(From In The Beginning ... Creativity by Gordon D. Kaufman)
"The maker and father of this universe it is a hard task to find, and having found him it would be impossible to declare him to all mankind .... If then, Socrates, in many respects concerning many things-the gods and the generation of the universe--we prove unable to render an account at all points entirely consistent with itself and exact, you must not be surprised. If we can furnish accounts no less likely than any other, we must be content, remembering that l who speak and you my judges are only human, and consequently it is fitting that we should in these matters accept the likely story and look for nothing further."
Plato, Timaeus
PREFACE
I begin with a paraphrase of the opening verses of the Gospel of John's "In the beginning was creativity and the creativity was with God, and the creativity was God. All things came into being through the mystery of creativity; apart from creativity nothing would have come into being."
For a good many years I have been speaking and writing of God as creativity rather than creator (more recently as serendipitous creativity). It has seemed to me impossible--in this age of cosmological and evolutionary thinking, which emphasizes an understanding of our universe as having come into being in and through a Big Bang some 14 or 15 billion years ago--to make sense of the traditional defining idea of God as "creator of the heavens and the earth." By 1975, with my book An Essay on Theological Method, I had come to the conclusion that all theological ideas--including the idea of God--could best he understood as products of the human imagination, when employed by men and women seeking to orient themselves in life. This freed me to experiment with a variety of ways of thinking of God, humanity and the world more congenial to modern/ postmodern consciousness about these matters than were (as it seemed to me) the more traditional formulations. But it was not until the publication of my book In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology (Kaufman 1993a) that I was able to set out in some detail the major problems I had with traditional Christian thinking about these matters, together with my own constructive proposals addressing these problems.
Many have expressed interest in my theological reconstructions, and many have also raised serious questions about my proposals. In a number of articles in recent years I have sought to clarify some of the ambiguities and difficulties in these proposals as Well as to develop them further. In the course of these activities I was led to reflect more fully on just what it might mean to think of God not as a personal being who had created the world and everything in it, and who continues to work creatively in and upon that world, but rather as neither more nor less than just this creativity itself (however that is to be understood) manifest throughout the vast cosmos as we today think of it. Particularly awe inspiring to humans, of course, has been the creativity manifest in the emergence of life on planet Earth with, on the one hand, its evolutionary expansion in countless directions and, on the other hand, the painfully slow evolutionary developments that at long last brought us humans--creatures capable of becoming consciously aware of this magnificent panorama of which we ourselves are part--into being, creatures who can and do stand in awe and gratitude before the serendipitous creativity that has brought all this forth and has given us life.
In this book I seek to explore more fully than I have in the past what it means to speak of all this as a manifestation of creativity: what we can say about this creativity how we can think about it, and why it has seemed to me appropriate and illuminating to think of this creativity as God--to think of God as nothing more not less than precisely this creativity. These are complex and difficult matters, and it is not until the concluding chapter of this book--chapter 3, "In the beginning . . . Creativity"--that they can be taken up directly. The earlier chapters, including the prologue, are intended to provide a context for, and are thus preparatory to, the exposition in chapter 3. These preparatory chapters Were, for the most part, written before chapter 3 was clear in my mind. The ideas to be found in them were themselves also preparatory in that they present some of the steps on my path to this larger picture; they have, however, been reworked and edited for this book. They do not constitute a tight argument culminating in chapter 3 but they do present snapshots, one could say, of scenes along the path to that chapter. In this way they set out a number of contextual matters about which readers of chapter 3 need to be aware in order to understand what is going on there.
The prologue, entitled "The Word 'God,'" sketches the broad historical background and context of this book. Francis Fiorenza and I published this essay (in a slightly different form) in the book Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Kaufman and Piotenza 1998). It sets the stage for chapter 3 (as well as chapters 1 and 2) by recounting briefly the origins of our word "God," and some of the history of its development and employment during the past four thousand years. The meaning of this word is extraordinarily complex (as we today receive it). Fiorenza and I have attempted to make this clear by presenting a quick sketch of the interplay and interconnectedness of three quite different "strands" in its meaning, strands clearly visible in its history throughout the past two thousand years. In its various current uses the word"God" continues to bear all three of these strands of meaning, and we will not understand aright the many quite diverse possibilities for further development in the meanings and uses of this word, if we are not fully aware of this complexity. There simply is no single right or correct meaning--no "essence"--of the word "God." As the prologue shows, it has been open to a great variety of uses and interpretations, and those who wish to think clearly about how it can or "should" be used today--and what we "should" take it to mean today--must be prepared to give reasons for their preferences; no one is in a position to take for granted that they know definitively what the word "God” means and that their use of this word should therefore be assented to by all other English speakers
These are important points to have clearly in mind while reading the other chapters of this book, because these chapters advocate and argue for a somewhat new and distinctive meaning--for Christian theology--of this word. I have designated this background presentation of the meaning of "God" as a prologue to the argument of the book (rather than its first chapter) because this material basically clears the air of certain misconceptions that might get in the way of understanding what is going on in this book. The argument in this prologue is complex and extended, and for this reason some readers may prefer to move directly into chapter 1, taking up the material in the prologue at some later point in their reading.
Chapter 1, "Todays Evolutionary/Ecological World and the Theological Structure of Christian Faith," is the beginning of the books argument. This chapter briefly sketches a significant dissonance between traditional Christian understandings of humanity in the world under God and today's evolutionary/ ecological thinking.
But it falls short of setting out a full presentation of the main reasons for calling into question this Christian thinking (what is designated in this chapter as the theological structure of traditional Christian faith). It falls short, in the first place, by not taking into account the great variety of Christian faithing, and by being so very brief in what it does present. And it falls short, in the second place, by moving so quickly and sketchily (in order to introduce my theological proposals) into a presentation of three terms that I have found useful in my constructive work: humans as biohistorital beings; the widespread serendipitous creativity manifest, in the cosmos as conceived today, which provides a promising way of thinking of God today; and the notion of cosmic, evolutionary, and historical trajectories or directional movements that have emerged spontaneously in the universe at large and on planet Earth in particular, and through which the consequences of the divine creative activity in the world become visible to us humans. It is, of course, impossible to deal properly with these massive issues in the course of a single chapter, though the brief presentation there should give readers some sense of the issues with which this work is concerned. Readers who want a larger and fuller argument on these matters should look to my book In Face of Mystery (Kaufman 1993a).
This chapter also focuses on one of the manor issues that theologians must today take into account, namely the (partial) responsibility of Christian thinking, attitudes, and practices for the current ecological crisis. After sketching briefly some of the problems that our modern/ postmodern ecological ways of thinking raise with respect to some traditional Christian ideas and language, the chapter suggests (with the aid of the three concepts mentioned above) that a different, more ecologically sensitive way of understanding Christian faith and Christian thinking about humanity in the world under God is available to us and should be considered. In this way chapter 1 introduces the reader to the major issue to be addressed in this book, namely how shall we think about God today?
Chapter 2, then, "Cn Thinking of God as Serendipitous Creativity," focuses the project of the book further by briefly elaborating my specific proposal that We think of God as the serendipitous creativity manifest throughout the cosmos (rather than as the Creator of the World and all that is in it). This chapter (an earlier version published as Kaufman 2001a) was Written as a kind of quick introduction, on the one hand, to my proposals about how we should imagine God today, and, on the other hand, as a brief answer to some of the more severe criticisms of these proposals. Like Chapter 1, it does not provide a full argument on the issues taken up (fuller accounts can be found in Kaufman 1993a, 1995, and 1996a), but it does directly present my central proposal about how we should think of God today, and it responds briefly to some of the questions that may arise, especially for readers encountering this proposal for the first time. In this way it introduces some of the central issues that the book is intended to address, thus putting the reader in a position to move on to chapter 3, where an enlarged discussion of what it means to think of God as creativity, to think of creativity as God, is to be found. I shall not summarize the content of that chapter here.
Despite the extended time that I have reflected on the ideas now presented in chapter 3, I continue to find myself somewhat uncertain about what to make of them. I sent copies of an earlier draft of this chapter to a number of friends Whom I thought might be interested in it, asking them to be severe in their criticism, pointing out what they took to be major problems with it but also what positive values there might be in pursuing it further. I got eight responses, some of them enthusiastic about the project, others quite critical of it. These comments were all very valuable, enabling me to improve the text in many ways as well as to avoid a number of serious mistakes, and I am grateful for the time and effort my friends put into their responses. Chapter 3, as it now stands, is a much better piece than I could have made it simply on my own. Though I am still somewhat uncertain about what all this comes to theologically I have decided that it should he published as a kind of experiment in thought.
The book concludes with an epilogue on the development of my theological thinking. A few years ago I was asked to present an intellectual autobiography at one of the meetings of the Highlands institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought. Afterward several persons told me that the statement presented there enabled them to understand better what I was attempting to do theologically than anything else of mine they had heard or read, and they urged that it be published. I continued to Work on it, expanding somewhat from what was originally presented, and in clue course it was published in the American journal of Theology and Philosophy (Kaufman 2001b). Since this piece sketches the path that led to the conclusions set out in this new book, making some excerpts from it available here to readers should be helpful.
This book is a Work in progress. It proposes a way of thinking about God significantly different from most traditional ideas, though it retains and builds upon the central motif in that traditional thinking, that God is the creativity that underlies and grounds all that is. I present my formulations here as an option to be considered as we search for ways to bring this symbol at the heart of most Western religious thinking and activity into more intimate and vital relation with todays modern/ postmodern understandings of the world, and human existence in the world. Only if we can continue to see God as active in the world as we know it, and thus active in relation to us humans living in this world, will it he possible for us to orient ourselves, and significantly order our lives, in relation to God--that is to live with a robust faith in God.
Prologue
The Word “God”
The word "God" is one of the most complex and difficult in the English language, a Word rich with many layers and dimensions of meaning. It is full of problems and difficulties--for religious believers as well as unbelievers--and is susceptible to many sorts of interpretation. "God" is a word known and used (in one way or another) by everyone who speaks English: a Word used in everyday exclamations of surprise as well as in religious meditation, in cries of despair as well as in worship, in curses as well as in prayers. "God" is the term used more often than any other in the language to name the ultimate in reality and value and meaning for humans, but it has also been employed frequently in thoroughly dehumanizing Ways. It is not possible, of course, to explore all the complexity and richness of the meanings and uses of the term "God" Within the compass of this prologue. The most that can be presented here is a sketch that suggests some of this intricacy of meaning along with some of the reasons for it.
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This historical survey, written with Francis Scliiissler Fiorenza, was originally published (in a slightly different version) as Kaufman and Fiorenza 1998.
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There have been many studies of the idea of God characteristic of this or that historical period, or found in the work of one or another philosopher or theologian. But comprehensive attention to the way in which this symbol itself developed in the course of the past four thousand years or so, its enormous influence on human life and culture throughout that period, and its continuing significance today is scarcely to be found. For some, perhaps, it is simply assumed that "God is dead," and therefore it is no longer necessary to attend carefully to this symbol (even though it obviously still has great power in popular religion); others, who count themselves as "believers" in God, may take one or another more or less traditional understanding so much for granted in their own personal lives that it does not occur to them that this ambiguous, complex, much contested symbol requires careful study in its own right. It might be thought that the guild of professional theologians pursues investigations of the term "God" like those sketched in this prologue, but that is not the case. Most theologians concentrate their attention largely on explication of symbolizations and interpretations found in one particular religious tradition (or a relatively narrow family of religious traditions); the enormous diversity and complexity that this symbol actually carries in our languages and cultures is, in consequence, rarely regarded as of central importance for their work. Despite its continuing importance in human life, serious study of this term is hard to find. This prologue suggests what might be involved in such study.
I. Linguistic and Biblical Backgrounds
The English language word "God" (spelled with a capital G and with cognates in other Indo-European languages) functions most commonly as a proper name: God is one on whom humans can call in a time of desperate need; God is the creator of the world and of all that is in it, the protector and savior who provides for creaturely wants and who sustains women and men undergoing evils of all sorts; God is one to whom humans should give thanks for the many blessings of life. In the major Western religious traditions, God is the central object of worship and the ultimate court of appeal in all major crises of life.
But who or what is this "God"? According to the Oxford English Dictionary (O.E.D.), the proper name"God" (as used in English speech and writing) is linguistically derived from earlier uses (usually indicated by a lowercase g) in which the word designates a "superhuman person (regarded as masculine . . .) who is worshipped as having power over nature and the fortunes of mankind; a deity" (O.E.D., 1971, 1:l168). "Deity," in turn, is defined as the "estate or rank of a god; godhood; godship .... The divine quality character, or nature of God" (675). The discussion begins here with “God” as a proper name since "throughout the literary period of English [this has] been the predominant" usage, and what had been "the original heathen sense" of the word came to be "apprehended as a transferred use of this ‘a god' in this View is a supposed being put in the place of God, or an imperfect conception of God." In "the specific Christian and monotheistic sense" of this Word, which has long been standard in written English, the name "God" has designated, the "One object of supreme adoration; the Creator and Ruler of the Universe," and it was often used "in contexts where the One True God is contrasted with the false gods of heathenism" (1168). As these quotations from the O.E.D. suggest, the text of the Bible has been the principal source of the conceptions of God that have dominated spoken and written English, and radical departures from biblical notions (Whether in reflective philosophical or theological works, or in esoteric [religious or other] Writings)--though often incorporating metaphors, images, and concepts drastically different from any found in the Bible--nevertheless have always (in significant respects) depended for their intelligibility in English speaking cultures on the force of the basic biblical images and conceptions.
The Bible is a collection of Writings produced over a period of at least two millennia and as such includes many different images, concepts, and Ways of thinking about what is referred to there as "God." Though the conception of God that dominates biblical texts as they have been appropriated in English language usage is monotheistic, traces remain of earlier polytheistic and henotheistic uses out of which biblical monotheism gradually emerged. During the early period, when the tribes of Israel lived a nomadic form of life, God was understood as the god of the tribe. A plurality of gods was envisioned, as suggested, for example, by reference to "the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor" (Gen. 51:53) The first commandment also presupposes this view: "I am Yahweh your God . . . you shall have no other gods before me" (Exod. 2OZ2~3; Deut. 5:6-7); this commandment does not dispute the existence of other gods, but demands exclusive veneration of Yahweh by the Israelite tribes. A god (El) of this sort was usually associated with a particular location and its traditions. The development and spread of the Sinai traditions led to an understanding of God as "Yahweh," the local god of Mt. Sinai who was honored by Kenites and Midianites. In the later exilic and post»exilic periods, the belief in God as creator became established, as Israel articulated its convictions about Yahweh in confrontation with the cosmogonic notions of new cultural and religious environments. Thus, the claim ofYahweh's exclusiveness eventually developed into Israel's monotheism.
In English-language Bible translations the image/concept"Lord" is used most frequently (much more frequently than "God") to characterize God; in many versions of the biblical text this term is used to translate"Yahweh"--a name that traditional Jews have regarded as too holy to pronounce. This dominant use of "Lord" (a title rather than a name) to refer to God connects directly, of course, with the O.E.D.'s basic characterization of God as the "Creator and Ruler of the Universe." Many other images and concepts, which deepen and expand the notion of God the Lord--nearly all of them male-gendered--are also to be found in the Bible. Some of these are essentially extensions of the notion of lord (king, mighty one, creator, father, shepherd); others, however, bring in strikingly different metaphorical meanings (the first and the last, the most high, the holy one, spirit, love). For the most part, the Bible presents readers with an essentially anthropomorphic image/concept of God: God is sometimes pictured as having arms and legs, eyes and ears, a nose, a mind, a will; God has feelings of anger, kindness, vengeance, mercy; Gods actions are purposive and creative, and they manifest righteousness and justice, faithfulness, strength of will, loving kindness, care for Gods creatures, a strong commitment to keep promises made in covenants with them. In short, God is presented as an all»poWerful, all knowing moral agent who has brought the world into being and who is continually Working in that world--especially with men and women--to carry out the purposes for which it was created.
These largely anthropomorphic images are, however, significantly qualified by a number of profoundly abstract metaphors that give the biblical image/ concept of God its sense of utter difference from the human, its sense of overwhelming authority and power-that is, that enable this symbol to refer to deity (as contrasted with all finite realities). God is portrayed as saying, for example, "1 am the first and 1 am the last" (lsa. 4426; cf. 48:12, 41:4; Rev. 1:17, 2:8, 22:13); God is said to be the reality "in [which] we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28), a reality present everywhere (apparently at all times), not only in heaven above or"at the farthest limits of the sea" but even"in Sheol" (Ps. 139:8), the last place of the wicked and the dead; God is frequently referred to as the "l\/lost High"; God is presented as having created the heavens and the earth, as being the ultimate source of all that is. None of these expressions and conceptions are anthropomorphic or anthropocentric, human like, human-centered (although the activity of creating is depicted in anthropomorphic terms in Gen. 1 and 2); all are quite abstract, so much so that, taken simply by themselves, they present no specific content at all. What they express is Gods unsurpassability, Gods uniqueness. God is eternal, a uniqueness of an entirely different order from that of any finite being.
In consequence, what would otherwise appear to be quite straightforward anthropomorphic or anthropocentric locutions frequently become qualified in rhetorically powerful ways: "For as the heavens are higher than the earth [says the Lord), so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isa.55:9). God's profound incomprehensibility to humans thus becomes an important theme. In the New Testament, for example, Paul writes that God "has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses. ... Who ... are you, a human being, to argue with God?" (Rom. 9:18, 20; cf Job 38~42). And jesus is reported to have reminded his followers that many of God's activities are not what humans would regard as morally discriminating: “your Father in heaven . . . makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous" (Matt. 5:45) It is often suggested in the Bible that no one ever has direct or immediate contact with or experience of God: in John's Gospel (1:18) and again in 1 John 4:12, it is stated flatly that "No one has ever seen God," The figure of God as portrayed in the Bible (even though in many respects quite anthropomorphically conceived) remains to very deep levels beyond human comprehension or understanding: "l-low unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" (Rom. 11:33)
In the Bible itself thus, the anthropomorphic and anthropocentric qualities so important to those who pray to and worship God are not what in fact establish Gods deity; it is, rather, those locutions which drastically qualify human-like characteristics that distinctively identify God as God. And it is their presence as essential components of the biblical image7concept of God that makes it possible for worshipers to employ this symbol in directing their feelings and thoughts and activities toward what they regard as ultimate reality power, and meaning. Nonetheless, the anthropomorphism of the biblical God and the overall anthropocentrism of the biblical story of Gods activities remain throughout, and in some Christian texts these are strongly accentuated: "God so loved the [human] world," we are told, “that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life" (John 3:16)
The biblical God has been regarded, in many quite different sociocultural contexts, as the ultimate reality and power, and thus the ultimate authority figure for humans. There have always been, however, sharp disagreements about how God is to be conceived and understood, due at least in part to the great diversity of images and concepts that (as We have seen) are used to characterize God in the Bible, and the tensions of many sorts to which this diversity inevitably gives rise. Heretics were burned at the stake or drowned, and terrible Wars were fought, over such issues; so-called unbelievers were persecuted, tortured, killed; and campaigns of enslavement and genocide were under-taken--all in the name of the holy and righteous God of the Bible. The God claimed to be the creator, sustainer, and savior of humans from all manner of evils has, on many occasions, "authorized" utterly bloodthirsty crimes of humans against each other. This God has also, of course, frequently provided the inspiration for resistance to injustice and tyranny as well as movements toward more responsible and humane patterns of human life.
II. Three Strands of Meaning in the Term “God”
We have thus far considered only one of the strands that constitute the meaning of the word“God" as it is employed in English-speaking societies-the biblical strand, which contributed the basic structure and many of the images that comprise this meaning»complex, providing it with much of its sociocultural, personal, and religious-spinitual energy, creativity, power, and authority. The Christian movement, however (the principal bearer of this symbol during the formative period of Western culture), grew into a major religious and sociocultural force largely within Hellenistic culture, and was heavily shaped in many ways-including in its use and understanding of the image/ concept"God"-by Greek and Roman (in addition to jewish)
traditions and practices. Thus the term “God”--already very complex, as we have noted--was to become much more elaborate and complicated in its strands of meaning and in its uses than has so far been suggested.
It has sometimes been supposed that the great diversity of thinking and feeling and attitudes respecting God could be sorted out and assessed by distinguishing sharply between what philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) called "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and jacob" (that is, the God of biblical traditions) from"the God of the philosophers and scholars" (Memorial in Pascal [c. 1670] 1995). But the intermixing of Greek and Hebraic traditions in Western religious history has become so intricate and mutually interconnected char such simplistic attempts to disentangle the various dimensions of meaning that this word now bears inevitably fail. Consider, for example, the uses to which the word"trinity" (a term central in Christian understanding of God) has been put. "Trinity" is not a biblical word at all but acquired its meaning originally in highly technical, theologico-political discussions of a range of terms drawn from Greek (and Latin) philosophical reflection (ousia, hypostasis, substance, essence, persons, modes, etc.).
Nevertheless, in such phrases as "Blessed Trinity" it is widely used in the liturgies and prayers of many ordinary worshipers. Similarly in the historic creeds (often given a central place in worship) technical philosophical language about"two natures" in"one person," and the like, is to be found. Not only have philosophical ideas been integrated in this way into central devotional activities and practices; in the Bible itself (as noted above) profoundly abstract notions, deeply qualifying the prevailing anthropomorphic imagery, also perform indispensable functions. Claims that Greek conceptions of God are philosophical-and hence conceive of God as immutable-while the biblical understanding is anthropomorphic and more suitable in worship are inadequate on other counts as well: they overlook the extent to which the Bible, especially the Christian writings, is itself permeated with Hellenistic cultural and philosophical views, and they fail to take note of the anthropomorphic, polytheistic images in Greek mythology Though some might still wish to separate out these various historical strands in meaning, which the symbol"God" has come to carry in Western languages and cultures, this is not likely to illuminate matters much since the word "God" itself as employed today, inevitably carries traces of all this complex weight of meaning. A more adequate approach recognizes that both anthropomorphic and philosophical ideas and images of God are to be found in every historical period in Western history--judaic, Hellenistic, and Roman antiquity as well as the medieval, Reformation, and modern periods. It is precisely this richness and intricate complexity of meaning char gives this word its continuing significance in human life and praxis.
Instead, therefore, of attempting to identify the exact historical roots of various strands of meaning borne by the word"God," three of the complex patterns of, or tensions in, meaning that have emerged in the course of Western history will be discussed here, each of which contributes significantly to the meaning(s) that “God” bears today.
The first complex is concerned with the distinction already mentioned, between (on the one hand) popular images and models for conceiving God and (on the other) more reflective and philosophical language. Some popular images seem to dominate certain periods but may not be employed much in others, and these differences are themselves often correlated with the social and political practices and beliefs characteristic of each period. Philosophical categories, attitudes, and questions also change drastically over time. Consider, for example, the enormous impact modern science and philosophy have had on reflective, as well as popular, thinking about God.
The second complex of meaning concerns the relation of language about God to the understanding of human subjectivity and creativity Whereas in antiquity it was often assumed that the reality of God is interior to, and thus directly present within, the soul (e.g., Plotinus, Augustine), in modernity this way of thinking has become both more complex and more problematic. Human subjectivity (from Descartes to Rahner) is thought of as permeated by an awareness of infinity (not"God" as such), and a critical awareness of the creative and constructive role that human language itself plays in precisely this consciousness increasingly emerges.
These developments prepare the way for consideration of our third complex of meaning: negative theology, the awareness and articulation of the inadequacy of all human language and ideas about God. This is a theme, going hack to the first centuries of the Common Era, that has reappeared in every period and found new forms of articulation in modernity/postmodernity. There have been, however, significant changes along the way which emphasis shifting from a focus on the attributes of the object of theological inquiry--God--to much more concentrated attention on the intrinsic limitations of all human knowledge.
These three complexes of meaning in concert contribute significantly to the tensions, complexity; and force of the term "God" today as Weil as to an intrinsic indeterminateness in its meaning that makes agreement on its proper specification and articulation difficult to reach.
III. The Conflict between Philosophical and Popular Images of God
The early Christian theologians appropriated Greek philosophical thinking in a very selective manner to elaborate their understanding of God. They criticized the Skeptics and Epicureans but took over elements of Stoic speech and thought about divine providence. Above all, they appropriated Platonic and neo-Platonic ideas about the divine that were regarded as useful in criticizing popular Greek and Roman mythological language. The emphasis on unity in neo-Platonic philosophy was employed in criticizing Greco»Roman polytheism, for God conceived as "one" and "unchangeable" stood in sharp contrast with popular language about the actions of various deities on behalf of particular cities, locales, or persons. The early Christians were called "atheists" because, in denying the existence of the gods of the polis, they undermined popular beliefs in Greco»Roman deities. However, this embrace of Platonic philosophy by Christians also presented some large problems. For example, the incarnation of God in Jesus meant that God changed through entering the world of time, history and matter. The attempt to understand this led to the gradual development of the concept of the Trinity (often regarded as the most distinctive mark of Christian thinking about God). Bur Christian belief in the Trinity had then, in turn, to be reconciled with the Hellenistic idea of Gods oneness.
The affirmation of the oneness of God goes back to Plato's adoption of the Pythagorean method of seeking explanation in mathematical terms. The ultimate principle of all reality order, and goodness is to be found in the origin of all numbers, the One. God, the originative source of all being, was not dependent upon any other being, and was thus the sole ultimate being, without beginning, Without change, without parts, existing from all eternity This Greek understanding was linked with the biblical God of Exodus/He Who Is" (cf Exod.3:14), in both jewish (Philo of Alexandria [20 BCE-54 CE]) and Christian theology The philosophical emphasis on oneness also had a popular political connotation since it was associated with the Roman monarchy: the one divine ruler of the universe and the one emperor on earth were seen in intimate connection. In the East, the debate about the Trinity therefore, was not only an issue about Christian orthodoxy but involved a critique of political monotheism as well.
The distinction between everyday popular usage of the term "God" and philosophical language using other terms became important in the medieval period. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) consistently replaced the popular term "God" with philosophical terminology more appropriate to his argumentation. He used such terms as summa essentia, summus spirits, and ipsum bonum to refer to the divine. This distinction between a philosophical and a popular use of language is also evident in Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). The individual "proofs" or "ways" to God's existence resulted in a philosophical principle, such as "unmoved mover” or “first cause." Aquinas concluded that these refer to "what everyone calls God."
At the same time popular thinking about God in terms drawn from the feudal social system was current even among sophisticated theologians. Anselm's classic theory of satisfaction is based upon a feudal conception of justice with its emphasis on honor and debt: the human debt to God is infinite because human sin went against the (infinite) honor of God and therefore can be satisfied only by an incarnate God. And Thomas Aquinas explained divine providence in terms of the popular imagery of a king setting goals, even though he thought of the divine causality in neo-platonic and Aristotelian conceptions. Jean de Gerson (1363-1429) not only argued that one had to keep to the traditional term"God" but also affirmed the importance of the sovereignty of God who ruled the world with the control of an absolute ruler. Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), however, underscored the inadequacy of all language respecting God, even the term "God." He argued that it is necessary to have the greatest number of descriptions, of which he preferred the terms maximum pariter et minimum and unum alisolutum (Nicholas of Cusa [1440] 1954, 1:4).
Medieval theology thus sought a synthesis between philosophical ways of speaking/ thinking and the God of revelation. But the rise of medieval nominalism, represented especially by William of Ockham (1285-1347), led to a breakdown of this synthesis. For Ockham, not only does Gods free will determine what is necessary for salvation but Gods free choice can be discerned only through divine revelation. This voluntarism provided a philosophical context for the Protestant Reformation, which emphasized the radical corruption of human nature through sin and the conviction that humans know God only through revelation. For Martin Luther (1483-1546) the causal ontological grounding of theological and philosophical speaking and thinking of God recedes in favor of an emphasis on Gods free activity, Although John Calvin (1509~1564) acknowledges a sense of the divinity within humans and the witness of creation to Gods existence, all such natural knowledge is considered confused, hindered by sin, and thus incapable of leading to true knowledge of God. The latter, to be found only in the scriptures, was available to all believers and not simply to academic theologians or spiritual mystics. The Reformers thus conceived God less in categories such as absolute simplicity or principle of unity of being and more as the Divine Monarch with a sovereign will (in keeping with the political context of the increasing power of national monarchies). Here the inscrutable will and freedom of the sovereign God, rather than the simplicity and unity of the uncreated principle of all Being, comes into the forefront of language and conceptions about God.
The religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led to the acceptance of religious tolerance as a necessity for political life. They also led to a critique of the dogmatic claims in the religious confessions (most of which were formulated largely in "popular" terms). Two movements in this early modern period, the Enlightenment and pietism, are important for our concerns here. Though pietism is often seen as a reaction to the Enlightenment, these two developments nevertheless had similar features in their thinking of God: they both emphasized religious subjectivity (either through an analysis of consciousness or through emphasis on the believers religious experience), and they underscored the practical relevance of faith. The use of more personal language about God, strongly emphasized in the Reformation period (especially in left-wing groups), steadily increased, with deism using the image of God as watchmaker and pietism employing personalistic familial metaphors. Despite these commonalities, however, sharp differences between Enlightenment and pietistic rhetoric and thinking led to a decisive split between popular imagery of God and the philosophical critique of such language. Georg W E Hegels (1770-1831) philosophy of religion attempted to overcome this, but a dualism between philosophical reflection and popular religious language became dominant in the modern period, and a great proliferation of ways of speaking and thinking of God appeared.
Although Darwinism sounded the death-knell for a natural theology of design, attempts to conceive God in philosophical categories based upon a scientific understanding of the world have continued. William ]arnes's writings on pragmatism and religion, for example, present a scientific democratic conception of religion and divinity. The Varieties of Religious Experience ([l902] 1985) points to the specific and irreducible nature of religious experience and its enlargement of human consciousness. In A Plumlistic Universe ([1909] 1977) James advances the notion of the divine as finite (as had john Stuart Mill [1806-l873]) within a pluralistic universe: "'God,' in the religious life of ordinary men, is the name not of the whole of things, heaven forbid, but only of the ideal tendency in things" (124). James regards the idea of an omniscient' and 'omnipotent' God . . . as a disease of the philosophy-shop" (James 1920, 269). In his view of the universe as pluralistic, “God" signifies a reality that is finite in both knowledge and power but calls forth an active human response; humans can cooperate with God in effecting changes in the world.
Quantum theory brought an end to the mechanistic worldview of Newtonian physics and thus encouraged the development of notions of God as in process. In contrast to the emphasis of traditional theism on the divine simplicity that entails immutability and infinity the process theisms of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) and Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) distinguish between the abstract essence of God (as absolute, eternal, unchangeable) and Gods concrete actuality, which is temporal, relative, changing, and dependent on decisions made by finite actualities. Hartshorne, moreover, claims his language about God is more biblical and personal than that evoking the God of classical theism. In Whitehead's understanding, God offers to each “actual occasion" that possibility which would be best but does not control or determine the finite occasions self-actualizing; God works by persuasion and is not in total control of the events of the world. The existence of evil in the world is thereby compatible with the divine beneficence toward the world.
In these and other similar developments there is a continual criss-crossing of popular and reflective images and conceptions nurturing and fertilizing each other, giving birth to widely different ways of speaking and thinking of God. So the meaning{s) of the word "God" have expanded in many directions, producing rich new possibilities for its employment but also much disagreement about how it is to be used, and many have begun to Wonder whether it can any longer be usefully employed, Nevertheless, the power of this symbol remains great in popular Western culture, particularly in North America, and theologians and philosophers of quite diverse commitments continue to struggle with its meaning for human life in today's world.
IV. Subjectivity and the Word “God
In the classical tradition, in keeping with the prevailing anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism of earlier conceptions and images of God, the spirituality of the soul was regarded as the avenue to knowledge of God as Spirit, and this influenced decisively the way in which the term "God" was employed (especially in "reflective" uses). This focus continues into modernity although now the emphasis is placed more on the dynamism of the human intellect, which in its striving to unify experience is taken to he the source of our ideas of God. This modern development opened the door for historical studies and the sociology of knowledge to call attention--in connection with their exploration of the social and linguistic character of all human knowing--to certain social and political features of language about God as well as to the practical consequences in human life of the diverse images employed in this language. These all have had their effects on the meaning and uses of the term "God" today.
The idea of God as Spirit, pure Being without material parts, led classical Christian authors to approach the understanding of God largely through reflection on the self In his On Free Choice of the Will, Saint Augustine (354-430), for example, holds that human intelligence is the highest and best of human attributes. This intelligence is dependent upon a reality that is higher than itself the spiritual, eternal, and unchanging God ([388-95] 1993, 2.37-1539). Since the soul is the image of God, Augustine asserts in The Trinity that the mystery of the trinity can he understood (to some extent) through analogy with the human soul: just as self-knowledge, self-memory, and loving self-affirmation are interrelated, so too are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ([400-16] 1963). The souls knowledge of itself leads to knowledge of God and to a true idea of being.
This approach to God through subjectivity, however, undergoes a decisive shift in the transition to modernity. René Descartes (1596-1650), seeking to establish knowledge upon a secure foundation, called into question everything that could be doubted until he reached an indubitable proposition: "I think, therefore I exist." Then, through establishing a criterion of truth (what is clearly and distinctly perceived) and the existence of God (as an infinitely perfect being who cannot deceive), he made the idea of the infinite the condition of the knowledge of all finite objects (since these objects are delineated as limited only in relation to this idea). Descartes's approach left the modern West with a twofold legacy: (1) a foundarionalism that equates knowledge with secure foundations and clear and distinct ideas, and (2) an emphasis on subjectivity that anchors the knowledge of God but leaves the world of nature "godless."
This decisive shift in the understanding of subjectivity's importance is connected with other cultural developments. As the Newtonian and mechanical worldview was increasingly established as the only legitimate scientific position, a move from theism to deism takes place. The terms "deism" and "theism" were originally synonymous, but "deism" came to refer to the view that the divine lacks an immediate ongoing personal relation to the world. God was often pictured as a watchmaker: once the watch was made, it ran according to its own mechanism. Having established natural laws, God does not intervene iii ways contrary to them, that is, miraculously. David Hume's (1711-1776) critique of the metaphysical view of causality and his demolition of the argument from miracles advanced a naturalistic view of the world, and in the nineteenth century Charles Darwin's theory of evolution further undercut natural theologies, with evolution providing an alternative explanation to divine teleology. These developments in the natural sciences eliminated God entirely from the order and design ofthe material world. Christian theology had long distinguished the traces of God in the sensible and material world from the image of God in the soul, but in modernity this distinction became a rupture, with the locus of God for humans restricted to subjectivity--pious subjectivity with--out objectivity.
F D. E. Schleiermachet (1768-1834) sought a post-Enlightenment understanding along this line by locating religion in human feeling, not understood as an emotion but rather as an immediate self-consciousness or a mode of experiencing oneself in relation to the totality of the universe. This religious dimension of experience became, then, the locus for language about the divine. In his On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers ([1799] 1958), he uses such terms as "universum," "infinite," "world-soul," and "All" to replace the idea of an all-powerful person. Such terms focus attention more on the unity and infinity of the universe than on a personal God (thereby picking up on widely influential ideas earlier developed by Baruch Spinoza [1632-1677]). G. W E Hegel, however, argued that both the Enlightenment critique of metaphysics and the location of language about God in religious feeling robbed the idea of God of its proper meaning: in Christianity the divine idea is the unity of the divine and human nature, not as a static structure but as a trinitarian movement of"self-othering" and self-reconciliation. Thus, what is originally present in religious belief as a "representation" and objectification becomes elevated into a (philosophical) concept that transcends the representational in its validity. God as spirit is triune, a conception of the divine that enabled Hegel to overcome dichotomized understandings of the relation between God and the world, between the infinite and the finite.
In the left-wing Hegelian movement, however, the social construction of language about the divine came to the fore, exemplified in the critique of religion found in Bruno Bauer (1809-1882), Karl Marx (1818-1883), and Ludwig Peuerhach (1804-1872). In his Essence of Christianity ([l841] 1957), Feuerhach argues that when humans attribute qualities to God, they are actually calling attention to those human qualities they consider most valuable. To affirm that God is love, for example, is to affirm that love is divine. However, by projecting these qualities onto an object other than the human species, one alienates the human species from itself as well as from the World of nature. Feuerbach thus brings out not only the constructive character of language about God but also the alienating effects of such language. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) further radicalizes the critique of religious belief in his proclamation that "God is dead" (a phrase already used by Hegel) and his critique of Christian theism as a popularized Platonism. His analysis of the"will to power" shows how theistic valuations and beliefs introduce dominative powers that alienate humans from nature and life.
In the period following World War 1, under the impact of the cultural crisis it provoked, a strong "neoorthodox" protest against these sorts of developments occurred, beginning with Karl Barth's (1886-1968) emphasis, in his Epistle to the Romans ([1918] 1933), on the "infinite qualitative distinction" (a Kierkegaardian phrase) between God and everything human. Given this understanding, Barth claimed that God could be known only through Gods own activity that is, divine revelation. Though Barth's intent was to overcome in this way the human-centeredness of theologies rooted in human subjectivity and religious experience, he accomplished this by employing a concept of God (held to be drawn from the Bible) as a fully self»conscious, volitional, self»revealing being, a supreme Subject-ironically building on central human metaphors. Thus, though neoorthodoxy criticized modern theology for its emphasis on subjectivity and its "humanization'Q,of language about God, it too mirrored this emphasis by employing the categories of modern (anthropocentrically conceived) subjectivity in its understanding of God. Whereas the medieval tradition interpreted God as the "to be of being," Barth, though seeking to demolish the modern theological emphasis on the human subject, nevertheless conceived God essentially in these modern terms.
During the same period that Barth was working out his theology of revelation in Europe, Shailer Mathews in the United States was proposing, in The Faith of Modernism (1924) and The Growth of the Idea of God (1931) that the social scientific study of religion investigate the relation between social mind-sets and religious beliefs. Mathews surveyed the idea of God through seven social mind-sets: Semitic, Hellenistic, imperial, feudal, nationalist, bourgeois, and scientific-democratic. Whereas the Semitic mind-set views Christ as a messianic king within the scenario of the world drama between God and Satan, the Hellenistic mind»set recasts the messianic expectation into the concept of the logos, Gods creative "Word." The imperial mind-set casts God as a universal emperor, the feudal mind»set sees redemption in terms of the honor due God as a feudal lord, and the nationalist mind-set envisions God as a political monarch with absolute authority. Mathews ends his survey with the scientific-democratic social mind-set. The task of theology is to understand God in a way that coheres with this current dominant way of thinking; in 1915 Mathews emphasized the democratic pattern, whereas in 1930 he emphasized the scientific pattern. His proposals made explicit the modern awareness of the interelation between human consciousness and religious language, between social mind-sets and religious beliefs. His work not only shows the extent to which conceptions of God are always built up out of metaphors at hand in the culture but also underscores the necessity for theological methodological reflection and construction to take into account the current social and political institutions and conditions, as theologians and others attempt to ascertain (that is, construct) the meaning of the term"God" in a specific historical context.
This methodological awareness of the social and linguistic conditioning of language about God came to the fore in the twentieth century in discussions of the nature of religious language. Some seek to explore what is distinctive about religious language or about "God-talk" by examining specific types of language, such as "limit" expressions; others ask whether religious language involves speech-acts that entail a specific existential commitment of the speaker as well as propositional affirmations. According to another approach religious language cannot be defined in essentialistic terms. It is a mistake, thus, to speak and think of it in any of these essentialist ways: religious language is always part of a life-praxis and can be understood only within that specific context (Ludwig Wittgenstein). Yet another approach emphasizes the openness and creativity of all metaphors: Paul Ricoeur has proposed that biblical language about God be explored in terms of the creativity of its literary forms and its metaphors, while Sallie McFague's Models of God (1987) and Gordon Kaufman's In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology (l993a) present programs of God-talk in basically metaphorical terms.
The images and metaphors used to express the divine are taken from several areas: the family and personal relations, various occupations, political life, the world of nature, modern scientific thinking. Images from the family often convey the intimacy of a personal relation (God as father, mother, friend, helper). Images drawn from occupations provide examples of particular activities that may he regarded as presenting important ways of viewing the divine (shepherd or caretaker, potter, builder, warrior, or commander). Other images are drawn from political life (king, lord, master), from nature (spirit [wind], force, power, ground), and from science (evolution, ecology field of force). The use and implications of these images may he quite diverse. Un the one hand, to imagine God as king encourages attitudes of submission and obedience (to God) in ways that the images of friend or comforter do not. Un the other hand, images of Christ as king or lord have often served to draw contrasts with totalitarian regimes, as in the anti-Nazi position of the German Confessing Church; the allegiance to the divine ruler serves, in this case, not as a source of submission but rather as a resource for resistance.
H. Richard Niebuhr has emphasized that more fundamental than the question of Gods existence is the question of the kind of God we have. In Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (1960) he points to God as a transcendence that undercuts all human idols, including church, the scriptures, and Christ. Niebuhr explicates Christian belief in the trinity by showing how it protects against various sorts of one»sidedness in life. If God is identified only as father, then one tends to see the created order in terms of the will of God (creator of that order) and its fulfillment; however, if God is identified mainly as Christ the savior, then salvation and redemption, in contrast to the present created order, are emphasized; if God is viewed exclusively as spirit, the ecstatic elements in religious life become highlighted. Here the trinity with its images of God as father, son, and Holy Spirit, has implications not only for the conception of God but also for the understanding of human life.
Contemporary feminist theology has challenged the largely male-gendered traditional image of God as father because of its reinforcement of patriarchal institutions and values. In Beyond God the Father (1973) Mary Daly not only criticizes the system of patriarchy entailed in this image but also attacks the static and dualistic metaphysics implicit in it. In seeking to overcome the inadequacies of exclusively identifying the symbol "God" with such symbols as father and lord, feminist theologians have taken different directions. Sallie McFague has sought to offer alternative images such as mother, friend, and lover (cf the classic trinitarian imagery of father, son, and holy spirit). Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, a New Testament scholar, highlights the role of the feminine Sophia-God within the Wisdom traditions of the Bible and the identification of jesus in the early strands of the New Testament traditions as the messenger of this Sophia»God, and then later with Sophia herself In a different direction, Carol Christ (see especially 1997) and others argue for the necessity of a post-Christian approach to God-language. They retrieve the image of the Goddess from non»Christian, especially pre-Christian, traditions and argue for its significance. Rosemary Radford Ruether explicates the notion of "Gaia" in relation to the understanding of God (a name that she frequently Writes as God/ess).
All of these more recent approaches ask what kind of God we have, thus exploring further the meaning and use of God»language. The increasing proliferation of metaphors and images, of course, and the growing critical awareness that each has significant limitations raise the question of the adequacy of all God-talk-an issue at the center of the tradition of negative theology to which we now turn.
V. Negative Theology and the Word “God
As reflective modes of thinking about God develop, awareness of the limitations of human knowledge of God becomes increasingly acute; already in the Bible there are poignant references to the hiddenness and inscrutability of God, as observed earlier (section I). It is not surprising, then, that early Christian writers, alongside their positive theological speaking and thinking, developed a negative theology as well. The Cappadocians, especially Gregory of Nyssa (335-394), underscored the inaccessibility of God to human knowing; the spirituality and infinity of God makes God inaccessible to human knowledge. Pseudo-Dionysius (sixth century) goes further: God's incomprehensibility does not flow from the limitations of the human mind but is a quality of God. John of Damascus in Exposition of the Orthodox Faith [c743] 1899) and Pseudo-Dionysius in On the Divine Names, and Mystical Theology ([sixth century] 1951) affirm that one can only posit negative statements about God. Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), an influential medieval jewish thinker, argues similarly: the oneness of God means not only that there is not a plurality of gods, but also that God as unique is beyond all human creatures; propositions about God are, therefore, negations ([1190] 1963, 1, 58). For both Pseudo-Dionysius and Maimonides we can affirm what God is not, not what God is; similar conclusions are reached by Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna (980-1037) and al-Ghazzali (1058-1111).
Medieval theology developed an explicit theory about the uses of analogical language in speaking of God, and this doctrine of analogy is often contrasted with negative theology in that analogy entails not only negative but also positive affirmations about God. Correctly understood, however, the theory of analogy does not so much affirm the adequacy of positive affirmations as the imperfection of all language about God; it should be seen, thus, not as rejecting but as continuing the tradition of negative theology. Thomas Aquinas, in Summa Theologiae ( [1271] 1964, vol. l, question 13) distinguishes between an analogy of attribution and an analogy of proportionality An analogy of attribution is based upon similarity between cause and effect: eating vegetables, for example, can be called healthy because it produces health. An analogy of proportionality however, points only to a proportion between two elements in realities that are to be sharply contrasted with each other. Thus, Gods understanding and wisdom are proportionate to God's being, and human understanding and wisdom are proportionate to the being of humans. This type of analogy underscores dissimilariry rather than similarity when human language and images are applied to God. God is infinite and human beings are finite and limited: no proportionality exists between God and humans. In applying propositions to God, one is indeed making an affirmation but only imperfectly and what is affirmed has to be affirmed in a way that negates and transcends the finite analogue. As Aquinas notes in the introduction to question 3 of the Summa Thoeologiae:"Now we cannot know how God is, but only how God is not; we must therefore consider the ways in which God does not exist, rather than the ways in which he does exist' The theory of analogy is, thus, close to a negative theology.
A more radical negative theology is found in the writings of the mystics. Meister Eckhart (1260-1328), for example, held that being and knowing are identical, and what has most being is most known. But from this he concludes, "Because Gods being is transcendent, he is beyond all knowledge" 1300] 1941, 142). Nicholas of Cusa takes negative theology in a speculative direction, going beyond medieval thinking with his notion of "learned ignorance. "This was not simply a Socratic not knowing but rather the assertion that one knows because one does not know. Arguing that nothing can be greater than the ‘Absolute Maximum" or less than the ‘Absolute Minimum," God is beyond all opposition, for in God these opposites coincide (coincicientia oppositorum).
In modernity, a distinctive sort of negative theology emerges. It is not so much based on the spiritual nature of God or the infinity of God's being in contrast to human finiteness as on the limits of human-reason. Immanuel Kant 1724-1784 sought to provide a firm foundation for rationality by examining the proper use of human reason within its limits. He shows that the cosmological, teleological, and ontological proofs of God's existence all presuppose an ability that the human mind does not have: to go beyond experience and give content to the idea of an absolutely necessary being. Kant's critique of natural theology is not simply that one cannot theoretically demonstrate the existence of such a being; it is the more basic claim that the very notion "existence of God" ensnares speculative philosophy in the dialectical illusion of assuming that God is the sort of object that can be characterized as "existing" The concept of God for Kant, thus, becomes a regulative idea or transcendental ideal. "What this primordial ground of the unity of the world may be in itself we should not profess to have thereby decided, but only how we should use it, or rather its idea, in relation to the systematic employment of reason in respect of the things of the world" H1781] 1929, B727). Kant thus develops a negative theology based on the limitations of human knowledge. At the same time, however, his understanding of the function of the transcendental, and of God as a postulate of practical reason and morality open the way for pragmatic and self-critical reflection on our use of language, images, and metaphors about God.
Johann G. Fichte's (1762-1814) critique of traditional theism goes further than Kant's. Fichte argues that qualifications or determinants such as substance, consciousness, and personhood are all finite and therefore cannot be applied to God. Personhood is finite, for example, since a personal subject is determined by things outside of itself and becomes conscious of itself only in relation to other fnite objects. To transfer the anthropomorphic category of personhood (an individual self-conscious self) to God goes against the infinitude of the divine. Fichtes conclusion led to misunderstanding and to the charge of atheism.
Influenced by Kant's critique of theistic metaphysics and Fichtes critique of personhood, Friedrich Schleiermacher sought to redefine the understanding of religion and the divine in his On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultural Despisers ([1799] 1958). In his Christian Faith ([1822] 1928) and Dialektik ([1811] 1976), Schleiermacher explicates the believers immediate self~consciousness as an experiencing of the self as"utterly dependent." As he goes on to note, the"whence" of this utter dependence is what religious persons and believers name God, but what a non»re1igious interpretation calls nature. In his discussion of the adequacy of religious statements about this "whence," Schleiermacher is conscious of the Kantian critique: religious affirmations are more properly propositions about the human condition than metaphysical descriptions about God or the world; the attributes of God, thus, do not refer to something specific in God but rather express our relation to God. Schleiermacher does go beyond this, however, insofar as he views the diverse divine attributes as expressing the one divine causality. ("Causality," of course, is simply the correlate of the sense of a"Whence.")
ln postmodern philosophers and theologians a more radical critique is advanced. Here it is not simply the epistemological issue that is raised, but also the onto-theological question. (Behind this postmodern challenge stands the influence of Martin Heidegger [1889-1976] with his view that the distinguishing characteristic of modern philosophy is its tendency to think of Being in terms of subjectivity and its search for an indubitable certitude [René Descartes].) The problem becomes, How does one think of God, or otherwise use the Word "God," without reducing God to a being like other beings or an object like other objects? The concern with overcoming these objectifying tendencies so characteristic of the onto-theological tradition is evident in such postmodern thinkers as Marion, Lévinas, and Derrida.
Jean Luc Marion criticizes the metaphysical conception of God as idolatry. In God without Being (1991), he argues that to think of God as the all»comprehensive concept, and as a free willing ground of everything, is idolatrous, for it fails to eliminate empirical threads from the super»sensible notion of God. Emmanuel Lévinas (1906-1995) also criticizes the Western philosophical tradition for its conception of God as a being with certain ontological qualities. For him even Western mysticism sees God as, however mysterious, nevertheless comprehensible by some elect few; this is still to conceive God anthropomorphically and fails to comprehend the otherness of God. In Totality and Infinity (1969) Lévinas uses the word "Infinity" rather than "God" to express this otherness. For him the Holocaust reveals the failure of theodicy and the God of ontology and he proposes that God is known through the ethical relation of our responsibility for others. He finds "traces" of the Good, of the transcendent Other in our responsibility for the other.]acques Derrida criticizes attempts to appeal to a negative theology and to seek to distinguish God from being, in his argument that such attempts are still onto»theologies. They continue to use the conceptuality of Platonic and neo-Platonic philosophy even in arguing that God is not being or is beyond being. Though negative theologies seek to go beyond the alternatives of theism and atheism, they are tied to an onto-theology to the extent that they seem to retain a being beyond Being, some hyperessentiality that is beyond all negation and positive predication.
Such critiques radicalize negative theology They suggest that even in its negations all negative theology is tied to an ontology that presupposes the being of the divine. We seem here, with respect to God, to end up with utter speechlessness. But we should not forget that it has been only through speaking--through uttering this enormously complex word"God" and speaking about God, and through speaking in critique of all such speaking--that We may be led to this conclusion.
VI. The Symbol “God” and the Study “ of Religion
Our sketch of these three meaning-complexes connected with Western employment of and reflection on the term "God" shows how complicated, difficult, but rich this word has been and still is. As an ultimate point of reference for all that is (and, indeed, is not), the term is intended to gather up, comprehend, and hold together all reality and experience, all possibilities and imaginings in a meaningful inter-connection that can orient human life-an intention surely transcending all human capabilities of knowing, conceiving, or imagining. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the"death" of God has frequently been proclaimed in modern times. And yet speaking the word"God, "worshiping God, thinking about God, all continue. The long history of negative theology and alongside it and coexisting with it the regular renewal of reflective positive theologies as well as much popular imagery and language about God, testifies to the continuing importance of this term. The full meaning of these conflicted Ways of speaking to and about God, evident throughout the history of God-talk, is still far from clear.
Much of this prologue has been devoted to sketching the complexity that the Word "God" has come to have in the course of Western history; it is the central, most powerful symbol to which human life in the West has been ordered and oriented. In modern times, thus, although it has become highly contested (not only among intellectuals in the universities, but in wide sectors of Western culture at large), this symbol is still very much alive. Other terms, such as the "holy" the “sacred,""divinity" the "supernatural," the "mystical," and so on, have been proposed as articulating what is at the heart of religion. None of these common nouns, however, expresses either the comprehensiveness or the specificity of meaning to which the proper name "God" adverts, with its positing of an ultimate point of reference in terms of which all realities must be understood, and its claim, therefore, that all aspects of human life (not only religious and moral practices and experiences) should be oriented in terms of this reference point. This ultimate point of reference (God) relativizes all present human practices, ideologies, and institutions, calling them all into question critically--while demanding their transformation in more humanizing and humane directions. It is not evident that the meanings and uses of this rich and complex symbol can be properly grasped through subsuming it under one or more such general concepts as those mentioned above; rather, it must be careful examined in its own right, not reduced to something else quite different.
What kind of study is required to bring this enormous complexity of meaning into proper focus? How can religion studies contribute most effectively to the exploration, understanding, and interpretation of this symbol? We suggest here the usefulness of three different approaches. Each of these can help bring into View important dimensions of the symbol "God" and the way it functions, and all of them taken together, and interconnected with each other, should produce a richer and more profound understanding than anything now available. Only an interdisciplinary "field-encompassing field" such as religion studies has the capability of pursuing a project of this scope and depth. In view of the power and significance this symbol has had in the past and continues to have, this sort of concentrated effort would seem to be appropriate.
(1) Historical, sociological, and other analytical studies of the symbol “God." One type of study that needs to be pursued much further is of the sort this essay begins to sketch: a much fuller and more careful analysis of the origins of this symbol, the various streams of tradition that have contributed to its development, and the many diverse cultural and linguistic contexts in which it has played a significant role in ordering and orienting human life. In addition to such historical studies, we need much fuller knowledge than we presently have of the way in which the word\"God" continues to function in a range of cultural contexts today There are, for example, those popular religious movements for which "God" is a central rallying cry and focus for devotion as well as for political action, movements including (but not limited to) some that are often designated as "fundamentalist" or 'evangelical.' Many persons, however, who are not directly associated with such movements, also count themselves "faithful believers" in God. What does this word mean to such believers? How do they understand the God in whom they place their faith? Why do they regard faith in God as important? I-low do they relate themselves to their neighbors who do not profess such faith? Does their faith lead them to church involvement or regular biblical study? And so on. Non-reductive sociological, psychological, linguistic, and other studies of what "God" actually means to diverse groups of modern/ post-modern people, and what importance (or lack of importance) this word has for them, are much needed.
(2) Comparative studies of “God” and "the gods." Much academic study of religion is directed today by interest in history of religions and comparative religions. Early in the last century comparative studies of the symbol "God" (and “the gods") were beginning to get under way; but for many decades these have been in abeyance, perhaps in part because of the Western bias evident in many of those earlier studies. Properly done, such studies would involve not only comparative examination of the diversity of linguistic traditions involved--their grammatical and syntactical practices and their uses of various sorts of metaphor; exploration of the differing ways in which major ordering symbols (like"God") function in these diverse traditions; and so on-but also the ritualistic, moral, and social contexts with which these linguistic practices are connected. Comparative studies of this sort should help to call into question and to challenge--Western theistic and atheistic biases tar may still operate in the studies proposed under (1) above, by introducing totally different conceptual frameworks for ordering, orienting, and reflecting on human existence and activities. One thinks, for instance, of the illumination the Buddhist notion of sunyata (emptiness) could bring to the problems posed by Western substantialist thinking about God, a way of thinking that has given rise (as we have seen) to the long critical tradition of negative theology.
These two sorts of studies taken together should bring fuller understanding of the diverse ways in which (at least some) religious symbol-systems have actually functioned in a range of sociocultural contexts, thus providing a basis for developing more adequate theories of religious symbolization than are now available. Such theories, in turn, should facilitate more disciplined examination of the alleged uniqueness of the symbol "God" as well as more adequate assessment of its actual strengths and weaknesses. Without better understanding of these issues the questions regarding this symbol posed by for example, todays growing consciousness of the significance of religious pluralism, can scarcely be addressed intelligently.
(3) Constructive work. With these various sorts of studies all in mind, a further question needs address: can (or should) the symbol "God" be deliberately reconstructed today in ways that will enable it to order and orient the lives of modern/ postmodern people more effectively? Attempts to construct imaginatively new more viable, meaningful, and self-critical ways to conceive, understand, and employ the symbol"God" in todays world comprise the central task of constructive theology (see Kaufman l993a, 1995). Theological work has always been a constructive-and/ or reconstructive (Fiorenza 1984)--activity engaged in imaginatively as women and men have had to come to terms with new contingencies, new issues, new problems. Today many different sorts of issues call into question various features of traditional (Western) understandings of God: issues posed by religious pluralism; by scientific cosmologies; by the increasing economic, political, cultural, and religious tensions between the powerful “First World," or industrialized, societies and other less powerful sectors of our global village; by the moral, intellectual, religious, philosophical, and other forms of criticism (including, most recently feminist criticism) to which the symbol“God" has been subjected in the last two or three centuries, both in the West and in parts of the world that the West colonized; and so on. These can be taken up in more deliberate and self»conscious fashion now than has ever before been feasible.
Radical, far-reaching deconstructive work, together with highly imaginative fresh construction and reconstruction, is beginning to appear in the studies of theologians of many different stripes. In due course all of this should have significant effects on the way the word “God" is understood and used in the future, though doubtless much "popular" religion will continue to resist these developments.
The significance of constructive work with the symbol "God" can be considered from another vantage point. What bearing (if any) do the various sorts of technical studies described under (1) and (2) have for the actual faith in God of thoughtful women and men in todays world-reflective members of churches and synagogues and mosques, as well as interested persons who do not have communal or institutional religious commitments? Should those involved in the academic study of religion be concerned with "practical" questions of this sort? Do religionists have responsibilities to the wider society and culture that sustains them to assist in the address of major problems faced in that society and culture? Or is the study of religion a"purely academic" exercise? The natural and social sciences, as well as some of the humanities, are drawn upon in diverse ways for the knowledge and understanding necessary to address major problems that todays societies confront. Religion studies might also have much to offer if they focused attention more directly on sociocultural problems in which religion and religious symbols are deeply implicated and if they sought to address more directly some of these matters. We think that scholars in the study of religion do have responsibilities of this kind. They ought, therefore, to be developing proposals about how the enormous confusions concerning God, and faith in or loyalty to God, might be addressed in modern/ postmodern societies.
Are some ways of thinking of God today more responsible than others? Is it important (or feasible) for modern societies to address sensitive theological questions of this sort (in view of the enormous sociopolitical power that the symbol "God" still commands)? In what ways do some of the individuals and groups that use the word "God" quite freely in fact seriously misuse it? And what sociocultural consequences does this have? Is it appropriate to speak of "proper" and "improper" uses of this word? What should loyalty to God today involve? These questions call attention to important issues that should be much more freely discussed and debated in the public square than they commonly are, and such discussions should in no way be foreclosed by governmental or ecclesiastical authorities. In American society-with its well»known "wall" separating church (or religion) and the state, though the name of God is widely invoked in contexts (often government sponsored) of 'civil religion"--surely more public attention to what is involved when the word "God" is employed is called for. More direct address of this deep theological root of public life in this society might help soften some of the hard-edged discourse becoming increasingly prominent in our public life. It is, of course, to the sorts of constructive studies mentioned in the last three paragraphs that the several chapters in this hook--especially chapter 3--are devoted.
The study of religion is one of the few disciplines that is in a position to begin addressing the problems that arise in connection with the centrality of the symbol "God" in our historical past and its continuing force in public life. But taking up this social/ cultural/ political task has rarely been considered by scholars in this field to be their responsibility, and hence studies in religion have not been organized in ways that focus directly on these matters. Religion scholars should at least ask themselves whether they may not have some distinctive responsibilities, qua religion scholars, with respect to these central problems in out society about which they are almost alone in having expertise. As Robert Bellah said years ago, "in the last analysis [humans are] responsible for the choice of [their] symbolism" (1970, 42). Religion scholars have a special obligation to help modern societies exercise that choice responsibly. In this book special attention is devoted to the question whether the symbol "God" is today functioning as effectively as it might and should--in our modern/postmodern world--and a specific proposal to address this problem is presented.
