One of the most interesting questions in theology and religious philosophy, at least for me, is why certain individuals and cultures opted for a particular religious framework. While this is certainly a complex issue, one can speculate at what might have been happening with seminal figures (i.e. Elijah, Moses, Jesus, Siddartha, Lao Tsé, etc.) in history who for some reason formulated their religious thinking as they did. One way to approach this question is, I think, from the standpoint of religious experience. Now, what I mean by religious experience is any experience that is interpreted as revealing something about the ultimate basis or structure of reality. I believe the issue of religious experience as a basis for forming religious sentiment has become particularly acute in this age of religious pluralism. Prominent Christian theologian Langdon Gilkey wrote:

If I were asked what are the biggest changes in theology since the first half of the twentieth century, since the great neo-orthodox days, I would mention, first, the concern for the issue of the pluralism of religions, and second, the deep, and very new, theological concern with nature.

Religious pluralism calls into question the truth and authority of a particular tradition. A survey of religious sentiment throughout history reveals both similarities and differences between religious traditions. If religion, in some way, taps into and characterizes ultimate reality this begs the question why there are differences? There are, of course, adherents who just claim that the others just got it wrong. To an objective observer these claims will, in my view, be almost always circular.
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There is a general theme in liberal theology these days that really irks me. It represents a picture of a god that is distant and not participatory in any real sense. This trend can be seen in the neo-deistic ideas that relegate God to a maintenance person keeping the water flowing and the heat on but not really entering into the lives of the tenants in the building. It can also be seen in process thought where God prehends the sufferings and existential issues of life and tries to influence the world to the better but remains pristine in God’s glory. This is not the God of the scriptures. It is not the God that can be found in such a wonderful representation in the participatory suffering and death of Jesus. The god that is being presented is a god who has nothing to do or say to the weak who find themselves alone, suffering, and dying. This god has nothing to offer to the prayers of those dying of hunger and violence in their solitude. What good is the heat, water, and lure to those who reach out to the Source of life in their solitude and despair. This god is a demonic god who doesn’t get god’s hands dirty. It is not a god that is of any use to the world of the weak.

The true God is a God who actually lives in this world. It is a God who doesn’t just prehend or feel the sufferning of the weak but one who actually suffers and dies as well. Isn’t the message of the gospels that can be found many religions that even when we are alone and reach out to God, God is there in the very midst of life’s trials. All these trends that try to be accommodating to the mainstream worldviews of science and culture today will never be embraced because their response to the weak can only be “buck up”, “accept the influence of God”, “shit happens”, “God cannot do anything”. These are hollow responses that find no existential impact. They do not touch the heart of the weak of body or spirit. Theologians who promote these ideas should be ashamed. In their comfort they have nothing to offer the downtrodden of the world.

The only answer that has power is that we and God are one. Our suffering is not just sensed and appreciated by God but it is God’s suffering. All theologies that strike a divide between God and the world are destined to the dustbin. They will not find any appeal for the great masses of the world. They may appeal to the intellect of some but they do not translate to the real world. Only a God who is personally there in the dark, even closer to us than we are to ourselves can speak to the deeply heartfelt prayers of those in profound need. If Jesus is right that the weak shall inherit the Earth is it because they, above all, can know that God who lives in the very midst of their needs and trials.

The process thinkers seem to think that characterizing divine action as “lure” solves some problems for theology and science. But what does it solve? Most seem to think it solves the problem of supernaturalism without losing divine action. But does it? I don’t see how. After all an influence must “touch” that which is to be influenced. You don’t influence someone without talking to them or showing some action. But all types of influences that current science would accept are the result of physical interaction. Words interact with structures in the ear or eye which creates neuro-dynamic processes that end up in the brain and so on. (more…)

In past centuries most theologies began and proceeded from within a constrained circle. Usually the constraint was defined by a scripture, scriptures, or religious and theological traditions. All one has to do is look at the educational institutions for theology around the world and their curriculum to see this. Theological departments are invariably grounded in some religious tradition be it Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. This should not come as a surprise since most of these institutions were probably established to train scholars and clergy persons for those traditions. The problem with this circumscribed approach is that these institutions take as a given the veracity and authority of their particular traditions when that has become the very issue in a religiously pluralistic world. This leaves untouched some very basic questions that theology should address outside any particular theological circle: (more…)

I don’t know when the idea of perfection arose in human thought. It certainly appears in the axial age when philosophy blossomed both in the East and the West. From that period the major religious systems arose and they were all world rejecting in some fashion. They all point to a perfection in the offing for reality and from that necessarily ensues theological and philosophical schemes of how that perfection can be reached. Those schemes might include a cycle of life and death until enlightenment is achieved or the advent of an eschatological event that brings things to a final solution. Of course because of the presence of evil in the world, it is understandable that such notions would arise. How can this world, as it is, be accepted as “the best of all possible worlds” as Leibnitz said when evil is confronted at every turn. The answer to this question can only come when the goal of perfection as normally defined is abandoned. (more…)

Love has to be one of the most talked about and written about things in the world. The apostle Paul has a wonderful definition in 1 Corinthians. I would add one thing to Paul’s list. Risk. I think it is important to add this for two reasons. First it is an obvious element in love and secondly it is important for theology.

The statement that “God is love” is ubiquitous in theology and religious sentiment. But if God is love then God must also be at risk. Many of the ontologies employed by theology neglect this idea and reduce God to a bystander. This has tragic consequences for the formulations of theology and the personal piety that ensues. (more…)

Theologians all have a given temperament just like anyone else. Should it be any wonder that features of that temperament would be reflected in their theological approach and the ensuing content that emerges. I have often wondered about the psychological dynamics of great thinkers and how it effects what they produce. It is an area that, in my opinion, has been sorely neglected in the history of thought. Although the arguments of these thinkers can be taken on face value, it is often enlightening to see “where they are coming from”. There are exceptions to this neglect. Biographies of great minds often give some insight into the “background” from which their thoughts emerge. Gary Dorrien’s books(three volumes), “The Making of American Liberal Theology” take a biographical, narrative approach that offers opportunities to see how temperament might have shaped the thought of the great liberal theologians. (more…)

After all these many years for some reason I remember very vividly an experience I had as a teenager. As with many teenagers I was troubled. Being a very shy person, I found it difficult to fit in with the gregarious goings-on in high school. It seemed,at the time, that most everyone was having such a good time relating to each other and having fun. I had friends, to be sure, mostly on the tennis team, but when it came to the social aspect of the teenage community I felt extremely inadequate. I felt awkward and out of place. Wanting to date and relate on a social level for a very shy person can be a difficult situation. It creates an internal conflict that was not easily resolved. One night I was feeling particularly down about life and was looking for some relief. As many people do in trying situations, I felt the need to seek some solace in God. (more…)

Both theology and engineering are systematic endeavors. In engineering systematics is unavoidable. Systematics means completeness, coherency, and compliance with all available knowledge. The reason engineering must be systematic is because if it is not bridges fall down, airplanes crash, and people die. As a result engineering must correspond to the reality of things. This means that it is not enough that certain parts of an engineering design seem to fit the reality of things but that everything must work. The same should be true for theology. (more…)

There is a concept in Christianity and Hinduism call kenosis (i.e. self emptying). I think this concept is apt in that in God’s living aspect there is a limitation on God. The characteristics of life itself are finitude and temporality. If God is a living God then this is a limitation that God imposes on God’s self. The crucial concept in my theology is life. Life is constrained being but it is also becoming. What we see from science is that life is constituted by regularity and novelty. Science has good opportunities to characterize the regularities in life because its method requires repeatability. However, science has also discovered its limits with quantum theory where there is an indeterminacy in the very fabric of the cosmos. While the scientific implications of this indeterminacy are not fully fleshed out, it does provide a point where an attempt to coalign religious intuitions with what science is exploring. This coalignment is certainly speculative. The question is, should one wait for more confirmation from science on the possible practical consequences of this indeterminism or do some speculation. My approach is to see if religious intuitions are *reasonable* within the current context. This necessarily drives a certain amount of speculation. As long as one is willing to abandon certain speculative concepts when new information comes in, then I see no harm. (more…)

The history of theology and philosophy is rampant with what I would call the reductionist program. Certainly there is an order to the cosmos that is reflected in rational thought. All one has to do is look to the “summas” of various thinkers over the years to see the massive volume of thought that seeks to rationally elucitate theological and philosophical thought. It is as if a rational argument is deep enough and consistent enough it will persuade. There is some element of truth in this. There is an rational order to the cosmos as propounded by the Logos concept and many philosophers like Hegel. However, it is becoming more and more evident that a reductionist approach (the logic of primitives) cannot be adequate. In science this is represented by the burgeoning field of organizational studies or as more commonly called emergence. Philosophers and scientists of emergence claim that the whole cannot be explained by understanding the dynamics of its parts. Often, it is thought that there has been great success in this approach at very low levels of complexity (i.e. particle physics). That exploration has, however, revealed that there are no deterministic “laws” that determine things but only probabilities and averaging(decoherence). This has been a striking and disturbing turn of events for many thinkers because it opens the possibility that no “lawlike” theory of everything is attainable. Instead what we are left with is the idea that the hope of reductionism and with it, its predictive certainty is ill conceived. The same can be said, I think, about the goal of rationally reductive theological and philosophical systems that seek to manipulation foundational primitives. (more…)

Of course, there are various reasons for the steady decline of participation in traditional religion. Is there any doubt that there is also a steady secularization in societies? The reason I would like to focus on is the incredulity of many religious claims found in the traditions. Most of the traditions, at least in the West, still point to an interventionist supernatural mode of causation. The miracle stories in all the traditions are still taken seriously by many adherents. For some people, however, the idea that there are supernatural interventions taking place in the cosmos has become less and less tenable. Why? In a large part I think it is a result of people getting a feel for how things work in reality. I use the word “feel” purposefully. Most people in populations do not have a strong grasp of the details of causation as described in science. Instead they steadily attain a feel for the causal dynamics of life. Certainly the success of science in explaining many of the causal factors associated with reality has had a big impact. As people become more educated and science literate they attain some sense of how things nominally work. This sense has created a dissonance between what the traditions claim and what science claims. (more…)