I have been enjoying Roger Olson’s The Journey of Modern Theology for the last few weeks. It has taken many, many hours so far and I am still 130 pages from the end. One thing that has struck me is how prominent the thought and influence of Hegel has been throughout the twentieth-century. At several points Olson refers to one or another theologian who has been influenced by, or sought to exorcise, Hegel’s “ghost.”
I have been accustomed to thinking of modern theology as deriving more from Schleiermacher and Ritschl, either accepting and extending their thought and approach, or alternatively, reacting against it. Olson’s account of the “journey” which is modern theology, suggests that twentieth-century theology owes much more to Hegel than I had previously acknowledged. In his discussion of Hans Küng, for example, Olson notes Küng’s debt to Hegel with respect to the doctrine of God (581-582):
In spite of large areas of disagreement with Hegel, who had also taught at Tübingen, Küng is clearly dazzled by the German philosopher’s overall vision of the dialectical unity of God and the world. …
In Hegel, God and the world—or God and humanity—are not “rolled into one.” Nevertheless, they are united in intrinsic, reciprocal unity-in-differentiation, so that Hegel’s God “is rarely described as a living, active person in an I-Thou relationship, but rather as a creatively present universal life and Spirit” (Küng, Theology for the Third Millennium, 133). …
At the same time, Küng found much to embrace in Hegel’s concept of God and God’s relationship to the world. In contrast to the all too static and otherworldly God of traditional theism, Hegel’s God is living, dynamic and capable of suffering, and it includes its antithesis in itself, rather than standing aloof from the world’s history.
The historicisation of the divine being, the divine immanence and divine pathos: these are all the outgrowth of Hegel’s thought. Schleiermacher’s feeling of absolute dependence is a religious a priori which accounts for the shift in theological method which occurred in the nineteenth century, but Schleiermacher’s God was still utterly transcendent. True, it is a transcendence coupled with immanence: God is the “infinite, all-determining, supra-personal power immanent in everything” (144), but Hegel’s account of God deepened divine immanence, tying God necessarily to the historical process. God became dependent on the world for the realisation of his own being. In the twentieth-century, Barth developed the idea of a history in God, admittedly in very different directions to Hegel. Tillich, process thought, Moltmann and Pannenberg all echo Hegel in some aspect of their work.
Olson’s image of Hegel as a “ghost” is provocative, creative and stimulating—and probably quite true. It seems that we will be unable to understand twentieth-century theology without some understanding of Hegel.
Is that true of modern cultural sensibilities as a whole? Earlier this month our education minister, Christopher Pyne, walked away from the utilitarian views about postgraduate research he expressed while in opposition. Among his characterisations of “ridiculous” research projects was Hegelian philosophy. If Hegel’s ghost is as prominent in modern thought and culture as it has been in theology, there is nothing ridiculous in understanding him, even in cultural and secular contexts.
I looked forward to reading this for quite some time, having very much appreciated Rowling’s Harry Potter series. The novel begins with the event which sets the whole story in motion. A man dies, and so must be replaced on the parish council of the little English village of Pagford. As the story proceeds, however, it is apparent that the village is riven with strife, power-struggles, competing moral visions, and disunity. The blurbs on the back cover refer to it as “a wonderful novel,” a “brilliant novel,” and a “great novel.” Beauty, I guess, is in the eye of the beholder.
If, as another blurb suggests, it is “a stunning … evocation of British society today,” and “a state-of-England novel driven by tenderness and fury,” I can understand the accolades. Still, I don’t know that I enjoyed it. But perhaps this was not a novel to be “enjoyed.” I found the novel somewhat depressing, being what I call a “gritty” story, an unvarnished and at times brutal portrayal of life in the small community. Rowling’s characters are coarse, nihilistic and deeply flawed; life, as the saying goes, is hard, brutish and short.
“Driven by tenderness and fury…” Perhaps the novel should be read as a novel of protest, a cry against the moral degradation afflicting western societies (not simply Britain). Rowling certainly attacks the “authentic” life, where “authenticity” is understood in self-centred and nihilistic terms. She is merciless in her attack on middle class moralism. Is Rowling furious? Or is she simply having fun, deriding all the various groups that make up the community? I am not entirely sure, and Rowling is not about to preach. She does, however, make us mourn the tragic vacuity and waste of young life. She hints that the character of the dead man points to a better way.
I probably need to read it again to get a better sense of what she is doing.
What did you make of it?
Penelope Seidler by Fiona Lowry, winner 2014 Archibald Prize
I was in Sydney recently and took the opportunity to visit the Art Gallery of NSW to view the portraits submitted for this year’s Archibald Prize. Now I am not an artist in any sense of the word, and could only stand amazed at so many of the paintings, admiring the skill and composition of the artists. I was glad that there were volunteer tour guides explaining and giving story about each of the paintings and sometimes, of the techniques involved. I enjoyed the experience so much, I might make it an annual pilgrimage!
The winning painting, by Fiona Lowry, actually shone, and was beautiful to look at. Lowry uses an airbrush technique to produce her work – at least the couple I saw – and the result was luminous. She had asked her subject, Penelope Seidler, to visit a place of particular memory for her. They went to the property that she and her husband had once owned. At some point while they walked the grounds of the old homestead, Seidler had turned and looked up at the old house. Lowry has captured her at that moment, and this was the result.
Morpheus, by Andrew Mezei
I also loved the painting Morpheus by Andrew Mezei, and perhaps if I were the judge, this one may have won. It was much smaller than Lowry’s work, and almost renaissance in its style, with mythological and symbolic elements enhancing the subject – Professor Kate Leslie, an anaesthetist and leading researcher into awareness and dreaming experienced by patients under general anaesthesia. The fish (representing the dreams), the poppies (opiates and sedation), the finger stirring the water and creating the ripples, the water itself, and the pebbled bed: a magnificent painting, in my humble and unschooled opinion! But, having said that, Lowry’s portrait of Seidler was also magnificent and a worthy winner.
All the portraits can be seen here, and other entries I found captivating included those by:
a) Jandamarra Cadd (Archie Roach) – this painting communicated massive dignity;
b) Anh Do (his father) – Do’s father was a baker and the painting looked like it had been done with a cake-icing knife!
c) Vincent Fantauzzo (himself, as his son!?) – a large painting; the eyes are amazing;
d) Tim Maguire (Cate Blanchett) – technique: the second frame adds blue;
e) Mirra Whale (Tom Uren) – She captures something very human in this portrait;
f) Mariola Smarzak (Wendy) – Not sure why I liked this one so much; an intense realism?
Picture by early British Baptist missionary Alice Seeley Harris, who used her photos to expose abuses in the colonies. Her work helped end the bloody rule of King Leopold in the Belgium Congo in 1908. Picture from CT.
In their January/February 2014 issue, Christianity Today reported the research findings of Robert D. Woodberry in an article entitled “The World the Missionaries Made.” Woodberry’s findings suggest that Protestant conversional missionaries who operated independently of colonial powers laid the foundations for the development of healthy societies and democracy in many parts of the developing world. These findings are counter to common stereotypes of missionaries as culturally imperialist and destructive. He also notes that this was a largely unintended consequence of their work, a sign of God’s greater purposes being worked out through devoted but imperfect people.
Last night I was MC at an event in Perth in which Hugh Ross, founder and president of Reasons to Believe, and Carl Wieland, Managing Director of Creation Ministries International, engaged for the first time ever in a public forum. The event was billed “A Gracious Dialogue” rather than a debate and it retained a gracious character throughout – for which I am grateful!
There was a good turnout – almost 400 people, which is quite outstanding for Perth. The audience Q&A was handled by SMS, and I would do it again like that in a heartbeat: around fifty questions were received and scrutineers sifted them, choosing the most relevant and representative half-dozen. This allowed the best questions to be sourced, while avoiding any grandstanding, preaching or rancor. Given the topic and the heartfelt passion and the division it stimulates, this was a major achievement on the part of the organisers.
So what did I think?
1. Why did I get myself into this position?
Before the event I was somewhat nervous that it might be less than “gracious,” or that some members of the audience might become inappropriately militant. Happily, that was not the case. Further, and perhaps more to the point, I am neither a scientist nor the son of a scientist. Would I have anything constructive to say? Finally, I have a good friend who can’t believe that I would even give airtime to what he considers one of the more disreputable pursuits of conservative evangelicalism! In his view, giving oxygen to this discussion simply allows the worst aspects of fundamentalist evangelicalism to continue and even thrive.
2. This is an intra-mural discussion that probably has little interest or traction in wider Christian circles, not to mention those outside of Christian faith. It may even appear as incomprehensible to those outside the faith.
Carl Wieland
3. At base the discussion is a matter of hermeneutics, and so I was interested to see how marginal a role hermeneutical discussion played in the overall dialogue. Both speakers have an explicit commitment to biblical authority and want to find not only that the Bible is not antithetical to the findings of science, but positively corroborates the findings of science. They vigorously advocate their position, but do so differently, in accordance with their hermeneutical presuppositions.
Carl Wieland claimed that his position was based simply on the plain meaning of the text, and proceeds to read the science through the lens of this commitment. For Wieland, the biblical text is primary, and his group looks for means to interpret the science in accordance with this a priori conviction. A central feature of this approach is a commitment to a literal global flood, the literal interpretation of the days of creation in Genesis 1 as 24-hour periods, a literal reading of the Genesis genealogies, and many other passages, including Old Testament poetic passages.
Hugh Ross was more aware of the hermeneutical issues stating that both science and theology are interpretations of nature and Scripture respectively, and acknowledges the possibility of faulty interpretation, especially when conflict arises between the findings in the two fields. Although his appeal to Scripture also includes literal interpretation, even of poetic and proverbial passages, he is prepared to apply metaphorical interpretation when it suits his case (e.g. the word ‘day’ in Genesis 1).
4. Still on hermeneutics, the question must be asked concerning the legitimacy of treating Genesis, or indeed any other biblical text, as a proof-text for a scientific perspective. That this question was not even asked, let alone addressed, is indicative of a troubling oversight. It is anachronistic to read modern scientific theories back into Genesis, or to expect Genesis to speak in a scientific voice to our place in history.
Faithful reading of the biblical text is attentive to its original context, vision and purpose. It is far more likely that a faithful reading of Genesis 1-11 will see it as a theological polemic against the cosmogonies which confronted ancient Israel in their cultural environment. It adopts the form of other ancient creation myths, but communicates a very different vision of God, humanity and God’s relation to the world. Its purpose is theological rather than historical or scientific. The question of genre is inescapable here, and reading it as a modern scientific or historical treatise is to mistreat the Scripture. Our understanding of the plain sense of Scripture is culturally conditioned and may, in fact, impose an alien sense onto what the message of the text actually was and is.
5. More hermeneutics: Hugh Ross used the common analogy of ‘God’s two books’ to identify the knowledge which may be gained from nature and Scripture. Why should we expect the ‘two books’ to say the same thing? Why should we expect the Bible to be the full and perhaps only legitimate source of true knowledge? May we allow science to explore the what and how of creation, while allowing Scripture to provide why, that is, the overarching narrative and teleology?
6. Finally, a comment on each presenter’s approach to the topic. Carl Wieland gave an evident primacy and authority to the Scripture and would only accept ‘science’ that conforms to his interpretation of Scripture. At the heart of his argument is the problem of death: an old earth must reckon with the reality of death prior to the sin of humanity. Hugh Ross approaches the topic from the other side, identifying what he considers certain scientific constants, and seeking to show that they are not incompatible with Scripture, and may indeed be found in scriptural imagery.
To Conclude…
In the end, Wieland is forced to reinterpret science to make it fit with his interpretation of Scripture, and Ross is forced to reinterpret Scripture to allow it to fit with the findings of science. In the end, Wieland’s ‘science’ is less than scientific,and must resort to all kinds of pietistic suppositions about what God could have done or might have done. Ross’ interpretations of Scripture, however, are not illegitimate even though his hermeneutics might be further developed. It appears to me, then, that of the two options, Ross has the better approach and argument.
In some respects, Wieland is more consistent in the application of his literal hermeneutic. I get the sense that this is the ground of his appeal with ‘Bible-believing’ congregations. His rhetorical approach is thick with appeal to Scripture verses and references to ‘faithful interpretation’ and ‘the clear meaning of the text’ etc, and thus trades on concepts of biblical authority which resonate so deeply with Evangelicals, especially when they have not developed models for understanding this authority. Fortunately, however, there are other options available to evangelical believers; options which respect the inspiration and authority of Scripture, but which operate with a different understanding of what inspiration entails and how that authority functions.
The heroes of my adolescence were in town and on the news all last week. I was introduced to the Stones when I was about eight or nine years old and my elder brother came home with “Top of the Pops 1969.” Tracks I remember include the Beatles Ob-La-Di, CCR Green River, Elvis In the Ghetto, Thunderclap Newman Something in the Air, Peter Sarstedt Where Do You Go To My Lovely? and The Archies Sugar, Sugar. My favourite track was probably Elvis in those days, but I was intrigued by the cowbell at the start of Honky Tonk Women. Soon after my brother bought High Tide and Green Grass and I was hooked—on the music, not the grass—I always wondered, in those days, what on earth the title meant. Nevertheless, Little Red Rooster, Satisfaction, Get Off of My Cloud, As Tears Go By, Paint it Black…somehow the music worked its way into my soul. As did the band.
This week, of course, has been tragic for them, for Mick Jagger particularly. The death of his long time partner L’Wren Scott has rocked his world, not in the usual sense. I have read a fair bit of the coverage and came across a quote which led me to an old New York TimesMagazine article. Speaking, at that time, about his relationship with L’Wren, Mick said, “I don’t really subscribe to a completely normal view of what relationships should be,” he says. “I have a bit more of a bohemian view.”[1] We probably all know what he means.
But I was interested. Recently, in our Christian Worldview class, we watched a short segment on early English Bohemians from Alain De Botton’s Status Anxiety.[2] He toured Charleston, the home of the “Bloomsbury Group” in the 1920 and 30s who experimented with new forms of lifestyle. It was the home of author and artist Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf. De Botton describes Bohemia as “a way of looking at the world; Bohemia is not a place, it is a state of mind. And what that state of mind boils down to is a sense of independence and freedom, a commitment to live by your own values.” He suggests that it was a “secular replacement for Christianity in a time when Christianity was waning.” It provided a spiritual rather than material way of evaluating ourselves.
De Botton’s explanation is both helpful and unhelpful. He is helpful when describing the Bohemian state of mind, and correct in identifying it as “secular.” He is less than helpful in describing Bohemia as “spiritual.” He uses the term in contrast to material or external modes of thought, and thereby emphasises the internal motivations and disposition of those who practice a Bohemian lifestyle. We should note that this kind of interiority has nothing to do with biblical forms of spirituality. When Paul speaks of those who are “spiritual” (e.g. 1 Corinthians 2:15), he invariably means those whose lives are under the influence and direction of the Holy Spirit. This, of course, is utterly distinct from a self-generated sense of independence and freedom, or a commitment to live by one’s own values.
De Botton interviewed Vanessa Bell’s granddaughter, Virginia Nicholson, who said that the Bloomsbury Group “believed in truth, true living and true loving. They rejected the bourgeois values of the age, and everything the bourgeoisie stood for. … Experimentation was of the essence here. It was about breaking the rules and giving themselves a sense of validation by doing that.” She suggested we should be grateful for the way in which her forebears broke through stultifying traditions so that we enjoy the kinds of social freedoms we take for granted today. “In a curious way,” she said, “We are all bohemians now.”
What do you think: Are we all Bohemians now?
In many ways Virginia Nicholson is right: we are all bohemians now, those of us, at least, who live in western liberal democracies. Perhaps not to the extent of the Bloomsbury Group or Mick Jagger, but bohemian nonetheless. Bohemian values have gone mainstream, so that our culture too, believes in truth, true living and true loving, so long as this is understood as being true to oneself. The sexual and interpersonal experimentation that lay close to the centre of the Bloomsbury experiment is widespread and accepted today, encouraged as a means of personal fulfilment and discovery. The self has become the centre of value.
Sisters Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell
Perhaps Nicholson’s most telling phrase is “giving themselves a sense of validation.” Bohemia was indeed a secular replacement for Christianity, though not in the way De Botton thinks. At the heart of Christian faith is justification, freely offered on the basis of the saving death of Jesus. This is divine validation given by God to those who turn to God through Jesus Christ in humble and repentant faith. To be justified is to be forgiven, accepted by and restored to God, and granted a new status before God and all creation. Justification addresses the deepest and most fundamental of human needs: right relationship with God, and then consequently, with self and with others. That Bohemians would seek to validate themselves is indicative of the depth of this sense of need in the human psyche.
The bourgeoisie and the Bohemians both sought validation, the bourgeoisie through their respectability, the Bohemians through their defiance of respectability. In both cases their sense of validation was self-grounded and culturally supported. In many ways their choice of life was a variation on the same theme: the all-too-human attempt to justify ourselves and so to free ourselves from God.
Christians too, can fall into this trap, substituting some kind of self-validation for the validation that comes only from God. They might align with the bourgeoisie and seek their validation in respectability, or perhaps they reject the values of the bourgeois culture and practice a form of life they hope will bring the divine tick of approval. Both approaches will ultimately fail; our only hope of genuine freedom and authenticity is seek our justification in Christ alone.
Yet whatever gain I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. (Philippians 3:7-9)
[2] Alain De Botton, Status Anxiety, ABC DVD 2004. The segment begins at 14:32 in episode 3. Start earlier if you want to watch his interviews at a nudist colony. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
I have been enjoying Roger Olson’s The Journey of Modern Theology for the last few weeks. It has taken many, many hours so far and I am still 130 pages from the end. One thing that has struck me is how prominent the thought and influence of Hegel has been throughout the twentieth-century. At several points Olson refers to one or another theologian who has been influenced by, or sought to exorcise, Hegel’s “ghost.”
