Durham Conference: Jan. 13, 14 2009

Postgraduates at the University of Durham organized and hosted a conference on interdisciplinarity in theology and religion (Subtitle: How to Tie Knots that Will Hold). I was able to attend the two days of the conference (Jan, 13, 14) and had a wonderful time.

Sarah Coakley gave an excellent keynote address on her own experience as an interdisciplinary researcher. She has had a fascinating career as a researcher that has included projects with the Mind, Brain, Behavior group at Harvard as well as a recent collaborative project with the game theorist Micheal Nowak. Look out for an upcoming book co-written by Coakley and Nowak that has the potential to change the landscape of research in the area of science and religion. Also, she recently edited a book on pain that I am hoping to read at some point, and I recommend it to anyone else interested in the subject.

The conference was composed of primarily post graduate students (my guess is about 60). There was lots of time (although more would have been nice) to get to know one another and hear about each other's research interests. Because of the nature of the conference everyone was doing such different and unique things. There were projects ranging from the more traditional (such as The Role of the Holy Spirit in Deification in Athanasius) to the more popular interdisciplinary areas (such as my own project on the analogy between divine and human creativity, Church and Empire, music and theology) to the unique and unusual (such as Christian belief and the popular UK practice of woodland burial, how christians watch reality tv, and angelology as a necessarily interdisciplinary discipline). Everything was fascinating and there was a general sense of curiosity about one another's projects that pervaded the conference.

I also had the opportunity to present my own work in the form of a paper titled, "Is Creation the Expression of the Creator? An Exploration in Theology, Art, and Philosophy. " (click on title to read paper) This is the first time that I have presented a paper at a conference, and I was very happy with the way that it went. The discussion time afterward, which seemed to last a long time (there had to have been at least 15 questions/comments) went well and I received a good response and good constructive criticism. I really enjoyed the question time. It was fun to have people interact with my research and have the opportunity to respond and dialogue.

Two friends of mine from St Andrews also presented papers: Paul Warhust (on Kierkegaard as a Matthew scholar) and Christian George (on Pilgrimage as a locus of interdisciplinary study). I unfortunately did not attend Paul's, but I am sure it was excellent. I did attend Christian's, and I know his was excellent. He has got me thinking about how to appropriate prilgimage as a metaphor and christian practice today, as well as wishing that I had keynote on my pc so that I too can have graphics that make the other presenters salivate with longing.

Speaking of longing:

I also fell in love with Durham while we were there. Emily, Jonah, and I stayed in a great little bed and breakfast called the Chestnut Villa. The oldest portion of town is situated on a hill inside a bend in the beautiful river Wear. Durham Cathedral (more than 1000 years old) dominates the landscape, along with the castle that is connected to it. I could have spent two days inside the cathedral instead of the conference. The sense of scale produced by the walls that seem to shoot up and soar overhead is overwhelming. There were a number of stain glass windows of immense size and intricacy. And in one portion of the cathedral are a number of more contemporary art installations, including a massive pieta that is utterly captivating, evoking the deepest sorrow and tragedy alongside the glimmer of hope and resurrection.

  

Overall it was a great trip, even though a number of logistical things went wrong. Emily may comment on these in her blog post, but I won't go into them here.  Here are a few more pictures that Emily won't show you:

Kenosis and Freedom

This one goes out to Shawn Bawulski.  We have had a number of conversations about the nature of human freedom, and, while I am still far from having answers to the many questions that have come up, I came across an article by Sarah Coakley entitled "Kenosis: Theological Meanings and Gender Connotations" in The Work of Love (ed. John Polkinghorne) that is very helpful.  

I have been wrestling with the idea that God's Kenosis is essential to his relationship with creation.  Indeed, the idea for my phd dissertation is predicated upon the assumption that the analogous relationships Creator-creation and artist-artwork are characterized by kenosis: a "self-emptying" or "self-giving" on the part of the Creator/artist that ensures the "otherness" of creation/artwork.  The Work of Love is a collection of essays that explores the theme of "Creation as Kenosis" as a response to classical doctrines of creation that emphasis omnipotence, omniscience, and immutability.  Thus, "Creation as Kenosis" implies an amount of "vulnerability," "risk," and "sacrifice" on the part of the Creator.

Coakley points out what I had suspected, but not yet articulated.  She writes, "the striking commitment in this book to a libertarian view of freedom may be the linchpin holding several other systematic choices together." (204)  Libertarian freedom is the kind that considers a human being to be "free from conditioning control by another." (205)  The visual picture of Kenosis, with its connotations of "limitation" and "otherness," provided in The Work of Love is one of God stepping aside so that His creatures won't be dominated.  Coakley describes the picture as "a (very big) divine figure backing out of the scene, or restraining his influence, in order that other (little) figures may exercise completely independent thinking and acting." (205)

This picture, she argues, is a male-gendered picture of freedom.  She connects this kind of freedom to "the male child's repudiation of the power of the mother." (205)  There is a sense in which this freedom by distancing is a peculiarly male fantasy.  "The underlying symbolish -- this argument goes on -- is of a normative 'masculine' self who gains independence by setting himself apart from that which gave him life and indeed continues to sustain him." (205)  This type of freedom ensures "otherness," which is arguably essential for the existence of a loving relationship, by creating distance between God and his creation.  

Does Kenosis present us with an alternative to libertarian freedom, or do the two go hand in hand?  The alternative, Coakley argues, is compatibilist, but at the same time free from the determinism that the contributors of The Work of Love believe to characterize classical approaches to divine interaction with the world.  She observes, in fact that such an alternative is ironically present within The Work of Love. 

The alternative picture of Creator-creature interaction "undoes this assumption about the supposedly strangling effect of a continuous dependence on the divine." (206)  What is suggested by Coakley, and Ian Barbour in his essay "God's Power: A Process View," is an understanding of God's power "not as overpowering but as empowering." (15)  Barbour draws on the work of Anna Case-Winter (God's Power: Traditional Understanding and Contemporary Challenges, 1990) who suggests that God's power may be better understood in terms of mothering.  The child's response to the mother is not in competition with the desires of the mother that the child become a full person in his/her own right.  In fact, the child's response completes the activities of the mother.  This type of freedom ensures the "otherness" of creation through the continual and intimate sustaining of the creature by the Creator.

Coakley concludes her thoughts on Kenosis and freedom by writing: "If we think of divine kenosis as required for a God who must get out of the way in order that 'freedom' be enacted, then one sort of gendered picture is probably in play; whereas if we think of God as nurturing and sustaining us into freedom (of a different, compatibilist, sort), then it may be that another set of gender associations are present in the background.  For the latter view, it is not God who is in need of restriction or 'emptying', but rather a false form of hubristic human power." (206)  

It is interesting that Kenosis should generate two different accounts of freedom, one based upon distance, the other on intimacy.  Similarly, theologians writing about kenosis will use the terms "self-giving" and "self-emptying," as I did at the beginning of this post, despite their different connotations of fullness and absence.  That the kenosis of God, primarily a theological concept about the relationship between Creator and creature, should be articulated in such disparate terms seems, to me at least, to be a good thing because it suggests the struggle within a relationship of persons to define one's self while leaving room for the 'other.' 

I am also happily surprised to see that "Kenotic Theology" (if I can use the term) does not require one to accept libertarian freedom, but that compatibilism is an option as well.  How libertarian freedom is articulated within a kenotic understanding of the relationship between Creator and creature appears to be fairly straightforward.  How compatibilism is articulated, however, within the same understanding will require more thinking and reading on my part, as well as more conversations with Shawn Bawulski.

Love and the Problem of Disproportion

W. H. Vanstone, in his book Love's Endeavor, Love's Expense, reflects, "I knew of the God without Whom no sparrow falls to the ground. I could conceive, as a logical or theological possibility, that my tree, like the sparrow, might be important to God. But always the problem arose of disproportion or incongruity. [...] It was one thing to believe that God created all things, but another to believe that this 'fag-end' of His creation could be important to Him."

He then recounts a story about two boys who were looking for something to do on their holiday break from school. The boys came to Vanstone, searching for ideas, and he suggested that they build a model of a certain piece of land using sticks, rocks, paint and whatever other materials the could find. Despite the boys initial lack of enthusiasm, they chose to take on the project, and Vanstone reflects on their progress in an illuminating way.

Although the project began without much excitement, it quickly became an obsession: they would work long hours and miss meal times. He notes how "the placing each stone and twig was a matter for careful discussion." Once something was placed on the model, a moment of waiting and seeing if it was 'right' followed. New possibilities would arise after the placement of each piece, as well as new difficulties.

Vanstone writes that "As the model grew and became of greater value, each step in its creation became of greater moment and was taken with greater intensity of care. Each item that was placed seemed to possess greater power to make or to mar. [...] The once contemptible sticks and stones now had a certain power over those who were using them -- a power to effect or negate the completion of that which was being made, and so to satisfy or frustrate those who were making it. The two boys became vulnerable in and through that which, out of virtually nothing, they had brought into being."

"As I watched this microcosm of creative activity, and as later I reflected upon it, three things gradually became evident to me. The first was that, in such activity, there was both working and waiting. One could say that the activity of creating included the passivity of waiting -- of waiting upon one's workmanship to see what emerged from it, and to see if that which emerged was 'right.' The second, which followed from the first, was that, in such activity, the creator gave to, or built into, his workmanship a certain power over himself. He gave to his workmanship that which, if it were not his workmanship, it would not possess -- a power to affect himself, to have value, significance, or importance for himself. The third, which followed from the second, was that in such activity disproportion between creator and workmanship, or between creator and material, was overcome by the gift of value. That which in itself was nothing was transformed, in the creative process, into a thing of value: as the work of a creator, it received a new status in relation to the creator. The incongruity between the great and small was overcome when the creativity of the great was expended in and upon the small."

"Therefore, through this simple incident, I was helped to see that awareness of the importance of any aspect of material reality may be awareness not of its relevance to human well-being but simply of its being the work of love: and that a sense of responsibility for it may be a sense of responsibility for a work of love."

See W. H. Vanstone, Love's Endeavor, Love's Expense, 30 - 34.

On Theological Method

I came across a couple of paragraphs in the forward of Love's Endeavor (by W. H. Vanstone)that seem to encapsulate Vanstone's theological method. I am wrestling with many of these ideas at the moment because they seem to fit, and yet do not fit, within the evangelical tradition of my upbringing. Without saying any more, I turn to H. A. Williams:

Theological truth is the truth of God's relationship with man and it is the fruit not of learning but of experience. In this sense all theology, properly so called, is written in blood. It is an attempt to communicate what has been discovered at great cost in the deepest places of the heart -- by sorrow and joy, frustration and fulfillment, defeat and victory, agony and ecstasy, tragedy and triumph. Theology, properly so called, is the record of a man's wrestling with God. Wounded in some way or other by the struggle the man will certainly be, but in the end he will obtain the blessing promised to those who endure.

The theologian in this respect is no different from the poet or the dramatist. All of them must write in blood. Yet what the theologian is called to do with his experience is different from what the poet or dramatist does. [...] Its center of interest is different in two ways. First, the theologian's primary concern must always be God's relationship with man, and any relationship a man may have with his fellow-men or the world he lives in must always be subsumed under the primary relationship with God. Secondly, the theologian has been nurtured by a tradition of belief and practice and all the time he must relate his insights to the tradition which has nurtured him. However first hand, and in that sense original, those insights may be, they cannot be entirely out of the blue. They have to connect in some way with insights already achieved.

Can God's Creative Work Mean More Than He Meant?

George MacDonald writes, “One difference between God’s work and man’s is, that while God’s work cannot mean more than he meant, man’s must mean more than he meant … A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time with things that came from thoughts beyond his own.” (Macdonald, A Dish of Orts, 320 – 321)

What does it mean for a work of art to go beyond the author’s intentions? Is a work of art simply the product or embodiment of the artists thoughts, feelings, mental states unless otherwise inspired? Is the reason that artists are often curious or puzzled about their own creations that they have been inspired by something beyond them? Do we have here a case where the inexplicable is simply filled in by the divine?

To say that “God’s work cannot mean more than he meant” is deceptively simple. We feel, at a gut and intuitive level, that this is a fitting description of God’s creative powers. Surely if anyone can express himself perfectly it is God, right? And yet, if we dig too deeply, we find problems. If what God “meant” before creating is the same as what creation means, how can time and space have any relevance to the meaning of creation? Everything in the created world is essentially reducible to what God “meant.” In this view, the particularity of each created thing, as well as the history of creation, appears irrelevant to the meaning of creation. God’s activities in creation could be construed, therefore, as God’s continuing attempt to ensure that creation means what he initially meant. This suggests a relationship between God and his creation that is unilateral: God responds primarily to his initial desires for creation without taking into consideration changing situations within his creation.

To say instead that God’s work does mean more than he meant, opens up different possibilities. The most obvious way in which creation can mean more than God initially meant is that creation is capable of generating its own meaningfulness. The free response of human beings to God and his creation participates in God’s creative activity either advancing or obstructing God’s redemptive movement in history. This is not to say that humans bring about God’s redemption and the New Creation (which is the meaning toward which God’s creative activities are striving), but that humans participate in God’s redemption by moving along side Him. God welcomes human beings, as representatives of his grace within creation, based on trust rather than control. God’s creative activities are inherently risky because He chooses to create something ‘other’ than himself, and to be in collaboration with that ‘other’ to determine the final outcome of His creativity.

Describing God’s creativity as being in collaboration presents all sorts of theological problems. Is God’s sovereignty somehow limited over creation? Can God become the victim of His creation? How does one articulate the freedom of human beings? Does God learn about His creation as its meaning unfolds to Him? Can God be surprised? While these problems and questions are serious, it seems to me that they are the inevitable problems of defining a loving relationship between God and His creation. That God loves his creation is impossible to refute from a Christian perspective. And so the question becomes, what does it mean to love someone else? Surely part of loving someone else is recognizing that the beloved, as well as the lover, brings something genuine and original to the relationship. It is from the perspective of the love of God that questions about God’s creativity must be explored.