Marilynne Robinson is still best known for her first novel, Housekeeping , but her more recent novel Gilead has drawn attention to a more obscure title she wrote in between her two brilliant novels. The Death of Adam: Essays in Modern Thought is that rare piece of literature, theology by a non-specialist theologian.
Robinson is a theologian of a very high order, but her profession is creative writing (she teaches it, and periodically publishes a book). The Death of Adam is a great transgression of academic boundaries. One could do worse than spend a week reading the whole Robinson corpus.
In any event, I came across the following morsel while reading an essay in The Death of Adam on Dietrich Bonhoefer. When I've explained theology to "lay" people, that is, those who don't read theology, I've always been at a loss to do theology justice. But Robinson has, so here goes:
"Great theology is always a kind of giant and intricate poetry, like epic or saga. It is written for those who know the tale already, the urgent messages and the dying words, and who attend to its retelling with a special alertness, because the story has a claim on them and they on it. Theology is also close to the spoken voice. It evokes sermon, sacrament, and liturgy, and of course, Scripture itself, with all its echoes of song and legend and prayer. It earns its authority by winning assent and recognition, in the manner of poetry but with the difference that the assent seems to be to ultimate truth, however oblique or fragmentary the suggestion of it. Theology is written for the small community of those who would think of reading it" (117).
Read that last sentence three of four times. Then go back to the beginning, and remember she started out saying, "Great theology..."
If only there were world enough, and time...
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Monday, September 12, 2005
Creation and New Creation
The gospel(s) and the creation narrative are completely different genres of literature. Neither are what I would call "allegory", although both contain some allegories. Genesis is what I would call "myth", although this term is used differently in popular English than it is in literary studies, so we need to be careful in delineating that Genesis is myth in a certain sense and not otherwise (the Barthian sense?).
The book of the Bible that is most clearly allegory is the Book of Revelation. It is apocalyptic allegory. One of the largest problems in contemporary American religion (Left Behind, et. al.) is due to a mis-reading of Revelation as "future" history rather than allegory and gospel.
Why are the gospels different? Well, they are eye-witness accounts, or literary performances of collected eye-witness accounts. It would have been impossible for Moses (the "author" of Genesis) to be present at the creation of all things, not to mention Adam and Eve, nor could anyone that we might call an eye-witness have been there- so the Genesis myth is by its very nature going to be different from the historical account we have of Christ's life, death, and resurrection.
I believe in and confess the resurrection of Christ because I have heard it from people who have heard it who themselves heard it from... on down through a chain to the original eye-witnesses. See Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments for an interesting discussion of this issue of believers at first and second hand.
**We might also note that this issue of eye-witnesses and the passing on of the story from generation to generation is of the very essence/reality of the church. The church is that community of people who have heard the good news of Christ's resurrection (and just so participate in it), and are passing it on to future generations.**
It has been popular in some circles (beginning with Feuerbach?) to read the resurrection as allegorical wish-fulfillment, as in- because Jesus now lives on "in our hearts" after his death, he has been "resurrected". This collective belief in Christ living on then emerges, supposedly, as an actual claim by the community to his resurrection.
But this seems patently false. The first eye-witnesses began reporting immediately these things. 1) An empty tomb. 2) Appearances of the risen Christ. 3) An Ascension. 4) Multiple witnesses to the same resurrection.
I think it takes considerable courage and faith to believe that a group could collectively cleverly devise such a "collective unconscious" and then spread it world wide. Nevertheless, to believe thus requires a stubborn self-actualized faith of almost similar magnitude to actually simply confessing the resurrection of Christ, and the promise of our participation with him in it. We can all create our own religion if we wish. I feel no need to do so.
This is finally why the resurrection and the creation narrative are of completely different orders for me. The first is a narrative of God's relation to the old creation, how it was brought about. Certainly, this is important. But it is not of salvific importance to get it "right" or to believe it in certain ways as historical. On the other hand, that Christ is raised from the dead, historically and really, is very faith of very faith, the historical reality that grounds the church as that community that proclaims already the New Creation, Jesus Christ and Him crucified and risen.
The book of the Bible that is most clearly allegory is the Book of Revelation. It is apocalyptic allegory. One of the largest problems in contemporary American religion (Left Behind, et. al.) is due to a mis-reading of Revelation as "future" history rather than allegory and gospel.
Why are the gospels different? Well, they are eye-witness accounts, or literary performances of collected eye-witness accounts. It would have been impossible for Moses (the "author" of Genesis) to be present at the creation of all things, not to mention Adam and Eve, nor could anyone that we might call an eye-witness have been there- so the Genesis myth is by its very nature going to be different from the historical account we have of Christ's life, death, and resurrection.
I believe in and confess the resurrection of Christ because I have heard it from people who have heard it who themselves heard it from... on down through a chain to the original eye-witnesses. See Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments for an interesting discussion of this issue of believers at first and second hand.
**We might also note that this issue of eye-witnesses and the passing on of the story from generation to generation is of the very essence/reality of the church. The church is that community of people who have heard the good news of Christ's resurrection (and just so participate in it), and are passing it on to future generations.**
It has been popular in some circles (beginning with Feuerbach?) to read the resurrection as allegorical wish-fulfillment, as in- because Jesus now lives on "in our hearts" after his death, he has been "resurrected". This collective belief in Christ living on then emerges, supposedly, as an actual claim by the community to his resurrection.
But this seems patently false. The first eye-witnesses began reporting immediately these things. 1) An empty tomb. 2) Appearances of the risen Christ. 3) An Ascension. 4) Multiple witnesses to the same resurrection.
I think it takes considerable courage and faith to believe that a group could collectively cleverly devise such a "collective unconscious" and then spread it world wide. Nevertheless, to believe thus requires a stubborn self-actualized faith of almost similar magnitude to actually simply confessing the resurrection of Christ, and the promise of our participation with him in it. We can all create our own religion if we wish. I feel no need to do so.
This is finally why the resurrection and the creation narrative are of completely different orders for me. The first is a narrative of God's relation to the old creation, how it was brought about. Certainly, this is important. But it is not of salvific importance to get it "right" or to believe it in certain ways as historical. On the other hand, that Christ is raised from the dead, historically and really, is very faith of very faith, the historical reality that grounds the church as that community that proclaims already the New Creation, Jesus Christ and Him crucified and risen.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Intelligent Design
I don't have anything that intelligent to say about intelligent design. What I can say intelligently, I'll say here. For greater intelligence on the issue, click on "intelligent design" above and be linked to Paul Davies Templeton Address of 1995. He concludes with this call to conversation:
"The position I have presented to you today is radically different. It is one that regards the universe, not as the plaything of a capricious Deity, but as a coherent, rational, elegant, and harmonious expression of a deep and purposeful meaning. I believe the time has now come for those theologians who share this vision to join me and my scientific colleagues to take the message to the people."
One theologian who has taken up Davies call to take the message to the people is John Polkinghorne. The book he edited together with Michael Welker, The End of the Universe and the Ends of God is without a doubt the best science-theology co-authored piece I've read, not that I've read as thoroughly as some others in this field.
I find arguments from physicists on this issue more compelling than biologists. Stephen Hawkings, maybe the most famous of astrophysicists, uses the term "mind of God" at the end of his popular book. Freeman Dyson, another astrophysicist, famously declared that it is almost as if "the universe knew we were coming." Their arguments for a "designer" rest on complex mathematical systems that I am not qualified to evaluate. What I do know is that they have a basis for their conjecture.
Intelligent design taught in a biology curriculum seems to make less sense. Evolution is a helpful scientific theory that guides and directs progress in the field of biology. The argument for intelligent design, though natural (I mean, who isn't so amazed at things in the natural world enough to think it couldn't have been all by so-called chance, that is, natural selection), cannot really be taught as an alternative scientific theory because, as I understand it, it doesn't stand up as a theory. This is not to say that it has been disproved, just that it makes less sense of the available evidence.
I mean, I guess you could teach in geography classes that there is a debate about whether the earth is flat or not, since there are still flat-earthers around, but... see how silly that sounds.
As a Christian, I don't have any problem with teaching evolution in the schools, nor do I see evolutionary theory (and by theory, I mean the scientific, not popular, definition of theory) as undermining the foundations of the Christian faith. God works within and through creation, all things came into being through Him, so it is not surprising that God may have created mechanisms that function in one we can call scientifically observable ways.
In fact, I find it to be much more like the Christian God to create in such a way that our existence and life as humans came about through an intimate process that involves all of creation, beginning with the interaction of giant stars to create the needed elements for life, continuing with chemical interactions on a watery planet formed from the detritus of countless stars, continuing with slow processes of development and evolution, and culminating(?) in the creation of "praying animals", that is, us, creatures part and parcel of the created order, but created in the image of God, and renewed by the coming into our midst of very God of very God, Jesus Christ, God's new image for us.
We are a part of this thing called the universe, the created order God has called good. Why must we fight so hard to convince ourselves we transcend it, or God took some kind of special, separate track to create humans apart from all the things God is about the business of creating and sustaining by God's Spirit?
Sam, was that intelligent enough for now? :)
"The position I have presented to you today is radically different. It is one that regards the universe, not as the plaything of a capricious Deity, but as a coherent, rational, elegant, and harmonious expression of a deep and purposeful meaning. I believe the time has now come for those theologians who share this vision to join me and my scientific colleagues to take the message to the people."
One theologian who has taken up Davies call to take the message to the people is John Polkinghorne. The book he edited together with Michael Welker, The End of the Universe and the Ends of God is without a doubt the best science-theology co-authored piece I've read, not that I've read as thoroughly as some others in this field.
I find arguments from physicists on this issue more compelling than biologists. Stephen Hawkings, maybe the most famous of astrophysicists, uses the term "mind of God" at the end of his popular book. Freeman Dyson, another astrophysicist, famously declared that it is almost as if "the universe knew we were coming." Their arguments for a "designer" rest on complex mathematical systems that I am not qualified to evaluate. What I do know is that they have a basis for their conjecture.
Intelligent design taught in a biology curriculum seems to make less sense. Evolution is a helpful scientific theory that guides and directs progress in the field of biology. The argument for intelligent design, though natural (I mean, who isn't so amazed at things in the natural world enough to think it couldn't have been all by so-called chance, that is, natural selection), cannot really be taught as an alternative scientific theory because, as I understand it, it doesn't stand up as a theory. This is not to say that it has been disproved, just that it makes less sense of the available evidence.
I mean, I guess you could teach in geography classes that there is a debate about whether the earth is flat or not, since there are still flat-earthers around, but... see how silly that sounds.
As a Christian, I don't have any problem with teaching evolution in the schools, nor do I see evolutionary theory (and by theory, I mean the scientific, not popular, definition of theory) as undermining the foundations of the Christian faith. God works within and through creation, all things came into being through Him, so it is not surprising that God may have created mechanisms that function in one we can call scientifically observable ways.
In fact, I find it to be much more like the Christian God to create in such a way that our existence and life as humans came about through an intimate process that involves all of creation, beginning with the interaction of giant stars to create the needed elements for life, continuing with chemical interactions on a watery planet formed from the detritus of countless stars, continuing with slow processes of development and evolution, and culminating(?) in the creation of "praying animals", that is, us, creatures part and parcel of the created order, but created in the image of God, and renewed by the coming into our midst of very God of very God, Jesus Christ, God's new image for us.
We are a part of this thing called the universe, the created order God has called good. Why must we fight so hard to convince ourselves we transcend it, or God took some kind of special, separate track to create humans apart from all the things God is about the business of creating and sustaining by God's Spirit?
Sam, was that intelligent enough for now? :)
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