The One in the Many: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World Relationship
248
The One in the Many: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World Relationship
248Paperback
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802848925 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company |
| Publication date: | 09/10/2001 |
| Pages: | 248 |
| Sales rank: | 673,323 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d) |
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THE ONE IN THE MANY
A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World RelationshipBy JOSEPH A. BRACKEN
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Copyright © 2001 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-4892-5
Chapter One
The Shift to Intersubjectivity within Catholic Theology
There is, as I see it, a paradigm shift taking place in contemporary Roman Catholic theology away from the classical worldview of Thomas Aquinas and other scholastic thinkers in which the philosophy of Aristotle plays such an important role to a more interpersonal approach to the God-world relationship in which God is thought to be constantly interacting with creatures in the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. In most quarters, this shift in methodology has been warmly welcomed. Karl Rahner's book The Trinity, for example, has had such an enormous influence on contemporary trinitarian theology largely because he distanced himself from the classical treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity with its focus on the "immanent Trinity" or the inner life of God apart from creation and instead directed attention to the "economic Trinity" understood as God's self-communication to creatures, above all, to human beings. What is not so clear in Rahner's presentation, however, is the theoretical framework for this new interpersonal approach to the God-world relationship. His "formal exposition of the concept of God's self-communication" in terms of four pairs of interrelated concepts, that is, (a) Origin-Future; (b) History-Transcendence; (c) Invitation-Acceptance; (d) Knowledge-Love, by his own admission is more a brief sketch than a full-scale presentation of a new interpersonal understanding of the God-world relationship.
Furthermore, in my view, Rahner never fully resolved the inevitable tension between this new interpersonal approach to the God-world (or God-human) relation and the classical Thomistic understanding of that same relation. The model of God as interpersonally involved with human beings, for example, calls into question the classical understanding of divine immutability. But, when Rahner alternately pictures God as Ipsum Esse Subsistens or the unchanging ground of being for all creation, then God's relation to creatures is no longer strictly interpersonal. That is, precisely as the unchanging ground of being for creation, God is more the impersonal "horizon" for the drive to self-transcendence on the part of human beings rather than the Personal Other with whom one is in ongoing dialogue. As I have pointed out elsewhere, there is a way to resolve this tension in the understanding of God's relation to human beings, if one distinguishes properly between person and nature within God. That is, human beings have an interpersonal relation with each of the divine persons, but they are empowered to relate thus to the divine persons only in and through their created participation in the divine nature, the unchanging divine act of being. The divine nature, in other words, is first the enabling principle of existence and activity for the three divine persons in their mutual interrelation; then, by the free choice of those same divine persons, it is likewise the enabling principle or ground of being for all creatures in their relationships to one another and to the divine persons. But this model is somewhat removed from Rahner's own conception of the God-world relationship. Hence, the tension in his thought between the classical Thomistic understanding of the God-world relationship and the new interpersonal approach to that same relationship which he himself evidently favors appears to be unresolved.
In any event, my purpose in the present chapter will be to argue that only a consciously conceived metaphysics of intersubjectivity such as I have hinted at above, with its starting-point in the coexistence of subjects of experience in dynamic interrelation at different levels of reality, will in the end prove to be a worthy successor to the all-embracing metaphysics of being worked out by Thomas Aquinas and his successors. Neo-Thomism as represented by Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, and others, on the contrary, seems to be more a form of philosophical/theological anthropology than a cosmology or metaphysics as with Thomas Aquinas. That is, its starting-point is the individual human being in his or her drive toward transcendence through dynamic relationship with the Other, both divine and human. While this is from the perspective of Roman Catholic orthodoxy an enormous improvement over the methodological starting-point of Immanuel Kant and his followers, it still indirectly reflects the individualistic substance-oriented metaphysics of Aquinas and Aristotle. As we shall see below, the late Catherine LaCugna argued passionately for the substitution of "person" for "substance" as the first category of Being. But, in my judgment, a fully-developed social ontology or metaphysics of intersubjectivity should begin not with an individual person even when it is consciously conceived as in ongoing relation with others, but with multiple persons who are corporately one even before they think of themselves as separate individuals. The group or social totality rather than the individual entity, in other words, should be the starting-point for a bona fide social ontology or metaphysics of intersubjectivity.
In the following pages, accordingly, I will first offer some generalized remarks on the basic differences in orientation between a Thomistic and a Whiteheadian worldview and briefly review what I view as the advantages of the Whiteheadian scheme for a more interpersonal understanding of the God-world relationship. Then I will make clear how the objections of two prominent French Roman Catholic philosopher/theologians to the use of metaphysics in analyzing our human relationship to God can be satisfactorily met if one shifts to a Whiteheadian understanding of that relationship. Finally, I will review the much-acclaimed work of Catherine LaCugna and Elizabeth Johnson in recent years on the God-world relationship and indicate what seem to be shortcomings in their respective theories because they have not completely endorsed the implications of a social ontology or metaphysics of intersubjectivity. Their respective worldviews, in other words, are evidently no longer Thomistic in the strict sense; but basic presuppositions of that same metaphysical system still persist in their thinking about the God-world relationship which, if revised, would make their work far more consistent and for that reason much more persuasive.
A. Thomistic and Whiteheadian Worldviews in Contrast
To the best of my knowledge, no one disputes the notion that Thomas Aquinas heavily relied upon the philosophy of Aristotle in constructing his own philosophical theology as expressed in the Summa Theologiae. Such a philosophical understanding of reality lends itself to clearly defined objective relationships in which causes and effects are carefully distinguished from one another. Nothing, in other words, can be its own cause, can bring itself into existence: Quidquid movetur movetur ab alio (whatever is moved is moved by another). Even within individual things which are said to move themselves, one part of the entity does the moving and the other part is moved. Moreover, the part which does the moving is moved by an outside agent to perform that action and thus to pass from potency to act. Admittedly, within the philosophy of Aristotle and the theology of Aquinas, there is apparently one exception: namely, the Unmoved Mover for Aristotle and God for Aquinas. But the exception is only apparent since the Aristotelian Unmoved Mover and the Thomistic God are pure actuality and thus never pass from potency to act. Accordingly, they have no need for an outside agent to move them from potency to act; they are always in act. But at the same time they are not in the strict sense self-actualizing realities. They do not experience ongoing self-realization since there is literally nothing more to actualize.
Given the rigor of this causal scheme for the God-world relationship, one may safely conclude that the Unmoved Mover for Aristotle and God for Aquinas are formally conceived not so much as dynamic subjects of experience but rather as fixed objects of thought, ultimate terms within a comprehensive set of cause-effect relationships which governs all the entities in the material world. For that matter, neither are the individual entities of this world genuinely conceived as subjects of experience since they too are theoretically related to one another as objective terms of various cause-effect relationships rather than as self-creative or self-actualizing realities vis-à-vis one another. Here one might well object that within the theology of Aquinas there is explicit mention of entities that move themselves and thus are in some sense self-creative. As Elizabeth Johnson points out, for Aquinas "it is a measure of the creative power of God to raise up creatures who participate in divine being to such a degree that they are also creative and sustaining in their own right." Thus God through the exercise of primary causality sustains in being entities which exercise their own secondary causality in order to attain the end for which they were created. In the case of human beings, this means that God sustains them in the exercise of their intellect and free will. Even when human beings misuse their intellect and free will to commit sin, God sustains them in that physical activity and, more importantly for our purposes, orders even that objectively evil action to the universal good of the world order. Nothing, therefore, escapes the plan of divine providence.
This last remark alerts us, however, to what I perceive as one of the basic flaws in Thomas's understanding of the God-world relationship. For Aquinas stipulates that the end to which creation is directed in virtue of divine providence is extrinsic to creation itself; the end of creation is the divine goodness as the universal good to which all particular goods chosen by creatures are necessarily ordered. Furthermore, this universal good of divine goodness is further specified in terms of an order for the world known and willed by God in its entirety from all eternity. Since there is only one eternal act of knowing and willing within God which both constitutes the divine being and at the same time sets the pattern for the order of creation, the order of creation is fully actualized just as God's own being is fully actualized. As Aquinas himself notes, the plan for the order of creation preexists in the mind of God.
The logical consequence of this line of thought, however, is implicitly what may be called theological determinism. Every action taking place within creation is known and willed by God as part of a comprehensive scheme for the order and direction of creation as a whole. There can be no changes or alterations in this scheme with the passage of time since, as Aquinas sees it, God knows and wills every action of creatures precisely as it is taking place within the cosmic process. Thus, even though God knows and wills the individual free actions of human beings, these same free actions fit into a plan of creation which is known and willed in its entirety from all eternity as part of God's own divine act of being. Hence, contrary to Aquinas's own intentions with respect to human free choice, his scheme for divine providence over creation as a whole would seem to be a type of theological determinism, since nothing is left to chance in terms of the overall divine plan for creation.
I turn now to the Whiteheadian scheme for the God-world relationship in which causality, to be sure, still plays a role but in which "the final real things of which the world is made up" are conceived not as objects of thought, that is, as terms in an objective causal scheme, but as momentary subjects of experience in dynamic interrelation within a social context which is itself in process of evolution. In contrast to the above-mentioned worldview of Aristotle and Aquinas, therefore, everything ultimately exists in terms of self-causation: Quidquid movetur movetur a se, non ab alio (whatever is moved is moved by itself, not by another). Naturally, as we will see more at length in chapter five, Whitehead also postulates that this self-causation of the individual subject of experience is heavily conditioned by its social context or past world; here is where traditional notions of efficient causality play their limited role within Whitehead's scheme. But, since it ultimately is responsible for the way in which it exists in virtue of a self-constituting "decision" (cf. Glossary), Whitehead's actual occasion or momentary subject of experience cannot be fitted into a comprehensive scheme of cause-effect relationships governing the whole of creation after the manner of Aristotle and Aquinas. It is not, in other words, simply the effect of the causal activity of another entity; it is rather in the first place the agent of its own self-constitution.
Thus chance or, more precisely, spontaneity is in principle present at every moment and at every level of creation even though these spontaneous self-creations of actual occasions have in most cases a way of "averaging out" to produce the continuities in persons and things which we have come to expect in ordinary experience. Furthermore, moral evil or sin on the part of human beings is within this scheme clearly the result of the individual's own decision even though God according to Whitehead is likewise at work through the provision of divine "initial aims" (cf. Glossary): in the first place to counsel against the evil decision in question and then, after the fact, to assist in "damage control," that is, in helping the individual human being and others affected by the evil decision to cope with the inevitable negative consequences of that same decision.
Another way to make the same point is to reflect upon the different ways in which primary and secondary causality are understood first in Thomistic metaphysics and then equivalently in Whitehead's scheme. Within Thomistic metaphysics the primary cause uses the secondary cause as an instrument for the execution of its purposes. For example, a carpenter uses a hammer to drive a nail into a wooden board. Even when the secondary cause is itself a cause with respect to still other effects, as a secondary cause it is still instrumental to the intention and activity of the primary cause. St. Thomas, for example, at one place in the Summa Theologiae describes the humanity of Jesus as the "conjoined instrument" of Jesus in his divinity or as a divine person. But this means that the free actions of Jesus fit into a plan or order of creation willed by Jesus as a divine person together with the Father and the Spirit from all eternity as part of their unchanging divine being. The same, of course, would be true of all other human beings insofar as they are understood to be secondary causes empowered to exist by God as the primary cause of their existence and activity.
Within the Whiteheadian scheme, on the other hand, the primary causality is exercised by the creature, the actual occasion in process of concrescence (cf. Glossary), not by God as supplying divine initial aims to enable the creature to make its decision. Contrary to the Thomistic scheme, therefore, in the Whiteheadian scheme divine causality is instrumental to the exercise of primary causality by the finite actual occasion in its self-constituting decision. Moreover, God cannot know the decision of the creature until the creature actually makes the decision. So there is no way that the creature's decision can fit into an unchanging divine plan for the order of creation. God's "plan" for creation within Whitehead's metaphysics is totally contingent upon the self-constituting decisions of creatures from moment to moment. All that God can envision for the future of creation is the realization of various key values such as truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, or peace. But the way in which these values will be realized is left up to the creature, not up to God.
Once again, therefore, we are confronted with the logical consequences of two quite different worldviews. In the end, therefore, one seems driven to choose between these two competing worldviews and their corresponding value-systems. Keeping this in mind, I turn now to a brief overview of the thought of several contemporary Roman Catholic philosopher/theologians who, like Rahner, seem to be "midstream" between a classical Thomistic understanding of the God-world relationship and a new more heavily interpersonal approach to the same issue.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE ONE IN THE MANY by JOSEPH A. BRACKEN Copyright © 2001 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Excerpted by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword, by Philip Clayton....................viiiAcknowledgments....................xii
Introduction....................1
1. The Shift to Intersubjectivity within Catholic Theology....................15
2. Language and Objectivity in an Intersubjective Context....................49
3. The One and the Many Revisited....................77
4. Intersubjectivity: The Vertical Dimension....................109
5. Intersubjectivity: The Horizontal Dimension....................131
6. The Need for Common Ground in the Religion and Science Debate....................157
Appendix: A Research Program for the Future....................179
Glossary of Technical Terms....................218
Bibliography....................222
Index....................230