Most people have no idea what I'm talking about when I tell them that I'm studying Theology. I don't really expect them to, but I try to quickly offer an explanation so I can exonerate myself. No, really, I don't spend my afternoons in an ivory tower. And my school essays might really be interesting to a normal person if she reads them.
One fairly simple way of looking at theology is to think of it as a long, careful look at God. To attempt to spend years, and ultimately a life, on such a look, is a humbling, terrifying, and show-stopping occupation. We are all, in fact, called to the task of heavenly exploration, but those who "study theology" are expected to use telescopes and sometimes stay up nights. An extra attention to detail is required.
The details we are after, however, are not the sort you store in Vatican vaults or on microfiche slides. God is not like a calculus textbook - every facet of God is vital to every life. None of the God-truths are so dry that they can be safely left for the experts. A forgotten aspect of God's personality might provoke years of personal misery. Or it could (and does, all the time) cause civil wars, murder, and duplicity. People often fail to understand that theology is a discipline of almost mesmeric practicality.
Theology rightly infuses life with God. Theology connects crucial dots. Makes necessary pronouncements. Theology is earthy, because God is concerned with Earth. It deals with life's obvious questions and the not so obvious answers. I love the rugged functionality of such a pastime.
In my current setting, theology is an attempt to study God in the hopes that communications may improve between the two of us. At this point in the spiritual journey (which may be a very elementary point), this means that I am admiring God's personality and ways so I can know him better, and at the same time avoid stupid mistakes. As a result, I will also be expected to be of greater usefulness to others in explaining things about God.
That's why, every once in awhile, I feel the need to take a "theological principle," something that might seem stuffy and academic to those on the outside, and take a snapshot to capture its attractiveness. The "Feuerbachian Critique" is one such instance of beautiful efficiency. The name is misleading. When you actually check, the Feuerbachian Critique is very good looking.
I'm not sure who Feuerbach was, and I'm deliberately failing to go check my notes and find out. For the purposes of this post, you don't really need to know. Feuerbach's mode of criticism is enough to remove any awkwardness created by his name. The beauty of the FC becomes evident when it is necessary to debunk ridiculous ideas about God.
Say I began talking about God as if he gave preferential treatment to people with brown hair and blue eyes. As well, God's favorite basketball team was the Kansas Jayhawks, and he drank large amounts of coffee every morning. On top of this, God was happy to turn the deaf ear to occasional instances of withering sarcasm. Suppose I said all this, and drew up a persuasive essay explaining very brilliantly exactly why God should be this way, and not another. Rather than being intimidated or impressed, you would just look at me and grin widely. Then you would say, "HAH, your system is barred by the Feuerbachian Critique. You're just projecting your own ideas of goodness to form what you think should pass for a God! HA HA." And I would look down, slightly embarrassed, and realize that all my prognosticating had actually been very silly.
The FC is a useful consolidation of the biblical truth that if we can possibly come up with a way to make God more like us, we will do it. We have these ideas of how God should be, and we want him to fall in line. Several books in the Old Testament wryly depict people who ended up worshipping rocks and farm animals rather than acknowledging that God WAS and that he WAS DIFFERENT. Ultimately, we had better discover the revealed truth about the universe, and mold ourselves to it. Hypothetically speaking, if God is knocking us around like billiard balls, we had better adjust accordingly.
We'd just rather not. And that's where the Feuerbachian Critique is useful - a self-interrogative tool to make sure we don't slip into the oldest folly in the world: idolatry. If we can manage to keep from carving a little god in our own image, we will be that much nearer to the real God, and that much further down the road in the spiritual journey. That's the beauty of theology.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Beauty of Theology - The Feuerbachian Critique
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9 comments:
If we can manage to keep from carving a little god in our own image, we will be that much nearer to the real God, and that much further down the road in the spiritual journey. That's the beauty of theology.
Good stuff. Feuerbach's name is so fun to say. I read an interesting and brief critique of him some time ago (The Moderns)
Feuerbach in a nut shell:
Theology = anthropology.
or (to put it another way)
demythologized Hegel.
Ah, where would we be without Hegel.
Intriguing. I'd never heard of Feuerbach before, but from what you've said in your post, I'd guess that his critique was probably quite right.
I do disagree just slightly with one of your statements, though. You acknowledged that people have all sorts of ideas of how God should be, and we "want him to fall in line." But then you argued that we need to mold ourselves to the truth rather than what we think should be true. You said, "Hypothetically speaking, if God is knocking us around like billiard balls, we had better adjust accordingly."
This is partly true, of course. But I also think there is a sense in which it is legitimate to have ideas of how God should be, and then expect him to act accordingly. God tells us, for example, that he is righteous, loving, and just. It seems, then, that we ought to be able to hold God to that standard and expect him to truly be righteous, loving, and just.
On this basis, I strongly disagree with the suggestion that since God is God, we don't have any say in how he operates. I don't agree with the idea that if he chooses to dish out some hard knocks, we just need to adjust and deal with it.
On the contrary, since God has made claims about himself, he has, in a way, set himself up for accountability. In that sense, I think there is some justification for expecting God to act a certain way. And there is a sense in which it is appropriate to object if it seems he is not consistent with his own claims.
Not that I'm suggesting God IS inconsistent with his own claims. Far from it. But there are sure times when it seems that way. And when we run across some difficulty that seems to indicate that God is not loving, or just, or righteous, I don't think it's right to sweep it under the table and say "well, he's sovereign; that's his right." If God actually were "knocking us around like billiard balls," I would think us quite justified in objecting, rather than just adjusting to meet his sovereign whims.
Sorry, I realize this is a bit of a tangent, since I suspect Feuerbach was addressing a slightly different issue. But at least you know someone is seriously engaging your posts. ;-)
J, I think we should be very thankful that what God tells us about himself often does correspond with the way we want "a god" to be (but not always). I'd argue that God's goodness far exceeds any preconceived ideas we might have about him.
Our concepts of "goodness" appear puny and malnourished when compared with real mercy and love, as Christ displays them. However, we can also have a hard time understanding God's goodness at times.
Children can have a hard time understanding their parents' good intentions, and God is far more than an elevated parent. Our limited understanding, I think, has a lot to do with our perspective on this life as bittersweet.
To deal with your point; if God tells us, as he does in the Bible, that he will intervene on behalf of the one who loves him, then we are justified in expecting him to do this very thing. But in this case, it's God's statement about himself that we are banking on.
However, God's identity as a loving, just, deity, has little to do (causally) with my notion that he should be this way. He was what he was before I started thinking about him. That's why believing that God should provide free heaven for all, or free jelly donuts for all, is an instance where the Feuerbachian Critique would apply.
But because God is self-described as merciful and just, we have been given the right to think about him that way. That is the way he is.
Interesting.
I agree with your first four paragraphs without any reservations. About your last two paragraphs, though, I guess my next question would be as follows: Is there a certain way that a God/god SHOULD be? Or does he get to make up whatever rules he wants to as he goes along?
I guess this question reminds me of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which deals significantly with the responsibilities a creator has to his creation. It sounds to me like you might say a creator doesn't actually have any responsibilities, per se, to his creation. But I would disagree, and say that a creator DOES have responsibilities to his creation. Even if that creator happens to be God.
I know I'm being kind of paradoxical, here, and I actually do agree with your response. Just can't help posing these questions. :-)
Is there a certain way that a God/god SHOULD be? Or does he get to make up whatever rules he wants to as he goes along?
I'm afraid that saying "THIS" is the way a god should be leads to all kinds of problems. The most obvious one being that if I'm qualified to make pronouncements about God's character, I'm placing myself in a position above him. A position where I can casually lean down and give him helpful pointers on how he should relate to us humans to improve his poll results.
As C.S. Lewis says, "We have to take reality as it comes to us. There is no use jabbering about what it ought to be like or what we should have expected it to be like."
Reality has that quality of invincibility. We must adjust to it. And God is ultimate reality.
But I also think that it would be a mistake to suggest that God is administering his creation on the fly. God answers to no one...but he acts with perfect consistency within the bounds of his own character.
So then... there is something innately ludicrous about the clay lecturing the potter. And there is something innately amazing about a God who allows us to influence him by making appeals that correlate to his unchanging nature.
Thanks for posing the questions, J. I think they're essential ones.
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