Seeking a Postmodern Re-definition of Classic Theism

"Much as Newtonian classical physics has been re-expressed by quantum mechanics,

so too may Emergent Christianity move classic theism into a postmodern form of expression."

An Introduction to Process Theology

Evangelicalism, Emergent Christianity, and Progressive Christianity are as different from one another as they are alike in confessing God, the Bible, Jesus, man and sin. Each have a formative theosophic (theology+philosophy) view of God in relation to His creation which affects each one of their espoused beliefs in doctrine, dogma, practice, worship and world-and-life view:

• God, as separate and above, His creation - Classic Theism (Evangelicalism)
• God, as part of and next to, His creation - Panentheism (Progressive Christianity)
• God, as between these processes - a hybrid (or syncretism) of Classic Theism and Panentheism as yet unnamed and unformed (Emergent Christianity*)

*cf. http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/search/label/Theism%20and%20Process%20Theology?updated-max=2011-11-14T10:53:00-05:00&max-results=20

Here then begins a discussion as to the "why and what" of  Process Theology which is clearly unlike Classic Theism in its structural foundations as a panentheistic structure (as discussed in an earlier article here - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/08/process-theology-terence-fretheim.html).  BUT, there are many qualities to Process Theology's structure that are attractive to Theists searching to re-express Classic Theism into postmodern terminology and structural life.

What are those attractive qualities?

(1) Process Theology provides the flexibility that the Emergent church is committed to while avoiding relativism, purely apophatic spirituality, and deconstructive postmodernism. Interestingly, most forms of process theology are contrasted as constructive postmodernism.

(2) It encourages as much openness to other religions as possible while remaining rooted in a (constantly evolving) orthodox Christian tradition - a kind of "Confessional religious pluralism."


Where to Start?

So then, right from the start it would be important to know which expressions, or "elements" of process theology are substantive and which are pervasive:

• By substantive is meant what elements can only be part of process theology's structure not found within some other structure, like Classic Theism.

• And by pervasive is meant what elements are transportable characteristics that can be found in other dissimilarly disconnected structural systems. Elements that are not necessarily unique to one system or another, but tag-along progenitors found as non-unique descriptors.

In other words, what are process theology's pervasive elements (both identifiable and non-identifiable) that cling to process theology like adopted orphans until discovering that their real "mom and dad" are gypsies like themselves. Or, by way of another example, we all share personality traits but they are not necessarily the fuller definitions of ourselves. So too are pervasive structural elements that are shareable or, non-unique, as structural "traits" but not as structural "qualifiers." This is what is meant by pervasive.


Creating a New System

And so, if it is possible, we should "raid the hen house" as it were, and recover any spiritually pervasive elements clinging to process theology that are being championed by insightful panentheists as theirs alone. Mostly because I suspect (1) there are no other good competing systems to share these with, and (2) that with another competing system it would force theorists to streamline their systems to their lowest common denominators.  Along the way stripping out any "dangling metaphors," as it were, so that the foundation may first be seen before the theological house is built upon it (whatever shape, color, material or district that it is built in). And given the right structural concept, similar pervasive concepts would be as shareable as substantive qualifiers could not be.

As an example, one such concept I find in process theology that might be "shareable" or "pervasive" is that of synchronicity (see Catherine Keller's brilliant discussion of Spiritual Entanglement and Interconnectedness earlier reviewed - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/11/catherine-keller-on-entanglement.html). An updated revision of Classic Theism might include this pervasive element into its future theosophic structure, however, left in its classic form, synchronicity can only be described in Classic terms as a miracle. Or, as a miraculous, confluence of events and opportunity. Either as an event of nature in itself. Or as an event intersecting nature and ourselves with event between the same.


Introducing Relational Theism

I further suspect that there are other pervasive relational elements to be found as we become more conversant with process theology and are better able to distinguish what is, and isn't, appropriate to a newer, updated re-definition of Classic Theism which I now propose to rename Relational Theism. Why? Because I like the term and because it carries with it an inherent definition of "process" that I think can carry us forward from our Classic roots into a postmodernised, revisionistic, structural context.

One of Classic Theism's biggest drawbacks has been its very large, ontologically imposed gap of God being distant to His creation. A gap that process theology has closed in giving us a God who is intimately involved in His world. Not cold, sterile, inhuman as could be construed in theism's more classical expressions. But showing a warmer, relational correspondence between Himself, His creation, and man. One not so completely separate from sin and evil as to be unaffected by it. But One who suffers with us and groans with creation.

Where I would differ however, is that Process Theology so draws God into the process of involvement within creation that God has become defined by that process. So intertwined and interdependent as to be non-separate within His being, essence and substance, from creation. And in the process uplifting creation into an interdependent, intermodal realm of ontological existence with metaphysical imports as we see here. Hence "creation" becomes "c/Creation" and "God" becomes "G/god".

Perhaps Relational Theism could better treat these lamentable outcomes within a structural framework of personal-relational disruptions between the Creator and His creation. And not as a mere unfeeling, impassively separated God on the one hand, nor as a God so intricately intertwined within the mechanism of creation as to be un-God like (in the classic definition).


Relational Theism as Process

And so, when I think of Relational Theism perhaps I might also wish to think of it in terms of relational-process theology as it relates to God's creation within the time-bound constraints of love, anger, justice, hope, patience, and any other humanly anthropomorphisms that we wish to add. Anthropomorphic traits that are reflective of time-bound relational correspondences. And perhaps these traits are pervasive elements to Process Theology, and not substantive elements, that can be transported to the postulated framework of Relation Theism.

These are only suggestions of course. Most likely crude suggestions in hopes of being given a clearer vision by other like-minded Emergent Christians who are similarly unsatisfied with Classic Theism but not fully convinced by Process Theology's claims either. Who are "tweeners" wishing to evolve Christian doctrine from its antiquated Hellenistic foundations to a more appropriate Hebraic foundation. In the meantime we'll be content to live within the tension of Classic Theism and that of the  more liberal quantum panentheism of Process Theology, and try to evolve this discussion to something more satisfying, more complete, more God-like and creation-like.


A Final Word to Process Theologians

Lastly, I would like to give thanks - with deepest of appreciations - to all the hard work that has gone on by studied process theologians who have shared their lives, and life work, in this quantum branch of theology. Perhaps some could join us and help Emergent Christianity better express a more relational type of process theology that is not panentheistic. For now has come the time to determine Classic Theism's cycle of life, death and evolution.

RE Slater

November 15, 2011

*Related Links (Fred Schmidt) - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/11/progressive-christianity-must-be-more.html

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Why Progressive Christianity Needs Process Theology

(by Bruce Epperly)
http://pastorbobcornwall.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-progressive-christianity-needs.html

Posted by Robert Cornwall
October 19, 2011

What do progressive Christians believe, and why? How do they get to their positions on questions like the nature of creation, authority, morality, and our relationship with God? What are the resources and the sources, especially if one doesn't hold to a view of biblical inerrancy or infaillibility? One key resource over the past half century or more is Process Theology. With its embrace of concepts like panentheism, Process has opened new avenues of thought and practice. The major drawback is that the ways in which Process has been laid out have been rather difficult to understand.

One Process theologian who has taken care to better explain ideas is Bruce Epperly, whose writings appear at this blog quite regularly. In this brief posting Bruce offers up a helpful overview of Process Theology. I invite you to check it out and offer your thoughts and responses. At the end of the text there is a brief bibliography. Each of the books is linked to Amazon, so you can purchase books if you'd like.

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 Why Progressive Christianity Needs Process Theology,

by Bruce G. Epperly

In a recent Patheos piece, Fred Schmidt criticizes progressive Christianity for “not articulating in theological categories what it believes in.” While I disagree with Schmidt’s stark evaluation of progressive Christian theology – the The Phoenix Affirmations: A New Vision for the Future of Christianity of Eric Elnes or the EightPoints of the Center for Progressive Christianity provide a broad summary of progressive affirmations, nevertheless progressive Christianity needs to deepen its theological foundations. It needs a theology with the stature to embrace its vision of divine hospitality, partnership with science and medicine, commitment to social justice, and affirmation of cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity and pluralism. While progressives do not need to formulate absolute and inflexible doctrines, greater doctrinal gravitas will strengthen the progressive theological, ethical, and social voice. I believe that process theology provides the most comprehensive and sound basis for a fluid and flexible progressive Christian theology.

Process theology is identified with the philosophical insights of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. Like other theological approaches (for example, Augustine and the Neoplatonists, Aquinas and Aristotle, Bultmann and existentialism), process theology uses the philosophical visions of Whitehead and Hartshorne as a lens through which to understand God’s presence in history and creation and to formulate a Christian vision of reality, including the nature of humankind, authority of scripture, revelation, science, and ethics.

Process theology affirms that our vision of God and the world are interdependent. God is not an exception to our understanding of reality, but both shapes and reflects the nature of reality. Good theology, process theology asserts, reflects our lived experience. Briefly put, process theology undergirds progressive Christianity with the following theological affirmations relating to divinity, creation, and humankind. Process theology believes that our lived experience points to the following affirmations about nature and humankind:

• Reality is dynamic and interdependent.
• The world is composed of living, experiencing entities. The universe is lively and enchanted, not mechanistic and insentient
• The universal nature of experience points to the universality of value. Non-human creatures are valuable and deserve ethical consideration apart from our use of them.
• Mind, body, and spirit are intricately connected and shape one another.
• To exist is to have some degree of creativity and experience, albeit minimal.
• The future is open-ended and will emerge in part as result of human decisions.
• We are in constant dialogue with God, giving and taking, in a dynamic web of call and response in which God nurtures our freedom and creativity.

Our vision of God reflects our understanding of the world as interdependent, lively, creative, and open-ended.

• God is intimately connected with the world – God provides a vision of possibilities for every moment of experience.
• God’s influence on the world and human life is invitational, relational, and persuasive, rather than unilateral and coercive.
• God really experiences the creaturely world; God is influenced by everything that happens. God is the “most moved mover,” whose influence on our lives is connected with our impact on God’s life.
• The nature of God can be understood as panentheistic in contrast to pantheism (God and the world are one reality) and theism (God acts on the world from the outside unilaterally and supernaturally, and is not influenced by the world). Panentheism sees God in all things and all things in God. God embraces all things experientially, but is more than all things, in God’s ongoing experience and shaping of reality.
• God’s influence in the world is shaped in part by creaturely decisions – our openness to God enables God to be more active in the world. How we use our freedom, individually and corporately, conditions the nature and impact of God’s vision for our lives.
• God’s aim in the universe is toward beauty and abundance, and this vision embraces both human and non-human life.
• God is constantly injecting new possibilities to promote personal growth and planetary and cosmic evolution.
• Divine omnipresence and activity mean that God truly influences all things, working within the natural cause and effect relationships.
• God inspires wisdom, creativity, and love in every culture and spiritual tradition.
• Diversity reflects God’s aim at beauty. God seeks the greatest freedom, creativity, and diversity congruent with the well-being of our communities and planet.
• In the divine-human call and response, Jesus reflects the fullness of God’s vision for human life. Jesus’ uniqueness is grounded in both God’s call and choice and Jesus’ openness to divine energy, possibility, and vision.
• While Jesus embodies God’s vision of wholeness and beauty, God is also present as the inspiration for other transformational religious leaders (Gautama, Lao Tzu, Mohammed).

The process vision of God and the world leads to certain affirmations about human and non-human life.

• Our vocation is to be God’s companions/co-creators in healing the world.
• We are constantly receiving divine inspiration and guidance. God’s light shines in and through us and all creation.
• All creatures are touched by God, regardless of their previous decisions. God’s grace is intimate and also unending.
• The heart of ethics and spirituality is to bring beauty and joy to the world, given the limitations and possibilities of our particular context. Our calling in the spirit of Mother Teresa, is to do something beautiful for God. The quality of our lives and actions truly shape God’s experience and activity in the world.
• When we truly open ourselves to God’s vision and energy, “miracles,” leaps in energy and inspiration occur. While these events are not “supernatural,” they reflect a heightened sense of God’s presence in the world.
• God’s impact on the world opens the door to mystical and healing experiences. We can truly experience God’s presence in our lives.

Process theology serves to give a fluid foundation for the key elements of progressive theology: its creative affirmation of diversity and pluralism, its commitment to the liberation of all people, its concern for planetary well-being, and its affirmation of our responsibility to care for the most vulnerable members of our society. Process theology enables us to understand prayer and healing in “naturalistic” ways as heightening of God’s presence within the causal interdependence of life. Moreover, process theology articulates a vision that affirms the progressive partnership of faith and science, the importance of interfaith hospitality and global spirituality, and the value of this world as a realm of divine-human interaction.

(You can explore the connections between process theology and progressive Christianity in my Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (Guides For The Perplexed) Continuum, and my upcoming Emerging Process: Adventurous Spirituality for a Missional Church, Parsons Porch Books.)

SELECTED TEXTS ON PROCESS THEOLOGY

Bruce Epperly, Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (Guides For The Perplexed)

Bruce Epperly, Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living

Bruce Epperly, The Center is Everywhere: Celtic Spirituality in the Postmodern World

John Cobb, Christ in a Pluralistic Age

John Cobb and David Griffin, Process Theology

Monica Coleman, Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology (Innovations: African American Religious Thought) (Innovations: African American Religious Thought)

Catherine Keller, On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process

Jay McDaniel, Living from the Center: Spirituality in an Age of Consumerism

Robert Mesle, Process Theology: A Basic Introduction

Marjorie Suchocki, God Christ Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology

Marjorie Suchocki, In Gods Presence

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Book Review (from Amazon.com)

http://www.amazon.com/Process-Theology-Guide-Perplexed-Guides/dp/0567632555/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0

by A. J. Roberts (CA)

June 26, 2011

This review is from: Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (Guides For The Perplexed) (Paperback)

Of the seven or eight other introductory texts I have read on process theology, this one by Bruce Epperly is the best overall, even though it does not replace the others. This is indeed a bold claim to make for someone who loves the works of John Cobb and Marjorie Suchocki, both of whom have written many classic books on process theology. But one of the greatest strengths of Epperly's introductory level book is in his synthesis of many of the most important ideas of other leading Christian process-relational thinkers from the last few decades, including Cobb and Suchocki, but also David Ray Griffin, Charles Hartshorne, Catherine Keller, Bernard Loomer, Thomas Jay Oord, Rita Nakashima Brock, Robert Mesle, Lewis Ford, Jay McDaniel, Monica Coleman, and last but definitely not least, Bruce Epperly himself. Additionally, he quotes widely from the complex works of Alfred North Whitehead throughout the book, highlighting some of his most memorable passages and explaining them in a way that makes them more accessible.

Asecond strength of this book is due to Epperly's emphasis in practical theology. He is concerned, first and foremost, with the way in which process theology works within the lives of individuals and communities, impacting churches and preaching. This adds up to a real gift in clear communication, but also great sensitivity to the actual lives of people outside the academy, leading him to concentrate less on complicated academic debates and more on issues like prayer, life after death, ethics, and holistic healing practices.

Here are a few things that stood out to me about the book:

1) Epperly goes through every important area of Christian theology and explains the various ways that process theologians understand them - christology, soteriology, sin, anthropology, eschatology, ecclesiology, pneumatology, and the trinity. This is pretty much standard for process theology intro books, but Epperly is particularly clear and thorough in his explanations of the various process interpretations of systematic theology. Beyond the basic areas of systematic theology, Epperly also explains process views of miracles, scripture, revelation, and mystical experiences.

2) A very helpful overview of process ethics is included on issues like abortion, euthanasia, ecology/animal rights, and economics/justice (which draws heavily on Cobb's work). Such a wide variety of important issues are not always a part of other introductory level process texts, so this was a great addition to the book.

3) As previously mentioned, Epperly synthesizes other key process thinkers in this book and summarizes many of their most important contributions to the process theology conversation:

• Cobb's logos/Wisdom Christology and work in ethics
• Suchocki's theologies of original sin, eschatology, and prayer
• Epperly's own work in holistic healing practices and eschatology
• Griffin's work in the area of theodicy*
• Oord's work on a theology of love
• Coleman's Womanist theology
• McDaniel's work in ecology

*theodicy noun, plural -cies.

a vindication of the divine attributes, particularly holiness and justice, in establishing or allowing the existence of physical and moral evil.

Lastly, in the final chapter of the book, Epperly considers the possibility of the "amorphous, yet dynamic" emergent church movement adopting a process theology framework. He argues that process theology provides the flexibility that the emergent church is committed to while avoiding relativism, purely apophatic spirituality, and deconstructive postmodernism (most forms of process theology are contrasted as 'constructive postmodernism'). It encourages as much openness to other religions as possible while remaining rooted in a (constantly evolving) tradition - a kind of 'confessional religious pluralism.'

Indeed, citing Brian McLaren, Epperly believes process theology can provide a truly inspiring philosophical and theological grounding for a "New Kind of Christianity." Although only a few self-identified emergent Christian writers/leaders/pastors are explicitly aligned with some form of process theology at this point, there are certainly overlapping emphases with process in many emergent/emerging books and blogs. As such, Epperly's invitation to emergent Christians (who are largely post-evangelicals) to consider process theology as a viable option in their search for new forms of faith makes a great deal of sense for anyone familiar with McLaren or Doug Pagitt.

While process theology is anything but easy to understand for many beginners, Bruce Epperly has done a fantastic job of making it accessible without oversimplifying the incredible depth of process thinking.

To "Believe Out" the Church First Needs To Know What It "Believes In."

To "Believe Out" the Church First Needs

To Know What It "Believes In."

The words spoken here by Frederick Schmidt are as good as any words can be spoken in declaring that Christians first and foremost speak Christ and stay to their mission of outreach and discipling. Any other activity is secondary to the Church's primary missions of speaking Jesus to a world seeking life and deliverance.

And to help with the answer to Frederick's question I would submit that Emergent Christianity is a fresh, new movement seeking Evangelic AND Progressive Christianity's participation in re-speaking Christ to the world. Emergent Christianity is focused on Jesus, on ministering to people, on assimilating into society as many Kingdom constructs as can be created until Jesus comes again for his Bride, the Church, while living out His command to love one another.

The welcome mat is out then, to other Christian groups of similar interests, seeking the new life of rebirth found in Christ Jesus. Let us join with one another and work together as one body of Christ focused on the work of Church, first and foremost, of outreach, ministry and discipleship. And not get lost in the many issues of nation building and government. We have political parties to do that.

RE Slater

November 15, 2011

*For more on Progressive Christianity see - http://www.tcpc.org/template/index.cfm

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Believe Out Begins with Believe In

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Believe-Out-Begins-with-Believe-In-Frederick-Schmidt-05-16-2011.html

by Frederick Schmidt

May 15, 2011

"If all that Progressive Christianity has going for it is that it is politically progressive,

then there is really no reason to wrap churchy language around it."

- Frederick Schmidt                 

Jim Wallis is often galvanizing public opinion, but I am sure that he regrets having done such an effective job of it this week. The decision to refuse airtime to an on-line ad from Believe Out advocating a welcoming posture toward LBGT adults and their children has precipitated a firestorm of criticism. And Wallis' effort to explain Sojourners' position has done little more than throw a damp rag on the conflagration.

The debate quickly became more than a debate over inclusion, however. It also became a debate over the viability of "Progressive Christianity" itself. Speaking for many, Jim Naughton, Canon for Communications and Advancement for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington wrote:

I was more or less in favor of the big-tent strategy pursued by progressive religious leaders in Washington in the wake of Barack Obama's election as president. The thinking—as I understood—went that in reaching out to moderate evangelicals on a certain set of issues it might be possible to make legislative progress on behalf of the poor. One upshot of that strategy was that Jim Wallis . . . became the embodiment of the Progressive Christianity in the eyes of the Obama administration and the Washington media . . . So here we sit, us religious lefties, with a movement led by a man who occupies a position to the right of Dick Cheney on LGBT issues. I am assuming people savvier and better connected than I am will understand that this situation is not tenable. The big tent collapsed this weekend, and it was Sojourners who yanked out the tent poles. Someone needs to alert official Washington that Jim Wallis and his minions no longer speak for us—if they ever did.

There is little to be accomplished by adding to the fire. So I won't break into the supply of well-cured wood behind the house. (It has been raining today and it's wet anyway.) But I have found myself wondering why the debate is about political agendas and the way in which the Progressive Christian voice is represented to the White House.

The answer, I think, is this: A debate is never over the issues it should be when the adjectives in a movement's label are more important than the nouns. Put another way: "Progressive" Christians have yet to articulate in theological categories what they believe in, so it is hard to identify what they believe out—except by resorting to political assumptions.

That's a problem for the movement and, if it isn't addressed, it will not last. Why?

Quite simply, the answer is this: If all that Progressive Christianity has going for it is that it is politically progressive, then there is really no reason to wrap churchy language around it. There's a political party for that. It is far better financed and organized. It's a bigger player than the church will ever be. And it doesn't need to worry about how it is represented to the White House. It can occupy it. Put another way: A religious movement shaped by a political agenda will never have significant traction, if it isn't fundamentally religious.

Of course, this is as true of conservative versions of Christianity as it is of progressive versions. And it raises serious questions about the perennial effort to rebrand the faith at all.

But be that as it may, the point is this: No expression of Christianity can give a convincing case for its existence without defining what it means to be a Christian. Without doing that, in fact, every debate like this will be more about politics and policy than about something spiritually definitive.

So, where does the conversation begin? With explicitly religious and spiritual questions, perhaps like these (though there is nothing fixed about the list):

• Who is God?
• Who is Jesus?
• What is the reign of God?
• What does life under the reign of God look like? How and where is it given expression?
• What do human beings need from God?
• What is the relationship between God and human beings meant to be?
• What is the purpose of the church in giving expression to the reign of God?
• How are those purposes realized?
• What does the reign of God suggest about the membership, shape, and mission of the church?

I can't offer the answers to those questions. I am not even sure that it is important to institutionalize the "progressive" brand. Christianity, properly understood, has always struck me as a pretty progressive thing anyway and the noun has had more staying power than any of the adjectives. But in the absence of a conversation shaped by questions about the meaning and nature of our faith we will inevitably find ourselves talking about politics, the White House, and "wedge issues."

To "believe out" the church needs to know what it "believes in."

The Reverend Dr. Frederick W. Schmidt, Jr. is Director of Spiritual Formation and Associate Professor of Christian Spirituality at Southern Methodist University, Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas. An Episcopal priest, he also serves as the director of the Episcopal studies program. He is the author of several books, including Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of Luke (Morehouse, 2009) and What God Wants for Your Life (Harper One, 2005).

Schmidt's column, "The Spiritual Landscape," is published every Monday on the Progressive Christian portal. Subscribe via email or RSS.

Classic Evangelical Epistemology, Part 3

Bounded or Centered Set?

Part 3a

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2011/08/17/bounded-or-centered/

August 17, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 18 Comments

As I have been in my grudge match to the death with the Rule of Faith as a “rule,” one critique I regularly find myself bringing is that it creates a bounded set. My instinct has been that so conceptualizing the Christian faith is not only a category mistake but ethically disastrous.

In short, once we have defined Christianity as a set of beliefs that must be maintained in order to be faithful Christians, then Christian ethics boils down to maintaining “the faith” that is so delineated.

What should Christians do? Defend the borders.

I have recently stumbled upon the work of Paul Hiebert. Here is what he says about bounded sets:

1. The category is created by listing essential characteristics something must posses in order to belong to the set
2. The category is defined by a clear boundary
3. The objects form a homogeneous group
4. “Bounded sets are essentially static sets”
5. Within Western conceptual categories, bounded sets tend to be ontological sets, reflecting an absolute, unchanging nature of reality.

Two things strike me here: the quote, point 4, is the one that I most often rail against here. Christian theology is not a static set, but something dynamically in process in the ongoing story of the church. 

The church has to grow up to the fact that things are not simply givens, so we cannot take an 1800 year old statement as the defining marker of who we are and what we should do.

But here’s the other problem, as Hiebert lays it out. On point 2, the category is formed by a clear boundary.

What does this mean in practice? He says:

Most of the effort in defining the category is spent defining and maintaining the boundary. Not only must we say what an apple is, we must also clearly differentiate it from oranges, pears, and similar objects that belong to the same domain but are not apples. The central question, therefore, is whether an object is inside or outside the category.

The ethic entailed in a bounded-set system is defining and maintaining the boundary.

When we envision Christianity as a bounded-set, we are consigning ourselves to a lifetime of boundary guarding. Absent from all this, of course, are other measures of Christian fidelity–such as embodying the self-giving love of Christ or even walking in accordance with the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount.

Christianity-bounded by the “Rule of Faith” becomes, throughout Church History, a self-referential religion, concerned with keeping itself together, and keeping out the heterodox.

This is not to say, of course, that it is without biblical precedent. There were, after all, the disciples who bravely fended off the would-be intruders upon their bounded world: “Lord, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, but he was not with us, so we forbid him!”

So what is a centered set? Stay tuned…

About J. R. Daniel Kirk: Professor at Fuller Seminary, resident of San Francisco, consumer of dark chocolate, brewer of dark beer, reader of Flannery O'Connor, watcher of the Coen Brothers, listener of The Mountain Goats.

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Bounded or Centered Set?
Part 3b  

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2011/08/18/bounded-or-centered-pt-2/

August 18, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 16 Comments

Yesterday I talked about why bounded set thinking is problematic for the church: It is static and it is self-referential. In particular, I am not happy with a theological statement, such as a creed, defining what a Christian truly is, how we read the Bible, and how we are supposed to act.

As I’ve been thinking about this, however, I have more than once wondered if I might, in the end, have to affirm some sort of “bounded set,” because I do think that what makes someone a Christian is being “in Christ.” Is Christ the boundary on our Christian set?

Enter, once again, Paul Hiebert.

In contrast to bounded sets, Hiebert explains, other ways of conceiving sets include “fuzzy sets” (I’ll bypass this one for now) and “centered sets.”

Here is what he says about centered sets:

…a centered set is created by defining a center or reference point and the relationship of things to that center. Things related to the center belong to the set, and those not related to the center do not. Kingship groups… are relational categories.

Relational categories.

That’s more like it.

We all belong together, not because we are circumscribed by a common speech recited on Sunday mornings that tells us how to read the Bible, but because we are all related to Christ, and to God as God’s children, in Christ.

That is a better way to conceive of our identity.

Centered sets have a couple of advantages over bounded sets in terms of being a conceptual framework for Christianity. There are two variables that this way of conceptualizing relations can account for.

One: some folks will be closer to the center than others. All might be in some sort of relationship, but there are degrees of proximity to the defining center.

Two: people might be in motion toward or away from the center.

Part of the flexibility of this is that individuals aren’t the only ones who might be related to a Christian center (= Jesus). Whole churches, denominations, or even the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic church might at times be closer, at times farther, at times moving toward and at times moving away from Christ.

If Christ is the center of our set, the church resumes its rightful place as people who are always in a dynamic relationship with him rather than being erected as a static framework that, itself, defines the set.

Both in its move from the church as defining agent (Rule of Faith) to Christ (the center of our centered set), and in its recognition of the inherently dynamic nature of all relationships and reality, the centered set more faithfully depicts what Christianity is, and therefore opens up better possibilities for interpreting the Bible and acting faithfully in the world.


About J. R. Daniel Kirk: Professor at Fuller Seminary, resident of San Francisco, consumer of dark chocolate, brewer of dark beer, reader of Flannery O'Connor, watcher of the Coen Brothers, listener of The Mountain Goats.  

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Classic Evangelical Epistemology, Part 2

When I was a child

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2011/08/15/when-i-was-a-child/

August 15, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 7 Comments

When I was a child I thought that the world of my elders was an infinite set of givens.

I took it as a given that my parents were married. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I realized that marriage was never a given. Being married was a dynamic process that, at times, threatened to blow itself up. And it almost did. But not quite.

I took it as a given that people had certain jobs, or that they were employed. I took it as a given that I would enter into a world of employment and do certain things. It was in the waning months of my time at home and into college that I began to see that this, too, was an illusion.

My child’s vision had seen a given. Because it was all I had seen, I thought it was permanent.

But the problem was that life does not work this way. Not ever.

SPOILER ALERT: There is no “arriving” in life. Single people: you don’t “arrive” at your life goal on your wedding day. There’s a marriage that follows. And, as I say above, that relationship is always a dynamic process.

In The Sparrow, the wise older married woman says she has to decide afresh every ten years if this new person who is completely different from the man she married (and from the man she recommitted to ten years previously) is worth learning to love afresh.

Married people: you don’t “arrive” at your life goal when your kid is born.

Grad students: you don’t “arrive” when you get your job. In fact, landing that great job, sometimes landing a large amount of dollars in a cool city to go with it, can make the failure to experience “arriving” a thoroughly depressing affair.

I was at a fortieth birthday party a few months ago. At one point, the conversation turned to words of wisdom from other men who had passed that milestone. One that stuck with me was this: “If you’ve been diligently pursuing your vocational goals, you have probably accomplished most of them by the time you turn forty. Now you have to figure out how to look toward the future without that kind of hopeful vision for the future driving you.”

In other words, the idea that you’ve done it all already, and haven’t yet arrived, is where the midlife crisis comes from.

Life is full of dynamic processes. We are part of that dynamism as we change, grow, and contribute to our world. And, the world itself is ever changing and opening up new possibilities and heading in unexpected directions and, sometimes, leaving us behind.

There’s a point in all this for theology, but I’m out of space and will have to take it up tomorrow. So here’s a teaser: the baby church in AD 200 had the luxury of thinking its faith was a given for all places and times. The church in AD 2000 should be looking at the world with a more sober grownup’s vision.

Theology Doing Away with Childish Things

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2011/08/16/theology-doing-away-with-childish-things/
 August 16, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 8 Comments

In yesterday’s post, I waxed… um… something… about life being dynamic, and not simply a set of givens. Where I had intended to end up was this: the church once upon a time had the luxury of thinking that Christian faith was a set of givens, and that accepting these givens was a necessary and sufficient expression of Christian faith.

The content of this childhood dream was The Rule of Faith.

It wasn’t a bad dream. But it was a child’s dream.

The Hobbit wasn’t a bad story, but it was a child’s story. It was a there-and-back-again tale. The story of Frodo was no child’s story, but a tale of death from which there was no “back again,” even if one was fortunate enough to arrive back home.

After 2,000 years, we know that the world, and the philosophy through which we assess it, is not simply a set of givens.

We, as Christians, are part of the dynamic process through which the church’s faith continues to be articulated. We live in a world that is changing, and the transformed context of knowledge and experience changes what we must say and how we must say it. And, God is still at work in the world, and so we must allow that God, too, is a dynamic participant in this ever-changing process.

These are some of the realities behind the failure of a rule of faith to bind the church as one. When Irenaeus said to his opponents, “You are wrong because the church has always said…” He was, in essence, claiming, “You disagree with us – because you disagree with us! Hah!”

There comes a time when we have to recognize that the continuance of the church itself cannot lean on the given of two millennia ago. Perhaps that church needs, now, to be disagreed with.

Perhaps what we thought was a given needs to be reaffirmed, restated given that the parties in the agreement (the church and its members) are both completely different now.

The idea that one statement, or a cluster of like statements, can continue to define the relationship for two thousand years rests on a static view of the world that does not measure up to reality. The church did not “arrive” when it articulated the rule of faith. It said what needed to be said circa AD 200.

But this does not answer the question of what is necessary or sufficient to be said or done in AD 2000. We must regularly say afresh what needs to be said. This is not only because the world is dynamic and in flux, and not only because the church is dynamic and in flux, but also because God continues to be dynamically at work in both the world and the church.

Catherine Keller - On Entanglement, Interconnectedness & Synchronicity

When reading through Catherine's much appreciated interview it caught my attention if what she was referring to in terms of theological entanglements or spiritual interconnectedness was perhaps the same concept put forth here not  many months ago pertaining to the concept of synchronicity (LOST in Purgatory, "Synchronicity," Part 2 of 2).

I had thought at the time when discovering the concept many years earlier, that this concept was at once singular and multifaceted; rare in observance but readily performed in everyday life; a substance (both metaphysical and temporal) bound to the immortal person and being of God in His power, presence, being and divine embrace of His creation basically understood then, as now, as a "joined collective dynamic."

And so, Catherine draws this same coincidence out from within her own view of process theology, whereas I, whether rightly or wrongly, whether inconsistently and naively, have done the same through my bias towards classical theism (that I have since revised as relational theism; see sidebars for further discussion). Let us then consider her interview and the greater matters of how God works through us, the world, time and attention in mysterious and marvelous ways hidden from us but yet ever in plain view!

R.E. Slater

November 14, 2001

* * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Quantum Theology: Our Spooky Interconnectedness:

An Interview with Catherine Keller

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/4999/quantum_theology%3A_our__spooky_interconnectedness/

By Beatrice Marovich

November 2, 2011

*Beatrice Marovich is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Division of Religion at Drew University in Madison, NJ. She also works as a writer, editor, and communications consultant, specializing in ideas at the crowded intersection of theology, philosophy, faith and public/political life in North America.

Before I knew anything much at all about theology, I knew about creationism—theology’s old anti-evolutionary fracas. I knew, in other words, that in the worst case, theology and science were at war. In the best case, I assumed, they had a rather awkward relationship—something like bad first date. And then I read Catherine Keller’s Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (Routledge, 2003).

What occurred was nothing short of a paradigm shift. What Keller was up to was beyond me—in the very best way. She wasn’t doing apologetics (defending theology from its outside objectors). Instead, she was pulling playfully from the feisty texts of her tradition (in this case, the first book of Genesis, the creation story) in order to cast an evocative, spirited, poetic web over the cosmos that scientific research was revealing to us. I realized that there was no one else I’d trust as much to help me wade into this ancient discipline—theology. Here, Keller speaks with me about her forthcoming book.

BEM: Let’s start simple. The book you’re currently working on is called Cloud of the Impossible: Theological Entanglements. Perhaps the first question I should ask is: What is a “cloud of the impossible”?

CK: Well, it’s a metaphor that just engulfed me and wouldn’t let me go. I tried to work with other names. But it wouldn’t go away, this little cloud.

It comes from Nicholas of Cusa, who’s a theologian of the 15th century. It’s a phrase that he uses in his book called The Vision of God. When he talks about the cloud of the impossible he’s talking about the cloud that, at a certain point in your spiritual journey, you just can’t avoid if you want to evolve. The cloud that you simply can’t not enter, if you’re not going to settle for clichés and incoherencies, or repressed questions, in your spirituality.

So this cloud that you have to face… what is it? Well, for him, it’s a point of dire contradiction. It’s when two different things that you believe come into conflict and contradict each other.

What does the cloud of the impossible have to do with God?

Cusa says that we have to face the contradictions that the cloud confronts us with. The fundamental contradiction that haunts him throughout all of his work—and attracts him as well—is that we are utterly finite creatures who don’t have the capacity to grasp the infinite, which is God. So it’s a contradiction between finitude and the infinite.

But the contradictions, for me, can also be the contradictions between our life calling and a relationship to a loved one, or the contradiction between our ecological awareness and our economic practice. In his cloud meditation, Cusa suggests that these contradictions (which seem to be utterly resistant to our reason, which strike us as utterly impossible to resolve) suck us deeper into the cloud. We’re drawn ever deeper, until we hit a wall. We come to an awareness of a wall that seems to be woven of these intractable, irreconcilable opposites.

But Cusa describes this as the wall of the coincidence of opposites: coincidentia oppositorum. It’s the very realization that these opposites are interwoven that points to something else, a sort of third way. It’s a struggle to get there. There’s a kind of logic of “either-or” that has to be overcome. But then a gate opens and, at least for a moment, one is in paradise. This moment never lasts. But, for Cusa, the experience of the divine is precisely that: coming smack up against this contradiction and then, if we hang in there, the opening.

Is this the impossible?

That’s the impossible transmuting into possibility itself. It’s the possibility within the impossible.

Your book is also going to cover a kind of correlate phenomenon of impossibility in the world of physics?

I’ve been fascinated with a kind of quantum apophasis*. What we face in this field is a kind of fundamental contradiction between relativity theory (which is classical) and quantum physics, which “unsays” the laws of classical physics. I think this contradiction is its own cloud.

Brian Greene, a physicist at Columbia opens The Fabric of the Universe with a dramatic image of physics being under a dark cloud, which is this basic contradiction. So a lot of physicists are looking for the coincidentia oppositorum between these not entirely reconciled sets of laws. But the contradiction itself isn’t something that I, as a theologian, am looking to solve. I’m more interested in a phenomenon that comes out of this cloud, out of what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance”—quantum entanglement.

In classical physics, nothing can happen faster than the speed of light because no signal can propagate faster than the speed of light. But what was showing its ghostly face in quantum entanglement is a kind of influence that seems to be instantaneous and seems to take place between two connected particles, no matter how far away they are. So, rather than become more and more indifferent to one another the further away they are, these particles will forever respond to each other instantaneously as though you are effecting both of them in the same way, at the same moment [known as the Laws of Mutual Entanglement - res].

They’re entangled?

Right. It looks like, from a certain point of view, nothing is separate from anything at all. As the novelist Jeanette Winterson puts it, in her book Gut Symmetries: our separateness is a sham.

But what is a theological entanglement?

My book [laughs]. It’s a way of understanding our sometimes spooky, sometimes trustworthy, relationships… theologically.

Theological entanglement is a way of reflecting on our relationships—all of our relationships, at once, together. When we do this, we get to such an impossibly infinite place that, I think, we resort to God language. The metaphors of the divine, of a love that permeates all things instantaneously, an embrace that holds everything everywhere in its mindfulness, a spirit (even a holy ghost) that has the character of spooky action at a distance is a metaphor by which can gather our very mysterious interdependencies (as creatures) on each other.

We are constituted, in every moment, by our relations. Some of them we compose, but they comprise the conditions in which we are composed. Theological entanglement is a form of what’s called “relational theology.” Entanglement is meant to give a more physical, and spooky edge to our interconnectedness.

This isn’t just about the apophasis of an infinite God, but about the element of unknowability in all of us—as creatures made in the image of the unknowable. It looks, even from the vantage point of quantum indeterminacy, that every creature has an element of the unknowable or unpredictable to it. For every electron, you’re unable to measure (simultaneously) its location and its momentum.

What do you think your readings in quantum physics have done for your theology?

My study of physics strengthens my faith, because it exposes the depth of the mystery of what theologians call the incarnation. There is a way in which various branches of science, in a kind of postmodern vein (the corners of scientific fields where reductionism has not obtained for decades) the mystery of our interdependence is actually fleshed out with a kind of precision that I think theologians should be aware of. The universe that is showing itself in various fields, (not just quantum physics, but the fractals of chaos theory, for example) is a universe far more appealing to theology than was the [classic] universe of the past 300 to 400 years—made up of bits of dead, impenetrable matter, interacting predictably in a mega-machine.

The more you get into these cutting edges of science, the more the mysterious materializes. It turns out, even, that what we call “matter” is ultimately a kind of myth. You can’t really say this, as a theologian. It sounds like you’re trying to turn the actual world into some kind of illusion. That’s not what I’m talking about. Rather, I’m saying that what we call matter is something much more mysterious, subtle, apparently interconnecting faster than the speed of light, just pulsing in its inter-linked processes with the unknown. I think all of us have a lot to learn there. Clearly the scientists are not going to be, for the most part, reflecting on the possible meanings of their own science. That’s not what they’re trained for. This is why transdisciplinary work is so crucial.

Should we be afraid to reflect, theologically, on the meaning of scientific data, or the findings that come out of scientific research?

We should be careful. We should do a lot of reading before we jump to conclusions. But I think that’s true for any form of responsible thinking. There’s a lot of great, accessible material out there today, however. So I don’t think there’s any real reason to be afraid. To cite Cusa: the problem is not our ignorance. That’s unavoidable. But if we realize the shape of our ignorance, then we can learn a lot more.

And we don’t have to be afraid that we can’t know it all. We can’t all be physicists. I’m always very knowing of my own ignorance of the natural sciences. So I’m grateful for how much is being communicated across disciplinary boundaries. And I hope that this can, increasingly, go both ways. Perhaps, now, as the planet heats up and cooperation—not just between disciplines, but populations—becomes more and more a matter of life and death, there will be more interest in transdisciplinary conversations.

Perhaps theologians, pastors, spiritual leaders, people who are spiritually attuned to irreligious forms of creativity, will find some new ways to communicate about these things. But if science is left out of the mix, we will always be off in lala land. We need the incarnational practice of taking into account the most precise knowledge we can find, in the face of the mystery of our embodied existence.

As a theologian, what do you think is left out of the mix if God, or the divine, isn’t entangled with other forms of knowledge?

I think if God-talk simply drops out of sophisticated discourse and is just replaced by a wide range of philosophical, spiritual, poetical metaphors that avoid the Abrahamisms of the past, what’s left behind is simply our consciousness of who we are. That is, if we shift into atheism in the name of being in the know, we’re actually shifting into an unknowing ignorance.

We’ve been comprised by these traditions, massively. So to think that we can simply repudiate them by dismissing their more vulgar and clichéd forms is to do violence to what the prophetic and poetic strands of atheism always were: a more spiritually and affectively alive sense of life.

It’s possible to avoid God-talk for long stretches of time. Any canny Christian can do that, in order to make friends and influence people. Or just to get relief from bad clichés. But, at a certain point, one has to face up to the profundity and brilliance of the conceptual work that was done in the Western world for more than 1500 years, when it was dominated by the discipline of theology.

But we don’t want to reduce post-Christian criticisms of Christian idolatries to mere anti-faith, either. It wouldn’t do justice to the depths of the agnostic and atheist traditions which are, themselves, deeply prophetic traditions. Still, I think it’s important to stay mindful of God-tropes. Being mindful of these metaphors doesn’t necessarily cause us to believe in them. But we might find that the whole language of belief falls short of what’s meant by faith, anyhow—faith has never been a matter of little bits of knowledge parading as certainty.

COMMENTS

I find this subject fascinating and look forward to seeing Keller's book; however, it is somewhat disturbing for Keller to refer to "theology" and assume Christian theology only, and for the article to neglect to mention important influences that predate Cusa like the fourteenth century Christian work "The Cloud of Unknowing"**; not to mention far earlier apophatic works from Eastern Orthodox, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish sources. Indeed, Keller's discussion of opposites reminded me of nothing so much as the Zen way of putting the conscious mind into crisis by posing riddles — koans — which scramble the brain's tendency to make sense and order out of everything. And while Zen is not considered a theology, as such, including Buddhism in a discussion of "unknowing" is surely appropriate.

"Religious" cultures did not, for the most part, emerge in isolation. Historians find increasing evidence of cross-cultural influence that goes back thousands of years (recalling that peoples interacted through trade, conquest, and settlement before times for which we have written records). Historians of Western religion are pointing more and more to outside influences on Christianity by noting that Thomas Aquinas and other European theologians read the Jewish thinker Maimonides, who in turn is thought to have been influenced by Islamic philosophers such as al-Farabi and al-Ghazali, who themselves were heirs to ancient Greek and other philosophies. And back into the mists of time and place the influences go.

For this interview to make it appear as though Cusa put something new together when there are many earlier sources (even if one stays within the Christian tradition) is alarming. To neglect to even mention "The Cloud of Unknowing" when the title of Keller's book is clearly a reference (if not an homage) to that important work is something of a travesty.

Indeed, the focus on Christianity in this article — not overt yet obvious to the reader — adds fuel to a polarization of traditions which is, sadly, becoming increasingly popular today. Writers of such pieces need to be very careful to avoid reinforcing such misconceptions.

Keller's thinking about quantum mechanics and religious mysticism has been anticipated by a number of thinkers. For example, the 1996 edition of "The Cloud of Unknowing" (published by Doubleday, text edited by William Johnston [1973]) features a foreword by Huston Smith, in which Smith writes about the importance of quantum mechanics to our consideration of works like "The Cloud". I'm sure (at least one would expect) that Keller pays due credit to earlier thinkers — and to earlier works than Cusa's from around the world — in her book, but a sentence or two in this article would have sufficed to put her work into context.

– Beth, Dept. of History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

* * * * * * * * * * * *
 

DEFINITIONS

  

*Apophasis - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophasis

IN GENERAL

Apophasis was originally and more broadly a method of logical reasoning or argument by denial—a way of describing what something is by explaining what it is not, or a process-of-elimination way of talking about something by talking about what it is not.

A useful inductive technique when given a limited universe of possibilities, the exclusion of all but the one remaining is affirmation through negation. The familiar guessing-game of Twenty Questions is an example of apophatic inquiry.

This sense has generally fallen into disuse and is frequently overlooked, although it is still current in certain contexts, such as mysticism and negative theology.

IN CHRISTIANITY

An apophatic theology sees God as ineffable and attempts to describe God in terms of what God is not. Apophatic statements refer to transcendence in this context, as opposed to cataphasis referring to immanence. It stands in contrast with cataphatic theology.

Apophatic theology (from Greek ἀπόφασις from ἀπόφημι - apophēmi, "to deny")—also known as negative theology or via negativa (Latin for "negative way")—is a theology that attempts to describe [the transcedent] God, or Divine Good, by negation. To speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God.^[1] It stands in contrast with cataphatic theology that speaks to the immanence of God.

In brief, negative theology is an attempt to achieve unity with the Divine Good through discernment, gaining knowledge of what God is not (apophasis), rather than by describing what God is (cataphasis).

The apophatic tradition is often, though not always, allied with the approach of mysticism, which focuses on a spontaneous or cultivated individual experience of the divine reality beyond the realm of ordinary perception, an experience often unmediated by the structures of traditional organized religion or the conditioned role-playing and learned defensive behavior of the outer man.


Apophatic Theology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology

In negative theology, it is accepted that the Divine is ineffable (inexpressible), an abstract experience that can only be recognized or remembered—that is, human beings cannot describe in words the essence of the perfect good that is unique to the individual, nor can they define the Divine, in its immense complexity, related to the entire field of reality, and therefore all descriptions if attempted will be ultimately false and conceptualization should be avoided; in effect, it eludes definition by definition:

• Neither existence nor nonexistence as we understand it in the physical realm, applies to God; i.e., the Divine is abstract to the individual, beyond existing or not existing, and beyond conceptualization regarding the whole (one cannot say that God exists in the usual sense of the term; nor can we say that God is nonexistent).
• God is divinely simple (one should not claim that God is one, or three, or any type of being.)
• God is not ignorant (one should not say that God is wise since that word arrogantly implies we know what "wisdom" means on a divine scale, whereas we only know what wisdom is believed to mean in a confined cultural context).
• Likewise, God is not evil (to say that God can be described by the word 'good' limits God to what good behavior means to human beings individually and en masse).
• God is not a creation (but beyond that we cannot define how God exists or operates in relation to the whole of humanity).
• God is not conceptually defined in terms of space and location.
• God is not conceptually confined to assumptions based on time.

Even though the via negativa essentially rejects theological understanding as a path to God, some have sought to make it into an intellectual exercise, by describing God only in terms of what God is not. One problem noted with this approach, is that there seems to be no fixed basis on deciding what God is not, unless the Divine is understood as an abstract experience of full aliveness unique to each individual consciousness, and universally, the perfect goodness applicable to the whole field of reality^{[citation needed]}. It should be noted that this is also a kind of definition, namely that the Divine is an experience, which - because of the very definition of apophatic theology - the then Divine cannot be.


Cataphatic Theology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataphatic_theology

(sometimes spelled kataphatic) theology is the expressing of God or the divine through positive terminology. This is in contrast to defining God or the divine in what God is not, which is referred to as negative or apophatic theology.

To speak of God or the divine kataphatically is by its nature a form of limiting to God or divine. This was one of the core tenets of the works of St Dionysus the Aeropagite. By defining what God or the divine is we limit the unlimited as Saint Dionysus outlined in his works. A kataphatic way to express God would be that God is love. The apophatic way would be to express that God is not hate; or to say that God is not love, as he transcends even our notion of love.

Ultimately, one would come to remove even the notion of the Trinity, or of saying that God is one, because The Divine is above numberhood. That God is beyond all duality because God contains within Godself all things and that God is beyond all things. The apophatic way as taught by Saint Dionysus was to remove any conceptual understanding of God that could become all-encompassing, since in its limitedness that concept would begin to force the fallen understanding of mankind onto the absolute and divine.
 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

**The Cloud of Unknowing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloud_of_Unknowing

The Cloud of Unknowing
Author(s)	Anonymous
Original title	The Cloude of Unknowyng
Country	England
Language	Middle English
Subject(s)	Spiritual guide to contemplative prayer
Genre(s)	Christian mysticism
Publication date	late 14th century
Followed by	The Book of Privy Counseling

The Cloud of Unknowing (Middle English: The Cloude of Unknowyng) is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English in the latter half of the 14th century. The text is a spiritual guide on contemplative prayer in the late Middle Ages.

Manuscripts of the work are today at British Library and Cambridge University Library. ^[1][2]

History and influence

The Cloud of Unknowing draws on the mystical tradition of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Christian Neoplatonism^[3], which focuses on the via negativa road to discovering God as a pure entity, beyond any capacity of mental conception and so without any definitive image or form. This tradition has reputedly inspired generations of mystical searchers from John Scotus Erigena, through Book of Taliesin, Nicholas of Cusa and St. John of the Cross to Teilhard de Chardin (the latter two of whom may have been influenced by "The Cloud" itself). Prior to this, the theme of "Cloud" had been in the Confessions of St. Augustine (IX, 10) written in AD 398.^[2]

This work had already become known to English Catholics in middle 17th century, later ascetic and Benedictine mystic, Augustine Baker (1575-1641), wrote an exposition on its doctrine. Today a transcript of the work dated 1677 is at the Ampleforth College , apart from several at the British Library. English mystic Evelyn Underhill edited an important version of the work in 1922. ^[3]

Description

The book counsels a young student to seek God, not through knowledge and intellection (faculty of the human mind), but through intense contemplation, motivated by love, and stripped of all thought. This is brought about by putting all thoughts and desires under a "cloud of forgetting", and thereby piercing God's cloud of unknowing with a "dart of longing love" from the heart. This form of contemplation is not directed by the intellect, but involves spiritual union with God through the heart:

"For He can well be loved, but he cannot be thought. By love he can be grasped and held, but by thought, neither grasped nor held. And therefore, though it may be good at times to think specifically of the kindness and excellence of God, and though this may be a light and a part of contemplation, all the same, in the work of contemplation itself, it must be cast down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And you must step above it stoutly but deftly, with a devout and delightful stirring of love, and struggle to pierce that darkness above you; and beat on that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love, and do not give up, whatever happens."^[4]

In a follow-up to The Cloud, called The Book of Privy Counseling, the author characterizes the practice of contemplative unknowing as worshiping God with one's "substance," coming to rest in a "naked blind feeling of being," and ultimately finding thereby that God is one's being.

The practical prayer advice contained in The Cloud of Unknowing forms a primary basis for the contemporary practice of Centering Prayer, a form of Christian meditation developed by Trappist monks William Meninger, Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating in the 1970s.^[5]

Quotations

Ch. 39-40 quotation: other versions

Evelyn Underhill (1922/2003) And if we will intentively pray for getting of good, let us cry, either with word or with thought or with desire, nought else nor no more words, but this word “God.” For why, in God be all good.. Fill thy spirit with the ghostly bemeaning of it without any special beholding to any of His works—whether they be good, better, or best of all—bodily or ghostly, or to any virtue that may be wrought in man’s soul by any grace; not looking after whether it be meekness or charity, patience or abstinence, hope, faith, or soberness, chastity or wilful poverty. What recks this in contemplatives?.. they covet nothing with special beholding, but only good God. Do thou.. mean God all, and all God, so that nought work in thy wit and in thy will, but only God.[6]

Middle English original And yif we wil ententifly preie for getyng of goodes, lat us crie, outher with worde or with thought or with desire, nought elles, ne no mo wordes, bot this worde God. For whi in God ben alle goodes.. Fille thi spirit with the goostly bemenyng of it withoutyn any specyal beholdyng to any of His werkes whether thei be good, betir, or alther best, bodily or goostly—or to any vertewe that may be wrought in mans soule by any grace, not lokyng after whether it be meeknes or charité, pacyence or abstynence, hope, feith, or sobirnes, chastité or wilful poverté. What thar reche in contemplatyves?.. thei coveyte nothing with specyal beholdyng, bot only good God. Do thou.. mene God al, and al God, so that nought worche in thi witte and in thi wile, bot only God.[7]

From a description of how to practice contemplation (from chapters 39 and 40):

When we intend to pray for goodness, let all our thought and desire be contained in the one small word "God." Nothing else and no other words are needed, for God is the epitome of all goodness.. Immerse yourself in the spiritual reality it speaks of yet without precise ideas of God's works whether small or great, spiritual or material. Do not consider any particular virtue which God may teach you through grace, whether it is humility, charity, patience, abstinence, hope, faith, moderation, chastity, or evangelical poverty. For to a contemplative they are, in a sense, all the same.. Let this little word represent to you God in all his fullness and nothing less than the fullness of God.^[8]

From elsewhere (chapter 23, The Book of Privy Counseling):

"And so I urge you, go after experience rather than knowledge. On account of pride, knowledge may often deceive you, but this gentle, loving affection will not deceive you. Knowledge tends to breed conceit, but love builds. Knowledge is full of labor, but love, full of rest."^[9]

Popular culture

• Leonard Cohen refers to "The Cloud of Unknowing" in the 1979 song "The Window" (of Recent Songs)
• Todd Rundgren refers to "a cloud of unknowing" in the 1989 song "Parallel Lines" (on the album "Nearly Human")
• Jan Garbarek, the 2004 album In Praise of Dreams includes a track called "Cloud of Unknowing"
• Plastic Beach, the 2010 album by Gorillaz, includes a track called "Cloud of Unknowing"
• James Blackshaw released an album in 2007 by the same name
• John Luther Adams' orchestral work "Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing", completed in 1995, was inspired by "The Cloud of Unknowing"
• Steve Roach's album The Magnificent Void (1996) includes a track named "Cloud of Unknowing"
• Don DeLillo refers to "The Cloud of Unknowing" in the 1998 novel "Underworld"
• In the episode A Measure of Salvation of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series, Lee Adama mentions that the Cylons were saying a prayer to the Cloud of Unknowing
• The John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble album Eternal Interlude (2009) features a track titled "The Cloud." There is a short spoken-word segment paraphrasing a passage from the book