Lynne Renoir’s God Interrogated: Reinterpreting the Divine is part spiritual project, part intellectual feat, one which wrestles with religion’s most notoriously difficult and impenetrable topic—the idea of God. The book includes a consideration of the various theological discussions and debates surrounding God’s nature, existence, and origin that have gone on within the Abrahamic faith traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) for centuries. And yet, as daunting as the inquiry may be, the matter of God’s existence seems to constitute the crux of what makes religious belief difficult (if not entirely impossible) for many people living in today’s (so-called) secular culture. There is both an urgency and a necessity to this work of reigniting our spiritual imagination and assessing its capacity to embrace the possibility that an entity beyond what we see with our physical senses may nonetheless exist. The work of “interrogating God” is therefore not a concession to doubt or a collapse into blasphemy, it is rather a courageous and contextual confrontation of contemporary Western secularist assumptions which tend to undermine the paradoxes of faith, holy mystery, and the imaginative expansiveness of both spirituality and the divine.
Standing on a solid foundation of thousands of years of theological history in which God’s existence was as factual as the existence of water or air, God Interrogated advances a cause of return without necessarily championing a simplistic reversion to an older theistic ideology, which some might consider conservative or traditionalist (politically, theologically, or otherwise). Renoir clearly has these and other pitfalls in mind and seems keenly aware of the psychological limits our modern cultural context—which can feel vacuous and plagued with uncertainty, even for the most devoted of believers—places on our desire to commit to “seeking the divine” in our lives without abashment and self-consciousness (11). This prevents any kind of romantic reassertion of “traditional” theistic ideas or creeds, a project which holds value only for those already grounded in that framework, not for anyone outside it. And yet, the void left by this very uncertainty and vacuousness has left many of us with an inner sense of spiritual malaise without a place to land; this is arguably an important impetus for writing a book that takes stock of the arguments and assumptions that have been utilized in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to support God’s existence.
Of course, these are arguments and assumptions which carry less weight in today’s modern society. As Renoir puts it in the introduction, most modern societies equate truth with “the correctness of facts… in recent years, what have previously been regarded as the unassailable truths of our existence on this planet, have been shown to be enveloped in a fundamental ambiguity.” It should be noted that this is very much a Western phenomenon and that the spiritual losses she identifies in the West are not automatically issues for other cultures and communities around the world. It is somewhat regrettable that in her quest to reinvigorate inquiry into the existence of God, Renoir did not consult traditions or textual resources outside the “Abrahamic faiths.”
This is not to say that she does not take fresh and novel approaches to exploring the God question, but this is an insider’s mission exploring the legacy of a crumbling religious past, one thrown into question by outright cynicism or newer scientific understandings of our reality (it’s hard not to think about Adrienne Rich’s poem “Diving into the Wreck” as a similar effort with respect to patriarchy’s cultural legacy). I especially appreciated her engagement with science in Section 2 where she noted the parallels between the logic of creation and evolution’s alternative account in the Big Bang theory (103). One can clearly see Renoir’s restraint in deferring to already-answered questions or the traditional view of God as an all-powerful being who created the universe and governs it according to his will. Instead, she attempts to stake out space for God to exist within a scientific worldview that speaks the language of quantum physics, for example, instead of poetry or mythology.
Another strength of the book is its discussion of religious experience with respect to the God question. Renoir argues that, yes, God’s existence can be challenged (or affirmed) along philosophical lines, or that it can be harmonized with modern science and its discoveries in material reality. On the other hand, she suggests that it is evident personal and subjective experiences of transformation can occur in the lives of individuals who wholeheartedly embrace religious beliefs; as she explains, the “intense and intimate nature of these [life] experiences has been claimed by believers and certain religious thinkers to demonstrate the reality of God’s existence” (8). Thus Chapter 12 examines more thoroughly the arguments for and against the idea that the existence of God can be established through the experience of believers. Renoir reminds her reader that there is precedence for this as she deftly synthesizes insights from psychology, neuroscience, and evidence from sacred texts demonstrating how religious traditions have given prominence to emotions in religious experience (158-164).
It seems the fundamental idea here is that a person can arrive at a knowledge of God even without answering overarching abstract questions, because truth is also found in the inner dimensions of a person’s being—it is not something that is always imposed from an external source. Renoir’s work is itself the result of her own difficulties in experiencing the transformation she sought through her Christin faith and followed years of research undertaken in the areas of philosophy, science, and psychology (viii). Far from being indicative of spiritual bankruptcy, interrogation seems to be the well-worn path to finding God, a standard approach undertaken by nearly every major figure in religious history. There’s a case to be made that interrogation, exploration, and reconsideration of what was inherited and once held to be irrefutably true is necessary to driving the cycle of spiritual renewal, and that these are the ideal conditions in which creative thinking and imagining can thrive. As with so many other areas of the human experience, evangelical Christianity is notorious for vilifying any moves toward theological thinking which surrenders dogmatic certainty to allow God’s Spirit to illuminate anew. What’s refreshing about Interrogating God is Renoir’s ability to wrestle with God—as Jacob did in the bible—from within a culture which seems to have settled the issue of his irrelevance.
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