Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you.
As I predicted back in August in my last post, the frequency of my blog entries has had to decrease. But even so, I want to share some of the topics that have absorbed my time and summarize the projects I’ve been working on. Something like this will likely occur for the next few years during my course work, but—no fear—I hope to insert a few movie analyses and, of course, some arbitrary rankings when I have the time. I had also hoped to share three short stories by the end of this year, but that clearly didn’t happen—and the one that I did share I’m now revising substantially (so don’t go and read it).
This semester I took three seminars and a colloquium. The first of my theology seminars was Contemporary Theological Problems: Pryzwara, Bonhoeffer, Tanner, and it was a doozy. The connective tissue for the class was an interest in issues of metaphysics, how theologians talk of the transcendent reality of the Creator despite being mere creatures. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the key is Christ. Though we exist in the middle—unable to return to that unity with God before creation and still awaiting the triumphal return, in relation with God yet not totally with or without God—we know God and experience the divine by means of Christ. Katheryn Tanner, a theologian still working today, comes at the topic from a different vantage; she aims to show that any coherent theological system, whether it be Patristic, Lutheran, Barthian, or what have you, must abide by common rules when talking about the relation between God and creation—particularly the rule of non-contrastive language. Rather than seeing the divine-human relationship as zero-sum, whereby God’s sovereignty comes at the price of human freedom or vice versa, these two truths operate on different planes and do not conflict. Lastly, Erich Pryzwara (pronounced ʃeɪvarə for some Polish reason) pushes for the concept of analogy to orient how we discuss metaphysics, to see the Creator as both in and beyond the creature. His writing is not for the faint of heart, but in sifting through it, one discovers troves of theological richness.
The second theology seminar was Contemporary Problems in Christian Ethics: Natural Law. Natural law has historically been a neglected topic in Protestant circles since Calvin, Catholics finding it more useful in their theology. But this neglect has been to our disadvantage, as natural law is uniquely suited to provide a thoroughly Christian methodology for operating ethically in the public or secular sphere. A theology of natural law suggests that all of creation is oriented towards God’s good ends, and everyone should be able to recognize those ends as we communally move toward them (even if some do not recognize them as God’s goal for creation).
The final seminar came out of theological history and was concerned with the Radical Reformation. Surveying such figures as Zwingli, Grebel, Müntzer, Hubmaier, Hut, Sattler, and Menno Simons, as well as the events of the Peasants’ War, Kingdom of Münster, and the persecution of the Anabaptists, the course covered a lot in a short amount of time (both in weeks of the semester and in its scope of a single century). The Radical Reformation is notable for its elusiveness and ability to escape definition; it’s difficult to categorize its various strands or to determine a singular thread in all its figures. Yet, its radicalness is never in question and the zeal of its followers undeniable.
Colloquiums in Baylor’s religion department are shorter classes, meant to dip everyone’s toes—students’ and faculty’s—into the most relevant and cutting-edge of theological conversations. This semester focused on Ecological Theology. Starting off with Lynn White’s infamous lecture published in Science and moving to voices as diverse as de Chardin, Rosemary Ruether, Deane-Drummond, Willis Jenkins, and Pope Francis, the course tried to approach ecology from a number of theological perspectives. Much of the discussion centers on the need to present a new meta-narrative capable of charging hearers to address the climate crisis and other environmental issues, some suggesting that we start from scratch while others claim that we can retool the current Christian narrative for such purposes.
Each of these topics (besides, perhaps, the Radical Reformation) were mostly foreign to my theological training in Church of Christ affiliated schools. That’s not to say that I was unfamiliar with the general ideas or the figures involved, but that my schooling had been mostly unconcerned with these topics interesting the wider theology conversation. It is not yet clear to me if the training I do have will inform these emerging interests, or if my new studies will inform my previous work.
For my two theology seminars, I also wrote two papers. For the class on metaphysics, I wrote concerning the school of thought known as Grammatical Thomism, a blend of orthodox thinking based on Thomas Aquinas and the linguistic-philosophical insights of Ludwig Wittgenstein. One of the primary claims of these Grammatical Thomists is that language corresponds to what exists in reality and reason; if something cannot be expressed sensibly using words then it cannot exist in reality. However, these same thinkers affirm our ability to talk about God, that which is transcendent of all language and sense-making. How then do we talk about God? This is the very concern raised by Katheryn Tanner, and so I think the Grammatical Thomist approach is applicable to her project in God and Creation—the answer being: very carefully. When we talk about the divine, we tip-toe at the edge of reason, probably beyond even rationality. What we can say intelligently and confidently about God, then, is based solely in what is affirmed by Scripture and the Church.
My other project was a more contentious proposal: that natural law theology is compatible with the prospects of transhumanism. Transhumanism has come up before on this blog, and I believe it will only become more relevant in the coming decades. It is the possibility that humans will augment and alter themselves so much they will eventually no longer resemble what we know today to be homo sapiens. How then can a theology dependent on the created order operate if humans have so radically changed themselves? I suggest that this concern is rooted in a mistaken notion of what is “natural.” Nature is not what is outside your window or your naked body as static things. Nature is forever in motion and changing. What is natural is only what in physical reality is directed towards God’s ends. And while some elements of transhumanism are very much not directed towards these ends—e.g. the possibility of the rich distancing themselves from the poor by means of augmentation—most features of transhumanism are neither directed toward or away from that ultimate telos or, better yet, are active accompaniments by humans in God’s redemptive work.
For anyone interested in these topics, I’m glad to discuss them further or send along my full essays. I hope and expect to revisit these ideas more as I incorporate new subjects into my theological conversations. But between now and then, have a merry Christmas.
Regardless of what side of the climate debate someone is on there is a concern for the waste and pollution that exists. Every time I take out my trash to the curb I realize how much waste I am simply burying in the ground with little concern for where it goes once it leaves my home.