World of Love Appendix A: Revelation, Reason and Experience

... where it is the world-itself we are trying to conceive, the whole within which everything else falls -- including not only all facts but also all our symbols -- there is nothing outside our conception against which we can place it to see whether it "corresponds"; just as every thing is within the world, so also everything must be conceived as included within the concept of the world. With this conception, then, criteria of correspondence cannot be applied; only criteria of coherence and pragmatic usefulness to human life are relevant and applicable. If these considerations hold for the concept of the world, how much more must they apply to the concept of God, built up as it is through even more elaborate imaginative constructive moves. -Gordon D. Kaufman ¹

Following my teacher, H. Richard Niebuhr, this theology is confessional. In the tradition of Anselm, it is "belief seeking reason." It begins within the circle of faith, confessing belief in a Creator God who chose not to enforce the divine will but to use omnipotence only to create beings who are intended to be companions, lovers and co-creators through eternity.

I confess that my faith has had many confirming experiences of mature, unselfish love in many persons who also confess that this love comes from God who is love, and that this is where they got it, though through human mediation. I confess that I have been cradled, nurtured, forgiven and taught the most important lessons of life by and within the Christian community of believers.

I confess that I believe there are lives beyond this one, that there is no end to the growth in grace, love and creativity for which we are destined. I confess that I believe God works directly and indirectly within each person and that God will fulfill all personhood eventually and do it without coercion, deception, manipulation, or supernatural act.

I do not claim that all this can be proved in the way most scientists define proof.
In what sense can we say that it is established as true, or disproved?

Gordon D. Kaufman writes:

When we are dealing with metaphysical or theological conceptions, then -- with the "world" or "reality" or "God" -- the ordinary truth-criterion of correspondence simply cannot be directly applied. Instead, appeal must be made to the intuitive or self-evident plausibility of the "root metaphors" on the basis of which the principal metaphysical or theological concepts have been constructed.
This appeal can be buttressed, however, by recourse to two other criteria of truth: coherence, and pragmatic usefulness to human life. ²

These are the criteria I have sought to use in this course. If the root metaphors which underlie the overall system of interrelated meanings presented here are confirmed (become self-evident) through both intuition and reason; if the parts of it hold together and hold experienced reality in unity (coherence); and if its pragmatic results give strength and freedom through a clearer understanding of reality, a greater ability to attack social evil productively and for people to relate to one another lovingly, then perhaps it fulfills Kaufman's criteria.

But are Kaufman's definitions of coherence and pragmatic usefulness the same as mine? He writes:

Although because of the metaphorical and analogical notions that these disciplines necessarily employ, precise definitions and strict deductions are often difficult or impossible to produce, and significant inconsistencies are thus often hard to detect, it remains clear that the princple objective of both metaphysics and theology is to give an ultimate coherence to human life and experience through providing overarching, all-inclusive concepts and images which can bring the fragments and pieces of experience into a meaningful unified conception or pictures. The imaginative constructive activities in which these disciplines are engaged are the widest and most comprehensive attempts of humans to draw all life and experience into a unified whole. ... ³

Here it is necessary to look also at what he means by pragmatic usefulness. Kaufman points out that the world-view which "good" theology and metaphysics bring helps to bring human experience and life to greater self-consciousness, thus making it possible for men and women to take fuller responsibility for their own life and action.

In this respect metaphysics makes its own significant contribution toward fuller human liberation from determination by the powers and forces of that nature from which humanity has gradually emerged. ⁴

In this course I also assume that some styles of life are superior to others in terms of what they produce: greater freedom, love, internal unification, expanded boundaries and fuller content. There are various words to use and ways to express this "higher" way of life and its fruits. However, this is a faith assumption. In the end Kaufman operates within the circle of faith and the Christian community just as I do, and he admits it. His theological assumptions and life experiences do not lead him to a Max Stirner kind of solipsism, a Marxian submergence of individual into communal good, a Freudian pessimistic resignation to irreconcilable conflict between inner needs and societal demands, or a Nietzchean glorification of will to power.

To believe that there are higher values, that they are to be sought, that they involve enhanced freedom, love, mutual self-giving and the like, that they can be found and lived, and finally (the greatest leap of all) that these are characteristic of the inner being of a loving Parent God who is in the process of sharing with us that loving Being -- all of these are leaps of faith and to believe them is a choice which always flies in the face of some contrary evidence.

I'm sure Gordon Kaufman will disagree with some parts of my belief system. However, I think we would agree that after all the evidence and arguments have been presented, after all the questions of coherence and pragmatic usefulness have been examined, in the end we still have to say faith is a choice we make on the basis of the best evidence we have. The faith which I was given as a child has been corrected and confirmed in life as much by my failures as by my successes in following its light. I have also found that as I proceed along the way, falteringly, my assurance of the existence and love of God grows ever stronger. But to believe this and seek to live by it is a choice, and will remain so.

This returns us to the first session. If we could somehow prove God's existence and love, then we would inevitably be less free. We would take on some of the robot characteristics of beings whose thoughts and actions are coerced from outside themselves.

Science and Theology

When I mentioned this writing project to Dr. Michael Commons at a symposium on post-formal stages in developmental psychology at Harvard, he cringed. He complained that when theologians write about developmental psychology stage theory they tend to twist it around so that it becomes religion rather than science. It is distorted by being assimilated.

At least this is the point I understood him to be making. I have tried hard in this course to let the research and the researchers speak for themselves and have made their points as they would have made them. I believe I have kept the lines clean between social science and religious faith.

To use an analogy, I have found developmental stage theory a help somewhat as Aquinas drew upon Aristotle or process theologians use Whitehead's philosophy. Where it has been done correctly, the writer has stated what the philosopher says clearly and fully, drawn from the philosopher's images and concepts to establish hypotheses to test or to illuminate aspects of religious faith, and then made clear where the philosopher had a different faith or point of view.

When this is done then physical and social science and philosophy are not confused with theology. Science is not reduced to theology nor distorted by it. Nor are secular thinkers coopted to give testimony to faith statements they would not themselves make.

The danger on the other side is that theology will be reduced to science or philosophy and lose its own distinctiveness. I believe I have guarded against that, too. Readers will have to make their own judgment on that.

It is also a faith assumption that truth is somehow one, though scientists assume something like it in order to search for a unified field theoretical system in physics. I have assumed that truth is one for the purpose of hypothesizing, and searching for that oneness. No final unity has been found, because our human capacity to experience and collate infinite variety is inadequate to the job. This is in addition to our sinful resistance to seeing painful truths. But, the effort is necessary, is worth it, and we have faith the truth we find will test out to some degree and lead us on to fuller truth.

Thus, the correspondences and mutual support which I find in my system among theologians, mystics, psychologists and others, may to some degree be forced and it may prove in some respects incorrect. But I have a provisional confidence that the system as an integrated set of hypotheses offers a scaffolding more adequate than most, one which people in the future may rebuild in some parts with the increase of knowledge and continue to find useful.

In my mind I compare the paradigms of the developmental stages and the god-self and their integral inter-relationship through the sub-selves within us to Freud's concept of the unconscious. The unconscious has been redefined many times and there is still debate over what it is and does, yet it has been an extremely valuable paradigm in psychology and healing.

The paradigms of the god-self and stage development may be eligible for comparison with this and other rough models in history which have charted new ground but proved subject to revision for greater accuracy later. Michael Green gives such an illustration:

The basic "construct-paradigm" or "artifact" operates as an analogy to induce a "new way of seeing." What is surprising about these paradigms is the fact that they may not even be fully accurate in the light of subsequent developments. An example from the history of science is Copernicus's model of the solar system, which assumed circular planetary orbits. Not until Kepler worked out the mathematics of elliptical orbits did a satisfactory theory of planetary motion become possible. And yet the revolution is rightly called Copernican, for it was the crude and overly simple original model that performed the decisive paradigmatic function by providing an accessible model exemplifying the essential pattern of the planets. ⁶

Naturalism and Supernaturalism

It is necessary to avoid both the extremes of supernaturalism and naturalism. The one implies God's intervention in the world in a way which inhibits our freedom. The other suggests that God set the world going and now is no longer involved personally.

Theologians have struggled mightily to find a clear path between the two. If you give up God's intervention then it appears you render large parts of the Bible incomprehensible and undercut the practice of intercessory prayer.

On the other hand, if you admit God speaks and acts directly to change people and events it makes a mockery of human freedom and of consistency in God's nature and action. An interventionary theology also makes painful the problem of what happens to people who died before Christ or never had a chance to consider faith in him.
I have suggested a solution starting with St. Thomas Aquinas' belief that God does not speak with specific content, not even within peoples' minds. Rather, God reinforces right decisions by feelings of rightness and deconfirms wrong decisions by a sense or intuition of wrongness. God nudges rather than directs, hints rather than speaks.

I differ from Thomas at two points: (l) I believe God has always acted this way, and (2) God's communication in terms of "feeling tone" is only with the god-self within. It is with this self-system, begotten not made in God's image, with which God can resonate and to which S/He can communicate feelings without disrupting free choice.

This is a mode of divine-human co-operation which is neither supernatural intervention nor naturalistic negligence. Call it supra-naturalism.

It also allows us to turn the tables practically on both supernaturalists and naturalists by suggesting that God performs all the miracles S/He can given respect for human freedom. God speaks as directly and clearly in all historical periods and all the times of our lives as possible given the way in which love can be communicated without robotizing the lover.

Brain Function

This brings us to a sensitive point: the relation between theological and biological hypotheses, especially the relevance of brain function to theology.

The distinction of right and left brain function is an hypothesis and the issues are far from settled. Can the functions be located in clearly distinct sections of the brain? Is left brain function really so different from right brain operations? Or do different functions happen simultaneously in many parts of the physical brain as some evidence seems to show? I have ignored this debate and made use of the evident gestalt-perceiving and gestalt-forming functions of the brain as a paradigm and heuristic help in theological hypothesizing. At any rate, the conclusions I draw theologically do not depend on a particular current definition of these phenomena.

It is clear that the brain has the power to form gestalts out of sensory input and to cluster into interpretive meaningful relationships both materials which register consciously and those which don't come clearly into consciousness. Some of these gestalts are more complete and organized systems; others are only fragmentary bondings of a few experiences, existing against a background noise of disconnected and vague impressions. All of these are raw material for intuitions and creative thought. The strongest gestalts are also available operationally to our conscious minds. They function as personality sub-systems. I believe future research will verify these assumptions.

Evidently, the selection of what is remembered, how memories are grouped, and the intensity with which they are retained and influence us are all determined by emotions related to intentionality, such emotions deriving their power to form and to evoke the sub-systems from strongly emotion-laden events and people in the past.

Israel Rosenfield writes of the relationship of emotion and memory:

(Memories) occur only when there is activity in the limbic system. In order to have the sensation of a "memory," an emotional link (limbic activity of some kind) appears to be important for establishing a coherence, an order, to memories. ⁵

The most difficult assertion in this course to accept is that a wholistic self-gestalt, whether we call it the god-self or the core self or the true self, begins its formation in the brain from the earliest days of our lives, and so is a force of some intensity from the very beginning.

I believe this is true. I have found in discussing the idea of the sub-selves with professionals a strange resistance to the idea itself. At the risk of sounding self-serving, I believe that there is a deep-seated and sometimes anxious resistance to believing that we are so fragmented within as this course suggests, in spite of all the evidence in even our everyday experience.

Liberation Theology

I am profoundly in agreement with most of the conclusions of liberation theology. I was arrested in Mississippi in pursuit of justice for black citizens and have spent a couple of years in prison due to anti-nuclear actions. While not a Marxist, I believe that we have indeed been brainwashed into a ruling class mentality and automatically rally to defense of our privileged status as wealthy first world people.

Black theology, feminist theology, third world liberation theology are all thematic systems. They contribute essential perspectives and no theology unbaptized in their fire has a right to claim authenticity in our time.

However, I believe a primary calling of theology is to show how we unite the parts of existence and relate them to the nature and largest purpose of God, in spite of the cynicism in our time with regard to the possibility of developing convincing comprehensive systems of thought.

The weaknesses in some liberation theologies are: (1) a tendency to twist biblical material out of shape to political liberation ends; (2) a tendency to inject a Marxian political and economic definition of class struggle which distorts its broader reality and significance; and (3) in some cases a tendency to justify killing in the name of liberation.

The connections to liberation theology in my own system are:

l. The hypothesis that no one may reach stage 6 and integrate at that level without taking all human beings into one's perspective as equals before God and entitled to the same consideration we give members of our own families. If one is not converted in the guts to this perspective (and not just as an ideology), then one cannot grow further in godlikeness until this barrier is crossed.

2. The priority of sacrificial, non-violent love as the central reality of God's nature. This is a corollary of a stage 6 perspective, as I have argued elsewhere.

3. The stage 7 perspective cannot be entered and one cannot be integrated at that level without overcoming, psychologically and spiritually the power of death and developing the ability to live within eternity and infinity, at least to live without hiding from this expanded perspective. This represents an inner liberation from the anxieties and fears which underlie our hates, prejudices and oppressions.

Total liberation, then, not only from one's own prejudices but also liberation to the courage to give one's life gladly for other people, requires development at the higher stages. This doesn't mean people don't sacrifice their lives at all stages. A stage 3 mother may throw herself into the mouth of a tiger to save her child. People trapped in stages 1 and 2 may throw life away out of nihilistic dispair.

I am not implying either, that tackling and eliminating particular injustices must wait until we all reach the higher stages. That is the same heresy as suggesting that if only all people were converted to Christianity the world would be at peace. We know it is not true.

Liberation theology remains and will remain an essential element in any wholistic theology. Any theology which bases itself on God's inner nature of sacrificial love for all has to make room at the top of its action agendas for defense of the rights to full justice of the suffering people at the bottom of the heap. It cannot trail behind preservation of the church structures, or worship, or evangelism or anything else.

For all the above reasons, I find Ched Myers' book, Binding the Strong Man, A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus (Orbis Books, 1988) embodies to an large degree the kind of liberation theology I believe in. Calling his book a political reading may mislead some. In the sense that all religion is involved in politics it is a political reading. In the sense that any view of God's purposes has positive or negative political implications for every society, it is a political reading. But it does not reduce religion to a this-worldly political struggle. Nor, I believe, does it twist scripture to political ends. Quite the opposite. By seeing Mark's times, purposes and audience with new clarity we feel able through this book to read its message for the first time washed clean of layers and layers of cultural scum. And especially, lifted free from its smothering featherbed of individualistic, quietistic modern interpretations which have served the preservation of unjust systems for generations.

Incidentally and along the way, Myers does a splendid job of putting semiotics, deconstructionism, narratology, structuralism and other literary interpretations in their proper place. It is hard to praise his achievement in this respect too highly.

Ecumenical Theology

What shall we say of Hans Kung's book, Theology for the Third Millennium: An Ecumenical View? Is it possible in our time to produce an ecumenical theology, one which will unite the splinters of Christianity and also other world religions?

Kung recognizes that it is not. This book is not a theology, but articles on how theology should be conducted in order to institute a process of dialectic dialogue among the Christian denominations and with other religions -- in the direction of unifying all of us. This is a unity not based upon compromise or a least common denominator. It has to be based upon objective truth, but a kind of truth which has to be found along the way and through dialogue.

Kung reasons in somewhat the same way I do, that the search for and struggle for whole, healthy, loving people in a just and compassionate society will take us toward a center where we will find truth and God and unity with one another; and that the struggle enable such people and such society is more productive than arid discussions of theology in a conference room.

This assumption, for me, was summed up at the beginning by reference to Teihard du Chardin's concept of the Omega Point. This postulates as an hypothesis that all reality moves toward a unity which does not submerge all the wondrous complexity of individual achievements and social productions, a harmony of fecund complexity.

This is basically an appeal for a stage 5-6 approach to theology as illustrated by Kung's definitions of the task:

Only this sort of theology is a truly ecumenical theology, which has laid aside the still widespread denominational ghetto mentality and can combine the greatest possible toleration toward extra-ecclesiastical and generally religious phenomena, toward the simply human with the task of elaborating what is specifically Christian. ⁷

There is here, of course, an assumption that God is revealed through many channels of human interaction and not just religious people or the churches.

Truth in the Christian faith, then, is to be discovered in the pursuit of the truly human and is not to be found as any dogma which can become fixed in any historical era and certainly not by the mentality which thinks of the faith as something to be defended by an arbitrary hierarchical authority.

God evidently intends us to go about the task of understanding her by actively loving one another and respecting one another. How else does a compassionate, all-forgiving God become revealed in individuals and society? Not by arguments over Arianism and Pelagianism. Such truth is self-confirming. As we become the agape of God, as it controls our lives with its liberating fullness, then we find we need no further proof.

Cointact the author at: vjross22@hotmail.com

1. An Essay on Theological Method, AAR Studies in Religion 11, Scholars Press, Missoula, MT, 1975, 1979, page 75
2. The Theological Imagination, Constructing the Concept of God, The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1981, page 255
3. ibid., page 255
4. ibid., page 256
5. Israel Rosenfield, The Invention of Memory, A New View of the Brain , Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, NY, 1988, pages 6-7
6. Imagining God, op. cit., pages 67-8
7. Hans Kung, Theology for the Third Millennium, An Ecumenical View , Doubleday, New York, 1988, page 166. Translated by Peter Heinegg

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