The work of Paul Tillich (1886-1965), who is considered by many to be the leading Protestant theologian of the 20^th century, offers an intriguing perspective on the God-musings of religion-scholar Karen Armstrong (see Post #32).   If nothing else, taking a look at Karen Armstrong’s views from the perspective of his work reminds us that theology is an ongoing conversation—at least for those with open, inquiring minds.

For the purposes of this post, we’ll set aside most of Tillich’s three volume systematic-theology and focus on a mere two pages in the introduction to his first volume, entitled Reason and Revelation, Being and God.  In case you’d like to reflect further on what follows, or want to bring your own mojo to bear on Tillich’s work, check pages 42-43.

In this short, but typically brilliant, part of his introduction, Tillich discusses what he calls the “experiential theology” which has grown out of the “evangelical tradition of American Christianity.”  Although Tillich was born and educated in Germany, a large swath of his career took place on American soil, giving him the unique ability to reach objective, well-informed conclusions.  He perceived that experiential theology, at least the kind particular to the American situation, attempts to generate an “empirical theology” grounded in experience.

Now we can bring Karen Armstrong into the conversation because her “sense-of-God” approach falls neatly into Tillich’s “empirical theology” category.

The first move of what Tillich calls empirical theology is to show that “religious objects [like God] are not objects among others.”  Armstrong made this exact move when she decided God was not an object among objects.  God was not like a plate or a glass or a table she could pick up and examine.  Those objects existed, and so they could be found.  But since she couldn’t find God (like an object), making God’s existence the starting point for her search had led her down a dead end.  That path had only served to alienate her from God—her travels had yielded nothing more than a shadowy abstraction.

Still with me?  Whoever said theology, even stripped-down theology, was simplistic?

Armstrong, having abandoning God’s existence as the starting-point for her search, found God when she identified a different starting-point—that of creating a “sense of God.”  In other words, she decided to look for God in what seemed, to her, to be the most secure source available—her own experiences.  Instead of starting with the question “Does God exist?” she started with “What does God mean to me?”

How many of you have reached a dead end like Armstrong’s and resorted to finding God in the quality or dimension of your own experiences?  If you have, then, like hers, yours is an American empirical theology.  Sounds impressive, doesn’t it?  Your friends’ jaws will surely drop open when you spring the words “American empirical theology” on them.  Try it and see.

Tillich further explains that American empirical theology agrees with European phenomenological theology a la Rudolph Otto in his famous book, The Idea of the Holy.   Now you can also tell your friends that your empirical theology has something in common with “phenomenological theology.”  A warning:  you’ll have to practice saying “phenomenological” several dozen times before you nail it.  But it’ll be worth it.  Your friends’ jaws will drop even lower.

Besides the concerns raised at the end of Post #32 by yours truly and by those who took the time (or had the time) to leave comments, Tillich identified a few problems with Armstrong’s empirical-theology approach.  Any theology, like most things in life, has its advantages and drawbacks.  The advantages, as Armstrong herself so well illustrated, was that she was able to find God after decades of fruitless search “out there”.

But here’s a potential drawback.  Let’s pretend that we’re using Armstrong’s empirical-theological method.  Since the whole of experience can’t serve as the source for a “sense of God,” we have to identify an experience as having a unique quality.  Surveying the vast set of our experiences, we look for one few that strike us as having a special quality, special enough so that we can label them religious experiences.  It could be that feeling of wonder when watching the sun rise (see Post #30), or an unexplainable feeling of calm in the midst of crisis (see Post #4).

This means that we’ve had the “special” experiences before we ever label them as such.  Until we assign to them the “special” status of religious as a result of theological analysis, the “special” experiences were simply part of the whole of our experiences.  Our theological analysis, looking for experiences to label religious, finds them.  Then, on the basis of these so-labeled religious experiences, we develop an empirical theology.  Philosophers call this circular thinking.

Is circular thinking a problem?  Not necessarily, but proponents of empirical theology should realize that their thinking is as circular as those who adopt other kinds of theologies, including ones that empirical-theology-proponents might find objectionable.

Are there any other (potential) downsides?  Empirical theology traps God in our experience.  God is “trapped” because God no longer transcends experience.  God, in the traditional sense of the God-Who-is-not-us is excluded from this kind of theology.  While such an entrapment is attractive for Armstrong, others will find it harder to walk away from theologies that locate God outside of the human realm.

The bottom line is that, like the conversation between Tillich and Armstrong in this post, theological conversation is ongoing.  All theologies, including our own are (or should be) works in progress.  As such, we benefit (as do academic theologians) from the ability to be clear about our assumptions and about what counts as adequate criteria of validity for us.  Any theology can be called into question.  Plusses and minuses are part of the package.  Does this mean we shouldn’t adopt an empirical theology like Armstrong’s?  Not at all.  But theologians, academic or not, will want to informed about the strengths and weaknesses of their positions.

Like many of us, the religion-scholar and popular author, Karen Armstrong, spent decades waiting for God.  Raised a Roman Catholic, God remained a shadowy figure even as she sat through countless sermons and countless catechism classes.  God, described to her in abstract terms, meant little to her.  God existed—of this, Armstrong was certain, at least on an intellectual level—but God remained out of reach, too remote to become a reality for her.

Sound familiar?

Armstrong has more patience than the average Joe or Jane and so she continued to wait for God.  She was convinced that if she kept up her efforts to find God, she would eventually be rewarded by a vision that “would transfigure the whole of created reality.”  To prepare for this vision, she joined an order of nuns.

Armstrong never did glimpse “the God described by the prophets and mystics.”  She suffered from what some call “spiritual dryness.”  Except that she’d never been blessed with a period of spiritual wetness to help her through the dryness.  Unable to maintain the status quo, she decided, with regret, to abandon the religious life.  Soon, her belief in God’s existence slipped away.

Although she’d stopped hoping for an encounter with God, Armstrong maintained her academic study of the history of religions.  Ultimately, the research that went into writing her bestseller, The History of God, put her in touch with clergy from the three “religions of the book”— Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  Several of these rabbis, priests, and Sufis offered her this advice.  “Instead of waiting for God to descend from on high,” they suggested, she “should deliberately create a sense of him for” herself.

Reflecting on her many years of waiting (in vain) for God, she realized that she’d always looked for God who, she’d believed, existed “out there.”  But God wasn’t to be found “out there.”  God wasn’t an ordinary object like a glass or a plate or a table.  God wasn’t an object she could pick up and examine.

She wrote that, in hindsight, the rabbis, priests, and Sufis would “have told me that in an important sense God was a product of the creative imagination, like the poetry and music that I found so inspiring.”

They would have encouraged her to stop looking for God “out there” and, instead, to find ways to make God a reality for herself.  Also, “A few highly respected monotheists would have told me quietly and firmly that God did not really exist—and yet that ‘he’ was the most important reality in the world.”

Must something exist to be real?  Tough question.  Lucky for us that Armstrong likes brainteasers of this sort.   After pondering the question, she decided that she could set aside the question of God’s existence.  By setting aside that question, she freed herself to create a sense of God’s reality for herself.  She could even make her sense of God the most important reality.

Hallelujah.  Her wait was over.  She had finally found God.

To recap, Armstrong ended her wait by changing the question from “Must God exist to be real?” to “How can I make God real for myself?”

Here’s a note of concern, though.  Armstrong’s God is no doubt as lovely and gentle as the poetry and music she finds inspiring.  But (there’s always a but, isn’t there?) for the rest of us, are checks needed on the sense of God we create for ourselves?  How do we put a damper on creating a sense of God Who looks like a green-eyed spaghetti monster?  The part about the green eyes is too over-the-top for an acceptable God, don’t you agree?  Seriously, how do we put a damper on say, a sense of God Who looks the other way when we make promises we don’t intend to keep?  Or worst, Who orders us to harm or kill others?  Here, the September-11-2001 terrorists’ God comes to mind.

Reference:  Karen Armstrong, A History of God:  The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (New York:  Ballantine Books, 1993).