For the last few weeks, Philip Clayton’s Transforming Christian Theology has been sitting annoyingly on my desktop, mocking my lack of time and ambition to get to it (as promised here). Well, despite the fact that the AAR Meeting has come and gone (the event these reviews were supposed to lead up to), I’ve finally started reading the book and over the course of the next few weeks will be doing a four-post series of reviews. Better late than never, I say!
First, who are we dealing with here? Well, Philip Clayton is a philosopher/theologian who currently holds the Ingraham Chair of Theology at Claremont School of Theology (see his website here). This book comes out of a “Damascus Road experience” Clayton had while reading Brian McLaren (Everything Must Change and A Generous Orthodoxy) and John Cobb (Reclaiming the Church) where he discovered that the professionalization of theology was one of the primary culprits in the increasing irrelevance of theology to church life. Among Clayton’s aims is to move theology from the abstract realms of academia into the lived reality of the church.
Part one of the book is called “Theology for an Age of Transition.” Clayton’s analysis of our postmodern culture is familiar enough: the reality of religious pluralism, the rapid pace of societal change, the general suspicion towards totalizing metanarratives, the increasing priority of action over belief, etc. Into the context of this turbulent stew, we postmoderns are supposedly beginning to realize that theology has to be relevant. It can no longer be entrusted to the the “experts.” We have to be prepared to embrace doubt, to allow belonging before believing, and to encourage those in our churches to do theology for themselves.
On the one hand, this is a welcome, if unoriginal message. Of course theology ought to be relevant. As a good Mennonite, part of me is happy to affirm any articulation of the importance of practical theology. My tribe has never been very fond of arcane metaphysics and precise compendiums of doctrine in and of themselves (hmm, it occurs to me that some might wonder just how good a Mennonite I am based on my propensity toward the preceding 
). On this level, I can certainly affirm the idea that theology has to touch down in real life.
But at times, part one read like a somewhat breathless paean to the “practical idealism” of postmodernity. It seems, at times, that Clayton thinks the chief goal of theology in a postmodern context is to accommodate itself to, well, postmodernity. We have to be relevant and practical, after all. And if postmoderns find certain elements of theology or denominational distinctives or traditional church practice to be irrelevant, well then we’d better busy ourselves trying to make things more accessible for them, right?
Well, maybe not. Yesterday I came across this quote from Robert Brimlow in a book by William Willimon that sums up some of my frustration with the opening section of Clayton’s book:
Our problem is not that of finding a way to translate the gospel so that pagans [or postmoderns?] can understand it in their idiom…. Rather, our problem as the church is to find a way to let the world know that there is another language and another way of viewing and understanding reality that they should want to learn.
Could this be true of postmoderns as well? Or is the “language of postmodernity” the new “given” to which the gospel must adapt?
The last chapter of part one is called “Managers of Change.” According to Clayton, this is what Christian leaders will have to realize—that we are not “preservers of institutional givens, but managers of change.” But surely this is a false dichotomy. The other alternative is, of course, that we are both preservers of institutional givens and managers of change. We not begin to follow Jesus or “do church” in a vacuum. Institutions are not negative simply by virtue of being given to us.
I do not find the idea of being a “manager of change” in order to stay relevant to postmoderns terribly inspiring or appealing. But doing what I can to manage the change that inevitably comes as God’s story unfolds within and through a framework of institutional givens? Well that certainly sounds more appealing…
We are entrusted with the crucial task of presenting the (always relevant) gospel in terms that make understanding and embracing it possible; but we must also remember that we have to become relevant to the reality the gospel addresses and that accommodating and reorienting ourselves to the patterns and structures of life that we have been given is one of the ways that we become who we are intended to be.
A discussion of part two to come shortly.
Over the last week or so I have been making my way through an article from last month’s issue of The Walrus which discusses the imminent demise of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. The article talks about the rising acidity levels of oceans around the world by virtue of increased CO2 emissions and the warmer water temperatures this produces. It predicts that some of our most magnificent ecosystems (like the Great Barrier Reef) are living on borrowed time because of human-induced climate change. In some ways, the article reads like many others: it is a tale of human beings wantonly wreaking havoc with nature and a plea to do something about it.
But the article is somewhat unique as far as the solutions it sets forth. We are used to hearing calls to reduce our CO2 emissions by any and all means in order to combat climate change. This author argues that we are long past the point of these strategies having a meaningful impact. We have already done too much damage. Rather, our focus might need to turn to “geo-engineering”—deliberately manipulating the earth’s climate to counteract the effects of global warming. There are a variety of ways this might be done (many of which I can barely understand, much less imagine!), but the overall goal is to accept the (permanent) damage we have done and do what we can to minimize the calamity in the brave new world we have brought about.
Turner admits, this response sounds somewhat counter intuitive, to put it mildly :
[I]t is predicated on the twisted logic that a reasonable response to evidence that human industry has irrevocably altered the biosphere would be to undertake to alter it in much more intentional and grandiose ways.
Nonetheless we are, quite simply, past the point of no return. Recycling our newspapers, driving hybrids, and using energy-efficient light bulbs, while good ideas, are not going to save us (or the Great Barrier Reef!). More radical surgery is required.
As my head was swimming with strange new terms like “anthropocene epoch,” “geo-engineering,” and “carbon sequestration” some very old words also came to mind:
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
Familiar words, no doubt. Words that have often been used as an excuse to exploit and dominate nature for human needs. Words that have been used to justify irresponsibility and abuse. Words that have been interpreted as placing an improper ontological gap between human beings and the world they live in.
But as I see it, the article cited above shares a deep irony with a good deal of “environmental” (for lack of a better word) discourse: like Genesis 1, it assumes a sharp distinction between “human beings” and “nature” but from within a mostly naturalistic framework. While it would obviously be too strong a claim to say that all those who advocate care for the environment are atheists or agnostics, I think it would be fair to say that a high percentage of environmental warnings in our public discourse are based upon and justified via a methodological (if not ideological) atheism. God is not really part of the picture (we have no need for that hypothesis) and neither are those charged with caring for the world seen as anything resembling divinely appointed image bearers charged with the lofty task of “ruling” (to borrow from Genesis again) over the natural world.
Yet the article, which advocates human beings altering the very atmosphere we live in, assumes a level of “dominion” over nature that would have staggered the biblical writers. Despite the widespread assumption/belief that human beings are simply a part of nature—one more random organism thrown up from mother nature’s clay—articles like this one assume, indeed depend upon a fairly exalted anthropology. They assume that we are not just a part of nature, that we have the ability and obligation to control nature, that we have a duty to protect nature, to preserve its variety, wonder, and beauty.
This is the language of human dominion, not of one species humbly assuming its place among all others. Of course, from a Christian perspective, this is to be expected. A Christian anthropology can accommodate both the obvious differences between human beings and the rest of creation and the imperative to steward creation responsibly. It can accept that we have much in common with our fellow creatures (that we are, in obvious ways, “of the earth”) while at the same time recognizing that our obligations and abilities extend far beyond theirs.
But the same cannot be said about much of our public discourse with respect to the posture we ought to take toward the world we inhabit. Our public narratives have no place for a God to whom we are accountable for our care of the world. But it seems to me, as I read articles like this one and others, that one of the most pressing ethical issues of our time depends upon, even if it does not acknowledge, something like a biblical understanding of human beings and their position in the cosmos. At least in the realm of our public discourse, ours is an ironic dominion indeed.
I realize two cartoons in one week is a bit unusual around here, but this one was just too funny not to share. I promise to return to more substantial themes shortly
On Sunday I preached from Revelation 21:1-6—a passage that I would guess is among the more well-known and well-loved in all of Scripture. It speaks of a new heaven and a new earth where the old order of things has passed away. No more tears, no more death, no more pain… It is a world that seems too good to be true. It is a world that scarcely resembles the reality that Revelation’s first hearers/readers were familiar with. Or that we are familiar with. For as long as it has been around, there has been a disjunction between this text and the lived reality of those who read it, hear it, and hope for what it promises.
This disjunction is, I think, beautifully expressed in a prayer from Walter Brueggemann’s Prayers for a Privileged People that I read this morning. It is called “Dreams and Nightmares”:
Last night as I lay sleeping, I had a dream so fair… I dreamed of the Holy City, well ordered and just. I dreamed of a garden of paradise, well-being all around and a good water supply. I dreamed of disarmament and forgiveness, and caring embrace for all those in need. I dreamed of a coming time when death is no more.”
Last night as I lay sleeping… I had a nightmare of sins unforgiven. I had a nightmare of land mines still exploding and maimed children. I had a nightmare of the poor left unloved, of the homeless left unnoticed, of the dead left ungrieved. I had a nightmare of quarrels and rages and wars great and small.
When I awoke, I found you still to be God, presiding over the day and the night with serene sovereignty, for dark and light are both alike to you.
At the break of day we submit to you our best dreams and our worst nightmares, asking that your healing mercy should override threats, that your goodness will make our nightmares less toxic and our dreams more real.
Thank you for visiting us with newness that overrides what is old and deathly among us. Come among us this day; dream us toward health and peace, we pray in the name of Jesus who exposes our fantasies.
