10/05/2009
If our task is to explicate the Christian understanding of God as it shapes theological reflection, we must first assume that there is such a Christian understanding, and then attempt to articulate it. The primary source of a Christian understanding, then, is the witness of scripture; the interpretation of scripture is subsequently informed by tradition—the myriad attempts that have been made by previous and contemporary Christians to glean just such an understanding from scripture. In this endeavor, we must readily admit, like Anselm, that God cannot be comprehensively understood or conceptualized, and that we must rely first on our faith to guide our understanding. Nevertheless, we also admit that our understandings are grounded in a context or worldview, and that they rely on reason and logic to be articulated. Although the scripture’s witness of God occurs within a Hebrew context, much of traditional Christian thought has appropriated a Hellenistic hermeneutic that is not intrinsically a Christian paradigm. Furthermore, the spread of global Christianity throughout modernity has inspired the appropriation of various other cultural contexts as interpretive lenses through which Christianity can be understood. Rather than legitimate one culture’s system of logic over against another’s, this crisis of interpretive pluralism forces us back to God’s self-revelation in scripture and our humble faith that this revelation is self-authenticating. By using the “both/and” logic of Chinese philosophy instead of the “either/or” reasoning of Greek philosophy, we can better understand the uniqueness of a Christian understanding of a God who is transcendent, a God who is one, and also a God who is with us.
In order to affirm that God is transcendent, we must first dispense of the Aristotelian dualistic logic of “either/or.” This leads to an insolubly static duality of subject and object, which is incompatible with a God who transcends the division of subject and object. At this, Karl Barth rightly adopts a “both/and” or “neither/nor” logic in place of “either/or.” He suggests that God is both essence and existence, and neither an object nor an idea. Thus, not only is the logic of Aristotle inadequate to conceptualize a transcendent God, but also neither is the Platonic conception of ideals. In the tradition of the church, the metaphysics of Greek ontology led to the static ontology of God seen as the essence of being. This thought permeated both the Neo-Platonist thought of Augustine, as well as the Aristotelian thought of Aquinas. Seeing God as a static being, however, is incomprehensible to a humankind and a world that are in the dynamic process of becoming, and not being. The “both/and” logic in which Chinese philosophy is rooted allows us to conceive of a God who, by transcending the dualism of “either/or” is both being and becoming. If, as we faithfully believe, God is ultimate reality, he must be both. Thus, Jung Young Lee is able to account for both the changelessness alluded to by the doctrine of divine impassability as the source of creation, and the need for a dynamic conception of God to relate to humankind, by asserting the Chinese concept of change as ultimate reality. Thus, by conceiving of God as change, God implicitly transcends any objectification, while still relating to the world in which all things are in a process of change and becoming. If we read God as change, then it is true when Lee asserts that, “everything changes because of change [i.e. God], but change itself is changeless.” In other words, the use of this Chinese conception informs and enhances our traditional notions that God is the first cause through which our dynamic world of changes has come into being, and yet this God is also unchanging. Rather than fall into the dualistic trap of interpreting these doctrines in light of a static God of substance, we can use the inclusiveness of the concept of change to understand how such a God relates to us and reveals himself to us in a world in flux.
Next, we must see how this understanding of God as changeless change sufficiently articulates the Christian concept of a God who is one. In this endeavor, we must turn to the scriptures that mediate God’s self-revelation. Deuteronomy 6:4 contains the Hebrew Shema, an ancient understanding of the God of the Bible. In the transliterated Hebrew text, it reads, “Sh’ma Yis-ra-eil, A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu, A-do-nai E-chad,” which literally means, “Hear Israel! Yahweh our God, Yahweh one.” By virtue of its ambiguity, it is translated in a number of different senses in English, such as “Hear O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD alone” and “Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.” Both senses emphasize the unity or oneness of God, and point toward the Christian conception of monotheism. Old Testament scholar Victor Hamilton, however, casts this concept of monotheism in a different light: it does not seem to indicate belief in one God as opposed to a polytheistic belief in many gods; monotheism in the Old Testament rather indicates a God who is consistent in his action in history. Thus, “a God who is inconsistent is historically polytheistic.” God is our God because he is the same for us as he was for the patriarchs, he is one because he has not changed, and he is alone because he is God of all. As we see in Amos 9:7, God is both the God of the Israelite exodus from Egypt, and the God of the exoduses of other peoples as well. He transcends the dichotomized duality of “us” and “them” precisely by being one God for all. As Barth argues, God’s transcendent unity is also the unity of the past, present, and future. Thus, we begin to see that the authoritative uniqueness of Christianity is grounded not in the exclusiveness, but in the inclusiveness of God. As Lee states:
It encourages not competition but cooperation, not domination but coordination, not authority but authenticity, not conformity but affirmation. It rejects…a dualism that is in any case incompatible with the original Judeo-Christian message.
Both Barth and Lee are articulating the notion that theological reflection cannot assert its own authority based on the merit of its propositions. Hence, Christian theology is authoritative not so much by virtue of an overt claim to authority as by its self-authenticating proclamation of a transcendent God who is one and who includes all by loving grace. This God is changeless insofar as he is consistent from one time and people to another, but he also implicitly must embody change in order to be the same God in changed circumstances.
Lastly, it becomes clear that God, when understood as changeless change, is not only unified and transcendent, but he is also Immanuel—God with us. As Barth confirms, God reveals himself to us in the scriptures and through the history of his deeds. He does this because he has a fundamental interest in humankind, which culminated in the act of the incarnation of Christ. The concept of changeless change helps us see God in light of the dynamic interrelationship that Barth asserts is the task of theology to describe; a God whose unity allows him to “exist neither next to man nor merely above him, but rather with him, by him, and most important of all, for him.” Traditionally, this aspect of God has led to his characterization as a personal God, but when he introduces himself for the first time in scripture, we see that while his relation to us is on some level personal, his nature nevertheless transcends the bounds of personal and impersonal. Thus in his meeting with Moses in Exodus 3:14, when asked by Moses what his name is, his response is strikingly non-symbolic and mysterious: “I am who I am,” or “I will be who I will be.” The other names we use for God symbolically reflect the conditions of certain encounters with God, but when God defines himself, he does so non-symbolically as “is-ness.” Though it is important that God relates to us on a personal level, and that he achieved the fulfillment of this relationship through the incarnation of Christ, the impersonal or super-personal nature of God must not be forgotten. Otherwise we risk misunderstanding God through what Barth calls “anthropotheology” rather than properly trying to understand ourselves and God through “theoanthropology.” In other words, God must first be understood as transcendent before he can be understood as Immanuel; otherwise we merely reduce God to being Immanuel in the sense that he is one of us. We were created in his image, so we must not cast him in our image; instead we must faithfully strive to understand him, which in turn will inform a proper understanding of ourselves as his likeness.
By using the “both/and” logic of Chinese philosophy instead of the “either/or” reasoning of Greek philosophy, we can better comprehend how God is transcendent; a God who is one and alone, and also a God who is with us. This understanding prompts us to reflect upon how we relate to God, and how we live our lives as Christian believers in this God. Since he is a God who loves, forgives, and extends grace, we are called to do the same; since is inclusively one universal God of all, we must also be inclusive of all; since he exhibits his authority through his humility, being tortured and killed by the authorities of this world, we are called to be humble servants. As he is the God of the Gospel, we are likewise called to bring this “good news.” If, however, we fail to understand him in this dynamic interrelationship, and if we fall into a static conception of him as wholly other, then we cut ourselves off from allowing him to transform us. For this reason, we have faith in him, that we may understand him, and that through our faith seeking understanding we may be transformed by him.
References
Barth, Karl. Evangelical Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963.
Charry, Ellen. Inquiring After God. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000.
Hamilton, Victor. Handbook On the Pentateuch. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005.
Lee, Jung Young. The Theology of Change. New York: Orbis Books, 1979.
Siddur, Siddur.org. Available from HYPERLINK “http://www.siddur.org/transliterations/SatAM/11shacharit_shema_2.php#shma” http://www.siddur.org/transliterations/SatAM/11shacharit_shema_2.php#shma; Internet; accessed October 5, 2009.
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