It's All About Union

There are many metaphors used to speak of our relationship with God, and what Jesus has done for us in his death and resurrection. But I am going to make a statement which is not fully thought out or researched, but intuitively seems right. All of these metaphors (e.g. beatific vision, messianic banquet, forgiveness of sins, etc) are summed up in the metaphor of union with God. I realise that this is using one of the metaphors as the metaphor, but it seems to me that this metaphor takes us directly to the underlying consistency of the Christian gospel. Our end is to be united with God, and we see this end in Jesus. All the other metaphors fall under the power and meaning of what this metaphor refers to: our deep and abiding union with God through Christ and the Spirit. The forgiveness of sins is a good example. An absolute ton has been written about the forgiveness of sins, and some Christians make it the determining metaphor for Christ's work of salvation. There is nothing wrong with this as long as we realise that 'forgiveness of sins' is about union: sin prevents our union with God; forgiveness of sins makes union possible.

The doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity teach us this. They are, if you like, the abbreviations of the whole Christian schema. They direct our theology as the spectacles through which we read the rest of our experience, and guide us in our interpretation of Scripture. Both doctrines are about union: the union of humanity and divinity in Jesus, and the union of love of Father and Son in the power of the Spirit within the Trinity. Some metaphors have a natural affinity with this abiding vision of God, others need its correction. Forensic metaphors (like judge) are useful, but need to be kept in contact with the union of love we call the Holy Trinity.

Trinity Sunday 2008

Anglicans in Australia are invited to celebrate Trinity Sunday this week. So a few thoughts:

• When preaching on the Trinity it is generally useful to help people be less obsessive about how 3 = 1.
  
  
• Although you could get them thinking a little about the threeness and oneness of God by saying that whereas the threeness may be numerical, the oneness of the Trinity has in it a sense of the oneness of union. It will still raise the question why one God not three, but it is a good start. (And the idea of union and unity will lay the ground work to the answer as to why we do not worship 3 gods.) Most people will get what you are driving at. Especially if you use some examples like community, marriage where two become one, etc.
  
  
• I'll be talking about images of God and how our image of God affects how we see ourselves, our purpose and how we act. Bloodthirsty gods are worshiped by bloodthirsty people. Chac mool is a case in point. Three images of God appropriate for Trinity Sunday are:
  
  
• A lava lamp! I'll be using this in my kids' talk. When it is heated up the wax inside is moving around, bits breaking off and floating around a bit and then reuniting with the mass. This is not an image for how 3=1, but points to thinking of God as dynamic, with this movement of Father, Son and Spirit.
  
  
• The cross, of course. The crucifixion of Jesus is the Trinitarian event. There are three actors in the event of the cross, Father, Son and Spirit. (See 1Jn 4:7-16) In the cross the Son experiences a godforsakenness bridged by the Father's love in the person of the Spirit. (Or, if you follow von Balthasar, the ultimate image becomes the descent into hell, the 'place' of utter godforsakenness.) This requires more work to get across, but is worth mentioning so that people get the hang of the idea that the Trinity isn't disconnected from the history of Jesus and the Bible.
  
  
• Rublev's Trinity (see picture above) with its deferential figures, picture of hospitality with eucharistic cup and open circle, and our eye not converging to a distant horizon, but drawn back to ourselves, inviting us to join the three in the picture.

Best wishes for those preaching this week-end!

Forgiveness of Sins

Christ's forgiveness of our sins is not the reprieve of a judge but the embrace of a lover. (John Main)

Doing Theology is a Religious Experience

Empiricism can be defined as that philosophical movement that restricts reality to what can be proven to be in the world. ('Proof' residing within a narrow set of criteria.) Theory, from this angle, has no take on reality. The religious parallel is those who restrict the 'stuff' of faith to experience, exclusive of theologising. This tendency can be observed among those particularly struck by a spiritual experience, often restricted to an emotional experience or, at least, an emotional response to the experience concerned. I think here of some of the excesses of the charismatic and pentecostal movements. And, surprisingly, it is to be found among the liberal wing of the church whose theology too often appears as a thin veneer easily peeled away from the rock of experience (experience often couched in psychological terms or a broad, inchoate spiritualism). And then there are, of course, those utterly obsessed with a personal relationship with Jesus (again, narrowly defined).

Perhaps this goes back to the split between theology and spirituality that occurred in the West a thousand years ago or more, and is still so evident today in the progressive wing of the church. In earlier times spirituality and theology were not seen as separate but were united in true theologia. Why exclude theology (in the narrow sense) from our total religious experience? Let the barriers between spirituality and theology soften a bit, and let 'doing theology' be the religious experience (understood in a very broad sense) it so obviously is. It would seem to me that those who do theology well are those for whom theology is a religious experience, breaking down the narrow understanding of religious empiricism. If we were to do this, it would then be possible to reclaim our Christian heritage that understood the doctrine of the Trinity to be the ground for Christian mysticism (rather than some kind of general sense of the incomprehensibility of God being the foundation of mysticism). Theology could then take its place as a language of mysticism. (E.g. the doctrine of the Trinity)

http://www.blackwoodonline.com.au/

For those who have read the previous post it was written for the webpage of Blackwood online, an online service for the businesses and community groups of Blackwood and Belair. (It should be on the web page this week.) It is an attempt to talk about the Trinity and the non-competitive God mentioned in previous posts. The doctrine of the Trinity is trying to tell us that identity and relationship are not in conflict or competition. To use traditional language and concepts, God is Father eternally, the significance of which is that the identity of God as Father is eternally linked to the Father's relationship to the Son. God is never not the Father (implying a Son), so identity and relationship come together in naming God as Father. And although couched in masculine language, this is a very non-patriarchal view of God. And, of course, the reason God can carry our self-offering is because God is not in competition with us. God is 'disinterested' as the spirituality traditions of the church affirm.

Aspiring to Longevity?

Longevity in itself is not something worth aspiring to. Which sounds a little counter-intuitive in a society like ours. We are obsessed with it, and with the avoidance of death. But the real question is what we live for, and who we are in that life. The alternative to longevity is not an early death, but self-giving. Who we are is realised not in saving ourselves, but in giving ourselves. This was one of the key insights of Jesus and embedded in the faith of the church in its eucharistic practice of Holy Communion, and doctrinally in the belief in God the Trinity.Person and relationship are not inversely related (the more relationship the less personal identity). Exactly the opposite is true.

How do we work that out in our lives? It can be tough, especially in a society afraid of death and obsessed with longevity. And especially tough if one does not know to whom to give oneself. Jesus teaches us to give ourselves not just to each other. To do that would be to give ourselves to those who cannot, ultimately, carry our self-giving. As much as each of us struggles to truly give of ourselves without strings attached, so too we each struggle to receive the self-giving of others. No wonder a sense of betrayal or frustration too easily follows the great moments of our lives where we try to offer ourselves to others! (Think of the divorce rate, which is greatly increased if de facto breakdown is included.) Jesus thinks that we are to give ourselves to God, for it is only God who can carry such a self-offering in a non-possessive and disinterested way (by which I mean without self-interest). But Jesus teaches us to make this self-offering to God through others. Without God our self-giving can too easily end up self-seeking or an expression of self-hate. Without others, our self-giving to God ends up bloodless. And with self-offering to God through others longevity is neither here nor there.

Pentecost and the Grand Design of Humanity

Franz Kafka wrote stories about political and social control. Grand projects of uniformity, with those who fail to fit persecuted. The Tower of Babel is the great myth of the Bible that tells us that this is part of the human predicament from which we must be saved. It is seen throughout history wherever uniformity becomes the foundation upon which human arrogance attempts to build an everlasting testament to itself. History is strewn with these grand projects, from the macro level of empires down to the micro level of families. But God is kind to humankind and destroys the tower, and separates people into language groups so that there can never be a successful grand design. Human diversity and variety will always bring down the grand project, at least eventually.

The destruction of Babel and the disunity of humankind is not God's final response, though. God's vision for humanity is not Babel, but it is unity. Pentecost is the Biblical 'answer' to Babel and all attempts to mimic Babel. Notice that in the story of Pentecost in Acts 2 language is not a barrier to unity. But not the uniformity of a single language, for everyone hears in their own tongue. And what do they hear? The good news about Jesus. This is not to be confused with some grand design rolling out over the top of human difference, for it is not founded on uniformity (symbolized in Babel by a single, universal language) and is achieved through the death and resurrection of Jesus, a victim of the Roman Babel. Moreover, in addition to the universal message communicated in each tongue, the Jesus 'project' is directed toward God, and is not a monument to human arrogance. The message of Jesus is communicated through the art of a living discipleship and persuasive proclamation, and the result is a humanity oriented toward God.

A few points to finish:

• The Spirit of Jesus received at Pentecost will always lead the baptised to oppose the grand designs of humanity, whether at the macro or the micro level.
  
• The unity of the church is not an authoritarian based uniformity, but a genuine unity respectful of differences. Even the differences that usually pull us apart.
  

Receiving the Spirit

What does it mean to receive the Spirit? Pentecost Sunday is the celebration of the Spirit, when we remember and celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit.[1] There is some confusion as to the fundamental meaning of ‘receiving the Spirit’. Some in the Pentecostal movement have twisted it to become a means of excluding those unlike them[2], while the charismatic movement (rightly) focuses on spiritual gifts[3], but this focus has the tendency to obscure the fundamental meaning (and experience) of the Spirit. The Christian tradition affirms over and over that the Spirit enables us to join in the relationship Jesus enjoys with God. In traditional language, the Holy Spirit is the personal bond of love between the Father and Son, and through the gift of the Spirit we are ‘adopted’ as children of God, enjoying the same loving intimacy with God as Jesus the beloved Son.[4] This puts the Christian experience of the Spirit in a little more perspective and retrieves ‘receiving the Holy Spirit’ from some of the excesses of Pentecostalism.

First, it means that there is something going on in us as people of faith that is more important and deeper than we usually realise. Jesus is God in the flesh, the co-equal Son of God, enjoying the closest possible intimacy with God the Father; an intimacy of complete union. We share in that intimacy through receiving the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus. This is an intimacy beyond what is natural to our humanity. Through Christ and the Spirit we actually enter the very life of God, the love of the Father and the Son.

Second, this intimacy is not individual, as though it were just about each of us individually and God. We share an unimaginable intimacy with God that will be completely realised eternally, but we enjoy this intimacy together. The Father and the Son share their love (the Spirit) to enable us to join them in their community/communion of love. Intimacy is not individual.

Third, a primary sign of the presence of the Spirit in our lives is Christian community echoing the communion/community of the Father, Son and Spirit. This is Paul’s point in 1Corinthians 12, especially verses 1, 4-7, 27. All other manifestations and gifts of the Spirit do not contradict this first principle.

Fourth, when bad things occur this bond of love with the Father and Son through the Spirit remains. Even when it feels like we are deserted. Even Jesus experienced this[5], but the bond of love remained, and bridged the godforsakenness of the cross[6] and even hell itself.[7]

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[1] See Acts 2:1-11; 10:44-48; John 20:19-23.

[2] They love Mark 16:17 and these signs become a proof of faith. See note 3 for Paul’s own rejoinder to their misreading of Mark 16:17. Also 1Cor 14:1-19.

[3] See 1Cor 12:4-13. Note also 1Cor 12:27-31, where the answer to the rhetorical questions is ‘No’, not all receive the same gifts. And the still more excellent way he mentions is love. (1Cor 13:1-13).

[4] For example, Jn 14:18-21; Rom 8:14-17; Ephes 2:17-18. For Jesus the beloved, see Matt 3:17.

[5] Matt 26:36-46

[6] Matt 27:46

[7] 1Pet 3:18-20

God, Salvation and Materiality

We take bodiliness and materiality very seriously. The 'stuff' of creation is not evil, but good. Nor is it something to escape from. We are our bodies in the sense that there isn't some real me hidden inside my body. Which is why, of course, we recite belief in the resurrection of the body in the Creed. Salvation in the Christian schema is not 'spiritual', if we mean by that immaterial. God had to become part of creation (and remain God) for creation to be saved. Reflect on that and the world, and our mission within it, becomes more Christlike, more real, and more comprehensive.

There is a tight nexus between creation, Incarnation, sacraments and the resurrection of the body. Start with any one of them and you end up with all the others; unpick any one of them, and the whole lot will, eventually, disappear. There is a consistency here in the way in which God relates to the 'stuff' of creation. Intimately, and without antagonism. Indeed, exactly the opposite to antagonism. While there is no direct proportionality between God and creation, creation is made to find its home in God. If it were not so, and if salvation were just a matter of escape from our materiality, why did God become human? Surely a meditational technique would have sufficed! Or if something a bit more were needed than just a meditational technique, maybe the appearance of an avatar to proclaim some secret knowledge for the initiated and those to be saved. (Sounds like some forms of 'Christianity' doesn't it!) But God becomes human for the salvation of the good creation, and this salvation is the union of creation with God . We call it resurrection, and it is not the destruction of our materiality, but the transformation of our materiality into its final form. Which is why we have sacraments. The Eucharist can truly communicate God. (Remember, the non-competitive God of true transcendence can be 'in' the sacrament without compromising or diminishing the integrity of the 'stuff' of the sacrament.) The final form of bread as a complete and holistic nourishment of the human body and soul is anticipated in the bread of the Eucharist. And it does this precisely as bread.

The Ascended Lord Who Suffered and Died

That resurrection has nail holes in it is important. That the crucified-risen Jesus is bodily ascended into heaven reinforces the point. I remember one of my first major pastoral failures. At the hospital bed with an elderly woman sweating blood about dying in a forthcoming operation. In a nutshell, she wanted to live and sought assurance from me that she would. I gave that assurance. Cheaply. And she died. Christ sweated blood at Gethsemane, and there was no cheap (worthless) grace. God does not necessarily save us from suffering, does not necessarily heal us, and we all have to die. (Isn't there a book title, 'Everyone Wants To Go To Heaven but Nobody Wants To Die'? Or words to that effect.) That God in the flesh suffered and brought salvation, is resurrected and still has nail holes, and is then bodily resurrected (that is, Jesus' personal history of suffering is taken into heaven, is part of the sacred story of his fulfillment as a human person) suggests to me that we should not immediately seek only to avoid suffering and death. Of course we seek healing, but a deeper response leaves open the possibility of Gethsemane. Death and suffering might not be part of God's plan, but God uses suffering and death, often inscrutably, for God's purposes. The good news is that the resurrection and ascension tells us that all shall be well, eventually anyway! God shows us in Jesus how God can rework sin, suffering and death for salvation and completion.

The Ascension of Jesus

The Ascension of Jesus, for all the theological problems it raises (e.g."where" did Jesus go!), seems quite important to me, for at least two reasons.

The first reason concerns the significance and universality of the Word made flesh. Jesus ascends (and remembering anonymous' caution regarding the metaphorical nature of our language, and Phillip's comment, quoting Baron, that God is not so much somewhere else but somehow else) to God signifying the universality of the crucified-risen Jesus, the Word made flesh. Jesus is with God, and from here the Father sends the Spirit of God over all the world, now impressed by the crucified-risen Christ. Moreover, this means that the full humanity of Jesus, including his crucifixion and resurrection, is also of eternal significance. Matter is found 'in' the eternal life of God the Holy Trinity, within the eternal, heavenly dwelling of God. (Lots of metaphor here.) The Ascension of Jesus points again to the goal of all creation: union with God in God's own life (through hypostatic union with the Son).

Second, the story of the ascension in Acts 1:6-11 has the disciples looking up into the heavens, even though Jesus has gone from their sight. And then two men question the disciples, the result of which leads them back into the world, back to Jerusalem to receive the Holy Spirit and complete their task as witnesses 'to the ends of the earth.' (1:8) They will witness to the universal Christ, who, in the particularity of his life, death and resurrection, brings universal salvation to all. (Rom 5:18-21) Following the ascended, universal Christ is first about mission.

For all its problems, the Ascension is a beautiful piece of theology.

Art and Science in Ministry Development

The science aspect is easy to see: statistics, research, data, with advice and often detailed steps or procedures, with a subject matter that is on paper or a computer. The art aspect can be overlooked, involving rhythm and timing, inspiration, discernemtn and intuition, and the subject is people. We need both, and in an integrated fashion. To ignore the science would be to refuse to learn from the experience of others, and to eschew basic human insights available to us through statistics, etc. Ignoring the art of ministry development would be to treat people as ‘things’, and fall into the trap of thinking ministry development is the result of manipulation and the application of unbending rules. Ministry development, on the contrary, is the creative liaison of the whole of human research and knowledge, both material and spiritual. It follows no unbending rules, for the Spirit blows where it will. However, the freedom of the Spirit does not mean that research and experience cannot be the means to opening ourselves to that Spirit. It is art and science, spirit and matter.

It would be true to say that the more progressive side of the Diocese of Adelaide has been slow to take up this holistic approach. I can still remember viewing leadership and management techniques and knowledge with deep suspicion. Partly, the misuse of the science by some in the church gave ministry development and its ‘science’ a poor image. We must recognise the danger, inherent in the ‘science’ of ministry development, towards superficiality, as if applying this technique will bring growth, but ignoring the question of real and lived personal and corporate faith. But this should not blind us to its benefits. And we must practice the art of ministry, engaging with real people and bringing the science to bear for the benefit of the kingdom.

Cautions Regarding Transcendence and Incarnation

The transcendence of God (and God understood as non-competitive) enables us to understand traditional Christology. Because God is truly transcendent, the fullness of God is not inversely related to our being and presence. God and creation can be proportionally related, that is, God can be fully present to us without in any way compromising our own integrity.(Indeed, just the opposite is the case; personal integrity is enhanced in relationship with God.) There is not a competition between us for 'space' (if we and God were related competitively it would be an either/or between us and God.) This is to say, proximity to God does not diminish us, neither does it obliterate and replace. Proximity to God brings our fulfillment. Thus Jesus, as the incarnation of God, is not an incoherence, but the fullest epiphany of this general Christian theological insight into the God-world relationship. Humanity and divinity are united in Jesus without diminishment of either. (Two natures, one person)

A few cautions pulled from K. Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity. A brief Systematic Theology, pp. 6-7.

• Incarnation can't be deduced from the general principle of transcendence understood in terms of a non-competitive God. it is only in the light of the revelation of Christ that the general has become visible.
  
  
• The doctrine of the Incarnation is not merely an extrapolation of the general principle of transcendence.
  
  
• Christology is not about the general principle of transcendence. Christology is about Jesus and salvation through him.

... the case of Christ has its own irreducible distinctiveness. It is not an instance of a general relationship found everywhere; it is not the highest point on a continuous grade of relationships between God and the world. While what happens in Christ may be the center of a theological account of the universe from its beginning to its end, it is not such by being simply repeated elsewhere. (Tanner, Jesus, p. 7.)

Scripture, Inspiration and Tradition

I suggest that a theory of scripture, biblical inspiration and canon should take into account the following six points:

1. The Christian movement predates the Bible. Christians had to write our NT documents, and and‘the church’ chooses the documents to be included in the Scriptures.
   
   
2. Key doctrines communicated to through the ecumenical councils are integral to the Christian reading of Scripture. The heretics used Scripture, and apparently quite successfully. And in the christological debates, a key term that separated orthodoxy from heterodoxy was 'homoousios' (same being, in relation to the Father and the Son), which is not a word used in Scripture in that context.
   
   
3. We receive the Bible from those previously in the faith, and it does not come fresh to us but accompanied by interpretive clues, rules, teaching, etc.
   
   
4. We interpret Scripture, and we encourage translations (and all translations are in some way interpretive), and consider Jesus to be the Word.
   
   
5. Without the Bible the faith would have been lost long ago.
   
   
6. Without the continuing inspiration of the Spirit the faith is lost. (Even if we still had the Bible. The Scriptures are, in this respect, insufficient.)

Some key issues arising from these six points are:

• The relationship between inspired community (Church) and inspired text. And I mean this pre- and post-Bible.
  
  
• The relationship between Scripture, Creeds, and Church.
  
  
• The crucial place of the Bible in the transmission of the faith.
  
  
• The relationship between the 'Word of God' and 'God's word written'.
  
  
• The sufficiency and insufficiency of the Bible.

Living Tradition

A Sydney (Anglican) trained evangelical (now a bishop) said, in response to me talking about 'the tradition', "How can you believe in something that changes?" I took it to mean he was contrasting scripture with 'the tradition' minus the scriptures. A couple of clarifying points:

• Without the tradition it is impossible to correctly understand the Scriptures. Tradition came before Scripture. (St Paul hands on to the Corinthians what he himself was taught. See 1Cor 11.) Remember, heretics were/are always adept at scriptural 'proofs'.
  
• The Scriptures are only one strand (utterly unique, authoritative and irreplaceable) of the rope that maintains apostolic succession. (More on this later.)
• The tradition changes so that the tradition lives for each age. Traditions that don't change die out. The hard part is being faithful to the tradition without betraying it; but when we do we are part of the living Christian tradition.
  

A good quote on tradition from Yoder to be found at Inhabitatio Dei.

The Resurrection of Jesus as Future Event

If tonight you heard the newsreader announce that peace reigned throughout the world you would be sceptical. If the newsreader said there was a new conflict in such-a-such country, perhaps not suspicious at all. Why? Because of precedent, or expectation based on experience. This is part of the reason why people struggle to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. Their experience suggests that the resurrection of Jesus is unlikely. It does not fit their view of the world, and is without a validating precedent. (Which is also why some wish to discover precursors to the church's proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus in other religions of antiquity. A precedent is then provided, although not for the resurrection. Rather, these 'precedents' are then used as evidence to deny the uniqueness and truth of the resurrection of Jesus.)

The gospel says that the resurrection of Jesus is a unique event, without precedent in history. The resurrection of Jesus is not to be justified by historical precedent, as though it (the resurrection) needs to be ordered to the past to gain credibility. Rather, it is the other way round. In the Christian scheme of things history is to be ordered to the resurrected Jesus. (This is part of the theological meaning of "Jesus as judge".) The reason is that the resurrection of Jesus is not a past historical event to be judged by the canons of historical research. (The life and death of Jesus, and the preaching by the church of the resurrected Jesus can be so investigated, but the resurrection itself is opaque to the usual processes of historical analysis.) The resurrection of Jesus is the future (come to meet us), not one event among many stuck in the past. The resurrection of Jesus is God's action in breaking us out of the cul-de-sac of history as we have come to experience it. Which is exactly why faith in the resurrected Christ is liberating.

The Coherence of Christian Belief

God does not give on the same plane of being and activity as creatures, as one among others and therefore God is not in potential competition (or co-operation) with them. Non-competitiveness among creatures - their co-operation on the same plane of causality - always brings with it the potential for competition: Since I perform part of what needs to be done and you perform the rest, to the extent I act, you need not; and the more I act, the less you need to. Even when we co-operate, therefore, our actions involve a kind of competitive either/or of scope and extent. Unlike this co-operation among creatures, relations with God are utterly non-competitive because God, from beyond this plane of created reality, brings about the whole plane of creaturely being and activity in its goodness. (Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity, pp. 3-4.)

God is not one (super) being among others. God is not defined as God over against us. (I am not you, and that is part of what makes me me. But not so with God and me.) God is not even just beyond us, not merely incomprehensible, if we conceive of these terms to mean that God is on the same background as us. (As Phillip said to me recently. Actually, yesterday!). Contrary to this, God is transcendent. This means that, as Phillip says, God is not in competition with us (or in cooperation with us for that matter). This is one facet (perhaps the central one) of the uniquely Christian doctrine of God and is a reason why the Genesis creation stories are not to be considered as merely one more example of the generic creation myth of antiquity. The transcendence of God means that God can providentially undergird all that is without in any way compromising creation's own being. God can become fully human in Jesus and remain God without the diminution of either humanity or divinity. God's grace operates and saves us entirely without any contribution from us, yet this in no way diminishes the importance of our response. The sacraments of the church convey an inward grace without diminishing in any way the nature of the 'stuff' of the sacrament. Which is all to say that God is love, and free to love us, without compulsion or need, or due to any kind of mutual self-definition-through-difference, but does this as a total act of absolute love.

It is this fundamental theological insight that prevents Christian belief from spiralling off into incoherence.

Unless the Christian sense of the divine is differentiated from anything and everything in the being of the world, unless the Chrsitian God is differentiated from what philosophers have called the whole, all the Christian mysteries cease to be mysteries. Either they become impossibilities, or they become accommodated to natural necessities, or they are made to compete with what is natural … The Christian distinction between God and the world allows the formulations of the other mysteries to say something and prevents them from shattering as statements. (Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology, p. 38)

Further Thoughts on Transcendence

A guest post from the Revd Dr Phillip Tolliday, lecturer in historical and systematic theology at Flinders University SA and St Barnabas College.

I want to explore further the connection Warren made earlier between transcendence and immanence. There is little doubt that to use a phrase first coined by the post liberal theologian William Placher, we have been witnessing the ‘domestication of transcendence.’ Since at least the 1960s the motif of divine transcendence has been steadily eroding. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which has been the suspicion that a transcendent god is not only a god who is removed and distant from us, but more worryingly, a God whose disposition toward the world is necessarily one of tyranny. The way of overcoming this alleged divine tyranny is to ensure that divine transcendence is subverted by divine immanence.

The problem is alleged to be that divine transcendence necessarily leads to belief in a domineering supreme being. Not surprisingly, as Craig Baron, among others, has pointed out, this leads people to wonder how the existence of such a supreme being is reconcilable with human flourishing. God and humanity appear locked in a competitive death struggle. In attempts to dissolve the dilemma various ‘solutions’ have been proposed, ranging from Deism through to the outright atheism of Feuerbach. It is against this background that we should interpret Sartre’s aphorism that we cannot be fully free as long as God exists. According to this competitive construction of divine transcendence a key project of modernity has consisted of the solving of the problem of this competitive supreme being, either through its marginalization or its elimination.

In our scenario the two protagonists circle each other constantly; one the supreme being and the other the supreme ego. As in the best westerns there isn’t room in town for both of them! One has to die. And the story of modernity may be characterized as the progressive erosion of the supreme being in favour of the equally progressive exultation of the supreme ego. Commencing with Descartes’ Cogito the supreme ego eventually morphs into ‘the self-grounding and self-justifying ego’ that seeks to master its world. However, our less than perfect world is eloquent and manifest testimony to the limitations of the supreme ego. The supreme ego, it seems, is no less tyrannical than the supreme being was alleged to be.

Could it be that competition is the problem here? Might it not be possible to speak of divine transcendence in a way that is non-contrastive (Kathryn Tanner) and thus non-competitive? This is precisely what Craig Baron attempts in his exploration of Thomas Aquinas’ thoughts about God. He notes that competition demands that there be a shared background for both the supreme being and the supreme ego. It doesn’t matter whether that background is the metaphysical equivalent of the boxing ring or the OK Corral – it simply matters that there is one. And the background that has been commonly assumed to be shared by both God and the world is being.

But it is this very notion of a shared background between God and the world, or between a supreme being and a supreme ego that Aquinas calls into question. Aquinas claims that ‘God is not a species or an individual, nor is there any difference in him; nor can he be defined, since every definition is in terms of genus and species.’ Let us not miss the significance of what he is saying here. Everything in the world can be classified in precisely those terms that Aquinas says are not able to be predicated of God. In other words Aquinas is claiming that God is incomparable. God is not another in the world but transcendent to the world, where this transcendence is understood in a non-competitive and non-contrastive way. As Baron puts it, ‘God is not so much somewhere else as somehow else…the non-competitiveness of this differentiation appears when we realize that there is no common frame of reference for God and the world, no field that they share, no ground for which they are fighting, no genus in which they are both contained.’

Ironically our uncritical disdain for divine transcendence has had the unforeseen and presumably unintended consequence of aggregating the tyranny which we had feared from the supreme being and placing it at the feet of the supreme ego. Doubtless this is where it belongs but the domestication of transcendence has meant that the supreme ego must now fix the world - a task requiring, dare I say it, transcendence.

Simplicity on the Other Side of Complexity

There are three levels of theological knowledge. The first is the level of simplicity where a person possesses a certain basic level of knowledge. This is not to be derided, for it can be a good, solid understanding of some core theology. However, there is often a lack of critical awareness and an ignorance of the breadth of the Christian tradition.

The second level of theological knowledge is the level of complexity. This begins when people begin some serious study, often at a university degree level. At this level a critical awareness is fostered where the old certainties are questioned and the rich resources of the Christian tradition are encountered. Specific bundles of knowledge on particular topics of theology are acquired, but the person does not see in the complexity the unifying patterns and, ultimately, the beauty of the whole, a whole to which all individual bundles of knowledge must yield. Some people lose heart at this stage, nostalgically remembering the old certainties, but lacking the knowledge and perseverance to push through the sheer busyness and complexity of this stage to the third level of theological knowledge.

The third level of theological knowledge is a deep simplicity that is informed by the complexity of the Christian tradition and its challenges while maintaining a critical awareness. In and through the complexity and the questions that arise people are able to recognise and intuitively grasp the overall structure and meaning of the Christian faith. This does not mean that they know everything, but have learned to recognise the patterns of the Christian faith that make up the beauty of the whole. They are then able to use this intuitive grasp of the whole to explore new questions and apply the profound insights of the Christian faith to life.

The tradition from which I come (Anglican, in the middle, but on the catholic side) is good at all three levels. Despite the Anglican-turned-fundamentalist jibe that says while Anglican they learned nothing and knew nothing, and had to join the fundamentalists to become Christian, Anglicans are generally well grounded in a simple faith that carries them through life and beyond. And we are certainly good at the complexity stage, and have plenty of examples of those who have attained the third level of deep simplicity. Where we have failed is communicating the complexity, and most especially, the deep simplicity in a popular way and at the popular level. The fundamentalists are excellent at this popular level, although they don't have to worry about translating complexity or deep simplicity into a popular level! (What they have is simplistic, but they are very good at communicating it at a popular level.) We need to embrace the popular and communicate both the complexity and especially the deep simplicity, and encourage and develop people who can do so.

The Difference Going to Church Makes in My Life Part 1: Praying

Not being a great pray-er, going to church helps me because:

I actually pray at church. Even if the rest of the week I don’t, I do at church.

And when I pray at church I use a variety of kinds of prayer; indeed, more variety than I use elsewhere. For example, at Holy Communion I confess my failure and hear the words of absolution pronounced. I give thanks to God for all sorts of stuff, and in particular, through the action of taking, blessing, breaking and eating bread (and wine) at Communion. Without the sacramental life of the church my personal prayer life would be narrowed and exclude praying through the ‘stuff’ of the sacraments. (Like bread and wine.)

And when I pray at church I use language that I do not use elsewhere. Words expressing feelings and thoughts, thanksgiving and petitions that I myself would not think of if left to my own devices. The language provided in the liturgy is deeper than my own, and leads me to a deeper place.

When I pray at church there is less self-focus. The problem for most of us when we pray at home is that it too easily becomes self-focused. If not on our own problems and possible suggestions to God to fix them, then the issues that we think are important (and they might be important, but they remain our version of reality alone. When I go to church most of the prayer is first directed to God through Christ and the Spirit in themselves, and only secondarily is my particular focus on life picked up in this great prayer.

And I pray with others. The problem with personal prayer is that it too often remains individual, indeed, even encouraging an assumption of my 'personal relationship' with God. Not that there is anything wrong with this, that is until our 'personal relationship' is no longer subsumed under our primary relationship with God as members of the people of God. The Bible thinks of God's relation to individuals as part of a people, and finally part of the whole created order. Praying with others brings different perspectives, and a background presence of the wholeness of God's salvation, intended for all creation.