This is a follow-up to my initial post on Elizabeth Johnson’s Quest for the Living God.
First, let’s talk about the USCCB’s critique of Johnson’s method. As reiterated in the press statement, the Bishops argue that “the book does not take the faith of the Church as its starting point. Instead, the author employs standards from outside the faith to criticize and to revise in a radical fashion the conception of God revealed in Scripture and taught by the Magisterium.” The Bishops fault Johnson for beginning with a critique instead:
Sr. Johnson, however, begins with a critique of the Church’s faith, or, rather of what she terms “traditional theology” or “classical Christian theology.” In response to the distortion she claims are there and to the challenges posed to faith in the contemporary cultural situation, she offers a thoroughgoing reinterpretation of the doctrine of God. She makes this move plausible by presenting the unappealing portrayal of God to be found in what she labels “modern theism.” According to Sr. Johnson, modern theism models God as “a monarch” who is at the “peak of the pyramid of being.” The best theology can do is portray him “as benevolent.” “‘He,’ for it is always the ruling male who stands for this idea, is essentially remote” (14). While loving he is “uncontaminated” by the world. “And always this distant lordly lawgiver stands at the summit of hierarchical power, reinforcing structures of authority in society, church, and family” (14). According to Sr. Johnson, this portrayal follows from the conviction that God is immutable, incorporeal, impassible, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent (see 15). This is modern theism” (Statement 2-3).
After giving a few examples, the Bishops conclude this section with some fairly damning remarks:
From the above, it is evident that Quest for the Livng God contaminates the traditional Catholic understanding of God, which arises from both revelation and reason and which has been articulated by the Fathers and the Scholastics, especially Thomas Aquinas, and taught and professed by the Church, with Enlightenment deism. Such a notion of God may conform to what is termed “modern theism,” and so be in need of reform as the book suggests. However, to give the impression that “modern theism,” is virtually identical with the traditional Catholic notion of God is seriously to misrepresent the tradition and so to distort it beyond recognition. Nonetheless, as seen in the above analysis, this is what Quest for the Living God has done at its very onset. It is this misrepresentation that Sr. Johnson takes as a warrant for articulating her many models of God, models that she proposes as more attractive than “modern theism.”
Quest for the Living God speaks of a crisis within the Church, a crisis reflected in the disjuncture between “modern theism” and a more contemporary understanding of God based upon secular experience. The real crisis, however, the one that this book illustrates, is reflected in the disjuncture between a proper and authentic understanding of the traditional notion of the Christian God and an understanding of God that no longer comporst with Christian revelation and the Church’s profession of faith” (Statement 6).
These sections are almost unreadable. Part of this is because the Bishops are arguing that Elizabeth Johnson’s rightful critique of Enlightenment deism slips into a critique of “traditional theology.” Unfortunately, the Bishops also are using these terms in a slippery way. So let’s be overly clear. Both Johnson and the Bishops think that Enlightenment deism is bad. Both even think that Christian theology has been affected by it, and that this is bad. The Bishops are arguing that Johnson, in her critiquing of Enlightenment deism, is also critiquing “classical Christian theology”—particularly the claims that God is “immutable, incorporeal, impassible, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent” (cf. Statement 4).
Reading the Bishops’ statement, you would think that Johnson had directly contradicted all those traits of God. Let’s look at what she actually says. After describing the challenges that the Enlightenment posed to Christian theologians of the 17th and 18th centuries, Johnson explains how they adopted Enlightenment philosophy and language to articulate the faith:
In response, Christian theologians of the era also used rational argument to defend the existence of God. Before this time, theologians drew the idea of God from scripture, sacramental worship, and theological tradition, using philosophy to interpret and clarify certain points. This kept them focused on divine incarnation in Jesus Christ and on the Spirit’s gift of indwelling grace as essential components of the Christian idea of God, which is Trinitarian. Now, however, to counter the Enlightenment’s criticisms, they switched to the same playing field as their opponent. Leaving behind Christian sources and adopting philosophical methods of thinking that sought objective knowledge about the universe on a rational basis, they set out to shape “clear and distinct ideas” about the divine. Starting with the natural world, they reasoned to the existence of God using a process of inference, thereby constructing a theology where God appears as the highest component in an intellectual system. This all but assured that while God is a powerful individual above other powers in the world, he remains a member of the larger household of reality. His attributes are deduced by a reasoning process that contrasts what is infinite with the limitations of the finite. Thus God is immutable (only creatures change), incorporeal (bodies are the site of change), impassible (only creatures suffer), omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, in contrast to creatures who are limited in power, knowledge, and presence (15).
She then critiques this way of speaking because it sacrifices a proper understanding of both immanence and transcendence. In attempting to focus on the distance between God and the world, Enlightenment theologians merely negated what they knew about the world. Paradoxically, this threatens God’s transcendence (as it defines God through philosophical conceptions of the world) and his immanence (as God seems distant and unconcerned with us). It is against this picture that Johnson levies her critique: “As it trickled into preaching and personal piety, this construct became ever more simplistic, leading to contemporary Western society’s characteristically trivial image of God” (16).
Johnson does not directly contradict the propositions of “traditional Classical theology,” rather, she argues that they have produced an idolatrous understanding of God in the minds of many of the faithful: “people viewed God as a grand old man; or a resident policeman; or a tape of parental hang-ups; or a consummate churchman; or a managing director; or a dictator; or a disappointing protector; or a spoilsport” (16). And what about that pesky claim that this is all a problem with Johnson’s method, or starting-point? In the passage above, Johnson explicitly compares Enlightenment theology to a time when “theologians drew the idea of God from scripture, sacramental worship, and theological tradition, using philosophy to interpret and clarify certain points.” To summarize: Johnson is arguing that on account of the Enlightenment, theology has become too philosophical and has departed from its original criteria of scripture, worship, and tradition and that this has created an idolatrous concept of God in the collective Christian imagination. Her critique is developed an understanding of the faith that is rooted both in divine revelation and the tradition. While there may be more room for complicated arguments regarding her claims about the Enlightenment, the claim that Johnson’s method involves judging traditional theology by some external secular standards is absurd—it is actually the very opposite of what she is trying to do.
Finally, let’s look at the Bishops’ own interaction with the sort of philosophical theology Johnson is critiquing:
Within traditional Christian theology, God is indeed the supreme being, but that means that he actually exists in a manner that is uniquely his own and so his manner of existence radically differs in kind from all else that exists. Existing in such a manner does not make God remote (Statement 5).
Here, I don’t think Johnson and the Bishops have a different conception of God. The Bishops don’t understand the metaphysics of what it means to say a “supreme Being,” or, ironically, the metaphor involved in such a statement. At the literal level, to say that God is a supreme Being is to put God within the realm of being. The word “supreme” does not indicate a difference in kind, but degree. To use “supreme Being” as a description for a God who is transcendent and immanent is to speak metaphorically—in the same way that telling a child to imagine “the biggest number ever” is a way of describing the concept of infinity. It is a shorthand for a concept that is otherwise unthinkable. To claim that such language is orthodox rather than the worst sort of onto-theology requires exactly the appeal to metaphor that Johnson is critiqued for.
But we’ll talk about religious language next time—I need to go eat dinner.
[...] In Defense of the Quest Part II: On Method [...]
Excellent! Nice job, Erin. I’m also happy to see my reading of Johnson’s text confirmed by that of the WIT authors. I agree with what you’ve presented here and think that you’ve hit these issues right on. The more I return to the report, the more confused I get. I am just not convinced that the committee members read the same book that I did, right? I’m also glad that you rightly note:
“At the literal level, to say that God is a supreme Being is to put God within the realm of being. The word “supreme” does not indicate a difference in kind, but degree.”
It is indeed the most obvious of onto-theological missteps, where is Heiddeger when we need him? Keep up the great work here!
Thanks for the support Dan. It seems like the Bishops’ statement lacks its own coherent conception of what a Christian metaphysics or theory of language looks like–which is what is so frustrating about their critique of Johnson. The “supreme being” thing really takes the cake. I don’t think it necessarily leads to the kind of onto-theology that Heidegger critiqued, but only because it functions metaphorically. It is precisely when we take such language literally that we fall into error. That the Bishops don’t realize that they themselves are using metaphorical language in a way that contradicts their explicit statements on language is very strange.
Here, I’m following the work that people like Bob Masson are doing right now in describing how metaphor functions in theological discourse. You might enjoy reading some of his work if you haven’t!
Thanks for this, Erin. My only knowledge of Johnson is through the osmosis of the ND theology lounge, so this kind of close analysis of the text(s) in question is super helpful to someone like me.
Thanks Mary, I am glad this was helpful to you!
And I prefer that you call it the “Mallounge.” I’m still trying to make that a thing. (side note: the equivalent portmanteau at Marquette would create the word Coughounge”).
In my department I think it would be the “Semitilounge,” which is kind of hilarious.
Actually, now that I have read the bishops’ report, would you mind if I pushed you further on some of the specifics of it (the extent to which its reading of Johnson converges or diverges from your own)?
“At other points, however, she seems to regard ‘modern theism’ as interchangeable with ‘traditional Christian theology’ and ‘traditional preaching and theology,’ for she reproaches the latter for the same faults as the former (73, 80).”
It seems to me that this is where their condemnation of the book stands or falls. If they are right that she presents the two as interchangeable, or even is not clear enough in distinguishing them, then their corrections hold; but since they don’t give any direct quotes, I can’t tell what they are founding their interpretation on. Their use of “seems to,” though, marks a red flag for me. They seem to be saying (there and elsewhere) that Johnson is sort of fuzzily associating Catholic teachings with all of these Bad Things, but again, they are not giving me enough of the text to tell.
So I would ask you, as someone who is good at grounding analysis in actual data: can you be more explicit about how Johnson presents the interaction between traditional Catholic teaching and modern theism in those two cited pages (the only direct citations that they give for this claim)?
(I guess I could look it up for myself, but I don’t have a copy, and if Megan has one I don’t know where it is, and she’s not here right now.)
Mary, this is a good question. In the pages that they cite, Johnson is providing a genealogy of “modern theism” which seems less like a theological position and more like a popular conception in the imaginations of Christians and non-Christians alike about what the Christian God is like. The Bishops basically argue that the term “modern theism” is vague enough–does it refer to Christian theology or Enlightenment deism?–that it allows her to slip and slide. But I think she is instead trying to diagnose a phenomenon in popular culture. It is a phenomenon that has been fed by both the Enlightenment and by bad Christian responses to the Enlightenment, particularly by bad preaching.
In this regard, I see no difference at all between her diagnosis of the contemporary situation and Michael J. Buckley’s recent work on the origins of modern atheism. In fact, given that he locates the source of modern atheism in modern theism, and Johnson likewise makes a similar argument in the podcast (and hints at such in the book) I think what we she is talking about is a broader cultural phenomenon, one that has largely resulted in atheism.
In addressing this phenomenon she never mentions a single theologian, Catholic or otherwise, so I don’t think that she is really critiquing the tradition, except to question whether we have failed to vigorously counter this idea enough.
LIkewise, I’m reading her solution as an opening up of theology rather than an explicit critique of any tradition. It seems like she would be fine with God described as “immutable” as long as we also called her “spirit” every now and then.
Does that help? I can provide more texts if you want.
Is it just me, or does this genealogical move also sound somewhat similar to the genealogy given by Walter Cardinal Kasper in Part I of “The God of Jesus Christ”? I don’t see him being skewered by any bishops’ committees over it.
Michael, I’m not really up on this issue exactly, but Johnson does recommend that book by Kasper at the end of the following chapter in her “For Further Reading Section.” I’m sure somebody from WIT can answer your question more directly though.
I also can’t speak to the Kasper connection (I haven’t read him), but let me say that I could have easily structured my analysis of this book in terms of how many 20th-century thinkers have already said everything she says (especially in regard to method and language). The book is shockingly uncontroversial.
Michael — It is absolutely similar to his genealogy. This is actually a point that I was discussing with a faculty member on Thursday: everything Johnson says in her genealogy is also said by Kasper.
This is perhaps one of the reasons that a book meant for a non-specialist audience is more vulnerable to this sort of misinterpretation: when one aims to keep the footnotes from being overwhelming or alienating, these connections are not drawn out as explicitly.
But this is something I find troubling: the question of what sort of a hermeneutic is at work to regard Johnson’s genealogy with suspicion, when it is so mainstream.
[...] On Religious Language Having examined the Bishops’ critique of Johnson’s method in my last post, I want to move on to their claims about her theory of language—particularly her claim that all [...]
AND ANOTHER THING (Sorry, the more I think about this, the more ridiculous it seems. Megan deserves most of the credit for this thought, though):
Let’s look at the roles of the people involved in this, the charges invested in them by the church (and, one must hope and believe, by God), and the ways in which they fulfill those charges.
Elizabeth Johnson is a theologian. This means, as I understand it, that her job is to push the limits of human understandings of the divine, to seek out a more perfect knowledge of God and to explore ways in which the church might be strengthened. Part of this job–as I see it, a really important part–is to make the work done by contemporary theologians available to non-specialists.
The job of a bishop is multivalent and incredibly taxing, but (again as I understand it), his or her primary role is pastoral ministry. This understanding, I have to say, is based on the structure of the Episcopal church, and I’m not sure the extent to which these roles map onto the Catholic church. But as bishops are drawn from the ordained clergy, it seems to me that these men’s primary training must be in pastoral care. The bishop is the pastor of the people, but even more specifically, the bishop provides the primary pastoral resource for those who themselves are in roles of ministerial leadership. (And, as I have seen as a priest’s daughter, a bishop can be an enormous force for good or an equally enormous force for bad.)
These bishops’ declaration–both in content and in the way in which it was carried out–seems to me to be a poor fulfillment of this role. To their congregation, they are effectively saying, “We don’t trust you to think for yourselves,” thus undermining their ability to attain a full relationship with God. (I base this statement primarily on the fact that they single the book out for criticism precisely because it is directed to a non-specialist audience.) To Johnson, the failure is far worse. By attacking her work without a full and honest engagement of it (the more carefully I read the proposal, the more it reads like someone who just doesn’t want to deal with it in real detail–or, worse, someone who doesn’t really know what such a detailed engagement with a text would look like) they show contempt for her scholarship. By doing so without seeking any kind of dialog with her beforehand, they show contempt for the mission to which she is called, and moreover, contempt for her as a person. Johnson is a member of a religious order, an educator within the church. As such, should not her well-being be their special concern?
Mary, I completely agree with this point. And further, I would argue, that part of Johnson’s vocation as a systematic theologian is to make theology relevant to contemporary society. Making theology relevant requires an examination of language and metaphors for God to ensure that our language is being heard correctly. Thus, examining how the meaning of metaphors for God have changed as society has changed and proposing new ways of speaking about God is what Johnson is supposed to be doing.
Exactly! Jessie, I am reading the parts that the Bishops are arguing as “secular” as the sections where she is the most apologetic!
Edited:
Actually, I haven’t looked this up. Does anyone know the education levels of any of the committee members? Are any of them professional theologians or have training at the doctoral level?
Yes, exactly. It’s the same problem that comes up in biblical translation–how do you translate a static text into a language that is constantly changing?
And the chair of the committee (Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington) obtained his doctorate in theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, according to Wikipedia.
Although I am pretty seriously committed to the idea that people outside of academia have the right and should have the opportunity to participate in the scholarly sphere. I don’t think you would say otherwise, but I think the point is worth reiterating. Theology is not and should not be limited to those who make it a profession–which I think is exactly what Jessie was saying. It’s just that, if you’re going to criticize a scholarly work on scholarly grounds, you have to be prepared to be evaluated by the standards of scholarship.
I also don’t think that “theology” in the fullness of that term should be limited to the academy (in fact, maybe it should exclude the academy!). BUT, as it does exist in the academy it employs its own technical vocab, in the same way that any other field does, and you have to know the language to engage with it. I’m not even sure this is a good thing, so I am really not trying to create a classist or elitist structure here. I just want to point out the very real problems of having different groups who are employing language in different ways (here: the way that the word “metaphor” is being used by the respective parties).
[...] The blog Women in Theology has a response from Johnson as well as an ongoing series defending her work (first installments here and here). [...]
[...] (which is summarized here and can be found in its entirety here), among them the excellent series going on at the WIT blog. As I note in a comment somewhere on that blog (somewhat more snarkily than was [...]
[...] Defense of the Quest Part IV: On Religious Language (ctd), Conclusions In my previous posts, I demonstrated that the Bishops misread Johnson’s critique of modern theism as well as her [...]
[...] I ; Part II ; Part III; Part [...]
[...] criticism and defended Johnson’s book against the charges leveled at it. (Introduction, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.) We also included some testimonials from some of Prof. Johnson’s former [...]
[...] treatment of Elizabeth Johnson and her most recent book, Quest for the Living God, about which WIT have had some thoughts, and on which the boards of directors of the Catholic Theological Society of [...]
[...] March responding to the theological adequacy of the bishops’ complaints: Defense of the Quest I, II, III, IV. Dan Horan of Dating God also wrote some comments about the implications of Friday’s [...]