Lecture:
Dr. Kelsey followed up on his first lecture by suggesting that the best theology is doxology, praise to God for God’s utter singularity, self-sufficiency, and glory—the glory intrinsic to God’s inward being. Here is where our lecture title comes in. The creative “ground” from which the most appropriate doctrine of God emerges is a praise-ful, canonical reading of the narratives of Holy Scripture pointing us back to a God who is (1) radically other than all that is not God and (2) radically close to all that is not God. When theology is “done” correctly, it is done in this light, and finally, as an act or worship in praise of God. Theology as God-talk, then, is at its best when it praises God for God’s own sake, and not first with reference to what God has done, does, or will do for God’s creatures.
Dr. Kelsey sets forth three questions to flesh this out:
(1) What is it to be God?
(2) What are the limits and possibilities for human God-talk and talk to God?
(3) How does God’s self-presentation to us in the narratives of canonical Holy Scripture open us up to correct praise for God? Concomitantly, when praising and glorying in God, what is the proper understanding of the Glory of God?
Dr. Kelsey prefaces his answers to the questions by suggesting we rethink our traditional ways of distinguishing God from ourselves. When thinking through the ontological relationship between the God and all that is not God, the Christian tradition has fallen into one of three metaphorical modes of thinking. In thinking God, the Christian tradition has been guided primarily by metaphors of degree (gradation and hierarchy of being), power (relegation of authority, influence, and at worst, coercion), and spatio-temporality (God existing in relation to or inhabiting the “box” of our space and our time to a greater or lesser degree). All of these are insufficient in that (1) they do not operate according to the witness of the overarching themes of the creation narratives in the canon of Holy Scripture, and (2) they view the relationship between God and all that is not God in a competitive dynamic, playing them off against one another, for better or worse, in order to establish God’s reality and the reality of creation.
This brings us to the problem of language (analogy, univocity, and equivocacy) in God-talk. Kelsey suggests that the first steps to mitigating this problem can be taken by carefully considering the scriptures, particularly the Hebrew Bible creation narratives as revised by the Priestly source as well as the creation themes of the Proverbs. In these texts, God relates to all that is not God through creative blessing. From this, we found our impetus for speaking about God as God shows Godself to be radically other than creatures, but also radically close to creatures, indeed, closer than they are to themselves.
So, for the first question: What is it to be God?
In creatively blessing creatures, God expresses God’s intrinsic glory as the one who is freely and self-determinately singular, a se, and holy. Whether or not God relates to anything that is not God, God exists as such and is inherently glorious.
First, God is freely self-determining. In light of biblical wisdom literature and the redaction of Ancient Near Eastern and more specifically Hebraic creation narratives by the P source, we are led to say that the God of Abraham is in and of Godself independent. God is not constrained by any particularities of other existing entities prior to God’s blessing through creation. God does not act under a compulsion or overwhelming “need” to create. Rather, God freely determines for Godself the how, the when, and the why of all of God’s works ad extra. As a self-determining being, God can also relate to creatures each according to their kind with respect to the uniqueness of their needs.
Second, God is intrinsically singular. In the Abrahamic faiths, calling God one has been par for the course. Dr. Kelsey, however, wants to reconsider the usage of one simply because it doesn’t say enough. He opts for the word singularity. Singularity connotes the utter difference and strangeness of God in relation to all that is not God. God’s singularity just is. Here obviously the question of God’s triunity comes up, but Dr. Kelsey wants to bracket that for now.
Third, God is a se, completely self-sufficient and free in and for Godself prior to the act of creating and relating to all that is not God. Aseity preemptively rejects all questions about the origin of God. Aseity reminds us that imagining God according to the metaphors of hierarchical being, power struggle, and spatio-temporality are insufficient ways of viewing God. By giving up these comparative metaphors and focusing on the radical otherness and nearness of God, we are pushed back into God’s aseity and free self-determination.
And yet, to speak of these perfections is to stammer about the glory intrinsic to God, a glory that words must stretch out towards. Inevitably, they will fall back into the ground and into our narratives as we are drawn to silence. In a striking statement, Dr. Kelsey noted that we can know that our expressions about God are in some sense true though we cannot grasp how our expressions really apply to God’s inner life. This essentially is Dr. Kelsey’s answer to the second question: What are the limits and possibilities for human God-talk and talk to God?
And, for the third and final question: (3) How does God’s self-presentation to us in the narratives of canonical Holy Scripture open us up to correct praise for God? What is the proper understanding of the Glory of God?
According to Dr. Kelsey, our most appropriate response to the God of creative blessing we see in Holy Scripture, are words and responses of praise. In light of creative blessing, we recall God’s intrinsic glory, the sheer God-ness of God. We praise God for God’s uselessness to us; not in the sense that God holds no promise for our existence or care for creatures in relating to them through creative blessing. Rather, we praise God for God’s uselessness in that God is majestic before our existence and worthy of our glory in light of God’s own intrinsic Glory.
Here Dr. Kelsey identifies what he believes to be a problem in the way in which Americans in particular praise God and understand the glory of God. In the dominant Christian culture, God pro me, is overemphasized. Dr. Kelsey suggests we would do well to return to praising God for God’s intrinsic Glory, for God’s utter uselessness to us. For, only when we delight in God for God’s own sake can we properly delight in God for the sake of ourselves as well.
Comments/Reflection:
Following (to a certain extent) Kathryn Tanner’s quest for non-competitive ways of speaking about the relationship between God and creatures, Kelsey opts for articulating divine transcendence in such a way that does not compromise creaturely integrity. Pragmatically speaking, I think, is a worthy thing to do. It carries significant benefits, particularly for Evangelical Christians who are trying to free themselves from relating to God in a cause-effect relationship of shared yet competing power (i.e., If I pray to God, then…, If the ELCA has a conference on homosexuality, then God will send a thunderstorm, and so on.). I agree that God is not confined to the mechanisms of the universe, particularly as we know them. And, we are in danger of worshiping our ideas when we start relating and praising God based firmly on our codification of God’s being. On this basis, Kelsey has pinpointed the problem of commodification of God, particularly in North American society. However, I would say this is not just a North American problem but a Modern/Post-modern problem altogether. As Charles Taylor notes commodification in modern society and the “atomistic focus on our individual goals” leads to the neglect of working toward community for its inherent value. “[T]he individual has been taken out of a rich community life and now enters instead into a series of mobile, changing, revocable associations, often designed merely for highly specific ends. We end up relating to each other through a series of partial roles” (Taylor, Sources of Self; 502). With the rise of the information age and high speed existence, this problem has only been exacerbated. When we treat one another as commodities or means to an end, we inevitably relate to God in like manner. By viewing God as a commodity, God is compartmentalized and regulated to meet a particular felt need. As such, Luther’s God pro me has become a God for a particular purpose, not necessarily God pro me in my totality of being and relating. This, I agree, is an abusive way of relating to God. Still, it does not follow that in response to this problem we must ground our relationship to God in praise of God’s uselessness—that is, in praise of who God is apart from our existence.
As such, I am skeptical of Kelsey’s solution to this problem. It seems to me that worshiping God “for God’s own intrinsic God-ness” without an eye to the covenant God has established in Christ is impossible for human beings. Such an endeavor also assumes that God’s intrinsic God-ness and sufficiency cannot be worked out in relationship with creation. Rather, creation has to be grounded in this (rather abstract) sensibility. But, can we not worship God “for God’s own sake” because God exists "for God's own sake" as God exists for us? Will praising God as God pro me always be an objectification of God? Furthermore, how can we know God apart from the relationship we have with God? Does this not mean that we would wind up worshiping God apart from Jesus Christ? These are the questions I have for Kelsey.
While I think Kelsey’s concern is legitimate, I think proper covenantal worship could be an answer to the problem, not grounding worship in praise of an a priori pre-covenantal glory of God. Worshiping God as the one who is glorious in all that God does ad extra does not have to be (and I would argue couldn’t be) subordinated to worshiping God “for just being God.” In fact, why distinguish the two from one another as if God is more properly glorious in being a se than in being pro nobis?
Perhaps God’s relating to all that is not God first in and only through Jesus Christ gives us the proper grounds for worship. If commodification is a problem, which I contend with Kelsey that it is, it might be addressed by considering what exactly our proper relation to God is.
I'm always leery of theology that denies God's utility. After all, God does not become God for us without acting in ways that are useful, and forming covenant bonds in the aftermath of that first utility. The covenant assures mutual usefulness in the relationship.
ReplyDeleteAseity is a great apophatic reminder that God is not what we would construct in God's place. But it can't stand on its own as positive God-talk. I don't see that Kelsey is wrong in his attributes of God (even bracketing the trinity, since no proper trinitarian theology denies the unicity/singularity of God - because we affirm that God is one, and no other is God). But I don't see that what he says has meaning for anyone apart from the actions by which that God becomes God pro nobis.
Reading Capital lately, I wonder if the commodification problem has more to do, not with usefulness, but with exchange value. There are two problems I see mentioned here, God as an explanation for events and God as a "wish-granting genie". In neither case is what we call "God" in the equation a proper representation of the God we have come to know in faith. We move from a relationship with God that is mediated by things, to a relationship with things that is mediated by God. And God immediately ceases to be considered in terms of use value, and becomes a signifier of the exchange itself. A guarantee of the good result of the exchange, even. Praying for parking spaces at the hospital, or success in a job interview. Exchange becomes God's use value.
From that perspective, I'll agree with Kelsey's basic approach, in terms of breaking the "pro me" commodification of God -- the blatant misuse of God. It's Hedeggerian, in a way -- making God either broken or obtrusive for the naturally assumed use, so that God ceases to be ready-to-hand, and becomes merely present-at-hand. And what else is the glory of God, except the sign of that presence, the spilling over of all that cannot be held by the commodity? Making it so that we have to stop and actually think about the nature of God, in order to recover the right use of God.
(That said, I'm reminded of the Shorter Catechism, and Augustine. "To glorify God and enjoy Him forever", with enjoyment opposed to use. But I believe in graced use as a component of joy, and distinct from abuse.)
Hey Matt,
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting. I think your insights on Marx and Heidegger are insightful.And, I think Heideggarian theologians have made this distinction (ready-to-hand v. present-at-hand) in a way that does justice to the concern of commodification/containment and presence/lived existence in relationship with God. Jungel comes to mind, and from what little I've read of Bultmann, I think he could help tie some of this together as well. That God cannot be held as a commodity can be combated with a good covenant theology. Moreover, in light of the likes of Jungel and Bultmann, a theology of revelation that takes God's relating a priori as the only way we can speak about God, without permitting containment, control, and impersonal utility can also sever the God "pro me" touchstone from the criticisms leveled against it.
But back to your point on Marx. Sometimes I wonder if praising God for God's pure singularity, self-sufficiency and freedom falls to the projectionists' critiques (a la Feuerbach). While this might not necessarily be the case, I think its something for those who lay a great deal of stress on the independence and intrinsic resourcefulness of God to thoroughly address. I spoke with Kelsey about this personally, indicating that I thought freedom and independence was just as much a danger in Western Christianity as commodification, but he said that freedom for the Fathers meant something entirely different than it does for us. He wasn't in the position to work it out, but I'd really like to see it done. How does this relate to Marx? Not entirely sure; I know it does, though. Maybe you could flesh it out some?
Btw, where are you studying systematic theology?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Nathaniel! I should warn you that if I'm going to build out the Marx bit, especially by connection with Feuerbach, it could require shovels to get out again. :) I'll start by pointing to thesis 4, the gist of which is that Feuerbach is trying to take a religious/secular split and ground it in the secular (as opposed to what I find implied, which is that the original ground is religious). So there's an arc in which we strip the original signification identity, forming an abstraction we can then re-identify in our own terms. I think that's a plausible root of the problem.
ReplyDeleteAs to the projectionists, there's a definite risk there. Much like the critique of the historical-critical quests: seeing the distant reflection of ourselves and calling it the other. We make our perfections divine. But (and I didn't hear the lecture) I don't see good focus on the peculiarity of *this* God's aseity going that way. The trick is that we have to distance ourselves from the dominant American context of philosophical theism, of the abstract deity as the real thing to which particularity can be added later. As in Kierkegaard, the absolute is not the universal -- only the properly particular can be absolute; the universal is generic.
Not having Kelsey's explanation of what he means about the Fathers either, I'll still tentatively back his statement for exactly that reason. The Fathers weren't confused as to which God, and so when they assert freedom and independence and resourcefulness, these are applied (even ascribed!) to the very particular God whom they know. The meanings of these ascriptions depend upon the identity of God, and not vice versa. We have the modern problem of too often assigning those attributes (and actions like creation, which is also an ascription to the godhead) fundamental positions in the nature of God, and questioning all the other properly basic things we know about God. (That's my stab at it, anyhow!)
As to the Marx bit, I think you are on target with the connection. And I think it has everything to do with the abstraction process -- as Marx says that gold is abstracted from its use values as elemental metal to become the ideal form of the money commodity, pure exchange value, I think we have a similar problem with abstracting God from "elemental metal" natural properties that have been witnessed. An abstraction is very close to being a pure signifier. It is immensely flexible. Example: "Do you believe in God" is an immensely flexible question in the West! The range of answers is biblically and theologically incredible.
I'm studying at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, though I've also done a good bit of my coursework at Chicago Theological. Vitor Westhelle and Laurel Schneider, among others. It's been good formation, though as I get to dissertating on Barth I'll have to start traveling.
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