Forgive the relative silence in recent days. The pile of marking on my desk is making posting here more difficult. But to preserve my sanity, I’ll take a few moments to highlight some recent class discussions that have really got me thinking.
I’ve been using N.T. Wright’s Simply Christian as a text book for an introductory theology course and his way of conceptualizing the way God interacts within our world has provoked a lot of conversation. He basically argues that there are three possible ways of answering the question “Where is God?”
1) God is in everything, the universe is essentially divine.
2) God’s world and our world are radically separate and distinct.
3) God’s world and our world overlap and interlock.
Where this becomes somewhat confusing is in trying to understand God’s ongoing activity in the world. In the first option God is somehow inherent in the processes of life so it’s hard to talk about God’s personal activity. What happens has the ’smell of divinity’ but it’s difficult to point to purpose behind it.
In the second option, the one Wright thinks is the default view for many Christians, God’s activity can only be seen in the ’supernatural’ or paranormal events of life. Our world, the world that is radically different from God’s, is governed by natural processes that are explainable without recourse to God. If God were ever to do something within that world it would have to be something that could not be explained in any other way.
The more I’ve thought about this the more I recognize it within my own life. I implicitly expect that if God is going to show up it had better be obvious and it had better not have a naturalistic explanation. I would not agree with that statement on paper but it’s often the first thought that pops into my head. But this is surely an incorrect view of God. If we agree that God’s presence is found only in the utterly inexplicable, then we have failed in our obligation to point to the presence of God within the world that he has created. If God is only present in those experiences of life that circumvent the normal, then God is nothing more than an absentee landlord making periodic visits to collect the rent and fix the plumbing.
My daughter and I get to eat breakfast together some mornings and she often reminds me, as we eat, that God has brought the sun up again. Again! Sadly she’s getting older and she’s noticing this less and less often. In a way I see these mornings as a reminder that even though I’ve ‘moved on’ and now understand the sun’s rising in more astronomically correct ways, she may be closer to the real truth behind it all.
What an awesome conclusion that you draw there Gil…I really liked Simply Christian, thank you for your reminder to notice Jesus in the ordinary!
Thanks for bringing this to light. I tend towards the third view. Deism with its’ watchmaker God saw God as putting things in motion and sitting back in a celestial rocking chair. God is working every day in every way. He loves us deeply. Sometimes in considering creation we forget that God created it as “good” and that he did it because he loves us immensely.
I would think your daughters view of the world more accurately reflect position one that you outlined above. I mean that the sun rising is a pretty natural occurance. It is not really a recognizable as an intersection between our world and God’s world that would be implied by option three. Is that the view you would advocate? Or am I not understanding correctly?
JC,
I suppose it would be a question of degree. I don’t think recognizing God within a natural process is the same as saying that this process is inherently divine. The fact that we see the sun rising as a ‘natural occurrence’ (exclusively) is evidence of the view highlighted in option two. I would subscribe to option three but I would add that that overlap can occur a number of ways, both dramatic and ‘natural’.
Thanks for the reminder. delis