By Robert Baird
With appreciation for the piece in the previous issue of Christian Ethics Today by Professor Rob Sellers on “The Parliament of the World’s Religions,” I offer a word on behalf of a thin theology.
Most, probably all, readers of this journal have a theology. It may not be systematic, but most readers of Christian Ethics Today have thoughts about the nature of God, how God relates to the world and, specifically, how God relates to human beings. Your theology may be thick and detailed, with precise beliefs about God and God’s relation to creation. It may be thin. God may be the word you use for the mystery which seems to underlie all that is — a mystery which lures you into the future in ways that seem right and good, a mystery which gives you hope that in the end, all pain, suffering and tears will be redeemed, hope that in God’s good time all will turn out well. Or, perhaps your theology is very, very thin indeed. For you, God may be a mystery that elicits silence in the face of it all, especially silence in the face of questions about how divine goodness and power are compatible with the pain and suffering in the world.
At any rate, anyone with a religious bone in his or her body (which surely includes the agnostic who puzzles about it all, and maybe even the atheist who, after good faith struggle, denies it all), has a theology ranging somewhere on a continuum from really, really thick to very, very thin.
Early on, the Christian story got complicated, giving birth to some very thick theology. The Gospel of John says that “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God.” (So, we seem to have two — God and the Word.) But then the gospel adds, “the Word was not just with God, the Word was God.” (So, it turns out that they are not two, but one.) Then Jesus, near the end of his life, says: “When I go I will send the Spirit, the Comforter to you.” (So, now we have three.) In the language of Christian tradition, we have God the father (or mother), God the son (we don’t seem to have the option of “or daughter”), and God the Holy Spirit. And we are on the road to a very thick theology. Indeed, some are so committed to a thick trinitarian theology that they never refer to God (That’s too vague, too inclusive.); they always refer to the Triune God.
In the history of the early church, fights emerged over an increasingly thick trinitarian theology. Hard questions were raised about how God could be three and one. Arguments ensued, battles fought, and councils called to settle the questions, to quiet the arguments, to still the fighting.
In the Fourth Century, the Athanasian Creed tried to settle matters. Here is one translation of a passage from that Creed: “We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost . . . the Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible . . . . They are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible . . . .” The creed concludes: “He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.”1 Now, that is a thick theology.
In 1553, John Calvin and others burned Servetus, a Spanish theologian, at the stake in Geneva because he denied the Trinity. That is thick theology gone mean.
To be sure, there are important and creative efforts to interpret the Trinity that are quite meaningful to some. I acknowledge that. Others, however, for many reasons have difficulty with theological thickness, not the least of which is the awareness that from earliest recorded history, individuals have disagreed about the nature of God. Over time, those disagreements have only been magnified.
Bright, inquiring, and sincere religious believers around the world disagree about the nature of God or ultimate reality; therefore, we have Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and the list goes on.
Bright, inquiring, and sincere Christians disagree about the nature of God; therefore, we have Catholics (Roman and Greek Orthodox) and Protestants; and within Protestantism, we have Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and the list goes on.
Bright, inquiring, and sincere Baptists disagree about the nature of God; therefore, we have Southern Baptists, American Baptists, the Alliance of Baptists, The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Landmark Baptists, Freewill Baptists, Primitive Baptists and the list goes on.
Compounding the epistemological problem is another matter mentioned so often that it may seem tiresome, but its relevance never ceases. One’s religious group is almost certainly determined by family of origin. Born into a Catholic family, one becomes Catholic. Baptists give birth to Baptists, Episcopalians to Episcopalians, and Muslims to Muslims. Not always of course, but almost always. To be raised a Christian or a Jew, a Muslim, a Daoist or a Hindu is to be raised in a community that has already interpreted ultimate reality. This is as basic as the fact that we learn words from our community, words like God, Allah, Dao and Brahman.
Many college students first encounter this challenging thought reading John Stuart Mill’s 19th century essay, "On Liberty," in which he famously (or infamously, depending on your point of view) argues that “it never troubles him [the religious dogmatist] that mere accident has decided which of these numerous . . . [faith positions] is the object of his reliance, and that the same causes which make him a churchman in London would have made him a Buddhist or Confucian in Peking.”2
In his book, God is Not a Christian, Archbishop Desmond Tutu refers to this truth as an overwhelmingly simple one: The contingency of where we were born largely determines the faith to which we belong. “The chances are very great that if you were born in Pakistan you are a Muslim, or a Hindu if you happened to be born in India, or a Shintoist if . . . Japan, and a Christian if . . . born in Italy.”3
Years ago, when my wife and I were in California, we attended Christmas Eve services with our daughter’s family. There was a traditional pageant, with young children playing the roles of Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the angels, and the wise men. Even Jesus was played by a new-born, who finally got overwhelmed by it all and had to be rescued by his mother sitting poised on the front row. Witnessing it, the thought struck me that it was virtually assured that those children would grow up with the Christian story as part of the very fiber of their beings. Then it also occurred to me that on that very day, thousands of little children in India were becoming immersed in the Hindu tradition, learning to interpret reality through such words and concepts as Brahman and Krishna and karma, growing up with the world of the Bhagavad-Gita as a part of the very fiber of their beings, just as we would have had we been raised in that culture. That all of this is true is simply to acknowledge, as philosopher Simon Blackburn notes, that we are embodied creatures.4
But what follows from all of this? What conclusions should be drawn from this sociological or cultural fact? Let me mention two in passing and then, third, make a proposal which takes us back to the piece by Sellers on “The Parliament of the World’s Religions.”
First: One conclusion that does not follow, a point importantly and forcefully made by philosophers Peter van Inwagen5 and Alvin Plantinga6 is that because one’s beliefs are influenced or even determined by the environment in which one is born, one should for that reason reject the truth of the belief. Under such epistemological guidance, most of our beliefs would go by the boards, for we inherit most of them. If such beliefs guide us well, if they seem to get us in touch with and keep us in touch with reality, to reject them on the grounds that they were learned from our environment would be epistemological folly.
But, second, awareness of religious differences that also give birth to loving lives should elicit some level of epistemological humility, some level of awareness of and appreciation for the possibility that religious traditions other than one’s own may offer insight into the nature of ultimate reality. Barbara Brown Taylor’s marvelously titled and insightful book, Holy Envy, published last year is a testimony, as the subtitle of her book puts it, to Finding God in the Faith of Others. Having illustrated this repeatedly throughout the work, she concludes: “The more I learned about the religions of the world, the more I became convinced that they were all pointing to the same sacred mystery beyond all human understanding.”7 John Hick (1922-2012), the philosopher perhaps most associated with a pluralistic understanding of religion, argued that “if it is rational for the Christian to believe in God on the basis of his or her distinctively Christian experience, it must by the same argument be rational for the Muslim . . . for the Hindu and the Buddhist [to hold their beliefs] . . . on the basis of their own distinctive forms of [religious] experience.”8
So, then, third, here is a proposal. It involves affirming and cherishing a thick theology in one’s private devotions, in worship, and in fellowship with one’s own religious community. At the same time, “moving in the direction of a thinner theology”9 can be a rationally and emotionally satisfying way of appreciating the varieties of religious experience and of relating to the broader world of religious communities. Compare, by the way, the insights of perhaps the greatest work ever published in the philosophy and psychology of religion, William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience.10
What would such an approach look like? Here are some intimations.
Fred Craddock (1928-2015), Distinguished Professor of Preaching at Emory University’s Candler Divinity School, told the following story on himself. Craddock read Albert Schweitzer’s Quest for the Historical Jesus; his response was negative. The theology, the Christology, in the book was so weak, so thin, says Craddock, that he was convinced that it could not keep the Church alive. As Craddock put it: “There are not enough [theological] calories in this to last two weeks.”11 He then heard that Schweitzer was going to play the organ in a dedicatory service in a large church in Atlanta, and that he would be available for questions after the service. Craddock says he prepared. His copy of Schweitzer's book was thoroughly marked-up. His questions were well-formulated. He sat on the front row, eager to critique Schweitzer’s weak, thin theology.
Then, Schweitzer appeared. In Craddock’s words: “Schweitzer got up and said, ‘I thank you for your hospitality, for your gracious reception of me; but I have to go back to Lambarene in Africa. My people there are dying. They are sick and they are hungry. If any of you have in you the love of Jesus, come help me.’”12 I looked at my questions, says Craddock and, in that context, they were “stupid silly stuff.”13
In that moment it seems to me, Craddock experienced a thinning of his theology, by which I mean he put aside theological details for the affirmation that the creative source of all that is, is love, desiring that we love too. Thin, as theologies go, many would argue, but powerfully thick in another way: “My people there are dying. They are sick and hungry. If any of you have in you the love of Jesus come help me.”
Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam (1926-2016), committed to “his belief in a single personal God,” rejected the notion of giving up his own religious tradition for some universalistic religion. But he was also committed to religious pluralism because, as Putnam expressed it: “I am . . . convinced that whether one has the right or wrong view on theological questions is far less important to God (or to the Compassionate Buddha, or to what some Buddhists call ‘the other shore,’ or to what Chinese refer to as Heaven) than whether one shows compassion, cheerfulness, and makes a contribution to enriching human spiritual and material life.”14
Sounds right out of the Old Testament book of Micah: “He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk in quiet fellowship with your God.” Micah emphasizes not what one believes, but who one is and what one does.
The same point is made repeatedly by referencing the New Testament passage from Matthew in which the sheep are separated from the goats, not on the basis of beliefs but on the basis of who feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and visits the imprisoned. The distinction made between the sheep and the goats has nothing — nothing — to do with the religious language of either the sheep or the goats. And, by the way, Barbara Taylor reminds us that we miss the point of that passage if we fail to recognize that there is some of the sheep and some of the goat in all of us.15
Putnam concludes that not only are there forms of spirituality other than his own of great value, but that “the world is a better place — and God is better served — . . . because there are a variety of perspectives on the divine.”16
A Christian, a Jew and a Muslim on the road together fell into debate. The Christian tried to persuade the Jew that he had rejected the final revelation of God in Christ. The Jew tried to convince the Muslim that his community was blocking the establishment of the one true faith in Jerusalem. The Muslim tried to convince the Christian that since the seventh century, Christians had mistakenly opposed the fact that there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.
On that same day, another Christian, another Jew and another Muslim fell into conversation. The Jew spoke of his religious life, of the story of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. The Christian testified to his faith in Jesus and of the remarkable lives of Peter and Paul. The Muslim recounted his commitment to Allah and of Mohammed’s fateful journey from Mecca to Medina. They were joined on the way by a Buddhist who spoke of Siddhartha Gautama and of a revelation under a Bo tree. And, in the spirit of the Parliament of the World’s Religions as recounted by Professor Sellers, they appreciated the valuable lives growing out of one another’s poignant stories.
— Robert Baird is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Baylor University
Notes
1Sullivan, James. "The Athanasian Creed." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 14 July 2020 http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02033b.htm
2John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1956), 22-23.
3Desmond Tutu, God is not a Christian: And Other Provocations (New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 2011), 5.
4Simon Blackburn, Truth: A Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 171.
5Peter van Inwagen, “Non Est Hick,” from The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith, ed. Thomas D. Senor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 216-241, see particularly 238.
6Alvin Plantinga, "Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism," from The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith, ed. Thomas D. Senor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 191-215, see particularly 211-212. Reprinted as chapter 10 of Philip Quinn and Kevin Meeker, Eds. The Philosophical challenge of Religious Diversity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 172-192.
7Barbara Brown Taylor, Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others (New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 2019), 189.
8John Hick, “In Defense of Religious Pluralism,” Problems of Religious Pluralism (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1985), 103.
9Here I am indebted to the insights of philosopher Philip Quinn in “Towards Thinner Theologies: Hick and Alston on Religious Diversity,” International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 38, No. 1/3 (Dec. 1995), pp. 145-164, see conclusion on p. 163. Reprinted as chapter 14 of Philip Quinn and Kevin Meeker, Eds. The Philosophical challenge of Religious Diversity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 226-243.
10William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, (New York: Random House, 1929, initial copy right 1902).
11Fred. B. Craddock, “What We Do Not Know,” Journal for Preachers XXII (1998), 35.
2Ibid. 36.
3Ibid.14Hilary Putnam, “From Darkness to Light? Two Reconsiderations of the Concept of Idolatry,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin 29 (2000), 19.15Taylor, Holy Envy, 215-216.
16Putnam, “From Darkness to Light? Two Reconsiderations of the Concept of Idolatry,” 19.
