Nostri Patri?

So, I must admit, I failed my expectations for the weekend. Fortunately, however, I *might* be done with my thesis, so all is not lost. I am going to try, though, to finish the 3 posts I promised. So this is post number 2.
In my last post, I suggested that there is a lot in theology that is untenable. If it does not help people pastorally or ethically, and preferably in both ways, then it is rather useless for religion. This does not mean we should just do away with anything we think is extra, as many parts of religion (for example, vestments, hymns, incense and liturgies, etc) have powerful effects on people pastorally. We do have to consider, however, whether this is the case for any given issue. For example, after Vatican II, most religious sisters were no longer required to wear habits, and now most in the Western world do not. However, in Asian and African countries, many sisters still wear habits, as it is understood and perceived differently in these cultures.
To continue along this line of thinking, however, I want to bring into question the entirety of the Patristics period. I have known many professors and students alike who hold strongly to the early Fathers. After all, it seems, these men established the ground rules for theology. In fact, during the Reformation, John Calvin and Martin Luther largely drew from Augustine's thought rather than the more comprehensive Thomas Aquinas or any other Medieval theologian.
Don't get me wrong here. I don't doubt the impact that the early Church Fathers had. If nothing else, I can appreciate how much they contributed to Christian understandings of, well, just about everything. However, this is what makes me quite nervous. The names of Jerome, Augustine, Athanasius, Gregory of Nissa, Gregory Naziansus, John Chrysostom, Origen and others are almost untouchable. We can't call anything they say into question or we seem like bad Christians. But I am right now calling this into question. Allow me to explain why.
In the first place, they introduced into Christianity a lot of Hellenistic thought, particularly of a Platonic nature. This is not necessarily bad, but it led to a lot of confusion and intellectual acrobatics. The Semitic tradition of Palestine did not require a Platonic understanding of the world to work. The Platonic view of God tends to be utterly transcendent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and profoundly other. The Biblical view of God tends to be much more personal and relational. The entire Bible can be read as a story of the developing relationship of this God YHWH and the people he creates and develops a loving relationship with. It is a profound love story that has given countless millions hope in this life when none other was there. Contrast this with the Platonic God who is so utterly other that, as St Thomas says, we can only say anything is like God by analogy and not by any degree of reality. This creates the great problem of trying to resolve the apparent contradictions of the Bible, a book written by Jews in the Palestine region, with a Greek understanding of the Ultimate. The two are not compatible because they were never meant to be. The Biblical understanding of God was not oriented at informing Greek philosophers just as Plato (despite what Origen thinks) was not trying to introduce Semitic Monotheism into Greek culture.
Now, don't get me wrong. I think we can understand Christianity better using other subjects of knowledge. I appreciate theologians who incorporate psychology, sociology, evolution and other sciences into their theology, and I owe a lot to St Thomas' combination of Aristotelian ethics with Christianity. However, the Patristics took it all a step further. Rather than using Plato's philosophy as a tool for theology, they tried to force an unhappy marriage between the two. Thus, we get the Christological controversy.
I cannot stand the Christological debates of the third through fifth centuries in the least. These were the great debates where the best minds in the theological world tried to define God. Out of these debates we get the Trinitarian "formula" and the conception of two natures within the person of Jesus. Words like "hypostatis," "prosopon," "physis," "natura," "ousious," "sarx," and "anima" were thrown around like candy at a parade. If none of those words meant anything to you, don't worry. Often times people were condemned for getting these ideas wrong, or putting them in the wrong order. If you want to be a good, orthodox Christian, you have to say that Jesus is 1 ousious with the Father, the Trinity is 3 prosopa but 1 natura, Jesus has 2 physeis but is 1 prosopon, and Jesus has a fully human sarx, anima, and logos which is combined but not mixed with his divine natura and logos. If you missed one of these apparently vitally important notions, congratulations, you're condemned for the next 1600 years as a heretic.
I have four big reasons for why I don't like the Christological controversy. 1) It's extremely arrogant. It seems rather stupid to condemn others for not believing God to be exactly constituted the way that you think God is, even though the Platonic view (which gives us the lovely vocabulary list above) insists that God is wholly other and everything is related to God purely by analogy. Furthermore, none of these terms makes any real sense, either for human beings or for God. At some point, it all becomes a competition to see how complex of a Christology you can derive before you have to admit that God is mysterious. It's not enough to say Jesus is God but the Father is God and how that works is a divine mystery. Rather, we are forced to say Jesus has a human body, human mind and human soul that is somehow unmixed with God but also has a fully divine nature and the way they're combined is the mystery. 2) It's all unbiblical. At no point does the Father say, "I am one in ousious with the Son" nor does Jesus ever say, "My divine logos is willing, but my human logos is weak." Yes, there is some contradiction in the Bible. But as Kierkegaard and Tillich point out, part of being a Christian is accepting what seems absurd. We don't have to come up with an overly complicated formula to completely understand it. 3) These terms are utterly confusing. Not everyone could agree on their meanings when the formulae were established and they left that to other theologians to figure out. If this seems minor, let me reiterate: Men were condemned because they did not use the right Greek term for substance or soul but the men who won did not know exactly why they won. And yet we still consider this orthodox? 4) These ideas can no longer be held with our modern understandings of the universe. We no longer assume a soul-body dualism that allows us to maintain sarx vs anima anymore and so teasing out all of these distinctions is not only useless but a waste of time today. We have a more nuanced anthropology of humanity and (I hope) a better understanding of God and if we talk about God's "substance" today, we should expect to be ridiculed.
Of course, there are also many other reasons why I think we should be reluctant to give the Fathers any real credibility today. Augustine was clearly a misogynist who often changed his mind to argue against different people and used dirty politics when he lost (such as when he originally lost against Pelagius). Origen reportedly castrated himself and wanted to be martyred but his mother hid his clothes so he was afraid to run outside naked in front of the Roman soldiers (Oedipal much?). Jerome was also a misanthrope who went to live in a cave to get away from all people. Nobody during the Patristics period was pure, and yet, we maintain their views as if there are no problems. If any of their writings were published today, they would immediately be criticized for being misogynistic, anti-semites who employ logical fallacies and rhetorical showmanship in order to win over their audiences. And yet, this is what we consider true doctrine.
Now, once again, I do not mean to say we need to get rid of everything the early Fathers said. I do think, however, that we need to realize that the burden of proof now lies on them, rather than modern critics. If we excuse away their odious attitudes as relics of an age past, we must also excuse away their doctrine as relics of an age past. Rather than accepting all they say, except for the parts that are clearly not useable, I think we should rather only accept those things from them which are useable. It is time we move beyond the ignorant views of a bygone era and begin to view Christianity as something more positive.

The purpose of theology?

Yes, I did want that to be a question mark at the end of my title. And yes, I apologize for being so terrible at updating my blog. In return, I shall try to post a few this weekend. I've got three topics on my mind, and I hope they play out logically and sort of systematically. Bear with me here. 
First, I want to talk about the purpose of theology. Thomas Aquinas talks about theology being the highest science because its subject is the greatest subject (ie, God) that we can study. Anselm talks about theology as "faith seeking understanding." But when theologians try to "build a framework" that is chalk-full of highfalutin vocabulary and largely inaccessible to any but the most studied audiences, I have to really call into question the mindset of the theologian.
But before I get into criticizing people who make a great deal of every last detail of doctrine, I should just make my point. Theology is really about two things: how to live your life, and how to take care of your soul. The soul portion of this could be modified or understood as the pastoral lens. That is, priests and ministers study theology so they can better help the people in their care to find hope, faith and love. The life portion is most clearly illustrated in ethics, and it is (in my opinion) supposed to be an application of pastoral aspect of religion in real life. I think these two aspects are most important because I believe this is why people go to church, and why every religion (at least that I can think of) has both a system of eschatology and ethics.
Every piece of theology, then, must be evaluated in relationship to these two broad functions of religion. Every dogma and piece of doctrine should either be designed to pastorally guide someone or ethically direct someone. Of course, it should never be the case that the two aspects of religion are completely divorce, so what you believe pastorally should be reflected in what you believe ethically. 
Let me provide an example. The doctrine of "imago dei" (human beings being made in the image and likeness of God) is useful pastorally because it means that we have a special relationship with God. This in turn means that humanity is essentially good and has a great destiny and can be understood as a positive understanding of the world and our relationship to it. For those who have a negative self-image or a sense of worthlessness, this doctrine can be incredibly helpful. On the ethical side of things, however, this means that the way we treat other human beings is reflective of how we are treating the images and likeness of God. Human social interaction becomes much more important when we understand our work as being directed at God. As Jesus says in Matthew 25, "Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you have done it unto me." Thus, imago dei serves as both a pastoral message of hope and a strong social norm.
We can do this with many other doctrines within Christianity. But at some point we end up finding doctrines that are, frankly, quite puzzling. For example, I find much of the nuanced view of systematics to be neither helpful ethically nor pastorally. If I have to imagine God, for example, as completely immutable, unemotional and unchanging, I might begin to think of God as uncaring, which is a rather unhelpful concept of God. Similarly, I might think of my work as being unnecessary, which prevents any sense of necessity for living an ethical life.
We can do this with all sorts of doctrines. The Lutheran doctrine of sola fides is unhelpful ethically, just as a more rigorous view of casuistry is unhelpful pastorally. Doctrines about the Trinity or the human-divine nature of Jesus are only helpful insofar as they can be applied to ethics or pastoral work. Understandings of God as transcendent or "wholly other" can also be unhelpful. 
What I mean to say is, when I go to Mass and take the Eucharist, does having a nuanced understanding of transubstantiation or satisfaction theories of atonement enable me to be spiritually enrichened? When I go out into the world and conduct my everyday business, does an understanding of Jesus as being "of two natures" and Mary as "theotokos" really help me to be a better person?
The history of the Church is sometimes a history of condemning persons who just happened to not share the same view on a minimally important issue. It seems to me that condemning Arius for not understanding Jesus as both divine and is far less important than stopping the slaughter of innocents in the Crusades or torture in the Spanish Inquisition. Why are we worried about getting the fine points of our doctrines of "the wholly transcendent" right while we grossly neglect our ethical obligations, or our pastoral duties?
This is particularly applicable today. Rome has been preoccupied with making the Mass translations "more accurate" (though less idiomatic) and condemning people who think women can become priests. Instead, it should be focusing on how to reach out to women in general, LGBTQ men and women, people who have been sexually abused by clergy, and women who have undergone traumatic events. Rather than condemning mandated birth control, the Vatican ought to be listening to the needs of the people. 
I think by and large the laity gets this. Catholics today tend to be more concerned about social justice issues and less concerned about every word that comes out of the Vatican. Catholics DON'T believe in the inherent evil of birth control, abortion or homosexuality. Catholics DO believe in the grace of God, the importance of the love command, and the need to aid the poor and afflicted. Most of all, I think, Catholics believe in the true Christian message, preached by Jesus, in the Gospels.
Anything that does not further aid people pastorally or guide people in a loving way to live their lives like Jesus is at best unhelpful, and at worst, utterly worthless theologically.