The point of the humanities, staying with Rorty, is to shake things up, to help us imagine new ways of living and being. He argues that the humanities offer “a desirable replacement of bad questions like ‘What is Being?’, ‘What is really real?’ and ‘What is man?’ with the sensible question ‘Does anybody have any new ideas about what we human beings might manage to make of themselves?'”
Theology has much to offer here. But first the point needs to be made that theology is one of the humanities. Once god-talk has discarded notions of special revelation (as opposed to naturalism), it can claim no special knowledge that other humanistic disciplines cannot also lay claim to. Once you’ve opted for panentheism, there can be no divine finger pointing out the truth from the sky.
It should go without saying that theology is not a science (and should not be). But like all other humanities, theology has been crept upon by the social sciences. The social sciences aid theology by describing religious persons and organizations, but they cannot tell theology where to go or how to get there–they’re not built for that. The social sciences can help identify sites for new hearings, but they cannot write the script. The prime question of god-talk must remain the god question, not the questions of management theory, psychology, or the new sciences.
Adding to Rorty above, the question for a humanities-based theology must be “Does anybody have any new ideas about what we human beings might make of ourselves in light of this god question?” Framed that way, god-talk opens up to the wealth of human experiences–religious and not–which theology has at most remotely concerned itself with. “What could this experience improve my god-talk?” ends up being a better question than “Who is god?” or “How might I be saved?”
Could our new and improved god-question place god-talk closer to anthropology and cultural studies than to theoretical disciplines like philosophy? Perhaps the traditional questions of theology and of the philosophy of religion could be reframed as meta-theology. If I’m right, the traditional “arts of ministry”–the sermon, the collect, hymnody, the pastoral visit–are candidates more likely to be real theology. Still, if the whole of human experience is open to god-talk, then the traditional arts of ministry are simply not enough. God-talk must find its way from and back to film, indie music, and other alternative media. (Perhaps even blogs?)
[…] ship?
Filed under: uu, culture industry —by chutney
A while back I made a case for doing “indie theology.” Now Christian Century has posted (tempo […]
Rorty is implicitly using an Augustan technique called “banter,” or “raillery.” He is deflating God-talk as Pope in Peri Bathos deflated the Longinian Sublime. Deflated, the talk becomes the chummy talk of the American Univ Faculty Lounge. I find it very uncongenial, as if I were trapped in a locked room with a talkative pedant who considered himself witty for using the language of every day life. Reminds me in some ways of G.E. Moore in its smugness. Bloomsbury Part II. The Aesthete.
If philosophy is a matter of learning that there are no deep problems, why doesn’t Rorty sell life insurance, or learn chemistry?
Mannered, precious prose — What would it take to kick that out of Rorty? And what would be left if you did?
HT,
Mannered, precious prose — What would it take to kick that out of Rorty? And what would be left if you did?
Pragmatism. And story. We need more?
Your point about the pedant is similar to Mike’s point about the socio-economic privilege needed to take such a position. Yet it seems all philosophical language requires a certain level of privilege–Plato was not a slave, after all. Unless one of us is selling everything he has and giving it to the poor, I think we’re all on the same foot here. That you find mine and Rorty’s philosphical dialects off putting does not mean that yours is also free of that taint.
I still don’t understand how you can equate the existence of “Truth” or “God” with the existence of “deep problems.” Could you elaborate? How are “Truth” and “God” not idols needing to be torn down from the high places?
And doesn’t Rorty’s approach give a greater depth to life’s problems, an infinitely varying depth? (If depth is what we value in our problems.)
In the spirit of dialogue,
chutney
I think one of the more important contributions of the Christian and Jewish traditions is the centering of religion around the question: What must I do to be saved? This is where I have some agreement with Wieman when he argues that the idea of God should be in reference to what operates in human existence, in the natural world, etc. to save us from assorted evils and to transform us to a better life. In this sense, God is not just about some of the deepest problems, it is one of the central problems of human existence.
Whether we give the name God to this operative reality could be a different discussion in some ways. In that sense, God talk is periphereal, salvation is paramount. And given the vast ability for humans to do harm to each other and the planet, I’d have sympathy with that direction of thought.
I do have some sympathies with the pragmatism and the American philosophic tradition. I think it can provide some rich resources in terms of theology, ethics, and working on these very complex problems. But how Rorty has appropriated the tradition is quite different from the way theologians working in the same tradition have appropriated it.
Dwight,
I’ve been slowly working my way through Wieman and so far I’m impressed. If something like the “creative event” is how salvation happens, do we really need god-talk? Once again, my affinities lie with the third person of the trinity to the exclusion of the others.
When I get a little farther along, maybe we can get some cross-blog posting on Wieman going.
Following up on your post, Dwight, perhaps the question is “Does anyone have any new ideas about how salvation happens?” The question would need to be understood to be asking for descriptions more than prescriptions.
In terms of a candidate for salvation, the creative event does seem like a good candidate. For those who haven’t read Wieman, it’s the process by which people are able to communicate and integrate the other into who we are, thus expanding human sympathy and making the world of our experience more meaningful. I’ve never seen any author identify God with such a process. But looking back in the history of philosophy, the idea does pop up in different forms. It is Dewey’s theory of communication in Experience and Nature (that mind, consciousness, develops on this interactive basis). It’s also comes from Hegel who said that mind came to be such through this integrative process. It could also be linked up with Whitehead’s process of concretion. But….
Sometimes I have a hesistancy in identifying salvation with one process. I think it takes a particular process metaphysics for the claim to make much sense (for instance how can God be a creator in such a model, unless we agree that how we or anything becomes the thing it is is through this integrative process?)
One way of speaking of salvation, is to make it more open. Gordon Kaufman does this in Theology for a Nuclear Age….that is, when we think of what makes for life, for good in the world, it’s a rather complex affair that will take the minds and resources of the best of what we have, in terms of the sciences, in terms of human experience, and the like. And whatever solution we come up with, will only be some guestimate that will continually need to be revised based on new info.
But whether one goes with Wieman or not, it does seem we can talk about super human powers, perhaps nature, perhaps another term by which human life depends. And working in appropriate relationship with such powers is what is key. On the one hand, this is a radically different vision of salvation from say I get to go to heaven notion. On the other hand, I think some examination of a number of religions, finds some piety, recognition of what is due to things like nature, our ancestors who created the world we live in, to the Other by which we are here. So perhaps there could be some continuity here.
In terms of the use of the word God….big guestion and I have no clue. I wish I did. I think the problem for a liberal religious faith, or any adequate faith for that matter is that there are two ideas which somehow should be united.
1.Whatever is the source of good, of value, of love, needs radical committment
2.A continual openess to experience, fallibilism, able to revise, etc.
I don’t think they are contradictory. Without being able to be appreciative of the possibilities of good in experience, there cannot be a radical committment to such a thing. On the other hand, when we find radical committment it usually comes in the form fundamentalism and fanaticism, both not very conducive to openess. And because of such association, the notions of radical committment in practice is not easy attained liberal religious thought.
Perhaps God language is able to in a way that any secular language is not, able to point us to both things? Perhaps not. Finding Wiemans and Dewey and other folks ideas about God were exciting, refreshing, even liberating. And then seeing the dismal reaction to Gene Robinson, seeing fundamentalism advancing ever more, (and a lot of events this summer seem to be confirming this advance) I’ve kind of despaired about the language of God and whether just using the G word is just too conducive to a lack of openess, etc.
I have no problem using the G word, but being pragmatist, the history of the word and the way it functions in our society will determine whether it’s a word which is recoverable or not. But perhaps in liberal religious thought there can be some room for experimentation with not just God language, but other entirely new words to getting at this same reality. I guess this hasn’t been new in UUism. But…
As much as I can have my disagreements with Spong, I’m convinced that his question about theism is something the rest of the mainline church needs to wrestle with, call into question, fundamentally re-evaluate. I’m encouraged by some movement of the United Church of Canada this way, but I think much of the debates in the mainline churches hinge on the issue.
Sorry for my long wandering response here. In short…God may not be necesssary for the religious life, but the reality to which God points to is, is clearily necessary. But whether this reality can be pointed to in the western tradition with different language of if God language could be recovered seems undetermined as far as I can tell….what are your thoughts?
As for the use of “God” (or other aspects of traditional Christian vocabulary and practice), the issue would seem to be whether viable and saving religious communities can grow that don’t use the word and orient themselves around its real symbolic import. The fate of post-traditional movements does not give me hope on this count.
But maybe we should recognize a two-track approach here: Theologians like Kaufman or Wieman or perhaps even Spong (who always strikes me as derivative) are trying to clarify what key terms might mean and should mean. But their redefinitional work just doesn’t sing; it fails at the pastoral level because it is explicitly revisionist and intellectual. You can’t easily take Kaufman or Wieman into the pulpit; some kind of additional translation is needed.
So the second level — the much more important one, the one where people may come to realize only slowly that their *ideas* have shifted because the transformation has been experiential — is the liturgical level. The prayers, hymns, liturgies, curriculum, and folklore of the church need to be cultivated in new ways without sharply discarding the traditional forms. Or, at the very least, the critical prophetic aspect of religion needs to remain in a lively tension with the sacramental priestly aspect, which is probably religion’s drawing power.
I noticed a subtle shift, for example, in the Easter hymn texts written since 1950, which through verb tense and sense of time locate the resurrection in the continuing present, not in the finished past. If Victorian hymns remembered the crucifixion and resurrection as historical events (“There is a green hill far away”), many modern hymns locate the resurrection within the current life of the church. This subtly moves away from the dangers of overliteralization and over-historicization. These hymns help the church step away from the risk of fundamentalism and toward an enhanced appreciation for symbolism in worship. I think something similar can happen throughout the church’s life, especially around such loaded words as “God.”
God-talk on the couch.
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Slavery to god?
Author Yair Caspi had a religious experience once, what psychologist Abraham Maslow would term a “peak experience.” It’s content? We can only find true freedom by making ourselves slaves to god. Caspi then built that experience into a psychological met…
“Theometry” as described in my web site uses humor as well as logic to wrestle with these important issues in rather interesting and unusual ways. For example, its home page begins with a Rorty quote and ends up with a lovely one from a lesbian former porn actress and still in the game free-speech and free-actions freedom-fighter. Plus, it also gets to explain why, even when things end up down, they end “up” — which if nothing else will have value for those of you who like me enjoy spending time observing and altering the nature of alterity.