Created: 2021-04-20 Tue 09:00
What is true is more like telling stories and less like philosophical or scientific propositions.
There is something essentially “narrative” about life.
Søren Kierkegaard. Placher treats him as a reaction to Hegel. He gave the world the concept of “Christendom” which is to be contrasted with “Christian faith.”
Another theologian of the mid-20th c., John Macquarrie, described the discipline of theology as “God talk” – i.e. using words to understand God and God’s interaction with humans.
If we can only understand “looking backwards” – as we have done in this course – but can only live going forwards – i.e. without understanding, only trust – then doing Christian theology is either not about real life or not about understanding.
As one of my teachers put it, “If that is true it’s important.”
When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted. Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: “Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer.” And again the miracle would be accomplished.
Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say: “I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.” It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished. Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to G-d: “I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient.” And it was sufficient.
G-d made man because He loves stories.
In a provocative essay on medical ethics, written many years ago, one of my teachers, Stanley Hauerwas, broke with a long history of theological ethics by arguing that we make decisions not on the basis of principles but rather on the basis of the stories we tell of ourselves.
Theology should be done more like stories and less like philosophy or science.
Certain events of the last century, events that occurred with complicity and often with defenders from the Christian faith, call into question the traditional authority of the faith.
Going back to the beginning of our semester, we looked at various “proofs of the existence of God.”
At various points along the way, we have considered “theodicy” questions, questions arising out of conflict between the existence of evil and the profession of belief in an all-powerful and all-loving God.
If it is the case that Christian thought has lumbered under the burden of carrying a Greco-Roman conception of divinity while ignoring the possibility that such a view of the divine may itself be “un-Christian” – well, that might make all the difference.“
There are many in today’s environment who have concluded that it is impossible to defend “classical theism”.
The best-known scene in Elie Wiesel’s book “Night” is apparently that of the execution. Three prisoners, two of them adults and the third a little boy, were hanged at the Buna camp in Auschwitz after being implicated by the Gestapo in the discovery of a weapons cache. The adults died immediately. But the little boy, who did not weigh much, hovered between life and death for more than half an hour.
“Where is God?” someone standing behind Wiesel asked, and Wiesel relates in the book that a voice from inside him replied: “Here, He is. He is hanging here on the gallows.” Haaretz
Clearly there is energy being spent on trying to find “God-talk” that goes beyond the traditions we have inherited.
What we know? How do we know? What if there is only contextual knowledge?
Math, Physics and sciences of all kinds have traditionally been intertwined with Theology. There is considerable energy spent in resisting those interconnections in the modern American context.
What we seem to “know” from a broad perspective is a vast interconnected universe, from the impossibly small to the impossibly large. But the impossible is not just possible, but presumed to be real.
seems to be an illusion. There is a convergence of science and mysticism.
“A particle is not a separate entity but a set of relationships. The world is an interconnected tissue of events, a dynamic unbroken whole. Scientists are no longer observers but participants. And physics and mysticism converge in striking parallels, leading back full circle: A powerful awareness lies dormant in these discoveries of modern physics. An awareness of the hitherto- unsuspected powers of the mind to mold reality, rather than the other way around.”
Created by Dale Hathaway.