Rethinking God VII

Massacio's Crucifixion, typical

of late medieval art emphasizing

the humanity of Christ

Well, let’s get back to our postings on revisioning God (see entries for November 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17).  I had mentioned how our concepts of God have evolved over the centuries since that point at which what are known as the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—made their first contact with Y-WH Sabaoth some four thousand years ago when He first picked up with this wild and unshaven band of nomadic outlaws from Ur of the Chaldees.  I mentioned in previous postings that it took the Hebrew people some thousand years or more to come to monotheism and to realize that this God of theirs was not one of several gods but is God Alone.  In the process too they seem to have consolidated Him with another deity they knew and worshiped—Elohim.  And then it took some time more to realize that while this Deity was far from vegetarian, human sacrifice was not on His menu.  Along the way various new stories emerged about Him and how the world and all its inhabitants came to be and sometimes those stories conflicted with one another.  That was not a problem—the People of God could live with some ambiguity.
Christianity provoked new developments in our understanding of God as the believers in Jesus as mashiah gradually came to appreciate that Jesus somehow shared in the Divine Nature of the Deity he referred to as his (and our) Abba.  From this awareness developed the notion of the Trinity—that God is One in Divinity but three in distinct Persons: The Father (Y-WH, The Son (who is become incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth) and the Holy Spirit.  This did not happen at once—nor was the awareness complete in biblical times but only in the second and third centuries with substantial disagreements lasting into the fourth and fifth and—at least in regards to what the Divinity of Jesus means—even later. 
With Christianity and the emergence of a Trinitarian awareness, the Second Person of the Trinity—incarnate in Jesus—eclipsed the primacy of the First Person (Y-WH, the Father) not in theory but certainly in the devotional life of the faithful.  Jesus, as the Mediator with the Father, became the Presence of God most familiar and most adored.  Jesus was seen primarily as the Great Heavenly High Priest who stands at the heavenly Throne of Grace interceding for us.  He also was seen as the King who will come at the end of time as Judge and Ruler.  But this perception too would change in time.  In the late eleventh century Anselm of Canterbury wrote Cur Deus Homo, a theological treatise explaining why (cur)  God (Deus) had become human (homo)  in the Incarnation of the Divine Son as Jesus of Nazareth.  We won’t go into his answer here, but we need to note that historically this would also cause a great theological shift as Christians from the twelfth century through the fourteenth centuries would greatly emphasize the human nature of Christ whereas for centuries from the sixth through the eleventh they had emphasized his Divinity.  Now we see less and less of the King seated on the throne of Judgment and more and more of the tender babe in his mother’s arms or the naked and dying savior hanging on the cross.       
Now why I have been writing about this is so that we can see that the faithful—the People of Israel in their Covenant and the Christians in ours have not been passive recipients of doctrine but have played the active role of shaping the faith.  It is not the role of a Magisterium to define the Truth and for God’s people to passively accept their word as dogma.  The faith as it bubbled up through the sacred writers of the Scriptures and in the decrees of the Councils and later in the teachings of the Church bubbled up from the hearts of God’s people as they reflected on their experience of God.  Again—I am not writing theologically here and have no interest in this blog of doing a “theology of revelation.”  I am writing from a historical viewpoint.  It was not Abraham nor even Moses who came to “define” God in a monotheistic understanding.  They were long in their graves before the People of Israel were weaned away from polytheism.  It was not Paul, much less Peter, who defined the hypostatic union of the Divine and Human Natures in the One Person Jesus Christ or taught that God is one in Divine Nature but Three in distinct Persons.  If this had been taught definitively by the apostles there would have been no arguments over it in the third and fourth centuries.  These understandings arose over time within the hearts of the Christian people.  It was not the bishops who insisted that Jesus was one in Divine Nature with the Father.  Newman reminds us that the majority of the bishops had bought into the Arian heresy hook, line, and sinker.  The issue wasn’t even settled with the Council of Nicea—Arianism flourished for a further two centuries after Nicea.  It was the faith of the faithful that clarified the doctrine.
And so too today—the problem is not that the faithful are not listening to the bishops; the problem is that the bishops are not listening to the faithful.  Our faith in not static.  There are serious issues facing the Church today, issues that require some key teachings of faith and especially of morals to be critically reexamined.  Pontifications will not resolve these issues but rather the Church—the entire Church—magisterium, theologians, and faithful need to build consensus.  All three voices must realize this is not a time we can afford disunity but rather where we must bravely enter into deep and prayerful reflection and dialogue to come to understand the faith the Church—the whole Church—holds.   

Rethnking God V

The Emperor Constantine and
Bishops at Nicea

Well it would seem that everything we needed to know about God we learned from Jesus—that Jesus was God’s final Word of Revelation.  Theologically that may be true, but it is not true historically.  In fact, Jesus created a huge problem that made the Church seriously rethink everything it thought it knew about God.

We take it for granted that by the death of the last apostle and the close of the canon of scripture, our doctrines were complete.  We knew that there is one God in three Divine Persons.  We knew that Jesus was “consubstantial” (one in being as we used to say) with the Father according to his divinity and of one human nature with us as regarding his humanity.  We thought that the apostles had it all worked out.  But they didn’t.  It is clear from the New Testament texts that they were themselves trying to work out what made this man who is so much like us in so many respects so utterly different than us in others that he could be called “The Son of God”—and what did that mean anyway?
The Church would spend approximately three centuries trying to clarify what it believed about God and about Jesus before definitively defining the Trinity and it would take almost three more centuries before it clarified the relationship of Jesus to the Godhead—the theological fancy-schmancy word for God.   There were hints of the Trinity in the New Testament books—most notably the Trinitarian formula for baptism—a command put in the mouth of Jesus by the author of “Matthew’s Gospel” that the disciples should baptize “in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  (Actually it seems from The Book of Acts and from Paul’s writings that for a short while the Apostles and their successors were baptizing “In the Name of Jesus” and that the Trinitarian Formula came a little later—certainly by the ‘80’s AD when Matthew (or someone) wrote his Gospel.  The idea that Jesus was God’s Son presented huge theological dilemmas for the early Christians.  Coming out of Judaism the first Christians were rigidly committed to the Oneness of God and didn’t know how to express the idea that Jesus—the “Son”—somehow shared in the Divinity of his “Father” without ending up with two gods.  And even then: what to do with the Holy Spirit?  Is the Spirit a Person like Jesus or merely an emanation of the Father like my spirit would be of me and your spirit would be of you?  All this gets argued back and forth through the second and third and into the fourth centuries.  The whole complexity only begins to be resolved with the Council of Nicea in 325 but even then the Council never uses the word “Trinity” and while the Father and the Son have a fair bit said about them, the Holy Spirit gets somewhat lumped in with other things like baptism for the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead and assorted other doctrines. 
Theophilus of Antioch writing before 190 is the first to use the word “Trinity” though the idea can be found in Ignatius at the beginning of the second century and Justin Martyr in mid-second century.  Nicea was meant to answer questions about Jesus as well—who he is in relation to God (the Father) and who he is in relation to us?  This had been a hot item in the second and third centuries as well with such ideas as Adoptionism, Sabellianism, and other formulae that we now consider to be heretical but which, in the day, had strong and avid believers.  In the event, Nicea created more questions than it answered and it took about six more councils—Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constantinople I, II, and III, and a second council at Nicea—to iron out the details and even then lots of Good Christians—the Armenians, the Copts, and the Chaldeans among others—bailed because they didn’t agree. Finally the Western Church (today’s Catholics along with the Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed traditions) and Orthodox (Greek, Russian, and various other “Chalcedonian” Churches have agreed that Jesus Christ is one Person in two natures, a Divine Nature consubstantial (there’s that word again) with the Father and a human nature like our except in sin.  So basically this all took six centuries to work out: people—all sorts of people like popes and bishops and saints and mystics and cleaning ladies and horse jockeys and bookies and bartenders and school teachers and even a few imperial mistresses—arguing and fighting back and forth until the consensus fidelium came to a consensus fidelium.  But even then, that wasn’t the end of it.  We are always rethinking God.  We never get the answer to exactly say what we know in our collective heart is the precise truth.  Maybe it just can’t be done.     The theological process is more important than the theological product.  We never stop “rethinking God.”

Rethinking God III

Model of the Jerusalem Temple where

sacrifices were long offered to God in

the period of the Hebrew Scriptures

After reading the previous post about how our ideas of God have evolved since the historical periods  in which the Hebrew Scriptures were written one of my readers sent me this letter which had been circulating on the internet some years back.  You may remember Dr. Laura Schlessinger, physiologist turned advice counselor/radio personality, whose nationally syndicated radio show ran from 1994 to 2010.  From 1998 until 2003 Dr. Schlessinger practiced orthodox Judaism and often brought her religious insights to bear on the advice she dispensed to her listeners.  For the most part this very rich tradition was well received but people who did not share her religious convictions sometimes found her opinions off-putting.  These adversaries were not necessarily non-believers but often Christians and Jews who had a “different read” on the meaning of Scripture for contemporary society.  I want to print a letter purportedly directed to Dr. Schlessinger  that was circulated about twelve years ago that spoofed her biblical literalism.  I do this not to support the views of those who disagreed with Dr. Schlessinger but rather to show how different our understanding of God is today—even Dr. Laura’s understanding—than it was two or three millennia ago.     

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.
a.              When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
b.              I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
c.               I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
d.              Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
e.               I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
f.                A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?
g.              Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?
h.              Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?
i.                 I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
j.                My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev.24:10-16) Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev.20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
Your devoted disciple and adoring fan,

J. Kent Ashcraft

 

Rethinking God II

The Return of Jephtah by

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini,

or, God likes his virgins

roasted

My last posting in which I said that I find that I am rethinking God—reconsidering what “God” means to me in the light of my actual experience—has shocked some people and led to a number of comments, both positive and negative.  The ultra-orthodox are quick to remind me that “God is unchanging.”  Of course, I am not quite sure what it means that “God is unchanging,” but as a historian I am well aware that the human understanding of God has changed frequently over the approximately four thousand years that God and humankind have been on speaking terms.  I have never read Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000 year quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam but it is on my next order to Amazon.  I do recall from days as a theology student that “back in the day” when God introduced himself to Abram of Ur of the Chaldees, that there were many deities in the Abramic pantheon and that despite the careful editing of the stories by later editors at the time of the Babylonian exile (or even later) Abraham (as Abram was later known) and his son and grandsons worshiped a number of deities.  I remember that God as known under the soubriquet  Y-WH was originally a warrior-god in the Canaanite pantheon.  (I am very reluctant to use the full name or even the full Tetragrammaton as there is a strong tradition—in Judaism a law—that the Name of God is never pronounced or written and while we Christians do not feel so compelled, I do think we should not be cavalier with the Name.)   Of course God was known under several other names in the Hebrew scriptures, most notably El Elohim. In the Hebrew texts of the Pentateuch—the first five books of the Bible, or the  Torah—God is referred to sometimes by one Name, sometimes by the other.  All that is well and good, but they seem to have actually been two distinct deities who are over a period of time conflated into a single deity.  Moreover, even the name “Elohim” is a plural form and not singular.  While when it refers to God, the word employs a singular form of the verb (taking the plural when it refers to the “gods of the nations”—i.e. the “pagan” deities of Israel’s neighbors) the fact that it is a plural form indicates that it originally did refer to a plurality of gods and that later editors cleaned up the text to reflect the monotheism that eventually replaced Hebrew polytheism around the time of the Babylonian exile.  So here is one example of how even in ancient times God was being rethought.  God went from being two (Y-WH and El Elohim) deities among many to be One and One only with no other deities.  
But God has changed—or rather our understanding of God has changed—in other ways as well.  In the 11^th chapter of the Book of Judges, Jephthah sacrifices his daughter to Y-WH to fulfill a vow he had made—a vow to perform human sacrifice should God make him successful in battle against the Ammonites.  This indicates that in the 11^th century before Christ Jews still believed that God found human sacrifice acceptable.  Yet clearly this practice was done away with fairly early on as subsequent biblical texts do not mention human sacrifice being offered to God—indeed prohibit it—and by the Christian era it is an embarrassment to the rabbis who alter the story to say that the girl was  not in fact killed but sentenced to perpetual spinsterhood. 
These examples don’t imply any change in God but they clearly spell out that our knowledge of God is evolutionary.  We continually refine our understanding of God and of his law.  It is not a fixed reality.  I will bring up other examples of how in Christianity the concept of God changes radically as we come to understand God at ever deeper levels.  Some will claim that during the period in which revelation occurs that God tells us more and more about himself but once the canon of scripture closes—with the death of the last apostle—all that can ever be known is known.  But we will see that the Christian concept of God has continued to evolve long after the apostles.  Scripture reflects the experience of God—it does not “reveal it.”  God has revealed God’s Self to humans over the course of centuries—millennia—and continues to do so.  This does not mean that every human articulation of the encounter with God is of equal weight.  There is a tremendous amount of subjectivity in religious experiences of which we must be very careful but it is simply untrue to claim that we no longer learn anything new about God. 
Of course there are those who are terrified of not being able to control what others believe about God.  One priest I know says that in the almost forty years of being a priest, the subject that most angers his listeners when he preaches is “The Mercy of God.”  “You would be surprised,” he says “of how many people demand God to be ‘just’ by which they mean that God should follow the same moral code to which they hold, and when you say that his Mercy overflows our sins—or rather, it overflows the sins of 'others'—such as abortion, homosexual intimacy, entering the United States illegally, thinking for oneself rather than blind obedience to “The Church”—they go nuts.  Of course these are the children of those who thought that God wanted black children to go to a different school than white children or be nursed in ‘separate but equal’ hospital wards and the great-grandchildren of those who thought God wanted some people to ‘own’ others.”  Ah yes, there are many of our presuppositions about God to which we had better give some thought.

Rethinking God

I was struck last week when a politician said that even in the case of rape when a child is conceived it is the will of God.  At first I thought: “how could anyone believe that?”  Then I thought: “Wait, I believe that.”  Then I had to sit back and ask myself: "what do I believe about God?"

First, we need to clarify what the politician said.  He did not say that the rape was the will of God.  No one who is professes faith in the God of Jesus could say that.  There are certain Old Testament stories that might lead one to believe that an act of violence such as rape or murder could be God’s will but it would violate the image of God as Abba, as a loving parent, that Jesus presents in the Gospels.  Such Divinely ordained violence threatens to annul the paschal sacrifice of Christ which suffices to atone for all the evil in the world and to cancel once and for all whatever divine wrath is due to sin.  So much for the rape issue.  What about God willing a conception of life resulting from this act of violence?  When this issue came up, I realized that I had long believed that God directly willed the creation of each and every human life at the time of its conception.  But after reflection it also dawned on me—in this context—that I have not for some time believed that God has directly willed the creation of each and every human life at the time of its conception.  It took a shock like hearing this jerk say something as outrageous as God has willed the conception of a baby as the result of an act of violence for me to realize that my thoughts about God and his role in our lives have indeed changed over the years.  Now, I am not saying that God therefore gladly permits the termination of an innocent life because of the circumstances in which it was conceived, but what I am saying is that I have come to more clearly differentiate God the Creator of Life from Santa in his workshop.  The creation of life is a biological process not an artisan craftsman at his skill.  I don’t mean that God has a conveyer-belt that piles up souls and shoots them into embryos like Pepsi being mass-squirted into racked bottles passing through a machine.   To be honest, I am not sure exactly what a “soul” is.  I am not saying that I don’t believe in souls, only that I don’t know what one is and how one is joined to a biological product.  I haven’t gotten that far yet.  And to be honest, I probably won’t spend a lot of time figuring that one out.  The important thing is that I realized I have begun to seriously reconsider what I think about God, how I understand God, my “concept” of God—my theology.  And obviously I am not alone. 

This is no surprise.  We Christians have redefined God at any number of points in our history.   Indeed the People of Israel redefined God periodically through their history before Jesus ever came along and gave us a very new and very different notion of God than had been held by his co-religionists.  Maybe we should look at some of these shifts in our understanding of God.  I am not saying that God changes but rather that our human understanding of God has changed throughout the history of our religious thought. 

And it is this shift in our basic understanding of the most important object of belief that has so many Catholics frightened and the consequent polarization as some in our faith have moved into brave and new experiences of God and others are anxious to keep God in the same Box in which they found him in as children.  We are going to have to look at this conflict.