Theology II

It is now time to dig a little deeper.

The last post in which I began to address the question of theology I did a quick run through of the history of theology (or perhaps some might think that ran over might be more appropriate). I ended both with a quick critique of modern theology and I began to hint at a different kind of theology. Now it is time to deepen that critique and to begin moving us towards where we might need to go. First we have to know where we are. More importantly, in theology, we have to begin by thinking about how we know anything in the first place.

One of the most important aspects which we need to understand about modern theology is its epistemology. Epistemology is basically the academic word which asks the question of how do we know what we know, how can we claim something is true? At its heart there are two questions. The first is simply the question of reality, simply put “what is the nature of reality” and the second is the question of truth which basically asks “what is our relationship and to that reality” especially in terms of what we say and do.

Science can provide a good example for this. Science begins by narrowing its epistemological interest to the physical world. This is important. It doesn’t say there isn’t a reality beyond the physical, it just says that it cannot look into that reality. So science begins by answering the reality question by saying that the reality it concerns itself with is something which is a part of our physical world. In contrast a neo-platonic (an old Greek world view) would see reality as a reality of forms, something separate from the physical world with the physical world being a poor reflection of REALITY. Science also begin by assuming that the physical world is relatively consistent and that since we are also physical beings we can interact with this physical world. This allows science to then go out and test the physical world to find these consistent patterns. This is science’s answer to the Truth question. Reason is used as a means of developing our ways of understanding what is discovered in our physical reality. What is important to note is the reason is always secondary and not the determiner of what is true. What is discovered in experiments, that is in our interaction with the physical world, is what determines what is true. This is what allows recent physics to hold as true an understanding of reality that defies reason and logic. Since experiments show that one thing, an electron, can be both a particle and a wave (two different things), through it defies reason, it is still considered true.

This scientific tangent is important as I will later explain in my next theology post. To begin with it is important to simply open up the question of epistemology for theology. In other words how does theology understand the reality it is trying to know (God and our relationship to God) and how does theology understand its relationship to this reality, in other words how does it claim to be true?

Modern theology has been largely shaped by two different epistemologies, coherence and correspondence epistemologies. A coherence epistemology is basically an epistemology of rational logic. It believes that reality (for theology the reality of God and our relationship to God) is a reality which exists as a rational whole. This view is deeply related to the world view of the Greeks and neo-Platonists who believed that reason or rationality is the underlying true reality of existence and thus reason is able to show the truth of existence including how the different aspects of reality connect and are related. So reality is a rational reality, and we can then know this reality through reason and thus know the truth. This is the basic epistemology of modern systematic theology which basically says that reason can help us to understand the different theological concepts and how they relate to each other, thus giving us the theological truth which is universal since it is based on a universal reason. Truth is then determined by the relationship between these concepts and how they correspond to each other. This is also the epistemology of many conservative/fundamentalist theologies which often rely on a very tight rational system to fortify their understanding of both scripture and God.

Correspondence epistemology basically sees reality as existing as a part of the world and a statement is considered true depending on how accurately it describes that reality or in terms of how that statement relates to that reality. The key questions, especially for theology is how does one know if one is describing that reality accurately and what is the relationship between a statement (or expression of truth) and that reality. In theology this has taken many different forms. Some have given it a ecclesiastical (church) spin by saying that what the church says is true. Some have given this an historical spin, basically if you can trace the line back, the farther back it goes the closer it is to the truth (both the historical critical folks and the traditionalist often fall into this category). Some give this a biblical spin and they claim that there is a simple correspondence between the words found in the bible and the reality of God. Others give this a confessional bend and say that the creeds or their church’s confessions are equivalent to the truth. Others give a special person bent, and they look up to some person who they see as specially endowed to know the truth, whether it is Martin Luther, or a Pope, or Calvin, some saint, theologian or their pastor and they say what ever that person says corresponds to the truth.

Increasingly I have come to believe that how both of these espistemologies have come to be used in modern theology, has caused profound damage to the Christian faith and simply no long can hold up to basic of scrutiny.

Theological a coherence epistemology just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because of two theological realities. One the one side God’s transcendence and on the other side rests God’s revelation, incarnation and imminence. For a coherence theology to work it has to fit together like a great system of tinker toys (Thanks Dian Butler-Bass for the illustration). You need concepts which are understood and you need clear ways of connecting them. This is a problem because one of the basic understanding of God is God’s transcendence. Namely God is a lot bigger then what any of our concepts can hold. This was demonstrated by Augustine when his best attempt at understanding the trinity was shown to him to be like holding the whole ocean in his hands. While the modern turn to the subject as knower tempts us to believe that our concepts can know the reality of God, this will always be idolatry, namely confusing something of creation as being the creator. What ever we can say of God, God will always be infinity more. This makes the building a system impossible, for if each concept is incomplete, how it connects or doesn’t connect will always be beyond our understanding. For what in our reason may appear incompatible (as an infinite God and a finite person once seemed) God might just bring together to be in fact one.

God’s incarnation takes the problem of systematic theology further. Secular philosophy has long since thrown coherence epistemologies on the trash heap unless one escapes into idealism (the realm of ideas is what is truly reality). This happened first through Kierkegaard who responded to Hegel’s great philosophical system with the critique that it left out the particularities of existence. In other words even the greatest of systems cannot account for the sheer multiplicity and the freedom present in the existence we encounter in actual lived lives.

The systematicians fell again, this time in their analytic form to the critique of Wittgenstein who saw that since their were systems to themselves, they could do little more then extrapolate from meanings that they already contained and follow rules made up by the society that created them or already assumed by the system. Basically to have a logical system, the system must rest on presumptions which form the building blocks of the system. The problem is that those assumption either be supported by the system itself (which means that you end up with a meaningless loop which in simple form is A→B→C→A). The other option is to have it rest on presumptions outside the system, which simply means that the question of what is true has been moved beyond the system and we are thrown into another epistemology anyways. Either way the most important questions, such as questions of ethics and for that matter theology, become simply things that coherence cannot answer.

The one way to escape this is to escape to the real of ideas and be a true idealist. Which means that it is not the reality of the world which is real, but rather the realm of ideas and pure reason is what is truly real, and thus where truth is found. For theology this is impossible, though it has tried. For centuries theology often sought to escape this world by adopting the neo-platonic view which saw the world as just corrupt, and something to be escaped. God was separate. God as a being of pure reason, and thus from rational contemplation the truth of God could be grasped. From this has flown many world hating, earth consuming and people destroying theologies. While philosophers might still flee to this ideal realm, theologians cannot because of God’s simple and devastating critique of it all, God being born as a baby named Jesus.

In Jesus God was not found in some separate world of ideas, God was born in the particularities of a baby. God is revealed not by escaping from this world, but by God’s creation of this world and God’s coming into the world and even God’s death in this world. And this same Jesus pronounced the Kingdom of God, not as something far off, but as something near, amongst us and within us. Lutherans call this the theology of the cross. It ties us forever to see God revealed in the midst of creation.

So for theology when the systematizes come with their systems of theology, their concepts are shown as empty idols in the face of a transcendent God. When they comes claiming an empire of universal truth, the voice of Kierkegaard is heard with so many others whether they are the poor of liberation theology, women, post-colonials or simply anyone who comes one by one and says I have seen God in my life and what you say doesn’t fit, the systems fall. God is revealed in God’s incarnation and imminence. When faced with the brokenness of our lives and our world their inability to transform is laid bare, while the ideas may cohere, what is needed is not logic but a love which can heal.

While studying theology systematically, that is taking the time to move through, study and question its many concepts has great merit as a practice, we should not confuse it with truth.

While correspondence theologies bring us much closer they too are also almost beyond repair.
Correspondence epistemology basically says that what is real is the world around us that we are a part of. Correspondence epistemology sees truth as existing when there is an equivalence between what is said about that world and the reality of the world that exists.

This is the epistemology that most modern people, and most modern religious people work from. We believe that our theology is true if what we say about God corresponds with the reality of God. The problem emerges in the details. These problems begin with the relationship between what we say and the reality of the world. Lets face it God is not something where we can sit back, take a look and simply describe. This raises for us the question of what is the relationship between what we say and the reality of God. In other words how do we know what we say accurately describes God?

There are several traditional answers. One answer simply says that it is the unbroken apostolic tradition which can give us these answers by providing an unbroken link from person to person back to Christ who is the full revelation of God. The very world apostolic makes this link problematic. We must remember that there was not just one apostle. It is clear that each of them had a different view and understanding of Christ. Thus not only our different books of scripture, but even the stories of Paul and Peter , amongst others disagreeing. There is also the telephone problem. Yep that game where one things is said and it is passed from person to person until everyone hears the what the last person hears and everyone laughs. Now imagine playing that game over 2000 years, over vastly different cultures, with some links being far from being beyond question (just Goggle the banquet of the chestnuts or perhaps ask Galileo). Do not get me wrong. The tradition which has been passed down has great capacity for expressing truth, where we fail is when we make it the determiner of Truth. Context changes the meaning of what is said. Yelling fire in a house caught on fire is very different from yelling fire to a firing squad, just as driving a car means something very different in 1908 and 2008 when we now face global climate change.

Another claims says that the words of the bible correspond to the truth of God. Once again I am quite convinced that the bible can reveal God, the question though is which words and how should I interpret them? The bible says many things. There are after all four Gospels, there are two stories of creation. Further since its very beginning it has been recognized that the bible should not be read just literally, rather in one passage there can be a moral metaphorical meaning and beyond that an allegorical reading that reveal the reality of God. To claim only a literal reading robs the bible of its depth. Further, as most people who have read the bible over time soon discover, a passage that at one point meant to them one thing, years later speaks to them quite differently. As we change, and as we learn and grow, what we can hear from scripture changes. Which version is true? Which version corresponds with God? What is even more interesting is that when someone claims to speak the bible’s truth, whether they are a Christian fundamentalist or a historical critic what often becomes clear is that in stead of some universal truth, what is more often shown is simply how their own methods, or personality has read scripture. Have you not noticed that the Jesus of the historical critic and the fundamentalist has a strange tendency to become quite similar to the preacher of truth. The reality is that as soon as we read it, as soon as we exegete it, as soon as we preach it, the bible becomes something of the person doing the reading. The truth that it claims is once again the truth of the subject who speaks. While God is often revealed in this, to confuse their or our speech with God’s is to again make the fatal mistake of turning God in to a human creation.

There is another theory of correspondence which is quite close to this. It occurs when in the face of the great unknowing of God we turn to a person who we trust to some how grasped a truth which we can not. Whether that person is Martin Luther or a Pope, a saint or a preacher or even a parent. Any version of this leaves one big question, how is it that this person has come to have this special access to truth that other have not? In other words it begs the question of epistemology . Once again we have moved truth from God to a person and slipped into idolatry.

All of these fall into a further problem. One that is imbedded in language itself which makes a simple correspondence an impossible dream. The nature of langue is that when a word is spoken it always acts to both reveal and conceal. When I say the word ocean whether it is out our window or in your imagination you are able to see a great body of water. At the same time though, in order for you to see that water the word ocean has had to conceal much more. The water invisibility rising and falling again on land, the many fish in it depth, the child playing on one of its distant beaches, the bacteria floating on its surface, the sense of peace (or great fear) it inspires, . . . each of these are a part of that great body of water. All together they are to overwhelming to understand. All language is an act to bring one aspect of reality into focus, by pushing into the background everything else. Language does not simply describe or correspond, rather language is always an act which, in its revealing and concealing, allows the reality of the world to appear and be meaningful.

With this we are pointed towards an epistemology much more appropriate for theology. Already this post is far to long. So you will have to wait for theology III.

The summary is simply this. Modern theology has deceived us. It has relied on an understanding of epistemology and the truth which believed that as humans (subjects) we can know the truth. In an age when people have yearned to know the truth, both liberal and conservative theologies have fought to make their claim to truth win out. The conservatives have one, largely because they have yelled their claim to truth most loudly with the greatest tone of certainty. Unfortunately all of this has slipped into idolatry. We have confused our knowledge with the truth of God and thus we have created an idol of God in our mind. Whether it is the reason of coherence’s systems or the church, scriptures, confessions or creeds of correspondence’s claims. We have missed the point. Theology is not about having the truth of God. Theology is about being guided and telling the story of our journey as God embraces us with God’s love and mystery. The Hebrew word for knowledge implies relationship. It is this ancient understanding of epistemology which is now our task to reclaim.

Yes, I know far too long for a blog post.