Choosing your theologians
3 Nov 2005
The Death of Adam, by Marilynne Robinson, buy UK – £7.04, USA – $11.20. Take a look inside.
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Many of us have been rediscovering theology. That theology isn’t static, and it is the task of many christians as their context and culture changes to re-contextualise their theology to that context. Theology isn’t static, defined once and for all.
Whilst some statements and beliefs of orthodoxy about Christ, and God, maybe fairly constant over the last 2,000 years between most denominations, what those beliefs mean and how we explain and communicate them change greatly. Many of us have found that our theologies need re-thinking or that the ones we held were not helpful any more.
And when we do that re-thinking and re-contextualising, we often look back, as I think we should in time, to find other christians, and how they did their theology, in situations similar to ours, or applicable to ours. By doing this we are rediscovering many people that for some of us, our traditions excluded until now, and are finding them life giving.
We are finding out more about the theologies that our tribes/streams/denominations came out of, gaining a deeper appreciation for them. Then we look forward, maybe suggesting and using some new theologies, some of which we will have to lay down, or let others lay down in the future, as they too need to be changed.
Whilst many people move away from the theologies of modernity in some way, we need people to preserve them, so that others in the future can re-discover them, just as we are re-discovering theologies from people who have continued to live out beliefs and practices that the modern church abandoned.
This all brings me to ‘The Death of Adam’ by Marilynne Robinson (I mentioned earlier on my blog a fiction book Called ‘Gilead’ by Marilynne Robinson. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was I think a way for Marilynne to take her academic research, and theology and encapsulate it in a mesmerizing story).
I have finally managed to get hold of a paperback version of one of ‘The Death of Adam” which is filled with her research in the form of short essays. The subtitle for the book is ‘Essays on Modern Thought’. In particular it is a critique of modernity from an unusual perspective, at least for me for several reasons, that I will try to explain.
Now over the past few years of my research I have rediscovered the reformers, in particular, Martin Luther through the writings of Douglas Hall. When I was at seminary/college the reformers seemed to get harmonized and condensed into something bland and uniform. I guess that’s as much to do with time constraints and my lack of really looking deeper as a 19 year old at seminary.
So now I read Luther, and find in his Theologia Crucis, something profound for the issues of power, post-colonialism, post-revivalism, and the nature of spiritual formation in a post-modern context (see my dissertation when it is finished). Yet in that process of discovery I became increasingly cold towards Calvin.
In Calvinism there is the idea of a doctrine of God, where God is intrinsically angry, and deliberately damns people to hell, with that strand seen in the revivalism of Jonathan Edwards (see his famous sermon ‘Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God’, where Edward’s writes ‘The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire;… you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours;…yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment… Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.) I’m not saying Calvin would approve of this application of his theology, but I find it distasteful.
We can see this in the revivalism of much of the modern church, and increasingly in the theology of people reacting conservatively to post-modernity. There also seems to also be a call to preach the Gospel, essentially through the filter of Calvin’s TULIP. As a result I think the focus on a platonic, de-humanising, gospel message, has been something I have found personally hard to stomach, and something I think our emerging culture largely rejects.
I’m sure I misunderstand Calvin very much in that presentation, but I read and hear enough to know some of it is not just a stereotype (as an aside I think Calvinism is going to be used increasingly by many conservative sections of the church reacting against post-modernity).
So back to ‘The Death of Adam’, and low and behold Marlynne Robinson bases most of her essays and research on the idea that the modern church has indeed misunderstood Calvin, and that in fact Calvin is someone we need to re-read to find responses to the questions of post-modernity be they authority, women, darwinism etc that are vital for us today.
I’m sure many Calvinists will dislike her reading of Calvin, but the book has made me think, I need to go back now and read some more Calvin for myself.
Tagged: Books, Church, Key-Posts, Resources, Theology
8 comments
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Comment by dh
5.16 pm on 3 Nov 2005
While I do feel that God hates sin I wouldn’t say (agreeing with you) He is angry except inrelation to rebellion by us as humans (aka OT when people delibrately and intintionally sinned and were judged or Paul’s statement on rebellion and sins).
I liked your phrasiology on the delibrately sends people to hell. You are so right people send themselves to hell by choosing to reject Christ.
I found this in my study today:
“27What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. 28Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” It seems to me this is actually a place. For some post-moderns (not you) to downplay this seems a disservice to what Christ preaches let alone all of the many other passages on the subject in the NT.
I think your post points out we must not be 100% Calvin or 100% Arminian. While it may seem impossible, I feel both Calvin and Arminianism can be combined with no mutual-exclusivity. While I too am pushed somewhat away from Mr. Edwards, I do feel he had other messages of Truth that show the importance of how our Faith or lack of Faith place us in relation to the Kingdom. “Without Faith it is impossible to please God.” “Except a man be Born Again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
Comment by dh
5.21 pm on 3 Nov 2005
P.S. We were studing the death of Adam from the Bible in our study today. It seems the death was a seperation from God Spiritually as well as physical death being that the physically died. God’s perfect will was for man to live foreve eternally with Him and both were seperated at the fall of Adam and Eve necessitating in the OT Faith in sacrifices for redemption and ultimately Faith in Christ as the perfect sacrifice.
Comment by Paul
7.07 pm on 3 Nov 2005
Interesting thoughts Jase – especially about calvin and luther – i like your humble style that there is stuff to go back and re-read from both these guys as well as others…
I also like the preserving comments as well, it makes a lot of sense to think that in 1,000 yrs time folk might look back on mordernity and rediscover and be inspired in future theologies…
For me Luther and Calvin have a painful past – being 2 factions at war in the church where I grew up and a dirty term that as a kid I had no real grasp of other than so and so was an armenian etc…
So I am glad people like you and others are unpacking truth and getting out into the market place to help us live our lives – without turning into a theological royal rumble!
Keep up the ace work!
Comment by John Kilpatrick
7.26 pm on 3 Nov 2005
Jason,
I wonder if you can see all the logic in your steps of discovery here. You begin to have more time for Luther, presumably when you increasingly realize that what is called ‘The Whig View of History’ has viewed Luther through modernist spectacles and thus, rather inevitably, has distorted what he stood for in order to get to what he stands for.
You are beginning to reassess Calvin and once again you are finding that he cannot be constrained by modernity in the way that even non-Calvinist modernists have accepted as definitive.
(Don’t get me wrongly, I think that both Calvin and Luther have some very challenging questions to pose to postmodernity but you were, none of you, going to listen to those questions when you were squeezing them into a modernist mould and opposing that.)
And so we come to Jonathan Edwards and probably the next step in your rehabilitation — sorry, force of habit — on your journey. Disengaging Edwards from the claims of modernity is a process that has been going on full swing now for about half-a-century; since Conrad Cherry’s The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal. I know that embracing statements like the one you quote from ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God.’ will be as difficult as Harry Potter embracing Voldemort but understanding why he said it and why he thought that he could follow it up with the ¶ beginning ‘And now you have an extraordinary opportunity …’ will assist in getting by your prejudice and enable you to appreciate the greatest anti-modernist theologian the world has ever seen.
Comment by dh
8.09 pm on 3 Nov 2005
I guess this is where my interest in post-modern seperates from those who are post-modern. Jason’s post was great on this and John’s interjection was good to a point but to reject outright the modern theologians (R.C. Sproul, Charles Spurgeon, Chuck Swindoll, Adrian Rogers, etc.) type Christian I feel is where I seperate. We don’t have to look at Calvin and Arminian as antithesis’s of each other even within modernity. I see a great combination that doesn’t contradict each other between the two. While the fight between the two has been bad in the past for centuries as being polar, when you see God choosing Us (forknowledge before the foundation of the world) and our freewill to choose Him (If YOU confess with your mouth….) are not contradictary then a greater move between modern and post-modern can arise. When the polar divisions between the two and the prejudice between the two continues rather than picking out the meat and spitting out the bones of the two we will not move forward together. I appreciate Jason looking into Luther and Calvin. We can find a wonderful balance between the two. As individuals they personally were at odds and off but much probably a majority of both were so wonderful. Hey maybe the modern can help the post-modern in this combination. I honestly can say I’m Calviminian. On a humorous note I’m a SouthernBaptiNazaCovenantReformedAssembliesof GodaCostal. (even more humorous, not in any particular order as above). :)
Trackback by chrismc
9.29 pm on 3 Nov 2005
Choosing your theologians
Link: Choosing your theologians. One of my favorite blogs is by Jason in the UK. He posts some interesting thoughts about Calvin and the desire for a new theology. I kind of go back and forth on the need for a new theology. I go forward because I agree…
Comment by Sivin
6.49 am on 4 Nov 2005
“So now I read Luther, and find in his Theologia Crucis, something profound for the issues of power, post-colonialism, post-revivalism, and the nature of spiritual formation in a post-modern context (see my dissertation when it is finished)” … interestingly on this side of the earth, I feel the same way about some of Luther’s relevance for Malaysia and my context.
Comment by Antony Billington
7.36 am on 4 Nov 2005
Hi Jason – You love theology, so it’s only a matter of time before Jonathan Edwards becomes a theological hero to you… All the best – Antony
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