Explorations into the Horizon of Faith. Vichara Academy for Theological Inquiry Session I, 28 May 2013, Sophia Centre.
Explorations into the Horizon of Faith
(Intro to lecture, Vichara Academy for Theol. inquiry)
Fr. Dr. K. M. George
From where I live at Devalokam, Kottayam, I have a panoramic view of the vast rice paddy fields stretching to the back waters of Kerala. Evenings are particularly delightful. The Western sky is colourful with the setting sun. Flocks of birds dot the vast-space. Sometimes there are migratory birds even from Siberia. Between the ever changing colours of clouds above and the water-locked greenery below, the birds fly around and create a wonderful choreography across the horizon.
Poetically speaking, horizon is the meeting point of earth and heaven. On the one hand it is the point where your view ends. It is in a way the closing of your vision. There is nothing more beyond if you take this fixed view of horizon.
On the other hand, if you move forward the horizon recedes. The more you advance the more it recedes. It opens up new space and reveals new landscapes. It is no more the closing of your view, but an opening up of your vision.
Horizon contains these two apparently contradictory aspects: end or closing of your vision and opening or expanding of your vision. It all depends on your position and perspective. If you remain still in one place keep looking from just one angle of vision you have the feeling that the horizon is the end. But if you keep moving forward, you experience that horizon is your making. It is the beginning and not the end. Instead of the horizon confining your view, it stretches your vision ever beyond.
To deal with the phenomenon of horizon in the right way we need to be explorers. An explorer is ever on the move, either physically, mentally or spiritually. The word has some negative historical baggage because of the colonial and imperial past. Nevertheless, we should retain the idea of the explorer since it has spiritual connotations as well.
In the Sayings of the Desert Fathers who were ascetics in Egyptian deserts in the 4thcentury, there is this oft-quoted story.
A wandering ascetic called Serapion once went to Rome where he heard about a saintly woman who always remained in her cell. The traveler monk Serapion was curious about it. He visited her and asked her, ‘Amma, why are you always sitting here?’ She said. ‘I am not sitting. I am travelling’.
Here is an explorer woman ascetic who never moves out of her ascetic’s cell but is ever on a journey. Internally she moves forward, and her spiritual horizon is also moving.
We understand Christian faith as a horizon here. You have two options. Either you can remain in your place and consider your horizon as the whole of your world and accept it as the end of all. Or you can be ever on the move and see more and more…
Nature as Scripture
(lecture notes)
(Fr. Dr. K. M. George)
1. Nature as Source of Theology
Traditional text books in Theology begin with the ‘Sources of Theology’. Depending on the Church tradition of the author, it can be Scripture alone (sola scriptura) or Scripture and Tradition or as in the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, “Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience”. There is no explicit reference to Nature or God’s creation as a source of Theology. It is important that we include Nature or the created Reality in its totality as a major source of Theology. This would agree with the old and authentic heritage of the Church.
God has written two books, said the Fathers of the Church,-the book of Law and the book of Nature.
2. Good and Evil
Nature here refers not simply to the beautiful landscape that we actually see or come across in some of the romantic poetry, but the whole of creation-both visible and invisible. The fundamental biblical affirmation is that all that God created is good. The early teachers and interpreters of faith, both in the East and the West, took this affirmation seriously and assumed it as an axiom for their theological work.
The question of evil certainly arises when we make such an affirmation of the beauty and goodness of created reality. Did God create evil? If not where did it come from?
The patristic answer is that God did not create evil and that evil is the absence of the good. It is non-being, and as such “evil has no substance or Kingdom”.
However, in our world of daily life, or the vyavaharika world, as we say in India, we have to deal with the experience of evil. We will come to this later.
3. Scriptural Function
Why do we say that Nature is also Scripture. In our understanding Scripture gives us knowledge of God, Scripture reveals to us the will of God, Scripture gives guidance in our life, Scripture helps us discern the good from evil and so on.
Nature or God’s creation carries the same function in a different way. Christians believe that Scripture is revealed. So it brings to us knowledge and insights about God, world and all life that exists on earth. Scripture is written by human hands, but is inspired writing. So according to Christian faith, it is not simply the product of human intelligence and imagination, but is the Word of God.
4. Indian tradition
There is a similar view about scripture in the Vedic tradition. Vedas are a-paurusheya, that is directly revealed to us without the assistance of human personal agency. There are no human authors for the Vedas. The Islamic tradition also holds that Quran was unilaterally revealed, and impersonally written by the prophet Muhammad who was illiterate. The prophet’s inability to read and write, in a way, heightens, by contrast, the power of revelation.
5. Revelatory dimension of Nature
When we say that Nature is one of the sources of theology we highlight its revelatory dimension as far as our knowledge of God is concerned, and its guiding function as regards our personal life.
We have scripture’s own testimony as to the revelatory aspect of Nature. For example: Psalm 19: “Heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament his handiwork ….”
Or Rom. 1:20- “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made”.
This is the basis for what is called “Natural theology”. But we are not going in that direction for the moment.
6. Idol-Making out of Nature
So Nature is given a certain scriptural status here. However a strong warning is in order here, following up what St. Paul tells us. The major risk is that natural phenomena or created things can be made into idols.
“For although they knew God they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles” (Rom 1:21-23).
This can happen also in our attitude to the Scripture or Bible. What is called ‘bibliolatry’ is precisely the idol-making our of words and sentences composed by human beings. The whole idea of the absolute inerrancy of the Bible is not part of the authentic Christian tradition.
As Gregory of Nyssa puts it, this idolization can happen even at the conceptual plane when we reflect on God. Our theological concepts can become idols of God and create an impenetrable screen between us and God.
7. The Epistemological Gulf
According to the classical teachers of Faith, we cannot logically move from creation to the creator except in a limited way. When we consider the incomprehensibly profound nature of God’s Being, the created reality cannot grasp it in any meaningful way. There is a chasm, an epistemological gulf between the Creator and what is created as far as our ability to know is concerned.
Paulos Mar Gregorios points this out in connection with his outlining of Gregory of Nyssa’s theology. The connection between erga (works or products), energia (operations) and theousia (essence) of God’s being cannot be logically pursued. “The wind is the energeia which creates the ergon of a sand dune. But if you did not know what the wind was, how can you move from the knowledge of a sand-dune to the knowledge of the wind? Or in today’s terms would a photograph or a green leaf constitute sufficient ground to understand the nature of light? Can you understand a human being from his excretions or from a ship which are both his erga?” (A Human God, MGF/Spectrum Books, 1992, p.17) Mar Gregorios say that Gregory of Nyssa rejects the principle of analogia entis (analogy of being) or analogia fidei (analogy of faith) as in medieval European scholastic theology, but concedes only analogia metousias(analogy of participation). The degree of participation in the energeia of God means the degree of conformity to the good by the impulsion of the will of each towards the Good. We can only know the energeia of God. This knowledge does not lead to the ousia or the incomprehensible essence of the God head.
8. The Interpreter’s Role
The problem of idolization or idol worship does not lie with created reality or with our language or letters, but with our attitude. We are the interpreters of Scripture whether it is Nature or Bible. So we are thrown back to the issue of the Human Being as the Interpreter. The problem of hermeneutics, the science of interpretations, here lies with us the Interpreter.
Who or What am I in relation to the created Nature or the heard or written scripture? How do I approach them?
9. Participation or Separation?
In asserting that we are created in God’s image and likeness are we setting a radical distinction between us human beings and the rest of creation? If God is the creator of both humans and the rest of creation, does the rest of creation also carry any stamp of God’s will and love?
In the Western interpretation of the Genesis passage the distinction between human beings and all other creation is an unbridgeable gap. God, world and humanity are isolated entities. The later conflict between science and religion, for example, is an outcome of this separation. In the Eastern tradition, however, there is the idea of participation (metousia). Although the distinction between the Creator and the Created reality, as well as the distinction between humanity and the rest is maintained at the epistemological level, the world can participate in human nature, and the human nature can participate in God’s nature.
10. The Joy and Suffering of Creation
The created world can rejoice or suffer depending on human attitude: “How long will the land mourn, and the grass of every field wither? For the wickedness of those who dwell in it the beasts and the birds are swept away…..” (Jer. 12:4).
When human beings live in justice and peace, caring for each other, without greedy exploitation of the earth’s resources, the earth will rejoice. As Lynn White and other have been saying for the last 50 years or so the Western human attitude to creation has been that of domination and exploitation of nature, justifying it on the basis of the Genesis account of creation: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Gen. 1:29).
11. From exploitation to Communion
In the midst of the ecological crisis we need to recapture the ancient idea of participation- humanity and the all the rest of creation participating in each other’s life in a spirit of love, compassion and the common good of all. In the same way, the human being, as “the priest of creation”, can lead all God’s creation to participate in the love and grace of the Creator God.
Deep ecologists like Arne Naes of Norway would argue that man cannot judge the rest of creation, because everything in the world has its own inherent value. It is not in terms of its usefulness for man that we should understand other creatures and the natural world.
The challenge before us is: how can we change our attitude to nature in such a way that we can restore the holiness and value of God’s creation? Remember God saw that everything that He created was good. How can we cultivate communion and participation instead of domination and exploitation? How can we regain a holistic approach to created reality as carrying the stamp of God’s loving care and goodness?
