Creation: From Nothing Until Now, Part 4: Willem B. Drees


Metanexus: Views 2001.12.28 3771 words


What is theology? And what does theology have to say to us? Is it truly the
science of God, in the way that physics might be considered the science of
material objects and their interactions or biology viewed as the science of
the "lifeworld" or of living "objects"? What, then, would be the "scientific
basis" for theology? Empirical data? Lived experience? Personal convictions?
As Willem Drees observes:

"If I would have been born in India, wouldn't I have had different
convictions? Even within a single tradition opinions diverge. The Biblical
writings are no unity, as became clear when they became the subject of
historical-critical investigation (...). Some stories were told in the
palace or the temple, whereas others were told among farmers or shepherds.
We too make out of this 'library' our own selection; some parts we consider
to be important, while other texts are left in the background or read in a
'creative' way. We cannot trust blindly books or people. We always have to
face the question: 'And why do you consider this wisdom?'"

So, are we seeking knowledge via theology? Or something more elusive, namely
"wisdom"? Drees continues:

"The exact sciences seem to offer more certainty. Once the mathematics
teacher has proved Pythagoras' theorem (about the length of the hypotenuse
of a rectangular triangle), the pupil seems to have no choice; whether
understood or not, whether they like it or not, the teacher is right.
Theology has from time to time looked for secure support from the sciences.
Some hope that cosmology offers an argument or even a proof for the
existence of God: there has been a beginning of the universe, any beginning
needs a cause, hence there is a cause surpassing the universe. However, such
a proof is not conclusive."

No, such proof is not conclusive. But one must needs ask: is the object in
question actually amenable to this kind of study, i.e., science? Psychology,
for instance, often waffles in the edge of a similar problem--the human
being as (animate) object versus the human being as (animated) subject. For
while experimental psychology may reveal insights into human behavior in the
aggregate by way of the behavior of rats or monkeys, the data itself is
somehow not readily amenable to counseling psychology of the individual man
or woman. Why is this? Moreover, does theology also suffer from a confusion
as to whether the "god" in question is a subject or an object?

These are precisely the kinds of issues and questions that are discussed
today in the fourth part of our series on Creation: From Nothing Until Now
(Paperback or Library Binding; ISBN: 0-4152-5653-4; Routledge; December
2001, 128pp.) by Willem Drees. Parts 1, 2, and 3 were posted to
Metanexus:Views on (2001.12.17), (2001.12.18), and (2001.12.27)
respectively. Willem B. Drees is professor of philosophy of religion and
ethics at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He has an advanced degree in
theoretical physics (Utrecht, 1977) and doctorates in theology (Groningen,
1989) and philosophy (Amsterdam, 1994).

--Stacey E. Ake

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Creation: From Nothing Until Now, Part 4
From: Willem B. Drees
Email: <wb@drees.nl>


Intermezzo: The nature of theology

At this point, I want to digress from the grand tour 'from nothing until
now' to offer some reflections on the nature of theology. In writing the way
I have written above, I implicitly opt for a particular view of what
theology might be in our time.

Let me begin with describing a position I reject, theology as the
science of God. Biology is knowledge of the living (bios), psychology of the
psyche, sociology is about social processes. Thus, 'theology' presents
itself, at least linguistically, as knowledge of God (theos). A problematic
issue is how we acquire such knowledge. On the basis of personal
experiences? Miracles? Science? A holy book?

Personal experiences do not form, in my opinion, a good basis for
knowledge of God. Human experiences do not reach that far. Extraordinary
experiences, such as those of overwhelming silence, deep loneliness, wild
ecstasy or deep communion with someone else, remain human experiences,
shaped by our background, upbringing and situation. Experiences may be
transforming ourselves, and we may start to see the world differently in
consequence of what we have experienced. However, that does not yet make an
intense personal experience the basis for science, not even a 'science of
God'. What is rare, is not thereby outside of our science inspired view of
reality. The integrity of reality (scenes 3 and 7 [in Drees' book]) has been
confirmed again and again. 'Miracles', unexpected events, are not the end of
our knowledge but an occasion for further research. Miracles, extraordinary
events, are in my opinion not a good basis for theology as a science.

It is, in my opinion, a very good thing for faith if we do not give
miracles a place in our view of natural reality. Emphasis on miracles may
give the impression that faith is about explaining events for which there is
no scientific explanation. Such a kind of faith runs the risk of becoming a
'God of the gaps', withdrawing again and again on a smaller territory. It
also offers a problematic conception of God: God leaves control mostly to
the automatic pilot, but sometimes feels the need to change to manual
control to correct mistakes in God's own design. Faith emphasizing miracles
is also problematic in pastoral and moral perspective. If God does an
occasional miracle, why not more often? Why not with this patient, this
friend of mine, this suffering child? Why didn't God push another sperm cell
in the case of an Austrian couple at the end of the nineteenth century,
giving them a daughter rather than their son Adolph? And if God can
intervene to deflect evil, why would we then have to take responsibility?

Rather than building upon miracles and personal experiences one might
seek a firm basis in a book such as the Bible. But why not the Koran or
another ancient text? Confidence can also be placed in persons such as
martyrs, theologians of the early church, popes and bishops, teachers and
mothers who have passed on the faith. Or gurus, masters and spiritual
mediums. But why ascribe authority to this person rather than to that one?
If I would have been born in India, wouldn't I have had different
convictions? Even within a single tradition opinions diverge. The Biblical
writings are no unity, as became clear when they became the subject of
historical-critical investigation (see below, scene 9 [or the next
installment!]). Some stories were told in the palace or the temple, whereas
others were told among farmers or shepherds. We too make out of this
'library' our own selection; some parts we consider to be important, while
other texts are left in the background or read in a 'creative' way. We
cannot trust blindly books or people. We always have to face the question:
'And why do you consider this wisdom?'

The exact sciences seem to offer more certainty. Once the mathematics
teacher has proved Pythagoras' theorem (about the length of the hypotenuse
of a rectangular triangle), the pupil seems to have no choice; whether
understood or not, whether they like it or not, the teacher is right.
Theology has from time to time looked for secure support from the sciences.
Some hope that cosmology offers an argument or even a proof for the
existence of God: there has been a beginning of the universe, any beginning
needs a cause, hence there is a cause surpassing the universe. However, such
a proof is not conclusive. As we have seen the concept of time is
problematic (scene 1 [not excerpted in Metaviews]), and thus the whole
notion of an absolute beginning and of anything preceding such a beginning.
Such arguments also fail as they change domain, from explanations within
reality to a statement about the ground of being. The success of science is
paid for by a limitation of its ambitions. In my opinion the natural
sciences may point us towards limit questions, but they do not get us across
that boundary (scene 2 [see Metaviews 2001.12.18]).

Once upon a time there was a professor in theology who taught on the
attributes of God, including the unknowable ones. Knowledge of the
unknowable has not been granted to me; our knowledge does not reach that far
and deep. That is a good thing. The pretension to know exactly what God is
like and wants from us easily generates intolerance. Awareness that God, the
Ground of being, the absolutely good, is beyond our reach, may keep us from
fanaticism.


Rather than understanding theology as the science of God, claiming
knowledge, some have argued that we should concentrate on our limitations.
When we speak of God as 'mystery' we admit that we don't have knowledge of
God, while at the same time referring to God. That the sacred cannot be
measured with any human measure, is pre-eminently a religious sensibility.
To pretend to know God is the road to idolatry.

In the Bible the elusive, hidden character of God is considered at many
places. Jacob wrestled with a stranger when crossing the Jabbok [at Peniel]
(Genesis 32). They struggle during the night; the stranger cannot be seen in
daylight and his name is not revealed. The Name that Moses hears at the
burning bush, sometimes translated as 'I am who I am' (Exodus 3: 14), is not
a metaphysical description. Rather, it expresses an expectation; it is also
open to the translation 'I will be whom I will be'. At mount Sinai there is
a reference to 'a thick darkness where God was' (Exodus 20: 21). No images
of God were accepted in Israel. A man takes a piece of wood from the forest.
'Half of it he burns in the fire; over half he eats flesh, he roasts meet
and is satisfied; also he warms himself and says 'Aha, I am warm, I have
seen the fire!' And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol; and falls
down to it, and worships it; he prays to it and says 'Deliver me, for thou
art my god!'' (Isaiah 44: 16-17). Thus, Isaiah exposes the foolishness of
falling down before a block of wood - and we could extend that to human
images. Nor is final wisdom to be found among humans; Only God 'understands
the way to it, and he knows its place' (Job 28: 23); see also Proverbs 8 on
wisdom's affinity to God. Job places his hand on his mouth and is silent
(40: 4f). Any human answer falls short; God is not according to human
images. Job does not admit moral guilt but hubris that arose out of moral
innocence.

In Jesus too God's presence is hidden and disputed. Is this the one we
were expecting? 'Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of
James and Josef and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?'
(Mark 6: 3). He is unable even to come down from the cross. But then there
is a Roman officer who says 'Truly this man was the Son of God!' (Marc 15:
39) Of the Biblical God it can be said that as Lord he can be servant, in
smallness great, in humiliation he shows his majesty.

These examples, which can be multiplied, show that there are many
'negative' moments in the Bible. They have to do with God's unknowability,
mystery and holiness. Among the prophets there is another motive as well,
outrage at social injustice: 'This cannot be God's intention; God is
different'. The subsequent tradition does not live from a holy place where
God is present, but from special moments of remembrance and expectation. The
Sabbath recalls creation and anticipates its completion. In synagogue and
church God's great deeds are called into memory with an eye on the future.
For Jews and Christians the presence of God became a matter of recollection
and hope, and thereby a matter of inner confidence, of faith. Life is
oriented towards The Elusive Presence as the Biblical scholar Samuel Terrien
expressed it.

Later European critiques of too pretentious a religion could also appeal
to the Greek philosophers. Xenophanes (d. 470 BCE) wrote that if they could,
horses and oxen would think of the gods as horses and oxen. Our images are
culturally shaped and anthropomorphic. Mythological stories about the gods
are not adequate. The divine principle is different from all mortals.
According to Plato's Apology Socrates was condemned to death since he did
not acknowledge the gods of the city. Where others held to convictions,
Socrates posed questions.

Plato adds another step. Critical questioning brings him to the idea
that there must be a beginning, an arche from which everything springs
forth. This theme is developed further in the neo-platonism of Plotinus. The
One is beyond being. We can speak only of the One by denial, by negative
predicates, as unbounded, timeless, infinite. Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish
thinker from the beginning of our Common Era, identifies 'the One' with the
Biblical God.

Negative theology comes to a pinnacle in Christianity at the end of the
fifth century with an author who is referred to as (pseudo) Dionysius the
Areopagite. He wants to ascend from the image via the imageless to God. The
road to God is not one of extrapolation but of denial, of abandoning our
images and descriptions. With respect to the divine all negations are true,
all affirmations are insufficient. The road aims via negation of all
positions at a position beyond all negations. Dionysius assumed a
hierarchical view of the world. Again and again there was a higher level to
be reached by negating the lower one.

Just as in negative theology no answer is ever final, so too for the
natural sciences. With every answer we can pose new questions (scene 2 [See
Metaviews 2001.12.18]). In this way we may argue that there is an open place
in our view of the world. We should handle that open place, those limit
questions with care. If we draw images from our religious heritage to offer
an explanation (God as 'creator') it may seem as if we claim to have
knowledge 'beyond the knowable'. The platonic philosophers could do that
since the assumed a framework which to them was obvious. We no longer
possess a generally accepted metaphysical framework of this kind; limit
questions do not automatically lead us to a reasonable basis for faith.


If a 'science of God' is beyond our reach, theology can be seen as the study
of religions as human phenomena. Such an understanding of theology can
satisfy ordinary criteria of academic life. One can study how religious
festivals organize social life around sowing and harvesting, birth,
adulthood and death. One can analyze how Roman emperors strengthened their
power by presenting themselves as gods to be worshiped. Or pay attention to
the way reconciliation within a tribe is reinforced by rituals.
Anthropologists and sociologists have studied many different cultures around
the world. The Western cultures included; we too have our myths and rituals,
both old and new.

As said in the introduction, when myths are considered as claims
regarding that which once upon a time actually happened, they are ripe for
the dust bin or the museum. Myths and masks become curiosities from times
when 'they did not know better'. If they are seen as early stages of science
and philosophy, they are outdated in the light of modern science. However,
anthropologists, sociologists and students of literature have long noticed
that a creation story is not merely about particular facts. These stories
reflect human fears, passion and aggression, power and order. Myths have a
normative role; they structure society and guide the individual. In this
sense, myths are what the Bible calls torah, essential instruction. The
anthropologist Clifford Geertz described a religion as 'a systems of symbols
which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and
motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of
existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of facticity that
the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic'. They are symbols and
rituals motivating humans, and they achieve this by evoking certain ideas
about the most basic order of existence. The worldview has to be perceived
as rooted in 'the way things are', but the stories may well refer to this
order indirectly, metaphorically. If the factual content of the stories is
secondary to their guiding, comforting and life structuring function, we
need not ask whether Noah's Ark was capable of holding all those animals and
go search for remains. The story of the Great Flood is not important as a
story about the far past; it is important for us now as a story about the
evil that we people do.


Theology as a science of God is beyond our grasp. Theology as Religious
Studies is academically O.K. However, it has a major disadvantage - one's
own convictions can be left aside. One can study the opinions of a Christian
theologian of the third century, a heretic of the twelfth century, a
Buddhist leader, a Siberian shaman or a leader of a tribe of native
Americans - and never speak about one's own convictions. Thus, one would
pass by the questions that make theology interesting and valuable. Questions
directed at oneself: How do you see life? What is of ultimate value for you?
Adam, Eve, where are you? Or, less individualistic: What kind of community
would we like to be, what kind of society? I see theologies as
interpretations of existence with the help of particular religious
heritages. In such an interpretation of existence, normative and factual
elements are combined, just as they were mixed in creation stories and other
myths.

When one articulates and justifies a particular interpretation of
existence, issues of truth and of value are at stake. Debates about truth
surpass the boundaries of Religious Studies but still are academically
respectable. In considering the value of a particular tradition, theology
goes beyond the regular territory of academia, though it does so in the good
company of normative ethics, social philosophy and esthetics.


Typical of theologies, as systematic positions, seems to be that they offer
a particular view of the way the world is and a view of the way the world
should be, thus of the True and the Good, of the real and the ideal. Each
theology is a particular view of the relationship between a cosmology (in
the metaphysical sense as a view of the way the world is) and an axiology,
that is, a view of the values that should be realized. In The Varieties of
Religious Experience, William James wrote about a century ago on the
difference 'whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of
stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of
Christian saints': 'At bottom the whole concern of both morality and
religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept
it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? Shall our
protests against certain things in it be radical and unforgiving, or shall
we think that, even with evil, there are ways of living that must lead to
good?'

Thus, as a heuristic formulation that may help to clarify and explore a
complex area of discussion I suggest the 'formula':

a theology = a cosmology + an axiology

(with the + sign not being a mere addition, but hiding the crucial issue of
how the two are brought together).

Theologies can be quite different in the way they relate cosmological
and axiological aspects. One can have a scientistic 'theology' when on the
basis of explanatory insights, e.g. about the evolution of human behavior,
one makes statements on the behavior we ought to display or the values that
we should adhere to. Such a 'theology' is fully dominated by the
cosmological pole. Or, to take a different example, when Fritjof Capra wrote
in his book The Turning Point that inflation, unemployment and pollution
'are all different facets of one and the same crisis, and that this crisis
is essentially a crisis of perception' which will be overcome in an
'ecological perspective', he implicitly offered a cosmology and axiology in
one, namely the view that there are no genuine conflicts of interests in the
world, if we take the proper perspective. There is no tragic choice between
two evils, no falling short; essentially, it all is a crisis of perception,
a matter of the way we see the world.


Within the Christian tradition, there are - upon my definition - various
theologies. When the emphasis is on God's saving activity, the tension
between the way the world is and the way it will be, is prominent, whereas
in creation-oriented views (whether ecologically inspired or as natural
theologies) cosmology and axiology stand less in contrast. The prophet might
emphasize the tension, whereas the mystic might stress the way we belong to
reality.

The attempt to combine 'is' and 'ought' statements is what makes
theology so problematical, so difficult and so valuable. This difficulty
finds again and again expression in the problem of evil, which typically
concerns the relationship or tension between the two main components. Such
an understanding of theology as 'cosmology-and-axiology' gives a particular
role to theology, while respecting the autonomy of science and also, less
openly acknowledged, of moral discourse. It is in those domains that secular
rationality has its primary rights.

Upon this view, one can distinguish between science and an
interpretation of science, which is a cosmology, metaphysics or philosophy
of nature. A cosmology, in this sense, is a view of what the world (with its
substances and relations, matter, forces and causality) might be like, given
what we know. Any such metaphysics is an interpretation of scientific
knowledge, constrained but underdetermined by the sciences.

As far as religion is concerned, the definition places the emphasis on
existential issues which become prominent when our reality is not in
agreement with what we think ought to be, rather than on supernatural or
magical elements which upset our understanding of the cosmology without
taking into account the relationship with the axiological. Religion can thus
be thought about critically, not as being about that which upsets the
cosmological order, but rather about the way convictions regarding values
and facts are related - in harmony or in tension - even though the
particular existential view on 'what is' and 'what ought to be' may well be
beyond rational defense.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

This list is hosted by Metanexus: The Online Forum on Religion and Science <http://www.metanexus.net>. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Metanexus or its sponsors. To comment on this message, go to the browser-based forum at the bottom of all postings in the magazine section of our web site at http://www.metanexus.net/index2.asp?fc=/archives/searcharchives.asp?list=16listtype=Magazine. Metanexus welcomes submissions betwwen 1000 to 3000 words of essays and book reviews that seek to explore and interpret science and religion in original and insightful ways for a general educated audience. Previous columns give a good indication of the topical range and tone for acceptable essays. Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author of the column and "Metanexus: The Online Forum on Religion and Science <http://www.metanexus.net>". Please send all inquiries and submissions to Dr. Stacey Ake, Associate Editor of Metanexus at mailto:ake@metanexus.net. Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 by William Grassie.

POWRÓT