistic paradigm. Moreover, the idea of ‘pre-modernism’ conveys that those who embrace the perspective will or must eventually outgrow it. Chan, therefore, prefers to use the term ‘primal’ world view. Jenkins, Believing the Bible in the Global South, pp. ix, 7, 114. Jenkins, Next Christendom, p. 8. Andrew E. Kim, ‘Korean Religious Culture and Its Affinity to Christianity’, Sociology of Religion 61.2 (2000), pp. 117–33. Jenkins, Believing the Bible in the Global South, p. ix. Bible verses unless otherwise stated in this chapter are from the English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Publishers).

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missionaries in the Global South, the biblical narratives that depict Jesus as a divine healer offer a legitimate basis on which to pray for the sick.53 Asian churches not only gravitate towards the biblical stories of healing but also look to them for deliverance from their systemic and environmental plights. Many Asian churches also identify existentially with the Bible’s ‘core social and political themes’ such as ‘martyrdom, oppression, and exile’. They read the Bible with a sense of ‘immediacy’ and expect its veracity to deliver them from the present struggles.54 The lived experiences of Asian Christians, in other words, confirm that biblical salvation speaks of a holistic, inclusive deliverance from all things ensued by sin, even though its consummation is not yet. Furthermore, evangelicalism when transported to Asia needs to be redefined in ways less institutionally strict, because its core beliefs and practices are espoused by a greater population of Christians in Asia.55 There are, of course, the corresponding Western forms of evangelical fellowships linked to World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) and the regional theological affiliation of the WEA Theological Commission, the Asia Theological Association (ATA).56 In addition, a wide range of Asian Christians share the core evangelical beliefs and practices. They include numerous Pentecostal churches, some of which are not associated with any Western denominations. A significant part of mainline Protestant denominations across Asia is evangelical and charismatic.57 The mainline Protestant churches in Asia did not embrace or remain loyal to the Western Protestant liberalism. Protestants in China are an illustration of this phenomenon: ‘The theology represented by the “very top” officials of the China Christian Church (CCC) is probably not shared by most of the members of CCC congregations or even their rank-and-file pastors, the theology of the latter being mostly evangelical and charismatic.’58 Indeed, the churches in Asia forged a ‘new form of ecumenism’ based on the predominance of evangelical and charismatic dimensions of the contemporary Christian faith and practical expressions.

53

54

55 56

57 58

Wonsuk Ma, ‘When the Poor Are Fired Up: The Role of Pneumatology in Pentecostal-Charismatic Mission’, Transformation 24.1 (2007), pp. 28–34 (29–30). Jenkins, Believing the Bible in the Global South, p. ix. Note also Jenkins’s further comments on page 5: ‘The Bible has found a congenial home among communities who identify with the social and economic realities it portrays, no less than the political environments in which Christians find themselves. For the growing churches of the global South, the Bible speaks to everyday, real-world issues of poverty and debt, famine and urban crisis, racial and gender oppression, state brutality and persecution. The omnipresence of poverty promotes awareness of the transience of life, the dependence of individuals and nations on God, and the distrust of the secular order.’ Chan, ‘Evangelical Theology in Asian Contexts’, p. 225. See Bong Rin Ro, ‘A History of Evangelical Theological Education in Asia (ATA): 1970–1990’, Torch Trinity Journal 11.1 (2008), pp. 24–44. Chan, ‘Evangelical Theology in Asian Contexts’, pp. 225–26. Ibid., p. 226. Like China’s, Korea’s mainline denominations are also largely evangelical.

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Last but not least, Ken Gnanakan renounces ecumenical versions of Asian theologies because they deny or compromise the integrity and uniqueness of the gospel. Pluralism, he asserts, is ‘not saying anything different to [sic] what the liberal Hindu has been saying all along [that] all religions are of equal value and lead to the same God’.59 He elaborates that the church’s ‘commitment to God’s mission will only be a real commitment if it is based on a conviction of its uniqueness’.60 Building on the same conviction, Vinoth Ramachandra argues that Scripture and the Christian tradition afford a fuller horizon for analysing the complex and diverse human condition in Asia, than the reductionist political theologies. He writes, ‘unless we reflect biblically, rather than pragmatically or ideologically, on the diverse forms of human suffering, all our praxis will simply short-circuit.’61 At least in Asia (and in Africa as well), it is decisive that the remarkable growth of the church cannot possibility be attributed to ecumenical or political theology.

Conclusion The preceding presentation on the historical and contextual architecture of Asian theology illustrates the vitality, complexity and necessity of theological reflections rising out of Asian Christianity. The pivotal assumption for many theological undertakings in Asia is that without contextualization relevancy would not be possible. As a means of cultivating high relevancy in Asian theological endeavour, C. S. Song calls the Asian church to construct Asia’s own theology ‘with Bible and Asian resources in Asia’.62 His ardent desire is to cultivate Asian theology freed from ‘Western missionary Christianity and the theology of mission it represented’.63 Capturing the thrust of ecumenical, contextual theologies, he writes: Theology in Asia is on the move . . . demanding that the Bible be open to the realities of Asia and to the experience of Asian people in very different cultural situations. The Bible and Asian resources, historical, social, political, cultural 59 60

61

62 63

Ken Gnanakan, The Pluralist Predicament (Bangalore: Theological Book Trust, 1992), p. 3. Ken Gnanakan, Kingdom Concerns: A Biblical Exploration towards a Theology of Mission (Bangalore: Theological Book Trust, 1989), p. 199. Ramachandra, The Rediscovery of Mission, p. 60. He gives C. S. Song as a case in point: ‘C. S. Song’s singing the praises of the communist revolution under Mao Zedong as liberation movements is misguided and naïve as subsequent histories of these countries have shown.’ See Ramachandra, The Rediscovery of Mission, pp. 67–68. Song, ‘Asia’, p. 170. Ibid., p. 158.

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and religious, will interact with each other and illuminate each other, enabling Christians to perceive at a deeper level how God has been present and active in Asia, not only in the past two centuries through Western missionary efforts but in centuries past, present and future through countless Asian humanity.64

As inspiring and affirming as this invitation is to burgeoning Asian theologians, however, C. S. Song’s words resound with the aforementioned problems of relativism and syncretism. His proposal is predicated upon the assumption that there is only fluidity between culture and Scripture and thereby dismisses the inherent tension between the two. Song’s proposal also seems to evade the fact that contextualized theologies by nature eventually become detached or eclipsed by the tidal waves of paradigm shifts. Most importantly, theology of this sort inevitably dislocates itself from the core biblical teachings and therefore fails to maintain biblically based constancy. The necessity of relevancy, of course, is not new with Asian theological undertakings nor is it unimportant. But contextual relevancy must not compromise or undermine the theological task of faithfulness to Scripture.65 If Christian theology is to have a future in Asia, it must be authentically Christian as well as authentically Asian. To be so, Asian theology must embody at least two salient dimensions; it must stand in continuity with the confessions in the Bible by which its continuity with the historic confessions of the church can be established, and it must resonate with the dynamic life of the Asian church.66 For evangelicals, therefore, what is authentically Asian must also be authentically biblical. Both relevancy and authenticity must be reciprocally grounded in Scripture and not just in Asian contexts. The drive for addressing the diverse historical and cultural manifestations in Asia cannot overtake the primacy and normativity of Scripture for methodology and epistemic authority. In fact, the evangelically oriented churches in Asia have located an alternative way of striking at relevancy without compromising the authenticity of the

64 65

Ibid., p. 173. For references, see Hwa Yung in Mangoes or Bananas, pp. 56–58, chapters 2 and 3. Although Hwa Yung’ work falls short of actually providing what can be called an Asian Christian theology, the four criteria he identifies to assess Asian theology can be employed as heuristic tools to analyse contextual theologies. He argues that contextual theologies must: address the varied socio-political contexts that Asian churches encounter; empower the evangelistic and pastoral ministries of the churches in Asia; use biblically sound ways of facilitating the enculturation of the gospel; and be faithful to the Christian tradition.

66

The above can be reclassified into two categories of relevancy and authenticity in a similar way to ‘The Seoul Declaration’ (1982) by ATA (Asia Theological Association) and the ‘Guidelines for Doing Theology in Asia’ (2007) by ATESEA (Association for Theological Schools in South East Asia). Amos Yong, ‘The Future of Evangelical Theology: Asian and Asian American Interrogations’, Asia Journal of Theology 21.2 (2007), pp. 371–97 (378–81).

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Christian faith grounded in the ‘literal’ reading of the Bible. As illustrated in the foregoing pages, the Bible itself bestows powerful relevancy for people in Asia. Asian world view allows them to read the Bible not as a historical book in need of modernizing but a powerfully relevant book for today. In consequence, Asian churches (as a component of ‘Southern’ Christianity) contribute to the rest of Christianity a testimony that the Bible can be read with ‘a freshness and authenticity’ that enhances the Bible’s ‘credibility as an authoritative source and a guide for daily living’.67 As Simon Chan describes, the evangelically oriented Asian churches have found a way to articulate their beliefs without having to conform strictly to the theological systems of the West. For instance, they are producing theological narratives of momentous encounters with God in the form of holistic experiences of salvation. These concrete, holistic experiences in turn evoke theological questions regarding traditional understandings of salvation. Simon Chan writes: ‘The experience of many Asian Christians has shown that the biblical idea of the Holy Spirit as the foretaste of the new creation (2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13, 14) is more than an idea; it is a present reality.’68 Therefore, the present salvific experiences that confirm the reality inscribed in the Bible have the potential to push the status quo of theological reflection, thereby enriching and refreshing the received tradition.69 This brings us to the weighty and complicated relationship that Asian experience and theological reflection have with the fabric of Christian tradition. According to Robert L. Wilken, theologians must speak for the church and not just about the church.70 From its incipient formation, theology was done by the church, for the church. In this context, tradition can to be received as a gift – a dialogue partner and a heuristic trajectory – that navigates our own questions. For evangelicals, tradition must not be elevated to the level of Scripture, but the very questions and answers that have shaped the historical expressions of the Christian faith can serve to shed light into the present life of Asian Christians. Moreover, through a carefully crafted critical engagement, tradition can serve to forge a historic continuity. Wilken writes: 67 68

69

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Jenkins, Believing the Bible in the Global South, p. 5. Chan, ‘Evangelical Theology in Asian Contexts’, pp. 225–40 (232). One must note, however, the danger found in Asian Pentecostal theologies. See Wonsuk Ma’s appraisal of Korean Pentecostal theology: ‘David Yonggi Cho’s Theology of Blessing: Basis, Legitimacy, and Limitations’, Evangelical Review of Theology 35.2 (2011), pp. 140–59. See McGrath ‘Engaging the Great Tradition: Evangelical Theology and the Role of Tradition’, in Evangelical Futures, pp. 139–58. See also Roger E. Olson, ‘Reforming Evangelical Theology’, Evangelical Futures, pp. 201–8 (206). Robert L. Wilkens, Remembering the Christian Past (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 1–23.

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Without memory the language of scholarship is impoverished, barren, and lifeless, a tottering scaffold of secondary creations in which ‘words refer only to words.’ If we keep a cool distance from temporality and history, we make the task of understanding more not less difficult. . . . [M]emory aids in this work, its role is not only prophylactic but constructive.71

Finally, David Ford’s simple description of ‘theology’ from The Future of Christian Theology can be a helpful operative definition for thinking about the nature and task of theology in Asian context. He writes, ‘Christian theology is thinking about questions raised by and about Christian faith and practice.’72 In so doing, theologians must strive to articulate not only the rational component of faith but also convey the wisdom and passion that underlie it.73 Theological reflection rises out of a concrete life situation that propels the church to embark on a journey of passionate search for wisdom. Religious faith or piety is intrigued, inspired, formed and reformed by much more than what theology can articulate. Hence, although ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ – insofar as all our endeavours are nothing apart from our understanding of God, and all our questions are destined to consummate in the question about God (Eccl. 1.9) – the exceedingly diverse and dynamic experiences of Asian churches can serve to elucidate that the struggles in Scripture have prophetic relevance to contemporary life around the globe. Viewed in this light, the present time is ripe for Asian churches to engage in theological activities precisely because of the complexity and instability of life conditions in Asia. From biblical times to contemporary church history, theological reflection (theologizing) was not only stimulated by sociopolitical vicissitudes but also has been indispensable to sustaining and expanding the believing community faced with paradigm changes. After all, as the continent of greatest population force, Asia is the home of the greatest scales of disasters, migration, sociopolitical upheavals, poverty and injustice. Asia’s urgent and critical slice of reality summons theologians to render not only an orderly theological reflection but also one that reflects God’s passionate concern for the downtrodden and marginalized.74

71 72 73 74

Ibid., p. 15. David Ford, The Future of Christian Theology (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), p. 1. Ibid., pp. 1–22. For examples of theological works that address sociopolitical ethical issues in Asia, see David H. Lumsdaine (ed.), Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Paul Freston, Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 88–92; Lee Sung Ock, ‘A Time Like This: Korean Church and the Privatization of Religion’, International Congregational Journal 6.2 (2007), pp. 43–61.

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5

Not a Wisdom of This Age: Theology and the Future of the Post-Christendom Church David Starling

Is there a place for theology in the future of the church? A question of this sort could be asked and answered in a variety of ways. If we assume that the ‘future’ referred to in the question is the immediate, earthly future of the church – the next few decades, or the next few centuries, perhaps – we could appeal to various predictive disciplines for their projections about the shape of things to come and attempt to say something sensible about the likelihood or the desirability of Christian theology surviving in that sort of environment, or about the kind of Christian theology that we might expect to evolve in a context of that sort. An economist or a social demographer or a cyber-anthropologist, for example, could make observations about the trends in the religious marketplace, or the shifts in the population of Sydney or Australia or the world, or the reconfiguration of social space; on the basis of these, intelligent predictions could be made about their implications for the evolution or extinction of theology. I am none of those things, however, and it would be foolish for me to pretend to be. Instead, my intention in this chapter is to restrict the predictive element of my comments to one trend only, and to a trend that is slow-moving, long-established and frequently observed – the trend that Matthew Arnold pictured a century and a half ago as the ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar’ of the sea of Christian faith, as the tide runs out from the coasts of Christendom.1

1

Matthew Arnold, ‘Dover Beach’ (1867), in The Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (ed. C. B. Tinker and H. F. Lowry; London: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 211.

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The comments that I intend to make will not be my attempts to forecast the future of theology in such an environment, but to make normative claims about whether we ought to keep doing theology at all, and (if so) about the shape that our theology ought to take. The ‘theology’ on which my thoughts will be focused will be the particular discipline of systematic theology – that is, the discipline of Christian thought that attempts to construct an ordered, rationally coherent account of the nature and interrelationships and purposes of God and his creatures, with comprehensive scope and enduring validity.2 In other words, to recast the original question into something a little more wordy and a little less ambitious, my intention is to ask: is there a legitimate place for systematic theology in the kind of post-Christendom future into which the church in my own part of the world appears to be heading? And if the answer is ‘yes’, what might be the method and tenor of a theology that is authentically Christian and takes proper account of the cultural context of a post-Christendom church?

Hauerwas and ‘systematic theology’ The jumping-off point for my enquiry is an assertion in the opening pages of Stanley Hauerwas’s After Christendom, a book which (like this one) began its life as a New College Lecture series. In the course of the introduction, as Hauerwas explains his approach to the topic, he makes it clear that he will not be addressing it as a systematic theologian. Moreover, he tells us, this is not merely because he himself has felt called to a different line of work; it is because in his view the very notion of a Christian systematic theology is one that is obsolete in our time and was wrong-headed in the first place: ‘The very idea of systematic theology was a result of a church with hegemonic power that belied the very substance that made it church to begin with.’3 Hauerwas’s pugnacious assertion is more than a careless throw-away line; it expresses an assumption that informs his whole approach to thinking and writing about God,4 and raises the question of whether there is – or ought to

2

3

4

For a classical account of the scope and content of systematic theology, see Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.i.3, 7. Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom? How the Church Is to Behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991), p. 19. Cf. the brief observations and friendly criticisms in Robert Jenson, ‘Hauerwas Examined’, First Things 25 (1992), pp. 49–51.

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be – any future at all for theology in the post-Christendom world to which the title of his book refers. When the writer whom Time magazine famously hailed as ‘America’s best theologian’ says, ‘It is not that I am just unsure how to do theology, but that even if I knew how, I am not sure that I would want to do it’,5 there is surely a question to be asked about the discipline and its future. The shots that Hauerwas fires from time to time across the bows of theology (or, more precisely, systematic theology) should not read as a dismissal of all theology per se. Read in context, they are better understood as expressions of Hauerwas’s particular understanding of the social location of the Western church in a post-Christendom era, and his more general concern for the distortion that results when Christian theology is treated as a timeless, universal system of beliefs, disconnected from its social context and consequences and abstracted from the story it is grounded in.6 But it is still a challenge with far-reaching implications for the place of theology in the church’s future. If Hauerwas is right – if systematic theology is, by its very nature, the kind of intellectual cathedralbuilding project engaged in by an established church that sits perched on the epistemological high ground of a complacently Christian culture – then surely, barring a miraculous reversal of the trend of secularization, its time has passed (in the West, at least) and the church needs to find new ways of articulating its knowledge of God. Perhaps (one might conclude) the time has come to replace grand strategy with tactical sorties – a kind of intellectual guerilla warfare.7 Perhaps a postChristendom church ought to abandon the attempt to construct a coherent, comprehensive system of belief about God, the world, humanity, justice, grace, and so forth, justified by appeals to universally accepted criteria of rationality, and concentrate instead on narrating the particular story of Israel, Christ and the church, articulating the various ways in which the bits and pieces of the church’s life ought to be shaped by that story. Or perhaps (to deviate from Hauerwas’s proposal into a more pluralist, postmodern conception of the task of theology) the irreducible differences between times and places are best honoured if we abandon altogether the idea of a single story and a single church, and embrace

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6

7

Stanley Hauerwas, Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), p. 1. The introduction to Sanctify them in the Truth gives a helpful summary of Hauerwas’s take on the task and method of theology. Cf. the ‘ten theses’ that Hauerwas proposed for discussion in ‘A Story-Formed Community: Reflections on Watership Down’, the opening chapter of A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 9–35. Cf. After Christendom, pp. 16–18.

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instead an infinite plurality of ways in which stories of Christ could be told as expressions of the experience of individuals and communities who consider themselves to be connected in some way to him.8 There is much, in my view, that is enormously valuable in the way that Hauerwas reframes the theological task, including his stress on the importance of the community of the church within which theological reflection and assertion takes place and the narrative to which it calls the church to be faithful.9 But does a proper attention to the categories of community and narrative and a serious reckoning with the post-Christendom situation of the Western church render systematic theology redundant? In responding to Hauerwas’s challenge, my plan is to borrow his categories of community and narrative and ask questions about the church as the primary community served by theology, and about the narrative on which Christian theological reflection is based, with the aim of discerning the implications for doing theology in a post-Christendom context.

Post-Christendom Australia? At the outset, it is worth at least briefly examining the post-Christendom premise on which Hauerwas’s challenge is based. The extent to which my own situation in twenty-first-century Australia can be characterized as a ‘postChristendom’ one is of course debatable. At one end of the question, there is room for debate about the degree to which Australia could ever have been described as a ‘Christendom’ country: the image of Samuel Marsden sitting on the magistrate’s bench handing down sentence on unfortunate convicts needs to be placed alongside that of his predecessor, Richard Johnson, digging into his own pocket to find the funds for the settlement’s first church building (only to have it destroyed soon after by arson), and labouring for most of the years 8

9

The emphasis that Hauerwas places on story and community in his approach to theology and ethics should not be misunderstood as an uncritical embrace of postmodern epistemology – in his own words, Hauerwas is ‘just postmodern enough not to trust “postmodern” as a description of our times’. ‘No Enemy, No Christianity: Theology and Preaching between “Worlds”’, in The Future of Theology: Essays in Honor of Jürgen Moltmann (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), pp. 26–34 (27). See also ‘The Christian Difference; or, Surviving Postmodernism’, in A Better Hope: Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and Postmodernity (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2000), pp. 35–46. I would differ from Hauerwas on some points here, mainly to do with the relationship between text, meaning and interpretive community, and the extent to which ‘narrative’ can serve as an adequate characterization of the functions of Scripture and doctrine in the church. Cf. the brief critical comments in Kevin J. Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics (Downers Grove: IVP, 2002), pp. 209–11 and The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: WJK, 2005), pp. 93–100.

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of his ministry under ridicule and contempt of the governor and the marines of the NSW Corps.10 From my own denominational tradition one could add the picture of the first Baptist pastor of the colony, John McKaeg, conducting public baptisms in Woolloomooloo Bay before a crowd of hooting, laughing spectators, or his successor, John Saunders, thundering prophetically from his Bathurst Street pulpit against the dispossession and genocide of the indigenous population.11 From the beginning, it could be argued, New South Wales was not so much an heir of Christendom as a bastard child of the Enlightenment,12 and the churches occupied an uncomfortable and insecure position on the margins of the colony’s existence. At the other end of the question, equally, there is room for debate about whether the Australia of our own time can be said to be a ‘post’Christendom nation, when we still have federally funded Christian chaplains in our schools, Christian prayers at the opening of our parliaments, and a host of other official and unofficial entanglements between church and state.13 Questions like these are worth asking, and add useful nuances to our understanding of the past and present of Christianity in Australia and the future we anticipate. But if, as most who use the term understand it, a ‘postChristendom’ state of affairs is a destination towards which a society travels by means of a gradual cultural and political transition,14 then there is plenty of evidence to support a claim that churches in Australia are in the midst of such a transition.15

The Corinthians our contemporaries As we ponder how Christian theologians ought to think and speak of God within this context, I will be paying particular attention to Paul’s first letter to 10

11

12

13

14

15

Cf. John Gascoigne, The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 19–34. Cf. Ken R. Manley, From Woolloomooloo to ‘Eternity’: A History of Australian Baptists (SBHT, 16; 2 vols; Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2006), pp. 3–4, 30–31. Cf. John Gascoigne’s comments on the ‘mixed ideological parentage’ of the early colony of New South Wales, in Gascoigne, The Enlightenment, p. 20. See especially T. R. Frame, Church and State: Australia’s Imaginary Wall (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2006). Stuart Murray writes of seven transitions in the place of Christianity and the Christian churches within a society (‘from the centre to the margins’; ‘from majority to minority’; ‘from settlers to sojourners’; ‘from privilege to plurality’; ‘from control to witness’; ‘from maintenance to mission’; and ‘from institution to movement’) that characterize the movement into a post-Christendom state of affairs. Stuart Murray, Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004), pp. 19–20. Cf. the indicators of secularization that are discussed in T. R. Frame, Losing My Religion: Unbelief in Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009), pp. 60–104.

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the Corinthians as a canonical (and pre-Christendom) source and exemplar for post-Christendom theology.16 There are at least four reasons why, among all the biblical writings, 1 Corinthians is particularly relevant to the question at hand. First, and perhaps most obviously, there is the language of ‘wisdom’, ‘speech’ and ‘knowledge’ that recurs throughout the letter. This focus on Christian speaking and thinking commences as early as the opening verses, with Paul’s expressions of thankfulness for the way in which the Corinthians have been ‘enriched in [Christ] in speech and knowledge of every kind’ (1.5).17 It continues throughout the letter with extended explorations of various aspects of the content and function of Christian wisdom and knowledge, and a string of abrasive rhetorical questions – ten in all – in which Paul asks the Corinthians, ‘Do you not know. . .?’ Clearly, this is a letter that is intended, among other things, as an education (a remedial education) in how to think and speak Christianly. If there is anywhere in the New Testament where the presence or absence of a warrant for doing theology is worth looking for, 1 Corinthians is that place. Second, there is the explicit attention that the letter pays to the social context within which claims about knowledge are made, used and contested (e.g. 2.6–8; 3.18–20; 4.8–13; 8.1–13; 12.4–11; 15.29–34).18 Given that Hauerwas’s question about the legitimacy of systematic theology is not the thinly rationalistic question about whether it can fit within the bounds of pure reason but the hermeneutical and sociopolitical question about the way it relates to its context, 1 Corinthians is a fitting place to turn in contemplating how we might answer it. Third, there is the particular cultural ethos that prevailed in the city of Corinth, the first context in which this letter was to be read. As numerous commentators have pointed out, the social and economic circumstances of first-century Corinth bore a number of uncanny resemblances to the cultural context of the late-modern, urban, Western church. Anthony Thiselton, for example, highlights phenomena in the culture of first-century Corinth including ‘status inconsistency’, ‘religious pluralism’, ‘cosmopolitan immigration and trade’ and ‘priority of market forces not only in business but also in rhetoric’ as striking points of contact between the Corinthian Christians’ circumstances and our own.19 16

17

18 19

This approach not only reflects my own understanding of the authoritative role played by Scripture in Christian theology but is also congenial with Hauerwas’s basic assumption that ‘Scripture, of course, is the source as well as the paradigm of Christian speech.’ Stanley Hauerwas, Working with Words: On Learning to Speak Christian (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011), p. 88. Bible verses unless otherwise stated in this chapter are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). Cf. Richard B. Hays, ‘Ecclesiology and Ethics in 1 Corinthians’, ExAud 10 (1994), pp. 31–43. Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 16–17.

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The description that John McDowell offers (in his chapter of this volume) of the decentred, credulous, trivializing, consumer-capitalist space in which public discourse takes place in our culture is strikingly reminiscent of Dio Chrysostom’s withering depiction of the public intellectual life of ancient Corinth: That was the time, too, when one could hear crowds of wretched sophists around Poseidon’s temple shouting and reviling one another, and their disciples, as they were called, fighting with one another, many writers reading aloud their stupid works, many poets reciting their poems while others applauded them, many jugglers showing their tricks, many fortune tellers interpreting fortunes, lawyers innumerable perverting judgement, and peddlers not a few peddling whatever they happened to have.20

Finally, fourth, there is the relatively comfortable position that the Corinthian church (or, rather, the elite within the church who are the ‘you’ in much of the letter) occupied within the social and political life of the city. Thanks, perhaps, to the high social status of some of the earliest converts and the legacy of the ruling handed down by the proconsul Gallio in the church’s infancy, the Corinthian Christians seem to have enjoyed protections and privileges that many other early Christian communities did not.21 Their situation, therefore, presents a particularly illuminating pre-Christendom analogue to our own ‘awkwardly intermediate stage of having once been culturally established but not yet clearly disestablished’.22 Like us, and unlike many of the early Christians addressed within the New Testament, the Corinthians have something to cling onto; a place within the city (or, for some, a pretension or an aspiration to a place) that they are anxious to avoid losing. In striking and significant ways, the Corinthians are our contemporaries. The relationship between the Corinthians’ situation and our own is still one of analogy, of course, and not one of total equivalence. The assumed familiarity of the Christian story in a post-Christendom context, for example, breeds a contempt for Christian claims that is markedly different from the contempt generated by the unfamiliarity of those same claims in the context of pre-Christendom mission 20

21

22

Orations 8.9. While the description is set in the context of a narration of the life of Diogenes, it is generally agreed that it is heavily coloured by the impressions that Dio had formed of Corinth in his own day. Cf. C. P. Jones, The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 47–49. See especially John M. G. Barclay, ‘Thessalonica and Corinth: Social Contrasts in Pauline Christianity’, JSNT 47 (1992), pp. 49–74 and Bruce W. Winter, ‘Gallio’s Ruling on the Legal Status of Early Christianity’, TynBul 50 (1999), pp. 213–24. George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), p. 134, quoted in Hauerwas, After Christendom, p. 23.

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(e.g. Acts 17.18, 32). Likewise, the offensiveness of a message about a recently crucified victim of Roman imperial power should not be facilely equated with the offensiveness of a message proclaimed by a church that carries a legacy of 20 centuries of its own abuses of power. Mission after Christendom is not simply a re-run of mission before Christendom. Nevertheless, even when due account has been taken of the differences between the Corinthians’ situation and ours, the similarities are still amply sufficient for the analogy to be worth exploring.

What sort of community? What might we learn about the community of the church within which the work of Christian theology is conducted, if we examine the ways in which Paul seeks to shape the Corinthian Christians’ understanding of the church they belong to and its relationship to the time and place within which it is situated?

A missionary community In the frequent references that Paul makes across the letter to the issues that arise concerning the Corinthian Christians’ relationship with their pagan neighbours, a consistent pattern emerges. Paul urges the Corinthians to understand themselves as a missionary community within the city, maintaining engagement with the world around them but not losing their distinctiveness as the people of Christ. On the one hand, they are not to ‘leave the world’ (5.10); they are to ‘eat whatever is sold in the meat market’ (10.25) and accept the dinner invitation of their unbelieving neighbour (10.27); as far as is possible, they are to ‘give no offence to Jews or Greeks’, ‘not seeking [their] own advantage but that of many, that they may be saved’ (10.32–33).23 At the same time, however, they are not to forget that they have been ‘called to be saints’ (1.2) and to live by a wisdom that is ‘not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age’ (2.6). This missionary identity that Paul impresses upon the Corinthian Christians is not only intrinsic to their existence ‘in Corinth . . . in Christ Jesus’. It also has implications for the questions Paul finds himself addressing and the interplay between common knowledge and special testimony in the arguments with which he addresses them.

23

For example 5.9–10; 9.19–23; 10.27–11.1.

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In the opening paragraphs of ch. 8, for example, Paul commences a critique of the Corinthian Christians’ participation in the rituals of pagan polytheism by offering a summary of the ‘knowledge’ that should inform Christian understanding of the rituals of pagan polytheism: Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘no idol in the world really exists’, and that ‘there is no God but one.’ Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth – as in fact there are many gods and many lords – yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (8.4–6)

Paul’s summary is clearly grounded in the special testimony of Old Testament Scripture and New Testament gospel, but it is also (and unmistakably) expressed in language that collides with the practices of paganism and reframes the formulations of Stoic pantheism and Hellenistic Judaism. Paul’s language in v. 6, for example (‘one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist’) suggests obvious points of comparison and contrast with the wisdom theology of Philo,24 and with the sort of traditional Stoic formulations that are drawn upon in the writings of the second-century emperor-philosopher, Marcus Aurelius: ‘From thee [O Nature] are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return.’25 Similarly, in ch. 15, as Paul argues for a way of understanding life, death and bodily resurrection that is intended to inform and correct the Corinthians’ manner of life among their pagan neighbours, his first move (in vv. 1–11) is to remind the Corinthians of the apostles’ testimony to the death and resurrection of Jesus, interpreted within the framework of the OT scriptures. But as the argument of the chapter continues (in vv. 36–44), he also constructs a string of analogies between the content of that testimony and various phenomena from the natural world that he considers to be part of the common knowledge of humanity, with the aim of exposing the fallacious assumptions of the sceptic whose scoffing questions he folds into the rhetoric of the chapter in v. 35: ‘But

24 25

For example On the Cherubim 125–26, On the Special Laws 1.208. Meditations 4.23. See also Pseudo-Aristotle, On the Cosmos 6, Asclepius 34 and the discussion in Seneca, Epistle 65, in which the ‘throng of causes’ by which the analysis of Plato and Aristotle might account for the existence of the universe (‘ut Plato dicit: id ex quo, id a quo, id in quo, id ad quo, id propter quod’) are said to all hinge on ‘the first, the general cause’, which Seneca identifies as ‘creative reason, in other words, God’ (‘ratio scilicet faciens, id est deus’).

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someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”’ In Corinth, as in Athens (cf. Acts 17), testifying to Jesus and the resurrection leads, sooner or later, to an unavoidable participation in the discussions that counted as ‘theology’ in the Greco-Roman world – the kind of conversations exemplified in Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods and categorized by Varro in his famous tripartite summary of the contents of classical theologia.26 The primary mode of speech with which a missionary church addresses the world will always be the mode of witness, in which the church proclaims to the world its testimony to Christ’s death and resurrection as the climax of the story of Israel and the foundational narrative of the church.27 But the example of Paul in 1 Corinthians suggests that there are also other, ancillary modes of speech that are legitimate and essential if the church is to understand, explain and defend this testimony within a missionary situation.28 Simply telling and re-telling ‘the old, old story’ (as Hauerwas puts it)29 is not enough; testimony inevitably leads to theology.

A catholic community For all the attention that Paul devotes in 1 Corinthians to his readers’ situation within the city of Corinth, he never allows them to forget the fact that their calling to be saints is possessed ‘together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1.2). Scattered across the letter is a series of brief, acerbic rebukes to the church’s fantasy of constructing a special, boutique, Corinthian Christianity (4.17; 7.17; 11.16; 14.36). ‘Did the word of God originate with you?’ Paul asks the Corinthians sarcastically, ‘Or are you the only ones it has

26

27

28

29

The three parts of theologia, according to Varro, are theologia fabulare, theologia naturale, and theologia civilis. Cf. the quotations from Varro in Augustine, The City of God VI.5. See especially Hauerwas, After Christendom, pp. 133–52 and Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ‘The Trials of Truth: Mission, Martyrdom and the Epistemology of the Cross’, in To Stake a Claim: Mission and the Western Crisis of Knowledge (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1999), pp. 120–56. An observation of a similar sort is behind the friendly criticism that Robert Jenson offers in his review of After Christendom, in which he notes with ‘intense . . . disquiet’ the introduction that Hauerwas provides to a letter from a graduate student that is included as an appendix to the book. In his introduction to the letter, Hauerwas seems to concede the letter-writer’s claim that ‘the very notion of “witness” [is] violent, simply in that witness asserts as true for the other a truth that the other does not already possess’ – a concession to which Jenson responds: ‘All address by the church to the world must indeed be “violent” – as all mutual address by factions within the world undoubtedly must be – unless the church and the world are always antecedently involved in one conversation. That is, unless there is God and unless he is in converse with the world by ways other than by way of the church.’ Jenson, ‘Hauerwas Examined’, p. 51. Hauerwas, After Christendom, pp. 148–49.

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reached?’ The bulk of the final chapter is devoted to issues relating to the church’s connectedness with the churches of Galatia, Asia, Macedonia and Jerusalem. To invoke a category that is only marginally anachronistic, Paul is insistent that the Corinthians remember that they are not only a missionary community but also a catholic community. Paul’s insistent reminders to the Corinthian church are equally pertinent for us as we consider the implications of our post-Christendom situation for the task of theology. For all the discontinuities and differences within the history of the last 2000 years of Christianity, the New Testament nevertheless reminds us that our identity as the church is created by our union with Christ, a union that we possess in common with believers of all times and places. This has ramifications for the theology of the modern, Western, post-Christendom church that are both chronological and geographical. Chronologically speaking, a strong sense of the catholicity of the church helps to guard against the temptation to bracket out a millennium and a half of theological thought as if it were nothing more than an unfortunate ‘Christendom’ parenthesis between the earliest Christianity and our own time.30 At the same time, geographically, the emergence of a burgeoning Christian presence in East Asia and the Global South challenges the Euro-centric perspective of the ‘post-Christendom’ (or ‘postmodern’ or ‘postEnlightenment’) prism,31 and our tendency to speak and act as if we were (as Paul puts it in 1 Cor. 14.36) ‘the only ones whom [the word of God] has reached’. A post-Christendom theology needs to address the particular problems and opportunities of the Western, post-Enlightenment, post-Christendom church, without pretending that we are at liberty to reconstruct the whole edifice of Christian doctrine to fit neatly within the context of our own time and place. We are not the only tenants in the building.

An eschatological community Third, and crucially (given the topic of this chapter) the understanding of the church’s identity that is implied by the gospel and asserted within 1 Corinthians is that it is the community ‘on whom the ends of the ages have come’ (10.11).

30

31

Note, for example, the deliberate assertion of catholicity in the introduction to John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), pp. 3–10. See especially Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 2007), pp. 1–17.

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This eschatological perspective on the church’s identity is pervasive throughout the letter, from the opening thanksgiving, in which the church is depicted as ‘wait[ing] for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ’, and given the calm reassurance that ‘he will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1.7–8), through to the Aramaic invocation, ‘Maranatha – Our Lord, come!’ of the closing verses (16.22). Thus, the ‘future of the church’ to which Christian theology must pay attention is not merely the proximate future that we might extrapolate from the trends of the present, but also the imminent and invisible future, which ‘no eye has seen, nor ear heard’ (2.8). To borrow a distinction from Jürgen Moltmann, the hope towards which the church’s life is oriented is not merely a futurum that grows out of the potentiality of the present but an adventus, a parousia – a coming of God to us.32 The ramifications for our topic are obvious. A theology that is informed primarily and definitively by that future – the eschatological future made known in the resurrection of Jesus – will certainly serve the church of the present as it seeks to make prudent and visionary preparation for the anticipated developments of the projected, proximate future. But it will do so without allowing the trends of the moment to control the theological agenda, or succumbing to the temptation to ‘use future projections as a club in presentday arguments’.33 A church that is a genuinely eschatological community – that is, a community that knows itself to have a stake in the age to come, through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead – is a church that is liberated from the anxious need to read the trends of the culture (or the trends of the academy) and safeguard a future for itself in the next decade or the next century. And a theology that understands that and takes it to heart is set free from a thousand fears, vanities and cultural enslavements to be (as Barth put it) a ‘modest, free, critical and happy science’.34 Our educated guesses about the shape of the coming decades or the coming centuries are part of Christian love and Christian faithfulness – we are preparing ourselves for anticipated challenges to Christian obedience and anticipated opportunities for mission and service – but they are not the substance of Christian hope. That is grounded elsewhere.

32

33 34

Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), p. 25. Jenkins, The Next Christendom, p. 15. Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1963), pp. 3–12, 16.

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What sort of narrative? Turning from the community within which we do theology to the narrative to which we call that community to be faithful, three brief observations need to be made about the shape of that narrative as Paul evokes it in 1 Corinthians, and the implications for theology after Christendom.

A salvation-historical narrative First, the narrative that underpins Paul’s arguments within the letter is an explicitly salvation-historical narrative. Paul’s assertion that the gospel announcements of Christ’s death for our sins and resurrection on the third day are ‘in accordance with the [Old Testament] scriptures’ (15.3–4) is consistent with the salvation-historical hermeneutical framework that is implied and assumed throughout the whole of 1 Corinthians and Paul’s other letters.35 Within this framework, convictions about the oneness and self-consistency of God invite us to understand the church’s present and future in narrative continuity and typological correspondence with the story of God’s actions in the past.36 Thus, the Gentile believers in Corinth are invited to view the Israelites of the Exodus generation as ‘our ancestors’ (10.1) and to understand the things that happened to them as ‘examples (typoi) . . . to instruct us’ (10.6, 11), illustrating and reinforcing convictions of permanent validity about enduringly relevant attributes of God (in this instance, in 1 Corinthians 10, God’s jealous love and faithfulness). The stability and unity of this grand narrative are critical for the hermeneutical bridge that Paul builds across the ditch between historical assertions about unique, particular events and theological truth-claims of universal applicability. The events to which the church bears witness line up within a single story, with a single, divine protagonist about whom statements can be made that have enduring truth and applicability. On the basis of the narrative logic of that story,37 Paul is confident that he can commend such statements to the Corinthians as

35

36

37

See especially Ben Witherington, Paul’s Narrative Thought-World: The Tapestry of Tragedy and Triumph (Louisville: Westminster, 1994) and Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 84–121. See especially Richard B. Hays, ‘The Conversion of the Imagination: Scripture and Eschatology in 1 Corinthians’, NTS 45 (1999), pp. 391–412. Cf. Ian W. Scott, Paul’s Way of Knowing: Story, Experience, and the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), pp. 277–88.

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‘sensible’ people (10.15), asking them to ‘judge for [them]selves’ the implications for their conduct.

An apocalyptic narrative Nevertheless, a reader of Paul’s letters cannot help noticing that this narrative, as Paul configures it for his readers, is not a smoothly linear one in which the covenant-faithfulness of God is met with the answering faithfulness of his people and the glorious triumph of their cause. Readers familiar with the original context of his Old Testament quotation in v. 7, for example, will be reminded of the shocking gash that the account of Israel’s apostasy in Exodus 32 tears in the fabric of that book. More than that: Paul’s picture of the church as the community ‘on whom the ends of the ages have come’ (10.11) is a reminder of the sharp disjunctions between the old age and the new that are characteristic of the mode in which he renders the story of Israel and the church, in the light of God’s saving intervention in Christ. In this sense, the narrative of God, Israel, Christ and the world that Paul evokes in his letters can be described not only as a ‘salvationhistorical’ narrative but also, more specifically, as an ‘apocalyptic’ narrative – apocalyptic being the particular form that salvation history takes when the blackness of the present is understood to be so thick that God’s purposes can neither be perceived nor fulfilled without a new and direct divine intervention in both revelation and salvation.38 And if it is true, as Ernst Käsemann asserted, that ‘apocalyptic is the mother of Christian theology’,39 then encoded into the DNA of Christian theology are ways of understanding the world that are more immediately congenial to a pre- or post-Christendom situation than they are to existence within a Christian empire. While the wisdom of Stoicism was such that it could be perceived as fitting for Seneca to act as a tutor to Nero and – in

38

39

‘Apocalyptic’ refers properly to a particular corpus of early Jewish writings: ‘a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient . . . envisag[ing] eschatological salvation and involv[ing] a supernatural world . . . intended to interpret present earthly circumstances in light of the supernatural world and of the future, and to influence both the understanding and the behaviour of the audience by means of divine authority’ (John J. Collins, ‘Early Jewish Apocalypticism’, in Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), pp. 1.282–88). More broadly, and by extension, the adjective ‘apocalyptic’ can also be used with reference to the literary and theological aspects of many other texts from early Judaism and early Christianity that share an affinity of outlook with these apocalyptic writings. See also B. J. Oropeza, ‘Echoes of Isaiah in the Rhetoric of Paul: New Exodus, Wisdom and the Humility of the Cross in Utopian-Apocalyptic Expectations’, in Duane F. Watson (ed.), The Intertexture of Apocalyptic Discourse (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2002), pp. 87–112. Ernst Käsemann, ‘The Beginnings of Christian Theology’, JTC 6 (1969), pp. 17–46.

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the following century – for Marcus Aurelius to act as a kind of tutor to himself, Paul’s radical reframing of wisdom in the light of ‘the word of the Cross’ suggests a much less easy or obvious relationship between Christian theology and the wisdom of empire.40 A Christian theology that is true to its apocalyptic roots will resist the temptation to offer a neat, static providential system that explains and justifies the world as it is and assumes that the explanation it offers will be universally accepted by all reasonable people. Instead, it will take serious account of the hiddenness of God’s hand in the world that we see, and the desperately unsatisfactory condition of the world that is presided over by ‘the rulers of this age’ (2:6) and it will insist on asserting propositions that appear laughably foolish from within the plausibility structures erected by the elites of this present age: For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. (1.18–25)

A cosmic narrative The narrative within which the New Testament describes the work of God in Christ is, thirdly, an explicitly cosmic narrative. For us ‘there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist’ (1 Cor. 8.6). The grand finale of the story is one in which, through the victory of Christ over every hostile power, God will be ‘all in all’ (15.28). The scope and scale of this narrative emboldens Paul, as he writes to the Corinthians, to make repeated,

40

See especially Timothy Brookins, ‘The Wise Corinthians: Their Stoic Education and Outlook’, JTS 62 (2011), pp. 51–76 and ‘Rhetoric and Philosophy in the First Century: Their Relation with Respect to 1 Corinthians 1–4’, Neot 44 (2010), pp. 233–52.

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sweeping assertions about ‘all things’ – almost 40 times within the 16 chapters of the letter.41 Not all of these references to ‘all things’ are cosmic in scope: at times, Paul is speaking about the ‘all things’ that one encounters in daily life, or the ‘all things’ that are done in the Christian gathering, or the ‘all things’ that he is willing to become in the service of a mission to ‘all people’. But it is still striking to note the confidence with which Paul constructs these utterances of general or universal applicability. Because of the cosmic scope of the story that Paul tells, he unhesitatingly assumes that it will in some way inform our understanding of every corner of the universe and every aspect of life.

Theology before and after Christendom When this sense of the scale of the Christian story is combined with the robust confidence in its truthfulness that Paul displays throughout the letter, and with the coherence that he expects and insists on between the claims of this story, the common knowledge of humanity,42 and the pattern of life that is lived by those who know and believe these things,43 we are well on the road towards the kind of theological systematization that emerged in the centuries that followed. Long before the churches Paul planted came to enjoy anything remotely like the imperial hegemony Hauerwas speaks of, the process of theological systematization had begun. And if the project of systematic theology was commenced long before there was Christendom, then the demise of Christendom is not in itself a reason to abandon it. There is a legitimate place for theology – for systematic theology – after Christendom. But the kind of theological system-building that is consistent with the trajectory established in 1 Corinthians is not a set of pure, timeless abstractions that can be stated independently of the particular, historical assertions at the core of the Christian faith; nor are its vast, ambitious claims about the comprehensive implications of the lordship of the risen Christ articulated without reference to the problems that arise for the people of Christ in particular contexts and

41

42

43

For example 2.10, 15; 3.21–23; 4.13; 6.12–13; 8.6; 9.22–25; 10.31–33; 11.12; 12.6; 13.7; 15.27–28; 16.14. The kind of observations that Paul treats as the common knowledge of humanity should be distinguished from the matrix of interpretive assumptions that he characterizes negatively as ‘the wisdom of this age’. Cf. Anthony Thiselton’s comments on the shape of Paul’s argument in 1 Cor. 15.12–19 in Thiselton, First Corinthians, p. 1217.

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circumstances.44 Hauerwas is right on these scores. And (once more in agreement with Hauerwas) it is still salutary for a post-Christendom church – just as it was for the pre-Christendom Corinthian church, with its false expectations of social acceptance and prestige – to be reminded of the paradoxical combination of boldness and humility with which such theological system-building needs to be undertaken, if it is to be authentically an act of Christian faith, hope and love.45 ‘Do not deceive yourselves’, Paul warns the Corinthians: If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. . . . So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future – all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. (1 Cor. 3.18–23)

44

45

Cf. the account of how the ‘unifying field’ of Christian understanding enables the ‘joined-up life’ of Christian existence, in Andrew Cameron, Joined-up Life: A Christian Account of How Ethics Works (Nottingham: IVP, 2011), pp. 83–317. These themes are further explored in David I. Starling, ‘“Nothing Beyond What Is Written”? First Corinthians and the Hermeneutics of Early Christian Theologia’, JTI 8 (2014), forthcoming.

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6

How I Think I Learned to Think Theologically: The Post-Christendom Church and the Future of Theology Stanley Hauerwas

What we aim at is truth in the concrete. John Henry Newman

An apology for myself The title of this chapter is not an attempt to be clever. I will try to make articulate how I think theologically. But the first ‘I think’ indicates that I do not know without thinking how I think theologically. Some may find it odd that I do not know how to characterize how I have done and continue to do theology, but I think I am being honest when I confess I am not at all sure I have known how to say to myself or others what and how I have understood the way I work as a theologian. Of course I have some ideas about how I have understood the task of theology, but I hope there is more in what I have done theologically than is in my understanding. A remark I hope will become intelligible when I develop, as I think I must, an account of practical reason if I am to understand my ‘work’. More appropriate or at least conventional titles would have been something like ‘How to Think Theologically’ or ‘How Theologians Think’. My worry about a title like ‘How to Think Theologically’ is it may suggest that theology is a given across time. I simply do not think that to be the case. Though I would be hesitant to deny that there are crucial habits associated with how Christian convictions are to be understood in relation to one another – how christological

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and Trinitarian commitments are interrelated – I think it important to recognize that there is no one way for how theology is done. A title like ‘How Theologians Think’ might seem to do justice to the variety of theological work, but to focus on particular theologians can give the impression that theology is the speculative work of an individual rather than an office of a community. The approaches suggested by both titles can and have produced quite useful accounts of the work of theology, but those accounts cannot help but reflect the particular theological perspective of the theologian who has provided those accounts. I see no reason, however, why that should be thought to be problematic. Accordingly I thought one way to address the question of the church and the future of theology is to try to say something about the way I have tried to do theology. By doing so I am not trying to suggest that the way I have worked is the future of theology, but it would be an exercise in false humility to pretend I do not think the way I have learned to think about the theological task has not anticipated how I think or at least hope may have some implications for the future. I have worked presuming the end of Christendom which has meant the way I have done theology has seemed for many, for quite understandable reasons, odd. That said it is still the case I am hesitant to direct attention to how I have tried to do theology because I so dislike the narcissistic fascination with the self characteristic of so many intellectuals in the modern university. Our fascination with our work no doubt has everything to do with the fact that if we did not take our work seriously then no one would take our work seriously. Theologians at least have the advantage that, though we often end up writing for other academic theologians, we are at least committed to write for people who identify themselves as Christians. As I just suggested to understand theology as an office of the church means the theologian does not get to determine what and how they think without reference to what and how theology has been done in the past. So the way I do theology hopefully reflects what I have learned from other theologians. Yet I do worry that by trying to understand how I have done theology I risk being self-absorbed in a manner that distorts the theological task. It is surely the case that the character of theology should demand that those engaged in the work of theology not take themselves overly serious. Accordingly no one should undertake the work of theology if they are devoid of a sense of humour. Of course, one of the problems with that recommendation is the fact that those who have no sense of humour often do not know they have no sense of humour – a

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not insignificant challenge if, as I will argue, the character of theology and the character of the theologian are inseparable. By trying to think through, or at least to make articulate, the way I have done theology I hope might be useful to others. I am aware that the way I have worked is hard to imitate. In fact to try to imitate ‘my style’ would mean that you have not learned the lessons I hope my way of doing theology entails. Thus my infamous claim that I do not want students to think for themselves, but I want them to think like me. I do want them to think like me ‘only differently’. By trying to say how I think I think theologically I need to make clear I am not trying to finally ‘pull it all together’. I am old, but I am not about to write a ‘retractions’ or to respond to critics by ‘setting the record straight’. Rather I want to try to show that there has been some method to the madness of my work by directing attention to how what I have done has been an exercise in practical reasoning. I am aware that the way I have learned to think theologically cannot help but frustrate many readers. There is just so much of it and there is no one essay or book to be read to ‘get it’. Moreover since my work has been in response to assignments the diversity of topics I have addressed I suspect cannot help but make those who specialize in one or another aspect of theology weary. I am an amateur in almost every subject I address, but I am not going to apologize for attempting to respond as constructively as I am able to requests that I think about subjects that may not seem to fall under the subject-matter of theology or ethics. Seeing the connections makes all the difference and practical reason is all about seeing the connections. That I have written much as well as the range I have covered I should like to think reflects my conviction that theology must be the ongoing effort to construe the world as God’s good work. That I so understand the work of theology is why I have grudgingly been willing to be identified as an ‘ethicist’. Ethics at least suggests that theology is a practical science, but the very distinction between theology and ethics can reproduce the deleterious distinction between theory and practice. I certainly do not mean to deny that theology properly understood has speculative, or I would prefer contemplative, moments, but I have tried to show that fundamental theological convictions about God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit are inseparable from the work they do for the formation of a people set loose in and for the world. Accordingly if you think Christians have ‘beliefs’ that need to be applied I assume that something has gone wrong in your understanding of the grammar of theology.

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David Starling, in a very interesting paper entitled, ‘Theology and the Future of the Church’, has called attention to my injudicious claim in After Christendom that ‘the very idea of systematic theology was a result of a church with hegemonic power that belied the very substance that made it the church to begin with’. Starling charitably observes that I am not dismissing theology per se, but rather the judgement I make about systematic theology reflects my general concern that Christian theology not be treated as a timeless system of belief. Theology so understood too often elides the politics that is the condition of the possibility for such a way of thinking. My worry about systematic theology, therefore, reflects my judgement that Christians must learn to live in a post-Christian world. Drawing on Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians Starling provides an account of the ecclesial presuppositions and corresponding narratives that shaped Paul’s letter in a manner that can help us discern how we must learn to live as well as do theology in a post-Christian context. Starling, however, argues that Paul’s theological commitments provided the material for the development of a kind of theological systematization that emerged in the centuries that followed Paul’s missionary work. I could not agree more, but I do not think of the development of theology in the early centuries of the church to be ‘systematic’ theology. Rather I associate systematic theology with developments after the Reformation in which ‘doctrine’ became an end in itself.1 I think that Starling draws attention to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians as the source as well as the demand for further theological work of theology is very insightful. Paul’s letters are occasional but their ad hoc character is held together, as Starling denotes, by Paul’s understanding of what makes the church the church. Theology done as letters, or at least as reflection on letters such as the letters of Paul, has a concreteness that resists false universalizing tendencies. I should like to think, at least in terms of form, the way I have done theology is not unlike letters to the church. Theology so understood means there is no place to begin or end. Rather you always begin in the middle. I am sure many find this way of proceeding hard to understand because they want some account of a ‘method’. But there is no method. There is no prolegomena for all future theology. Indeed there is no prolegomena period. It is performance all the way down. Thus my presumption 1

See, for example, Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 75–128. Gregory observes that doctrine prior to the Reformation was a Christian response to ‘life questions’ such as ‘What should I live for and why?’ or ‘What is meaningful in life?’ After the Reformation doctrine became a marker for authority but since there was no consensus on which doctrines were to be considered authoritative the way was prepared for the Enlightenment attempt to make ‘reason alone’ the standard.

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that letters, sermons and essays may well be central genres for theological reflection. I need to make clear at this point that even though I am trying in this essay to understand how I think theologically I am not trying to argue that all future theology should try to work the way I have worked. I suspect I could not have worked the way I have worked if I had not known Barth’s Dogmatics, McClendon’s Systematic Theology and Robert Jenson’s Systematic Theology were available. A book like Katherine Tanner’s Christ the Key is invaluable. Theology comes in many shapes and sizes and we need most of them. The occasional character of my work I suspect drives some of my readers to distraction. Critics often try to characterize one or another aspect of my work as what I am really ‘all about’ in order to say why I am wrong about this or that. For example I am accordingly characterized as an ecclesial thinker which usually is a prelude to a characterization of my work as sectarian. Or some think the animating centre of my work revolves around the critique of liberalism which from my perspective is clearly a side issue. Those with more friendly interpretations compliment me for reintroducing the importance of the virtues for understanding the moral life. The list could go on, but the truth is that there is no centre to my work unless you count work itself as the centre itself. Those in the field of ethics I suspect are particularly frustrated that there is no easy way to sum up what I am about. I refuse to focus on one characteristic to determine the content of Christian ethics. For example love is often identified as the defining concept that makes an ethic Christian. From my perspective the attempt to put all theological eggs in that basket usually makes fundamental theological concepts secondary. That is why I have always thought it a mistake to make one or two concepts that allegedly determine what it means to be a Christian. When love is assumed to be what Christian ethics is allegedly about Jesus often fades into the twilight. Another way to say why I seem hard to pin down is I have worked very hard to avoid having a position. Of course I have positions about a host of matters. I believe that suicide is rightly understood negatively and that baseball should not be played in Florida in the summer. (Florida is for spring training.) But that is not what I mean by a ‘position’. ‘Position’ names the attempt by a theologian to develop a theological system that bears his or her name. Accordingly the ‘position’ becomes more important than what the position is allegedly about, that is, God. Theology with such ambitions appears more like modern philosophy with the result that the proclamation of the gospel by the church begins to sound like a ‘position’ rather than the originating source of thought.

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Theologians do not need to have a position because we serve a convictional community that makes our reflections on church practice possible. That does not mean that theologians may and should take a critical attitude towards the church, but to do so means they draw on resources that the community has at its disposal. That every Sunday the church is charged to attend to Scripture means that the church cannot escape the judgement of the Holy Spirit. That is why as I suggested above that one of the most fruitful genres for theology remains the sermon. Sermons that are faithful to Scripture will defy any ‘positions’. That said I must confess I am sympathetic with those that attempt to find some centre or fundamental orientation that could ‘sum up’ my work. I often long for some punchy way to put in a nutshell what I think because I often cannot remember where I have said what I think needs to be said. I may even think I have put in print what I think when in fact I have not done so. I have always tried to avoid being a self-referential thinker – ‘If you had only read my X or Y chapter you would understand how far that criticism is off the mark’ – but that means I often forget what I have said. I have also tried to avoid saying the same thing over and over again because I cannot stand to be bored but more importantly I think thought requires one to discover the limits and possibilities of how one thinks by actually doing the work of thinking. I have been very fortunate to have had a long life and to have had responsibilities that have given me time to think and write about what I care about. I am sure, moreover, that there have been developments in my work that at the very least suggest different emphases. The stages Sam Wells identifies in his Transforming Fate into Destiny: The Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas I have always thought to be quite illuminating.2 Yet I also think that the stages Wells identifies, that is, from quandary to character, from character to story, from story to community, from community to church, are exactly that, namely ‘stages’, which mean the latter stages only make sense in the light of the beginnings. That means, however, I continue to presuppose work I did very early as still crucial for understanding why I am saying what I am now saying but often those that read what I am now saying have not, for quite understandable reasons, read what I wrote at the beginning of my work. For example the claim that you can only act in the world you can see and you can only see what you have learned to say is only intelligible against the background of the work I did in Vision and Virtue which was first published in 1974. That claim, a claim that itself begs and

2

Samuel Wells, Transforming Fate into Destiny: The Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1998).

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is meant to beg for further elaboration, is crucial if you are to understand my latter declaration that the first task of the church is not to make the world more just but to make the world the world. In the last section of this chapter I will spell out how I understand how these claims are interrelated. But before doing so I need to give an account of practical reason if I am to make good on the claim above that the way I have done theology is best understood as an exercise in practical reason. By doing so I hope to clarify not only what I have said thus far about how I have worked as a theologian, but also why the ethical, sociological and political aspects of my work are integral to the theological task. But first I need to say more about how I understand the character of practical reason.

Practising practical reason Towards the end of Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Alasdair MacIntyre makes a comment that at least helps explain why the ‘I’ matters for how we think about matters that matter. His comment is in response to the problem, a problem that is at the heart of Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, of how someone who is besieged by disputes over what is just and/or true can decide to act in a reasonable manner. Such a person, and this is the kind of person for whom MacIntyre has written his book, has not yet given allegiance to a coherent tradition of enquiry but is confronted by claims of a number of traditions. MacIntyre says the initial response to such a person is quite straightforward, namely, the answer ‘will depend upon who you are and how you understand yourself ’.3 Commenting on this response MacIntyre observes this is not the kind of answer that we have been educated to expect from a philosopher. But the standard philosophical response, he argues, is based on presumptions that are in fact false. The chief of those presumptions being that there are standards of rationality that provide adequate evaluation of rival alternatives that are equally available to all people no matter what tradition they happen to find themselves. Once this presumption is questioned it becomes clear that problems of justice and practical rationality are not the same for all people. What the problems are and how they are understood and resolved will vary not only with historical,

3

Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), p. 391.

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social and cultural contexts but with the situation of the persons who has this or that particular set of problems. Some worry that MacIntyre’s response – ‘it will depend on who you are and how you understand yourself ’ seems to imply a vicious relativism and/ or subjectivism, but nothing could be further from the truth. For a person in the situation he describes has the possibility of self-recognition and selfknowledge because they have learned to speak and write some language in use. Accordingly they will have some texts through which they can test certain kinds of argumentative interventions. They will, therefore, be able to assess over time their initial responses by testing them by arguments in the ongoing tradition as well as debates of that tradition of enquiry with alternative traditions.4 MacIntyre is acutely aware that his account of a person capable of recognition that they are at home in a tradition is in marked contrast to the kind of person who thinks of themselves as alien to every tradition of enquiry. A person who thinks they are at home nowhere associates rationality with the attempt to provide neutral, impersonal and independent standards of rational judgement. The natural language of these cosmopolitan persons is the language of nowhere because it seeks to be everywhere. For such people to become capable of representing a particular tradition would require something very much like a conversion. From MacIntyre’s Aristotelian understanding of practical reason they would have to learn they cannot think for oneself if one thinks by oneself. From Augustine they would have to acknowledge they have ignored those standards internal to the mind which make possible our ability to know our deficiencies.5 MacIntyre’s emphasis on who the person is that is making judgements that reflect the work of practical reason is echoed by Charles Taylor’s defense of practical reason as an exercise in ad hominem argument. Taylor thinks the rise of modern scepticism is the result of the despair in practical reason fuelled by naturalistic presumptions underwritten by mistaken views of science that encourage the expectation that apodeictic results are possible. In contrast Taylor argues that an ad hominem understanding of practical reason is linked to our ability to effect purposes that makes possible the acquisition of ‘potential recipes for more effective practice’.6 Taylor acknowledges that the differences between some cultures may be too great to make ad hominem argument possible, but 4 5 6

Ibid., p. 394. Ibid., p. 396. Charles Taylor, ‘Explanation and Practical Reason’, in Martha Nussbaum and Amartyr Sim (eds), The Quality of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 208–31 (220).

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there is no other alternative. Nonetheless, Taylor judges that the attempt to articulate the implicit (which is the character of ad hominem argument) extends the possibility of moving beyond easy cases in which the opponent offers only explicit premises. Taylor draws on Mill to inform his account of practical reason whereas Aristotle is MacIntyre’s primary source for his understanding of practical reason. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle distinguishes between scientific knowledge and practical wisdom. The former deals with matters of necessity whereas practical reason is about human concerns that are open to deliberation. Accordingly practical wisdom must not only entail universals but must also be about particulars ‘since it is concerned with action and action is about particulars. That is why in other areas also some people who lack knowledge but have experience are better in action than others who have knowledge’.7 Aristotle accordingly thinks it very unlikely that practical wisdom will be found in the young because they have not developed the capacity to perceive or deliberate about particulars. The person of practical wisdom must have the understanding that gives them the capacity to judge last things which are judgements about particulars. Understanding is judgement about matters that can be other in which universals are reached from particulars. Therefore the person of practical reason must have capacity of perception of particulars that comes from being well trained. In short they must be a person of virtue.8 Joseph Dunne, who provides one of the most careful accounts we have of Aristotle’s understanding of practical wisdom, suggests for Aristotle there is an essential connection between character and practical wisdom (phronesis). According to Dunne practical wisdom is a perfected form of experience because it is the virtue that makes the experience of some people not simply an accumulation of actions from the past but ‘a dynamic orientation to bring this systematization into play and allow it to be tested by present circumstances, to draw from it what is relevant and to see where it does not fit’.9 Practical wisdom, therefore, is a habit of attentiveness that makes past experiences a resource that allows the present to ‘unconceal’ its peculiar significance. To be sure Aristotle expressed the work of practical reason through his account of the practical syllogism, but MacIntyre argues that every practical

7

8 9

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (trans. Terrance Irwin; Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1999), 1141b.15–19. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1143a.20–1143b.5. Joseph Dunne, Back to the Rough Ground: ‘Phronesis’ and ‘Techne’ in Modern Philosophy and in Aristotle (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), p. 305.

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syllogism is a performance by a particular person on a particular occasion. The soundness of the practical syllogism will, therefore, depend on who utters it and on what occasion. This does not mean that a person must be able to formulate a practical syllogism before they act, but it does mean that they should act as someone would have done who had so deliberated. They must do so because they must be ready to answer the question of why did you so act. Indeed one suspects that most moral judgements about what we do and do not do are retrospective. Such retrospective judgements are not only possible but necessary, because even though the kind of practical rationality Aristotle describes is at odds with the modern tendency to separate the end from the means and reason from character, there are still contexts in which practical reason flourishes. We should not be surprised that there remain contexts that exemplify the work of practical reason, because such reasoning is not some esoteric achievement. In fact our lives are constituted by activities shaped by practices recognizable as instances of the kind of wisdom MacIntyre thinks Aristotle so acutely describes. In the words of John Henry Newman, practical reasoning is ‘the exercise of a living faculty in the individual intellect’.10 For example MacIntyre calls attention to the hockey player who in the closing seconds of a crucial game has the opportunity to pass to another player on his team better positioned to score the decisive goal. We say, if the player has rightly perceived the situation, that they must make the needed pass. That we rightly say they must make the pass ‘exhibits the good of the person qua hockey player and member of that particular team and the action of passing, a connection such that were such a player not to pass, he or she must either have falsely denied that passing was for their good qua hockey player or would have been guilty of inconsistency or have acted as one not caring for his or her good qua hockey player and member of that particular team’.11 MacIntyre comments on this example by observing that we recognize the necessity of rational action as integral to our social and political life just to the extent those aspects of our life provide the structured roles necessary for the discovery of the goods needed to make our actions intelligible. Any account of practical reason that is faithful to Aristotle entails a politics. For it was the polis that integrated the systematic activities of human beings ‘into an overall form 10

11

John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), p. 240. MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, pp. 140–41.

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of activity in which the achievement of each kind of good was given its due. . . . No practical rationality outside the polis is the Aristotelian counterpart to extra ecclesiam nulla salus’.12 That practical reason entails a politics is central to Eugene Garver’s extremely important book on practical reason, For the Sake of Argument: Practical Reasoning, Character, and the Ethics of Belief. Garver observes the philosophical presumptions of liberal political arrangements have resulted in the severing of the connection between character and reason with the result that only the definitive resolutions of mathematicians and the battle of interest and power are the only alternatives. In particular Garver calls attention to the use of ‘rational choice’ theories of decision to legitimate and explain the behaviour of modern states. Reason so understood seems suited to liberal democracies because reason so construed is formal rather than substantive distinguished only, as MacIntyre suggested, by the marks of publicity, neutrality, impersonality and universality.13 In contrast Garver draws on Aristotle’s Rhetoric to argue for the essential connection between thought and character. By calling attention to rhetoric Garver develops the political presumptions of practical reason by emphasizing how language makes possible a common life. The good person therefore must be a person of deliberation and persuasion able to avoid the temptation to engage in manipulative strategies. Rhetoric as a form of practical reason is constituted by contingency, emotion and passionate interests but is no less rational for being such.14 According to Garver friendship is crucial for the good working of practical wisdom. Yet it is friendship that the modern state has abandoned in its quest to secure order and stability. Friendship has been abandoned in favour of trying to make justice the primary political virtue. Yet it is only through political friendship that ‘practical reason can aim at truth while staying committed to public argument because ethical arguments can be more powerful and more rational than arguments from reason alone’.15 To be sure, practical reason in the concrete – and there is no other form than in the concrete – requires the acknowledgement of authority, but authority depends on the existence of an ethos that makes argument possible. Such an 12 13

14 15

Ibid., p. 141. Eugene Garver, For the Sake of Argument: Practical Reasoning, Chraracter, and the Ethics of Belief (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 13. Ibid., pp. 2–3. Ibid., p. 27.

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ethos consists in narratives that constitute the memory of a community as well as establish its future. We become ethical agents through membership in such communities through being schooled in the texts and exemplars that determine the character of our lives. Narratives are, therefore, invitations for inclusion into a community. Lives embedded in such narratives make possible the ongoing testing and revision of the narratives.16 Garver’s emphasis on the rhetorical character of practical reason suggests that reason so understood can produce an ‘ethical surplus’ that produces alternatives that would be missed by reason alone. Garver provides a close analysis of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision that ended the segregation of schools, to illustrate how practical reason can generate more powerful conclusions than the initial premises might seem to allow.17 Given Garver’s emphasis on the internal relation between character and practical reason I assume he might also think that the source of ‘ethical surplus’ is to be found in the lives of those who extend the narratives that constitute that community of discourse.

Back to the beginning The account of practical reason I have just given, and it is a bare bones account, I could not have provided when I began my work as a theologian. I did not think about what I was doing when I began to write. By not thinking about what I was doing I mean I did not think I needed to have a ‘method’ before I began. I just began doing what I thought needed to be done. But from the account of practical reason I have just given that is not a bad way to begin. I did have something like a project. I was convinced that the current ways of thinking about ethics as a decision procedure failed to provide an appropriate account of the agent who was making the decision. Mark Ryan, in his extremely informative book, The Politics of Practical Reason: Why Theological Ethics Must Change Your Life, suggests that early on I sensed that agency is embedded in the life of a particular community which meant that practical inferences are licensed within communities of shared goods.18 The strange mixture of topics in my first

16 17 18

Ibid., pp. 78–79. Ibid., pp. 9–11, 73–75. Mark Ryan, The Politics of Practical Reason: Why Theological Ethics Must Change Your Life (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011), p. 99.

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collection of essays, Vision and Virtue, a mixture that continued in subsequent books, was my way of trying to develop that understanding of agency.19 Ryan observes that though my understanding of practical reason drew on Aristotle I inflected Aristotle’s account by stressing the importance of language. Thus my claim that you can only act in the world you can see and you can only see what you have learned to say. I thought that it was at least a plausible suggestion that the church can or should provide the habits of speech that shape how Christians see the world. Yet Ryan suggests that my emphasis on the church as the source of Christian language can miss what is crucial about my developing account of practical reason. In contrast to the presumption that language is a tool used to achieve specific ends or as something we can change as the occasion arises, Ryan suggests I followed ‘Wittgenstein in believing what is needed is rigorous and disciplined attention to the constraints of grammar and its lifeform-shaping rules’.20 I call attention to Ryan’s way of putting the matter because as is so often the case he has said what I think better than I have been able to. In particular he rightly says I learned from Wittgenstein that the relation of ethical deliberation to action is not external but internal and from Aristotle I learned to name this internal relation character.21 Interestingly enough this meant I could not begin as most attempts at Christian ethics begin by developing a general anthropology. As Ryan observes to do so would betray ‘the connection of Christian agency with the character-shaping language that sustains it, as well as deceptively imply that we can do ethics without language’.22 Ryan’s characterization of the essential presumption about agency in my early work nicely suggests that though I was not explicitly trying to do theology as an exercise in practical reason in fact that is what I was doing. Moreover that was the essential move that made me a theologian. I might have preferred to stay identified as an ethicist, that is, as someone in the field of ethics who entered the field because they did not want to have to attend to fundamental theological 19

20 21 22

Stanley Hauerwas, Vision and Virtue: Essays in Christian Ethical Reflection (Notre Dame: Fides Press, 1974). The topics addressed not only dealt with situation ethics, character, the narrative character of the self, abortion, death, children with mental disabilities, but also had chapters on Yoder, democratic theory, and what I can only describe as an attempt at theological journalism dealing with the 1960s. Truthfulness and Tragedy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977) and A Community of Character (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) have different agendas but I am clearly continuing to work on the same set of issues I began in Vision and Virtue. Ryan, The Politics of Practical Reason, p. 101. Ibid., p. 109. Ibid., p. 101.

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claims about, for example, the Trinity. But given how I had learned to think that descriptions are everything I could not avoid thinking theologically. If, as I would come to say, theological convictions are meant to construe the world then it must surely be the case how Christians intend the world is different from those who do not talk the way we talk. That does not mean Christian and nonChristians share nothing in common, but it does mean that what they may share in common must be discovered rather than assumed. That theology became for me an exercise in practical reason meant the church became central for how the world was to be understood. If you can only act in the world you can say then the ‘saying’ has to come from a determinative community with the habits of speech necessary for the discernment of difference. Thus the claim that the first task of the church is not to make the world more just but to make the world the world. Offensive as that claim may seem it is but a way to make clear that the ‘world’ cannot know it is the world unless an alternative linguistic community exists. The ‘world’ so understood remains under God’s providential care but exactly what makes it the world is the inability to acknowledge and worship the source of all that is. This fundamental eschatological understanding of existence entails, or better demands, that the church makes the world, which includes us, capable of being storied. We are contingent creatures and we exist contingently. To say we are contingent beings is but a way to say we are creatures who did not have to exist but who do exist. The very description, ‘creature’, is itself a story that provides a truthful account of our lives. One of the tasks of theology is to help us discern how our lives may be possessed by unacknowledged stories that make our ability to live in gratitude for the gift of our existence impossible. Worship is crucial for such discernment. It was, of course, the work of Karl Barth and John Howard Yoder that gave me the resources necessary to emphasize the centrality of the church for discerning the challenges facing Christians in our day. The general stance of the liberal Protestant establishment, particularly in America, assumed that the church was an agent to make democracy work. In the name of being tolerant such a view presumed that Christians must find a way to engage the ethical and political challenges using language that was not specifically Christian. From my perspective that was to give away the store. My criticism of ‘liberalism’ has not primarily been directed at ‘liberals’ but rather at Christians who assumed that our fundamental linguistic habits could be translated into the idiom of liberalism. My worry about that strategy was not only did I think in the process Christians lost the significance of the church as

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a political reality, but the story that shapes how Christians intend the world is lost. Thus my perhaps too simplistic claim that liberalism names the project of modernity to create people who have no story except the story they chose when they had no story. That story reflects, as I suggested above, a view of rationality that cannot help but distort the situated character of practical reason. That practical reason will by necessity reflect a determinative narrative I have tried to display by trying to show the connections between the gospel and everyday practices such as marriage, the birth and care of children, the commitment to the ill, being present to the dying, the demands of friendship, the disavowal of violence, the challenge of those physically and mentally disabled, the refusal to lie, concern for the poor. I have done so in the hope that the worship of God is seen as constitutive of a way of life that would otherwise be unintelligible if in fact the God we worship does not exist. Ryan characterizes this aspect of ‘my method’ as the employment of narrative in a manner that bridges rather than divides our reflective lives and our practical lives by showing how practical reason is no less rational for being particular and embodied.23 In effect ‘my method’ is to show how theological language in good working order reframes what we take to be necessities by helping us see that who we are makes all the difference. For example the justification of violence is often shaped by the assumption in some situations there is no alternative to violence. That we must resort to violence can, therefore, be justified as a lesser of two evils. But the very existence of a people schooled by the gospel should make possible, even if it means they must suffer and die, there is an alternative to the assumed necessity of violence. The creation of such an alternative at least begins with a people who have learned to say ‘no’. That ‘no’ may well be the exemplification of Garver’s understanding of what an ethical surplus looks like. A theology so conceived cannot help but be polemical. It cannot help but be polemical because it is, as Taylor suggest, an exercise in ad hominem argument. The identification and location of enemies, which often entails our ability at self-recognition, is an ongoing task. The world does not want that presumption that it is intelligible without God challenged. So the Christian theologian cannot help but come into conflict with assumed conventions because the fundamental presuppositions that sustain the everyday are often at odds with the narrative we believe is true – that is, God was in Christ so that the world might be saved.

23

Ibid., p. 125.

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7

Attentive Judgement: Theology and the Future of Education John C. McDowell

In his introduction to an engagement between Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank, Creston Davis asserts that ‘If the theological was marginalized in the age of Western secular modernity, it has now returned with a vengeance.’1 One wonders about the rhetorical use of ‘vengeance’ talk, unless appeal is made to theological institutions operating consciously as counter-modernities (such as creationist educational establishments, for instance). The language is less political than that, however: ‘Theology is reconfiguring the very makeup of the humanities in general, with disciplines like philosophy, political science, literature, history psychoanalysis and critical theory, in particular, feeling the impact of this return.’ While the claims certainly do advert to a renewed interest in the theological in some surprising places, for instance among critical theorists, again the rhetoric is loose and more than a little glib, as those of us teaching in public universities in the West might well testify.2 After all, a packed room can still go suddenly quiet when someone announces that he or she is a ‘theologian’. In his work on the place of religion in liberal democracies American philosopher Richard Rorty even entitled an academic journal article ‘Religion as a Conversation Stopper’.3 When the silence finally ebbs away, even if only for a moment, invariably

1

2

3

Creston Davis, ‘Introduction: Holy Saturday or Resurrection Sunday? Staging an Unlikely Debate’, in Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic (ed. Creston Davis; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), pp. 3–23 (3). Daniel M. Bell provides a suggestion for further critical engagement with Davis’s claims: ‘Too many false friends today invoke a kind of transcendence (even, in some cases, “Christ”) that can be little more than a figment of a Feuerbachian imagination.’ ‘Only Jesus Saves: Toward a Theopolitical Ontology of Judgment’, in Theology and the Political: The New Debate (ed. Creston Davis, John Milbank and Slavoj Žižek; Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 200–27 (201). Richard Rorty, ‘Religion as a Conversation-Stopper’, Common Knowledge 3.1 (1994), pp. 1–6.

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two questions are asked of the theologian: ‘what is theology?’ and ‘how can theology be done today?’ Of course, these could be asked by someone who is not embarrassed by the theologian’s presence in the public gathering. In this context the questioner would then offer an expectant silence, a communicatively pregnant space that allows the theologian to respond with a description of her intellectual business of critical intellectual reflection of some ancient standing – in fact, the discipline around which Christendom’s medieval universities were founded. When the second question is asked in just this mood it is a request for the theologian to specify just what type of procedures or methods are followed in her critical work. On the other hand, and in marked contrast to this approach, the interrogation can equally arrive in a more ideologically loaded form. These questions can be asked in a spirit that is intensely critical of the whole business of theology, by rhetorically silencing the conversation either with disinterest (‘how can you do theology when it’s just not interesting or useful?’) or with shock that such an ‘intellectual’ practice could still take place (‘how can you do theology when it’s just not rationally possible?’). This way of asking the theologian questions about his or her work is somewhat similar in form to Pontius Pilate’s sneering response to Jesus’ mention of truth in the Fourth Gospel: ‘what is truth?’ (Jn 18.38). Pilate’s question is deliberately designed to rhetorically evade any challenge to his authority, an authority that represents locally the absolute power of Rome herself, the ‘victor’s’ power alone to ultimately determine what is ‘true’. For instance, the German idealist philosopher, and first Rector of the University of Berlin, Johann Fichte (1762–1814) suggested that religion’s appeals to historically specific affairs (such as an historical founder, events in the life of the earliest communities, etc.) and the authority of revelation simply exclude it from ‘scientific’ inquiry, the proper business of public intellectual life (Fichte appealed here not to the ‘natural sciences’ as such, but to Wissenschaft, or properly ordered and disciplined study).4 So Rorty, for example, in his reconsideration of ‘Religion in the Public Square’, claims that modern liberal democracies simply have to exclude such authoritarian appeals: ‘“the concept of a liberal democracy” forbids certain moves being made in the course of political [or, more broadly, “public”] discussion. What should be discouraged is mere appeal to authority.’5 This particular kind of appeal to the 4

5

Johann Gottlieb Fichte, ‘Deducirter Plan einer zu Berlin zu errichtenden höheren Lehranstalt (1807)’, in Sämmtliche Werke (Berlin: s.n., 1846), vol. 8, pp. 97–204. Cf. Immanuel Kant, ‘The Conflict of the Faculties’, in Religion and Rational Theology (trans. Allen G. Wood and George Di Giovanni; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 239–93 (270). Rorty, ‘Religion in the Public Square: A Reconsideration’, Journal of Religious Ethics 31.1 (2003), pp. 141–49 (147).

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unarguable is intensely conversation-stopping, and, Rorty continues, ‘citizens of a democracy should try to put off invoking conversation-stoppers as long as possible. We should do our best to keep the conversation going without citing unarguable first principles, either philosophical or religious.’6 When offered in this vein, the question ‘how can theology be done in this day and age?’ becomes a rhetorical question that answers in dismissive terms its own concern: ‘what is educative about theology?’ Rorty is not alone in claiming that the education that religion provides is publically unreasonable, a form of esoteric knowledge, a conversation-stopper, and an education in exclusivist intemperance that tends to ‘do more harm than good’.7 Therefore the exclusion of religious claims and convictions from the governing life of the ‘public sphere’ is ‘part of a reasonable compromise between secular and democratic governments and ecclesiastical organisations’.8 For theologians to do the work of anticipating an objection to their business offered in such a rhetorical form is the beginning of some fruitful intellectual work. It can be productive for not only the nature of ‘theology’ but for the character and purpose of ‘education’, and the way the two terms are used together. This requires a working understanding of how the situation has come about, of the sedimentation of the past in our present. Careful attention to the story of the development of modern theological and of secular educational systems here can produce some interesting things, and it can ask some particularly difficult questions of both secular and of theological educational providers. This is an important theological task, for the making of good judgement in the asking of theological questions by and of Christian communities.

Modernity grows a tale Talk of ‘modernity’ is in many ways an imprecise historians’ device, but where the language takes shape is around the description of a mood of philosophical and technological change whose early exponents referred to it as ‘Enlightenment’, and whose rational maturation has sometimes been referred to in terms of human maturation – as ‘man come of age’. Its story can be told as one in which ‘education’ develops in independence (or ‘autonomy’) from the kinds of theological traditions of knowledge that supposedly characterized medieval 6 7 8

Ibid., pp. 148–49. Ibid., p. 142. Ibid., p. 141.

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schooling. One of the most celebrated statements of the age came from the prominent Königsberg philosopher who is generally not only regarded as the most important philosopher of the modern era, but also as the one who exposed reason’s critical limits – Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). His short text of 1784, aptly titled ‘What is Enlightenment?’, served as a clear articulation of the spirit of the so-called age of enlightenment.9 Here Kant urged the emancipation of persons from binding tutelage to external authorities.10 Autonomous persons were to courageously use their own reason, and the church, as well as the rulers of the state in league with the state-church, was identified as one of several ‘guardians’ that denied the ‘freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters’.11 The soteriological shape of the exhortations is pronounced, and it is this that has driven the mythos of modernity. So Jeffrey Stout maintains that ‘Our early modern ancestors were right to secularize public discourse in the interest of minimizing the ill effects of religious disagreement.’12 Earlier, in possibly his most famed composition, The Critique of Pure Reason (1781 and 1787), he had declared that ‘I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith’,13 and in 1793 he developed what he meant by this in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. In a moment of realization that Kant’s writings on religion were not merely in service to theology by providing clear philosophical articulations of the rationality of Christianity, but indeed were laying the foundations of a whole new way of doing theology, the Prussian Lutheran Church authorities censured him and Friedrich William II forbade him from writing on religious matters. That situation changed with the statesman’s death, and the dutiful Kant felt liberated from his oath of obedience at that point. Responding to an invitation to publish a paper on the relation of theology and philosophy by the liberal theologian C. F. Stäudlin, Kant offered his last published work which was titled ‘The Conflict of the Faculties’ in 1798. In the first part of this paper Kant specifically addressed the relation of theology and philosophy and did two main things. Negatively he implicitly contested both Fichte’s removal of theology from public education and the French Revolutionaries’ establishment

9

10 11 12

13

Immanuel Kant, ‘What Is Enlightenment?’, in Practical Philosophy (ed. and trans. Mary J. McGregor; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 17–22 (21). Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., p. 18. Jeffrey Stout, The Flight from Authority: Religion, Morality and the Quest for Autonomy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 241. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (ed. and trans. Paul Guyer; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Bxxx, p. 117.

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of specialist écoles rather than supporting of universities. Positively, he offered philosophy as the discipline that grounded intellectual work, and argued for the presence of theology as a university faculty. But where Kant educationally situated theology, and the justification he provided for its very existence, proved to be something of a double-edged sword. Theology was not now the ‘queen of the sciences’ (Thomas Aquinas’s phrase) but, at best, one faculty among the faculties. The prestigious and celebrated University of Berlin of 1810, established through the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), briefly the Prussian Secretary for Religion and Public Instruction, was a classic example of this approach. It was largely this Berlin-model that helped shape the modern research university directly and public education more generally. Theology, law and medicine, were to be professional state-service faculties required by the ‘higher authority’ of the state, rather than the natural light of reason itself. Of course, the history of this state-focused offering of theology came to a chilling climax in both the church-supported ‘War-Theology’ of 1914 and the presence of the Deutsche Christen in support of National Socialist regime in the 1930s. Among other things this ‘clerical paradigm’ had several important implications for the shape and place of theology as educational.14 First, theology was ‘positioned’15 and reshaped not as a scholarly research discipline that furthered knowledge and understanding, or as that which engaged in the cultivation of Bildung, but rather as a provider of practical professional training in state service. The real intellectual work of Wissenschaft was done by Philosophy.16 This reflected Kant’s influential way of placing religion in the category of ‘faith’ in such a manner that he substantially distinguished it from ‘reason’ and therefore from wissenschaftliche knowledge. One of many examples of this tendency was the work of the great liberal historian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Adolf von Harnack, who gave decisive priority to Wissenschaft and to Schelling’s notion of the ‘transition to objectivity’ in such a way that theology could not appropriately witness to anything that could not be demonstrable by historical criteria. Second, as Thomas Albert Howard observes, this move intensified the ‘process whereby the churches were virtually annexed to the

14

15

16

Edward Farley, Theologia: The Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Education (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), p. 86. The image is taken from John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), introduction. Of course, Philosophy too has since been reduced to being a discipline alongside the other disciplines.

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modernizing state’.17 In fact, given the state control over the university, knowledge itself was an artefact of the state. In this respect, Stanley Hauerwas argues, ‘The university is the great institution of legitimation in modernity whose task is to convince us that the very way things are is the way things have to be.’18 Third, given that theology was publicly justifiable only for training ecclesiastics it became isolated from, and largely irrelevant to, the Christian formation of the church’s lay members. Theology therefore lost its intellectual place in the academic formation of the liberal education system with its Wissenschaftsideologie, and was unwittingly prevented from having a direct impact on the lives of both the lay church-people and the wider community. Fourth, religious ‘faith’, and by implication theology, not only did not engage in ‘pure reason’ but was rationally housed in Kant’s ‘practical reason’ or ethics – in other words, it had to do with how we live rather than with what was rationally true about the world. This, supplemented by its clerical-training function, augmented the pressures that led to functionalizing of theological education with its growing focus on matters and questions of practice. According to Mike Higton, ‘The temptation [of much church-based theological education] can be [and has been] to demand that all the teaching which an ordinand (say) receives be useful, that it serve certain clearly specified goals, that it fit clearly within a clear practical strategy and equip the student for pursuing that strategy.’19 Finally, since theology was essentially justifiable with regard to the training of clergy for service to the state, and since in Germany and other places there were several denominations of church, the development of modern theology has institutionally reinforced the educational divisions between different confessional affiliations. Consequently, there could often be both Protestant and Catholic faculties of theology within the same German university, and these denominational arrangements entailed that the churches retained control over most senior appointments. Accordingly, Rorty proclaims, ‘ecclesiastical institutions . . . [have been] among the principal obstacles to the formation of a global cooperative commonwealth’.20 Often in conscious rejection of the German and American models, in the United Kingdom particular confessional constraints 17

18

19

20

Thomas Albert Howard, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 22. Stanley Hauerwas, The State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), p. 6. Mike Higton, ‘Can the University and the Church Save Each Other?’, Crosscurrents (Summer, 2005), pp. 172–83. Richard Rorty, ‘Cultural Policies and the Question of the Existence of God’, in Radical Interpretation in Religion (ed. Nancy K. Frankenberg; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 53–77 (54).

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in the older universities were slowly removed and as newer departments were organized, and the primary and secondary state education system followed suit, there developed a publicly funded intellectual space where the contingent polarities between denominations and between theology and religious studies need not dominate.21 Crucially, given that the ‘clerical paradigm’ had served as the main modern reason for theology’s existence, with the emergence of more secular and pluralized forms of state governance and public engagement, it is hardly surprising that theology’s public significance has dissolved further. As Harvard Divinity School theologian Ronald Thiemann argues, while Kant and others of the time ‘came to the defense of theology and theology secured its place in the modern university, . . . the arguments they offered in support of theological education served further to undermine . . . [its] intellectual standing’.22 Especially with regard to the nature and place of theology as a discipline, von Humboldt’s plan for the University of Berlin reflected the influence of Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768–1834), Fichte’s successor as Rector of the University of Berlin. Schleiermacher’s account in Brief Outline on the Study of Theology of 1811 was largely a direct response to Fichte’s appeal for the removal of religion and theology from the state education system. While Schleiermacher critiqued Kant’s reduction of religion to ethics (Kant’s God guarantees the rationality of the moral law and immortality of the soul), he nevertheless largely adopted Kant’s perspective on theology as clerical-training. ‘[T]he clerical paradigm’ was becoming entrenched as an educational philosophy in theological education. Moreover, Schleiermacher outlined discrete areas of academic expertise or discipline (philosophical theology, historical theology and practical theology) which later fragmented theological education. The division of theology into distinguishable professional areas of study soon became standard in theological schools (although the nature of the disciplines was more usually that of the fourfold biblical studies, church history, systematic theology and practical theology). Moreover, in addition to these matters, his account, either directly or indirectly, generated various other issues that have plagued the health of the discipline in public education, particularly as it attempts to talk of ‘God’. For instance, in Schleiermacher’s apologetic strategy, religion is justified in the 21

22

On this see David F. Ford, Shaping Theology: Engagements in a Religious and Secular World (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), p. 29. Ronald F. Thiemann, ‘Toward a Critical Theological Education’, Harvard Theological Review 80 (1987), pp. 1–13 (3).

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modern world by virtue of its particular ability to describe religiously more general features, or experiences, of human cultural concern. This move from religion as a general category to the particular religions and religious practices, however, came to characterize the kinds of modern theologies which gradually became uninterested in religious particularity. Schleiermacher’s understanding of theology as a description of more general experiences of human cultural concern, then, was therefore intensified in modern theologies that gradually lost interest in matters of historic religious traditions. Second, Schleiermacher’s theology pre-eminently operated from an account of the religious intuition (what he calls the ‘feeling of absolute dependence’). While this account of religious intuition involved something abundantly greater than simple matters of affection, numerous modern theologians habitually emphasized that the knowledge of God is something inward and experiential. Third, for Schleiermacher, then, theology provided an account of the pious feeling, and while this notion of ‘feeling’ or ‘God-consciousness’ was pre-eminently mediated through Jesus as the uniquely God-conscious man and the Christian community, much modern theology retrained the essence of its attention on the phenomena of religion, religious practices, and the pious God-consciousness rather than on talk of God as such. The focus of theological and doxological interest in Christian theology was shifting from God, as the subject-matter of theology, to the subjective, to the affections or experiences of individual Christians. As Alasdair Heron observes, theology was shifting its ‘understanding of the character of theological and doctrinal statements – a shift from the objective to the subjective pole, from the truth to be affirmed to the awareness and intention of the person or community affirming it’.23 Finally, the distinction between theory and practice was intensified, with theology’s more theoretical subjects becoming progressively disconnected from questions of practice, and with practical theology appearing less and less theological and intellectually meticulous. A substantive schism was developing in many places between the scientific studies conducted in public religious and theological education and the perceived needs of churches. ‘The irony of this’, Thiemann observes, ‘is that the justification for ministerial studies fails to establish the intellectual status of the curriculum, and the argument for critical studies, while providing a justification for some disciplines within the university, appears wholly disconnected from the preparation for ministry’.24 Such has been the shape of a theological education when it imbibes the determinations

23 24

Alasdair I. C. Heron, A Century of Protestant Theology (Cambridge: Lutterworth, 1980), p. 28. Thiemann, ‘Toward a Critical Theological Education’, pp. 5–6.

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of an ontological space characterized by an epistemic and moral subjectivity of autonomy.

The end of persons in education Several significant nineteenth-century thinkers recognized that the German Idealist portrayal of modern autonomous reason and of Wissenschaft as involving an ‘inquiry into the universal, rational principles’ was more rationally precarious and mythic than its advocates suggested.25 The emperor was apparently wearing no clothes after all! For instance, the controversial philologist and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) perceived an illegitimate and anachronistic theology lurking underneath the secular disguise of modern German philosophy, despite all its talk of autonomy. Kant, for one, still required God to explicitly secure the rationality of the moral law and its fulfilment in immortal existence. Moreover, even where there was no overt appeal to theological themes and categories, Nietzsche argued that the Enlightenment’s appeal to a universal reason and an absolute ‘meaning’, like theology, forgot that all knowledge is bound to the context of the knower.26 According to Paolo Freire, ‘people are manipulated by . . . [a] series of myths’.27 Nietzsche attempted to radically repair the disciplining myth of modern reason, and in so doing claimed that freedom to be autonomous was the fruit of an honest admission that at heart of things is the ‘will to power’.28 This complex and highly controversial thinker was not as straightforwardly anti-humanist as some associations of his will-to-power and ‘master morality’ with Nazism might claim. Yet one of the directions that education has taken has undone any grounding of the various disciplines in any universal or integrative discipline (such as philosophy) and this has fragmented intellectual inquiry further. Moreover, and consequently, the discipline of learning has slipped from being a more humanist pursuit (concerned with, for example, ‘the good life’, ‘the common good’, ‘civilization’ and so on) to being something moulded specifically around the individual will. Observably, over the past few decades in 25

26

27 28

Citation from Hans Frei, Types of Christian Theology (ed. George Hunsinger and William C. Placher; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 98. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (trans. Walter Kaufmann; New York: Vintage Books, 1974), ‘Preface’, p. 2. Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (trans. Myra Bergman; London: Penguin, 1996), p. 128. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale; New York: Vintage Books, 1968), §1067, p. 550.

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particular categories of the will, such as individual ‘choice’, and an instrumental rationality in which learning provides certain ‘transferrable skills’ (or broad job-skills) training for individuals, have come to dominate education policies and practices.29 Here education focuses less on the objects of inquiry than on things like student skills (‘student-centred learning’), and the measure of success is largely students’ feedback on the courses and programmes they consume. In this process, educationalist Jane Thompson comments, ‘curiosity, creativity and critical thinking’ can become less important than utilitarianly conceived skills training for a more productive and efficient workforce.30 Where ‘persons’, or rather ‘values’, are in view, they are directed by the state. It is therefore problematically without any critical sense of the operations of ideology that Terry Lovat and Ron Toomey claim that since the 1990s each Australian state and territory ‘has been actively promoting its system and teachers as inculcators of the essential values that define being Australian. . . . Be it under the aegis of civics, citizenship or plain Values Education, it is now commonly accepted that an essential component of public education’s responsibilities is to be found in inculcating values in its students’.31 As Freire observed some years ago, ‘There is no such thing as a neutral education process.’32 ‘[A]ll education, whether acknowledged or not’, Hauerwas observes, ‘is moral formation’.33 But a moral education in what? Selling their ontological souls to an ethics of utilitarian principle, particularly an economically directed one, each education provider seeks to out-narrate the other providers in order to secure a good share of the now all-determining market.34 In fact, economic concerns have become a guiding interest on the shape of educational policy, subverting much of the wisdom of the teaching and research interests of the medieval universities.35 As the Cologne Charter of the G8 summit of 1999 declared, ‘Globalisation is . . . the organising framework within which 29

30

31

32

33 34

35

See John C. McDowell, ‘What Athens Has to Do with Jerusalem: The Wisdom of Reason, the Publics of Theology’, Pacifica 22 (2009), pp. 125–47. Jane Thompson, Stretching the Academy: The Politics and Practices of Widening Participation in Higher Education (Leicester: NIACE, 2000), p. 43. Terry Lovat and Ron Toomey, ‘Introduction: Values Education – A Brief History to Today’, in Values Education and Quality Teaching: The Double Helix Effect (ed. Terry Lovat and Ron Toomey; Dordrecht: Springer, 2009), pp. xi–xviii (xi). Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p. 56. ‘Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the [learner] into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it or it becomes the practice of freedom.’ Hauerwas, The State of the University, p. 46. Daniel Bell argues that ‘capitalism’s victory is much more insidious and pervasive than mere control of things economic’. Bell, ‘Only Jesus Saves’, p. 203. See Walter Rüegg, ‘Themes’, in A History of the University in Europe, Volume 1: Universities in the Middle Ages (ed. H. De Ridder-Symeons; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 3–34.

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current ideas and beliefs about adult learning are given value and priority by politicians.’36 Desire is disciplined, selfhood is conditioned. Even university research in the Humanities is largely co-ordinated under the imposition of administrators’ models of calculable excellence (in Australia the ‘Excellence in Research Australia’, or in the United Kingdom the ‘Research Assessment Exercise’). According to David Ford, The practical significance of what appears to be a case of collective irresponsibility in failing to think about ourselves with anything like the rigour that we show within and (increasingly) between our disciplines is that universities are far more vulnerable than they need to be to others setting their agenda and shaping their life.37

These are not minor shifts in the ethos and purpose of education, whether at higher education level or at some other. Speaking of the tertiary education sector Carl Raschke exclaims that ‘Higher education has been in a “crisis mode” for so long now.’38 The crisis is particularly one of identity, of teleology, with the requisite question of who and what are universities for not even being entertained by many government and higher education policy makers (or, if it is, being entertained in such a way that the considerations leave persons behind.39 While it is entirely accidental, given what I have been arguing here I particularly like the acronym for the Cambridge University Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities – CRASSH. The impoverishment involved is not merely of the educational providers and the market wares they peddle. When higher education peer-to-peer research displaces many of the more socially engaged considerations concerning the target audience, not only is Freire’s call for a Pedagogy of the Oppressed or Bell Hooks’ Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom largely meaningless, but the general public is left to be preyed upon by all manner of 36

37 38

39

G8 Summit, Cologne Charter: Aims and Ambitions for Lifelong Learning (Cologne, 1999), http:// www.g8.utoronto.ca/summit/19999koln/charter.htm, cited in Jane Thompson, ‘The Road to Hell . . .’, in Radical Learning for Liberation 2 (ed. Brid Connolly, Ted Fleming, David McCormack and Anne Ryan; Dublin: MACE, 2007), pp. 38–55 (32). Educationalist Jane Thompson comments that the Charter reflects decisions taken by European governments as they increasingly look to business and the private sector for help in specifying and shaping appropriate educational policy and provision. So in a British government White Paper of 1987, the claim was made that ‘Higher Education has a crucial role in helping the nation meet the economic challenges of the final decade of this century and beyond.’ Higher Education: Meeting the Challenges (London: HMSO, 1987), p. iv. Ford, Shaping Theology, p. 95. Carl A. Raschke, The Digital Revolution and the Coming of the Postmodern University (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. vii. This was a point strongly made at the CRASSH and British Academy conference ‘Changing Societies, Changing Knowledge’ in 2003 [see Ford, Shaping Theology, pp. 95–96].

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pseudo-intellectuals popularly peddling their impoverished and ill-informed wares.40 The result is an ontologically untested public space that offers the intellectually lightweight works of the likes of the ‘new atheism’, Christian literature that echoes consumerist self-help therapies and so on. Where William Cavanaugh asks ‘why has the state failed to save us?’ we should now be asking ‘why has the state failed to educate us?’41

The end of theology: Teaching as a subversive activity Under these conditions, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s appeal to universities to appropriately train students in good judgement seems both archaic in sentiment and yet timely in its demand: ‘it is a primary responsibility of a university to be unresponsive, to give its students what they need, not what they want, and to do so in such a way that what they want becomes what they need and what they choose is choice-worthy’.42 At this point the Christian apologist might be tempted to offer a solution provided by ‘only Christianity’, or ‘only the Church’ or ‘only Jesus’. Yet when the late Donald MacKinnon (1913–94), former Cambridge Norris Hulse Professor of Divinity, complains about ‘cheap apologetics’ he has in mind an anxiety ‘to secure apologetic victories’ which actually, but unwittingly, leads theologians ‘to suppose they had reached solutions, when in fact they had hardly begun effectively to articulate their problems’.43 What makes it a ‘cheap’ intellectual strategy is that there is an inability, or a refusal, both to engage in the ‘more expensive’ (because more sophisticated) analysis, and to sense the proper depths of real difficulty as well as the painful need for the most patient and deepest attention to understanding and critique. This strategy is unable, or worse refuses, to engage enduringly in insightful and conscientious analysis in order to properly comprehend the perspectives being argued with. Invariably, too, it has an insufficient sense both of the complex history of the contexts of one’s own

40

41

42

43

Bell Hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York and London: Routledge, 1994). William Cavanaugh, The Theopolitical Imagination: Christian Practices of Space and Time (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2003), p. 43. Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘Catholic Universities: Dangers, Hopes, Choices’, in Higher Learning and Catholic Traditions (ed. Robert E. Sullivan; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001) pp. 1–22 (15). Donald M. MacKinnon, ‘Can a Divinity Professor Be Honest?’, The Cambridge Review (12 November 1966), pp. 94–96 (95); The Problem of Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 124, respectively.

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perspective, and therefore of the need for an often destabilizing consideration of self-understanding and self-critical inquiry. Modern theology, in other words, is very much part of the problem. As Hauerwas observes, ‘The habits that now constitute the secular imagination are so imbedded in how Christians understand the world we no longer have the ability to recognize the power they have over us.’44 The opening reflections claimed that many ask ‘how can theology be done today?’ in a contemptuous way, but the argument proceeded by suggesting that, among other things, this practice assumes a separation of faith and reason. The public perception that modern theology distinctly lacks any important educative value is further accentuated by the attitude of churches that promote an almost anti-theoretical stress on the ‘primacy of practice’.45 From these two broad and interrelated developments theology comes to presume an a-rationally confessed and unsullied divine gift, whether in terms of the pious experience or the eternal truths of God made transparent in history, or in the authoritative ecclesiastical structures, or in the Bible. This is a gift that utterly bypasses thought and reflection, and secures itself as utterly unquestionable and untestable simplicity in an otherwise complex world. This same history has contributed to education in general being in a state of disarray as it is subjected to market forces that commodify, individualize and instrumentalize it as a constructive subjectivity defined by the supposed indeterminacy of ‘choice’. Critical repair of education is necessary for societies concerned to some degree or other with constructing ways of being human together beyond the individualism of consumer culture. Theology too is far from free from this particular pressure, and this is a third problem it faces in our contemporary educational climate. Evangelical theologian David Wells, for instance, laments what he identifies as a ‘gradual descent into the . . . adaptation of Christian belief to a therapeutic culture’.46 Theological education, then, Thiemann argues is also ‘in a state of disarray’.47 A prime theological resource for imagining what education might look like can be developed through understanding theology as an education in good

44 45

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Hauerwas, The State of the University, p. 173. The nineteenth-century revivalist preacher Dwight L. Moody once claimed in an interview, when asked about his theology, ‘My theology! I didn’t know I had any.’ (Cited in Richard Hofstadter, AntiIntellectualism in American Life [New York: Vintage, 1962], p. 108.) Billy Sunday boasted he did not ‘know any more about theology than a jack-rabbit knew about ping-pong’. (Cited in William G. McLoughlin, Bill Sunday Was His Real Name [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955], p. 123.) David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 58. Ronald F. Thiemann, ‘Making Theology Central in Theological Education’, The Christian Century (4–11 February 1987), pp. 106–8 (106).

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judgement, or that which involves the shaping of discerning practice by the preunderstanding of good vision. That might sound rather vague, but an illustration from the so-called transferrable skills directives identified for programmes and individual courses or units of study may help. Among the frequently specified objectives are words such as ‘critical’, ‘analysis’ and ‘evaluation’. These indicate that students will learn to exercise their judgements in order to make decisions concerning things like arguments, understanding materials or texts or problems and so on. But in the process their judgements will be, if the students are engaging well, challenged, clarified, developed and improved. Of course, in certain disciplines the exercise of good judgement requires more of what might be called ‘vision’, the type of horizon or disposition that in fact determines and shapes judgements. Modifications at the level of ‘vision’ can have an important impact on the judgements and decisions concerning good reasoning and practice that one makes. For instance, someone whose approach to politics was broadly neo-liberal could, through a course of substantive study, become more convinced by Marxist perspectives. Such changes in vision or the structure of belief would substantially reshape decisions or judgements about how to live a good life, plan for the future, engage in making policy and so on. On certain readings, Christian commitment to the theological narration known as ‘the gospel’ involves just such a restructuring of vision. It can expose much of what is occurring in the practices of secular and commodified forms of education (and that includes theology insofar as its substance comes to reflect those cultural pressures) as being unconducive to the well-being or flourishing of persons, and it can offer insights that will remodel the educational vision. Christian ethicist Oliver O’Donovan argues that ‘The triumph of God in Christ has not left these [political] authorities just where they were, exercising the same right as before. It imposes the shape of salvation-history upon politics. . . . [Yet] political leaders are not simply denied their authority, but are constituted, on these new terms, as a secondary theatre of witness to the appearing grace of God.’48 Of course, Christian theology is related in deep ways to the unflinchingly particularist confession of God in Christ, and this type of approach cannot and should not be expected from a pluralist and secular society. In this regard, O’Donovan’s language of ‘imposition’ particularly requires substantive testing. But nonetheless, the manner in which a good theology asks its questions and embarks on its studious reflections can put some important matters for critical

48

Oliver O’Donovan, The Ways of Judgment: The Bampton Lectures, 2003 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 5.

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consideration to religiously diverse societies and the liberal domination of the educational space. Earlier Jesus’ trial by Pilate in John 18 was mentioned, and this is a helpful text for gesturing towards good judgement regarding the educational issues raised so far. Nevertheless, real caution needs to be exercised when appealing to biblical texts in theological reasoning so as not to read into them issues and perspectives that distort their contexts and sensibilities; or to produce a simple conversation-stopping appeal to authority not shared by one’s conversants; or to leap over the complex history of the attempts of traditioned communities to read these texts. Its broad relevance to matters of envisioning theological education, and also education in general, in redeveloping judgement has to do with obliging theology to be attentive. This equally broad claim can be broken down into three more specific arguments, and in spelling them out it will become clear just what theology can critically offer to education more widely and can do to properly resist the pressure into dismissive silence or the silence of consumers’ disinterest. First, theology involves a responsive attention to its subject-matter. The story of modern theology is largely one in which forms of reasoning were applied which in effect reduced it not so much to a pale imitation of what it could be but rather into something quite different – an individualized, irrational and uncritical expression of faith. This has substantially impoverished not only theological education itself, but more general ‘secular’ understandings of religious traditions, and of Christianity in particular (hence the dismissive silence mentioned at the outset of the paper). Pilate, in making his judgement on the matters before him, equally imposed his vision of how things were upon his ‘subject-matter’ which resulted in his deadly act against the very ground and giver of life (1.3, 10) himself. The Fourth Gospel, by virtue of identifying the One suffering judgement with the very Logos or Word of God’s own Self (1.1, 14), exposes the Judaean governor’s authority to exercise judgement on Jesus as distorted and deluded. Instead, the narrative suggests that judgement has already been made and given by the God under whose authority Pilate actually lives and moves – the judgement that in Jesus is Life (1.4) and Truth (14.6), so that in him good judgement has its ground and goal. Moreover, a theology that works as a response to its subject-matter distinctly resets the focus away from both the-individual-in-faith or the-individual-as-consumer. There is something else too. Modern secular thought has used the category of ‘religion’ as the way to deal intellectually with classifying faith traditions. Kant, for example, followed the growing trend among post-Enlightenment intellectuals in regarding ‘natural

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religion’ as underlying all the seemingly different religious traditions. Ultimately there was one religion, natural to all and known by reason, with the religious traditions manifesting as well as masking it in various ways. It is this approach, now commonly known as ‘religious pluralism’ and most prominently expounded in English-speaking philosophy of religion by John Hick, that has shaped much of the shape of the study of religion in terms known as ‘comparative religion’. But at the very least, it needs to be asked whether this imposes a single perspective on material that is now denied its rich differences. Ironically, is religious pluralism not a refusal to acknowledge the irreducible plurality of faith traditions? Being attentive to the subject-matter encourages a better sense that the differences matter, or at least that they might matter if only we paid attention to judge this. Moreover, it renders pluralism, in Milbank’s terms, ‘vacuous and impossible’.49 Second, theology employs attention to community. Such a claim is often made by educationalists, but the appeal to communities can invariably appear rather uncritically sentimental, as if doing things together is the end rather than doing things together well to ‘glorify God’. After all, Pilate seems in large part from the gospel account to have responded to pressure from sections of the Jewish community to try Jesus as a threat to Rome, and his own judgement was largely shaped by a vision of the glory of Rome which he had learned both from his contemporaries and those past who had generated this particular imperial ideology. Yet modern theological education has often been shaped by an acontextually conditioned vision of the autonomous rational subject, and its commodifying disposition is geared towards the liquidity of late-modern detraditionalized identity. This occurs in such a way that any research that is done is dislocated from the good of the wider public, especially the churches. Unlike with the appeal to autonomous reason, the engagement with its subject-matter comes through community at several levels. Importantly, there is the educative ‘great cloud of witnesses’ (Heb. 12.1), the historically and geographically extended and multiply identifiable communities of readers, and attention to this generates a distinctly catholic spirit in education. That cannot be emphasized enough – there is something deeply flawed in any arts and humanities discipline that does not treat its classic texts. Can one do political studies well without at some point engaging with the likes of Grotius, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Paine, Marx and so on? But the problem is even more pressing for a Christian theology. For instance,

49

John Milbank, ‘The Conflict of the Faculties: Theology and the Economy of the Sciences’, in Faithfulness and Fortitude: In Conversation with the Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas (ed. Mark Thiessen Nation and Samuel Wells; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), pp. 39–58 (53).

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Christian confession of the mediation of God’s presence – in the incarnation as witnessed to through the Scriptures and proclaimed through the history of Christian performance – requires a refusal of simple appeals to the immediacy of God. Encounter with God, and growth in Christian life and understanding occur within the contexts of faithful communities who perform the Scriptures together. And there have been multiple ways of reading throughout Christian history – even if one does not want to advocate the apathy or despair of laissezfaire relativism, one cannot but confess that Christian communities have engaged in a diversity of readings. At the very least this requires conversation, listening, understanding and argument. Otherwise, Christian communities that appeal to some unmediated experience of God, or to the flatly available authority of God in the structures of church or bible, are in real danger of docetism, or at the least Apollinarianism – a failure to appreciate the full-blooded ways in which confession occurs, in which doctrines develop, in which argument, disagreement and consensus are forged in Christian theological history.50 Further, in following the way of its ‘subject-matter’ – its commitment to a claim concerning an incarnate Lord who gives his life as the restoration for a broken creation – theology learns to do its work in a responsible witness to the event of the world’s healing for the sake of that healing being made available. From this, a well-ordered theology is duly placed to offer an invaluable service to forms of education that forget to ask about human and non-human (‘creaturely’) flourishing, and therefore fail to wonder about who or what education is for beyond the narrow constraints of the self-interested autonomous subject, or that constrain knowledge in support of the self-interested state and realpolitik.51 Theology can help put the importance of ‘vision’ back on the educational agenda. Theology, itself an umbrella term for diverse intellectual disciplinary inquiries, is alert to the problems that simple but intense academic specialization generates for the question of human well-being or wholeness. Ignoring this is fatal for our educational institutions, as technocratic reason in the guise of education reduces people to and trains them for surviving as cogs in the determinative

50

51

Therefore, to speak of the particular ‘explicit theological commitment’ of the theologian as ‘sectarian’, in contrast with a faith (which, surely, is a form of commitment!) which ‘need not be sectarian’ as Paul MacDonald Jr does, is already an ideological assumption. ‘Studying the Secular University’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78.4 (2010), pp. 991–1024 (1015). In a university context government and funding bodies need to give serious consideration to what has been unhappily called ‘knowledge transfer’ (it is ‘unhappy’ because it tends to suggest, at least rhetorically, a ‘banking model of education’, and the engagements in learning and teaching are mono-directional). Might it not be an important and necessary task for an academic to embark on a series of sermons, or write regularly for a newspaper, or be available for television or radio interview?

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or totalizing ambition of the market-system, since they will simply assume an underlying vision of the way things are and should be. Likewise, it is fatal for the health of persons the truth of whose being has to be articulated through a radically alternative vision. Instead, the search for meaning and wholeness takes place through ideologies that persons are unprepared to critically test and reflect on, and offer reasonable judgements about. Equally, it is fatal for the health of society to fail to demand the highest levels of knowledge, understanding and public debate. Ford, reflecting on the implications of the disintegration of highlevel public reasoning and argument for religious understanding, observes that ‘If religions are not studied in universities then they do not go away; what happens is that the level of public debate on religious matters and on the wide range of issues to which religion is relevant is to that extent impoverished.’52 Third, Theology involves an attention that is critical. This particular statement can be further subdivided into the following three sets of contentions. In the first place is consideration of how theology is to operate within contexts deeply bound to what Christian traditions theologically describe as ‘sin’. Pilate’s vision of things spawns his Realpolitik but is exposed as deadly, what these Christian traditions name as ‘sinful’, a distorting darkness which is disruptive of the goodness of a world created because spoken into being through God’s Reason or Logos. Theology in this moment, as critical reflection on the proclamation of the church,53 is to be relentlessly alert to the disruptions of desire and the temptations to the easy short-cut and longing for consolation, and the partiality of the contexts which shape its visions, and it is to be inexorably honest about the pressures that misdirect its work. To draw this point into the earlier discussion of the dismissive silence that theologians frequently face in public settings today, a repentant theology’s potential for ‘conversation-stopping’ becomes decisively mitigated when it learns well from listening to others’ criticisms of it, whether those criticisms are legitimate perceptions or correctable misunderstandings of its claims. Only in listening carefully and appropriately will good judgements 52

53

Ford, Shaping Theology, p. 36. Cf. Mark Noll’s comment: ‘If evangelicals do not take seriously the larger world of the intellect, we say, in effect, that we want our minds to be shaped by the conventions of our modern universities and the assumptions of Madison Avenue, instead of by God and the servants of God.’ Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 34. The purpose of theological education as such, according to Charles M. Wood, ‘is not to form Christians, but to form the habit of critical reflection on one’s formation. It is not to mediate the content of the Christian tradition, but to equip one for theological reflection on the Christian tradition’. An Invitation to Theological Study (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994), pp. 18–19. Wood, An Invitation, p. 4: ‘Christian theology is the activity of examining the life and message of the Christian church, and of making some judgments as to whether they are what they purport to be, namely, authentic, true, and fitting representations of the gospel of Jesus Christ.’

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about the legitimacy of the criticisms be discovered. As MacKinnon counsels, ‘We have got to realize the seriousness with which men [and women] urge that faith encourages dishonesty.’54 And, importantly, even when others’ criticisms are perceived to be illegitimate one can still learn much from the fact that this is the perception that people have of theology. A morally imperative theology can therefore encourage all forms of education to listen appropriately, and consequently to be deeply and unflinchingly self-critical. In the second place, critical attention is not merely an inward or selffocused therapy but offers a modest yet potentially transformative array of insights on the way persons are formed and act in our societies. Theology, as a crucial aspect of the ‘missionary’ work of Christianity, can engage in wellinformed critical judgements about competing visions in reflecting on the light of what is described by Karl Barth as the gospel of the Judge (Jesus) judged (by Pilate) in our place (for our salvation). In this mood, theology can encourage the collegial understanding that is largely disappearing from ever fragmenting educational practices, and can help overcome disciplinary fracture through mutual engagement and conversation. After all, as theologians constantly remind educational institutions, ‘theology’ as a discipline is actually an umbrella term for the study of theology proper, or the shape of belief; for sophisticated reflection on how to read the sacred and classical texts; for exposition or exegesis of those texts; for studies in the history of development and change in religious practices; and for ways of concrete engagement in religious practices today. According to Ford, It is hard to think of a discipline that is not related to the questions raised by the study of religions. This underlies the obvious fact that theology is not one field in the way in which, for example, geology is. It does not have a subject matter that can be neatly circumscribed, because it is the nature of religions to pervade the whole of life, individual or corporate, and to offer a comprehensive horizon embracing all reality. . . . [A] specific religion is not adequately studied if it is fragmented into specialist aspects without coordination. Its aspects are coinherent in ways that quite often make nonsense of attempts to deal with it in fragments.55

In the third place is the pluralization of what is meant by ‘theology’. Pilate’s judgement has been formed by a quite different theology from that of Jesus, 54

55

Donald M. MacKinnon, Philosophy and the Burden of Theological Honesty: A Donald MacKinnon Reader (ed. John C. McDowell; London: T&T Clark, 2011), p. 20. Ford, Shaping Theology, p. 31.

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and Nietzsche at his best can help us begin to discern this also with much so-called secular theory. The Roman official was devoted to a fundamentally different story of the way things are and ought to be. Churches and other educational settings that are deeply steeped in sentimental appeals to people’s ‘experiences’ and even ‘traditions’ should recognize that beliefs, theories and theologies matter – and they matter practically since they determine the shape of discernment, deliberation, planning, arguing and engagement. Even within Christianity itself there are a range of theological perspectives, some of which appear quite incompatible. In this way theology has to admit that, whether it likes it or not, there are many different theologies, and ‘secular’ education has to be attentive to the kinds of claims it makes lest it unwittingly slip into doing ‘secular’ theology. Dealing with them well will involve not ‘cheap apologetics’ or the power that comes from self-assertion and self-protection, but the deepest commitment to self-critical understanding, knowledge of others, and argument formed by good reasoning. Whatever else Jesus did, John 18 makes it clear that in his thorough following of the way of obedience unto death he did not oppose his imperial judge’s claims with simple assertions that assume or produce self-interest, or self-protective security, or, more starkly, naked power. Patient engagement in listening, conversing, and arguing, witnesses in its own way to the self-dispossessing giving of the patience of God, and to the repentant humility of one who recognizes the complexity of confession. Like Judaism and Islam, Christianity has had a productive and highly distinguished intellectual heritage. It is faced today, no less, with questions about its identity, what its sacred texts mean, and how it relates to alternative perspectives or readings of things. It is not a legitimate option to refuse to think about itself as an education, a formation in judgement that comes in and through the schooling of persons in the humanum ‘grounded in, and lived in relation to the mystery of the Triune God’.56 The issue, instead, is about the quality, integrity and honesty of the education, both in theory and in practice. As Nicholas Lash once said, the refusal to critically reflect on one’s faith is not a spiritual virtue, but is unwittingly a claim that obedience to God does not really matter to us, only what so-called ‘faith’ provides for us.57 ‘[F]or those called to love God with all their minds it [viz. the refusal to critically engage] is . . . a radical failure in

56

57

L. Gregory Jones, Transforming Judgment: Toward a Trinitarian Account of the Moral Life (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1990), p. 2. See Nicholas Lash, Voices of Authority (London: Sheed and Ward, 1976), p. 79.

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integrity.’58 Yet it is a major task to get theology to this point. William Placher recognizes that this requisite ‘pressure for [appropriate] academic quality in theological education needs to come from the “consumers” – from denominations and congregations. The economic pressures on most seminaries drive them to make everything as easy as they can in order to attract more students. They are aware that a seminary down the road, or online, stands ready and eager to offer something easier and cheaper. The demand for higher [and theologically well-ordered] standards needs to come from denominations and through the hiring practices of local congregations’.59 In a market-driven environment in which consumption and profit are the key evaluative terms for making public judgements it remains a vital challenge to convince churches of their need for ‘formation in the intellectual skills the church calls theology’.60 An attentive theology of the type broadly offered here indicates the importance of asking what education is for, and by attending to its responsibility for human well-being it can offer a substantive vision of education beyond any reduction to consumer will and the pressure of the market. Embracing and promoting serious, rigorous and honest lifelong learning characterized by good judgement might then mean that the theologian could encounter the silence of interested attention from those who want to hear and discuss the issues more than the silence imposed by anti-theological sarcasm. At the very least, a well-ordered theology in responsible witness to the future of God’s world can transformatively critique the faith/reason, practice/theory dualisms that tend to underlie the more dismissive versions of silence, and the more simply uninterested versions that are grounded in the vision of individuals’ will-to-consume. As Hauerwas declares, ‘theology is one of the few disciplines that has a chance to be free and rational’.61 There is still a vigorous and worthwhile theological argument to be had, and when it is dismissed on the basis of bureaucracy or consumer taste the very nature of the educational process is disordered.

58

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60 61

Ford, Shaping Theology, p. 36. A little mischievously one could suggest that theologians are increasingly bearing the image of God in Christ as ‘martyrs’, as being under the cross – it is many of them who as a pilgrim people who have no home, either among the respect of public educators or among the churches who marginalize them; it is they who are becoming powerless and voiceless; it is they who are oppressed and downtrodden. Yet, against the threat of despair they are called to hope and live in faithful witness. In fact, by simply refusing to compromise on valuing rigorous study, good and valid reasoning, sympathetic understanding, and argument, theology will be itself positioned somewhat counter-culturally. This might re-educate educationalists in well-being, judgements, modesty, care and attention. William Placher, ‘The Seminary’s Impossible Task’, The Christian Century (22 February 2003), pp. 36–46 (45). Citation from Hauerwas, The State of the University, p. 206. Hauerwas, The State of the University, p. 6, fn. 13.

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8

‘Grace Builds Upon Nature’: Philosophy and the Future of Theology Paul Helm

It may seem odd that a philosopher should offer remarks on the future of theology. If there is a justification for this it must be because the history of Christian theology can be regarded as the history of the interaction between the philosophies of the culture and the canonical sources of the Christian faith. What follows is offered as a contribution to this ongoing conversation.

Theology and words Theology is a human discipline, a study of God and his ways, as these have been made available in general and special revelation. It is subject to growth and decay, to periods of progress and of regression, like any other human discipline. To say that theology is a human discipline might be taken by some as meaning that theology is simply constructive, a cultural artefact or a series of artefacts, like an abstract painting or a work of fiction. Yet the intention of Christian theology down the years has been to be referential and truth-stating; other things besides, of course, but these other things have depended on belief that the core of Christian theological statements enjoy referential success, and are belief-worthy. To make a true statement, that statement must have a meaning and it must enjoy referential success; its subject must succeed in referring to the appropriate state of affairs and what it says of that subject must be true. So for ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself ’ to be true it has to be true that there is a God of whom it makes sense to say that he was ‘in Christ’ and good reason to suppose that this God in fact reconciled the world.

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What is interesting about much modern theology is that there is often a deafening silence regarding this issue of referential success or failure in religion, especially of course in the Christian religion. Anyone who has any experience of the character of theological discussion that prevails in academic departments of religion and theology will be familiar with the sociological phenomenon that I shall call theological autonomy. The business of theology is conducted exclusively between theologians, with rules that exclude or forbid raising questions of truth and falsity, or even of seeing the need to justify the activity of ‘doing theology’, or of questions regarding objective truth and falsity. This mind-set also does what it can to discourage the raising of such questions from outside the charmed circle of theological discussants. For theological debate has the features of a game, as its practitioners will often concede. The late Basil Mitchell has an amusing essay ‘How to Play Theological PingPong’.1 In the game, theology seems to be nothing but words about words about words. It is theologians’ words about theologians’ words about theologians’ Godtalk. If the readers think that this is not the stuff of academic theology, then he should consult any issue of an academic theological journal. It is this fact, the fact of theological cultural insulation and an unconcern about objectivity, that fosters the development in the minds of non-theologians of the thought that theology is ‘not a subject’, a thought that is slowly, but surely, contributing to the demise of university departments of theology. Why should tax-payers’ money be spent on word games? To take a recent example, academic theology has been at the centre of the flourishing of ‘Trinitarian studies’. Whose model of the Trinity is to be preferred? Eastern or Western? One that tends to tritheism, or the opposite, which tends to modalism? Is the Trinity a model for human community? Such questions have spawned learned books and articles galore, and without doubt these are interesting questions. But they are surely only worthwhile questions if there is first a satisfactory answer to the question, Have we reason to think that there is a God who is triune? But the question, ‘Is there a triune God?’ which ought surely to be a logically prior question to a discussion of the more precise contours of God’s triune nature, is never raised. Imagine a discussion about the biology of unicorns. Where exactly is the heart of a unicorn to be found? What is its diet? What are its habits of procreation? When and how often do unicorns moult? Imagine books and monographs

1

See Basil Mitchell, How to Play Theological Ping Pong: Collected Essays on Faith and Reason (ed. William J. Abraham and Robert W. Prevost; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990).

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on these and other similar issues written by the student of unicorns. Imagine a Journal of Unicorn Studies with articles having titles such as ‘Unicorns and Climate Change: A Suggestion’ or ‘The Mating Call of the Male Unicorn: a Roar or a Whinny?’ Before spending any time leafing through these peer-reviewed contributions to unicorn literature ought we not first to establish whether or not there are unicorns? It is true that there may be reticence to declare or deny a personal belief, or to bring issues of personal belief into academic enquiry. The neglecting of the question of referential success may also arise because it is thought that the discussions have reached degrees of sophistication that makes checking for truth well nigh impossible. But nevertheless, academic discussion proceeds under its own steam, with the prospect of checking for truth never being raised; the only questions raised and judged worthy of discussing are whether theologian A has correctly understood theologian B’s ideas and their implications. Words about words.

The style of modern theology and philosophy In the last century theology was knocked sideways by Logical Positivism with its characteristic claim that theology is cognitively meaningless. The collapse of academic theology in the face of the falsification and verification challenges of Positivism was, with the benefit of hindsight, astonishing. The discussions of real or supposed distinctives of ‘religious language’ proposed by such as Ian Ramsey, R. B. Braithwaite and R. M. Hare were developed in a cultural vacuum cut off from the rich history of treatments of language in Christian theology.2 This dramatic influence of positivism seems to have established a pattern that has continued over the past century or so. The pattern has the following central feature, that some thesis or outlook of Anglo-American philosophy gains the attention of some theologians after roughly 30 years of its first discussion and coming into vogue by philosophers, and usually when that attention has waned. Philosophy, like other academic subjects, is subject to the vagaries of fashion, and to the exhaustion of particular topics. As I shall illustrate, in the last century

2

See, for example, Ian Ramsey, Christian Empiricism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974); R. B. Braithwaite, ‘An Empiricist’s View of the Nature of Religious Belief ’, reprinted in John Hick (ed.), The Existence of God (London: Collier Macmillan, 1964) and R. M. Hare’s contribution to ‘The University Discussion’, reprinted in Antony Flew and Alasdair Macintyre (eds), New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London: SCM Press, 1955).

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or so it has taken about 30 years or so for a trend or tendency or the dominance of an idea to come into vogue and then, like a pair of socks, to be worn out in discussion, and for the subject to be changed. It is at that time, the wearing threadbare time, that the idea in question comes to be taken up by theologians. So that theologians were worrying themselves to distraction by puzzling over ‘the nature of religious language’, its distinctive role or ‘logic’, while caught in the headlights of Logical Positivism, but after its decline. One reason for this decline was that the cogency of its argument for an empiricist view of cognitive meaningfulness was shown to be threadbare. Another was that positivism gave way to other interests, being superseded, for example, by attention to the subtleties of ‘ordinary language’.3 This ‘linguistic’ theme or mood produced two types of variation: Wittgenstein and the emphasis upon language-games, and the J. L. Austin-inspired speech-act theory. There was a flurry of theological interest in Wittgenstein, and his gnomic utterance ‘Theology as grammar’ as seen in the work of Paul Holmer,4 for example, though it cannot be said that Holmer worked with this saying in a very concerted way. Of the varied theological connections proposed, one which came to be influential through the work of George Lindbeck in The Nature of Doctrine5 focused upon Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the denial of the idea of a private language and real or assumed consequences of this denial for the essentially communitarian account of language and consciousness. The critique of Cartesian views of consciousness as individual and solitary was based upon Wittgenstein’s view of a private language. What Lindbeck did was to use an idea attributed to Wittgenstein as a reason for explaining and warranting his own ideas about the nature of religious community. No attention was paid to the meaning of the ‘private-language argument’ (not itself a phrase of Wittgenstein’s) that became a bone of contention among philosophers, and continued to be until interest in it waned in the 1970s.6 There was a failure to see that the private-language argument is an argument, in large part constructed from the gnomic, epigrammatic prose of Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations and elsewhere. There came to be several versions of it, and numerous qualifications and counterarguments to it.

3 4 5

6

Others were a renewed interest in metaphysics and in the history of philosophy. Paul L. Holmer, The Grammar of Faith (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978). The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984). See, for example, O. R. Jones (ed.), The Private Language Argument (London: Macmillan, 1971), though the argument saw a revival in the 1980s in connection with Saul Kripke’s work on it. (See S. A. Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language [Oxford: Blackwell, 1984].)

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When appropriated by theologians the context of the idea in philosophical argumentation gets left behind. Lindbeck, for example, gives no sense of the contestable nature of the idea of a private language. It is as if this idea could legitimately be imported from philosophy as a more or less permanent ‘finding’, without any need for much explanation or discussion. And the finding can at once be seen to have important implications for the nature of Christian doctrine, for its communitarian character. But if the reference to the argument is to be fairminded, it surely must carry with it something of the argumentative setting and a sense in which it is judged to be plausible by those who discuss it professionally. Another way of saying this is that for theologians philosophical ideas seem to have an assumed prestige. Other examples could be cited, such as J. L. Austin’s work on speech-acts, and its influence on Donald Evans7 and Kevin Vanhoozer.8

Nature and grace It is tempting to think of a situation in which each 20 or 30 years’ theology is harnessed to a different philosophical development as opportunistic. At the very least such a practice has a tendency to undermine theology’s own objectivity. In any case, such a relationship between philosophy and theology, in which a particular view becomes a dominant, controlling influence before it quickly fades from view, is markedly different from the traditional ways of philosophy’s real but subordinate place in assisting the philosophical task. So, one thing that needs emphasizing as we venture into the field of theological futurology, is that grace builds upon nature, where nature is to be understood widely, as encompassing both human nature and the natural world. This Thomistic phrase is frequently misunderstood. It does not claim that grace is to be naturalized, that grace is nothing but an expression of nature, or an extension of it. Rather, it is the recognition that in being clear about the works of God’s grace we must, inter alia, utilize God’s natural gifts to us and stress that Christian theology is rooted in history (and in that sense in nature, the world and space and time) and its claims are subject to the scrutiny of the senses and the reason as well as to their assistance. When theology rests on historical or geographical or ethical or metaphysical claims, or such claims are implied, these must be open to scrutiny as they are in any other discipline. To the extent that it cuts itself off from such

7 8

Donald D. Evans, The Logic of Self-Involvement (London: SCM Press, 1963). Kevin Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster, 2005).

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enquiries by professing no interest in them and in the challenges that they may bring, to that extent it is headed in the direction of Gnosticism. The relation of theology to these areas of enquiry is not that of superstructure to foundations. Grace builds on nature does not mean that the theologian must first offer satisfaction in history or anthropology or whatever before a single brick of the superstructure can be safely laid. As it happens, my own view is that the more appropriate figure for the intellectual shape of Christian theology is not that of a building but of a web.9 Portions of that web may come under strain or suspicion at any time, and as a consequence some theological claim may have ‘defeaters’, which must be responded to. The ‘defeaters’ must be ‘defeated’. Nor do I mean that the defeat of defeaters must have the form of a universally compelling argument or the presentation of data that are overwhelmingly in favour of the Christian gospel. Yet the integrity of theology’s public voice depends upon the ability of Christian thinkers to recognize potential defeaters and to do their best to defeat them. When the Apostle Paul says that he bore witness to events that ‘were not done in a corner’, and John talks of seeing with his eyes and touching with his hands the manifest, incarnate life of God, and Peter writes of making known the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, they are emphasizing that the Christian gospel was enacted in the public arena. And when the same men stress that the Saviour was seen and heard, and that the apostles did not bear witness to ‘cleverly devised myths’ but heard for themselves the Father’s voice testifying to his Son, they are with one voice testifying to the importance of our senses and reason in appropriating the saving grace of the gospel. This is one important way in which grace, God’s sovereign, redemptive grace through Jesus Christ, builds on nature, as the apostles have taught the church.

The senses In the course of his long discussion of the doctrine of transubstantiation in the Institutes, Calvin wrote this about the body of Christ: ‘The body with which Christ rose is declared not by Aristotle, but by the Holy Spirit, to be finite, and to be contained in heaven until the last day.’ And also, more generally What is our flesh? Is it not that which consists of certain dimensions? Is confined within a certain place? Is touched and seen? And why, say they, may not God

9

I have tried to develop the idea of a web in Faith with Reason (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000).

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make the same flesh occupy different places, so as not to be confined to any particular place, and so is to have neither measure nor species? Fool! [W]hy do you require the power of God to make a thing to be at the same time flesh and not flesh? It is just as if you were to insist on his making light to be at the same time light and darkness. He wills light to be light, darkness to be darkness, flesh to be flesh . . . flesh must therefore be flesh, and spirit, spirit; each under the law and condition on which God has created them. Now, the condition of flesh is, that it should have one certain place, its own dimensions, and its own form.10

Some years later Francis Turretin developed such points into a general approach to the senses in relation to the revealed mysteries. The basic question is when the senses are relevant: The question is not therefore whether the testimony of the senses is in every case to be regarded, so that we should grant nothing except what the senses can seize. For we grant there are many mysteries to which the reason and much less the senses cannot rise, such as the mysteries of the Trinity, of the incarnation, etc. Rather the question is when the senses judge of an object belonging and do not go beyond their proper sphere, must their testimony be rejected or admitted? The question is whether faith may be opposed to a well-directed judgment of the senses and overthrow it. This we deny.11

That is to say, the evidence of the senses is to be admitted when it deals with an area in which that sort of evidence is relevant, when ‘a spiritual is joined with a corporeal thing’. One of the problems with the doctrine of transubstantiation is not that the presence of Christ at the celebration of the Supper is mysterious – it certainly is – but that mysteriousness is construed in a way that violates the basic testimony of the senses. In the Supper there is a double aspect – the corporeal is the vehicle of the spiritual. Through the elements of bread and wine the presence of Christ is brought near, as we recognize the elements for what they are, a matter in which the senses are involved, and as the word accompanies their distribution and provides us with the understanding of what is going on, a matter of the intellect. To suppose that Christ is bodily present under the appearance of the bread violates the basic evidence of our senses, and has serious consequences for our understanding of the real humanity of the risen Saviour. For it requires that the real human body of Christ be distributed across countless locations where the Supper is being celebrated. 10

11

Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. Henry Beveridge; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008), IV.17. 24. Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I.XI.IV (ed. J. T. Dennison Jr; trans. G. M. Giger; Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1992), I.35.

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So the body of Christ is a real human body, in the Aristotelian category of place, or – as Calvin preferred – Christ’s body is referred to in Scripture as being in one place at a time as any body is (as Aristotle taught, as no doubt Calvin had not forgotten). But we don’t need Aristotle to teach us this. Such a body can be touched and seen, and was touched and seen. It cannot therefore be a body under the appearance of bread, and so seen and yet not seen. The biblical support for this real and vital, though limited, place for the senses in our understanding of the mysteries of our faith (when there is a sensory component to these), and in not multiplying mysteries unwarrantably, is provided by the place that the senses play in the gospels. Further, the reception of the preaching of the faith involves the senses. We must hear the preacher, read the book. If the senses are systematically unreliable then how can we get anywhere by studying the Bible, hearing the word, contemplating the works of God? Holding conversations with others? Remembering what we have heard? This was supremely the case in the disciples being in the company of the incarnate Son, who they saw, and touched and listened to. Did their senses deceive them? But it is also the case with us. But how far ought we trust the senses in these matters? They are not infallible, for they are subject to our imaginations and pre-dispositions, tiredness, and ‘fevers and delirium’. Sometimes it may appear that the senses are defective when in fact we come to a conclusion too quickly, as in the case of Mary Magdalene who supposed that the risen Christ was the gardener. It is necessary therefore to test the senses, in obvious ways.

Reason and right reason Reason is said to be at least part of what the imago dei consists in. We could debate that, asking whether reason has the requisite degree of relationality about it. Anyhow, reason is one of several features which, if the image does not consist in them, in their combination, are at least apt for the image, that which the image fits atop. It is reason in that sense that is used in the Augustinian phrase ‘right reason’. What makes reason right reason is not that it is a peculiar sort of reason. It is human reason, but possessed of a certain kind of orientation. One recurrent serious distortion of the faith, not much discussed at present, is Gnosticism, the idea that true religion consists in a certain kind of knowledge or insight, discontinuous with natural languages and senses, and what they convey, which the would-be Christian must be initiated into. In contrast to such

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an approach, it must be insisted Christians occupy the natural world in the same way their Messiah did, that’s why in his first letter John was ready to emphasize that the Word of life, whom he proclaimed, was heard and seen and touched. The Word made flesh was a public figure. Whatever happened in the Fall, reason is not lost, otherwise humanity would have been lost. But reason was skewed, because mankind was skewed; in the Fall, and as a consequence of it. The skewing of reason is, or leads to, the loss of ‘right’ reason. In the work of redemption and restoration, all aspects of the soul, including the reason, begin the process of being restored. There is no perfection, sinless moral perfection or complete restoration of the reason. But there is a definite beginning, a reorientation of the self, the mind, the voluntas, including its autonomy. The regenerate, reasoning person recognizes the limitations due to being a creature, and therefore the presence of ineradicable mysteries of the faith. The knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are, as Calvin taught, intrinsically related. The influence of such regeneration upon reason can be recognized far and wide, insofar as Christian influence on the wider culture becomes effective. So that while the impetus and energy for right reason is a fruit of regeneration, effects of that fruit can be felt more generally. Conversely, what we call secularism or modernism includes the eclipse of recognition that we have a Creator about whom it is right for us to recognize that many matters about him and his ways are mysterious. Instead it asserts the autonomy of reason, and eliminates creaturely dependence from public discourse. Earlier Reformed theologians, such as Francis Turretin, treat such matters with great insight and discrimination. So he gives his readers a general account of the place of logic, reason and judgement in theology at the beginning of his Institutes of Elenctic Theology. In Book I question 9–11 he outlines what he takes to be the role of reason in theology, albeit in his usual compressed and economical way. In the light of current ferment about foundationalism and its alleged evils I think that it is helpful to regard Turretin not as an epistemological foundationalist in the optimistic Enlightenment sense. He does not appeal to selfevident proposition or propositions as foundational, in the manner of Descartes’ cogito, nor does he appeal to undeniable foundational data, like John Locke’s simple ideas, ideas of sensation and reflection. Rather, he thinks of the senses and intellect as fundamental instruments of knowledge. Maybe that makes him a ‘fundamentalist’. And intrinsic to his account of the place of the reason and the senses in theology is the claim that grace builds upon nature.

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Writing of what Paul says about the captivity of our thought to Christ (2 Cor. 10.5)12 Turretin writes: ‘He [Paul] does not therefore mean to take away the reason entirely because grace does not destroy, but perfects nature. He only wishes it to serve and to be a handmaid of faith and as such to obey, not to govern it as a mistress. . . .’13 The idea that grace builds on nature in this way may not make many friends among the more fideistically inclined. Nevertheless this is the historic position of the church back at least as far as Augustine. Grace builds upon nature by, for example, not denying the powers of the human intellect and the senses. Jesus was not a fideist or a Gnostic, any more than he was a sceptic. As his sufferings involved the pain and agony of his human body, so his teaching employed all the powers of his human mind, which in turn appealed to the senses and intellects and imaginations of his hearers. Employment of these powers does not deny the effects of sin on human nature any more that they make the illuminating, regenerating activity of the Holy Spirit unnecessary. Turretin holds that reason has a real but subordinate role. It exercises what he calls the ‘judgement of discretion’ in matters of faith. That is, in weighing up evidence and in drawing inferences from Scripture. Here he refers to the reason that is to be employed in such work as ‘rightly instructed’. By this he means reason that knows its place in subordination to divine revelation. Possessing reason in this sense keeps those who possess it from judging or arbitrating the mysteries of the faith. He makes a distinction between reason’s role in helping to establish the truth of propositions known by nature, and known by the word of God. In the case of the propositions of the word of God, reason has a secondary rule. Where the word includes ‘something unknown to nature’, that is, unknown to natural reason – I presume that this is a reference to miracles – then reason ought not to pass judgement on this, but only the word. Much more so is reason subordinated to revelation in the case of the mysteries of the faith. So while Turretin is emphatic that the mysteries far exceed our comprehension, and that reason is ‘slippery and fallible’ unless enlightened by the Spirit, there is nevertheless a real if ancillary place for it in gaining understanding what has been revealed. Reason therefore does not provide us with theological norms, and so our faith does not become a mixture of philosophy and theology. For the principles of reason do not afford

12

13

In this chapter Bible verses unless otherwise stated are from the English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Publishers). Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I.31.

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us with the foundation and principles of faith, but have an instrumental and therefore a subordinate role. To begin with, there are propositions, which the reason intuitively recognizes the truth of, such as the whole is greater than the part, an effect supposes a cause, and it is impossible for something both to be and not to be at the same time. Without the recognition of these there could be neither science nor art nor certainty about any thing. And these first principles, as Turretin calls them, are true not only in the realm of nature, but also in the mysteries of the faith. Faith borrows these from reason and uses them to strengthen its own doctrines (i.e. to prevent them from being misunderstood). It is at this point that Turretin distinguished between reason and right reason. This has already been anticipated by what he has said about rightly instructed reason. In any case it means at least right creaturely reason, reasoning from the standpoint of admitted creatureliness, a standpoint that recognizes the limitations of human, creaturely reason due to ignorance and finitude. The right reasoner does not complain when he cannot comprehend the mysteries of the faith, nor does he seek to overturn the first principles of natural religion. As a result right reason subordinates itself to the revealed mysteries, and to the understanding of them (or the preserving of them from misunderstanding) as best it can. I do not think that Turretin held that the recognition of such reason, or a willingness to possess it, is necessarily the immediate fruit of regeneration, for at times it may be held generally in the culture, and so be a part of ‘public doctrine’. Turretin’s carefully circumscribed assessment of the subordinate place assigned to the reason and the senses in the understanding of Christian theology is testimony to his belief that faith, the faith, sits atop nature, that grace perfects nature. The ‘perfection’ of nature comes by the development of ‘right reason’. Is there a dichotomy between nature and grace? They are not at odds, obviously. Is nature ‘autonomous’, an ‘autonomous realm’? No, nature, understood at this point, as the operation of God’s creative work, is not a purely secular realm, the product of blind forces. This nature is the effect of God’s creative agency. He created mankind with reason, and he sustains human reason, which is a gift to those who have it, and the senses, and memory, all gifts of God. Is it the gift of common grace? Certainly. The crucifiers of Jesus saw and handled the same body. These structural powers are upheld by sets of secondary causes, and God, the primary cause, in turn holds these in being. The whole set-up is ‘common’ – not correlated with or determined by the incidence or power or God’s regenerating grace, but distributed to mankind in general as a result of God’s undeserved goodness.

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Both the senses and the reason, when they are used instrumentally in theology, remind us of its objective character. The appropriate use of our senses and reason does not settle all disputes, but it does make clear that theology is not the product of the human imagination or of the emotions. The Christian faith testifies to what has happened, and it offers reasoned elaboration and discussion of this.

Objectivity in a further sense But not only the faith that is confessed has objectivity, but also the subjective responses to the faith have this same character. Here also grace builds on nature. Here I wish to highlight the sort of objectivity that grace has. Think for a moment of the regenerating and illuminating work of the Spirit. How does this go? The indwelling of the Spirit is not that of a new visitor who comes to the house and proceeds to do all the housework. What results from his work is a new man, a new creation, but this is not creation ex nihilo but the making of all things, the old things, new. The faculties which produce the old things are not replaced by a ‘new sense’, a sixth sense, but they are old faculties which (through Spirit-given penitence and mortification) lose certain propensities, or have them weakened, and (through the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit) gain new propensities, or a strengthening of those that exist. The old nature is not expelled, like an evil spirit, but marvelously and mysteriously, but gradually and fitfully, renewed. We are on the road to becoming truly human, not to being immediately transformed into angels. So that while the regenerating work of the Spirit is supernatural, it cooperates with the natural, taking the initiative and fitting human nature for such cooperation. So as the employment of the natural powers of the soul gives us a sense of objectivity, of the distinction between the objective and the subjective, the difference between sense and nonsense, the true and the false (even though the boundary between the two is often oddly drawn), so the regenerating of these faculties is an extension of the range of that objectivity through a healing of human powers. Besides the objectivity of divine realities being disclosed to us through nature, as grace builds upon nature, they are experienced through the character of a covenantal relationship with God. What is that relationship? At its vaguest, it is the relationship of compliance and resistance. Just as, in negotiating our way through our physical environment, we experience cooperation (as we lean on the chair) and resistance (as we skid on the ice, or crack our shin against the table-leg), so

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the Lord calls his people into covenant relationship with him, and to experience its objective reality through the same mix of compliance and resistance, but now at a moral and religious level. The presence of this mix provides evidence of the objectivity of that covenant relationship, and of the Lord, with whom we are in covenant partnership. So that partnership is self-involving (a phrase that Donald Evans coined many years ago) not automatically, but by the Spirit. When Jesus said ‘Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’, how do we become convinced that he spoke of realities, and that the whole business is not mere make-believe? Because those who come to him find rest. Or consider the phrase, ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ Or the Wayside Notice, ‘Only Jesus can heal the broken hearted.’ Here we have another expression of this same compliance-resistance pattern, akin to the resistance and yielding of relationships with the physical environment. Those who resist may not experience it as resistance. For though the pattern is parallel to that of the impact of the physical in everyday life, it is much more nuanced. For the prospect of self-deception is much greater than it is in the case of our interaction with the physical world. It is not possible for long to refuse to believe that one has crashed the car.

Philosophy and the future of theology We have been trying to sketch the recovery of a view of Christian theology in which reason and the senses have a real though subordinate place, bringing out its objective character. This view of the role of reason and the senses sketched here is in sharp contrast to that in which philosophical work is currently used by theologians in an often arbitrary and selective way, in effect cherry-picking from current philosophical work of whatever will serve the interests of some current agendum. One of the ways in which theology can be reinvigorated without losing its moorings is by conversation with its proponents in earlier centuries. I have tried to argue a two-fold case for such a conversation, based on the historic relationship between nature and grace, showing the empirical and intellectual links with Christian theology, in particular a recovery of its objectivity, and contrasting this with the use of philosophical ‘findings’ in modern theology. So I have argued, paradoxically, that the key to the future of theology lies in the recovery of its past.

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9

A Prophetic Proposal: Theology and the Future of Method John McClean

If history teaches anything, it is that its turns are unpredictable. Who in 1980 would have imagined the fall of the Berlin Wall by the end of the decade? Trends in theology come more slowly, but can be just as startling. Karl Adam described how Barth’s Romans commentary ‘fell like a bomb on the playground of the theologians’. Suddenly (at least suddenly for theology) the field was different. The 1960s concerns with ‘the death of God’ and demythologization, were replaced with a resurgent confessional Trinitarianism. So I am not going to suggest what theology will be in the future, but suggest what it should aspire to be. This chapter will survey four metaphors for how theology can be conceived and suggest a new one: ‘prophecy’. The metaphors are not an exhaustive analysis and no theologian is entirely described by a single metaphor. Each of the descriptions of the metaphors is something of an exaggerated summary for the sake of discussion. One of my proposals is that theology should address the imagination, shaping how we picture the world and our place in it. In that sense, I hope my suggestion will be imaginative.

Theology as wisdom The first Christian theologians presented themselves as philosophers: lovers of wisdom. Justin Martyr (d. c. 165) dressed as a philosopher and argued that the philosophical quest led to Christianity as the ‘only reliable and profitable philosophy’. The logos was at work in Greek philosophy and in the Hebrew

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Scriptures, and both are fulfilled in the gospel.1 The early church borrowed language and concepts of classical philosophy, but saw that it competed with and completed philosophy.2 Wisdom showed how to live well and the Christians were convinced only revelation and salvation in Christ made the good life possible. Sapiential theology adopts the ‘Athens’ model of theological education in which Christianity is paideia, a way of ‘culturing’ the soul and forming virtuous character.3 It is contemplative, emphasizing a transforming encounter with God; and ecclesial, emphasizing that God is known by and in the church. It is practical, developing the Christian life growth in Christ-like character from a deepening knowledge of God. Scripture and other texts are studied, not to catalogue their ideas but to allow them to lead into an encounter with God. This understanding of theology with its focus on both God and virtue has new attraction for contemporary theology.4 One danger is that it may focus on formation rather than God, implying that theology talks about God in order to be shaped by him, rather than because he demands to be our goal. Contemplation may also subvert proclamation. The Christian message is an announcement of what God has done and will do, we know him in and through that, not primarily in contemplation.

Theology as science In the high Middle Ages, theologians began to express a different selfunderstanding. Without rejecting the importance of sapientia and virtue, they sought and offered scientia. Aquinas commences his Summa Theologica arguing that theology is the science of God, working with ‘demonstrative argument’ from ‘premises that are somehow naturally evident to us’.5 Muller, describing the post-Reformation thought appropriation says, similarly, ‘a

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Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 10–19. Chadwick, Early Christian Thought, p. 19, says of Justin ‘There is no sign in Justin of any tendency to mitigate or to attenuate traditional beliefs, above all, his doctrines of Creation, revelation in history, and eschatology, in order to meet philosophical criticism.’ D. H. Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin: The Theological Education Debate (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), pp. 6–12. Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); D. J. Treier, Virtue and the Voice of God: Toward Theology as Wisdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); Paul Allen, Theological Method, Guide for the Perplexed (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2012), pp. 207–28. See Aquinas, Summa, I.1.2 and Brian Davies, Thomas Aquinas on God and Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 141.

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science is a discipline in which truth appears as rationally verifiable’.6 Scientific theology is ‘more concerned with divine things than with human acts’.7 We do not seek to know God for the sake of something else, but simply so that we might know him.8 Scientific theology became even more attractive after the ‘scientific revolution’, although ‘science’ was understood in different ways.9 Despite great variety in method and content F. D. E. Schleiermacher, Charles Hodge, T. F. Torrance and W. Pannenberg could each describe theology as a science.10 All hold that theology must be a critical discipline and its concepts must be held open to question and development. Ideas and theological formulations must be tested against the reality they seek to describe and interrogated for their coherence with other claims. Theology as science seeks to bring the intellectual rigour and investigative care of other disciplines to theology. Theology as science corresponds to Kelsey’s description of theological education in ‘Berlin’. This education involves critical research with academic freedom supporting professional application.11 Positioned in the wider academy, scientific theology will tend to be interdisciplinary.12 Theology as a science asserts that God is not found through contemplation. God exists independently of us and to that extent our knowledge of him is ‘objective’.13 In contemporary theology this must be insisted on against what Lindbeck calls the ‘experiential-expressive’ view that doctrines are ‘noninformative and

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R. A. Muller, ‘Scholasticism Protestant and Catholic: Francis Turretin on the Object and Principles of Theology’, Church History 55.2 (1986), pp. 193–205. Aquinas, Summa, III.1.4 resp. J. Peterson, Aquinas: A New Introduction (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2008), pp. 33–34. ‘Once theology was sapiential, then strove to be scientific as the very notion of ‘science greatly changed’, D. J. Treier, Virtue and the Voice of God, p. 27. See F. Schleiermacher, Brief Outline of Theology as a Field of Study (ed. T. N. Tice; Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1990), p. 3 (§5). and C. Helmer, ‘Schleiermacher’, The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth-Century Theology (ed. D. Fergusson; Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 46–54; C. Hodge, Systematic Theology (London: James Clarke, 1960), pp. 1–17 and M. A. Noll, ‘Introduction’, in Charles Hodge, Charles Hodge: The Way of Life (ed. M. A. Noll; New York: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 1–44; T. F. Torrance, Theological Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969) and D. W. Hardy, ‘T. F. Torrance’, The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918 (ed. D. F. Ford and R. Muers; Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 3rd edn, 2005), pp. 167–72; W. Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science (trans. F. McDonagh; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), pp. 297–345 and J. McClean, From the Future: Getting to Grips with Pannenberg’s Thought (Paternoster: Milton Keynes, 2013), pp. 11–13. Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin, pp. 12–19. Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, pp. 299–300, and see Philip Clayton, ‘Anticipation and Theological Method’, pp. 122–50 in Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (ed. C. Braaten and P. Clayton; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988). See D. K. Clark, To Know and Love God: Method for Theology, Foundations of Evangelical Theology (Wheaton: Crossway, 2003), pp. 212–19, for a defense of ‘chastened objectivity’ in theology.

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nondiscursive symbols’ of religious experiences.14 McGrath appeals to Luther’s theology of the cross to argue that Christian theology should know that ‘experience and reality are, at least potentially, to be radically opposed’.15 One weakness of scientific theology is its separation of knowledge of God from self-knowledge.16 When we consider the One in whom ‘we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17.28)17 self-knowledge is involved far more directly than in any other discipline. This is Calvin’s famous point in the opening paragraphs of his Institutes. It is not that self-knowledge is a direct path to God but that true knowledge of God must lead to self-recognition as a dependent and rebellious creature. So ‘we shall not say that, properly speaking, God is known where there is no religion or piety’.18 Theology as science easily loses sight of its aretegenic (virtue forming) role and becomes a body of knowledge which stands in the academy apart from the life and faith of the church.

Theology as art A more recent description of theology is to view it as ‘art’. Schleiermacher is one inspiration for this, from his association with the Romantic movement rather than his concern with the place of theology in the academy. In Romanticism the imagination is the meeting point of the infinite and the finite. It asserts ‘the active reality of the “living deity”’, but holds that an encounter with God produces quite different experiences and responses in different people.19 For the Romantics the imagination is both receptive and spontaneously productive and is involved with realization of knowledge of God in much the same way that it is in artistic expression. Schleiermacher declared that ‘that belief in God depends on the direction of the imagination’.20 Balthasar is perhaps the most famous for insisting that theology is aesthetic. He is clearer than the Romantics that knowledge of God is not found directly in 14

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G. A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1984), p. 16. A. E. McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine: A Study in the Foundation of Doctrinal Criticism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 25. All science requires a level of self-involvement from the investigator. Cf. M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2002). In this chapter all Bible references, unless otherwise stated, are from the NIV-11. J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. J. T. McNeill; trans. F. L. Battles; LCC, 20–21; 2 vols; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), I.i.2, p. 37. J. A. Lamm, ‘Romanticism and Pantheism’, The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth-Century Theology (ed. D. Fergusson; Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 165–86 (178). F. Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (ed. and trans. R. Crouter; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 138.

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an experience of beauty, but he does insist that theology is called to recognize, respond to and reflect the beauty of God in his revelation. ‘Intellectual cognition is part of this response but it has a holistic character which gives powerful expression to the existential or even experiential claim laid upon us by our encounter with the incarnate Word. We are drawn “under the spell” of the incarnate Word much as a particular work of art can compellingly absorb our senses, mind, and imagination.’21 For Balthasar theology as art is an alternative to the rationalistic ‘scientific’ theology of Scholasticism. I will call this approach aesthetic theology, but I mean by it what von Balthasar denoted ‘theological aesthetics’.22 Aesthetic theology seeks to ‘feel’ and ‘see’, not simply understand, or rather to feel and see as a key part of understanding. It experiences the tragedy, sorrow and pain of life and the ugliness of the cross as well as the joy of salvation and the beauty of God and knows that we do not know those till we feel them. It will be more interested in expression than investigation or argument. As scientific theology seeks to relate to the other ‘sciences’, artistic theology engages with the other ‘arts’. The power of aesthetic theology is that it recognizes the connection of truth and beauty and that there are aspects of knowledge which cannot be expressed in propositions. The aesthetic dimension is particularly important in a personal relationship to truth. The Puritans recognized this and the need to speak to and move ‘the heart’. Pre-eminently Jonathan Edwards understood the importance of the ‘religious affections’ moved by God’s beauty. He often points out the symmetry, proportion, agreement and harmony of God’s character and his works.23 Wolterstorff points out some of the possible weaknesses of conceiving theology as art. Since the nineteenth century ‘art’ has come to be treated as an object of contemplation with an inherent value as ‘art for art’s sake’.24 And this is not a good analogue for theology. Theology is more a craft, in which all God’s people should share, and its value is instrumental in helping us turning to God to know and live for him. Kevin Vanhoozer notes that aesthetic theology often

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See O. Davies, ‘The Theological Aesthetics’, The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar (ed. E. T. Oakes and D. Moss; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 131–42 (135) and K. Mongrain, ‘Von Balthasar’s Way from Doxology to Theology’, Theology Today 64 (2007), pp. 58–70. H. U. von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (7 vols; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982), vol. 1, pp. 79–117. L. Mitchell, ‘The Theological Aesthetics of Jonathan Edwards’, Theology Today 64 (2007), pp. 36–46. N. Wolterstorff, ‘Beyond Beauty and the Aesthetic in the Engagement of Religion and Art’, Theological Aesthetics After Von Balthasar (ed. O. V. Bychkov and J. Fodor; Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 119–33.

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has the effect of isolating the biblical text from God as author and displacing the divine meaning with the creative response of the theologian.25

Theology as dramaturgy Vanhoozer suggests that theology is dramaturgy. This suggestion follows a recent trend, found in thinkers as diverse as Balthasar, Horton and Wright to view theology as dealing with a ‘drama’.26 Vanhoozer has taken this general insight and used it to generate a specific metaphor for theology. Dramaturgy studies a play to help with its performance. ‘Broadly speaking, the dramaturg’s duties are (1) to select and prepare play texts for performance; (2) to advise directors and actors; and (3) to educate the audience.’27 Vanhoozer suggests this is an analogy to the work of theology which is called to understand a drama. ‘What the church seeks to understand is a true story . . . a series of events that, when taken together, as a unified drama, serve as a lens or interpretative framework through which Christians think, make sense of their experience, and decide what to do and how to do it.’28 God reveals in and through actions, including speechacts. He is both the Author of and primary Actor in the drama. An integrated account of God’s revelation is not found in an abstracted discussion of divine essence and attributes but in an account of a drama in which God shows his identity. Theology helps the church understand God and his acts and how to participate in God’s drama, it is ‘God-centred biblical interpretation that issues in performance knowledge on the world stage to the glory of God’.29 Vanhoozer explicitly contrasts his view with accounts of theology as ‘teaching’ or ‘factual propositions’ (theology as science) and as ‘an expression of religious experience’ (theology as art). His criticism of ‘propositional’ theology as science is not that it is wrong but is ‘reductive, too one-dimensional’.30 25

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K. J. Vanhoozer ‘A Lamp in the Labyrinth: The Hermeneutics of “Aesthetic” Theology’, Trinity Journal 8.1 (Spring, 1987), pp. 25–56. See H. U. von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory (trans. Graham Harrison; 4 vols; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988–98); M. S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002); N. T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God (New York: Harper One, 2011); C. B. Bartholomew and M. W. Goheen, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004). Bert Cardullo (ed.), What Is Dramaturgy? (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), p. 3. K. J. Vanhoozer, ‘Playing New Scenes: The Drama-of-redemption Approach’, Four Views on Moving Beyond the Bible to Theology (ed. Gary Meadors; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), pp. 151–99 (155). Vanhoozer, ‘Playing New Scenes’, p. 161. K. J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), pp. 87–90.

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Theologians must allow their minds to be ‘nurtured by the canon’ and understand the classic performances of the past in the creeds and councils and then seek fitting improvisations which draw together the canonical text and the present context. Vanhoozer explains ‘there is no shortcut or formula for judging fittingness’. What is required is sanctification and readiness to discern what God is doing in Christ and willingness to fit in to that, not a technique.31 Dramaturgy has an aesthetic dimension like that of theology as art. Vanhoozer’s primary criteria is ‘fittingness’, an aesthetic judgement. Unlike aesthetic theology, this approach looks to God as the Artist, and specifically the Author and Actor of a great drama. The church meets God in his words and actions given in Scripture and Scripture is concerned about the ongoing ‘performance’ of the people of God. Many features of the text of Scripture show its purpose to inspire and guide later generations. The dramaturgy metaphor ‘fits’ the Bible well. This metaphor calls theology to guide the church in word and speech on the basis of God’s acts. Where theology as science is primarily focussed on description of God from which ethics is derivative, and theology as art is likely to be focused on response, theology as dramaturgy requires a focus on both aspects. It is interested in God’s acts and our part in the ongoing drama.32 Where does theology as dramaturgy fall short? There is a risk that it might focus on the church’s action rather than the Actor and author. The metaphor also sets the theologian off-stage, commentating and advising but not, in their vocation, participating in the drama. These are two concerns which a prophetic metaphor could address.

How do the metaphors guide theology? None of the metaphors has dictated a strict correspondence with the analogue. Some of the early theologians imitated the philosophers, yet they also used distinctively Christian forms – sermons, commentaries and letters. A scientific theology does not have to be presented as a scientific treatise; nor does aesthetic theology have no arguments. Theology as dramaturgy does not have to be produced as a series of annotations on biblical texts. The metaphors are not strict 31 32

Vanhoozer, ‘Playing New Scenes’, pp. 179–86; see also Drama, pp. 108–10. See similar comments in M. D. Williams, ‘Theology as Witness: Reading Scripture in a New Era of Evangelical Thought, Part II: Kevin Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine’, Presbyterion 37.1 (Spring, 2011), p. 21.

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descriptions and do not place restrictions on the form or method of theology. Further, none of the descriptions, in themselves, determine the orthodoxy of a theological proposal. It is possible to do theology following any of the metaphors and to remain within the great tradition or to abandon it. While there is scope to consider if one or some approaches are more ‘fitting’, none of the metaphors ensures orthodoxy or demands heterodoxy. The various images give theology an orientation, expressing the aspirations of practitioners and the expectations of recipients. Theology conceived as wisdom is likely to invites its public to reflect and contemplate. Theology as art will be inventive and exploratory in both its method and its forms and to invite readers (or listeners or watchers) on an imaginative journey. Theology as science focuses on rational analysis, the accumulation of evidence and apologetic argument. It is no surprise that Schleiermacher’s aesthetic theology is directed to the cultured despisers of the Romantic movement, or that Justin presents himself as a philosopher to second-century Rome. The metaphors orient theological method in a range of ways, shaping the goals, style, questions, interests, arguments, appeals, audience and presentation of theology.

Theology as prophecy I am proposing that theology can be Christian prophecy, taking the book of Revelation as a guide. Bauckham advocates understanding the Revelation as prophecy in two ways. John was probably one of a circle of prophets among the churches of Asia Minor (somewhat like the prophets mentioned in 1 Corinthians), and the book is an extension of the visionary reports and oracles which would have been the usual revelations of the prophets.33 John’s work is also a literary one, following the pattern of the Hebrew writing prophets and presenting the visions and oracles in ‘a literary work composed with astonishing care and skill’.34

Theology and drama Prophetic theology accepts Vanhoozer’s view that theology engages with a drama and it can claim the advantages of Vanhoozer’s approach. The book of Revelation 33

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R. Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 2–3. Bauckham, Revelation, p. 3.

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traces the drama of history from its origins in throne room of God, through the conflicts of history to the marriage of the Lamb when the ‘the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city’ (Rev. 22.3). And it shows God’s people how to act in the drama. The metaphor of prophecy goes beyond that of dramaturgy because it calls theology to step into the drama. Prophecy participates; it bears witness to Jesus (Rev. 19.10) and demands careful attention from the churches because their faithfulness and witness depend on in it (Rev. 22.6–7, 10, 18, 19).35 The prophets stand among the church and bears witness as part of God’s drama, they suffer with the church (Rev. 1.9) and face martyrdom (Rev. 11.7–10). It is common enough to stress that theology must be for the sake of the church. But perhaps it is time for theology to see itself as part of the church, bearing witness for the church and suffering with it. This heightens the stakes for theology. Contemporary theology often consists of detailed examination of the thought of others, producing innumerable studies to help us understand how the discipline has developed. There is a place for these kind of studies but they are not the primary calling of theology. Understanding theology as prophecy calls theology from the timidity of commentary. As a ministry for the church and in the church, theology must accept the discipline of the church. Paul tells the Corinthians, ‘others should weigh carefully’ the message of the prophets (1 Cor. 14.29). It is too easy for the vocational theologian to imagine that she serves the church on her own terms. While the prophetic theologian will challenge the church, she must allow the church to assess her ministry. Is it faithful to the good deposit? Does it comply with the rule of faith, the rule of love and rule of prayer? Theology as prophecy is dogmatics, it does not draw up the foundational beliefs of the church and determine our confession. The theologian is to call God’s people to grasp those beliefs, to make their confession and to live in light of it.

Theology and the triune God The book of Revelation offers a theocentric vision. The heavenly throne room sets the perspective. God is gloriously sovereign and beyond direct description. He appears like ‘jasper and ruby’ on a throne from which came ‘flashes of

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‘The testimony about Jesus is what constitutes Spirit-inspired prophecy. If prophecy is not Christcentered, then it has veered away from the gospel’, T. R. Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), p. 420.

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lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder’, standing on a sea of crystalline glass and encircled by an emerald rainbow (Rev. 4.2–6). In his beauty and majesty he deserves ‘glory and honour and power’ (Rev. 4.11) and receives the worship of the whole of creation and his redeemed people. Bauckham observes how this opening vision puts humanity in its proper place. ‘At its heart and in its eschatological goal the creation is theocentric, orientated in worship towards its Creator.’ Humanity does not even take the pre-eminent role in worshipping God, the four creatures are more beastly than human and ‘the circle of worship’ expands to include ‘every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea’ (Rev. 5.13).36 Before the opening vision, God is announced as ‘the Alpha and the Omega’, ‘the Lord God’, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come’ and ‘the Almighty’ (Rev. 1.8). Each title is repeated through the book, and set the tone and message of the book. Whatever is happening in the experience of John’s readers, God is unchallenged and utterly unsurpassable. All things come from him and return to him, he embraces, sustains and rules all things. John’s vision of God which enables him to ‘enlarge his readers’ perspective on their own situation by setting it within the broader context of God’s universal purpose of overcoming all opposition to his rule and establishing his kingdom in the world’.37 On the basis of this theology his readers are called to continue to offer their lives in service of the true and living God as his priests (Rev. 1.6; 5.10; 14.1–7; 20.6) and to resist the demand to worship the beast (Rev. 13.4, 8, 12, 15). Christ is central in the theocentric vision of Revelation, literally central in the second part of the throne room vision (Rev. 5.6). John’s apocalypse is from the glorious risen Christ (Rev. 1.1, 13–18). Throughout the book Christ occupies God’s throne (Rev. 5.6, 8, 12–13; 6.1, 16; 7.9–11, 14, 17; 12.11; 13.8; 14.1, 4, 4, 10; 15.3; 17.14, 14; 19.7, 9; 21.9, 14, 22–23, 27; 22.1, 3). He is the Lion (Rev. 5.5); the holy, true and faithful one (Rev. 1.5; 3.7, 14; 19.11); the conquering King who rules all kings (Rev. 1.5; 17.14; 19.11–16). The opening salutation summarizes what Jesus has done and will do, he is ‘the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth’, he loves his people and by his death has freed them and made them ‘a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father’, and he will return to redeem his people and judge the world (Rev. 1.5–7). He is proclaimed the ‘the first and the last’ (Rev. 1.17–18; 2.8; 22.13) and

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Bauckham, Revelation, pp. 35–36. Ibid., p. 31.

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‘the Alpha and Omega’ (Rev. 22.13) and is worshipped with God (Rev. 5.9–14; 7.10; 12.10; 20.6; 21.22).38 In comparison with God and Christ, the Spirit may seem less prominent in Revelation, but theological significance is not measured by textual statistics. In fact ‘the Spirit plays an essential role in the divine activity of establishing God’s kingdom in the world’.39 The opening greetings speak of the ‘seven Spirits’ (or seven-fold Spirit) before God’s throne (Rev. 1.4), fulfilling the promise of Zechariah that God will accomplish his purpose ‘not by might, nor by power’ but by his Spirit (Zech. 4.6).40 So all the acts of divine acts of power in the book are works of the Spirit. The Spirit gives John his vision of God’s work (Rev. 1.10; 4.2; 17.3; 21.10) and gives the church its prayer and witness (Rev. 14.13; 19.10; 22.17). Prophetic theology, following Revelation, will be Trinitarian in method as well as content. It will show that the drama in which it shares is the act of the One God, Father, Son and Spirit. Theology in the twentieth century has often been anthropological rather than theological, not only programmatically anthropological approaches but even theology in a more orthodox strain offers ‘theologies of ’ which say little about God. The Trinitarian revival of the late twentieth century has helped to halt this trend, to some extent, though as Holmes argues even this revival still insists on ‘involving God in history’ and does not capture the transcendence of the God of the Apocalypse.41 Prophetic theology should continue and extend the proclamation of God, the lamb and the seven-fold Spirit on the throne and ruling the world. Because of its exalted view of the triune God, theology has to deal with metaphysical claims, since these are required to assert the identity of the true and living God.42 Framing theology as prophecy does not limit the concerns of theology to the explicit concerns of the biblical text. In John’s day the presentation of the true God had to deal with political implications. That will be true now. It will also have to deal with metaphysical implications, since we live on the other side of the demise of metaphysics. Theology is not required to offer a full metaphysical scheme, it will have to assert that God who is beyond our grasp has spoken and calls us to worship. 38 39 40 41

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Ibid., p. 63. Ibid., p. 109. Ibid., pp. 110–15. See the survey in Stephen R. Holmes, The Quest for the Trinity: The Doctrine of God in Scripture, History, and Modernity (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2012), pp. 1–33, 198–200. See the extended argument in W. Pannenberg, Metaphysics and the Idea of God (trans. Philip Clayton; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990).

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Theology and hope Theology as prophecy speaks with hope and the truth of theology rests in the fulfilment of God’s purposes.43 Christian theology makes claims which cannot be directly tested and determined and always speaks in hope. Theology as prophecy answers the demands of theology as science, because it directs attention to the full revelation when God is all in all. More immediately theology calls God’s people to live in hope. Despite the revival of interest in eschatology in the twentieth century, it has not yet been given its full place in theological presentations.44 The task of theology must be to declare to and for the church the hope grounded in God’s rule and Christ’s victory; and to describe the ‘patient endurance’ this hope underwrites (Rev. 1.9; 13.10; 14.12).

Theology and Scripture Christian prophecy is grounded in the promises of God and draws from the Scriptures. The book of Revelation appropriates the imagery of the Old Testament and states the great themes of the Bible in an apocalyptic mode. Christian Theology has always been related to Scripture, one way or another, yet some metaphors encourage theology to always speak in a different idiom. Prophetic theology will follow Barth’s call to speak in scriptural terms. Barth was not suggesting that theology should simply quote and re-quote the Bible. He insisted that theology begins with the Bible and proceeds by continuing to understand the Bible. Theology as prophecy will see this as its proper task.

Church and the world Revelation has several audiences in view. Chapters 2–3 of Revelation relate the message of the book, that Christ has conquered, to the different situations of each of the seven churches, ‘the message to each church alerts that church to what is specific about its section of the battlefield’.45 The seven churches are representative of the churches not only of Asia Minor but throughout the Roman Empire.46 43

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45 46

See J. McClean, From the Future: Getting to Grips with Pannenberg’s Thought (Paternoster: Milton Keynes, 2013), pp. 70–90. On the revival see C. Schwöbel ‘Last Things First? The Century of Eschatology in Retrospect’, The Future as God’s Gift: Explorations in Christian Eschatology (ed. D. Ferguson and M. Sarot; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), pp. 217–41. Bauckham, Revelation, p. 14. Bauckham, Revelation, p. 14. See D. A. Carson and D. J. Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), pp. 707–11 for an overview of various views about the precise circumstances addressed by Revelation.

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Bauckham observes that this is the likely significance of choosing to address seven churches (since seven is the number of completeness in the book) and that there are other indications that John writes for the widest possible Christian audience. For instance, John presents his work as ‘the final culmination of the whole biblical prophetic tradition’ and uses the refrain ‘whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches’ (2.7, 11, 17, 29; 3.6, 13, 22).47 The inclusion of the book in the canon is the affirmation by the whole church that the message of the Apocalypse is global. So, the book of Revelation presents a fascinating model of contextualized theology. It is both highly particular and it presents the drama which involves every person. It is global, even cosmic in scope and specifically local. Prophetic theology follows this lead. Not satisfied with repeating the language and concerns of other times and places, it seeks to discern what the Lord’s people need to hear in their churches and cities, what temptations they face and what encouragement they need. At the same time it contextualizes a message about the great drama in which Christ has redeemed his people, now rules and protects them and will return to judge and recreate. Contextualization does not mean reading the context as the text, but addressing the eternal gospel to the circumstance of the churches (Rev. 14.6). On an even wider horizon, Revelation has a message for the whole world. The two witnesses of chapter 11 represent the church in its prophetic role. ‘Confronted with a world addicted to idolatry and evil, they proclaim the one true God and his coming judgment on evil, but they do so as a call to repentance.’48 The eternal gospel is for ‘those who live on the earth – to every nation, tribe, language and people’ (Rev. 14.6). Christian prophecy calls the whole world to ‘Worship God!’ (Rev. 19.10).49 Revelation is a public theology. When theology follows the lead of the Apocalypse it will follow a call to speak beyond the church and to help the church speak beyond itself.

Re-imagining the world in worship Much of the book of Revelation is concerned with offering the reader a new interpretation of the world in the light of God’s rule and Christ’s victory in ‘a vivid symbolic world’.50 ‘In order to break Satan’s power of illusion, Revelation

47 48 49 50

Bauckham, Revelation, p. 16. Bauckham, Revelation, pp. 84–88. Bauckham, Revelation, pp. 121. R. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), p. 181.

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must reimagine the world . . . the book’s imaginative power annihilates the plausibility structure on which the status quo rests and replaces it with the vision of a new world. The authority of the Roman Empire is thereby delegitimated, and the way is prepared for the community to receive the truth about God’s coming order.’51 The book of Revelation is often the book of suffering church because of the power of its imaginative power. Like aesthetic theology, prophetic theology works on the imagination. J. K. A. Smith offers a persuasive account of the ‘imagination’ as a ‘quasi-faculty whereby we construe the world on a precognitive level, on a register that is fundamentally aesthetic precisely because it is so closely tied to the body’.52 For Smith imagination is formed by the practices of worship. Revelation calls for these. First it requires reading and hearing, then it calls us to join in heavenly worship (Rev. 1.17; 4.8–11; 5.8–14; 7.9–12; 11.15–19; 12.10–12; 14.1–5; 15.2–4; 19.1–10; 22.8–9) while it offers a drama infused with liturgy.53 It is precisely the kind of text which, when read and heard as worship, may shape believers in just the way Smith hopes. It certainly helps to guide the kind of worship Smith envisions. Prophetic theology, then will be concerned with how and why God’s people worship and see in worship the avenue for shaping the imagination for service of God.

Theologian as prophet Finally, prophetic theology demands that the theologian be fully involved. In Revelation John is brother and companion in suffering with the church (Rev. 1.9), he falls as if dead at the feet of the glorified Jesus (Rev. 1.17), he is taken into heaven to see and hear (Rev. 4.1) and he weeps when he thinks the scroll cannot be opened (Rev. 5.4) and he measures the temple (Rev. 11.1). True prophets can never stand apart from their message, they are always drawn into it and changed by it. So theology as prophecy demands a spirituality. Theology as science allow the theologian to report from a distance, even theology as dramaturgy might suggest that is possible, but not theology as prophecy. Prophetic theology can

51 52

53

Hays, Moral Vision, p. 183. J. K. A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works, Cultural Liturgies (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), Kindle loc. 590. M. M. Thompson, ‘Worship in the Book of Revelation’, Ex Auditu 8 (1992), pp. 45–54; M. Cowan, ‘New World, New Temple, New Worship: The Book of Revelation in the Theology and Practice of Christian Worship – Part 1’, Churchman 119.4 (2005), pp. 297–312.

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only be done from within the life and suffering of the church at prayer; it requires spiritual formation.54

The prospect of prophetic theology What prospect is there for the development of a prophetic theology? As I observed in the introduction, it is impossible to predict what will happen. I hope that what I have suggested engages with some of the current developments in theology and suggests ways in which they might be continued and extended. The metaphors are not blueprints for the production of theology, but images to spark imagination. I am convinced that the image of theology as prophecy deserves continued reflection. It calls theology to recognize that it is caught up in the drama of the triune God, it shares the worship and mission of the church, it look to God’s future and speaks in light of that, calling the church to live for God’s new creation.

54

It is remarkable how rarely discussions of theological method have any extended reflection on the need for spiritual formation. For an exception see J. Frame, Salvation Belongs to the Lord: An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2006), pp. 72–78.

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Part Two

Theology and the Future

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10

Smith’s White Teeth and Paul’s Galatians: Theology and the Future of Humanity Michael P. Jensen

What will become of us? What will become of us? Or, what will we become? Or, in case the notion of ‘becoming’ sounds too passive: what can we become? There is no doubt that the destiny of humanity is rushing up to meet us at a speed unprecedented in human history. We are closer to the future than we ever have been before; and human technology is the accelerant of our destiny. By our ingenuity we hope to transcend the limits of our puny bodies and to build ladders to omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence and immortality. But of course, the paradox of this desire for power is that things have got way out of hand, to the degree that our technological excellence, by which we hope to survive, also presents the greatest threat to our continued flourishing on the planet. With humanity at such a crossroads, a number of metanarratives compete to describe its future. Some are infra-historical, and describe the future of human being, in progressive terms, as moving from glory unto glory. The genre of this narrative we might call ‘epic’, with Adam cast as the epic hero emerging triumphant from the struggle of history. Others are more pessimistic and describe the future in terms of an imminent calamity, usually on account of human evil or ineptitude. Adam is cast in this narrative as a tragic protagonist, a victim of his own nature. These descriptions of the future of humanity may be religious or materialist. However, in neither type of story is the other possibility adequately described. The progressivist narrative cannot account for the brute historical fact of human recidivism – our tendency endlessly to repeat the same follies. The tragicapocalyptic vision is deeply misanthropic, and in denial about the remarkable

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achievements of human beings. Both story-types are forms of an idealism into which the actual human experience must be squeezed without remainder – which explains why they are mutually unintelligible, and often at war with one another. Furthermore, both stories share a common emphasis on human agency in bringing about the future, whether progressively or regressively, to celebrate it or to bemoan it. Is there another possibility? Is there another kind of narrative that better describes the human experience and better prepares us for the future that may come? This is the question British novelist Zadie Smith asks in her turn-of-themillennium work White Teeth.1 As my reading of the novel will show, Smith uses a satire of the progressivist-epic and the tragic-apocalyptic narrations of human affairs to clear the ground for her own more comic-romantic vision of the human future. But does her more reticent alternative succeed where they have failed? In the apostle Paul’s correspondence with the Galatians we will discover an apocalyptic vision which shares Smith’s reticence about human action, but also makes a claim that the future of humanity has already invaded the present.

The human future in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth Smith’s rich, sprawling, picaresque narrative of late-twentieth-century London is an evocative description of life in a postcolonial Western city where human identity is being reshaped in the multicultural melting-pot. The novel humorously presents and critiques several competing futurisms – religious, political and scientific. For Smith, human destiny is not something over which we have a lot of say. We may have small prisms of choice, but for thoroughly postmodern Zadie, to claim to have a uniform explanation, whether it be religious or rationalist, flies in the teeth of the hilarious mess that is happening all around us. In the words of those other English misanthropes Radiohead: ‘we’re all accidents waiting to happen’. We are after all, victims of the random. For Smith, the best future humans are those that don’t succumb to some fanatical programme for change, but just love. Smith’s answer to the tension between ‘epic’ and ‘tragic’ stories is ‘comic’. For her, Adam is not a tragic or epic here, but a loveable clown. Two families are the focus of the story. Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal is married to Alsana and the father of twin boys, Majid and Millat. His friend from the 1

Zadie Smith, White Teeth (London: Penguin, 2001).

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Second World War, Archie Smith, is married to Clara Bowden, whose mother is a devout Jehovah’s Witness from Jamaica. They have a daughter named Irie. And there is a third family, the Chalfens, who represent a pompous English middleclass presence in the book (though they turn out to be thoroughly assimilated third-generation immigrants from Germany and Poland). As critic Caryl Phillips has it, ‘White Teeth squares up to the two questions which gnaw at the very roots of our modern condition: Who are we? Why are we here?’2 This is the significance of the teeth in the title: it’s a story about roots, and about rot in the roots. The characters share the burden of history, or at least history as it is remembered. The younger generation in particular are charged in their different ways with molding an identity for themselves from all the cultural and historical detritus they have inherited. Though Irie, Magid and Millat are born in England, they are all treated as foreigners because of their dark skin. Magid, who is sent home to Bangladesh to be brought up in that culture, ends up as an English rationalist to the bone. Millat on the other hand, stays in England and becomes part of an Islamic activist group called ‘The Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation’, or K.E.V.I.N. for short. As Smith explains in an authorial comment, the twentieth century has been the century of the great immigrant experiment. What White Teeth illustrates is that the genetic engineering of the human species is well underway. The forces of history have conspired to cross-pollinate humanity; though it has been and continues to be a very painful process. The new culture is only born through terrific labour pains, especially for the first and second generations. In Marcus Chalfen, über-scientist, we meet a possible solution. As the novel sweeps towards its conclusion, we hear of his experiments with mice which have led to his prototype FutureMouse – a mouse that is ‘genetically normal except for a select group of novel genes that are added to the genome’. These genes are, according to Chalfen, custom-designed so they can be ‘turned on’ and expressed only in specific mouse tissue and along a predictable timetable . . . The FutureMouse© experiment offers the public a unique opportunity to see a life and death in ‘close-up’. The opportunity to witness for themselves a technology that might yet slow the progress of disease, control the process of ageing and eliminate genetic defects. The FutureMouse© holds out the tantalizing promise of a new phase in human 2

Caryl Phillips, ‘Mixed and Matched’, The Observer, 9 January 2000, http://www.guardian.co.uk/ books/2000/jan/09/fiction.zadiesmith, accessed 29/08/2013.

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history where we are not victims of the random but instead directors and arbitrators of our own fate.3

As Chalfen says in an unguarded moment, ‘You eliminate the random, you rule the world.’4 If you think this is the stuff of science fiction, you’d be mistaken: FutureMouse has more than a passing resemblance to OncoMouse™, a lab mouse genetically redesigned to grow cancers. Harvard University holds the patent and DuPont holds the commercial rights. Feminist thinker Donna Haraway featured OncoMouse in her controversial book Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_Meets_Oncomouse™: Feminism and Technoscience,5 where she claimed that the arrival of beings like OncoMouse heralded the start of new possibilities, new definitions and new horizons for the human race. Haraway welcomes the coming of the posthuman as a chance, especially for women, to transcend the old social categories based on our now obsolete biology. Both Chalfen and Haraway represent the progressivist-epic telling of the human tale. Zadie Smith’s characters pin a lot of hopes, or fears, on a mouse. The unveiling of FutureMouse on the auspiciously apocalyptic date of 31 December is the focal point for the endgame of the novel as the uncertainties, interests and hopes of the various groups collide. K.E.V.I.N. sees FutureMouse as a tinkering with the will of Allah and plan to recite the Koran at the unveiling. F.A.T.E., a group of animal liberationists, are likewise planning to disrupt the meeting, along with a third group, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have of course been prophesying the end of the world. They are all fundamentalisms of a kind: each with an extreme vision of the human future incompatible with the others. This is a perfectly postmodern situation: the growth of fanaticism is a feature of a world where there is less certainty. Each group wants the limelight at the end of the world; but in the end, FutureMouse escapes and is no-one’s prisoner. Smith makes much satirical mileage out of all these extremisms: in the end, none of them is able to predict or own the future – at least not like a novelist can. She reasserts her mastery of events over against her impertinent characters. In the end, it all turns out to be, in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, ‘just a bunch of stuff that happens’. Indeed, Archie, the old soldier who likes to make his decisions by flipping a coin,

3 4 5

Smith, White Teeth, pp. 369–70. Ibid., p. 294. Donna Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_Oncomouse™: Feminism and Technoscience (New York: Routledge, 1997).

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seems to have a better relationship with fate than any other character. As he learns in the opening pages, when he narrowly escapes death at his own hand, . . . the position of the planets, the music of the spheres, the flap of a tiger-moth’s diaphanous wings in Central Africa, and a whole bunch of other stuff that Makes Shit Happen had decided it was second-chance time for Archie.6

So, really, for Smith, the human future is not nearly as predictable as the epic or tragic visions make out. The best approach to the future for a human individual, or indeed, for the human race, is a kind of resignation to fate; or better, a kind of stoicism-with-love of the kind philosopher Martha Nussbaum advocates. At least it is human, in other words: it doesn’t claim to know more than human beings are given to know, whether by divine revelation or by empirical science. This is what makes it so attractive: it calls on human beings to be more human, and not less. Smith’s theme is that the quest for identity overlaps considerably with the quest for destiny: the answer to what will become of us is bound up in who we are and where we have come from; and that the old identifiers like race, gender and religion are at present shifting and reforming such that either we are left alone and unhappy, or making extreme identifications with tribal groups at the fringes. Who are we? Why are we here? But I am not sure that Smith takes the alternative visions of the human future seriously enough. Each of the groups present is aberrant in some way which allows us to dismiss them. The scientists turn out to have links to a Nazi eugenicist for example; and Christian eschatology is represented by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have famously made inaccurate predictions of the return of Christ based on bizarre calculations. It is easy to laugh off these alternatives when you present such twisted examples. Comedy can be used to avoid more complex alternatives. Furthermore, though Smith it seems would argue that she isn’t casting her lot in with one of these great narratives, it is a pretty hard bluff for a novelist to pull off convincingly. She is still optimistic about her comic heroes and their capacity as characters to evolve into a new, blended human community from the ingredients of the old cultures. But she doesn’t really give us a sense of how to transcend difference and tribalism. Her comic vision doesn’t succeed in providing a third way between the tragic and epic stories. You cannot overcome

6

Smith, White Teeth, p. 23.

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the epic/tragic antimony by arguing for no story at all. Smith may have evaded a certain kind of eschatology, but she hasn’t evaded eschatology altogether. And though Smith has made a strong case against the kind of violent or radical action that upsets the equilibrium of human life on earth, in the end she leaves us with a kind of paralysis of indecision. She may well be right that trying to make our own fate has had disastrous consequences. But she has left us not quite knowing what to do, or what is to be done – other than the flipping of coins, because stuff simply happens.

Galatians and the future of humanity Christian theology also gives an account of the human future. It is not ‘epic’, though it shares with the progressivist-epic vision an optimism about human beings and the potential that we have to ameliorate our condition of life on the planet.7 It is not ‘tragic’, though it teaches of the self-destruction of human beings that threatens their own future. It shares with the ‘comic’ vision a reticence about futurism and awareness of the danger to human beings about such prognostications. But it does so by appropriating and transforming the language of apocalypticism and applying it to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It is ‘gospel’, in other words. The most famous declaration of Paul’s epistle to the Galatians is a description of a new humanity which might resonate with Zadie Smith: So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal. 3.26–28)8

How does this come about? Galatians is not often thought of as apocalyptic literature. Like most of Paul’s letters, it is situational and occasional. In this instance, Paul writes to the Christians in Galatia (in central Turkey) in urgent tones to warn them about the teaching of the ‘Judaizers’. These were a group of Jewish Christians who were insisting that Gentile converts to Christianity ought 7

8

For example, historian John Gascoigne notes the remarkable collusion between utilitarians and evangelicals in nineteenth-century Australia. They both shared an optimism about human progress. John Gascoigne, The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). In this chapter all Bible references, unless otherwise stated, are from the Today’s New International Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002).

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to practise the Jewish law – especially and including the rite of circumcision, but also the food laws and the other distinctive practices of Judaism. Paul had already fought and won this debate with the apostles Peter and James at the council of Jerusalem, as recorded in Acts 15. At stake was the very identity of Christianity: was it a Jewish sect that Gentiles could join? Or was it a faith that transcended tribal and ethnic boundaries? The recent work of New Testament scholar J. Louis Martyn has demonstrated how Paul harnesses apocalyptic eschatology to address the emergence of the ‘circumcision group’ as a corrupting influence on the Galatian Christians.9 In doing so, it becomes apparent that the Christian gospel as Paul preached it declares the divine invasion from the future of the present order of things. For Martyn, Galatians is a clear witness to a basic conviction of Paul; the gospel is not about human movement into blessedness, but about God’s liberating invasion of the cosmos. Christ’s love enacted in the cross has the power to change the world because it is embodied in the new community of mutual service.10

The suggestion of a ‘human movement into blessedness’ comes from the new evangelists who have presented an attractive alternative gospel to the Galatians. Their gospel involves the simple and comforting logic of exchange: God commands repentance, signified by circumcision, and zeal for the law (4.17) in return for forgiveness and life. The future of humanity lies in our own hands, if only we realize it. This message sounds like it echoes the Old Testament challenge to Israel to choose between ‘life and death, blessings and curses’ (Deut. 30.19). Only, the unmistakably prior element in the ancient texts was the gracious movement of God towards his people in choosing them as his people (what theologians call ‘election’) – a feature that has been entirely amputated by the circumcision party. Paul must therefore contrast his own message to theirs by giving an account of its divine origins: ‘I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any human source, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 1.11–12).

9

10

J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1997); J. Louis Martyn, ‘The Apocalyptic Gospel in Galatians’, Interpretation 54.3 (2000), pp. 246–66. Martyn, ‘The Apocalyptic Gospel in Galatians’, p. 246.

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Why does Paul have to up the stakes so drastically here in asserting that his gospel is not learned by humans but revealed by God? It is because the alternative gospel of the new evangelists seems so deeply woven into the natural order of things, like a karmic principle. The circumcision idea plays so readily into the all-too-human tendency to locate our identity in tribalism. The mark of circumcision was not coincidently made on the organs of generation, indicating that the human means of establishing continuity of cultural identity is literally from the flesh. By contrast, Paul seeks to completely overthrow this world view by contrasting human acts with divine ones. The two options are not two human alternatives – namely ‘works’ and ‘faith’ – but a human way of operating and a divine one. Thus, the sharp distinction that Paul draws in Gal. 3.2 – ‘Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?’ – is between an active ‘receiving’ (which is really a grasping) and a passive one. The rhetorical question is answered by the second alternative – it was by responding to the divine initiative that the Spirit came to the Galatians. By ‘believing what you heard’ Paul is speaking of the divinely ordained proclamation of the gospel itself which kindled the faith of the Galatians, not their own decision to attend to the law. As Martin Luther once put it, ‘the ears alone are the organ of the Christian’. To underscore the priority of the divine act in this human future, Paul weaves motifs from apocalyptic literature throughout the letter. What is this thing we call ‘apocalyptic literature’? Apocalyptic literature had its origins in the period after the exile of the Jews to Babylon, some centuries before the New Testament period, and has had a long history since then, both within the Christian tradition and on its radical fringes and even in non-Christian religions. Zadie Smith’s Jamaican Jehovah’s Witnesses are an example of this ongoing apocalypticism. The standard definition was put forward in the late 1970s by John J. Collins: An apocalypse is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.11

It is characterized by its view of history as in need of a decisive intervention from above; its dualism, in that evil and good are at war with one another; and 11

John J. Collins, ‘Apocalyptic Literature’, in Dictionary of New Testament Backgrounds, (ed. C. A. Evans and S. Porter; Downers Grove: IVP, 2000), p. 41.

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its claim that there will be an overturning of the current order of things. Often this is depicted through dramatic vision-like narratives. Of course, Paul’s epistle to the Galatians is not in the form of an apocalyptic vision. But Paul does make use here, as he does in others of his writings, of apocalyptic motifs. While the motifs he chooses to deploy in Galatians are not as dramatic as the trumpet call and the resurrection of the dead (as in 1 Thess. 4.13–18 and 1 Cor. 15), he quite clearly references an apocalyptic framework on multiple occasions. And in the process of pulling in these apocalyptic motifs, Paul gives us his own twist on them – which is that the apocalypse has already occurred within our time, in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. With Martyn, we can observe three of these motifs: First, Paul speaks, right at the opening of his letter, of ‘the present evil age’ (1.4).12 While he does not speak of the age to come in explicit terms, it is quite clear that he assumes an eschatological dualism. But where in other apocalyptic writings ‘the present evil age’ is contrasted to ‘the age to come’, Paul instead uses the language of ‘new creation’ (6.15; see also 2 Cor. 5.17). He no doubt learned this language of new creation from the latter parts of Isaiah, the great Old Testament prophet (e.g. 43.18–19). What this dualism implies is the expectation of a discontinuity between the ‘the present evil age’ and the ‘new creation’. In his opening address to the churches in Galatia, Paul refers to ‘. . . the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father . . .’ (Gal. 1.3–4). The sins for which Jesus gave himself are only the personal consequences of our enslavement to ‘the present evil age’. It is from this danger that we are rescued. The human being is a tragic protagonist inasmuch as he or she is oppressed by the powers of the present evil age. Second: what is thus required is a divine invasion of the present evil age in order to accomplish the liberation of humankind. Of course, we should not forget the prominence of the theme of liberation for Galatians as a whole: ‘for freedom Christ has set us free’ (5.1). And how has this freedom come to pass? By the entry into the present evil age of the faithfulness of Christ. In Gal. 3.23–25 we read: Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was put in charge of us until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law. 12

As he does in Rom. 12.2; 1 Cor. 1.2; 2.6; 3.18; 2 Cor. 4.4.

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Notice how ‘Christ came’ and ‘faith has come’ are parallel here: the coming of Christ and the coming of faith are equivalent. Paul describes the moment of the disclosure of this faithful Christ by using the word ἀποκαλυφθῆναι (apokaluphthēnai). That is to say, the invasion of the present order by Christ has all the hallmarks of an apocalyptic, end-times event. Third, Paul describes the cross of Jesus Christ as the place where God is making things right in an expectation-shattering, topsy-turvy way. That is to say, a new community has been founded on the basis of the invading love of God consummated and demonstrated by the death of Jesus. That act shattered the shackles of sin, the law and death that bound human beings, and declared a freedom to be for one another in love. In the community of the cross the old divisions of humanity so characteristic of the present evil age have been dissolved, for there is now no longer Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female. Rather, they are to replicate the love of Christ in their acts of mutual service (5.13). As Martyn writes: ‘the death of the old cosmos is the event that corresponds to, and has been caused by, the new creation in the cross’.13 The human future has, at least according to Paul in his Galatian letter, already arrived in the extraordinary death of the man from the future. Though Paul’s vision has ramifications for the future, we know from the whole corpus of his work that he offers something different from the futurisms that Smith so effectively satirizes in White Teeth. Like Smith, Paul wants to turn the attention of human beings to the priority of love. But unlike Smith, he does not do so by resigning himself to the random, or by the faint hope that human beings can summon up enough tenderness for each other to break the shackles of history that so weigh us down. The founding of the community of the cross is the future of humanity. It is already here. In contrast to White Teeth, Paul’s sketch for the new humanity in the second half of his Galatian letter does have teeth. Zadie Smith’s delightful but ultimately insipid vision for the human future relies on interracial erotic love – that eventually, sexual desire and genetics will take care of what divides us. Interestingly, she places her faith in the same method of securing a human future – human reproduction – as the circumcision group, even if it is to a different cultural outcome. On the other hand, the life of freedom in the Spirit spells the end of tribalism, not only because it eradicates the old distinctions that separated human beings and unites them on a new, spiritual basis; but also because it completely undercuts the power of the ‘in’ group to secure their 13

Martyn, ‘The Apocalyptic Gospel in Galatians’, p. 258.

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privileges by setting the standard for inclusion impossibly high. Smith has simply exchanged one kind of genealogy for another. The law of genetic inheritance is among those laws whose grip on humankind is broken as they become children of the free woman by faith according to the promise of God. In the end, Smith offers nothing more for navigating our way through life’s decisions than the toss of a coin. For Paul, the destruction of the power of the law – the crucifixion of the flesh, in his words – spells the opportunity for human individuals to develop real character and to excel in the production of spiritual fruit. The problem of needing to impress people, which we might call the ‘tyranny of cool’, is surmounted. Here is no need for the fateful business of measuring the self against the yardstick of others (Gal. 6.4). These new human beings are called to ‘serve one another humbly in love’ (Gal. 5.13), not merely according to affection but according to mutual responsibility, not seeking to master the world or end the world but to live expectantly within it. There is space for a love that is heroic but not triumphalist; self-sacrificial but not resigned to defeat. As Paul puts it: ‘Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation’ (Gal. 6.15). This is the basis for – indeed the freedom for – an appropriately human action in the world. There is no need for a minimalism of action as a guard against the sheer contingency of human existence in a random universe, but rather in this hopeful faith a liberty to be expressed in love. In that, humanity has some kind of future.

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11

Theology and the Future of Creativity1 Trevor Hart

Creativity in crisis Creativity is in Western cultures today a contested and a troubled notion. On the one hand, the language of human creativity has never been more freely and loosely deployed by those eager to promote or to lay claim to a wealth of human potential lying as yet unrealized and untapped. In March 2011, I attended a lecture in Glasgow by Sir Ken Robinson, educationalist and selfmade guru for political and business leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, and chief author of the 1999 ‘Robinson Report’. Robinson’s report was commissioned by the then Labour UK Government with a remit ‘to make recommendations to the Secretaries of State [for Education and Employment, and for Culture, Media and Sport] on the creative and cultural development of young people through formal and informal education’.2 Sir Ken’s own story is without doubt an impressive one – from humble beginnings in a large working-class family and an economically depressed post-war Liverpool, to a globe-trotting lifestyle as a much sought-after keynote speaker and advisor to the great and the good from a home base in Los Angeles. Without doubt, too, all this is due in part to Sir Ken’s own possession of intelligence, wit and imaginative drive in spades. He is an exceptional person. But his message to those of us fortunate enough to hear him 1

2

Some parts of the material contained in this essay can be found in an expanded form in Trevor Hart, Between the Image and the Word (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 119–37. Adapted by permission of the Publishers. All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education. The report was produced by the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education, a committee of which Robinson was the Chair. Its full remit was ‘to make recommendations to the Secretaries of State on the creative and cultural development of young people through formal and informal education: to take stock of current provision and to make proposals for principles, policies and practice’. The full text can be obtained online at http://sirkenrobinson.com/pdf/allourfutures.pdf, accessed 20/09/2013.

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speak in Glasgow was quite unequivocal: the ‘creative’ individual is no exception to the rule, but lies latent within every human breast awaiting the opportunity to flourish. All that is needed is a set of propitious personal, social and political conditions, and the permission of those around us to become the ‘artists’ of our own lives that we are all born to be. Among theological voices, too, we find those who are quite relaxed about the analogy between divine and human creativity. Among these, most would tend identifiably in the direction of Sir Ken Robinson’s radical egalitarianism, albeit furnishing it now with a religious and metaphysical ground that it otherwise patently lacks. So, for example, Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of Britain and the Commonwealth, insists that, in biblical terms, ‘Homo sapiens is the one creation that is itself creative. To a degree unique among life forms, human beings are not confined to adapting to their environment. They are capable of adapting the environment to themselves.’3 Unlike Sacks, Dorothy L. Sayers takes the bold step of linking this uniquely human trait to the biblical and theological suggestion that it is with the creation of humankind that God finally calls into existence something that exists in God’s own image and likeness (Gen. 1.26). After all, Sayers observes, having introduced God to us in its opening verses, the very first thing the Bible then tells us by way of its characterization of this God is that he creates. Thus, she concludes, ‘the characteristic common to God and man is apparently . . . the desire and the ability to make things’,4 and it is the artist who, in his or her creative engagements with the world, most concretely and conveniently reflects this creaturely analogy with the Creator.5 Other voices (theological and secular) are much less sanguine about this democratizing of the creative impulse. Informed more directly by the language of the Renaissance and Romanticism, some are inclined to want to reserve all talk of human creativity to a select few. Most typically, these are in the arts, and their contributions are identifiably ground-breaking, and thus deemed worthy of the ‘presumption of affinity’6 with God made consciously in the fifteenth century by the first faltering trespass into hitherto hallowed lexical ground.7 According 3

4 5

6 7

Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility (London: Continuum, 2005), p. 79. Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker (London: Methuen, 1941), p. 17. Ibid., p. 22. Cf. the argument in Dorothy L. Sayers, ‘Towards a Christian Aesthetic’, in Our Culture, Its Christian Roots and Present Crisis (ed. V. A. Demant; London: SPCK, 1947). George Steiner, Grammars of Creation (London: Faber and Faber, 2001), 17. On the earliest uses of the Latin verb creō and its cognates to refer to human aspirations and achievements see Martin Kemp, ‘From “Mimesis” to “Fantasia”: The Quattrocento Vocabulary of Creation, Inspiration and Genius in the Visual Arts’, Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies (1977), pp. 347–98; E. N. Tigerstedt, ‘The Poet as Creator: Origins of a Metaphor’, Comparative Literature Studies, no. 5 (December 1968), pp. 455–88. Prior to the late fifteenth century the terms were studiously reserved for theological and liturgical use to refer to God’s unique prerogatives as Creator of the world.

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to George Steiner, this lexical implication of divine affinity still lies tacit in the collective unconscious as a smouldering and potentially dangerous presence: to lay claim to the creative is, whether we know it or admit it or like it or not, to situate ourselves awkwardly in relation to divine precedent and prerogative. Some would suggest that we would be better not to do so at all, unless we have something extraordinary to mark us out from the masses. Writing in the 1960s the art historian Erwin Panofsky, noted with implicit disdain the then modish talk of ‘creative hairstyles, “creative play” for small children, and undergraduate modules purporting to teach students the skills of “creative writing”’.8 More recently others, such as John Tusa, Roger Scruton and Steiner himself have taken their place on the shore to resist, Canute-like, the tide of lexical slippage. Creative this, that and the other, they complain, turns out to be not really creative at all, not, at least, in any serious sense of the word.9 A rather different response, meanwhile, is forthcoming from some postmodern cynics for whom all claim to originality of spirit, imagination and achievement is so much humanist hubris.10 When deconstructed for us, even what seems to us to be new under the sun proves in reality not to be so; what is claimed to be original consists instead, and at best, of a clever sampling or pastiche of materials derived from earlier ‘creative’ efforts. This infinite regress stretches all the way back, one might suppose, to the putative primordial inception of substance and form which Christians call ‘creation’ and in which such postmodern cynics may or may not believe at all. And yet, Steiner suggests, strictly speaking the postmodern regress appears to be infinite. ‘Deconstruction, in today’s critical theories of meaning’, he observes, is precisely ‘an un-building of those classical models of meaning which assumed the existence of a precedent auctoritas, of a master builder. There are in Derridean deconstruction [no] beginnings’, whether humanly or divinely initiated.11 Some theologians, too, are acutely conscious of the metaphorical stretch involved in applying the language of ‘creation’ to human initiatives, and the danger of losing sight – in idolatrous fashion – of what sets God decisively apart as Creator from even the best and most exalted accomplishments of his creatures. Hence, they have also counselled nervousness (and in some cases wholesale avoidance) with respect to its use. C. S. Lewis, in an early review of 8

9

10

11

Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (New York and London: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 187, n. 3. See, for instance, John Tusa, On Creativity: Interviews Exploring the Process (London: Methuen, 1994), pp. 5–12. See, for example, the argument of Rosalind E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986). Steiner, Grammars of Creation, pp. 18–19.

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Sayers’ book The Mind of the Maker, already sounded this cautionary note, and others have followed in his wake.12 Such theologians, we might note, have something in common both with the elitism of Panofsky and Steiner (talk of ‘creativity’ ought not to be loosely used, but reserved properly for certain special cases) and with the postmodern cynic (strictly speaking, no human agent can ever be ‘creative’, his or her outputs suffering always from the ‘cruel fact of posteriority’13). Arguably, the most significant theological reason for resisting the easy or careless ascription of ‘creative’ capacities to human agents, and thus invoking divine precedent, lies in the unfortunate wedding of such parlance to a long history of human abuse of our created environment and its bounty. This has resulted among other things in the present ecological crisis. That this was in significant measure bound up with a theological blurring of the boundaries between Creator and creature, and the inappropriate ascription to humankind of freedoms, responsibilities and capacities vested properly in the Creator God alone, has been amply demonstrated.14 The linguistic trespass whereby humans were themselves for the first time deemed worthy of the description ‘creator’ can hardly bear the blame for this. But it was nonetheless part of the same theological and ideological shift. One might also argue that a deliberate, countercultural reversion to earlier patterns of lexical use would at least provide frequent occasion to flag up the more fundamental theological issue. In the remainder of this chapter I shall, nonetheless, suggest otherwise – that rather than seeking to unpick the broadening of the language of ‘creation’ and ‘creativity’ to include human fields of intention and action, we should seek to secure its future instead by redeeming it, and doing so on thoroughly biblical and theological grounds.

The grammar of ‘creation’ While theological concerns about the uniqueness of God’s prerogatives as Creator are legitimately important, there is more yet to be said about ‘creating’ and the ‘presumption of affinity’ involved in wider uses of the relevant vocabulary. As

12

13 14

See, for instance, Colin Gunton, The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 1, n. 2; Calvin Seerveld, Rainbows for the Fallen World: Aesthetic Life and Artistic Task (Toronto: Tuppence Press, 1980), pp. 26–27. Steiner, Grammars of Creation, p. 19. See, for example, Richard Bauckham, God and the Crisis of Freedom (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), pp. 128–77; Cameron Wybrow, The Bible, Baconianism, and Mastery Over Nature: The Old Testament and Its Modern Misreading (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), pp. 163–207.

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Colin Gunton admits, if divine creating is indeed an action situated properly within the grammar of the perfect tense (God always has created), there is nonetheless a vital sense in which ‘creation’ itself (the output of that action)15 remains incomplete and a work very much still in progress.16 In the Genesis narrative the advent of the seventh day marks a fire-break in the characterization of the divine action. This is a point in time by which certain things are already established and ‘given’, and beyond which they need not be repeated or modified. The world is now ‘finished’ (Gen. 2.1) inasmuch as it is ready for immediate occupation, and after this, Pannenberg suggests, in a fundamental sense, God ‘does not bring forth any new creatures’.17 Wherever in pre-history we imagine this point in time to have arisen, though (in the text it is only with the appearance on the scene of human beings), it is clear that in another equally fundamental sense, all this is as yet only the beginning of ‘God’s project’,18 not its divinely intended end. The fulfilment of God’s ‘creative’ labours, shaping and reshaping a world fit for human and divine cohabitation (see, for example, Rev. 21.3–5), must therefore be traced not in protology, but in an eschatology that is christologically and soteriologically determined and orientated.19 While we may still wish to insist upon reserving talk of ‘creation proper’ for a particular set of precise and technical theological uses, it is nonetheless clear that the term has a penumbra already gesturing towards the possibility of a wider and extended set of uses, even within the grammar of theology itself. The shape of the biblical witness to creation is entirely consonant with this semantic overspill. Hebrew possesses no single term covering the range of meanings of the English ‘creation’. While the Hebrew poets certainly take trouble to demarcate some lexical holy ground which must never be trespassed upon (the singular verb bārā’ being set apart from the wider imaginative field to name a unique and non-transferable activity of ‘creation proper’20), 15

16 17

18 19

20

Gunton reminds us that the term ‘creation’, whether applied to God or human agents, tends to be used in a dual sense, to refer both to the action of ‘creating’ and the thing duly ‘created’. Gunton, The Triune Creator, p. 1. Ibid., 88–89. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology. Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), p. 36. Cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics. Vol. III.1: The Doctrine of Creation (1st paperback edn; London: T&T Clark, 2004), p. 182. Gunton, The Triune Creator, p. 202. It is on these grounds that Barth interprets the divine judgement in Gen. 1.31 not as a valediction but as an ordination. All that God has made is pronounced ‘very good’ for the accomplishment of creation’s intended goal in the fulfilment of the covenant in Christ. See Barth, Church Dogmatics. Vol. III.1, pp. 212–13. So Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), pp. 148–49. For instances see W. Bernhardt, ‘bara’, in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (ed. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), p. 246; Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner (eds), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (trans. M. E. J. Richardson et al; Leiden: Brill, rev. edn, 1994), pp. 153–54.

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their witness to God’s primordial performance equally resists reduction to any ‘single or simple articulation’ of the matter.21 Instead, the writers deploy a string of different verbal images to describe some, at least, of what occurs ‘creatively’ during the first six days (shaping, making, forming, commanding, etc), these being by definition suggestive of human or other creaturely analogy. Moreover, recent work by Brown, Fretheim, Levenson and Welker has urged that, if we would be faithful to the imaginative logic of the biblical text here and elsewhere, we must recognize arising within it quite naturally the suggestion that aspects of God’s fashioning of the cosmos are not only analogous to but actually conscript and demand the participation of creaturely forces and agencies as such.22 The God of Scripture, Brown suggests provocatively, is no jealous guardian of his own ‘creative’ prerogatives, but one whose work as Creator is – by virtue of his own choosing and self-limiting – ultimately achieved per collaborationi.23 Such poetic suggestion concurs, of course, with what we now understand of the shaping of the material cosmos, an understanding no longer tolerating imaginative confinement of it to a single working week situated ‘in the beginning’. Whatever we may suppose about the temporal status of the primal act of incipience granting esse charged with meaning and potential to all things (including, Augustine reminds us, the structuring function of creaturely time itself),24 several centuries of learning in physics, geology and biology serve to assure us that the work of forming a physical cosmos fit for human indwelling is one which, precisely insofar as it harnesses and involves the created capacities embedded within the cosmos itself, cannot be hurried but takes a long time. Again, wherever we locate the advent of creation’s seventh day, to the best of our knowledge those same creaturely forces and processes are ones that rumble on beyond it, possessed of an abiding remit, a temporal future as well as a murky pre-historic past. Correspondingly, many of the biblical images used to picture God’s ancient forming of the cosmos are extended perfectly naturally to picture

21 22

23 24

Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, p. 149. See, for example, William P. Brown, The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 36–52; Terence E. Fretheim, God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005); Michael Welker, Creation and Reality (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), pp. 6–20. Brueggemann, too, refers to a ‘transactional’ quality in the OT’s description of the relationship between Creator and creation. See Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, p. 528. Brown, The Ethos of the Cosmos, p. 41. Augustine, City of God, 11.6.

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his hand still at work, shaping the world’s history and moving it towards its promised future.25 Brown’s further argument is that in the ‘creation traditions’ of Scripture itself, God’s activity of generating and ordering a physical cosmos is understood to be of a piece with – and not properly separable from – his calling forth an accompanying ethos to render an integral material-spiritual-social ‘world’.26 If so, then acknowledgement of the enhypostatic inclusion of creaturely agency in the relevant processes by which this same world is ‘made’ becomes inevitable (there can be no cultivation or culture without human activity), as does the concomitant insistence that its making continues beyond the threshold of the day of divine rest. Of course Adam’s divinely mandated naming of the animals must be situated on a wholly different plane from God’s own earlier ‘creative’ speech acts. But if Brown’s appeal to a biblical ‘cosmopolis’27 is correct, as a symbol of the birth and flowering of human ‘culture’ Adam’s act of linguistic poiesis is nonetheless part and parcel of God’s project to establish a world (which in this sense comes ‘unfinished’ from his hand); it is not merely concerned with preserving or yet (since it arises in the narrative prior to sin’s appearance) with redeeming one. Currents in the psychology of perception ever since Kant, and others in contemporary cultural theory, point to the likelihood that categories such as ‘object’ and ‘subject’, ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ (cosmos and ethos) themselves are more closely entangled than we typically suppose; the boundaries between them are permeable rather than absolute. However much may stand authoritatively over against us as something already divinely ‘given’, it seems that the reality of the ‘human world’ (the world as experienced humanly)28 is in any case always one mediated by some relevant human activity of making – whether individual or social, explicit or occult. ‘The world’, Iris Murdoch insists, ‘is not given to us “on a plate,” it is given to us as a creative task. . . . We work, . . . and “make something of it”. We help it to be.’29 If so, Steiner avers, the hermeneutics of

25

26 27 28

29

Thus, for instance, the image of God as a yotser (potter) fashioning humanity from the clay is deployed quite naturally both in the narrative account of Gen. 2.7–8 and in Jeremiah’s poetic engagement with Israel’s political history, fortunes and prospects (Jer. 18.1–11; cf. Isa. 29.16; Wis. 15.7), and Paul’s imaginative redescription of all this in the light of Christ (Rom. 9.14–26; cf. 1 Tim. 2.13, where the only other NT use of the Gk verb plassein refers back to God’s fashioning of Adam from the earth, thus completing the exegetical circle). Brown, The Ethos of the Cosmos, pp. 1–33. See ibid., pp. 13–14. Cf. Anthony O’Hear, The Element of Fire: Science, Art and the Human World (London and New York: Routledge, 1988). Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (London: Vintage, 2003), p. 215.

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‘reception theory’ offers us a vital aesthetic analogue for the creation of a ‘world’ which comes to us thus deliberately (and wonderfully) ‘incomplete’ and full of promise. An understanding of this sort implicates us directly and dynamically in the processes by which the ‘work’ takes shape, realizing (and doing so only gradually) some if not all of the plenitude of potential meaning invested in it by the divine artist.30 Again, therefore, while for perfectly good theological reasons we may still wish to reserve talk of ‘creation proper’ for something that God and God alone does, and does during creation’s first ‘six days’ alone, it seems artificial and perhaps even theologically unhelpful to draw the relevant lines with too thick a pencil. The biblical texts associated naturally with a doctrine of ‘creation’, it seems, flag continuities as well as discontinuities both between patterns of divine and creaturely action and between what precedes and follows the divine ‘Sabbath’ on the seventh day. Taken together with other considerations drawn from theological and ‘non-theological’ sources, this suggests that ‘what creator and creature alike and together make of what has been made’31 might even yet helpfully be viewed under the aegis of a ‘creation theology’, rather than being subsumed rigorously and without further ado instead under the alternative rubrics afforded by doctrines of ‘preservation’, ‘providence’ or ‘redemption’.

Tikkun olam The idea that God grants humankind a responsible participation in his own creative project is central to the Jewish notion of tikkun olam, the mending or perfecting of the world. As Jonathan Sacks notes, this notion has very ancient roots in strands of biblical and Mishnaic teaching, but receives its definitive synthesis in the kabbalism of the sixteenth-century mystical rabbi Isaac Luria.32 The central theme of the doctrine in its various forms is that the world that we inhabit as God’s creatures is as yet imperfect (and in this sense God’s creative vision remains unfulfilled or incomplete), and that every Jew, in the radical particularity of his or her circumstance, is called to share actively in the process

30 31 32

Steiner, Grammars of Creation, p. 53. Gunton, The Triune Creator, p. 89. See Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World, pp. 72–78. For a more extended discussion of the idea see Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1941), pp. 244–86 and Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken, 1995 [1971]), pp. 78–141, 203–27.

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of ‘mending’, ‘perfecting’ or completing the harmonious whole which God intends his creation to become and to be.33 As Sacks observes, in Judaism itself there is an unresolved tension here, tikkun olam functioning both as a principle for ordering human action in the midst of history and as an object of daily prayer and eschatological expectation.34 It is, paradoxically, both something that God will do and must be implored to do (since we cannot) and something that we must do in the here and now and in the nitty-gritty of everyday decisions and actions. The achievement of cosmic harmony thus comes both ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ – from the side of the creature in faithful response to the Creator’s calling and approach. Within the religious vision of Judaism, this dual insistence is bound either to remain an unresolved dialectic or else resolve itself in some form of religious and ethical synergism likely to place a crushing burden of responsibility on human shoulders. As we have already had occasion to notice, though, Christianity has a different framework to offer respectfully for consideration, one within which such seemingly contradictory claims may legitimately be situated and made sense of, without any confusion arising between them or any loss of integrity or force attaching to either as a result. In the messianic, priestly humanity of Christ, the church discerns and proclaims a fully human action of tikkun corresponding directly to the creative and redemptive purposes and activity of God the Father and energized from first to last by the activity of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore – and decisively – this same human action is that undertaken by God himself, substituting his own humanity for ours at the heart of the covenant he has made with creation, not in such a manner as to exclude our due response, but rather to provide a context within which the partial and faltering nature of that response no longer has the power to crush us, being relativized in significance (though not rendered wholly insignificant) by the response of Christ made on our behalf. Within a Trinitarian and incarnational account of atonement, and a corresponding understanding of human action as a participation in the priestly human action of Christ, in other words, the ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ dimensions of tikkun olam are able to be correlated and held together, and their whole dynamic situated within the overall triune pattern of God’s activity and 33

34

De Lange notes that in Lurianic kabbalism the despoiling of the world occurs not in a pre-historic fall contingent on human freedom, but before or during the act of creation itself. The world is thus always a fractured, imperfect or incomplete project within which humans are called to act to secure the good. See Nicholas De Lange, An Introduction to Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 206. Cf. Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World, pp. 74–75. It arises at the heart of Alenu, the closing prayer of each daily liturgy. See Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World, pp. 75–76.

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life. Only God can finally heal the world and bring it to completion. But he has chosen to do so not without a corresponding human action, but precisely in, with and through such action. This is concluded once and for all in the humanity of his own Son, but it is participated in and replicated ever and again in the Spirit-filled lives of others until the time when God will be all in all. Only God can bring about the ‘new creation’ to which the apostles and prophets bear poetic witness; but in the meanwhile, we are called already to live in ways that declare this new creation to be a hidden reality, performing parables of it in the midst of history, and so conforming historical existence, piece by piece, more fully to its promised destiny in God’s hands. It is this emphasis upon the significance of the piecemeal and the seemingly inconsequential that is one of the attractions of the notion of tikkun olam. Too often Christians are driven by a utilitarian ethic which supposes things worth doing only if some return can be identified on the investment, rather than understanding that good actions are worth doing precisely and only because it is good to do them. The world is in some sense made better thereby even when no grand strategy is advanced or outcome accomplished in the process. At one level, indeed, acknowledgement of the self-substitution of God’s humanity for ours in Christ renders every other human action inconsequential. Yet, paradoxically, it simultaneously charges every action with a new significance by situating it within the sphere of action undertaken in union with Christ, and thus rendering it either a witness to or a denial of its reality as such. That the healing and completion of the world will not depend finally on my actions or yours is a vital inference of this theological vision. But an equally vital entailment is that we are called, commanded even, to immerse ourselves fully in our own small part of the world and to do all that we can in every sphere of it to ‘make good’ the peculiar claims of faith concerning the world’s origin and promised end. And it is, we should recall, precisely this world, and not some other, that will be taken up and made new by God in the fullness of time. In that sense, nothing that we do, no choice that we make or action that we undertake in life, is wholly without eschatological consequence. For it is itself the object of God’s redemptive promise.

The liturgy of the arts One of the gains of an adequate theology of the priesthood of Christ is that it liberates us to acknowledge the potential liturgical significance of parts of our identity and action, that we have hitherto held back or supposed relatively

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‘secular’ and lacking in religious merit. The news that the Son of God has laid hold of our humanity in its entirety and offered it back, crucified and risen, to his Father in the power of the Spirit for our sakes, compels us in our turn now to offer back to God in joyful thanks nothing less than all that we personally are, and have and may yet become. As Jonathan Sacks notes, in biblical thought homo sapiens is the one creature which is itself identifiably ‘creative’, capable not just of adapting to its created environment, but of making more of that environment than is initially given in it;35 enhancing, or adding value to it. Indeed, in as much as the world is apprehended as meaningful, it constitutes a distinctly human environment, shot through with significance which transcends its materiality alone, a union of material being and semiotic excess in which ‘a thing is not just what it is’, and its reality takes time to unfold.36 A distinctly human engagement with or indwelling of the world is thus inevitably and always one in which we ‘make something of ’ the world rather than functioning as mere passive observers or consumers of it. To live responsibly in this sense, Rowan Williams suggests, is to draw out what is not yet seen or heard in the material environment itself, to ‘uncover what is generative in the world’,37 and so, working with the grain of the cosmos, to aid and assist in the imaginative effoliation by which the world approaches more fully what it is capable of being and becoming. In offering our humanity back to God, therefore, we offer back too the world in which we are embedded bodily and culturally, and what we have made of it for good or ill. Thus, as Williams submits, the sort of creative imagination involved in human artistry is not an eccentric or exclusive sort, but precisely an acute form of our wider human engagement with the world, with its distinctive dialectic of imaginative give and take.38 The premise of artistry is that perception is always incomplete, that truthfulness unfolds as we continue to explore it, that there is always an excess of meaning in what is given to us for consideration.39 Yet artistry, considered thus, is no mere cataloguing of the world’s given forms, no ‘mimetic’ inventory of the extant. Art brings new things into existence, and, precisely in doing so, discovers that which it makes. Precisely because significance has no purchase apart from the actions and responses of those who indwell the order

35 36

37 38 39

Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World, p. 79. Rowan Williams, Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2005), p. 26. Williams, Grace and Necessity, p. 162. Ibid., p. 140. Ibid., pp. 135–39.

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of signs, because human acts of signification and sense-making are already factored into our apprehension of an orderly and value-laden world (one in which ‘cosmos’ and ‘ethos’ are, as it were, perichoretically related), every act of discovery, of the uncovering or disclosure of new meaning, necessarily entails acts of making too, and every act of making lays bare some latent but hitherto unrecognized semiotic possibility. In art, as in life more generally, our calling is thus, paradoxically, to ‘change the world into itself ’,40 but we can do so precisely and only by means of imaginative responses which help to make of it more and other than it is as yet. Again, the necessary supposition is that world is in fact not yet ‘itself ’, but in some sense unfinished, with much more still to be drawn out of its primordial plenitude and fashioned in accordance with the ‘generative pulsions’ divinely invested and humanly intuited in it.41 This is not ‘creativity’ of a sort that craves trespass on the soil of divine prerogatives, but it is nonetheless a participation in the unfolding of ‘creation’, and in God’s making of new things and making all things new. It is precisely by means of our imaginative and ‘creative’ responses to the given world in the arts and elsewhere, therefore, that the world approaches that fullness of which it is capable (or, conversely, is held back from it).42 Having referred earlier to the work of Dorothy L. Sayers, it seems fitting to draw to a close by referring to the thought of her direct contemporary and compeer J. R. R. Tolkien. Looking back over his already lengthy career in 1954, Tolkien suggested to a correspondent that the whole of his literary output, imaginative and critical, had from the first really been concerned with exploring a single question; namely, the relationship between divine Creation and acts of human making or ‘sub-creation’ as he preferred to call it.43 Two poetic texts in particular tackle the issue head-on, and in a manner which points to a single abiding insight present from his very earliest ruminations on the subject: Primary and Secondary Reality – the world received from God’s hand and ‘what we make of it’ in various acts of human ars – are not to be too sharply distinguished, since 40 41

42 43

Ibid., 18. Ibid., 27. Williams borrows the word ‘pulsions’ from Maritain. See Jacques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (London: Harvill, 1953), pp. 302–6. Williams, Grace and Necessity, p. 154. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (eds), The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), p. 188 [153, draft, to Peter Hastings]. The letter was seemingly never sent. A related suggestion is contained in an earlier letter to Milton Waldman written in 1951: ‘all this stuff ’, Tolkien writes (alluding to his entire mythological enterprise), ‘is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine’ (Letters, 145 [131, undated, to Milton Waldman]). A footnote to the text reads ‘It is, I suppose, fundamentally concerned with the problem of the relation of Art (and Subcreation) and Primary Reality.’

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they are both ‘ultimately of the same stuff ’,44 and our creaturely participation in each demands of us further acts of imaginative response and making. Creation, in other words, always solicits and enables further acts of a ‘creative’ sort rather than jealously guarding its own prerogatives. The Elvish creation myth ‘Ainulindalë’ was cast in its final form in the 1950s and published only after Tolkien’s death more than 20 years later, but its earliest version belongs to the imaginative genesis of Middle-earth itself in the years immediately following the First World War.45 It concerns Eru, or Iluvatar, and his creation of the cosmos, not by solo virtuoso performance, but by calling into existence creatures themselves capable of sharing in the joyful task of bringing a world to completion. The metaphor in terms of which the myth pictures this creative interplay is itself, appropriately, an artistic one. Ilúvatar propounds a great musical theme, and invites the Ainur or Valar (the angelic first-created) to join in the music-making, each adorning the main theme with his own, to the end of a great and glorious harmony sounding forth. The creativity of the Ainur, therefore, is at once wholly unlike Ilúvatar’s own creative act, while yet constituting an extension, development of and participation in it. While each of the angelic creatures is free to fashion his own individual melody, the skill or ‘art’ of the matter lies not in any sheer creativity ex nihilo, but precisely in the harmonious development of a theme which Ilúvatar himself has already propounded and which determines, as it were, the form of the overall work. The core image, then, is that of harmonizing by free and spontaneous ornamentation. For his part, we are told, Ilúvatar will ‘sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song’.46 Creaturely acts of sub-creation, therefore, are here contingent on a divine self-limitation which, paradoxically, creates the conditions for that which pleases God’s heart and satisfies his desire the most – reciprocal acts of a ‘creative’ sort, taking what God has given and offering it back enriched and enhanced in accordance with its original Godgiven store of possibility. Of course, such kenotic sharing of responsibility opens 44

45

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J. R. R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, Including the Poem Mythopoeia & the Homecoming of Beorhtnoth (London: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 30. The citation is from the essay ‘On Fairy Stories’ first published in 1947. Given the consonance of the idea with those expressed in earlier works, and its place in the argument of the essay as a whole, it seems likely that it dates back to the lost original (presumably much shorter) text of the lecture ‘Fairy Stories’ delivered in the University of St Andrews on 8 March 1939. See J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion (ed. Christopher Tolkien; London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977), pp. 15–22. On the different rescensions of the myth see Trevor Hart, ‘Tolkien, Creation and Creativity’, in Trevor Hart and Ivan Khovacs (eds), Tree of Tales: Tolkien, Literature and Theology (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007), pp. 39–53. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977), p. 5.

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the emergent cosmos to malign influence, and Tolkien’s myth, while hardly a calque on its biblical equivalent, has its own Miltonic Satan figure in Melkor, the most gifted angel of all, in whom sub-creative desire falls away from its proper orientation and manifests itself in the reality-denying wish ‘to be Lord and God of his own private creation’.47 Melkor’s capacity for weaving discord and ruin amidst the primal harmony of the divine design is considerable, and it calls forth from Iluvatar a deeper and superior artistry in order to redeem it. This does not drown out (unlike the God of at least one Christian hymn) ‘all music but his own’,48 but rather takes the offending and destructive noise up skilfully into the pattern of his own music-making in such a way that its significance is finally transfigured and made good. The bringing of the creative vision to fulfilment and completion, therefore, is by no means automatic or straightforward; but it is contingent on creaturely as well as divine action and response and, in God’s hands, it is finally secure rather than uncertain. In earlier versions of the myth, Tolkien was much more bold in his suggestion of a world given by God only in what amounts to outline form; empty spaces were deliberately left unfilled and adornments unrealized, looking to the ‘eucharistic’ artistry of the Ainur for their due enrichment and completion. Later editions tone this down slightly, as Tolkien perhaps increasingly realized the danger of theological misunderstanding, and felt the need to indicate more clearly the distinction he believed must indeed be drawn between that creating which God alone does and is capable of doing, and creaturely ‘sub-creating’ as he had by now dubbed it. For, while the myth is first and foremost a work of the literary imagination, making no obvious claim as such to a truth beyond its own borders, it is also an exploration and daring sketch of the contours of a theological aesthetic – an account not of primordial angelic sub-creating, but that ‘artistry’ to which human beings find themselves called in the very midst of Primary Reality. The poem ‘Mythopoeia’ had its origins in a now legendary after-dinner conversation between Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Hugo Dyson conducted in the grounds of Magdalen College on the evening of 19 September 1931.49 Among other things, the substance of the conversation touched upon the capacity of myth (and by extension other imaginative and poetic forms) to deal in the stuff 47 48

49

Tolkien, Letters, p. 145 [131, undated (1951), to Milton Waldman]. ‘Crown Him with Many Crowns’, by Matthew Bridges (1800–94) and Godfrey Thring (1823–1903). The full text may be found in The Methodist Hymn Book (London: Methodist Conference Office, 1933), no. 271. See Humphrey Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (London: HarperCollins, 2002), pp. 196–99.

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of reality and truth, rather than being (in the reported words of Lewis,50 the ‘Misomythus’ of the poem’s cryptic inscription) ‘lies breathed through silver’. In his verse Tolkien playfully drives home his polemical point, that poetry may indeed be a sharp instrument in the hands of truth, helping us to cut the world at its joints, and decries by comparison the sort of arid rationalism and literalism for which everything is seen as exactly what its label says it is, with nothing ever found to be more or other than it is. The poetic eye, the poem itself suggests, is thus the one best fitted to explore a world believed to be chock full of deep connections and hidden meanings, rather than exhausted in our measured consideration of its mere surface appearances. Furthermore, such acts of poesis are fundamental to the roots of human language and perception themselves (‘trees are not “trees”, until so named and seen – / and never were so named till those had been / who speech’s involuted breath unfurled . . .’51). Whatever world of meanings and significances we apprehend around us is therefore already in part a product of prior poetic responses to what is divinely given from beyond ourselves – a ‘refracted light’ which has been splintered from its pure white into a glorious array of colours only by being passed first through the prism of our humanity. We experience the world in accordance with the capacities invested in our nature, and far from being essentially passive and receptive, those capacities turn out to involve us necessarily in acts of construction, interpretation and ‘sense making’ from the very first. There is, of course, a distinction to be drawn between Primary and Secondary Reality, but it must not be drawn too emphatically, since both are bound up with our peculiar poetic disposition towards things, and the boundaries between them are flexible and permeable.52 We make, as Tolkien puts it ‘in our measure and in our derivative mode’, by the law in which we’re made – ‘and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker’.53 Our distinctive creaturely calling, whether used or misused, Tolkien suggests, is to participate ‘in our measure and . . . derivative mode’ in God’s own continuing 50

51 52

53

The occasion was prior to Lewis’s return to Christian faith from the atheism of his early adult years, and a significant moment in the narrative of that return. See Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, pp. 197–98; Alister McGrath, C. S. Lewis, A Life (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013), pp. 147–51. McGrath makes a huge amount of some of the precise dates in the narrative of Lewis’s return from atheism to Christian faith, though does not really indicate exactly how or why they matter. The date of the conversation with Dyson and Tolkien, though, is undisputed. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, p. 86. Thus, artistic imagination may grant us ‘Recovery . . . a re-gaining – regaining of a clear view. I do not say “seeing things as they are” and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”.’ Ibid., pp. 57–58. The concession, albeit made in passing, is significant, both including human response already within any accounting of the ‘real’, and suggesting the latter’s susceptibility to modification by poetic redescription. Ibid., p. 56; cf. p. 87.

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creative engagement with the world.54 And it is for acts of imaginative subcreating that God looks and longs in his human creatures, craving nothing more than the glimpse of his own creative heart having found purchase and offered back in joyful thanks from the side of the creature. If, as Williams suggests, artistry is indeed but an acute and paradigmatic case of our wider human disposition to the world, then here the arts, holiness and worship promise to fuse in a manner as yet to be fully reckoned with in most of our churches, and with some potentially fruitful implications, perhaps, for a newly cast Christology. ‘Dis-graced’ we may well be, Tolkien avers; but neither the right nor the responsibility has decayed. ‘We make still by the law in which we’re made.’55 There is here, I suggest, a more secure and more fertile doctrinal ground not only for a ‘Christian aesthetic’ but for a meaningful account of human creativity more widely understood than that gestured towards nearly 75 years ago by Dorothy L. Sayers. Human sub-creators may or may not ‘image’ the triune God in their creative disposition towards God’s world; the jury on that particular theological move is still out. But it cannot seriously be gainsaid that our participation in Christ’s own Spirit-filled dynamic of enabling our humanity – and with and in and through it the wider creation – to become and to be ever more fully itself is thereby an active participation in God’s own (divine and human) completion of his creative project. To understand human ‘creativity’ in this light places a significant premium on it within the creaturely order of things and, at the same time, situates it appropriately as a mode of action wholly subordinate to and dependent upon the prior and accompanying activity of God in his Spirit and his incarnate, crucified and risen Word. Apart from a grasp of this objective theological context, all agendas to liberate and enable human creativity, no matter how well intended, seem bound sooner or later to go awry, generating only pathetic counterfeits of what God desires for his world. Within such a context, though, the suggestion that human beings are called to be genuinely creative (albeit as created ‘sub-creators’) situates all human response to the world potentially within the field of an action at once eucharistic and eschatological, grounded in the vicarious self-substitution of Christ for us, and opened out by the work of the Spirit of Christ in and through us in the direction of that New Creation promised by the Father.

54 55

Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, p. 87. Ibid.

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Performance, Incarnation, Conversion: Theology and the Future of Imagination Alison Searle

This essay explores the concepts of performance, incarnation, crucifixion and conversion, significant to both theological and dramatic discourse, in order to consider what it means to imagine in the light of the eschaton.1 Any discussion of the future inevitably involves the human ability to imagine: to have the ‘eyes of [our] heart’ enlightened (Eph. 1.18),2 to grasp the ‘assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’ (Heb. 11.1).3 Such imagining is at the heart of eschatological thinking and inextricably involved with, and shaped by, its theological formulation. In turn, the way individuals perform their various public and private selves to some extent incarnates their imaginative apprehension of the future.4 Conversion results from a revelation of that ‘which God has prepared for those who love him’ and which cannot be seen, heard or imagined by the human heart except by the Spirit’s enlightenment (1 Cor. 2.9).5 1

2

3

4

5

I am grateful to Dr Ian O’Harae and Dr Samantha Rayner for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this essay. Natalie Carnes has offered an important critique of the way in which ‘contemporary theologians and ethicists, in their eager embrace of the theater metaphor, deny at crucial moments the limits it imposes and thereby distort power, freedom, and selfhood’. ‘The Mysteries of Our Existence: Estrangement and Theatricality’, Modern Theology 28.3 (2012), pp. 402–22 (403). In this chapter Bible references, unless otherwise stated, are from the English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Publishers). For a theological exploration of how the human function of ‘imagining’ can be defined in the light of the biblical text see Alison Searle, ‘The Eyes of Your Heart’: Literary and Theological Trajectories of Imagining Biblically (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008). This is explored in detail by Kristen Deede Johnson in ‘Brave New World? Faith, Hope and the Political Imagination’, in Faithful Performances: Enacting Christian Tradition (ed. Trevor A. Hart and Steven R. Guthrie; Farnham: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 91–113. Lynne Enterline analyses Shakespeare’s use of this biblical text when creating the character of Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She notes that ‘like the sixteenth-century schoolboys trained up in the techniques of verbal, vocal, and bodily performance necessary for eloquence, Bottom tries to memorize a dramatic rendition of a Latin precursor . . . only to embark on an emotional experience made flesh. . . . His metamorphosis changes organs of perception. . . . When Bottom wakes up and

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This transformation can be figured as ‘learn[ing] Christ’: ‘to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life . . . and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness’ (Eph. 4.22–24). A Spirit-led imagination is central to the continual transformation and performance of this new self. It is the enlightened ‘eyes of [the] heart’ that enable one to ‘know the hope to which he has called [us], the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people’ (Eph. 1.18, NIV). An alternative biblical image of eschatologically orientated transformation is that of the ‘unveiled face’: those who behold ‘the glory of the Lord’ are ‘transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another’ by the Spirit (2 Cor. 3.8). In these Pauline epistles, the envisaged end is a person; at the heart of the final consummation is communion with God as he has revealed himself in his incarnate Son (Jn 1.18). Theology and drama both use the metaphor of theatrum mundi in order to explore relationships between God, humanity and the universe. The apostles, in Paul’s terminology, became a θέατρον – spectacle, play or theatre – displayed by God to the world, angels and humans (1 Cor. 4.9). In an alternative formulation, John Calvin identifies God as the chief actor; each person is ‘formed to be a spectator of the created world and given eyes that he might be led to its author by contemplating so beautiful a representation’.6 Perhaps most famously, William Shakespeare’s melancholic Jacques observes: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts. . . .7

The English non-conformist, John Bunyan, imagines the suffering Christian as one ‘set upon a Hill, upon a Stage, as in a Theatre, to play a part for God in the world’.8 While there are theoretical issues that limit the usefulness of the theatre as a theological metaphor or paradigm, the broader concept of performance offers a constructive way of thinking about how the imagination apprehends

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reaches for synaesthesia to capture his translation’s ecstasy, not only sensations cross, but so do word and body: “The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was” (4.1.211–14)’. Lynne Enterline, Shakespeare’s Schoolroom: Rhetoric, Discipline, Emotion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), p. 3. Quoted by Belden C. Lane, Ravished By Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 58. William Shakespeare, As You Like It (ed. Alan Brissenden; Oxford, 2008), pp. 150–51; II.7.139–42. Quoted by Richard Greaves, John Bunyan and English Nonconformity (London: Hambledon Press, 1992), p. 182.

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an eschatological vision of the future and renders it concrete in the present – whether it is incarnated in a life of faith or a work of art. These issues are explored in the following essay through a case study of the Quaker, James Nayler. His attempts to perform Christ led to great suffering. They precipitated a heated parliamentary interrogation of the concepts of ‘sign’ and ‘actor’ that elucidate important aspects of what it means to imagine and act now in the light of the scriptural narrative and its promised future. Nayler demonstrates how the biblical performance of creaturehood can transform the believer into a spectacle or play. His actions exemplify the way in which the crucifixion inverts accepted norms of beauty, truth and decorum in both life and art. Nayler’s creative endeavour to ‘put on Christ’ clarifies how the imagination apprehends and incarnates aspects of the biblical narrative. Extrapolating from this case study of Nayler, I conclude with a theological exploration of its implications for our understanding of imagination, interpersonal human relations and artistic creation. Any attempt to undertake a biblically inspired, eschatologically driven performance of Christ incorporates personal sacrifice, hermeneutical complexity and prophetic promise. This is clearly demonstrated by the entry of James Nayler into Bristol on 24 October 1656 and its reverberations in the English public sphere.9 A hostile contemporary, John Deacon, describes the procession, modelled on the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, in the following manner. James Naylor of Wakefield in the County of Yorke, a deluded and deluding Quaker and Impostor, rode October last through a village called Bedminster, about a mile from Bristol, accompanied with six more, one whereof a yong man, whose head was bare, leading his horse by the bridle, and another uncovered before him, thorough the durty way in which the Carts and Horses and none else usually goe. And with them two men on horseback with each of them a woman behind him, and one woman walking on the better way or path. In this posture did they march, and in such a case, that one George Witherley noting their condition, asked them to come in the better rode, adding that God expected no such extremity: but they continued on their way, not answering in any other notes, but what were musicall, singing Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabbath, &c. Thus continued they, till by their wandring they came to the Almsehouse within the suburbs of Bristol, where one of the women alighted, and she with the other of her own sex lovingly marcht on each side of Naylor’s Horse. This 9

For a full discussion of this incident see Leo Damrosch, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

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Witherley saith, he supposes they could not be lesse deep in the muddy way then to the knees, and he saith they sang, but sometimes with such a buzzing melODIOUS noyse that he could not understand what it was. This the said Witherley gave in upon his oath. Thus did they reach Ratcliff-gate, with Timothy Wedlock of Devon bare-headed, and Martha Symonds with the bridle on one side, and Hannah Stranger on the other side of the Horse; this Martha Simonds is the wife of Thomas Simonds of London, Bookbinder, and Hannah Stranger is the Wife of John Stranger of London Combmaker, who sung Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Israel. Thus did he ride to the high Crosse in Bristol, and after that to the White-hart in Broadstreet, where there lies two eminent Quakers, by name Dennis Hollister, and Henry Row; of which the Magistrates hearing they were apprehended and committed to prison.10

Even in the radical and innovative religious climate of Interregnum England the imaginative appropriation that Nayler and his companions made of the biblical text in this performance was viewed as extreme. Nayler’s ‘sign’ precipitated an intense, anguished and combative debate in the English Parliament that lasted ten days before his body was subjected to an excruciating, but by no means unusual, sentence as punishment for his ‘blasphemous’ action. There was undoubtedly an element of political expediency in the way the majority of conservative Puritan MPs decided to suppress Nayler, who was viewed in several quarters as a key leader of the rapidly increasing and belligerent sect of Quakers. But while the political dimension is significant, I do not wish to focus on it here. The different ways in which Nayler, his companions and his contemporaries interpreted his re-enactment of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem elucidate important aspects of the role played by the imagination in Christian tradition with implications for our understanding of its relationship to incarnation, performance and eschatology. The eminent theologian and pastor, Richard Baxter, recorded in his autobiography (published posthumously in 1696) that the Quakers’ ‘chief Leader James Nayler acted the part of Christ at Bristol, according to much of the History of the Gospel, (and was long laid in Bridewell for it, and his Tongue bored as a Blasphemer by the Parliament)’.11 It is clear from contemporary records of Nayler’s examination by Parliament that he did not identify himself as Christ in the blasphemous manner in which he was accused. Nayler states clearly when asked, ‘if any prayed to Christ in him, whether he did dis-own it? [he] answered, 10

11

John Deacon, The Grand Impostor Examined: or, The Life, Tryal and Examination of James Nayler, the Seduced and Seducing Quaker (London: Henry Brome, 1656), B1r–B2r. Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae (London: T. Parkhurst, J. Robinson, J. Lawrence and J. Dunton, 1696), Part I, p. 77.

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As a Creature I do disown it’.12 Similarly, he observes unequivocally regarding his entrance into Bristol, ‘I do abhor that any of that honour which is due to God, should be given to me as I am a Creature; but it pleased the Lord to set me up as a sign of the coming of the righteous one; and what hath been done in my passing through the Towns, I was commanded by the power of the Lord to suffer such things to be done to the outward as a sign, I abhorr any honour as a Creature.’13 Despite this Nayler was indicted by the Parliament as a blasphemer who claimed to be the Son of God; he was also disowned by many of his fellow Quakers, including George Fox, who did not need the unhelpful publicity that Nayler’s act provoked when many were already suffering imprisonment for their Quaker beliefs. Baxter had no problem with the punishment meted out to Nayler for his behaviour, but he is clearer in his analysis of the central issue than the MPs who asserted that Nayler was identifying himself as Christ – Nayler acted the part of Christ.14 Anxiety as to what this looks like in practice and whether or not the metaphor of theatre can usefully be appropriated in order to assist in understanding what it means faithfully to follow Jesus Christ in the light of the coming kingdom of God remains real. According to Natalie Carnes this ‘anxiety about hidden motives has stubbornly returned over the centuries because it speaks to something inescapable about what it means to be human in the world’. She suggests that ‘theater theologians use theater to describe the way Christians perform Christ or church in a way that misses what is unique about performing Christ: that it turns on the performance of a role that discloses and realizes one’s personhood, that it requires a set of descriptions attributable to one subject’. ‘That Christians can “put on virtue” and “put on Christ” is important to recover’, however, ‘“putting on Christ” remains a type of performance significantly different from theatrical and occupational performances’.15 That is why I am using the term ‘performance’ in preference to the categories of ‘actor’ and ‘theatre’; Carnes notes in passing that ‘[n]arrative is a much more fundamental category than “theater” (though performance might be similarly fundamental)’.16 Nayler emphasizes his identity as a creature in order to refute the accusation that

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A True Narrative of the Examination, Tryall and Sufferings of James Nayler (London: s.n., 1657), C1–C1v. Ibid., D3v. Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, Part I, p. 77. Carnes, ‘The Mysteries of Our Existence’, pp. 409–10. For a subtler attempt to negotiate the ways in which theatre can inform theological reflection see Ivan Khovacs, ‘The Intractable Sense of an Ending: Gethsemane’s Prayer on the Tragic Stage’, in Theatrical Theology (ed. Trevor Hart and Wesley Vander Lugt; Eugene: Wipf & Stock, forthcoming).

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he is blasphemously equating himself with Christ. This resonates with Carnes’s explication of the theology of Gregory of Nyssa: There is a way of describing what Gregory is doing, not as interpreting a role against itself, nor as positing humanness over and against roles, but as simply identifying one role – creature – as the determinative role of one’s life. One can even add that Gregory is concerned with what it means to perform creatureliness well and that he is concerned with creaturely becoming. But ‘creature’ is not a character one plays, as one might play, for example, Antigone or Hamlet. Creature is who we are, and we never arrive at a place where we are not a creature, where we retire the mask of our creatureliness. The performance of creaturehood, then, like the performance of Christ, is not a theatrical performance. Further, creaturehood does not come with the material realities – the costumes, the props, the supporting cast – that makes a role concrete. Thus Gregory turns us to the most concrete reality he can – decayed bones – to remind us of a creatureliness that interrupts all roles.17

For Nayler, as for Gregory in this account, recognition of one’s creaturehood prevented a false elision of his individual identity with that of Christ, but his entry into Bristol was also shaped by a particular theological semiotics emerging within the Quaker movement that proved opaque to many of their contemporaries. George Fox identified words, writing and signs as the means by which Quakers were to communicate with non-believers. Signs included those that were ‘produced by the Quakers themselves and . . . consisted in the public performance of shocking, dramatic actions, intended to convey, by nonverbal means, an expression of moral reproof and/or prophecy. The charter for these semiotic enactments was biblical. . . .’18 Here Richard Bauman positions Nayler’s act alongside the non-verbal prophetic witness of the Old Testament prophets. Ezekiel, for example, was commanded to shave off his hair, separate it into three groups and burn, cut and scatter it (5.1–5). On another occasion he lay on his side for 390 days indicating the duration of God’s judgement upon Israel (4.4–5); he also baked his food on human dung heaps in response to God’s explicit direction (4.9–12). Such ‘performance art’19 was intimately connected with messages of judgement, even apocalypse and here, too, the biblical material forms a telling parallel with Quaker practice.20 16 17 18

19 20

Ibid., p. 421, n. 35. Ibid., p. 422, n. 49. Richard Bauman, Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silences among SeventeenthCentury Quakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 84. Yvonne Sherwood, ‘Prophetic Performance Art’, The Bible and Critical Theory 2.1 (2006), pp. 1.1–1.4. Damrosch, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus, p. 167.

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Nayler’s prophetic performance can be elucidated further through consideration of Celia Deane-Drummond’s argument that Christian ethical orientation towards the future should be governed by a dramatic rather than a narrative mode of discourse. ‘Drama reflects the indeterminacy typical of human life, including the unforeseeable interactions of circumstances, and the ambiguities of existence.’ It ‘has the characteristics of “event” through the dynamic staging of particulars in a particular way’ and ‘an irreducibly social dimension, including the audience as much as those taking part in the play. In addition, drama includes the idea of anticipation, but this is not the same as resignation, rather, it is ongoing consuming involvement in the work of interpretation’.21 Commenting on the biblical book of Revelation she notes: ‘Christian apocalyptic is characterized by a confident hope not only that things can be different, but will be different. . . . The characterization of apocalypse as drama offers . . . a much greater sense of the importance of particularity and individual response compared with more fatalistic narrative approaches. Apocalypse understood as a way of bringing the truth about the situation invites a sense of what is, to what must be done.’22 I argue that we should view Nayler’s entrance into Bristol on a horse, with his companions singing praises in the pouring rain, as both prophetic performance art – his own role by all accounts was non-verbal – and as a dramatic mode of discourse. It was both a ‘sign’ and ‘event’ that was deliberately designed to include an audience as well as participants. It was envisaged in apocalyptic terms, as many Quaker signs were during the 1650s, and meant to be a witness both to the truth and against the contemporary spiritual situation of an England governed by mere ‘professors’ (i.e. those who claimed to follow Jesus Christ but did not authenticate it according to the Quaker understanding with their lives).23 The Bristol magistrates wished to make an example of Nayler and sent him to be examined by Parliament in London. After a lengthy interrogation by special 21

22 23

Celia Deane-Drummond, ‘Beyond Humanity’s End: An Exploration of a Dramatic versus Narrative Rhetoric and Its Ethical Implications’, in Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination (ed. Stefan Skrimshire; London: Continuum, 2010), p. 248. Ibid., pp. 251–52. It is important to note here that Nayler himself saw a stark contrast between his dramatic sign and the theatrical performances of contemporary actors during the Interregnum. He notes: ‘As I was passing down the borough of Southwark not many days ago, I saw the greatest abominations acted that ever mine eyes beheld: in several places in the open streets [there were] men upon scaffolds [i.e. temporary stages], by two, three, four or five upon a scaffold, transformed into several shapes, lifting wickedness up on high, and acting such abominable folly in words and actions in the sight of the sun, as might make any tender heart, fearing God, to tremble at the sight of. And this was in many places of the streets openly, besides what was within the houses, where several trumpets were sounding to gather vain-minded people thereto; which wounded my heart to see, that ever such things should be tolerated under your government, for whom God hath so wrought that you might reform these evils’, To The Parliament of the Commonwealth of England, cited by Damrosch, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus, p. 184.

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committee and a ten-day debate by the second Protectorate Parliament, where they also considered whether they had the right to conduct a trial, Nayler was found guilty of ‘Horrid Blasphemy’. This upheld the findings of the committee that: ‘First, James Nayler did assume the gesture, words, honour, worship, and miracles of our blessed Saviour. Secondly, The names and incommunicable attributes and titles of our blessed Saviour.’24 He avoided the death penalty by a small margin (96 to 82 votes), but the actual penalty imposed made Nayler, like the apostles, a θέατρον (spectacle, play or theatre). It was decided that his tongue should be bored through with a hot iron; the letter B stigmatized on his forehead; that he be set in the pillory for 2 hours; whipped by the hangman; wear a paper containing an inscription of his crimes; be committed to solitary confinement in a London prison and have no access to pen, ink or paper.25 Nayler responded simply, ‘He that hath prepared the body will enable me to suffer; and I pray, that He may not lay it to your charge.’26 Leo Damrosch observes: ‘In the opinion of his supporters Nayler’s prophetic sign had now produced its logical conclusion, a symbolic crucifixion.’27 Nayler’s imaginative appropriation of the life of Christ and its consequences are, admittedly, an extreme case. However, his dramatic sign and its aftermath raise questions of more general concern. What constitutes a faithful performance of creaturehood for Christian believers? How do we fulfil the biblical injunction to ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Rom. 13.14)? Who has the right to determine whether a particular performance is ‘horrid blasphemy’ or a Christ-like martyrdom? To some extent, as Jürgen Moltmann demonstrates, this tension is an inevitable and ongoing characteristic of Christian experience and results from the juxtaposition of two key scriptural themes: [D]o the apocalyptic contradiction and the messianic correspondence of the kingdom of God to the conditions of this world constitute mutually exclusive ideas? . . . apocalyptic sects which cut themselves off from ‘the wicked world,’ and modern Christians who want to keep up with every movement of ‘the spirit of the age’. . . . Again and again there have been times when the people of God have been persecuted, and martyrdom has been enjoined. Then nothing more is possible in history . . . [A]ll that remains is the sole decision: to confess or to deny. . . . Yet again and again there have also been, and are, times of open

24 25 26 27

A True Narrative of the Examination, Tryall and Sufferings of James Nayler (1657), D4v, B2r–B2v. Ibid., E2r–E2v. Ibid., Ir. Leo Damrosch, ‘Nayler, James (1618–1660)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19814, accessed 20/03/2013.

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doors. . . . Then we stand face to face with almost unlimited possibilities . . . the kingdom of God is at hand. . . . Then hope turns into action, and we already anticipate today something of the new creation of all things which Christ will complete on his day.28

There are no simple answers. ‘[I]t is the dogma that is the drama’ and each believer must ‘work out [their] own salvation with fear and trembling’ (Phil. 2.12). At the heart of the Christian faith is the doctrine of the incarnation: ‘the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world, lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death’.29 This dogma has profound implications, not least for a biblical understanding of the imagination, and theological reflection on and for the future. If Nayler’s performance is considered in the light of the incarnation then his rather dramatic sign can be seen as a faithful attempt by one believer to ‘put on Christ’. What he did in Bristol . . . was to permit his followers to stage the passion of Christ, with himself as protagonist like an actor in a mystery play, enacting in a deliberately challenging form the daily taking up of the cross that was commonly invoked as a mere metaphor, but that needed to be internalized and lived as a potent sign. The tragic absurdity of the actual performance, the handful of bedraggled singers trudging knee-deep in mud, was actually essential to the enactment. To be despised and rejected, to be mocked by the world, was precisely to imitate Christ.30

Attempts to apprehend the implications of the incarnation through faithful imagining and performance can result in mutilation and persecution, as Nayler discovered, or even martyrdom, as Moltmann indicates (see also Rev. 6.10–11). But it is important, too, to consider the time of ‘open doors’ when ‘the kingdom of God is at hand’. The doctrines of the incarnation and the resurrection enable ‘hope’ to turn ‘into action’ and the imagination plays a critical part in ‘already anticipat[ing] today something of the new creation of all things which Christ will complete’.31 Truth must be incarnated in a concrete, material way if others are to ‘taste and see that the Lord is good’ (Ps. 34.1). Faithful performance, inspired by a Spirit-led and sanctified imagination, is at the core of this lifestyle. As Luke Bretherton comments: ‘It is the Christocentric performance of hospitality that 28

29

30 31

Jürgen Moltmann, ‘Hope and Reality: Contradiction and Correspondence’, in God Will Be All in All: The Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann (ed. Richard Bauckham; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), pp. 84–85. Dorothy Sayers, ‘The Dogma Is the Drama’, The Whimsical Christian (New York: Macmillan, 1978), pp. 27–28. Damrosch, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus, p. 172. Moltmann, ‘Hope and Reality’, pp. 84–85.

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furnishes the world with the concrete, non-Utopian vision of “just generosity” . . . essential for human flourishing.’32 Such acts and lives anticipate the new creation to be ushered in at the eschaton. Nayler’s performance of creaturehood rendered him a θέατρον – spectacle – in Paul’s terminology. His attempt faithfully to follow Jesus Christ inverted his culture’s accepted standards of beauty, decorum and truth. His act is, in many ways, similar to that of the woman who had ‘an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly’, which she broke and poured over the head of Jesus (Mk 14.3). Her audience responded with self-righteous indignation: ‘Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor’ (v. 5). However, Jesus defended her: ‘Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. . . . She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. . . . [W]hat she has done will be told in memory of her’ (vv. 6, 8 and 9). This biblical inversion of commonly accepted or utilitarian definitions of beauty and service requires us to rethink our own aesthetic categories and the way our imaginations apprehend and ‘put on Christ’ daily in the light of the gospel narratives, particularly the crucifixion. It can be characterized as a crucified aesthetics and it requires a converted imagination.33 ‘To refer to the “beauty” of the cross is to speak in terms of a “converted” sense of beauty. The cross challenges us to re-think and to expand our notion of what is beautiful, and indeed of the “beauty” of God itself. . . . The Christian notion of beauty . . . must be able to include even the cross, “and everything else which a worldly aesthetics . . . discards as no longer bearable.”’34 Consequently, as Karl Barth has noted: ‘If the beauty of Christ is sought in a glorious Christ who is not the crucified, the search will always be in vain.’ The cross is not a beautiful object in itself, but it symbolizes a beautiful act – the self-giving of Jesus and the role of the Father in raising him from death. Further, the beauty of the cross can only be understood as a ‘moment in God’s poiesis’, its ‘significance is incomplete except in the dénouement of the narrative’.35 Yet, while the category of narrative ascribes meaning to this central biblical event or symbol, it does not exhaust it. Unpicking a retrospective temporal construction by asking ‘whether despite the presence of 32

33

34

35

Luke Bretherton, Hospitality as Holiness: Christian Witness Amid Moral Diversity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2006), p. 138. For a discussion of what such a crucified aesthetics might look like see my reading of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress in The Eyes of Your Heart, pp. 66–69, 201–3. Richard Viladesau, ‘The Beauty of the Cross’, in Theological Aesthetics after von Balthasar (ed. Oleg V. Bychkov and James Fodor; Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 135–52 (137). Ibid., 143.

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this happy ending [of the resurrection] and the imaginative backwash from it, there might nonetheless be some significant . . . concurrences and resonances’ between the genre of tragedy and the Christian story, allows space for the incomprehensible pain, grief, absurdity and mess of human existence. This is precisely the contradiction and pain that Nayler’s re-enactment of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and its grisly aftermath bring to the fore. Trevor Hart has argued that the failure of theology to learn from tragedy about its own story can lead to self-deception. Narrative and event exist in a productive tension because of the ‘sort of happy ending’ that the resurrection is and ‘its peculiar relationship to the shape of all that precedes it’. In J. R. R. Tolkien’s resonant neologism the biblical metanarrative is neither a comedy, nor a melodrama, but a eucatastrophe.36 Acceptance of this crucified aesthetic and its implications in the light of God’s promised future is dependent upon a prior spiritual enlightening of ‘the eyes of [the] heart’ – conversion. ‘Clear vision is the result of grace: of having our moral imagination and aesthetic sensibilities infused by the Spirit of God who enables a “right seeing.”’37 As Jonathan Edwards notes: ‘[s]uch is our nature that we can’t think of things invisible, without a degree of imagination. . . . As God has given us such a faculty as the imagination, and has so made us that we can’t think of things spiritual and invisible, without some exercise of this faculty.’ However, Edwards also identifies the human imagination as the source of some of the strongest prejudices ‘against truth of any kind’; it is so powerful that it has the potential to imprison individuals in self-delusion and fantasy.38 This recognition of the centrality of the ‘analogical imagination’ to seeing things whole has led James Fodor, following Stanley Hauerwas and Iris Murdoch, to focus on ‘vision’ as a means of integrating aesthetics and ethics – through the medium of the imagination. He suggests that ‘the central aim of the Christian life is not so much a matter of right action’ as ‘a truthful vision of God’. The moral life is ‘better understood on the analogy of the aesthetic mode of seeing and beholding than in terms of discrete actions and decisions. For the right answer . . . is mainly a matter of really looking while avoiding the constant temptation to return to the self with the deceitful consolation of self-pity, resentment, fantasy, 36

37

38

39

Trevor Hart, ‘Unexpected Endings: Eucatastrophic Consolations in Literature and Theology’, in Art, Imagination and Christian Hope: Patterns of Promise (ed. Trevor Hart, Gavin Hopps and Jeremy Begbie; Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 171–90 (183). James Fodor, ‘“Alien Beauty”: Parabolic Judgment and the Witness of Faith’, in Theological Aesthetics After von Balthasar (ed. Oleg V. Bychkov and James Fodor; Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 187–200 (191). Cited by Terrence Erdt, Jonathan Edwards: Art and the Sense of the Heart (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), pp. 52–55. Fodor, ‘Alien Beauty’, p. 191.

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and despair’.39 While in fundamental agreement with Fodor’s project, I think an overemphasis on ‘vision’ or ‘sight’ can be problematic. The metaphor of sight is only one of the ways in which Scripture describes our apprehension of the beautiful, good and true. Sight needs to be held in tension with other metaphors as, for example, tasting God’s goodness (Ps. 34.1); marriage and feasting (Rev. 19.6–9); or walking and getting dressed (Eph. 4.17–23). Only in this way can justice be done both to the multifaceted nature of the biblical text, with its resolutely tactile and concrete descriptions of the coming of the kingdom of God, and the doctrine of bodily resurrection. The power of Nayler’s vision and performance resulted from ‘his enacting in a deliberately challenging form the daily taking up of the cross that was commonly invoked as a mere metaphor, but that needed to be internalized and lived as a potent sign’.40 It was tangible, pathetic and unavoidable. The human ability to imagine is ‘absolutely necessary as the mode or capacity relevant to eschatological expectation and statement. . . . It is precisely imagination, the capacity which is able to take the known and to modify it in striking and unexpected ways, which offers us the opportunity to think beyond the limits of the given’.41 However, as finite human beings we cannot have empirical certainty as to the shape and nature of the future. Scripture invites us, on the basis of the self-revelation of God in his incarnate Son, to undertake an adventure of faith – ‘the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’ (Heb. 11.1). Imagination is the aspect of human nature or identity that enables us to envisage the eschatological future that God has promised. But if the promise inherent in the biblical text is to be realized in the experience of individuals and communities here and now, then the Spirit of God needs to breathe life into dry bones and words. To bear faithful witness to the promised kingdom of God it is essential that individuals and communities who have been transformed by the Spirit perform and incarnate (literally ‘make flesh’) the word of God revealed in Scripture, just as Nayler and his companions did during the Interregnum. Imagination is central to this process; like the poet, our calling is to body forth the ‘forms of things unknown’ and give ‘to airy nothing/ A local habitation and a name’.42 This may mean, like Nayler, that the metaphors need to be enacted literally. The biblical determinatives for establishing the vitality and 40 41

42

Damrosch, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus, p. 172. Trevor Hart, ‘Imagination for the Kingdom of God? Hope, Promise, and the Transformative Power of an Imagined Future’, in God Will Be All in All (ed. Richard Bauckham; London: Continuum, 2005), pp. 49–76 (75–6). William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ed. Peter Holland; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 231; V.1.16–17.

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truth of such a Spirit-led imagination are conversion, crucifixion, incarnation and the hope of resurrection. We are to perform or ‘put on’ Christ not despite, but through, the limitations imposed by our creaturely existence. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’ – these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. . . . Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit. (1 Cor. 2.8–13)

James Nayler’s incarnation and enactment of the life of Christ in his own performance of creaturehood not only established him as a spectacle that inverts, in biblical fashion, commonly accepted cultural standards of beauty, decorum and truth. His example also demonstrates how the imagination apprehends and renders concrete the biblical narrative and the future that God has promised here and now. W. H. Auden observes: ‘It is just when the would-be proximity of mimetic art to truth fails that the distance of analogy, with its “feebly figurative signs,” manages to succeed. . . . The imagination is to be regarded as a natural faculty the subject of which is the phenomenal world, not its creator.’43 The inadequacy of the created artefact is its saving grace, for ‘it is just here, among the ruins and the bones, that we may rejoice in the perfect Work which is not ours’;44 rather as the bedraggled and dirty state of Nayler and his band of followers was an essential element ensuring the dramatic potency of their prophetic sign.45 For Auden, communion with the divine, and communication of the divine, was achieved uniquely and finally through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. The closest the human imagination can come to a perfected work, from a biblical point-of-view, is the hopeful orientation of a crucified aesthetics anticipating the eschaton, when ‘we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is’ (1 Jn 3.2). It is the imagination that enables humans to grasp a vision of what will be and then to live here and now in anticipation of that transformed future. ‘[M]etaphors and stories entice us to find a way to bring into existence the reality that at once should be but will not be except as we act as if it is. Morally the world

43

44 45

Alan Jacobs, What Became of Wystan: Change and Continuity in Auden’s Poetry (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998), p. 24. Ibid. Damrosch, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus, p. 172.

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is always wanting to be created in correspondence to what is but is not yet.’46 Or, alternatively, in the language of Romans 8: For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning in the pangs of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. (Rom. 8.19–24)

This anticipation of the kingdom of God finds expression in interpersonal human relationships, but it is essential to reject any conception of the self as a monadic kingdom that engages with others as self-sufficient entities. Attempting to ‘love your neighbour as yourself ’ (Mt. 22.39) by visualizing ‘one’s outward image in imagination’ and attempting ‘to “feel” oneself from outside’ is not enough, as ‘we lack any emotional and volitional approach to this outward image that could vivify it and include or incorporate it axiologically within the outward unity of the plastic-pictorial world’.47 Alan Jacobs builds on Mikhail Bakhtin’s insight that human beings are intrinsically dialogic or relational, and thus, ‘neither the self nor the other is expendable, since self cannot be purely self nor purely other’,48 by noting that God in Christ has become the other for us, in his atoning death on the cross. This enables an individual, by first answering to the divine other, to genuinely give themselves on behalf of other people. Through responsible action, Bakhtin suggests that the individual can live, not simply for themselves or by attempting to annihilate their own self, but rather ‘from within’. By expending themselves on behalf of others in this way they achieve a genuinely answerable personhood.49 If I actually lost myself in the other (instead of two participants there would be one – an impoverishment of Being), i.e., if I ceased to be unique, then this moment of my non-being cannot become a moment in the being of consciousness – it would simply not exist for me, i.e., being would not be accomplished through me at that moment. Passive empathizing, being-possessed, losing oneself – these have nothing in common with the answerable act/deed of self-abstracting or 46

47

48 49

Stanley Hauerwas, ‘Vision, Stories, Character’, in The Hauerwas Reader (ed. John Berkman and Michael G. Cartwright; Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 165–70. Mikhail Bakhtin in Towards a Philosophy of the Act, cited by Alan Jacobs, A Theology of Reading (Oxford: Westview Press, 2001), p. 58. Jacobs, A Theology of Reading, p. 106. Ibid., 60–61.

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self-renunciation. In self-renunciation I actualize with utmost activeness and in full the uniqueness of my place in Being. The world in which I, from my own unique place, renounce myself does not become a world in which I do not exist, a world which is indifferent, in its meaning, to my existence: self-renunciation is a performance or accomplishment that encompasses Being-as-event.50

Loving one’s neighbour as oneself in this formulation is ‘explicitly linked to otherregard’; ‘one gives by making oneself the other’s guarantor rather than by virtue of abandoning one’s own interests’.51 Bakhtin shows how the commands to love God and one’s neighbour complement one another. It is the ‘divine signature’ inscribed in the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross, which, ‘once recognized by me, provides the ground for, or the source of, my own determination to . . . “incarnate” my love for the other’. Thus a genuine relationship between two human beings, a true kenosis of the self on behalf of the other, has ‘three – not two’ as ‘the dialogical minimum’, as it must be underwritten by the self-sacrifice of Christ (2 Cor. 5.21).52 Bakhtin’s distinction between passive existence (mere embodiment or an understanding of kenosis where the goal is self-annihilation) and authentic action (‘self-renunciation’ or incarnation where ‘I actualize with utmost activeness and in full the uniqueness of my place in Being’) can be used as a way of explicating human creativity. It not only allows the truly ethical action to be defined, it also enables a differentiation to be made between an imitation that is truly creative, or free with nature, from unthinking reproduction.53 When we incarnate rather than merely embody the act in our lives we put our signature on it. . . . Embodiment . . . refers only to the change that an individual undergoes when he or she becomes consciously aware of the fact that all human lives are different; the actual deed of ethically integrating with others follows after this awareness . . . both a partaking . . . and an incarnation.54

The doctrine of Christ’s incarnation can be linked directly to the process of artistic creation: it ‘provides a superb model for what a work of art is’ – ‘a little incarnation’ – creating ‘meaning in the concrete form of images, sounds, and stories’.55 This is precisely what Nayler achieved with his companions when he

50 51 52 53

54 55

Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’, cited in Jacobs, A Theology of Reading, p. 108. Gene Outker cited in Jacobs, A Theology of Reading, p. 110. Jacobs, A Theology of Reading, p. 110. J. R. R. Tolkien, ‘On Fairy-Stories’, in Tree and Leaf; Smith of Wootton Major; the Homecoming of Boerhnoth (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975), pp. 3–84 (60). Alexandar Mihailovic cited in Jacobs, A Theology of Reading, p. 62. Leland Ryken, The Liberated Imagination: Thinking Christianly about the Arts (Colorado Springs: Shaw Books, 2002), p. 17.

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entered Bristol on a rainy October day in 1656. The artistic imagination does not involve an annihilation of the human agent’s individual subjectivity. Though the artist draws upon that which has been given to them – natural talent, their indigenous culture, the traditions within which they have been trained and various environmental resources – they do not merely replicate or passively embody these things. As they draw upon these natural and cultural resources, the otherness of creation is shaped from a unique perspective, and the result is an artefact that has their own distinctive signature upon it – a responsible act. Nayler resisted the endeavours of the English Parliament to equate his entry into Bristol with his small band of followers as a blasphemous attempt to reenact the gospel story and identify himself as Jesus Christ. To do so, I suggest, is an interpretive error – a misreading of what it means to perform creatureliness, or in biblical terms, to ‘put on Christ’: ‘that it turns on the performance of a role that discloses and realizes one’s personhood, that it requires a set of descriptions attributable to one subject’.56 Nayler’s act epitomizes the contradictions and challenges at the heart of any endeavour to imaginatively apprehend and concretely realize the gospel, which centres upon the crucifixion of Jesus, in the light of God’s promised future while we remain dwelling in a fallen world. Using Nayler as a case study, this essay has explored how faithfully following Jesus can turn the believer into a ‘spectacle’ or ‘play’ in ways that invert normative cultural understandings of beauty, decorum and truth resulting in a crucified aesthetics. What appears to be the unscrupulous waste of expensive perfume is, in fact, a beautiful act of worship: it demonstrates that the woman’s love and spiritual insight have enabled her to grasp what remains hidden to the disciples and Pharisees as, with generosity and imagination, she anoints Jesus’ body for burial and hopes for resurrection. Nayler’s performance, undertaken in community, incarnates what it means to ‘put on Christ’. Central to such performance art, like that of the prophet Ezekiel, among others, is a Spirit-led and sanctified imagination. This kind of eschatologically orientated and countercultural lifestyle – undertaken by individuals and in faith communities – can result in ridicule, persecution, even martyrdom, but it also ‘furnishes the world with the concrete, non-Utopian vision of “just generosity”’ that is ‘essential for human flourishing’57 and anticipates the promised kingdom of God.

56 57

Carnes, ‘The Mysteries of Our Existence’, p. 410. Bretherton, Hospitality as Holiness, p. 138.

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Emergent Pantheism? Science, Complexity and the Future of Theology Kirsten R. Birkett

If there are phenomena that are strongly emergent with respect to the domain of physics, then our conception of nature needs to be expanded to accommodate them. That is, if there are phenomena whose existence is not deducible from the facts about the exact distribution of particles and fields throughout space and time (along with the laws of physics), then this suggests that new fundamental laws of nature are needed to explain these phenomena.1 To conclude, then, there are two challenges for the friends of emergence. The first is to show that emergent properties do not succumb to the threat of epiphenomenalism, and that emergent phenomena can have causal powers vis-à-vis physical phenomena. This must be done without violating the causal/ explanatory closure of the physical domain – or, if the physical causal closure is to be given up, a credible explanation and rational must be offered.2 Christian theology has always had conversations with the contemporary philosophies of the day. This is part of mission; speaking to the world in terms, and relating to issues, that the world understands. It is also part of understanding our world; to what extent are thinkers outside Christian theology right, wrong or nearly there? While any philosophy that denies the lordship of Christ is certainly misguided, nonetheless Christian doctrine tells us that human beings in general have been gifted by God with a great deal of power to understand and interact 1

2

David J. Chalmers, ‘Strong and Weak Emergence’, in The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion (ed. Philip Clayton and Paul Davies; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 244–54 (245). Jaegwon Kim ‘Being Realistic about Emergence’, in ibid., pp. 189–202 (201).

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with the created world (part of our dominion, albeit fallen, and part of God’s general providence). To that extent, it is no surprise that since the rise of modern science as a dominant way of thinking in the West, Christians have been involved. Indeed, the Christian world view itself, with its basis of a created order that is important, real, consistent and created with wisdom and rationality, was a large part of the beginnings of the scientific endeavour.3 While the popular press still prefers to view the relationship between science and religion as confrontational and hostile – with religion, or at least traditional Christianity, inevitably losing – that is hardly true of the more thoughtful literature. Given that science is no doubt here to stay as a fruitful way of investigating and understanding the natural world, we can be fairly sure that the conversations between science and theology will continue indefinitely into the future. It is also fairly certain that the pressure for theology to adapt to science, rather than the other way around, will continue. Is it true that theology must change in order to accommodate new discoveries about the created world? There are certainly theologians who would insist that this is obvious and necessary. Indeed, one of the newest conversations between science and theology is developing that pressure in one particular direction.

The emergence of emergence For over a century, the biggest issue in science and theology could be summarized as the question: ‘is it chance, or is it God?’. Could the astonishing order of the universe, the diversity of life, the fact that we are thinking, moral beings, possibly be pure accident? Could the chemicals of life have just happened to link up, against astonishing odds? Could so much variety have evolved purely by chance? In some circles, however, the whole debate is starting to look rather out-ofdate. Selfish genes? Gradualist evolution? The very questions are starting to be redefined, in an area of discussion called emergence. Emergence is the name given to an idea – it is probably not yet well defined enough to be called a theory4 – that over the history of the universe, and as we 3

4

The historical relationship between science and Christianity is a complex one, but for a general overview one can still hardly better John Hedley Brooke’s classic Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Nonetheless, serious research efforts are being undertaken. The University of Durham, for example, is calling for participants in an extensive study of emergence, involving physicists and philosophers, and is offering postdoctoral fellowships and PhDs in the areas of philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and physics. See https://www.dur.ac.uk/emergence, accessed 5/07/2013.

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observe it today, order and organization spontaneously emerge at suitable levels of complexity. It is sometimes summarized as a claim that ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’. For instance, water molecules are not wet – only water can be described as ‘wet’. Groups of birds form a flock, which acts as a unit with observable rules, even though none of the individual birds is aware of those rules. It is not that each bird, by chance, at an astonishing level of improbability, decides to turn or dive at exactly the same time. No, it’s just that when you get enough things together, with certain kinds of complexity, a new order can emerge. What if this principle can be seen at even more profound levels? What if the jump from inorganic matter to life can be explained, without any new substance being present, or anything vastly improbable happening, as a new way of connection that creates genuinely new existence? What if ours is the kind of universe that is not all determined at the base level, but has genuinely new, causal phenomena emerging at higher levels? It’s an idea that used to be associated with mystic life forces or supernatural intervention. The difference is that now it is entering the hard world of sceptical science. It is becoming a genuine topic of debate as to whether new levels of existence can spontaneously emerge.

What is emergence? The first distinction to make about emergence is that between strong and weak emergence. Weak emergence is generally defined as existing when a system exhibits new and unexpected behaviours – but if we had understood the underlying dynamics well enough, we should have expected them. In this case, ‘emergence’ becomes little more than shorthand for human limitations. ‘Strong’ emergence, on the other hand, insists that in some sense, something genuinely new has emerged. Theorists differ as to whether the ‘newness’ consists of laws of nature, or new types of causation. Emergence can also be strong in an epistemological sense (it was impossible to know about this beforehand) or in an ontological sense (new entities come into existence). For some, the issue of downward, or top-down, causation – causation – the newly emergent whole having a real, causal effect on its constituent parts – demonstrates the reality of new entities. So, for instance, it is not just that chemicals cause life to happen, but the existence of life changes the very chemical reactions. Emergentists vary as to just how ‘strong’ their commitment is, and what level of ontological novelty they ascribe to. For some, the commitment to emergence

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is strong enough to require the re-casting of our whole picture of the world. It is not just that there is downward causation, but that causation itself works at multiple levels.5 Terrence Deacon, for instance, writes of emergence as a different way of construing aspects of causation. ‘Emergence’, he writes, ‘is a way of understanding processes that introduce novelty, and this study . . . will do more than significantly advance our understanding of how life came about and how thoughts and experiences are generated. It could possibly also provide new insights into the very nature of physical causality’.6 He argues that dynamics such as feedback mechanisms create what appears to be real, top-down causation.7 There are, then, various ways in which emergence can be described, with differing levels of commitment to ontology and epistemology. One thing all theories of emergence have in common: they are anti-reductionistic.

What is reductionism? Reductionism is another word for which there is no one definition yet agreed upon. It is an unclear and controversial concept, but it always covers a related set of ideas. Reductionism means that everything in the world, in principle, can be reduced to, or explained by, physics. We know, for instance, that bodies are made up of cells – but cells are ‘really’ made of molecules. We know that molecules are made of atoms, and atoms are made of electrons and protons, which are made of quarks, and so on. Eventually science will get to the bottom of everything, which is perhaps String Theory or perhaps something else – but then we will know, fundamentally, what the universe is made of. Reductionism doesn’t just concern matter, it also concerns how we understand, or how we explain. It defines what science is, ultimately, trying to do. That is, we understand atoms properly when we know how electrons and so on behave. We 5

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Mathematician George Ellis, for instance, writes of simultaneous bottom-up, same-level and topdown causality. Why does an aircraft fly? he asks. A bottom-up answer would be: because air molecules create higher pressure below than above (the physics). A same-level answer is: because the pilot is flying it, running the engines, moving the flaps and so on. At the same time, the topdown answer is: because it is designed and manufactured to fly. ‘These are all true explanations that are simultaneously applicable.’ George F. R. Ellis, ‘On the Nature of Emergent Reality’, in Clayton and Davies (eds), The Re-emergence of Emergence, pp. 79–107 (83; his italics). Terrence W. Deacon, ‘The Hierarchic Logic of Emergence: Untangling the Interdependence of Evolution and Self-organisation’, in Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered (ed. Bruce H. Weber and David J. Depew; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), pp. 273–308 (273). Terrence W. Deacon ‘Emergence: The Hole at the Wheel’s Hub’, in Clayton and Davies (eds), The Reemergence of Emergence, pp. 111–50 (124).

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understand molecules by seeing how atoms interact to form them. The proper explanation of some behaviour of anything is to be able to describe what its component parts are doing and why – that is, what natural law they are obeying. When we can do that for everything, right down to the level of physics, then we will really be able to explain why everything happens the way it does. We will really understand the universe. It is fundamentally a mechanistic model of explanation, which underlies the idea of the hierarchy of the sciences. Science is generally thought of as a hierarchy, with physics at the bottom and the ‘soft sciences’ at the top. As you move ‘down’ the hierarchy, you get closer to the raw matter of the universe; as you move ‘up’ the hierarchy, you have increasingly large and complex ways in which that matter is organized. Psychology will eventually be understood by neurophysiology, how neurons interact. To understand neurons properly, you really need to know microbiology, or molecular biology, but to understand molecular biology you need to understand chemistry, and to understand chemistry and why molecules work the way they do, you really need to know physics. In some important ways, this has been done very successfully. Aspects of chemistry, why atoms form bonds and constitute molecules with particular properties, can be explained by more fundamental discoveries in physics. This is regarded as a triumph for the scientific method. At the same time, there are many phenomena in chemistry, biology and further ‘upwards’ that have not successfully been incorporated into more fundamental laws, except in a very general way. However, the goal is still clear; eventually, with enough study, enough knowledge, the way in which everything reduces to physics will be made explicit. Emergence says, no: there are some levels which cannot be reduced to a lower level. There are some laws which are not explicable by more fundamental laws, because when you get to a certain level of complexity, entirely new laws emerge. There are some systems for which behaviour is not explained by the behaviour of its component electrons. There are thresholds at which the systems make a qualitative jump, so that now entirely new concepts and laws need to be used to understand the behaviour. Knowing everything about the constituent molecules, or atoms, will not be enough.

Reductionism and predictability Another concept that is tied up with the idea of reductionism is predictability. If there are thresholds at which new laws emerge, then in principle, the new

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behaviour cannot be predicted. This goes against another fairly basic assumption of science as it has been practised over the last few centuries. In 1814, the French philosopher Pierre Simon Laplace, presented what may be the first published articulation of scientific reductionism. He suggested, that if at one point it were possible to know the position of every atom and the forces acting upon it, we would know the entire past and present of the universe as well.8 This is, in principle, full-scale reductionism. Once you know the initial conditions of all the particles in the universe, plug them into the right formula and you will find out everything that happens from there on. Such strong reductionism, involving physical determinism, has always had philosophical problems. If everything is determined by physics in this way, what place is there for free will? For responsibility and morality? These have not traditionally been regarded as scientific questions, although as we will see, they are being brought back into the discussion. For the purposes of this chapter, however, we are concerned with purely scientific challenges to this idea of radical reductionism. Are there scientific reasons to think that this postulated idea – know what every particle is doing and you can predict everything that will happen thereafter – might not be, in principle true? Anyone who is at all familiar with quantum mechanics will immediately put up a hand. It has become very clear that on a quantum level, we cannot know both the position and velocity of a particle. Even Laplace postulated intelligence – known as Laplace’s demon – could never know. Very well, but for the moment, let us put that question aside. Let us, perhaps, move above the quantum level to particles that are measurable. Would it then be true that all future events are, in principle, predictable? Perhaps not. With the discovery of chaos theory, it has become evident that chaotic systems, while acting according to strict mathematical formulae, nevertheless are not predictable. Why? Because the nature of the systems means that they are extremely sensitive to initial conditions. This is the famous ‘butterfly effect’ – a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world causes a tornado on the other. The point of the illustration is that the tiniest perturbation of air – just a butterfly flapping its wings – can have a massive effect down the line. The potential consequences are so huge, that we will never be able to measure initial conditions to enough decimal places to be able to make the right prediction. Chaotic systems, therefore, are considered inherently unpredictable.

8

Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (trans. F. W. Truscott and F. L. Emory; New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1902), p. 4.

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But need this affect reductionism in principle? Just say we could make the measurements. Could we in principle predict all the interactions that would happen after that, and therefore know the future?9 We may still be able to hold on to the idea that the initial conditions of the universe set the fundamental parameters that determined everything else thereafter, and if we could only measure the fundamental particles accurately enough, we could deduce everything else. This is the basic idea that emergence rejects. No, it says, not even then could we deduce everything. At crucial points, everything changes, and genuinely new behaviour emerges that was not predictable from what went before. What does that mean, exactly? As we have seen, there are ways in which things might be unpredictable in practice, without being genuinely new in the sense of absolutely not deducible from what went before. Here there is considerable disagreement among emergentists. What is it that would make a system emergent? Does it mean new laws of nature appear that are not special cases of, or logically deducible from, the laws that operate on a lower level? Does it mean that in some sense the lower level is not the cause of the higher level? Perhaps we could say it causes, but does not explain, the higher level.

Downward causation Any of these positions is possible within the broad parameters of emergence. The biggest issue – the holy grail, as it were, of emergence theory – is downwards causation. Can a higher-level entity cause change to a lower one? We know, for instance, that the behaviour of chemicals is what causes change in a cell. Can it work the other way around? Can the cell, as a whole, cause change in its own chemistry? There are now people willing to accept the possibility of top-down causation in more or less dramatic ways. Some call for changes in our concepts of causation altogether. Similarly, there are within the literature many opinions on what systems might be emergent, from none to one to some to many, some thinkers indeed rejecting the whole idea of a ‘hierarchy of sciences’ altogether. Strong reductionist claims, usually characterized by the phrase ‘nothing but’ and focusing only on physical existence, simply do not take into account the depth of causation in the real world as indicated above, not the inability of physics 9

Actually, no, not even then. For the number of interactions would be so massive that you would need a computer many orders of magnitude bigger than the universe itself to calculate it. It is impossible to have that much computing power. Unless, of course, some day a quantum computer might be able to do it. We are very much in the realms of speculation here.

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on its own to comprehend these interactions and effects. Reductionist claims represent a typical fundamentalist position, claiming a partial truth (based on some subset of causation) to be the whole truth and ignoring the overall rich causal matrix while usually focusing on purely physical elements of causation. They do not and cannot be an adequate basis of explanation or understanding in the real world. Consequently they do not represent an adequate basis for making ontological claims.10

Reductionism still probably rules the sciences. The connections between levels of reality are still strong. Emergentists, however, argue that it is time for a change.

Some cases of emergence Let us look at some of the claimed examples of emergence, and what is postulated to emerge.

Quantum physics The first puzzling and intriguing case is the emergence of the classical world from the quantum world. In the quantum world, things don’t exist in the way we are used to. Multiple possibilities are true at once. Light is both particles and waves, and particles do not have position and movement in the way that makes sense to us. Then, at some mysterious level, it all changes. Things either exist or not, they move or not in measurable ways, and reality is the sort of thing we can understand. The nature of existence changes, and the mathematics that describes it changes. A new world emerges. How does this happen? There are various theories, talking about things such as ‘decoherence’. There are quantum states that decohere and then classical properties emerge. Decoherence happens when a state is observed – when we do an experiment to measure what is happening, it appears we create what we observe. Perhaps, physicist Eric Joos argues, ‘measures’ simply means ‘interacts sufficiently with its environment’. That is, when you have a sufficiently large number of particles with a sufficiently large number of interactions, quantum states decohere into single possibilities. ‘The robustness of certain quantum

10

Ellis, ‘On the Nature of Emergent Reality’, p. 104.

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states – those that survive under the influence of the environment – defines what we typically call “classical”.’11 We experience what survives quantum collapse when the system is measured. This does seem to be the emergence of something new from a lower level. There is a further question – what causes the collapse? Could there be some genuine higher-level causation here?12

Biology Let us move up a few levels, to animal existence. There are many ways in which the living world can be argued to demonstrate emergence.13 One example that intrigues me concerns cell function. Things happen in cells that seem astonishingly improbable. The molecular processes that constituted metabolism in a living cell manage to produce chemical reactions that defy the odds by many orders of magnitude. The production of selected molecules can be billions of times more likely to occur in a cell than could take place in a test tube, even if one adds all the right ingredients in the right proportion in the proper sequence. This makes it appear as though cells can micromanage individual chemical reactions . . . Yet, as molecular biologists have looked into these processes more closely, it has become increasingly clear that the outcome is not accomplished by precise control of every detail, as if in some chemical processing factory where everything is carefully measured and mixed. Rather it is accomplished by a remarkably prescient system of mediating molecular relationships (catalytic relationships) which bias and constrain other molecular interactions so that they occur with vastly greater or lesser probability than if unmediated.14

In some way, just being inside a cell seems to cause chemicals to act in a way that they would not in a test-tube. The system starts functioning superbly as a system, more than a collection of chemical parts.

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Erich Joos, ‘The Emergence of Classicality from Quantum Theory’, in Clayton and Davies (eds), The Re-emergence of Emergence, pp. 53–78 (78). An alternative explanation, gaining some popularity, is that there is no real collapse – another universe comes into existence in which the other possibility takes place. This is, however, rather extravagant on universes. Harold Morowitz lists 15 biological emergences, part of his 28 overall levels of emergence. Harold J. Morowitz, The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Deacon ‘Emergence: The Hole at the Wheels, 200’, p. 116.

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Consciousness Perhaps the key contender for emergent phenomena is at the level of consciousness.15 An emergent view of mind, while completely monist (there is no ‘immaterial soul’ in these theories) will insist that mental properties, thoughts and ideas, are causal. Michael Silberstein calls this systemic causation rather than downward causation, precisely because as an emergentist he rejects the layered model of reality as divided into a ‘discrete hierarchy of levels’.16 The universe, he insists, is intrinsically nested and entangled. There are systems and subsystems, and the divisions between them are nominal and relative to various formalisms and explanatory schema – and he is quite sanguine about the fact that this violates the physical causal closure of the universe.17 Mental properties are not fully determined (in any sense of determination) by the neurochemical properties of ‘underlying’ brain states. Mental properties are not identical with, realized by or constituted by brain states. . . . Brain states are physically necessary but not sufficient conditions for the existence of the various mental states that they causally and non-causally support.18

He has an enactive – embodied, embedded – paradigm of consciousness. ‘Consciousness and cognition are emerging processes arising from self-organizing networks that tightly interconnect brain, body, and environment at multiple scales.’19 So, some things in the world may be genuinely emergent. It may be that as science continues to uncover more and more of how the universe works, it will simultaneously be discovered that it doesn’t all work by physics as was once thought. The different disciplines may be far more independent than imagined. Well, so what?

What does it matter? In itself, the emergence discussion may give us a fascinating view into how the universe works, but if you’re not that interested in science, then you probably 15

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17 18 19

David Chalmers insists this is the only observable, at present, example of emergence. David J. Chalmers ‘Strong and Weak Emergence’, p. 246. See also his The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Michael Silberstein, ‘In Defence of Ontological Emergence and Mental Causation’, in Clayton and Davies (eds), The Re-emergence of Emergence, pp. 203–26 (204). The idea that everything, ultimately, is caused by physics. Silberstein, ‘In Defence of Ontological Emergence and Mental Causation’, pp. 204–5. Ibid., p. 208.

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won’t care much about this debate. For the purposes of this chapter, however, emergence is interesting because of theological claims made on the basis of emergence. It is claimed not just that we may need to change our ideas about science, if emergence is shown to be true, but that we will necessarily have to change our ideas about theology.20

A new reason to do away with God If the improbability of order in the universe was a reason to postulate the existence of God – well, order doesn’t need an external cause, emergence says. It just happens. ‘Order for free’, as Staurt Kauffman put it as long ago as 1995.21 It could be that emergence simply becomes another weapon against theism.

A new spirituality There are other ways emergence could bring theological challenges. Stuart Kauffman himself, in his most recent publication, has now moved to a much more conscious pantheism.22 In a newly envisioned universe, biosphere, and human culture of unending creativity, where life, agency, meaning, value, doing and consciousness have emerged and that we cocreate, we can now see ourselves, meaning-laden, as integral parts of emergent nature. Whether we believe in a Creator God, an Eastern tradition, or are secular humanists, we make the meaning of our lives, to live a good life, in all these ways.23

An understanding of the universe as creating itself, with new levels emerging in infinite expansion, will give us the basis for ethics and religion. This will let us ‘live with at least one view of our God as the creativity in the universe, God, our own invention’.24 This God is ‘the chosen sacred in the creativity in nature . . . a shared sacred space for us all’.25

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It seems rather ironic to me that there is a pervasive assumption in this literature that what science reveals must inform the content of our theology; because, it seems, only what science reveals is truly real. In itself, this is a kind of reductionism! ‘Order for free’ is a recurring theme, and a chapter title, in Stuart Kauffman’s At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Complexity (London: Viking, 1995). He does not use this label, preferring to talk of ‘the sacred’. Stuart A. Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion (Kindle edition, New York: Basic Books, 2008), p. 245, location 4338. Ibid., p. 246, location 4356. Ibid., p. 278, location 4878.

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What are we to make of this? Is it time for a new spirituality, that unites secular and religious believers into a single, tolerant faith that worships God in the creative power of nature? Well, no. God is creator; he is not nature. He created the world, full of possibilities and magnificent as it is; but to worship his creation instead of the creator who made it is the classic definition of idolatry. It will not bring people together, however wistful Kauffman’s longings for a united humanity are, because it is not true, and fundamentally it does not deal with human sin. That is what divides people, causes wars, intolerance and planetary degradation. Yes, nature is wonderful; it is so whether emergence turns out to be true or not. It is wonderful because it was created by a wonderful God, who in his mercy is actively dealing with the rebellious humans who try so hard to hurt it and each other. A new spirituality based on nature (which, incidentally, is not the least new) may seem to be wonderfully tolerant and accepting of diversity, while satisfying the human need for spirituality, ritual and solemnity – but it is an empty promise.

A new way of understanding God Most of the theological commentators on emergence still talk of God in a more or less traditional sense. If is frequently acknowledged that there are a range of possible theological responses to emergence, but the one option that is almost universally ruled out is the God of classical theism. In other words, the biblical, Christian God. Philip Clayton, for instance, writes the following: The framework of emergence does however undercut some traditional forms of theism. It undercuts purely atemporal understanding of the God-world relationship in so far as such views tend to underestimate the importance of time, process and pervasive change within the natural world. It also at least indirectly undercuts static views of the divine nature, for it would be surprising, though not impossible, that a natural reality characterized by ubiquitous process and interconnection would be the result of a creator whose nature is essentially non-relational and non-responsive.26 26

Philip Clayton, ‘Emergence from Quantum Physics to Religion: A Critical Appraisal’, in Clayton and Davies (eds), The Re-emergence of Emergence, pp. 303–22 (320). In the same volume, Niels Henrik Gregersen surveys five different theological responses, and although he is agnostic about what his preferred response is, it is clear that traditional theism is not an option. ‘Emergence: what Is at Stake for Religious Reflection?’, pp. 279–302.

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Rather, in the tradition of what is widely known as process theology, emergence is seen to be new reason to accept an evolving, developing God. Teilhard de Chardin, who wrote of the development of everything towards the Christ-Omega, is frequently cited in the new literature; the process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead also. Arthur Peacocke, for instance, wrote: ‘Natural systems, it transpires, have an inbuilt capacity to produce new realities; hence any theistic understanding has to recognize that this is the mode and milieu of God’s creative activity.’27 Strong emergence seems to go, in many writers’ minds, with the idea of God as emergent. As new levels of reality emerge from lower levels, we may think of God emerging. What the God who emerges is like varies from writer to writer; and although the personal label, ‘God’, is frequently used, there is not much of the traditional God left in this concept. Clayton, for instance, writes of divine agency as being emergent, in some sense, in conjunction with the emergence of human consciousness and therefore agency. I have argued that the human person, understood as integrated self or psychophysical agent-in-community, offers the appropriate level on which to introduce the possibility of divine agency. Here, and perhaps here alone, a divine agency could be operative that could exercise downward causal influence without being reduced to a manipulator of physical particles or psychotropic neurotransmitters.28

Along with God being emergent, he is also necessarily immanent. The idea of a transcendent God is simply not seen as rational. It is not consistent with scientific revelation, as Peacocke puts it: ‘Consequently, a revived emphasis on the immanence of God as Creator “in, with and under” the natural processes of the world unveiled by the sciences becomes imperative if theology is to be brought into accord with all that the sciences have revealed.’29 This is tied up with the causal completeness of nature. Immanence, providing a new kind of causality which reductionism was unable to produce, nonetheless leaves the world largely causally closed. There may be room for God as an emergent phenomenon at a high level – consciousness or above – and his top-down causality may work from there backwards, but there is no room 27

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Arthur Peacocke, All That Is: A Naturalistic Faith for the Twenty-First Century: A Theological Proposal with Responses from Leading Thinkers in the Religion-science Dialogue (Kindle edition, Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), p. 11, location 281. Philip Clayton, Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 198. Arthur Peacocke, All That Is, p. 19, location 391.

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for causality ‘outside the system’, so to speak. His causal influence can only be immanent, from within. It seems, then, that emergence would prove that God is restricted both in what he allowed to be and what he is able to do. He cannot be unchanging, for emergence proves that the world is ever-changing. He cannot be onmniscient, for emergence proves that aspects of reality are inherently unpredictable, that is, unknowable in principle by any scientific means, beforehand. He must act in this inherent freedom that is part of creation, for there is no other way in which he can interact with creation. What are we to make of this widespread insistence that, if emergence is true, our views of God must change? It seems almost taken for granted by these authors; in an emergent universe, you simply cannot have the traditional, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient God, the God of providence, the creator. That is the one view of God that is simply impossible. Even if emergence is the truth about the universe, I find it less than compelling that we must therefore accept a certain view of God – indeed, as we have seen, other writers see it as equally good reason to accept no God. Yet what is striking about the argument for excluding traditional theism is a decidedly unusual way of describing it. Indeed, I would be tempted to think that many of the authors I have read have little understanding of what classical theism actually is.30 What we do not find in these discussions are accurate presentations of the classical doctrines of God’s omnipresence, omniscience and providence. Yet on those classical views, whether the universe is emergent or not is simply a detail of God’s technique. His is outside the universe, the creator of it, and he knows it, sustains it and directs it according to his will. It is because he is transcendent, and creator, that he can know the future which is not accessible to us within the system. It is because he is atemporal that any description of the unknowability of future behaviour of the system from its initial conditions is irrelevant to him. It is because he is omnipresent, sustaining all creation by his will, that there does not need to be causal ‘room’ for him within creation. It all depends on him, for 30

For instance, Gregerson, in the section in which he discusses classical theism, manages to bring together under this heading ancient Greek philosophy, Jewish, Christian and Muslim philosophical theologians ‘such as Moses Maimonides, Thomas Acquinas, and Avicenna’, and Friedrich Schliermacher. He finishes with a view that is almost unrecognizable as traditional theism (Gregerson, ‘Emergence: What Is at Stake for Religious Reflection?’, p. 291). Similar misunderstandings of traditional doctrines appear in other writers. Clayton demonstrates a rather peculiar view of the doctrine of providence when he speaks of divine communication: Clayton, Mind and Emergence, p. 201. This passage goes on to exemplify serious misunderstanding of doctrines such as the fall, theodicy and redemption.

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existence, every moment. Emergence may be a surprising theory for us. It is nothing new to God.

A new God Finally, we look at where these views of the emergent God may be taken – I would say in the extreme, except that given the mode of arguing there is nothing illogical in this trajectory. We have seen that emergence can be used to deny God and instead worship nature, or to make God an emergent part of nature. Both are, Christianly speaking, idolatrous; it is not surprising that the same mode of argument can lead writers to what might be the most personal idolatry, worshipping ourselves. Biologist Harold Morowitz, while writing of God in very Christian language, takes a severe departure from Christian content. God is immanent, yes, but God’s immanence is the fitness of the universe for life. ‘To many, it seems like an emotionally unsatisfying view of the divinity, but it does permit us to know God by studying nature’31 – to him, this is an essential tradeoff. What of sin and the fall? It is alluded to, but positively. Eating at the tree of knowledge was good, indeed inevitable, for it was part of the development of the universe. It was necessary for the emergence of intelligence, and therefore for the emergence of God himself. How is that? Because in the rise of intelligent life – homo sapiens being the only example we know of for sure – the conditions were met for the transcendence of God. There is still Trinity in Morowitz’s system, but a very different kind of Trinity: The laws of nature (the immanent God) operating under the rules of selection (the Spirit) gave rise to homo sapiens and human society. Immanence is natural law, eternal, unchanging, remote from mankind. A transcendent God is outside of nature and natural law, yet responsive to the needs of humanity and capable of contravening natural law for the benefit of individuals or peoples.32

This is a paradox; the two types of God are logically inconsistent. Yet they come together in humanity. Humans have choice; they have free will. ‘When it is finally combined with the ability to understand the consequences of interactions, our collective behavior becomes transcendence.’33 31 32 33

Harold J. Morowitz, The Emergence of Everything, p. 197. Ibid., pp. 194–95. Ibid., p. 195.

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So who are we? ‘We are the third branch of the trinity. We, Homo sapiens, are the transcendence of the immanent God. “We are God”, the best and worst of us.’34 Or, in other words: ‘the volitional mind of man is the transcendent emergence of an immanent god.’35 We have, then, a complete redefinition of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As Spirit, he was immanent in creation, the laws of nature themselves. As transcendent Father, he emerged from creation when human consciousness and culture reached an appropriate level of interconnectivity. As Son, he is – ourselves. We are God; science proves it.

Conclusion I have entitled this chapter ‘Emergent pantheism?’ mainly because ‘Emergent idolatry’ sounds a little nasty. True, some of the conclusions drawn from emergence are pantheist, even the atheist versions – because if the creative power of the universe comes from the universe itself, then this is a form of pantheism. The more theistic conclusions are closer to panentheism,36 and indeed some of the authors use that word of their views – God is identified with nature, but also beyond. Nonetheless, they all qualify for one form or other of idolatry, however noble and truth-seeking the authors are in their aspirations. In this sense, the views are not at all new; certainly they provide no new challenge for traditional Christian belief. Is emergence true? Maybe. Maybe the universe is pregnant with life; maybe novelty emerges at various levels. Maybe the philosophy and methodology of science will need to change. There do seem to be some compelling arguments along these lines. Yes, emergence may well be true; but contrary to the theological commentators I have read so far, I contend that it has few consequences for theology. It is likely that writers of various ilk will continue to challenge traditional theology, thinking that either this is evidence for the absence of God, or evidence for the redefinition of God; but neither conclusion, I believe, is warranted.

34 35 36

Ibid., p. 196. Ibid., p. 198. To place this debate in the history of panentheism, see John W. Cooper, Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers, from Plato to the Present (Nottingham: Apollos, 2007).

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On the other hand, if emergence does turn out to be true, this may be a reason for increased confidence for traditional believers. After all, Christians have always maintained that reductionism is wrong. However it is cast scientifically, we have always known that humans are more than the physical parts that constitute them; that ethics are more than customs or evolved group-survival strategies; that there is more that is real in the universe than what physics can explain. This is not so say that the Christian beliefs on these matters will necessary be the same as an emergent scientific explanation; we always knew that no account of particles can ever explain or predict any of God’s character, and that will not change, even if those particles are described in an emergent way. It is, however, somewhat gratifying that, finally, the widespread adherence to a fierce reductionism may be waning. I will continue to argue that theology must maintain an interested distance from science. It is neither dependent upon nor in debt to scientific knowledge. Galileo’s story shows the danger of the church being too closely beholden to, and enamoured of, science. Because theology was intertwined far too closely with Aristotelian physics, when the science moved on with Galileo’s radical discoveries, the church was caught out and ever since has (rather ironically) been portrayed as the enemy of science. Theologians who have seen ‘space’ for God’s action in the world in the improbability of chance Darwinian evolution, or equally now in the unpredictability of quantum or chaotic systems, may well be similarly caught out. Theology is interested in science – it is uncovering God’s handiwork, after all – but is not dependent upon it. If anything, I have found the sociological implications of the current emergence debate within scientific and philosophical circles the most interesting aspect of them. The possibility of emergence as a respectable scientific concept has now made it possible for the implausibility of neo-Darwinian evolution-by-chance to be openly acknowledged; but only because an equally monist alternative may now be available.37 As long as neo-Darwinism was considered the only nonreligious view, criticisms of it were firmly suppressed, as seen in the sociobiology debates.38 Now, and possibly more so in the future, gradualist neo-Darwinism is beginning to seem decidedly old hat. Science moves on, after all – but where was the intellectual humility of those fierce defenders of Darwinism? The problems 37 38

See Clayton’s comment on this, in Mind and Emergence, pp. 170–71. See Kirsten Birkett, ‘And Now for the Real Answer . . . Sociobiology and the Search for Explanation’, kategoria 21 (2001), pp. 33–49.

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with the gradualist theory always existed. The claims of epistemic purity for scientific atheists start to sound a little hollow. The emergence debate is interesting, and I am always fascinated by how the world might work and how we humans go about the task of finding out. We may be on the threshold of a whole new age in science. Theologically, however, the debate will have little to tell us – apart from the age-old human impulse to make God in our own image.

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14

Green Future: Theology and the Future of the Earth Byron Smith

The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it. (Ps. 24.1)

Welcome to the Anthropocene We no longer live on the same planet as that on which our parents were born. This is not simply a reference to the internet or globalization, or trends in politics, fashion or music. The pace and scale of global change – demographic, social, economic, ecological, climatological – witnessed over the last six decades exceeds any comparable period in the history of human civilization.1 In particular, the chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere, the stability of the climate, the diversity and health of ecosystems are all very different from what they were just a few decades ago. For hundreds of thousands of years, our species has modified its environment. Yet nothing compares to the changes effected over the last handful of decades. Recent human activity has altered the face of the globe in ways so profound that it will be visible in the geological record millions of years into the future. Indeed, the only analogies in the entire geological record to the pace and scale of global ecological changes since the industrial revolution, and especially since the Second World War, are major asteroid impact events. The Geological Society of London is considering a proposal to declare a new geological epoch, 1

For an overview see John McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century (London: Penguin, 2000). It is a sign of how rapidly these changes are occurring that this book is already significantly out of date in some areas. For instance, it devotes less than three pages to climate change.

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the Anthropocene, because humanity is having such an extreme effect on the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and biosphere of the planet.2 Rapid anthropogenic ecological change is part of the contemporary context within which the contemporary church conducts its discipleship, mission and common life, including its worship, spiritual formation, service, proclamation and theological reflection. Understanding our historical situation and the possibilities for faithful action within it requires a sense of the scale of the changes currently underway. Let us briefly survey two of the most significant sets of changes.

Biodiversity decline and habitat loss Human actions have destroyed or degraded four-fifths of the planet’s ancient forests, half of that in the last 30 years. This includes almost half of tropic rainforests, which receive most attention, but also at least 94 per cent of temperate broadleaf forests.3 Our actions have destroyed one-fifth of coral reefs and degraded another fifth. Coral reefs and rainforests are the most biodiverse biomes on the planet, accounting for about a quarter of all fish species and half of all terrestrial species respectively. Biodiversity has seen greater changes in the last six decades than at any time since humanity first appeared. Globally since 1970, wild vertebrate numbers have declined by almost one-third.4 Thousands of invasive alien species now reside outside of their pre-industrial range. Species are currently becoming extinct at something like 100–1,000 times the background rate of extinction.5 Recorded extinctions stand at about a thousand species, but it is likely that the true number exceeds 20,000 and may well be in the hundreds of thousands, with the rate increasing and little prospect of slowing for some time. All the primary drivers of these trends are linked to human activities and are either constant 2

3

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J. Zalasiewicz et al., ‘Are We Now Living in the Anthropocene?’, GSA Today 18.2 (2008), pp. 4–8. DOI: 10.1130/GSAT01802A.1. The primary debate about the term is not whether or not it is justified, given the nature of the observed changes, but precisely when it commenced: the rise of agriculture; the industrial revolution; or the great acceleration of changes in the second half of the twentieth century? Lee Hannah, John L. Carr, Ali Lankerani, ‘Human Disturbance and Natural Habitat: A Biome Level Analysis of a Global Data Set’, Biodiversity and Conservation 4.2 (1995), pp. 128–55. DOI: 10.1007/ BF00137781. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Global Biodiversity Outlook 3 (Montreal: SCBD, 2010), p. 9. Online: http://www.cbd.int/gbo/gbo3/doc/GBO3-final-en.pdf. J. Rockstrom et al., ‘Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity’, Ecology and Society 14.2 (2009), art. 32.

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or increasing: habitat change, overexploitation, pollution, invasive alien species and anthropogenic climate change. Consequently, many biologists now judge that we are in the opening phases of the sixth great extinction event in the 500odd million-year history of complex life in the Phanerozoic.6 Human presence and activities now affect over four-fifths of the world’s icefree land surface,7 and all of the oceans and atmosphere. Around two-fifths of the oceans have been ‘strongly affected’ by our activities.8 We move more soil each year than the combined natural forces of wind and water. Human agriculture, pollution and deforestation have degraded soil quality over millions of square kilometres. The oceans have changed more in the last 30 years than the rest of human history combined and are currently changing faster than at almost any time in the planet’s history, due to overfishing, pollution (plastics, heavy metals, nutrient runoff and noise pollution), ocean warming and ocean acidification.9 Major rivers have been so altered that nearly 5.5 billion people (about 80% of global human population) live in an area whose rivers are seriously degraded or threatened by agricultural runoff, pesticides, sewage, mercury pollution from coal plants, invasive species, irrigation, erosion from deforestation, wetland destruction, overfishing or aquaculture.10

Climate change Further changes can be multiplied, but perhaps the most discussed, widereaching and complex of all the many planetary changes currently driven by human activities is climate change. The basics of climate science – the world is warming, human actions are primarily responsible and the projected impacts are overwhelmingly negative – are explicitly endorsed by virtually every relevant national or international scientific body in the world. Not a single such institution has considered the evidence and rejected this mainstream understanding.

6

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Anthony D. Barnosky et al., ‘Has the Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Event Already Arrived?’, Nature 471 (2011), pp. 51–57. DOI: 10.1038/nature09678. Note that this figure was based on research published ten years ago. Eric W. Sanderson et al., ‘The Human Footprint and the Last of the Wild’, Bioscience 52 (2002), pp. 891–904. DOI: 10.1641/0006–3 568(2002)052[0891:THFATL]2.0.CO;2. Benjamin S. Halpern et al., ‘A Global Map of Human Impact on Marine Ecosystems’, Science 319 (2008), pp. 948–95. DOI: 10.1126/science.1149345. Callum Roberts, Ocean of Life: How Our Seas Are Changing (London: Penguin, 2013), pp. 3–4. C. J. Vörösmarty et al., ‘Global Threats to Human Water Security and River Biodiversity’, Nature 467 (2010), pp. 555–61. DOI: 10.1038/nature09440.

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Since the mid-nineteenth century it has been known that certain gases trap long wave radiation, and that the presence of these gases in the atmosphere keeps the earth more than 30°C warmer than it would otherwise be by preventing some of the sun’s energy from escaping out into space. Over the last few hundred years, and especially the last few decades, this natural ‘greenhouse effect’ has been enhanced by human actions. By burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – we have increased the concentration of the most important greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2) by about 40 per cent, to levels unseen on earth for something like 3 million years. Once burned, a large fraction of the carbon in fossil fuels stays in the atmosphere and oceans for centuries. This extra atmospheric CO2 acts like a thicker blanket around the planet, retaining more of the sun’s warmth and letting less escape out to space. Over the last few decades, this thicker blanket has been adding the equivalent of approximately four Hiroshima bombs worth of energy to the earth system every second – or enough energy to boil Sydney Harbour dry every 6 hours. More than 90 per cent of this extra heat has been going into the oceans, though some has been melting ice and warming the atmosphere as well. This additional energy is evident in a wide range of observed changes around the globe: shrinking glaciers, declining snow cover, thawing permafrost, declining land-based ice sheets, declining Arctic sea ice, warming oceans, rising sea levels (due to both melting ice and water expanding as it warms), earlier Springs and later Autumns (for seasonal phenomena like first flowering, animal breeding patterns, peak stream flow), rising atmospheric height (as warm air expands), pole-ward movement of species, increasing atmospheric moisture, shifting precipitation patterns and warming average surface atmospheric temperatures, which is probably what most of us think of first when we talk about global warming. The primary driver of this increased energy is an enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect through anthropogenic emissions (particularly those associated with the combustion of fossil fuels. There are numerous human ‘fingerprints’ in the observed data that point to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases as the primary culprit: the pattern of observed warming (winters and nights warming faster than summers and daytime); the fact that while the troposphere is warming, the stratosphere is cooling (indicating more energy being retained close to the planet’s surface rather than an increase in solar radiation); and perhaps most tellingly of all, the observed decline in the satellite data of outgoing radiation at the wavelengths known to be associated with CO2 and other anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

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All suggested alternative explanations of these changes have been thoroughly investigated and found wanting. While climate does change naturally, no alternative mechanism has been able to explain the observational data. Climate models that do not include the influence of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions are unable to replicate the observed pattern of recent warming, while those that do, can. Over the last two decades, more than 97 per cent of all peer-reviewed papers to have taken a position on the matter have explicitly or implicitly endorsed the mainstream position: recently observed changes are primarily due to human actions.11 The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in September 2013 said: ‘It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.’12 The most likely impacts of continuing on our current emissions trajectory are overwhelmingly negative for both human and natural systems. Although the specifics of what may happen when and where are subject to various levels of confidence, the overall picture of continuing on our current path is grim. Some things are known with high confidence (more heatwaves, rising sea levels); some things with less confidence (the precise effects on regional rainfall patterns). But the primary ongoing matter of scientific debate is not whether climate is changing or whether humans are primarily to blame. The main debate is not even whether expected changes on our current trajectory are bad, good or indifferent; the main debate is whether expected changes on our current trajectory will be disastrous or catastrophic. In brief, the difference in global average surface temperatures between the height of the last interglacial (commonly known as an Ice Age) and the Holocene, that is, the period of human civilization and agriculture, was about 4°C. At the last glacial maximum approximately 20,000 years ago, sea levels were more than 100 metres lower than at present and there was 3 times as much ice on the planet, including ice sheets more than a mile high over Chicago and many other current northern hemisphere population centres. The transition from this period to the Holocene, in which human agriculture first developed and the first stable human settlements were established, took roughly 10,000 years. On our current emissions trajectory, we looking at a similar scale of change (a 4-degree rise in global average surface temperatures) occurring in the space of 100 years or

11

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John Cook et al., ‘Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature’, Environmental Research Letters 8 (2013), 024024. DOI: 10.1088/1748–9326/8/2/024024. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fifth Assessment Report, Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis. Summary for Policymakers (2013), emphasis original. In the terms used by the IPCC, ‘extremely likely’ is defined as a likelihood of 95%–100%.

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so – in other words, changes as large as those between the last glacial maximum and today happening at 100 times the speed. This is likely to be devastating to a majority of ecosystems, including human agricultural systems. Building a precise picture of how different the world would be with a fourdegree temperature rise is very complex, but then so is working out precisely what would happen to every piece of matter in the event of a major asteroid strike. In neither case is precision on every details required to establish the dire effects on nearly all human and natural systems. It is still within our power to determine whether we stabilize greenhouse gases at concentrations that will keep warming to levels that are merely damaging or whether we proceed on to a radically different and more hostile planet. At the core of what is required to avoid the latter is leaving the vast majority of all fossil fuel reserves safely unburned and untouched underground. To have an 80 per cent chance of limiting warming to less than 2 degrees, more than 80 per cent of current fossil fuel reserves must remain unburned.13 Of course, these reserves are currently valued at trillions of dollars on global stock markets and in the budgetary assumptions of national governments. The value of these reserves determines the share price of fossil fuel companies, which in turn is a large part of what gives these companies such enormous political clout. Changing the political winds on this will almost certainly be exceedingly difficult. Nonetheless, the laws of politics can be rewritten; the laws of physics can not. It is technically possible using existing technologies for most of the worst outcomes to be avoided. Indeed, numerous studies have estimated the economic costs of doing so as only relatively a modest fraction of global economic activity. Yet the modest net costs hide significant winners and losers, meaning that concerned action to address climate change will shift existing power relations in significant ways. Therefore, the primary barriers to successful mitigation are political, cultural and psychological rather than economic or technical.

Delayed effects: The temporal challenge of climate damage We are perhaps already familiar with issues of global injustice, where the powerful benefit from systems and a political economy in which the poor are kept more or less marginalized. Such failures of our political systems to secure

13

M. Campanale and J. Leggett, Unburnable Carbon: Are the World’s Financial Markets Carrying a Carbon Bubble? (London: Carbon Tracker Initiative, 2011).

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lasting or widely distributed justice are well known. Climate change heightens this challenge by not only being inescapably global in extent (ensuring there is no direct correlation between the locations responsible for emissions and those most affected by them), but by introducing a decisively intergenerational aspect to the injustice as well. Some have argued that this feature is perhaps the most pressing and historically novel feature of our present ecological situation. For instance, Stephen Gardiner identifies this as one of the three features that contribute to climate change being a ‘perfect moral storm’, almost uncannily designed to thwart many of our usual ethical resources: [There is] a pronounced temporal dispersion of causes and effects. In the case of climate change, this is caused mainly by the long atmospheric lifetime of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, and by the fact that some of the basic physical systems influenced by the greenhouse effect (such as oceans) are subject to profound inertia, so that changes play out over centuries and even millennia. This is important because it suggests that whereas fossil fuel emissions have immediate and tangible benefits for present people, many of the most serious costs are likely to be substantially deferred to future generations.14

This time lag is critical to grasping climate change (and, to a greater or lesser extent, many other ecological issues). Many people don’t realize that the observed changes we are already experiencing are not the result of present greenhouse gas concentrations. We are merely reaping the start of the harvest of seeds sown decades ago. It will be decades more before the effects of today’s levels begin to be visible, and centuries or even millennia before their full impact is known. This temporal lag means that climate change occupies an intermediate position among future threats, too close to be safely ignored and too distant to avoid being perpetually trumped by the myopic focus on today’s problem caused by the media and political cycle. Dangerous climate change is far more immediate than say, the heat death of the universe or even the death of our Sun (or the preceding gradual increase in solar radiation that will likely destroy all life on earth well before either of these), and yet not immediate enough to enter the horizon of political decision-making. That this is so can be seen in the frequent attempts to find proximate hooks of one disaster or another on which to hang the climate threat. Yet these are doomed to be of only ambiguous use since any single disaster always has multiple causes and climate change is about a shift

14

Stephen Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 123.

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in statistical distributions, rather than being the sole unambiguous ‘cause’ of any given event. In this intermediate position, climate change is uncomfortably dangerous enough to be of real concern and yet always comfortably far enough away to ignore for one more day, lowering the chance that will anticipate with prudence such (slightly) distant futures. Individually, we are frequently poor at responding to such delayed feedback. The causes of obesity, heart disease, lung disease, alcoholism and all kinds of other long-term health problems are increasingly well known and connected to various behaviours that are often deemed quite pleasant in the short term. Yet, despite the long-term ill-effects frequently being catastrophic for our health, we continue to indulge. And that is just for problems where the effects are on my own life a few decades in the future. But when we turn to issues where the worst effects are felt by others, separated from me by time, space, social distance and even species, then my ability to refrain from indulging in short-term pleasures becomes even more difficult. When we turn from individual responses to collective responses, yet another layer of complexity is added and the potential to pass the buck becomes even higher. And when these collective responses are required not only at communal, social and national levels, but also critically among all nations of any economic size, then the barriers can appear insurmountable.

Global ecological change: An unavoidable context That the waste product of most contemporary energy production is a greenhouse gas means that almost every aspect of modern economic life is implicated in warming the planet. The various other drivers of global ecological change are tied in more and less direct ways to the economic, political and cultural systems of the world’s wealthiest societies. At almost every level, our everyday lives are tied to the causes of planet-transforming trends. These drivers are generally both distributed and cumulative, meaning that no individual person or nation can be held entirely responsible: all bear a measure of responsibility and none can avert the consequences unilaterally. Furthermore, many of these drivers of change are not easily or quickly modified, being woven in intimate and complex ways into the economic, political, cultural, behavioural and attitudinal systems of our societies. Most of the trends currently being observed are either constant or accelerating and while there are places in which hopeful countervailing

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currents are emerging, there is little reason to think that the threats represented by ecological will be easily resolved anytime soon. These threats are far from inconsequential. The changes already observed are shaping the lives and possibilities of billions of people in subtle and profound ways, but these changes are gathering pace. While wealthy nations have thus far been able to buffer themselves somewhat from at least some of the negative implications of these changes, projections of future change include nonmarginal scenarios in which the adaptive capacity of many human and most natural systems is exceeded. The climate and ecological crises into which we are collectively hurtling are not merely crises for those already vulnerable, but before long will touch and shape the lives of virtually all of earth’s inhabitants. Our ecological and climate predicaments will profoundly shape the social context within which the church’s discipleship and mission occur over the coming decades. Thus far, we have largely confined ourselves to summarizing scientific research in order to build the case for this conclusion. Let us turn now to scriptural and theological reflection upon this context in order to explore the implications of this planetary future for theology.

An expansion of neighbourliness If I hold a party in my apartment and play music loud enough for those who live above and below me to get annoyed, then my actions negatively impact a given circle of people. If a friend comes over with larger speakers and we turn the volume up to maximum such that the whole street can now hear, there is a sense in which I now have more neighbours than I did a few minutes ago. Put another way, one way of parsing neighbourliness is that it at least includes those lives that my actions touch. Indeed, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan emphasizes the potential expansion of neighbourliness in new and unexpected directions. Jesus’ interlocutor had asked ‘who is my neighbour?’ in an effort to delimit the bounds of his proper responsibility and so justify his current actions. But Jesus responded with a question that undercut such attempts at boundarymarking: ‘Who was a neighbour to the man?’ Irrespective of duties or rights, Jesus invited his listeners into imagining the possibility of acting as a neighbour out of compassion. Such compassion is an echo of God’s universal compassion for all that he has made (Ps. 145.9) and walks in the footsteps of Jesus, whose boundarybreaking and creative compassion discovered neighbours in unexpected places.

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Jesus’ story subverts the desire to wash our hands of difficult situations with a dismissive attitude of ‘not my problem’, or a cold calculus of moral purity. Perhaps the hesitation of the priest and Levite to help the injured man may have stemmed from a fear of touching a dead body and so becoming unclean. But Jesus’ infectious holiness sought out opportunities to welcome and befriend those whose presence at the margins is an uncomfortable reminder of the fragility of our attempt to construct neat and exclusive identities. Today, we discover all kinds of neighbours we never knew we had through networks of influence that extend beyond the horizon of our daily vision. Our actions today have consequences and impacts that extend significantly further than they used to. Much of the carbon dioxide resulting from our energy use will last in the active cycle of atmosphere, oceans and biosphere for centuries and millennia, affecting human and non-human lives on the other side of the planet and many generations into the future. The expanded reach of our agency creates new possibilities for blessing or harm, and so, in a similar manner to increasing the volume of my sound system, this increases the sphere of neighbourliness, making lives I will never meet proximate to my own in certain important respects. If love does no wrong to a neighbour (Rom. 13.10) then the grievous harms associated with our current way of life call out for an expansion in our moral vision. However, such expansion is no simple matter.

Looking ahead: Anticipation, prudence and compassion We are generally not very good at responding to long-term threats. As I have argued above, we are wired to focus on the immediate. Warnings that smoking or obesity might cut years off my life all too often fall on deaf ears. Or even where the veracity of the claim is acknowledged, there remains a disconnect between this acknowledgement and remedial action. Many ecological crises share this structure: incremental changes (often as the result of pursuing certain immediate objectives that may well be good or pleasurable in their own right) lead to unforeseen consequences ‘in the pipeline’ that may take years, decades or longer to become fully manifest. The distance between the actions that cause harm and the suffering of that harm is widened in climate change to be not only temporal, but also spatial and relational, meaning that there is no immediate or proximate visibility to the consequences of actions that are only becoming highly problematic in a

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cumulative manner. Thus, all manner of convenient distractions and halftruths hiding in the complexity of the issue can displace responsible action. We can point out the relative size of our tiny contribution and the inefficacy of reducing it by ourselves; we can question the consequences that are as yet only forecast; we can lower our ethical horizons to include only what is visible in my neighbourhood. The problem is that we are used to making our ethical decisions as though we were walking, where avoiding a pothole or a canine faecal incident is only a matter of looking a step or two ahead. But we are no longer walking. Our greater agency through soaring population and technological innovation means that our actions have greater consequences, affecting a wider sphere over a longer period of time. Our consumption and production don’t just satisfy our immediate needs and wants but have unforeseen knock-on effects that extend much further than they used to. We are no longer walking. When you drive, you need to look further ahead, observing and anticipating events over a wider field of interactions and responding well ahead of time to possible threats. ‘Too late’ happens surprisingly early. In driving, you need to look further ahead and further afield than when walking, because the consequences of your actions are so much greater. A mistake while walking means bumping into a stranger and perhaps meeting a new friend. A mistake while driving could mean sending a tonne of metal travelling at superhuman speed into a brick wall, or underneath a 50 tonne truck coming the other way. In such a context, the horizon of prudent anticipation has increased. Just as our circle of neighbourliness expanded to embrace lives we’ve never met whose space for flourishing is profoundly shaped by our choices, so the horizon of our moral imagination and vision needs to expand.

Expanding moral horizons But how can we come to see strangers as neighbours when we don’t actually see the lives of those strangers, nor intuitively grasp the causal links between our acts here today and the consequences far distant in time and space that result? When those who will suffer most from our actions are generally those who have done least to contribute to the problems (i.e. the global poor, future generations and other species), how does Christian discipleship train us to recognize our complicity in such largely invisible injustice and discern creative paths forward?

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For ancient Israel, the experiential centre of the vocation towards compassionate neighbourliness was their experience of having been aliens in Egypt, outside the sphere of moral concern for the ruling classes, largely invisible to those at whose hands they suffered. The experiential knowledge of suffering created the emotive bridge to see in others those who may suffer like we have done. But this alone is insufficient. More important than their recollected suffering was the memory of divine grace, of YHWH’s promised presence and liberation. A similar pattern is evident in the New Covenant. The ground for compassionate concern towards others is the knowledge of having been graciously welcomed by God in Christ. In Emmanuel, God drew near to us, chose to become our neighbour, to make his dwelling among us, to share our concerns and enter into our plight. It is only in the light of unconditional divine grace that we are enabled to see the full scope of our plight and the failure of our projects. The pure grace in this move subverts, extends and completes whatever human reasons we may discover for compassion. For instance, we may find in our children and grandchildren a useful imaginative bridge for conceiving of intergenerational injustice and so discover reasons to curb our consumption today for the sake of those who will come after. Yet this bridge can easily become a narrow interest in securing the flourishing of my progeny at the expense of the children of others. It can also focus attention on decadal timescales and away from longer periods. So this natural human affection must itself be crucified with Christ that it may rise to new life as compassion for the children and grandchildren of even my enemies.

Beyond survivalism The Christian gospel, specifically the resurrection of Christ as the first fruits of what is to come, as a promise of new life for all of God’s groaning creation, opens a space in which securing our survival is no longer our dominant concern. While in bondage to the fear of death, the fierce urgency of minimizing the chance of our own demise generally trumps all other considerations. Those whose faith is in the God who raises the dead find their fears of death relativized.15 This is true personally, but also at a societal level. Our primary goal 15

Cf. Heb. 2.14–15: ‘Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.’

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is not securing the continuity of our civilization, far less our way of life. So when we awaken to the ways in which we are undermining the conditions of possibility for human flourishing (and the flourishing of all life on the planet), our primary stance is not defensive or self-regarding. The hope of a resurrection like Christ’s, of the vindication of the way of Jesus Christ and the renewal of all things, frees us from responsibility for securing our existence. But this freedom is not freedom from concern. We are free from the crippling anxieties in which we dream of being able to escape our nightmare, and free to give ourselves in loving concern for our neighbour; not just our immediate neighbours, but all those whose lives are being touched – and indeed not just touched, but violently shaped – by the choices we collectively make. The church is a community sustained by a narrative that opens the space for moral imagination to embrace a widening sphere of neighbours in a conception of shared goods, and so the possibility of discovering a common good between rich and poor, between present and future generations, between humanity and the rest of the community of creation.

On imagining the future: Human action as reaction Come now you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin. (Jas 4.13–17) If making confident assertions of the likely course of my personal life is arrogance that ignores the fact that I am not in control, then expanding such claims to society as a whole seems sheer hubris. Nonetheless, it is important to note that this passage from James doesn’t rule out all expectations of the future playing a role in decision-making. It is not that Christians are forbidden from considering the future or making plans based on such considerations, but that all our plans must be written in pencil, not ink. This requires a certain chastisement of imagination, or perhaps better, imagination’s acknowledgement that it is imagination. The future is uncertain; it is an arrogant boast to confuse pictures of a possible future with our desires for the future and assume that we can (or

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must) ensure the realization of those desires. The future is not ours to seize and shape, but God’s to give and take. Our role is humble receptivity, trusting thankfulness, loving perception and hopeful prayer. Does this stance foster passivity, a resignation in the face of suffering and so a complicity in failure to secure liberation for the oppressed? It can and all too often has. But it need not. And a thorough account of human action will be more open, more honest, more creative and more effective for taking the priority of divine grace more seriously. God initiates, we respond. Human action is reaction. That is the lesson of James. This does not require passivity, rather openness to the unfolding possibilities of loving God and neighbour, an openness in which we take seriously our situation and take just as seriously the Spirit’s power to breathe new life into hearts of stone. Each of us is thrown into a concrete historical situation that is neither of our choosing nor our fashioning, born within a family and culture that we can only receive. Rejection and reformation are, of course, forms of reception. We do not begin with a blank slate, even if we wish to shatter or erase what is written. We are born amidst a broken glory. Unbidden, we both rejoice and suffer as a result. Our world, our selves and our time are not creatures of our will, to be made into whatever image we desire. We receive them. And we receive them as the gift of God despite the flaws evident in them, giving thanks for what is good, trusting that what is not is not beyond redemption. No deficiency in my self or my shared world or the span of time for my life is excluded from this trusting acceptance because at the heart of the world, self and time which I receive lies Christ, who is the hope of healing, of new life in the deadest of ends, of space to breathe. And so the gift received is my life: my self, my world and the time of the former amidst the latter. And the hidden centre of that gift is Christ, who is the image of my true self, the founding principle of creation and the alpha and omega of time. Human action begins in humble receptivity towards and trusting thanksgiving for that gift.16 Yet I am also called to account for what becomes of my self, my world and my time. The gift brings responsibility. Not only is the gift to be received, but understood, entered into and explored. The gift invites not mere submission of the will, but the delight of the heart, the joyful harmonizing of the affects. Coming to know this gift involves not simply the intellect but crucially love. Only a participation in God’s passionate concern for his creation (whether or 16

In this paragraph and the paragraphs that follow, I am particularly indebted to the account of Christian moral understanding and agency that is given in Oliver O’Donovan, Self, World, and Time: Ethics as Theology, volume 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 1–20, 105–33.

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not this is how we conceive it) enables us to see what is actually around us. The dispassionate observation of objective inquiry is frequently a necessary step in this process, but it is a limiting of focus that occurs within a broader framework of care. We learn about the world and ourselves and the time available to us because we care what happens, who we are to become. We are responsible for the gifts we have received. And having become responsible, we therefore care about possible futures, about paths that open before us, about the destiny of the good things entrusted to us. We face future prospects because we cannot do otherwise without closing our hearts and hands. And faithful imagination requires the abandonment of false hopes, as well as the rejection of myopic assumptions that things must remain as they are. The pursuit of responsible care for the gifts we have received may require of us the rejection of utopian fantasies, but also the questioning of the status quo. What we may hope for along the way is neither ease nor comfort, but that the road we walk will not, ultimately, be a dead end, that our labours of love will not be in vain. The path of faith, hope and love – that is, the path of true human action in the way of the crucified and risen Christ – is narrow, dangerous and often not immediately perceptible. It can only be walked with prayerful dependence and an ongoing openness to correction and further guidance. But it is a journey into life.

Conclusion Ecological crises are not likely to go away anytime soon. In fact, there are strong reasons to expect they will have an increasing influence at all levels of society from geopolitics to everyday life, significantly affecting everyone in direct and indirect ways. Theology and theological ethics need to wrestle further with this, not simply by developing a more robust doctrine of creation or creation care, but addressing the civilizational crisis into which we are heading. These questions are not merely a boutique topic for a small number of green-minded specialists, but a critical context for all other contemporary ethical deliberations, and for the ongoing discipleship and mission of the church.

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15

Envisioning an Alternative Urban World: Theology and the Future of the City David Smith

The future of human cities and their meaning is one of the most critical spiritual issues of our time . . . [W]hat is so often missing from contemporary concerns about cities is precisely a vision. And vision or perspective, rather than some kind of definitive conclusion, is a primary theological task. Philip Sheldrake1 Every two years the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UNHABITAT) publishes authoritative and comprehensive reports with the title State of the World’s Cities. The 2010/11 volume carried the subtitle Bridging the Urban Divide and described in detail the seemingly remorseless trends by which inequalities of income, access to urban space and opportunities for change were everywhere increasing. Cities continued to expand, indeed, in many places they were merging together ‘to create urban settlements on a massive scale’, so that over the coming decades ‘Homo sapiens, “the wise human”, will become Homo sapiens urbanus in virtually all regions of the planet’.2 Anyone who has read these reports over the years may be forgiven for doubting the claim implicit within this statement that contemporary urban humankind has access to sources of wisdom capable of challenging and transforming the cities of our urban age. Where, for example, is the wisdom which might enable us to address a situation in which the slum population of the world is expected to reach 889 million by 2020, with increasing numbers of these people experiencing hunger as ‘the relentless rise in 1

2

Philip Sheldrake, ‘Cities and Human Community’, in Andrew Walker (ed.), Spirituality in the City (London: SPCK, 2005), p. 67. State of the World’s Cities 2010/2011. Bridging the Urban Divide (London: Earthscan, 2008), pp. viii–ix.

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food prices in urban areas combines with persistently low incomes’, leaving the urban poor unable to ‘purchase adequate amounts and types of food’?3 This is one side of the ‘urban divide’, resulting in cities which, in the words of Mike Davis, betray the visions of earlier generations of urban planners, so that instead of ‘cities of light soaring toward heaven, much of the twenty-first century urban world squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement and decay’.4 It is as though the conditions in the slums of the British cities spawned by the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, so graphically described by Friedrich Engels, have now become universal, creating an urban world in which 40 per cent of the children born in Africa and Asia suffer from forms of stunted development which destroy their chances in life. Meantime, on the other side of this divide, among the privileged and wealthy, the city appears so different as to belong to another world. Here the beneficiaries of the process of globalization live in well-serviced districts, with ready access to a range of resources and a security of income which enables them to play their part in consumer society.5 On this side of the city the poor and deprived become largely invisible since the urban divide takes physical and geographical forms which effectively conceal the reality of the underside from the consciousness of the suburban middle classes. The divide becomes sharper still, taking the form of a chasm, in the case of the growing numbers of super-rich people whose access to entirely disproportionate wealth and privilege enables them live in what have been called ‘gilded dreamworlds’.6 However, if the conditions of the urban poor remain largely beyond the purview of the privileged, or worse still are presented through distorted media images which represent the deprived as feckless, scrounging and morally degraded, the reverse is not the case. The way of life of the urban middle class, and the even more lavish lifestyles of the most wealthy, are placarded through advertising and the mass media as ideal models of human existence to which all should aspire. The urban poor are thus constantly reminded of the gulf which 3 4 5

6

Ibid., p. xiv. Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (London: Verso, 2006), p. 19. As Graham Ward points out, ‘The market turns us all into consumers who produce only to afford to become more powerful consumers. Cities become variants on the theme-park, reorganized as sites for consumption, sites for the satisfaction of endless desire.’ Cities of God (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 56. The phrase comes from Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk in the introduction to a series of essays they edited under the significant title, Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism (New York: New Press, 2007). They write, ‘On a planet where more than 2 billion people subsist on two dollars or less a day, these dreamworlds enflame desires – for infinite consumption, total social exclusion and physical security, and architectural monumentality – that are clearly incompatible with the ecological and moral survival of humanity’ (p. xv).

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divides them from the way of life which the wider society classifies as normal, while suffering constant frustration at the failure of all attempts to bridge this divide. As the UN-HABITAT report concludes: The urban divide is the face of injustice and a symptom of systemic dysfunction. A society cannot claim to be harmonious or united if large numbers of people cannot meet their basic needs while others live in opulence. A city cannot be harmonious if some groups concentrate resources and opportunities while others remain impoverished and deprived.7

It is worth recalling here that the dramatic growth of cities which accompanied the industrial revolution gave birth to a tradition of sociological analysis which attempted to describe and understand the impact of these massive changes on both individuals and society. David Clarke observes that the general tone of nineteenth-century observers of the industrial cities was one of astonishment and perplexity, often accompanied by ‘a pronounced concern over the developing conditions of modern urban life’. The transformations resulting from urbanization, both with regard to the consciousness and behaviour of individuals and in relation to the structures of society itself, ‘must have seemed to represent nothing less than a fundamental and unnatural mutation of the human species’.8 With the passing of time, however, the questions identified as being of crucial importance to human well-being in the new world of the industrial city ceased to be of major concern as urbanism became, in a famous phrase, ‘a way of life’. The critical questions identified by the first urban sociologists remained largely unanswered, but they were suppressed by the onward march of ‘progress’. Clarke argues that modernity rendered ‘inaudible those questions most uncomfortable to its own existence’ and he quotes Zygmunt Bauman as saying, ‘Modernity has an uncanny capacity for thwarting self-examination.’9

Strangers in the city The mass movements of people from rural and traditional contexts to the burgeoning cities of our world, especially across the Global South, raise once

7 8

9

State of the World’s Cities: 2010/2011, p. ix. David B. Clarke, The Consumer Society and the Postmodern City (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 78– 79. See too the brilliant study of Kathryn Milun, Pathologies of Modern Urban Space – Empty Space, Urban Anxiety, and the Recovery of the Public Self (London: Routledge, 2007). Ibid., p. 79.

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again the questions first debated during the industrial revolution concerning what came to be called ‘urban pathologies’. The sheer volume of people on the move today makes this by far the greatest migration in human history, with the statistics from China alone highlighting the unprecedented nature of the phenomenon. Jonathan Watts, for many years the Guardian correspondent in China, describes how, as a child growing up in that vast country, he used to pray every night a prayer ending with the request: ‘And please make sure everyone in China doesn’t jump at the same time.’ As a small boy he had asked an adult what was meant by the word ‘billion’ and had received this reply: ‘If everyone in China jumps at exactly the same time, it will shake the earth off its axis and kill us all.’ In 2010, as he completed his journalistic assignment in China and reflected on the momentous changes he had witnessed in the early twenty-first century, Watts concluded that the Chinese people had indeed jumped and that as a result, ‘we must all rebalance our lives’.10 While migrations occur internally within specific countries or regions and result in the urban divide we have discussed above, globalization has accelerated cross-border and inter-continental movements as large numbers of people from impoverished areas of the world seek access to the centres of economic power. Urban scholars use the term ‘world cities’ to refer to a small number of urban locations which have become the command centres of the global economy. Saskia Sassen writes of ‘new geographies of centrality at the inter-urban level’ which bind major international financial and business centres such as New York, London, Tokyo, Paris and Frankfurt together. These cities become the sites ‘for immense concentrations of economic power’ while other post-industrial and postcolonial urban centres experience marginalization and decline.11 Sassen’s work demonstrates that globalization cannot be understood solely in terms of the function of the ‘free market’, divorcing this from the consequences of this system and then claiming that it remains the solution to the world’s ills. Globalization, she insists, includes the outcomes of the operation of the global market through which vast areas of the world have become peripheral to prevailing economic processes. It is precisely this situation which triggers migration as the poor and disenfranchised seek a path out of despair, swelling the already crowded slums, or finding niches within poorly paid service industries maintaining the gleaming 10

11

Jonathan Watts, When a Billion Chinese Jump. How China Will Save Mankind – Or Destroy It (London: Faber and Faber, 2010), p. 5. Saskia Sassen, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: Free Press, 1998), pp. xxv–xxvi. Sassen describes how an ‘immense array of cultures from around the world, each rooted in a particular country, town, or village, now is reterritorialized in a few single places, places such as New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London, and most recently Tokyo’. Ibid., p. xxxi.

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towers of the financial districts of world cities.12 The symbols of globalization are thus not limited to the skyscrapers of multinational business corporations and banks which increasingly dot the skylines of such cities, but include the ethnic and cultural diversity created by migration flows as once exotic cultures contribute to the potentially rich mosaic of urban life in Europe and North America. However, here too the urban divide is evident since migrant workers remain largely invisible within the accepted narrative of globalization and the gulf between their prospects and the high-income workforce inhabiting the corporate towers during the working day is expressed in new forms of social segmentation. Sassen insists that this concealed underside of the globalization process must be brought to the light of day and recognized as an integral outcome of the system. From the theological perspective these migratory movements have huge significance, not least because within the flows of humankind are to be found large numbers of people with deep religious convictions, including of course, millions of Christians across, and from, the Global South. As a result, alternative ways of understanding human existence and purpose within the city, whether derived from Christian, Islamic or Eastern religious sources, have surfaced within secular societies, challenging what had been assumed to be a post-religious consensus. These alternative visions carry weight both because they respond to perceived weaknesses within Western culture, and because they frequently come from below, expressing the hopes and visions for a different kind of urban world articulated by people who know from experience the profoundly negative outcomes of the prevailing ideology. Mike Davis makes the striking observation that in the slums and favelas of the Global South, as well as in areas of deprivation in the urban centres of economic power, it looks as though Karl Marx ‘has yielded the historical stage to Muhammed and the Holy Ghost’. Davis credits Pentecostalism with refusing to accept ‘the inhuman destiny of the Third World city’ and he concludes that if God died in the cities of the industrial revolution, ‘he has risen again in the post-industrial cities of the developing world’.13 12

13

Tim Watson observes that global migration patterns ‘brought the world to lower Manhattan to service the corporate tower blocks’ and that those who died in the World Trade Center buildings on 9/11 included messengers, garbage collectors and office cleaners from Mexico, Bangladesh, Jamaica and Palestine. He comments: ‘Only in death, however, could such people gain visibility, fleeting though it was’ and part of the tragedy of that terrible day was that it took such an extraordinary event ‘to reveal the everyday reality of life at the heart of a global city’. Quoted in Stephen Graham, Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (London: Verso, 2010), p. 82. Mike Davis, ‘Planet of Slums’, New Left Review 26, March–April 2004. http://www.newleftreview. org/?view=2496, accessed 18/03/2008. See the important theological assessments of the role of Pentecostalism in our urban world in Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Reading, MA: AddisonWesley Publishing, 1995) and Cheryl Bridges Johns, Pentecostal Formation: A Pedagogy among the Oppressed (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993).

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The violent city A key feature of the earliest urban settlements was the city wall which enclosed the sacred space within and acted as a defence against hostile powers without. The prominence of this structure and its persistence across the centuries highlight the relationship between the city and the practice and technologies of warfare. According to Lewis Mumford, war and domination ‘were ingrained in the original structure of the ancient city’ and he cites archaeological evidence (which is confirmed by the witness of the Hebrew prophets) that the sacred kings who ruled the earliest urban empires boasted ‘of their personal feats in mutilating, torturing and killing with their own hands their chief captives’.14 In modern times the huge increase in the destructive power of weaponry resulting from the growth of a technological culture has resulted in urban populations once again being targeted in times of war, leading to the wholesale obliteration of cities (or ‘urbicide’) in acts of previously unimaginable violence. In the age of globalization and with the growth of increasingly divided cities across the world, violence is taking new and disturbing forms in which there is an asymmetry between conventional forces, acting to impose order as this is defined by the ‘international community’, and a wide range of groups and individuals who experience the dominant system as oppressive, threatening to their human dignity and manifestly failing to live up to its own promises. In this context, the pursuit of national and international security ‘has become the making of urban insecurity’ as asymmetric wars, epitomized by the ‘war on terror’, turn cities into prime locations for conflict. In the words of Stephen Graham, ‘Warfare, like everything else, is being urbanized. The great geopolitical contests . . . are, to a growing extent, boiling down to violent conflicts in the key strategic sites of our age: contemporary cities.’15

The Stranger’s question Early in the twentieth century T. S. Eliot wrote of the coming of the Stranger, ‘who knows how to ask questions’, and of his penetrating enquiry: ‘What is 14

15

Lewis Mumford, The City in History (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966), p. 57. Mumford’s work has been strongly criticized for reflecting an anti-urban bias. However, this remarkable book remains a classic text for urban studies and the discussion of the city and violence cited here makes for sobering reading today. Stephen Graham, Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (London: Verso, 2010), p. 16. See too, Saskia Sassen, ‘When the City Itself Becomes a Technology of War’, Theory, Culture and Society 27 (2010), pp. 33–50.

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the meaning of this city?’16 The question goes to the heart of the concerns of urban theology, as the quotation at the head of this chapter suggests. But it also chimes with the perceptions of writers, artists, film-makers, and many thoughtful academics who wrestle with the ambiguities and anxieties of life in the metropolis, as well as with its potential for good. Tragically, however, in the urban world of the twenty-first century existential and ethical concerns with meaning and purpose are increasingly forgotten, drowned out by the clamour which accompanies the construction of cities which sometimes appear to be designed to suppress such concerns. Who would take notice of the Stranger’s question in Dubai or Las Vegas, or indeed in the increasing number of cities in which the quest for economic viability takes the form of providing spectacular mass entertainment, casinos and high-class shopping facilities? In the post-industrial cities of the West the economic and social vacuum left by the flight of capital and labour is increasingly filled by what are called ‘cultural industries’, accompanied by efforts to rebrand and market such places as attractive tourist destinations. Unfortunately this type of urban model also shapes much of the planning and architecture of the expanding cities across the Global South where ancient cultural and religious traditions are being set aside in the rush towards modernization. But even as it is suppressed, the crisis of meaning continues to loom over what has aptly been called the ‘ephemeral city’. This city without meaning can neither create nor sustain social harmony and well-being, and the essentially nihilistic view of human life upon which it rests ‘could prove as dangerous to the future of cities as the most hideous terroristic threats’.17

The Bible and the city18 As we shall see, the city is present in the biblical narratives from the very beginning and plays a far more significant role within them than has generally been recognized. Robert Carroll has said that the city is ‘one of the main foci of the Hebrew Bible’ and that there ‘is simply far too much material’ on this subject

16 17

18

T. S. Eliot, Selected Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), p. 106. These are the words of the historian Joel Kotkin in The City: A Global History (New York: The Modern Library, 2006), pp. 158–59. Unusually among urban scholars, Kotkin goes on to assert: ‘Without a widely shared belief system, it would be exceedingly difficult to envision a viable urban future.’ It is not possible here to examine specific biblical texts in detail. I have attempted a reading of the Bible on this subject in Seeking A City with Foundations: Theology for an Urban World (Nottingham: IVP, 2012), especially chapters five and six.

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for ‘any piece of writing to encompass them all adequately’.19 However, the frequency of references to urban communities must not lead to the assumption that the biblical writers are addressing situations identical to our own. This would be to ignore the specific historical and cultural contexts of the ancient world and could result in serious misreadings of the biblical texts. Krishnan Kumar observes that the absolute predominance which the city has come to acquire over the life of society is a recent, modern development and that in preindustrial times (which, of course, includes the world of the biblical authors) the city, while of great importance, ‘existed encapsulated within, usually parasitic upon, the body of society as a whole, which in large segments could display attitudes and activities barely touched by urban life’.20 The importance of recognizing this distinction can be illustrated with regard to one of the crucial concerns of today, that of sustainability. Is the urban world of the twenty-first century viable? Can the pattern of growth to which reference has been made above continue without so depleting the earth’s resources and polluting its atmosphere as to result in catastrophe? Is there a way in the urban age of rebalancing the relationship between the human family and the natural world? These questions arise specifically in our modern context and, although we are justified in seeking help from Scripture in responding to them, it is important to recognize that the biblical writers do not address such issues from the same starting point as ourselves. As Richard Bauckham has observed, in ancient times those who lived in cities retained ‘a close relationship with and dependence on the surrounding countryside’, a relationship which was a matter ‘of ordinary conscious awareness’.21 It is precisely this sense of human embeddedness within the created world which was lost in modernity, replaced by the belief that the human species had become nature’s master and manipulator. In other words, in approaching the Bible on this subject there is a need for deep listening which suspends the presuppositions inbred within us as modern people in order to hear the diagnosis of the prophets. According to the prophetic witness, our problem is neither merely technical nor superficial, but is located at the level of fundamental assumptions with regard to the relationship between culture and creation. 19

20

21

Robert P. Carroll, ‘City of Chaos, City of Stone, City of Flesh: Urbanscapes in Prophetic Discourse’, in Lester Grabbe and Robert Haak (eds), Every City Shall Be Forsaken: Urbanism and Prophecy in Ancient Israel and the Near East (JSOTSup, 330; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), p. 47. Krishnan Kumar, Prophecy and Progress: The Sociology of Industrial and Post-Industrial Society (London: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 68. Richard Bauckham, ‘The New Testament Teaching on the Environment’, Transformation 16 (1999), pp. 99–101.

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Nonetheless, it remains true that the city forms a fundamental aspect of the context of the biblical story and the challenges it presents to faith and practice surface repeatedly within the biblical texts. According to the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, Abraham abandoned his native home in Mesopotamia in a faith-inspired quest for ‘the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God’ (Heb. 11.10).22 The civilization which Abraham left behind was precisely that which had given birth to some of the earliest and most significant urban settlements in the history of the world. As he trekked up the Tigris and Euphrates valleys he would have passed walled cities which had dotted this terrain for centuries. Already then, we hear of two sharply contrasting urban forms. One is an empirical reality in which power and wealth are used unjustly and religion buttresses the status quo. The other is the focal point of vision and hope, an eschatological city shaped by justice and mercy and underpinned by the promises and actions of a liberating God. These two cities, as Augustine pointed out long ago, reappear throughout the Bible, culminating in the radical contrast between Babylon and New Jerusalem at the climax of the drama.23 Given these contrasting urban possibilities we are not surprised to discover that the biblical writers oscillate between a prophetic critique of the city (including chilling warnings of its decline and death) and visions of an alternative metropolis within which social and economic life will be shaped by the ethical demands of the Torah. The Bible, we might say, is against-the-cityfor-the-city. It is uncompromising in its judgement on urban evil, violence and injustice, whether this appears in the city states of Canaan, the imperial capitals of successive empires, or within Jerusalem itself when the ‘holy city’, having abandoned the covenantal ethic, becomes a city of death. Walter Brueggemann observes that the story of Jerusalem pivots around ‘the wrenching catastrophe of that grim moment when the Babylonians came and destroyed the city where God was said to dwell’. That terrible event (which today would be described as urbicide) was capable of explanation in different ways, but ‘there were those in the ancient city who looked underneath at the urban “facts on the ground”’ and were unimpressed by the ‘self-congratulatory slogans and liturgies of throne and

22 23

In this chapter Bible references are from the New International Version (Zondervan, 1984). Augustine refers to these two cities on the opening page of his seminal work, The City of God. He writes of the ‘city of this world which aims at dominion, which holds nations in enslavement, but is itself dominated by that very lust for domination’ and, by contrast, of ‘the glorious city of God’. Concerning The City of God against the Pagans (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 5.

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temple’.24 The prophets of Israel, especially Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, all of whom were closely associated with Jerusalem, exposed the apostasy of the city, wept over its plight, and called to account those who abused their power and turned religion into an ideology justifying an urban culture which had become an abomination to Yahweh. On the other hand, the hope of urban renewal and transformation, of the coming of the alternative city, breaks forth repeatedly, often in the direst of circumstances and, perhaps surprisingly, embraces both Jerusalem and the cities of the surrounding nations. Thus, the concluding words of the book of Jonah record Yahweh asking with regard to the violent, imperial city of Nineveh: ‘Should I not be concerned about that great city?’ (Jon. 4.11). These ancient texts can provide not only a foundation for urban theology, but the wisdom required by the urban world of the twenty-first century, as can be seen in Marshall Berman’s response to the events of 9/11. He testifies that the re-reading of the Hebrew prophets revealed a profound analysis of ‘urban ruin’. Unlike the Greeks, who treated urbicide as ‘an inevitable cosmic fate’, the prophets dared to say ‘God did this’, since they understood the loss of the city as ‘part of an ongoing historical process that will eventually lead to renewal and progress’. Berman sees in the ‘dialectical vision’ of the prophets a key to the understanding of the tragedies and failures of our cities today: It is only through losing our city that we can find the right way to live in a city. The prophet’s searing indictment of the city’s past is meant to empower the people to transform the city’s future. If we can learn why we were overcome yesterday, we will overcome tomorrow.25

Jesus and the city It has been widely assumed that the ministry of Jesus in Galilee was directed to a rural, traditional population and thus offers little of direct relevance in 24

25

Walter Brueggemann, Disruptive Grace: Reflections on God, Scripture, and the Church (ed. Carolyn J. Sharp; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), p. 101. Chapters five and six of this volume contain a stimulating discussion of the city in the Old Testament, a subject which Brueggemann has dealt with often. See his Mandate to Difference: An Invitation to the Contemporary Church (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007), pp. 9–39; and Using God’s Resources Wisely: Isaiah and Urban Possibility (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993). Marshall Berman, ‘Falling’, in Matthew Beaumont and Gregory Dart (eds), Restless Cities (London: Verso, 2010), p. 132. Another striking example of the impact of 9/11 is found in Peter Heltzel’s testimony that, having been absent from his work in the World Financial Center on the day the towers fell, he volunteered to assist amid the chaos at Ground Zero: ‘It was there in Gehenna that I felt the call to work for a new future, a more just city and a new world.’ Peter Goodwin Hetzel, Resurrection City: A Theology of Improvisation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), p. 7.

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relation to the city.26 However, this is to overlook the impact of the Roman imperial policy of urbanization on the Galilee of Jesus and his hearers. While the synoptic gospels do indeed describe a ministry directed to small towns and villages and there is little mention of the new Roman cities, the entire region was experiencing major disturbance and disruption as the direct consequence of the incursion of an alien political force which imposed its authority and culture through a policy of city-building. As Sean Freyne has pointed out, Roman propaganda had a profound impact on the lives of ordinary Jewish peasants and imperial policies disturbed existing economic, sociological and ecological conditions throughout Galilee. In particular, the urban building projects at Sepphoris (within sight of Nazareth), Tiberius and elsewhere, ‘were inevitably a drain on the resources of the region, material as well as human’. The new cities, specifically designed to establish and spread Roman power and ideology in colonized areas, introduced previously unknown and alien ideas and practices and, critically, led to an increase in levels of poverty and an inexorable slide ‘from landowner to tenant farmer to day labourers, to beggars, all characters we hear of in Jesus’ parables . . .’.27 In truth, the context of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee closely parallels that of millions of people across the Global South today whose traditional ways of life have been disrupted by the rush to the cities described above, so making his teaching as relevant in the urban slums of the twenty-first century as it was among poor immigrants in the city of Rome in the second half of the first century.

Apostolic models of urban Christianity Wayne Meeks’s ground-breaking study of the social context of early Christianity established beyond dispute the urban character of the primitive movement. Meeks showed that Pauline Christianity was ‘entirely urban’ and that, within a decade of the crucifixion of Jesus, ‘the Greco-Roman city became the dominant 26

27

Even as serious a scholar as Dieter Georgi, who wrote one of the few books to provide a biblical foundation for urban theology, said that Jesus’ teaching was ‘oriented toward the small town and the surrounding countryside’, and that the post-resurrection focus on the city in the mission of the early church ‘did not rest on the authority of the earthly Jesus’. Dieter Georgi, The City in the Valley: Biblical Interpretation and Urban Theology (Atlanta: Society for Biblical Literature, 2005), pp. 54–56. Sean Freyne, Jesus, A Jewish Galilean. A New Reading of the Jesus-Story (London: T&T Clark, 2004), p. 134. See also Marianne Sawicki, Crossing Galilee: Architectures of Contact in the Occupied Land of Jesus (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000) and Richard Horsley’s controversial but challenging works, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence: Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993) and Jesus in Context: Power, People and Performance (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008).

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environment of the Christian movement’.28 The question is, though, whether this perspective has been recognized and allowed to reshape traditions of theology and biblical studies which, across the intervening centuries, were developed in a quite different, largely rural, context. For example, have commentators on Paul’s letter to the tiny groups of Christ-followers in Rome given that urban context sufficient importance in their interpretations of the letter as a whole, or are their readings still dominated by theological debates which arose centuries later? There is evidence that the tide has turned and it seems likely that in the coming decades fresh and transformative readings of Romans (and, indeed, of the rest of the New Testament) will emanate from the churches of the poor as people who can make a connection between their own lives and those of the first believers in the slums of Rome begin to read Paul ‘from below’.29

Theology and the urban future In an article with the subtitle, ‘A eulogy for the unfinished city’, the sociologist Paul Chatterton laments the fact that ‘a deep desire to create new vocabularies, imaginations and strategies for action that could bring about a radically different city’ is largely absent from urban sociological discourse. Urbanist scholars display ‘a poverty of imagination, and a reluctance to use their work to dream the urban impossible and harvest that future in the present’.30 Language of this kind, and the aspiration it expresses for dreaming ‘the urban impossible’ in order to radically transform existing city life, presents a massive challenge to Christian theology, not least because the closing chapters of the Bible contain just such a vision of the city. The crucial issue is whether that eschatological vision can be harvested in the here and now to bring healing, justice and joy to the broken and troubled urban world we have outlined above. In the closing chapters of the book of Revelation the tension between Babylon and Jerusalem reappears and is finally resolved in the destruction of the former and the total transformation of the latter. The prophetic critique of the city 28

29

30

Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians. The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 11. Robert Jewett’s commentary is the clearest evidence of the interpretative tide turning with regard to Paul’s letter to the Romans. He writes: ‘A crucial element in understanding the situation of the Christian congregations in Rome is the crowded urban environment.’ Romans: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), p. 53. See also Peter Oakes, Reading Romans in Pompeii: Paul’s Letter at Ground Level (London: SPCK, 2009), and Philip F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), especially pp. 77–108. Paul Chatterton, ‘The Urban Impossible. A Eulogy for the Unfinished City’, City 14.3 (June, 2010), p. 235.

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thus reaches its terrifying climax in the description of the collapse of Babylon and, with it, the implosion of the economic system which had brought wealth to the kings and merchants of the earth, along with the sea captains whose vessels transported the riches of the world to the city of Rome. The members of this privileged elite weep and utter a lament expressing their astonishment at the death of a city which had boasted that it was ‘eternal’: ‘In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin’ (Rev. 18.17). Since ancient Rome may be described as the one real megacity of biblical times, the parallels between it and our urban world are significant and the apocalyptic vision of its collapse suggests that theology in the urban age, the era of the ‘endless city’, must be countercultural, critical and prophetic.31 However, while the destruction of Babylon results in inconsolable grief for the city’s beneficiaries, among the majority population it triggers a hallelujah chorus which sounds ‘like the roar of a great multitude’ (19.1). This is the prelude to the arrival of New Jerusalem, as a city so vast as to cover the entire Mediterranean area descends from heaven, bringing to the world previously dominated by Rome the long-promised shalom of God. While Paul and the author of Revelation have frequently been regarded as taking different positions with regard to imperial Rome, the latter’s vision of New Jerusalem expresses precisely the same hope which underlies the missionary imperative which drove the apostle’s ambition to reach the limits of the Empire with the subversive message of the gospel. Both Paul and John of Patmos ‘dream the urban impossible and harvest that dream in the present’. Finally then, how should the vision of New Jerusalem inform and shape theology today? John’s dream is an act of the Christian imagination which draws upon the tradition of images and symbols found in the Hebrew Bible, while also reflecting aspects of the wider human longing for meaning and justice. According to Dieter Georgi, the restored harmony between nature and culture in the New Jerusalem, as well as an ever-present brightness and clarity within the city, echo Hellenistic ideals so that in John’s vision, ‘Hellenistic city planning and architecture has been brought to perfection’.32 This is not at all surprising

31

32

Lewis Mumford believed that ancient Rome ‘remains a significant lesson in what to avoid’ and that its history offers ‘a series of classic danger signals to warn one when life is moving in the wrong direction’. The City in History, p. 280. On the ‘urban age’, see Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic (eds), The Endless City (London: Phaidon Press, 2007) which is an indispensable work of reference. Dieter Georgi, The City in the Valley: Biblical Interpretation and Urban Theology, p. 177. It is worth noting that towards the end of his much discussed book, The Meaning of the City, Jacques Ellul describes the city as ‘truly the culmination of history’. He writes: ‘What man has been seeking since the dawn of civilization he finally finds when God offers him the new city – the sum of all his efforts’ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), p. 194.

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when we recall that this city provides healing for the nations (22.2) and that their glory and honour are ‘brought into it’ (21.26). In other words, all that is good in human creative and cultural history has lasting meaning and will be purified and perfected in the city of God. The vision contains then the foundation for a theology of human work and creativity, as well as a mandate for mission which extends this beyond evangelization and church-planting, so that the vocations of business people, architects, town planners, artists, fire-fighters and street cleaners (among many others), have eternal value and contribute to the building of the city of God.33 Viewed in this way, the description of New Jerusalem is far from being an idle dream unrelated to urban history in this world. Not only can it be harvested in the present, but since it is founded on the work of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, it is already present in this world. As Pablo Richard points out, the fundamental reality of the Book of Revelation is ‘the resurrection of Christ in the present history of our world’, and it is this which makes Revelation a book of ‘hope and joy because Christ has risen and this good news changes the meaning of present history’.34 Babylon and New Jerusalem thus exist in the present, the one frequently dominant while the other often remains hidden, but the message of John of Patmos is that the future lies with the City of God. However, the challenge confronting such a theological vision today is that for many of the people who are most passionately concerned about the ‘divided city’ described in this chapter, such God-talk is freighted with historical memories which trigger the suspicion that it conceals an attempt to turn the clock back and reassert Christianity’s hegemonic control of the world. By contrast, as we have just seen, within the biblical narratives themselves the hope of God’s coming arose in the margins of imperial societies and provided the poor and oppressed with the promise of justice and liberation. The question for theology today is how the gap between now and then might be closed so that the fundamentally theistic vision of the city contained in the Bible can be recognized as a liberating alternative to the ideology which currently shapes urban life. Can theology find fresh language capable of opening the space within which the pervasive narrative of globalization can be viewed from a new angle? The answer is that voices capable of announcing God’s salvation with authenticity in the divided cities of today are already being heard within the churches of the poor, whether 33

34

See Dale Irvin, ‘The Church, the Urban, and the Global: Mission in the Age of Global Cities’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 33.4 (October, 2009) pp. 177–82. Pablo Richard, Apocalypse: A People’s Commentary on the Book of Revelation (New York: Orbis Books, 1995), p. 171.

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in the slums of the Global South or in deprived neighbourhoods in the postindustrial cities of the West.35 The phenomenon of world Christianity, with its centre of gravity firmly located beyond the West, has been widely recognized as heralding an epochal transformation in the religion, but what has not always been noticed is that the theological and spiritual concerns of this still-emerging movement are profoundly shaped by the urban contexts within which the vast majority of Christians in the southern hemisphere now live. Meantime, what has been called the ‘Great Emergence’ in the postmodern context of Europe and North America must also be recognized as a theological and spiritual response to a much longer process of urbanization in the Western world.36 Might it be that in the decades ahead of us an urban theology and spirituality forged in the context of poverty at the margins of the global empire of modern capitalism, will discover increasing lines of convergence with an emergent, prophetic Christianity at the powerful metropolitan centre, and that this might result in the discovery of a new, truly ecumenical catholicism? This would indeed be the ‘great emergence’, providing ‘a paradigm for what a universal theology might look like today, able to encompass sameness and difference, rooted in orthopraxis, providing teloi for a globalized society’.37 Such a development would make the city of God tangible and visible to the world as a radical and liberating alternative to the consumerist city of ‘endless desire’.38

35

36

37

38

Fresh perspectives on urban theology and mission are surfacing among small groups of Christians committed to living in areas of post-industrial urban decline. Paul Ede describes one such initiative in which a Pentecostal ‘eco-mission’ has given birth to action designed to heal polluted, brownfield land. He writes of the ‘gardener Christ’ who both ‘establishes creation in its ultimate glory as the renewed Jerusalem-as-garden-city (Rev 21)’ and ‘sends his church by his Spirit amidst today’s cities to begin to anticipate that eschatological vision’. Paul Ede, Urban Eco-Mission: Healing the Land in the Post-industrial City (Cambridge: Grove Books, 2013), p. 9. For helpful theological reflection on the city and the environment, see Part Two of Noah Toly and Daniel Block (eds), Keeping God’s Earth: The Global Environment in Biblical Perspective (Nottingham: Apollos, 2010), pp. 47–89. Phyllis Tickle identifies the ‘shift from being a rural to being an urban people’ as the most obvious and significant factor in the change in American culture in the twentieth century. She traces the connections between this and the emergence of new spiritual and theological movements in which people from previously separated and isolated traditions are swept towards a new centre in which they discover fresh ways of being Christian and ‘a new way of being Church’. Phyllis Tickle, The Great Emergence. How Christianity is Changing and Why (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), pp. 132–35. Robert Schreiter, The New Catholicity. Theology between the Global and the Local (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1997), pp. 132–33. The phrase is taken from the title of the important second chapter of Graham Ward’s Cities of God (London: Routledge, 2000). On the relationship between desire and consumerism see, William Cavanaugh, Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).

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Author Index Aleaz, K. P. 72 Allen, David M. 21 Allen, Paul L. 152 Amaladoss, Michael 70 Ames, Roger T. 51 Aquinas, Thomas 13, 20, 27, 28, 38–41, 43–4, 82, 119, 152–3 Aristotle 2, 33, 36, 41, 42, 89, 107–9, 111, 142, 144 Atherton, John 56 Augustine of Hippo 27, 31, 33, 40–2, 90, 106, 146, 186, 255 Aurelius, Marcus 89, 95 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 40, 43, 154–6, 206–7 Barclay, John M. G. 87 Barnosky, Anthony D. 233 Barr, James 55 Barth, Karl x, 14, 19, 33–4, 43, 92, 103, 112, 133, 151, 162, 185, 206 Bartholomew, Craig B. 156 Bauckham, Richard 158, 160, 162–3, 184, 205, 208, 254 Bauman, Richard 202 Baumgartner, Walter 185 Bavinck, Herman 15, 17, 19, 24 Baxter, Richard xi, 200–1 Bell, Daniel M. 115, 124 Berger, Peter L. 58 Berman, Marshall 256 Bernhardt, W. 185 Birkett, Kirsten 229 Block, Daniel 261 Bolt, John 56 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 16 Bowald, Mark 24 Braithwaite, Richard Bevan 139 Bretherton, Luke 205–6, 212 Brooke, John Hedley 214 Brookins, Timothy 95 Brown, William P. 186–7

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Brueggemann, Walter 19, 185–6, 255–6 Burdett, Ricky 259 Burrell, David 42–3 Calvin, John x, 142, 144–5, 154, 198 Cameron, Andrew 97 Campanale, M. 236 Cardullo, Bert 156 Carnes, Natalie 197, 201–2, 212 Carpenter, Humphrey 192, 194–5 Carr, John L. 232 Carroll, Robert P. 253–4 Carson, Donald A. 55, 162 Cavanaugh, William T. 126, 261 Chadwick, Henry 152 Chalmers, David J. 213, 222 Chan, Simon 73–5, 78 Charry, Ellen T. 152 Chatterton, Paul 258 Chung, Miyon 67 Chung, Paul S. 69 Clark, David K. 153 Clarke, David B. 249 Clayton, Philip P. 153, 224–6, 229 Cochrane, Arthur C. 16 Collins, John J. 94, 176 Cook, John 235 Cowan, Martyn 164 Cox, Harvey 1, 2, 251 Damrosch, Leo 199, 202–5, 208–9 Davies, O. 155 Davis, Creston 115 Davis, Mike 248, 251 De Lange, Nicholas 189 Deacon, John 199–200 Deacon, Terrence W. 216, 221 Deane-Drummond, Celia 203 Dewart, Leslie 2 Dio Chrysostom 87 Dunne, Joseph 107

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286

Author Index

Ede, Paul 261 Eliot, T. S. 252–3 Ellis, George F. R. 216, 220 Ellul, Jacques 259 Emery, Gilles 13 England, John C. 66–7 Enterline, Lynne 197–8 Erdt, Terrence 207 Esler, Philip F. 258 Evans, Donald D. 141, 149 Fabella, Virginia 68, 70 Farley, Edward 119 Felix, Wilfred 70 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 116, 118, 121 Fleming, Kenneth 69 Fodor, James 207–8 Ford David F. 79, 121, 125, 132–3, 135 Forrester, Duncan 56 Frame, John M. 165 Frame, Tom R. 85 Frei, Hans 123 Freire, Paolo 123–5 Freston, Paul 79 Fretheim, Terence E. 186 Freyne, Sean 257 Frost, William P. 1 Gardiner, Stephen 237 Garver, Eugene 109–10, 113 Gascoigne, John 85, 174 Georgi, Dieter 257, 259 Goheen, Michael W. 156 González, Justo L. 47 Graham, Stephen 251–2 Greaves, Richard 198 Green, Gene L. 45, 47, 51 Greenman, Jeffrey P. 45 Gregersen, Niels Henrik 224 Gregory, Brad 102 Gunton, Colin 184–5, 188 Hall, David L. 51 Halpern, Benjamin S. 233 Hannah, Lee 232 Haraway, Donna J. 172 Hardy, D. W. 153 Hare, R. M. 139 Harrison, Lawrence C. 58

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Hart, Trevor 181, 193, 207–8 Hasker, William 31 Hauerwas, Stanley 4, 82–4, 86–7, 90, 96–7, 104, 111, 120, 124, 127, 130, 135, 207, 209 Hays, Richard B. 21, 86, 93, 163–4 He, Guanghu 50 Helmer, C. 153 Heron, Alasdair I. C. 122 Hesselgrave, David 71 Hetzel, Peter Goodwin 256 Hick, John 130 Higton, Mike 120 Hinlicky, Paul 34–5 Hodge, Charles 153 Hofstadter, Richard 127 Holmer, Paul L. 140 Holmes, Stephen R. 161 Hooks, Bell 125 Horsley, Richard 257 Horton, Michael S. 156 Howard, Thomas Albert 119–20 Humphrey, Edith 22 Hütter, Reinhard 19 Irvin, Dale T. 260 Jacobs, Alan 209–11 Jenkins, Philip 45, 63, 66–7, 73–5, 78, 91–2 Jenson, Robert 34–5, 82, 90, 103 Jewett, Robert 52, 258 Johns, Cheryl Bridges 251 Johnson, Elizabeth 42 Johnson, Kristin Deede 197 Jones, C. P. 87 Jones, O. R. 140 Jones, L. Gregory 134 Joos, Erich 220–1 Kant, Immanuel 23, 116, 118–21, 123, 129, 187 Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti 33–4, 36–7, 70 Käsemann, Ernst 94 Kauffman, Stuart 223 Keller, Catherine 35–6, 42 Kelsey, David H. 152–3 Khovacs, Ivan 201 Kim, Andrew E. 74 Kim, Jaegwon 213

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Author Index Kim, Sebastian C. H. 68 Koehler, Ludwig 185 Kotkin, Joel 253 Kripke, S. A. 140 Kumar, Krishnan 254 Kwok, Pui-lan 48 LaBute, Todd S. 68, 71 Lamm, J. A. 154 Lane, Belden C. 198 Lankerani, Ali 232 Laplace, Pierre Simon 218 Lash, Nicholas 15, 18, 134 Lee, Jung Young 55, 69 Lee, Peter K. H. 70 Lee, Sang Hyun 55 Lee, Sung Ock 79 Leggett, J. 236 Lindbeck, George A. 87, 140–1, 153–4 Lovat, Terry 124 Lumsdaine, David H. 79 Luther, Martin 33–4, 154, 176 Ma, Wonsuk 75, 78 McCall, Thomas 34 McClean, John 153, 162 McClendon, James William 103 McCord Adams, Marilyn 38 McCormack, Bruce L. 34 MacDonald Jr., Paul 131 McDowell, John C. 87, 124 McGrath, Alister E. 66, 78, 154, 195 MacIntyre, Alasdair 105–9, 126 MacKinnon, Donald M. x, 126, 133 McLoughlin, William G. 127 McNeill, John 231 Manley, Ken R. 85 Maritain, Jacques 192 Marshall, I. Howard 22 Martyn, James Louis, 175, 177–8 Meadors, Gary T. 156 Meeks, Wayne 257–8 Milbank, John 115, 119, 130 Miller, Patrick D. 19 Milun, Kathryn 249 Mitchell, Basil 138 Mitchell, Louis M. 155 Moffett, Samuel Hugh 64–5, 67 Moltmann, Jürgen 1, 33, 56, 84, 92, 204–5

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Mongrain, Kevin 155 Monk, Daniel Bertrand 248 Moo, Douglas J. 162 Morimoto, Anri 67–8, 71–2 Morowitz, Harold J. 221, 227 Muller, Richard A. 152–3 Mumford, Lewis 252, 259 Murdoch, Iris 187, 207 Murphy, Francesca 42, 44 Murray, Stuart 85 Newman, John Henry 99, 108 Ngun, Richard 68 Nietzsche, Friedrich 27, 123, 134 Noll, Mark A. 63, 132, 153 Oakes, Peter 258 O’Donovan, Oliver 22, 128, 244 O’Hear, Anthony 187 Oropeza, B. J. 94 Owen, John 19–20 Pannenberg, Wolfhart x, 1, 153, 161–2, 185 Pardue, Steve 47, 51 Park, Andrew Sung 55, 69 Peacocke, Arthur 225 Pelikan, Jaroslav 13 Peterson, John 153 Phan, Peter C. 69–70 Phillips, Caryl 171 Philo 89 Placher, William 135 Plantinga, Alvin 38 Polanyi, M. 154 Polkinghorne, John 4 Ramachandra, Vinoth 72–3, 76 Ramsey, Ian 139 Raschke, Carl A. 125 Rea, Michael C. 38 Richard, Pablo 260 Ro, Bong Rin 66, 68, 73, 75 Roberts, Callum 233 Rockstrom, J. 232 Rommen, Edward 71 Rorty, Richard 115–17, 120 Rüegg, Walter 124 Ryan, Mark 110–11, 113 Ryken, Leland 211

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288

Author Index

Sacks, Jonathan 182, 188–9, 191 Saeki, P. Y. 65 Sanders, John 28, 30–2, 35 Sanderson, Eric W. 233 Sanneh, Lamin 49, 51 Sassen, Saskia 250–2 Sawicki, Marianne 257 Sayers, Dorothy L. 182, 184, 192, 196, 205 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 121–2, 153–4, 158 Schreiner, Thomas R. 159 Schreiter, Robert 261 Scholem, Gershom 188 Schwöbel, Christoph 162 Scott, Ian W. 93 Searle, Alison 197 Seneca 89, 94 Shakespeare, William 197–8, 208 Sheldrake, Philip 247 Sherwood, Yvonne 202 Silberstein, Michael 222 Singgih, Emmaneul Gerrit 45 Smith, David 253 Smith, James K. A. 164 Smith, Zadie, 8, 169–74, 176, 178–9 Song, Choan-Seng 35–6, 42–3, 55, 65, 68–9, 76, 77 Song, Minho 67 Stackhouse, Max L. 56, 59 Starling, David I. 97, 102 Steiner, George 182–4, 187–8 Stout, Jeffrey 118 Stuhlmacher, Peter 22 Sudjic, Deyan 259 Sugirtharajah, R. S. 69–70 Suh, David Kwang-Sun 70 Swain, Scott R. ix, 21–2, 25 Swinburne, Richard 38 Tamez, Elsa 54 Tang, Edmond 70–1 Tanner, Kathryn 20, 103 Taylor, Charles 106–7, 113 Thiemann, Ronald F. 47, 121–2 Thiselton, Anthony C. 86, 96 Thomas, M. M. 68

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Thompson, Jane 124–5 Thompson, Marianne M. 164 Tickle, Phyllis 261 Tillich, Paul 73 Tolkien, J. R. R. 8, 192–6, 207, 211 Toly, Noah 261 Toomey, Ron 124 Torrance, Thomas F. 153 Towner, Philip H. 22 Tracy, David 59 Treier, Daniel J. 152–3 Turretin, Francis 20, 143, 145–7, 153 Vanhoozer, Kevin J. 2, 84, 90, 141, 155–8 Viladesau, Richard 206 Volf, Miroslav 2 Vörösmarty, C. J. 233 Walls, Andrew 45 Wan, Enoch 48–9 Ward, Graham 248, 261 Watts, Jonathan 250 Welker, Michael 186 Wells, David F. 127 Wells, Samuel 104 Wilfred, Felix 70 Wilkens, Robert L. 78 Williams, M. D. 157 Williams, Rowan 191–2, 196 Winter, Bruce W. 87 Witherington, Ben 93 Wolterstorff, Nicholas 155 Wood, Charles M. 132 Wood, Donald 22 Wright, N. T. 156 Wybrow, Cameron 184 Yeo, K. K. 47, 49, 51–2 Yeung, Daniel H. N. 50 Yewangoe, A. A. 69–70 Yoder, John Howard 91, 111–12 Yong, Amos 77 Yong, Lim Kar 52 Young, Frances 58 Yung, Hwa 67, 72, 77 Zalasiewicz, J. 232

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Subject Index aesthetic theology 155–6 apocalypse as drama 203 apocalyptic eschatology 94–6, 175–9, 197 Asian Christianity 76 Asian evangelicalism 73–6 Asian Theology 6, 64–73 atheism 17 atonement and human action 189–90 attentiveness 135 biblical hermeneutics 24 Bildung 119–20 biodiversity 232–3 biology 221 Cartesian views of consciousness 140 Case magazine 3 catholicity 90–1 Christian ethics 55–6, 103–4 christology 21, 34, 47–52 church as catholic community 90–1 and culture 58–60 as eschatological community 91–2 as missionary community 88–90 and the world 162–3 city and the Bible 253–7 classical theism 28–35, 43–4 clerical paradigm 121 climate change 231–9 compassion 240–1 consciousness 222 contextual theologies 37, 67–73, 76–9 conversion 197–8 creative imagination 191–2 creative participation 188–90 creativity 181–4 creativity as divine prerogative 184–8 Darwinism 229–30 deconstruction 183 downward causation 219–20 ecclesiology 53–5, 91–2

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education and the individual 123–6 emergence 214–16 eschatology 1, 49, 91–3, 197 ethics 9, 55, 110–11, 121 evangelicalism 73–6 freedom 31 future of humanity 2, 4, 8–10, 169–70, 174–9 Geological Society of London 231 global Christianity 45–7, 63–4 Global South 249–50 globalization 53–60 glocal theologies 46–9 God character of 27–32 as emergent 225–7 as love 40 gospel 2, 4, 6, 9, 13, 15, 17, 22–4, 35, 45, 47–9, 52, 54, 63, 67, 72, 76–7, 89, 91, 93, 103, 113, 128–9, 132, 142, 152, 159, 174–6, 212, 242, 259 grace and nature 141–2, 148–9 Great Commission 54 hermeneutics 24, 93–4 Holy Spirit 19–20, 146, 148–9, 161, 176, 189, 191, 196, 207–10 identity 171–4 imagination 8, 10, 197–200, 243–5 immanence of God 225 immutability 40–1 impassibility 40 indigenization of theology 66–70 intertextuality 48 Jesus and the city 256–7 crucifixion of 33, 95, 154–5, 175, 178, 199–207, 210 resurrection of 14, 61, 89–90, 92–3, 205–7, 212, 242–3, 260 justice of God 60–1

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290

Subject Index

Korean Protestantism 65–6 liberation movements 35–7 means of grace 24–6 metanarratives 169–70 metaphysical theism 1 metaphysics 20, 32–5 migratory movements 250–1 missionary community 88–90 modernity 8, 117–18 moral formation 124 narrative apocalyptic 94–5 cosmic 95–6 salvation-historical 93–4 natural theology 16 neighbourliness 239–42 Nestorianism 65 New College Lectures 3–4 New Jerusalem 258–61 objectivity and subjectivity 148–9 Open theism 31–2 paideia 152 Pantheism 223–7 Pelagianism 42 phronesis 2 Positivism 139–41 post-Christendom church 6, 83–5 postmodernism 8, 183–4 practical reason 2, 105–13 preaching 23 predictability 217–19 problem of evil 39–40 prophetic theology 161 propositional theology 156 prudence 92, 240–1 public square 56–7, 116–17 Public Theology 56–8

sacraments 18 salvation history 93–4 science and theology 213–14 scriptural authority 24–5 Scripture 21, 25 senses and revelation 142–4 sola Scriptura 25 strangers 249–53 sub-creation 192–6 supernatural 74 Systematic Theology 1–2, 82–4, 96–7, 102–3 theodicy 29, 39–41 theological autonomy 138–9 theological foundations 17 theological method 151–65 theological narrative 93–6 theology as art 154–6 and attention 120–35 and the church 81–2 as contextual 37–9 defined 13–15 and drama 198–206 as dramaturgy 156–7 as a means of grace 24–5 and metaphors 157–8 and philosophy 139–41 as practical science 100–1 as prophecy 158–65 and public education 117–23 as science 152–4 and Scripture 162 as wisdom 151–2 and words 137–9 ‘the world’ 187–8 triune God 14–16, 22, 43–4, 159–61

quantum mechanics 218, 220–1

understanding through faithful imagining 205–12 United Nations Human Settlements Programme 247 urban divides 247–9 urban pathologies 249–51 ‘urbicide’ 252

reason 144–8 reductionism 216 reductionism and predictability 217–19

Wissenschaft 119–20 word of God 18–19 worship 163–4

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