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  • The Involvement of God

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    by Herbert McCabe

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    by Herbert McCabe

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    The Involvement of God

    Загружено:

    akimel
    by Herbert McCabe

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    crag eckGars 6b (No. 985) : The volvement of God tl Herbert McCabe OP ~ A paper given to the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain at Leeds in September 1985 {have calle this paper “The involvement of God” because I want to takepart in a discussion about such questions as whether God suffers with the sufferings of his creatures, in order to ask how far God ie involved in his world. I shall firs try to defend what I take tobe the lasial doctrine of God derived from Augustine and Aquinas: that it isnot in the nature of God tobe involved inthe suffering ofthe world 88 spectator, sympathiser or vitim, Dut that iti in God's nature ‘nonetheless fo be involved with his creatures more intimately than any ‘creature could be involved with aay other. Secondly I shall argue that the Christology of Chalcedon does make sense ofthe notion that God suffers and indeed was tortured to death; indeed, i arg part it jus this nodion. Thirdly, and abit more tentatively I shall suggest that sacramental interpretation of Chaleedonian chrstlogy yields the ‘whole of the doctrine of the Tenty ‘The subject of God's sufering iso popula amongst theologians today that Tam quite incapable of even beginning to give a survey of| ‘ent literature—this is partly because T haven't read enough and partly because T don't want to misrepresent authors by isolated ‘Quotation. I shal quote very litle; Tam concerned with certain ides, how they hang together and how they fall apart. There is, of course, today strong and respectable tendency to criticise what is taken to be the traditional notion of God, extentally fn the grounds that it fall to take the measure of the biblical revelation of God, and fails because it is blinkered by what are ‘ought of as ‘static’ Grek philosophical categories of thought. The ‘God of metaphysis isa Greek intrusion on Hebrew revelation, iti claimed, This snot, of course, a modern idea—it was very familiar to [Luther—but it has been given, I think, a new lease of Life by the oy ‘revival of proces theology and especially by the arival of liberation theology, (Don't get me wrong here, Incidentally. The praxis of liberation theology, that unity of theory and practice aking place in bese communis and elsewhere, especially in Latin Ameria, seems to me dearly the Most important thing going on anywhere in the ‘crstian movement today--much foo important to get entangled in ‘an incoherent theology of God.) Tm apite ofall my go0d intentions {shall begin with & quotation, from Moltmann, Hes speaking of Aquinas's Five Way “The cosmological proof of God was supposed by Thomas o answer the question adrumt Deus, but he didnot really Drove the existence of God: what he proved was the nature Df the divin .. Aquinas answered the question “What is the nature of the divine? but not the question “Who is oar “This emark will seem very peculiar to those of us who remember thatthe next sentence but one afer the Five Ways begins: ‘But because concerning God we cannot know what he is but only what he Brot. sere non poscumus quid sit. Wt seems improbable that “Aquinas had 0 quickly forgotten what he ad just been doing or that fe misinterpreted himself oo radially. Readers of Aquinas, however, including some of those who se themselves as his disciples, have the ‘tmosteffculty in aking him seriously when be sys that we simply Know nothing of the nature of God. And this, I think, is where the rmisunderstandings ofthe tradition begin. if I'may very briefly summarise what I have said so often elsewhere: Aquinas's Five Ways, as Tread them, are sketches fo five SSruments to show that a certain kind of question about out world land ourselves is valid: ‘Why the world, instead of nothing at all. ‘This is a question, in Aquinas's jargon, about theese of things, thet being over against nothing, not Just their being over agnnst some ‘Sterative or over against potentiality. Aquinas wishes 10 say two ‘hings: (1) tht ere we havea valid question, and (2) that we do not know how 10 answer ity or (1) God exists and (2) God is an incomprehensible mystery. ‘Of courte, there are plenty of philosophical reasons for thinking that the question i not a valid one, not one we could possible tsk, —that we may sy the words but, when we do, we ae nt asking a ‘eal question. Itis by no means obvious thatthe question is valid, and itis precisely the point ofthe Five Ways try to establish chat ta ‘ald question for itis one which for one reason or another, Weare impelled to ark. Whether any ofthese argument, or any others, are ouvincing is not my present concern; I merely want t0 show what ‘Rauines thought he was doing, He thought he was valiating a ‘pesca Juaeo-Crian atv (which as sine become a ute ' ‘common general human activity) of asking in some form: “What does ial mean? or ‘Why anything instead of nothing?” And he thought be was validating the questioning even though or perhaps because) he provides no answer. We do not and cannot in tis life know the fnswer but we label it “God’—et hoe omnes dicunt Deu "Tosay that we havea valid question (one with an answer) isto say ‘hat God exists; for what we mean by ‘God is just whatever answers {he question. Apart from knowing this, says Aquinas mos insistently, al we can do point, as systematically as we can, several kinds oF ‘categories of things that the answer could not be. For one thing, ‘whatever would answer our question could not itself be subject tothe ‘question—otherwise we are left as we were, with the same question sill to answer. Whatever we mean by “God cannot be whatever itis that makes us ask the question in the first place, So pershabilty, ecline, dependence, alteration, the impersonalty that characterises ‘material things, and s0 onal these have to be excluded from Go. ‘Ths meane that suffering is excluded Now, as I have said, itis extremely dificult for readers of ‘Aquinas to take his agnosticism about the nature of God seriously. IF hhesays Whatever God maybe, he cannot be changing’ readers leap 10 the conclusion that be means that what God isis tate fhe sys that whatever God may be, he could not suffer together with (ympathise ‘with) his creatures, he is taken to mean that God must by nature be ‘unsympathetic, apathetic, indifferent, even callous, It is almost as ‘though if Aquinas had sai that God could not be a supporter of {Glasgow Cat, we supposed he was caiming God as « Rangers fan. itis supposed that there must be hrking there come notion of| what God is—frequeatly characterised as a ‘Greek’ notion. Not ‘everyone misreads Aquinas quite so blatantly as Moltmann in the paseage I quoted, but we do find it hard to admit that he really did ‘ean what he sai “The people collectively known as “Greeks” in this context didnot, ‘of course, have any notion of creation. That isto say they did not ask ‘he typically Jewish (and thus Christan) question about the esse of things, the umately radical quesion that, or Aquinas, points us towards the unknown God. I should add a this pont, perhaps, that the revelation of God in Jesus in no way, for Aquinas, changes this situation. By the revelation of grace, he says, we are joined to God as {o-an unknown, ef quasi ignoto coniungamue. God remains the mystery which could only be known by God himself, or by our being taken upto share in his own knowledge of himself, «sharing which for us in this word isnot knowledge but the darksess of faith. For ‘Aquinas, the dstnetion that Molimann attibutes to him would be ‘easels: we shall not, and could not, know the nature ofthe divine ‘ntl we know who od is. ro “The Christian ute for the word ‘God’, according to this tradition, depends on what | would cal the ‘reation question’, and it seems 10 tne that Schllebeeckx hast exacly right wen he ‘Enthuslasm for Jeus of Nazareth as an inspiring human being, Lean apprecia—at the human level that is quite Something in tel But it entails no binding invitation, can bear no stamp ofthe universally human, unless it ean be ‘Shown that “the Creator, the monotheistic God of Jews, Muslims, Christians and s0, many others, is personally implicated i the Jesus event.” In other words, the ‘creation question’ hus to be a prio-t0 the fullest understanding we can have of Jesus. Our ute for the word "God" does not beain with chistology. To put it at is simplest, we cannot ask the question ‘In what sense is Jesus to be called Son of, Godt” without some prior use forthe word ‘God. And, ofcourse, the ‘New Testament did have such a prior use. The NT is unintelligible ‘except athe flowering of the Hebrew tradition and the asking of the ‘eation question that became central tothe Jewish Bible. ‘One of my frst clams, then, ie thatthe God of what I have called the ‘tradition’, the God of Augustine and Aquinas in the west, I preisely the God ofthe Bible, the God of Abraham, Isac and Jacob, the God who is not a god, nota powerful inhabitant of the universe, but the creator, the answer tothe question "What does ic all mean ‘Why anything anyway?” This was essentially the question asked by the Jews, atleast from Second [salah onwards the question which, once ‘tked, could not be unasked (except with great philosophical ingenuity, and this is che question which for mainstream chistian ttation gives ws meaning for the word ‘Gos! ‘One of my worries s that by contrast wth this bibial God, the God spoken of By those who insist on God's patisipation in the history of his peopl, sharing thee experiences, thelr suferngs and tciumpts, is perilously like one of the gods. This is particularly ‘worrying when itis found amongst bration theologians because its {he God ofthe Hebrews (wh inthe Jewish interpretation comes to be ‘en as creator) who Is hale in the decalogue as Uibertor it isthe gods (pars of history) and the whole religion ofthe gods that is seen {o stand for alienation and dependency. ‘Tam Yahweh your God who ‘brought you out of slavery; you shall have no gods. ‘God the creator, who is not one ofthe participants in history but the mover of Cyrus and of al history, is the lberator fundamentally because he [snot a god, because there are no gods, or atleast no gods to be worshipped, This leaves history in human hands under the judgement of God. Human misery ean no longer be atebuted tothe {ods and acoepted with resgnation or evaded wit sacrifices. The long sow proces can Dean of denying the human rt of eppresin tnd exploltation, just as the way now lies open for the scientific Understanding and control ofthe forces of nature. The doctrine of Creation which begins as a Hebrew insight makes human selence Double, including the scientific examination of buman soley and {he forces that govern it and guide its history. 1s seems 19 me a dsasrous error to suppose that, just because Aquinas and the medieval schools took over with delight the instruments of Grek classical and postcasical thought and sed and ‘developed their lope and their language, they were therefore thinking in the way that, say, Plato or Arsioe thought. Aquinas, for example takes words ike substance” and accident” and uses them in bis Bucharsle doctrine to say something that Aistoue would have ‘thought unintelligible nonsense—about the change of apiece of bread fot into another kind of thing, but Isto another individual. The {echnical word that Aristotle would have found so alien is Aquinas's ‘word ese (It is the ‘eae’ ofthe bread that becomes the esse" ofthe ‘ody of Christa its acidents lose their accidental role altogether and ‘become the symbols by which Christ is seramentally present). Heres ‘change below the level of substantial change, as creation is deeper {han substantial chang, a change which i not mato at all. "Esse" in Aquinas jargon belongs 10 the doctrine of creation, of which ‘Aristotle had no notion at all Hes content to deny, as does Aquinas, {hat the world could be made, generated. He doesnot, as Aquinas oes, ask the Jewish question, the question of ‘se of the existence ‘of things not over against potenalty but over agaist nothing. “The notion thatthe adoption of Aristotelian categories, concepts and language, arguments and insights means that aothing will be suid {hat Adstote would not approve is on exactly the same level asthe ‘notion that the adoption of marxist categories, arguments and insights ‘means that iberation theologians will or should say nothing but whet is approved by Marx. Luther was, perhaps, the Ratzinger of his age. “Aquinas's Five Ways, then, which are, ofcourse, a part of his ‘eology, are an attempt to validate what | have called the Jewish ‘question, the creation question, using the categories of Aristotelian and, to some extent , Platonic thought. Whether or not these attempts fare much use 10 people who have moved to different ways of seeing ‘the world, the question seems to remain, together wit the challenge ‘of validating Mt in the face of, for example, claims that such ‘etaphysia talk cannot be thinking. But in any case this metaphysis ‘of being arising from the notion ofa ceator God is Jewsh and not a Greek discovery "To lose sight ofthe Jewish creation question i,t seems tome, to seule for worhipping an inhabitant of the world, to betray the ‘biblical inheritance and vo repress 1 a worship ofthe gods; ts form of idolatey. o 1K, on the other hand, we accept the creator God, then he must be in no way pesive with respect tothe world and this must mean that God does not len from or experience the world and, in general, ‘cannot be affecied by It Its this that worries people. If the creators really incapable of experiencing suffering, what are we to make of| ‘God's compassion, or his wrath? Are we not in danger of making hi indifferent? Even f we acknowledge that words ke ‘compassion’ and ‘nat ae used metaphorically (because animal passons cannot be attributed to what isnot materia), sil they seem to imply some kind ‘of reaction to what is taking pace. Must we deny this of God? ‘As with Cate and Rangers, it doesnot follow that, if God is not affected by, say, human suffering, bei indifferent to it. In our ease there ae only two options open: we ether fee wth, sympathise with, have compassion forthe sufferer, or elie we cannot be present to the we must be callous, indifferent. We should notice, however, ‘necesary for compassion, but only a capacity o suffer with. Sharing in actual pain i nether necessiry nor aufficent for compassion, ‘whose essential components are awareness, feelings of pity and Concern. [can have al these three without myself suffering from the pain or tragedy that aficts my companion, and converely I may be Eniten with etaely the same kindof pain without experiencing any compassion at all. ‘Compassion is clearly feling (and not simply an intelectual awareness of anothers pain) butte not the same feting asthe pain ie, But the creator God canot even be sui tray to experience this feeling of compassion. ur only way of being present ro another's suffering is by being sect by lt, because we are outside the other person. We speak of ‘Sympathy’ of "compassion, just because we want to say that i is most as though we were not outside the other, but living her or his Ute, experiencing her or his suffering. A component of pity is frustration at having, inthe end, to remali outside. ‘Now. the ceatorcaano in thie way ever be ouside his creature; a perton's act of Being aswell as every action done has (o be an act of {he creator Ifthe tretor i the reason for everything thats there ‘ean be no actual Being which doesnot have the creator at its centre holding it in being. In our compassion we, in our feeble way, are seeking 1 be what God ial the ime: united with and within the life (of our frend, We cin sayin the psaim “The Lord is compassion’ but & ‘gn that this s metaphorical language is that we can also sy that the Lord has no need of compassion; he has something more wonderful, ‘he has his creative atin which he ‘loser to che sufferer than she tohera. ‘What is true of compassion has to be more generally true ofall ‘100 experience and learning. Unless we earn, we are ignorant, butt isnot {the case with God that he would be ignorant if he di not learn, And four learning and experience is a feeble shadow of God's lunderstanding of the world which he makes both to be and to be intelligible Whatever the consciousness of the creator may be it cannot be ‘that ofan experiencer confronted by what he experiences. think that James Mackey does not choose his words carefully enough when he says of Aquinas: He further distances from our world ll discussion of real divine relation by stating quite bald, ‘there is no real felation in God tothe creature’. Creatures, that is, may experience w ral relationship of dependence on and need {of God, but God experiences no such relationship to his For Aquinas, of course, the question is not one of expelence ‘God simply does ot have any relation of dependence on his ereatres but he understands, with an understanding mote intimate than any knowledge from experience, the truth about the dependence of creatures on his knowledge and love “The point about the lack of real elation on Gods pati simply that being ereator adds nothing to God, all she difference it makes is ‘allthe difference othe creature. (Indeed, the git of ese is oo radical to be eale a “difference sinc clearly the creature isnot changed by ‘coming into existence.) But it makes no difference to God nat, of ‘sourse, because God is indifferent or bored by tal, but because he ‘gains nothing by creating. We could call it sheery alr, except that the goodness God wils for his creatures is nota separate and distinc goodness from his own goodnes. The exential point that ‘Aquinas surely riahily, wants to make i that creation ful no need ‘of God's. God hat no needs. Tam repeating at too great a length the fair point thatthe God of Augustine and Aquinas, precisely by being wholly leanscendent, "extra ordinem onium entium exten’ more intimately involved with each erature than any other creature could ‘be. God could not be orher to creatures in the way that they must bet cach other. At the heart of every creatures the source of ese, making Ito be and to act." Asis well known, Aquins carries this through 9 its logical conclusion and insists that it must be Just as true of my free ‘cts a8 of anything else. Tobe frei tobe independent of others. God {snot in the relevant sense, other 'SoT think I makes perfect sense to say both that It notin the ature of God to suffer and also that is tin the nature of God to luck the mos intimate posible involvement withthe sufferings of his Sette. To safeguard the compasion of God thee in net 0 ‘sot to the idea that God as he surveys the history of mankind suffers with us ina literal sense—though in some spiritual way Here 1 come to my second argument 1 shink that te temptation to hold that i Jn the nature of God to suffer arises because of @ ‘Weakening hold onthe traditional doctrine of the incarnation. Tn ecordance with the doctrine of Chalcedon, we sa) that he one petson, Jess, i rly human and truly divine, we can say quite Iteraly that God suffered hunger and thirst and torture and death, ‘We can say these things because the Son of God assumed a human nature in which it makes sense to predicate these things to im. In other word, the traditional doctrine, while rejecting te dea that it in the nature of God to be capable of suffering, does affirm itealy ‘hat God suffered in a perfectly ordinary seas, the sensein which you or suffer. 1, with certain theologians, you regres from Chalcedon and. affirm that Jesus is not Itealy'dvine, you at once block the way ‘rom saying that Jesus suffered and died to saying that God suffered and died. Nevertheless, since theresa profound christian instinct that {he gospel has to do with the suffering of God, these theologians are constrained to say that since God didnot literally suffer in Jesus, God ‘must suffer in some other way; as, for example, he surveys the sutering of Jesus andthe rest of mankind. One consequence of thi, Of course is tht whereas a aditonal Christian would say that God ‘utfered a horrible pin In his hands when be was alld the cross, {hese theologians have to make do with a kind of mental anguish at the folie and sins of creature. May Ibe so impertinent as to remind this guthering of Aquinas's treatment of Chalcedon. Isl be brief, First a word or two about language. ‘Simple indicative sentences very commonly have two parts we call subject and predicate. Words in the subject place are used to refer to ‘what we want to talk about and words inthe predicate pace are ured to ay something about it, Which words are in which pace not tbe

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