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9. Reasons for the Ideological Triumph of the Positive
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9 Reasons for the Ideological Triumph of the Positive In part 1 of Professing the Faith, “Theology: The Christian Doctrine of God,” Hall explores Christian thought regarding the Deity in historical, critical, and constructive perspectives (see chapter 4 above, “The Sisyphus Syndrome,” for an explanation of these categories). In the critical section (“Questioning the Father Almighty”), from which this excerpt is taken, Hall asks the reader to consider this hypothesis: “The Christian doctrine of God has tended to accentuate the aspects of transcendence and power, as befits a patriarchally conceived deity in the service of empire; but in doing so it has severely jeopardized the essence of God testified to in Holy Scripture, and has risked confirming belief in God to contexts amenable to ‘positive religion’” (1993:92). Relative to the previous chapter on the theologia crucis, we can see here how the theologia gloriae has taken precedence in the North American context, and our theologies have become captive to the demands of establishment religion—Christendom. (Readers should also note that Hall capitalizes the word Theology when he is referring to the Christian doctrine of God, but lowercases it when he is referring to the general discipline.) Source: Hall 1993:101–8. Summarizing the discussion thus far, we may suggest that: (1) in its zeal to present the knowledge of God as a triumph over ignorance and doubt, historic Christendom forfeited the language of faith; (2) in its zeal to present the being of God as a triumph over nonbeing, historic Christendom forfeited the language of suffering love; (3) in its zeal to present the work of God as a triumph over evil, death, and sin, historic Christendom forfeited the language of hope. Or, to speak less absolutely, if in each case the language or mode of reflection was 129 not altogether forfeited, neither was it adequately explored and exploited. And, given the centrality of these three categories in biblical thought (and not only in 1 Corinthians 13), one must certainly ask why they were not exploited. Three types of reasons may be given in response—one from the standpoint of psychic and “religious” considerations; one on the basis of philosophic influences in the life of the early church; and one relating to the political functioning of the Christian profession concerning deity. The first reason belongs to the human condition existentially and can be discerned under all historical conditions. The second reason, like the third, is more expressly historical. Human Need for Symbolic Fulfillment We are asking why Christianity in its Theology developed a picture of God in which, at every point, the positive decisively triumphs. To begin with we do not have to go farther than our own conscious and unconscious human experience for an answer. There is that within us which wants and even needs the positive to triumph and which, precisely because the positive does not obviously triumph in the realities of our daily experience, creates images of triumph that bolster within us the will to affirm life despite its negations and ambiguities—the courage to “go on.” Such images may be secular, this-worldly ones, and in recent Western history this has indeed been their characteristic form (for example, the belief that medical and other sciences will overcome all illnesses and threats to life). But historically they have usually been otherworldly, supernatural, and in the usual sense “religious” conceptions of reality. The divine reality is held over against the realities of earthly experience, and the resolution and victory that are absent from mundane experience are affirmed by belief as nonetheless real—as ultimate reality. “God” thus becomes the symbol of a wholeness, unity, power, majesty, simplicity, righteousness, and wisdom that we lack and for which we long. No god is ever exempt from this human longing for fulfillment, and even human figures or historical events that become the vehicles of this overpowering psychic need for completion tend to lose their creaturely qualities or are frankly apotheosized. Later we may speak of the fate of Jesus in Christendom in just these terms. Every hero from Moses to Lenin has suffered the loss of purely human qualities because humanity demands of its gods and of its substitutes for gods that only the positive should triumph. It would be remarkable indeed if the Christian God had not been subjected to this same psychic-religious need, 130 | Douglas John Hall [3.239.13.1] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:17 GMT) especially after Christianity had become the religion of...