Porch Time

Field Notes From a Religion-Less Christian

June 23, 2022

Please Don’t Ask Me to Tell You How I See God Today

Because of my mistake in my blog writing this week (posted 6/21 I saw a serious error that I fixed after it was up for a while!) about what a theologian of glory and a theologian of the cross do I was driven back to spend time with my old friend and teacher, On Being a Theologian of the Cross (Gerhard Forde, 1997). In particular I needed to dive again into that volume’s “Part III: The Great Divide – The Way of the Cross vs. The Way of Glory.” 

Theologians of the Cross (TOTC) have given up the pursuit of seeing God as Virtue (and all the other divine attributes) and then, therefore, are done seeing things in life not as they actually are (e.g. a tree is a tree is how it is) but for what they say or reveal about God (e.g. a tree is a gift of God is your vision and aspiration). TOTC don’t see through the trauma and pain of Jesus on the cross and see instead the blessing and love of God. This seeing through and naming something else is the self-defense mechanism of the Theologians of Glory (TOG). The TOG find the incrimination of being the murderer of an innocent and just man so appalling that they must make it out to be a good and redemptive event. TOTC are crushed and destroyed by the weight of that incrimination and there is no escape, only death. TOTC are killed by the cross of Jesus. TOTC see the crucifixion for what it is and as it is. TOTC do not construct a theology to fend off the suffering and death of Jesus (or the suffering and death of all humankind – do we not see here what a Doctrine of the Incarnation really identifies?!) but rather see it for what it is, the inhumanity of humanity. Period. Not the love of God, but the inhumanity of humanity. 

We see, don’t we? There is an offense (to us, we take offense) that is worse or greater than the offense of this murder and being caught with the murder weapon in your hand. It is the offense that our actions and beliefs have no impact on our meaning and destiny, have no agency for completeness, personal or otherwise. It is, to put it bluntly and succinctly, the offense of God. God offends us. 

We don’t see or know God, and therefore, have no control over God. When we think we see or know God we become the one who gains control. We are the Subject again, not the Object.  This leads me to think of how we mostly do our theologizing today – we look for ways we can name God by what we see rather than seeing things for what they are. A sunrise is a sign of God, not a sunrise. A visit from a friend is a sign from God, not a visit from a friend. Then, conversely, a disease contracted is a sign of God (God is either absent or malevolent) and not a disease contracted. A pandemic is a sign of God (again, absent or malevolent) and not a pandemic. 

If we can identify God, name God, point out how and where God operates, we are back in the driver’s seat. 

But TOTC recognize what this enterprise is all about – a fending off of the offense of God. 

This is what Martin Luther meant by saying we only know God (see God) through/by suffering and death: not our physical or emotional hurt that we then see through transparently to see God but rather the impossibility of doing anything about our destiny (“suffering” as in the “suffer the little children to come to me,”of Mt. 19:14,  suffering as allowing God to be God). Not our physical or emotional demise that we then see through to see God but rather the death of self, the no import or agency of self. We suffer the fact, we die to any meaning within, our physical or emotional suffering and death. 

Our physical and emotional suffering and death are what they are, they are not a portal through which we see God or find God. Likewise, our physical and emotional joy and happiness are what they are, they are not portals through which we see God. It is the TOTC that are able to speak in this way about our life and death. 

The TOG are desperate to attach meaning to what is seen and experienced so as to protect themselves against the onslaught of God. 

It is popular today in the Church to be about the business of identifying or naming how we see God at work. Pastors and Preachers like to stir up the minds and hearts of people to be in conversation with God by asking them to name how they “see God today.” These clergy are well meaning. They are trying to lift the spirits of their congregants by having them think of happy things. To be sure, our spirits need lifting these days and thinking about happy things can go a long way in doing just that. But such an enterprise is not only bad thinking about God, but more importantly, it is fraught with the danger of hurting and damaging more than it helps. This all happens, this bad theology that ends up doing serious damage to people’s hearts and minds, because of the problem of God – God is just too wild, working out of bounds, doing everything and anything outside of the rules of reward and punishment. This is not only God doing bad things (what about that child dying young?) but also letting bad people off the hook (what about that mercy thing?). God is just too God, and not enough Us! This is what Luther meant when he said “the gouty foot laughs at your doctoring” to Erasmus in his Bondage of the Will treatise. One just cannot “doctor over” the problem of God. Only God can deal with God. And so, the story of Jesus, the event of Jesus, is just this exact thing. God taking care of the problem of God, on our behalf.  TOTC know this, are about this. This cross is not theology about God. The cross is our theology (“Crux sola nostra theologia” – Luther).

So, how can such “where do we see God today?” questions hurt? It takes people out on the thin ice (thin because the truth and actuality of the child dying young melts the ice) where they will fall through and drown. It leads people to speculate about God rather than to sit still and hear the only thing that heals and saves: the first-person declaration/statement that they are safe and sound, loved. That they are loved not because they are lovely or things are lovely, but lovely because they, and all things, are loved. 

I remember one particular day way back in graduate school, seminary, my good friend and Professor of Systematic Theology Professor Walt Bouman preaching in our daily Chapel Service. He said one thing that stuck with me readily and to this day: The Reformation was, for Martin Luther, in the mix of it all and the catalyst of it all, a pastoral passion and concern. Luther was focused on the fact that people were getting beat down and marginalized and destroyed not only by abusive church practices (like extorting money from the pocketbooks of regular folks in order to pay for forgiveness from God) but also by a theology that placed these folks in a place where they never were quite sure, and always anxious about, their standing with God. Luther was tired of the Church hurting people and he used his extraordinary intellectual capabilities in bible scholarship, languages and writing and speaking, that discovered again the explosion of grace that is Jesus Christ, to bear down on this behemoth (Church, which, remember then in the 16th century, was equal to and really one in the same as State) to run it into the ground so that the people might be freed (he didn’t always get it right….think of the Peasant’s War of 1525 and his vitriol against the Jewish people, especially later in his life). 

All of this is to say why it is so important to get the theology right. People get hurt, creation gets destroyed, when we don’t.