I won't try to define a "proper" theology in general, but I will comment on
a few essentials (IMO) of a "proper Christian" theology, if I may say that.
I cannot accept as legitimate a theology that is not based on the
historical experience of the reality of the resurrection, by which I do not
mean simply "appearances" in a Bultmannian sense: that the women went to the
right tomb and found it empty, that Thomas touched the hands and side of a
body that he had to admit bore the marks of a crucified man, that this same
person could vanish as suddenly as he appeared, and that he appeared to
literally hundreds of people at once (ruling out tall tales) and finally to
a zealous Jew who hated him. *Starting* thus from the *historical*
experience (I don't give a bad nickle for the claim that we can't speak
"historically" about this, either it happened in which case it's historical
or it didn't in which case it isn't) of a "risen" Lord, without the reality
of which I find the first few months of church history to be most
improbable, I move out to locate some of the non-negotiables of Christian
theology. Minimally, these would include the recognition that the God of
Jesus raised him from the dead, from which after a few centuries of
reflection Christians concluded that he must have been God himself, or so
close to God that he represented God fully; that he had given himself
sacrificially for all of us (however much we may want to broaden their
interpretation of it, how can we fault the biblical theologians for
interpreting him as the lamb of God?); that God must have power over nature
to accomplish this, and thus that the Jewish belief (arising no later than
the Maccabeean period) that God had the power to make the world from nothing
was correct; that (with Paul) our ultimate hope is grounded in this same
Lord and his God, the maker of heaven and earth.
It is on this basis that I cannot describe process theology--at least in
its "orthodox" variety, in which God has not the power to create ex
nihilo--as a "proper" theology at all. I see it facing some crucial
problems and coming up short on all accounts. (1) If Christ is not raised,
as Paul said, we are to be pitied and we have only false hopes. (2) If
Christ is raised, then we cannot consistently deny God awesome power over
nature: God must be the "author" of the "laws" of nature to accomplish this.
But then God must have power enough to make the world, since the giver of
laws establishes the properties and powers of matter. (3) Finally (as an
extra-theological critique), if process is claimed to be more "scientific"
than orthodoxy because (for example) a process view is more conducive to
evolution, then let us ask whether process is more "scientific" if it cannot
accept the clear implication of modern cosmology, to wit, that the one world
whose existence we can verify--the only world whose existence we can ever
"test" scientifically--has a finite age and thus appears to have been
"created". Process dies in my view on the horns of this dilemma: to affirm
that Christ is risen in the only sense that counts is to accept God's power
as at least very great, if not "omnipotent", which goes against the
fundamental assumption of process, that God can only persuade and cannot
create; whereas to affirm that process is "scientific" is to accept the
implications of modern cosmology, which also goes against the fundamental
assumption. Resurrection and creation (even apart from scripture) cry out
for a God that process cannot accept.
Ted Davis
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