Posts
The cringe at the heart of Christmas
Giles Fraser
December 12, 2010Christmas can be a bad time for those of us with an allergy to all that Jesus-is-my-friend theology.
CHRISTMAS can be a bad time for those of us with an allergy to all that Jesus-is-my-friend theology. As the angels sing, the eternal mystery pulsing through all things becomes a human being. Yes, this is orthodox Christianity. But what too many Christians take from this is theological permission to get terribly chummy with the divine. As God turns into Jesus, mystery can be replaced by sentiment, eternity forced to the scale of the domestic imagination. God becomes my best buddy. It's the cringe at the heart of Christmas.
In contrast, throughout the Hebrew scriptures God is inscrutable. He is found in the burning bush or speaks out of the cloud at the top of the mountain. At best, God is only glimpsed from the corner of one's eye, if at all. The second of the 10 commandments gives specific instruction that there cannot be an image of the invisible God. It is a way of suspecting any form of God that presents itself as too clear, definite or certain. And this is not just about visual representation. Any representation - philosophical, literary or poetic - that reckons it has God sussed deserves to be distrusted, smashed even. Iconoclasm is the way theology strikes back against the hubris of believers who think the question of God is quick and easy.
Perhaps this is a fancy way of saying that all good theological conversations should begin ''I do not know''. Yet today it is strident certainty that marks most public theological discourse. Believers who are sure of themselves and of what they mean by God slug it out with unbelievers who are equally sure. In this deeply uninteresting boo-hurrah, what is completely ignored by both tribes is that subtler and more complex approach to the big questions, in which the universe is experienced as the most extraordinary mystery.
To stare into the night sky and ponder why there is something rather than nothing, to experience awe at a child's birth, to want the world to be transformed, to seek forgiveness for your own failure and stupidity, to feel the need for silence, to suppose that love has to be at the heart of things - these experiences are not the preserve of the religious. In many such things, those of faith and those of none sit alongside each other as fellow travellers.
This week sees the start of Uncertain Minds, a series of conversations on agnosticism convened jointly by The Guardian and St Paul's Cathedral in London. It is an attempt to make space for a different, more open sort of discussion, one not dominated by a binary clash of certainties. There will be some on both sides who view all this as a traitorous collaboration with an ideological enemy. But that's ridiculous. The human search for meaning and truth needs many voices.
There is much, for instance, that belief has to learn from unbelief. The whole apophatic tradition in theology regards the search for God as being driven along by a recognition of what God is not. In this way, theology proceeds through a series of denials - God cannot be this, God cannot be that - thus stripping away falsehood and driving us deeper into the nature of reality. If Christians believe that God is truth, they must not be afraid of where the search for truth leads, however seemingly uncomfortable.
The reason so many contemporary Christians find this cloud of unknowing approach so peculiar is that they have overemphasised the immanent God/man of Christmas to the exclusion of the transcendent God of the universe. In downplaying God's sheer otherness, they have become overconfident that they know what God looks like.
Evangelical Christianity, with all its emphasis on Jesus as friend, risks domesticating the divine, pulling God too much within the dimensions of the human perspective. With this sort of Jesus at hand, God becomes just too easy.
Yes, of course, one can read the incarnation very differently. I would argue that the idea of God as a baby is one of the most disruptive theological suggestions ever made. After all, isn't God supposed to be omnipotent? Here, Jesus is a supreme form of denial - a denial of God as power. And this powerlessness can be as much intellectual as anything else. To be a Christian is not to have the answers. Sometimes it's just about living the questions.
GUARDIAN
Giles Fraser is canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral.
CHRISTMAS can be a bad time for those of us with an allergy to all that Jesus-is-my-friend theology. As the angels sing, the eternal mystery pulsing through all things becomes a human being. Yes, this is orthodox Christianity. But what too many Christians take from this is theological permission to get terribly chummy with the divine. As God turns into Jesus, mystery can be replaced by sentiment, eternity forced to the scale of the domestic imagination. God becomes my best buddy. It's the cringe at the heart of Christmas.
In contrast, throughout the Hebrew scriptures God is inscrutable. He is found in the burning bush or speaks out of the cloud at the top of the mountain. At best, God is only glimpsed from the corner of one's eye, if at all. The second of the 10 commandments gives specific instruction that there cannot be an image of the invisible God. It is a way of suspecting any form of God that presents itself as too clear, definite or certain. And this is not just about visual representation. Any representation - philosophical, literary or poetic - that reckons it has God sussed deserves to be distrusted, smashed even. Iconoclasm is the way theology strikes back against the hubris of believers who think the question of God is quick and easy.
Perhaps this is a fancy way of saying that all good theological conversations should begin ''I do not know''. Yet today it is strident certainty that marks most public theological discourse. Believers who are sure of themselves and of what they mean by God slug it out with unbelievers who are equally sure. In this deeply uninteresting boo-hurrah, what is completely ignored by both tribes is that subtler and more complex approach to the big questions, in which the universe is experienced as the most extraordinary mystery.
To stare into the night sky and ponder why there is something rather than nothing, to experience awe at a child's birth, to want the world to be transformed, to seek forgiveness for your own failure and stupidity, to feel the need for silence, to suppose that love has to be at the heart of things - these experiences are not the preserve of the religious. In many such things, those of faith and those of none sit alongside each other as fellow travellers.
This week sees the start of Uncertain Minds, a series of conversations on agnosticism convened jointly by The Guardian and St Paul's Cathedral in London. It is an attempt to make space for a different, more open sort of discussion, one not dominated by a binary clash of certainties. There will be some on both sides who view all this as a traitorous collaboration with an ideological enemy. But that's ridiculous. The human search for meaning and truth needs many voices.
There is much, for instance, that belief has to learn from unbelief. The whole apophatic tradition in theology regards the search for God as being driven along by a recognition of what God is not. In this way, theology proceeds through a series of denials - God cannot be this, God cannot be that - thus stripping away falsehood and driving us deeper into the nature of reality. If Christians believe that God is truth, they must not be afraid of where the search for truth leads, however seemingly uncomfortable.
The reason so many contemporary Christians find this cloud of unknowing approach so peculiar is that they have overemphasised the immanent God/man of Christmas to the exclusion of the transcendent God of the universe. In downplaying God's sheer otherness, they have become overconfident that they know what God looks like.
Evangelical Christianity, with all its emphasis on Jesus as friend, risks domesticating the divine, pulling God too much within the dimensions of the human perspective. With this sort of Jesus at hand, God becomes just too easy.
Yes, of course, one can read the incarnation very differently. I would argue that the idea of God as a baby is one of the most disruptive theological suggestions ever made. After all, isn't God supposed to be omnipotent? Here, Jesus is a supreme form of denial - a denial of God as power. And this powerlessness can be as much intellectual as anything else. To be a Christian is not to have the answers. Sometimes it's just about living the questions.
GUARDIAN
Giles Fraser is canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral.
Good read.
ReplyDeleteHail! The last statement.