The 20th century has witnessed events and sea changes in attitudes and perceptions which have fundamentally challenged the way Christianity has understood itself and it's claims. One of the chief areas has been the question of God. The two world wars have raised questions about the goodness and power of God. The scientific revolution has raised questions about the plausibility of supernaturalistic theism. The feminist and other liberationist movements have raised questions about the nature of God language and its potential to abuse women, the environment, and people facing various oppressions. The modern and now post modern consciousness have raised questions concerning the absolutist language of theism and revelation.
Several theologians and movements have sought to reformulate theology in light of these questions raised by our century. The books I've chosen are among those who have sought to reformulate theology in light of these questions. Four out of the six books I choose are based on a movement known as pragmatism. William James (1842-1910) defines pragmatism as "The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, categories, supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts." Truth for pragmatism is "that ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of experience" Pragmatism and its consequences for theology as well as why such a view would be taken in the first place will be unpacked through the paper.
Victor Anderson, in his work Pragmatic Theology: Negotiating the Intersections of an American Philosophy of Religion and Public Thelogy seeks to incorporate pragmatism into a vision of theology. Anderson recounts how pragmatism historically has acted towards secularization, seeing little interest in engaging theology. The two examples Anderson focuses on is Richard Rorty and Jeffrey Stout. Rorty is the one philosopher who from the 1960s on has sought to revive the legacy of pragmatism, primarily that of John Dewey (Dewey and his ideas and contributions to philosophy and pragmatism is examined later). His major task has been to try to break down the idea that our language can somehow map reality, that there is any correspondence between our language and the world out there as it "really is". Recognizing the limitedness and contingency of human language, the historicity and tentaviness of speech, Rorty's project, is the opposite of theology. For Rorty, theology is about metaphysics, huge conceptual schemes which claim to have absolute answers about such things as life and the meaning of it all. Theology, like correspondence theory of truth, cannot be sustained.(Anderson, 16)
Jeffrey Stout in his work Ethics After Babel, looks at how the demise of a certain and absolute base of morality has produced moral anarchy for some and shakened the foundation for ethical actions for many more. The desire for some absolute of which one can rest, some foundation of ethics which either lays in the very nature of the universe or by God is claiming more than it can be justified to claim, which is what Babel was, a tower designed to raise humans up to God and the God's eye view. We don't have that foundation and we can't return to it. Like the people at Babel who spoke a plethora of languages, so we too speak a plethora of ethical and moral languages. (Anderson, 18)
The problem with theology for Stout is that it only has two choices in such a state of affairs. It can claim the old metaphysical absolutes which are untenable in the modern world or it can shed any particular unique theological voice it may have, thus failing to add anything new or interesting to the discussion of morals. Theology to be relevant must shed what makes it unique. (Anderson 24)
Anderson believes that the picture of theology pained by Richard Rorty and Jeffrey Stout is one that is outdated. Many areas and movements of theology don't look like the classical Greek philosophical theism that both are citiquing. For Anderson the target audience and questions raised may be different in theology (ensuring any uniqueness that would be had by theology), nonetheless the framework of pragmatism can be the same for either atheist and theist alike. Anderson finds that classical pragmatists can be a source for those engaged in theology because these authors and thinkers were sympathetic to religious discourse that has been revised by a pragmatic outlook. (Anderson 27)
William James was not the first to write on pragmatism, but his extensive writings on the subject and how it can relate to religious discourse makes it important to cover. For James one must look at religious feeling as the source which gives rise to particular doctrines and understandings. The problem with theologians is they start with the doctrine. The difference is starting with the particular and than moving to some helpful conceptual language and doctrines which are connected with the particulars as opposed to starting with the broad categories. Instead of the claims of absolute which theology had traditionally trafficated in, theology can only be true should they enable the person to have some reflective equilbrium between all of our subjective experience and negotiating the material world out there. (Anderson 38)
So that theology is actually connected with material facts of the world and human experience and is satisfactory for the person. For James he adds a notion which is important in pragmatic thought. James believed that the truth of an idea is not only subjective satisfaction but also the public nature of an idea. If an idea can be compelling and get intersubjective agreemenet, there is truth to it. For instance when examining the question of God he writes "Pragmatism could see no meaning in treating as not true a notion (such as the idea of God) that was pragmatically so successful. What other kind of truth coild there be, for her, than all this agreement with concrete reality". As Anderson writes "the public test of theological legitimacy is whether the claims that theologians make for meaning and value are sustainable within a naturalistic system of shared meanings about the world and the values of human life, its goods, and its end." (Anderson, 39)
John Dewey, educator, philosopher, and pyschologist is a giant in pragmatic thought because of his wide influence and prolific writing. Dewey in his work A Common Faith marks a difference between religion and religious. Religion is an institution and/or a set of beliefs and practices. The religious is an attitude towards life and in particular the experiences people have and it's affects on them. A religious attitude is one which produces a better adjustment to life, producing a richer and more meaningful life by uniting the world as we imaginatively constructed it with our experiences. The problem with theology is it has been concerned with supernaturalism and thus focused on questions of God, God's will, heaven, hell, etc. all of which detract from the human and their actions and freedom. (Anderson 43)
Both Dewey and James sought to remove theology from it's questions concering the supernatural and place it squarely on the human, in terms of human experiences and values and ethics. It was concerned with an equilbrium between experience and the world and it was concerned that religious ideas form a basis of public knowledge and agreemenet. Religion was about the individual response to life not an agreement with a list of supernaturalistic propostions about the world. Dewey's ideas, specifically in the realm of education, experience, etc. would be important especially at the University of Chicago where was called to teach. Dewey's students and the University of Chicago would soon come to embody pragmatic principles and a pragmatic world view which would impact theology into the present. (Anderson 51)
The result would be what is sometimes loosely called "The Chicago School". It sought a new mission for theological education, one that moved away from dogmatics and moved to research. Religion was to be studied for how it has operated in peoples lives and in their values as opposed to providing any justification and apologetic for any particular system of religious belief. (Anderson 59). Theology as Anderson writes was "to examine the material culture of historic communities, their monuments, inscriptions, buildings, coins and the like. The theologian sees traditions, sagas, anecdotes, songs, legends, and myths which are promoted by oral tradition as sources of religious insight." (Anderson 60)
Religion is a cultural product so it is important to see the cultural and material conditions which gives rise to an amazing diversity of religious expression and experience. Religion should help people to adjust their experiences to the world as Dewey sought, so that the focus was not simply on the material conditions but also the subjective realm of human experience of the world. Theology should find the particular universals also that are found regardless of the contexts, those vital qualities which all religions to some extent have sought to foster. (Anderson 61, 62)
Recognizing that religion is a human constuct means it is impossible to have the absolute theology or the absolute study of religion. All answers are tentative, limited, and open to revision and criticism, just like any other discipline. Everywhere there is flux, change, growth and evolution so to claim that the door is shut on religion and its possiblities as well as "revelation" is nonsensical. The validity of the constructions "a man creates whatever concepts and principles he might need in order to make himself master of phenomena and of his environment, to the same end were the gods created" (Anderson 63). These constructs of course must be meaningful not for simply an individual but for a community. As William Dean notes "If the sacred is a religious convention, it is composed of images of what is ultimately important as they are carried by the spiritual culture of a people" (Anderson 66).
The themes raised by James and Dewey were practiced in the theological research and reflection at the University of Chicago have made a dramatic impact but it's impact would be shortlived due to two world wars and the accompanying shock of the depths that human evil could go The death camps of Auschwitz and the rsie of human ideologies that received public support that were death dealing challenged the legitimacy of religion being a human construct. For theologians of this day such as Karl Barth, religion was indeed a human construct and therefore an idol to be dispensed with. Rather the only way God is to be known is not by humans and their constructions but by the only revelation of God we have: Christ Jesus.
One theologian who sought the insights of pragmatism and yet was sober at the amount of evil and mischeif humans could achieve was H. Richard Niebhur. Niebhur was afraid that God was defined in relation to how the concept of God has been used by humans and the benefits acrued by such a use, as opposed to defining the human in relation to God. God's value is independent of human desire and construction. In fact God's radical transcendance relatives any human concern which could demand absolute alliegance. It is the work though of theological realists who wished to mediate between an absolute other God and revelation and theology as soley human construction which provided breathing space for a liberal faith which would take several decades to recover from the neo-orthodox (Anderson 84)
Victor Anderson's look at modern pragmatic and naturalistic theologians yeilds some basic understandings of theology which can shape a theology which is naturalistic and open and not simply either supernaturalism of the past or materialism so dominant in western culture. First a pragmatic theology is one which seeks to use the same method of inquiry that one would use in any discipline including trial and error, critique, revision, and tentative claims. It's one that looks to the history, cultural, sociology and other fields to find the context of which religious expression and attitudes can arise. This theology is one that is not simply though a passive observer, in fact it seeks to shape the conditions by which people can grow, learn, and achieve equilbrium. (Anderson 105)
This makes the theology have a public nature, one that seeks to reconstruct society and face the problems in it so that it can produce the conditions and contexts that make for growth. The particular resources which allow for such conditions in most naturalistic accounts of theology is that which can receive the label of transcendence. It is the divine, though it is not soley shaped by human will but also can burst in outside of human control. It's the flowing of history, the various accidents, the particular resources that come unexpected which is divine, God, etc. Though such pragmatic theologians as Nancy Frankenberry do not feel that such language of transcendance should receive the label of God. (Anderson, 112)
Victor Anderson when looking at Frankenberry and other naturalistic theologians works, agrees with most of the arguements but also wishes to retain traditional language including the word God. One of the tests of language and religious ideas is the functional power of terms and ideas. Can the universe, divine, transcendant resources be concepts which engender faith? Or is God too potent of a symbol, too powerful of a unifiying concept to discard? Anderson believes it is. (Anderson 116)
The problem with the language of God as Anderson wishes to use is, is that it is so revisionary and naturalistic that it too may suffer the same problems that the terms he critiques faces. God assumes personality, will, and a supernatural being. The pragmatic theologians are working on a wholly different understanding, so that the language of God is more confusing than illuminating.
Victor Anderson's work is helpful in it's broad survey of pragmatic and naturalistic thought and in arguing convincingly that such an understanding can be incorporated into theology. The arguement is compounded by looking at how pragmatism has been used and understood by the classical thinkers of the idea as well as it's applications in various thinkers past and present. His appreciation for the public nature of theology including it's task to reconstruct society making it fulfill it's democratic promise is important, as pragmatism is usually soley linked with questions of epistemology more than changing society. Pragmatism seeks utility, ideas have consequences of how the world should be.
One thinker who carries the label pragmatist and yet is clearily idenitifed with questions of epistemology is Richard Rorty. Yet in 1988 Rorty released a work titled Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. which is Rorty's account of why the left's reconstruction of society has failed in its goals. Rorty seeks to look at classical pragmatists such as John Dewey as a key to getting the left back on course to making this country a more humane place.
Rorty essentially makes a division between two lefts: the old left and the new left. The new left came into its own in the 1960s with the demand for equality for gays and lesbians, african americans, and women. It arose due to the disillusionment of Vietnam and with it the dissillusionment of the US government and thus the US. The US was capable of great lies and evil: extermination of the native americans, slavery, and militarism. The US was tarnished, no longer was it felt that the US could live up to its goals or promise but rather was imperialistic, an evil force. Such an understanding brings despair that makes reconstruction impossible. (Rorty, 7)
And yet when one surveys the movements for social change historically, they relied on the promise of America and it's potential. The movement against slavery, labor rights organizers, suffragists, etc. looked to American promise and it's ability to reinvent itself to be a better nation. The symbols of Lincoln, of Washington, of the revolution, of the Declaration of Independence and the promise of the young country was a rebuke to capital, to slave owners, to anyone who would deny freedom. (Rorty 14)
As long as the left has adopted the view of America as fallen, as if there was an original sin which has stained it forever, never to be forgiven for the great evils it produced, it has been a spectator to American politics. It's been content with philosophical critiques of the American system than seeing America as a place to transform. (Rorty, 14)
Rorty looks to Dewey, not Marx, Whitman not Foucoult as the basis for democratic renewal. Partly because the pragmatism of Dewey was one that recognized the tentativeness of all of our projects as well as the utilitarian aspect of why philosophy is done: to solve problems. Marx understood his work as an absolute scientific explanation of how the world looks and will look. It is an overarching metaphysic, which Rorty is suspicious of. And because Marx is teological, one in which a perfect worker's state is acheived any momentary gains which are made today are crumbs compared to this perfect and ideal system which doesn't exist. In fact this perfect workers state can and does condemn the limited and tenative programs which have made America a better and more humane place. Marx looks to a perfect state, Dewey looked for a better place and Rorty sides with Dewey. nstead of teology, we should see the work that is being done as projects, individual projects which are designed to make the world more humane bit by bit. (Rorty, 11, 95)
This search for the perfect state has all sorts of damaging effects. It condemns limited successes today in the here and now. It is content with a description of the evil rather than tackling the problems in hope of America's promise and it has stayed in the academy. And yet any reconstruction of society which has occurrred and will occur is when the left intellectuals and labor work together. Bread and butter issues, not social issues built the New Deal and won rights for labor and by exstention all Americans.(Rorty, 94)
Rorty also examines the question of whether change occurs bottom up or top down and finds that both are the occassion. He's affraid that philosophy has abandoned the field to those who are into analytic work leaving no room for the brave poets and visionaries. People are so susipicious of authority, they have adopted a hermeneutics of susicispion in every area of life from literature to philosophy, thus killing the chances that literature and thought can grasp up and change and transform us. Instead of creating openness to such things, schools are busy teaching suspicion and almost a cyncisim in people too young to have either. For Rorty change comes partly because of the dreamers such as Walt Whitman and wants to ensure that the academy is a place where there is room for that. (Rorty, 131)
I find Rorty's interest in class politics, his interest in the projects which make a more humane world in the here and now and not in some utopian otherworld, and who points to poets and visionaries as people who can be pointers to a more humane world where America fulfillers her promise as hopeful and on target. The problem I had with this book is that he sets up this divsion between the new left and the old left, as if they can or should be separated. Class issues divorced from tackling racism or homophobia or sexism is no favor to any worker. The critiques raised by deconstruction is helpful because so much that impeded reconstruction of society is all over, in the books we read, the information we receive, and the received wisdom. Any system is geared to it's own self preservation, including now. Without raising the questions of deconstruction I'm not sure how possible it is to challenge a dominant ideology in a way that could make for a more just world. I suspect as well we need a vision of a better world or we get derailed. A survey of the western social democratic parties have found that not only do they have no concern about replacing capitalism, they have no concern of maintaining the gains previously made by workers. Without a vision as well as working in the here and now, we may loose sight what it is we are working in the here and now for.
Victor Anderson in his book writes about another book and author whose ideas have impact both on how we relate to reconstructing society as well as reconstructing religion. Jerome Stone in his work The Minimalist Vision of Transcendence: A Naturalist Philosophy of Religion, is concerned with the two choices which are increasingly impressed upon us. One is a nihilism or an unbounded optimism about the human condition. Because people have lost a sense of transcendance these, for many, are the only alternatives. Transcendence for Stone is neccessary because it allows us to critique our lives, our institutions, our own projects and seeing them beyond our own selves. (Stone 1)
While revelation and other forms of religion may have provided such resources for self and societal critique, they are no longer viable alternatives in the modern world. Theology rather must be modest in it claims, instead of claiming an absolute other, God (maximal theism), and anbsolute transcendance. Stone seeks to develop a third way by asking what are "situationaly transcendent" resources which provide such a critique and what are some of the implications as we live in the world. (Stone, 11)
Stone defines transcendance as "the collection of situationally transcendent resources and continually challenging ideals in the universe. In short, the transcendant is the sum and worthy and constructively challenging aspect of the world." (Stone, 17). From the definition one finds that ideals and resources at hand which serve as critique and growth are transcendant, not a supernatural being. As much as such resources can be shared and sensical to various peoples. But Stone is not simply collapsing transcendance to human beings living particular values which they find important. Stone's critique of the works of John Dewey in his book Our Common Faith is that transcendence is not really transcendant because it can be controlled.
Stone wants to propose that these resources are transcendant to the extent that they are not controllable, brought about by the will of the individual. Rather, much like grace, it comes unexpectedly and presents itself in a surprising and serendipitous fashion. So that a religious response in life would be one that is continually open to such resources. It is not a life of rigid empiricism but rather an open ended empiricism which cultivates it's own openness from resources wherever they come from. Thus Stone, like Anderson examines the writings of Nancy Frankenberry and other naturalists who have explored such understandings of openness. Stone, like Anderson, does a survey of various thinkers including the pragmatists, humanists, and naturalist theologians past and present. His concern about some, such as H.Richard Neibuhr is that it assumes a religious committment which is ultimate, the very notion that Stone believes is untenable.Stone would replace the language with ultimacy with the language of openness. (Stone, 81)
Victor Anderson raises the question of whether such a minimalist understanding could be interpeted as religiously sustaining if it dismisses the idea of the ultimate. Anderson also critiques Stone by suggesting that such resources as courage, hope, etc. which provide transcendent resources are not what most people imagine by the language of "divine" which Stone uses.
Stone's work is a helpul survey of pragmatic thought, though the subject of his survey is even broader. His survey of humanist thought from Dewey, the Humanist Manifesto shows a critique which refuses to collapse transcendance into ethics. His critique of the neo-orthodox is that their theologies are trully not minimalistic. His survey of modern thinkers of naturalism finds more continuity with his ideas.
"When the term God is adequately understood...it is to refer to inner-wordly situational transcendat resources and demands" (Stone, 21). Stone's use of the term God is also unsatisfactory sense the understanding is so radically different in understanding from what most people understand the term to be. A pragmatic understanding of God runs into two contradictory forces. Historically in pragmatic though, truth is understood as public knowledge which can create some sort of intersubjective agreement. Pragmatism also would affirm that language is not static and fixed but rather evolves and can be transformed as well. So how does the task of re-imaging religious language work without breaking down intersubjective agreement? How does such re-imaging work in a way that the language is meaningful for people.
In Sallie McFague's book Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language the task of understanding language and from there revising our use of it and the consequences of it are central questions. The questions of language are especially pertinent as it relates to feminist critiques of Christian language. McFague notes some of these critiques. Language shapes our very understanding of the world and what it is to us. As Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote "the limit's of one's language are the limits of one's world" and as Martin Heidegger wrote "Language is the house of being". Language provides us a ready made world of meaning and reality which we are born into and for the most part assume. As much as men have engaged in defining religious language, men have created the world of meaning and value in Christian faith, one that has excluded women. (McFague, 8-9)
One finds evidence of such exclusion in the use of the tradtional language of God in Christian thought, such as God the father, God as King, etc. which legitimates a top down understanding not only of religion, but also of human relations. Patriarchy is a particular example of top down understanding of relations, modeled on God and subjects, husband and wife, parents and children, employer and employee, etc. So that God language mirrors human interests, modes of living in the world, and organizing reality. Religious language tells us as much about ourselves and our values and interests. It's that recognition that makes how we envision our religious language and language in general so important, in the first place. (McFague 9,10)
The other central critique which is raised by feminist authors and is, for McFague, a key questions of both protestant iconclasts and mystics alike, is the question of idolatry. Can our language map the divine? Is our language God? Is the Bible God's Word, is one particulare image really God itself. The problem of idolatry is so prevelant, that some have suggested we say nothing at all. McFague suggests that our religious language consists of "it is and it is not". Our language can point to God, and we shouldn't stop speaking and yet our language is not God. To engage in such a task one must look at the very nature of language. What McFague proposes is not a new understanding, but as she understand it, the scriptural tradition itself is filled with such uses of metaphor, the free flowing use of multiple metaphors and symbols. But what are metaphors and symbols? How should language be understood?
A metaphor is the basic mode of human understanding and the basis of language. It is not something that is outside our common experience, which we insert to the language to make a point. Rather it is the font of language. The human mind starts with experiences, sensations, events and it starts the process of association. The mind seems to have an incredible power to associate and connect unlike things in such a way as to make sense of the whole. "It is as if everything in the world were similar to everything else, in at least one respect, and the task were to locate the similarities, especially the significant ones" (McFague 33)
So the human mind learns through connection and association. McFague uses the example of a dictionary, a mere 26 letters and it's various combinations which produce the immense English language. This example can be use to look at Plato's dialectics. The question and answer motif is one in which analogies with the familiar are stretched to aquire new meanings and truth, whcih are rather aproximations. An example is Plato's Republic, where the question of what makes a just individual is illustrated by what makes a just city.(McFague, 33)