Thursday, December 20, 2018

One Alternative To The Theistic God Is Far Too Few, One God, May Ideas of God

Before going on from where I left off yesterday morning, giving Elizabeth Johnson's thoughts on what replaces the "classical theistic" conception of God, it's probably a good thing to point out that she, along with most of those who are proposing replacing the god of theism don't believe, for a second, that their ideas are the last word on that.  Part of the idea is that God will always, in countless ways, surpass human abilities to have an even merely adequate conception of God.  The conception of God and the ways that God is spoke about will always be ever changing because as far as human conceptions of God go, that will always be ever changing. Even if God as God is is never changing human limitations will mean that, so far as people will ever think about God, that will always change.  At least that's my understanding of this way of thinking about God.

Intersection

It is at this historical juncture where speech about God is being reshaped to include intrinsic relatedness to the world, alliance with human flourishing, liberating care for the poor, and greater mystery that feminist theology joins the theological effort, intersecting with these other concerns at every point.   At the same time, feminist theology's fresh language about the mystery of God from the perspective of women's lives and its specific critique of the sexism not only of the classical tradition but also of most reconstructive efforts to date bring a care into the conversation that has not been spoken until now. 

Classical theism emphasizes in a one-sided way the absolute transcendence of God over the world.  God's untouchability by human history and suffering and the all-pervasiveness of God's dominating power to which human beings owe submission and awe.  Is this idea of God not the reflection of patriarchal imagination, which prizes nothing more than unopposed power-over and unquestioned loyalty?  Is not the transcendent, omnipotent, impassible symbol of God the quintessential embodiment of the solitary ruling male ego, above the fray, perfectly happy in himself, filled with power in the face of obstreperousness of others?  Is this not "man" according to the patriarchal ideal?  Feminist thought sees a more intrinsic connection between those characteristics of the theistic God found problematic in nineteenth and twentieth century critiques and the fundamental sexism of the symbol of this God than is usually realized.  

The same holds true for more contemporary discourse.  There is not one religious tradition or theological school existing in the world today, nor one atheistic critique of religious tradition, nor one sociopolitical arrangement nor liberating critique of such structures, nor culture of East or West that yet does justice to the full humanity of women.  Valuable as insights from contemporary theology may b, these are as yet only partial and even dangerous to the degree that they implicitly assume that me, ruling or otherwise, form a universal norm for defining humanity and for speaking about God.  What has failed to come to expression in reinterpreted religious symbol systems and theological language is the human reality of vast numbers of women:  women disbelieving or seeking meaning in the midst of secular culture;  women and their dependent children as the majority of the poor, and consequently the lifting of their voices as the "interruption within the interruption" of liberation theology;  women as bearers of the wisdom of the East; women created in the image of God so truly that their concrete reality can provide suitable metaphor for the holy mystery of God.  As theology began to respond to its tradition of exclusivity in the light of the experience of the "other half" of the human race, the so-called revolution in the concept of God takes a turn into new and unsuspected depths.  

By the time you get to the end of that passage which, in the book goes on to a long and important discourse on Feminist Theology, it's important to understand that, unusually,  the starting point for Elizabeth Johnson's feminist theology is that it is one of a number of different and new theologies that come from differing perspectives AND THAT THEY ARE ALL IMPORTANT.   It's not something that can be dismissed as people defining God as they like based on their identity - any theology that delivers a God devoid of things you probably don't exactly want is probably a theology that buys time to be seen on American TV or radio to bilk the dupes - it is all to be expected of a God too big to fit into human minds contained on one person's (or one identity's thoughts) that God would be liable to more than one interpretation. 

The theistic God that new atheists were slamming and mocking all over the media in the past sixteen or so years is not God.  It was a God constructed out of the very mixed results of trying to square the round God of the Hebrew Bible with, first Greek philosophy and, then, scientistic modernism.  And, not generally being great readers, as Richard Dawkins proved in his featherweight rant, The God Delusion, they didn't even realize that by the time they started their campaign, large parts of theology had moved on.  God as explored in Latino Liberation Theology, Black Liberation Theology, Feminist Theology, Womanist and Mujerista theology, and a myriad of others had already surpassed those limits.  Elizabeth Johnson's book Quest for the Living God devotes chapters to many of these and more theologies. 

Given that I've been focused on the Song of Mary this was something that was necessary to go into, something that I didn't exactly connect till I was typing this passage out. 

2 comments:

  1. I find a great deal of what Johnson is arguing for in the gospel of Luke. We simply refused to see it, over time. Luke leads us into new and unsuspected depths, if We will but follow.

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    1. Assuming the theories that Luke is close to the Pauline tradition, I'm finding as I read Luke, Acts and the Pauline Epistles more closely than I ever did that their character is far different than I spent most of my life believing. It's all a lot more subtle and a lot more expansive than it is if you get caught up on the few things he said about Women and LGBT people which doesn't make any sense outside of the pagan world which was always a siren song calling the newly converted pagans back. I think those and the passages when he was giving advice to slaves in the system of Roman slavery are too bad because people are blinded to the wealth of liberating assertion in them. I have been reading and re-reading Romans and it always surprises me.

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