Putting God back in the church

Our problem is our view of biblical texts through the eyes of modernity blinds us to the texts’ original meaning - to the extent that we miss the extremely puzzling and paradoxical nature of biblical speech about God. The many examples of this could be teased out only in a larger work.

When our speech about God begins in the Bible instead of philosophical presuppositions, the God we arrive at is quite different - so different that John can tell us:

So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. (1 John 4:16 NRSV)

This language about God has no counterpart in the modern project, and only when we escape from its limitations can such a text make any sense. Only when we escape from the God of the 17th century scientist-theologians - the God that Newton believed in - can we hear what the Bible is saying to us.

God is not a being among beings. By centering his theology on the Word of God rather than the being of God, Karl Barth moved from the modern paradigm to the postmodern - before it was a recognised movement.

God thus ceases to be the subject of philosophical or scientific speculation, but is experienced as a spoken word. This word has content, not in the words of scripture, but in the reality to which scripture points - the humanism that emerged from Israel’s struggle with truth and in the man, Jesus.

This is the central reality of Christian worship, where the Word is faithfully preached and the sacraments celebrated. God is with His people. When this is affirmed, all speculation about God’s existence as being evaporates, making the scientist-theologians with their cosmological proofs redundant.

The Church’s long decline during the past few hundred years began when God was taken out of the Church and became an object of scientific speculation. It was entirely predictable this would produce the dominant heresy of the modern age, Unitarianism, since the modern paradigm could not cope with God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

When Newton could not affirm the doctrine of the Trinity (ironically residing, himself, at Trinity College, Cambridge), the king gave him dispensation to retain his post. In retrospect, this was a major concession to theological error and, given Newton’s fame, helped fragment the faith of the Church.

Understanding God in terms other than being requires considerable education against our natural tendency to think in terms of person.

We must speak about God in terms of person because He cannot be reduced to knowledge or force or process. Rather, he is in relation with us. But we must also remember He is not a person among persons. He does not exist in matter - especially not in a contradictory supernatural matter - but in the spirit of freedom and truth.

Only when we escape from the false orientations and restrictions modernity has imposed on us, can God be given back to the Church.Stanley Hauerwas has entitled an essay “In a world without foundations: all we have is the church.”