by Delwin Brown
In The Brothers Kararnazov, Ivan challenges his brother Alyosha's belief in the cosmic monarch God." He tells the young monk that he will discount all of the other reasons for rejecting this God and offer only one reason, the suffering of innocent children. Then Ivan recounts the stories he has heard about the cruel mistreatment, neglect, torture, and brutal killing of children, stories like those we read everyday in our newspapers. And then Ivan asks Alyosha one question: If you were God and, in order to bring about this glorious creation, you knew in advance that doing so could result in the suffering of only one innocent child-only one, to say nothing of the millions and millions of children who would suffer-would you, Alyosha, create the world, under those conditions? Alyosha, the pious young monk, is silent, and then he replies. "No, I would not"
'I he development of belief in a monarchical God is understandable. It emerged in the ancient world when powerful rulers rose up to unify peoples, create laws, impose order, and (ostensibly) protect their subjects from outside threats, natural and human. For a variety of reasons, both humane and lamentable, these developments were deemed to be good. Hence the cause of these developments-the power of the monarchcame to be viewed as the source of these goods and thus itself the epitome of what is good. The greater the power, it would have seemed, the greater the good, and, if so, then absolute power would equate to absolute good. Of course, in time it became apparent that no human ruler is absolutely good, and thus none is entitled to absolute power. Even so, the equation of absolute goodness and absolute power could still be made, if now it were ascribed to a divine ruler. The equation was made-God is absolutely good, and so absolutely powerful.
Many traditional Christians, however, have wrestled in the depths of their souls with the question that arises from this view of God. "Why, if God is all-powerful and good, is there so much utterly pointless evil in the world-evil that no outcome could possibly justify, and evil, in fact, that we mortals try desperately to prevent?"
The most credible reply of these anguished Christians is a commendably honest one: "We don't have an answer. We do not understand anymore than did Ivan, Alyosha, or the most rigorous denier of an omnipotent deity. We do not know."
But there is another understanding of God. It is different from the view of God as cosmic monarch. This alternative understanding also emerged in the ancient world. It did not fit well, however, with the growth of empires, nor did it serve the needs of rulers for adulation. It persisted nevertheless, usually in the quiet corners of peasant piety but sometimes, unrecognized, in the councils of ecclesiastical and political power.
It is the view of God as incarnate.
'Ihe origin of this view of divinity lies in the Hebrew background of Jesus, his Jewish context, the life he lived, and what this seemed to his followers to imply about the nature of the world and all life-each life, each form of life-within it. This interpretation is a "faith" precisely in the sense that the facts of Jesus' life, whatever they were, and the realities of the world, whatever we discover them to be, are assumed to permit this interpretation, even if they do not require it. It cannot be proven; it can only be proffered and tested continuously against everyday realities-personal, social, natural, and cosmic-for its adequacy as a guide to living in the world.
'Ihe fulcrum of this faith is belief in a God who is fully in and with the world. The world is God's place, its processes are the means through which God works, its destiny and that of the divine are intertwined. The chief symbols of this understanding of God are a peasant newborn in a manger, a child growing in knowledge, a teacher of compassion for all things, a prophet opposing injustice, a preacher of new ways of being, and a lonely man hanging on a cross, forgiving his enemies and doubting his faith, who somehow gives rise to a confidenceexpressed in different, even conflicting, ways by his followersthat evil is not ultimately victorious.
A manger, a prophet, a cross-these are not the symbols of a cosmic monarch. If they can faithfully symbolize God at all, it will be a God whose place is in the cosmos, with the creation, among the creatures. It will be a God whose reality incorporates the realities of all created life-chance and order, animate and inanimate, human and non-human, living and dying, good and had, joy and sorrow. It will be a God whose way of creating is the persuasive power of what is best or better for each given situation, large and small. It will be a God whose way of saving is as a presence throughout the creation, as creative energy, judging goodness, healing love.
It will not be a God who makes worlds on command, determines evolution in advance, stops bullets in their flight, topples tyrants from their thrones, or works other magical interventions. It will be a patiently working God. One who inspires the new, undergirds the good, and heals the broken by being fully present in and with the whole creation.
It will be the God made known to us in Jesus Christ.
Thinking about the Incarnate God
There is no one way to think about the incarnate God. John's gospel does so by employing a philosophical idea drawn from the Hellenistic tradition, while the ancient Christian councils used the substance philosophy of the Greeks. We can learn from both, but neither approach, so foreign to our modern way of seeing things, is adequate for us.
Ways of thinking about God appropriate to our time are needed and, fortunately, have begun to appear. Two in particular deserve our attention-Openness Theology (sometimes called Freewill Theism) and a family of views known as Process 'I heology. Openness Theology began primarily as a rereading of the Bible but has proceeded to take on, with more intentionality, a supportive philosophical framework. Process 'theology developed from a broad philosophical perspective but has continued to evolve and become more diverse as its Christian proponents have revised and expanded it in light of the biblical tradition. Their important differences, largely philosophical in character, need not concern us here. But we should add that these differences are likely to make Openness 'lheology more congenial to progressive Christians with an evangelical background, and Process 'lheology more congenial to those whose heritage is liberalism. Our interest is in what the two theologies hold in common. (For readers who wish to explore these views further, John Cobb is perhaps the best known Process theologian, and Clark Pinnock is the leading Openness theologian.'')
I)espite their differences, Process and Openness modes of thought can be summarized together because, in their explicitly Christian theological forms, both begin with the conviction that love is the fundamental character of God. Everything else that is said about God must be compatible with saying that God is love. 'Ibis means that God is intimately connected to the world, caring for it, and committed to its good. It also means that God, as love, is necessarily sensitive to the world and vulnerable to its developments. As the being of each lover is partly determined by the being of the other, so the being of God and that of the world are intertwined and mutually interactive. God makes a real difference in the world; the world makes a real difference in God.
For our purposes, the key element of love to be considered is the vulnerability that it entails. God is vulnerable; the life of God is a dynamic process that is affected by the world. 'Ihe joys in our personal lives are joys that make a difference to God. More equitable social and political forms of human community increase the quality of God's life. "Ihe advance of ecological justice is an advance in the divine experience.
Vulnerability also means that loss in the world impoverishes God. God suffers in our suffering. God is torn by the persistent injustice of our societies. God is diminished by the mistreatment of the non-human world. God "dies" in the "crucifixions" that we suffer and that we impose on other people and other members of the creation. It may help us to think of the creation in its entirety as the "body" of God. To harm the well-being of that body is to harm the vulnerable God. To advance the well-being of the creation, at any point and in any way, enriches the God who is with us and with the whole creation.
The vulnerability of a loving God leads us rapidly away from the c
oncept of a cosmic monarch and away from many of the familiar ideas that have been associated with it. A God who is open to the world-whether by primordial choice (the Openness position), or metaphysical necessity (the Process position)-cannot do anything that God might wish to do, and cannot know everything that God might desire to know. In other words, at least as we ordinarily think of these terms, God is not "omnipotent" (all-powerful) or "omniscient" (all-knowing).
These ideas may sound radical, even "heretical." After all, for centuries the dominant Christian tradition, addicted to the doctrine of a cosmic monarch, suppressed them. But they seem inescapable if we are to take seriously the biblical vision of a loving God, interactive with the world and affected by it. That, at least, is the judgment of the progressive Christian. The reasons are clear.
The processes of the world in which God is incarnate are characterized by an element of contingency or chance. Further, it is a world in which humans are in some measure free agents, actors who make choices that are not entirely determined by antecedent factors. Openness theologians say that in choosing to bring this kind of world into being, God willingly relinquished the power to abrogate that freedom and, in so doing, accepted willingly the risks of working with and within such a world. Process theologians begin with a different set of assumptions, but the end point is similar: human free choices (and, for them, the processes of nature, too) are inviolate, limiting conditions within which God must work, and, in love, does work willingly. God is not "omnipotent.
Ihe free agency of humans and the contingency or chance throughout the cosmic process means that, at any given point in time, the future is to some degree open, unclear, undecided, indeterminate. TO the degree that this is so, the future is also unknown to God. God fully knows the past and present, according to these theologians, and God knows future possibilities as they unfold, but which of these options are to be realized is unsettled for the world and, therefore, also for God. Except as a set of still open possibilities, God does not know the future. In this sense, God is not "omniscient"
God's power in the world is conceived somewhat differently by Openness and Process theologians (as well as differently within the Process movement itself). Openness theologians speak of God's power primarily as inspiration, usually in conjunction with reference to the Holy Spirit. Process theologians use that language, too, but they also speak of the "persuasive power of ideal forms of becoming" as the means through which God makes a difference in human experience and other natural processes. In more naturalistic versions of Process "Theology, the divine agency is conceived not as a person, but as a cosmic principle or process (such as "creativity," or as a "power that makes for right")-one element of the universe among others.
In all of these progressive concepts of God, however, the autonomy of human beings (and for Process Iheologies, the independence of non-human processes, too) are not, and cannot be, abrogated by God. Thus the course of things moves forward-in the cosmos, nature, history, and individual human life-through the interaction of multiple, interdependent causes at many different levels, including the persuasive agency of the relational God of love. At every point at every level, God is active through the inspiration of the best possibilities for that impasse, everywhere in the universe.
The incarnate God is omnipresent!
Experiencing the Incarnate God
Christian faith in God, like every other vital religious faith, is experiential as well as conceptual. It is a combination, in action, of the rational and the passionate, of ideas and feelings. Although, as we've seen, progressive Christians think of God in ways that differ markedly from the monarchical tradition, the various ways in which they experience God are like those of Christians throughout the ages. For example, the incarnate God is experienced as guide, as presence, and as mystery.
The most common way that Christians talk about God and God's impact in their lives is as divine guide. The incarnate God is a "right-seeking" God. God's role in the universe is to nudge it from less to more adequate forms and processes (which are not necessarily more complex or orderly in character). So for humans, God is the "lure" or push toward more wholesome forms of being within the self, within our societies, with the rest of the creation, and therefore also with God. The call to repent and move away from self-centeredness, beyond racism, sexism, and homophobia, and toward economic and ecological justice is an experience of God.
God is also experienced as a presence, an immediacy that is intrinsically valuable, valuable simply for its being-with-us. A gripping experience of nature-a sunset over the mountains, a view of earth from outer space, frost on fallen autunin leaves-is not "merely" an experience of nature; it is also an experience of the God incarnate in nature. An experience of communion with another individual or within a community of individuals is a good in itself. It needs no outcome beyond itself in order to be a benefit. It is also an experience of the God incarnate in human relationships. A sense that God, the ultimate good, is not elsewhere, is not here on occasion, but is here in the world fully and pervasively, is an experience of the presence of God incarnate.
God is experienced as mystery. The idea of a God who is fully one with the creation does not diminish the divine mystery, but underscores it.'Ihe mystery ofGod incarnate does not depend on the mystifying language and concepts of the christological councils. It appears already in the very notion that there is a directional power at work in what, by most accounts, seems to be a purely contingent, even whimsical, cosmic process. It is more than readily evident in the confidence that amidst the vicissitudes of history, the interminable struggles of social life, and the frustrating perplexities of individually trying to know and do the good, there is at work-precisely in these mundane and ambiguous processes-a power that offers to us and the entire creation the forms of healing for which we long, toward which we strive, but which we can articulate in only the barest, most tentative terms.
The preservation of an appropriate sense of mystery may be the greatest gift that belief in God has to offer our world today. It does not hamper the quest for truth, it tempers that quest with modesty. It does not enervate the search for justice, it tempers it with humility. It does not weaken our capacity to hope, it fills us with patient expectation.
Faith in the Incarnate God
A religion is a comprehensive orientation toward life. It is the framework within which we understand ourselves, our meaning and place in our larger environments, and how we should live within them. In other words, a religion is a way of life. Ideas of God are the fundamental interpretive point of view that grounds this orientation and holds it together. God is the key, so to speak, for understanding what the framework implies about our meaning, the meaning of our world, and our proper role in it. How we, as Christians, think we ought to live is grounded in our concept of God.
Our concept of God, however, is always an interpretation, never a straightforward description of what is there for all to see. We certainly believe it to be a plausible interpretation of the world, and in our daily lives, if we are reflective Christians, we test the adequacy of our understanding of God. But it is never provable. For this reason, our view of God, though fundamental, is never, ever a legitimate source of absolute claims or absolute attitudes.
The "absolutizing" of religion and religious belief is a sign of fear, a desperate attempt to hide the fact that our fundamental orientations toward life are always interpretive adventures, always a risk. Critics of religion are fully justified in denouncing its absolutistic expressions. They misunderstand religion, though, when they assume that the absolutistic impulse is essential to it. On the contrary, it is a corruption of religion precisely because religion is a standpoint of faith. All too often, however, Christians, still under the spell of a monarchical deity, illustrate that corruption vividly, and destructively. Christian faith, which ought to banish fear, becomes its mask.
POINTS FOR REFLECTION
• Many Christians view God as the cosmic monarch whose will controls all thi
ngs. There may be temporary comfort in this view of God, but there is also puzzlement and great moral distress.
• Belief in a monarchical God emerged in the ancient world when powerful rulers rose up to unify people, impose order, and provide protection.
• 'There is another understanding of God. It did not fit well with the growth of empires, but it persisted nevertheless. It is the view of God as incarnate.
• A manger, a prophet, a cross-these are not the symbols of a cosmic monarch. 'Ihey symbolize a patiently working God, one who inspires, undergirds, and heals by being present. 'Ibis is the incarnate God made known to us in Jesus Christ.
• Progressive Christian understandings of God begin with the conviction that love is God's fundamental character. Love is vulnerable, and the vulnerability of God leads us rapidly away from the concept of a cosmic monarch.
• The incarnate God is experienced as guide, presence, and mystery-as the call to move toward more wholesome ways of being, as the immediacy felt in communion with others, as the sustaining confidence in a power that works for good in all things.
• Awareness of God's mystery does not hamper the quest for truth; it tempers that quest with modesty. It does not enervate the search for justice, it tempers it with humility. It does not weaken our capacity to hope, it fills us with patient expectation.
• 'Ihe "absolutizing" of our religious beliefs is a sign of fear, and a corruption of faith. All too often, Christians, under the spell of a monarchical deity, illustrate that corruption vividly and destructively. Christian faith, which ought to banish fear, becomes its mask.
Chapter 5)
