Apophaticism (Say what?)

I learned the other day what I am. Theologically, that is. One of my professors put the term "apophatic theology" on a list of terms we should know before we graduate. Initially, I had no clue what it meant, but the more I studied the topic and learned how it functioned in Christianity, I was more able to see that its exactly what I've been grasping for throughout my upbringing in a doctrine-focused denomination and now seminary.

Apophatic theology is based around the idea of describing God in terms of what he is not instead of in terms of what he is. Its closely related to negative theology. For example, instead of saying that God is "good", we would say that God is "not evil". While that sounds stupid, it has profound implications for how we do theology. If you're an avid reader of my blog, you know I've proposed in the past that one of the great weaknesses of the quality theology in the Reformed tradition is its lack of priority when it comes to the issue of the acknowledgment of mystery. Of course, I'm not fully apophatic. I believe, as Reformed theology points out, that there is something called revelation: God showing us something about himself. There's special revelation that we receive in the Scriptures, general revelation which is revelation we receive in nature and one another, and then there's divine accommodation, or God making ultimate principles real to us on our own terms.

So then the question in my mind runs right to percentages, since I have an economics mind. As far as I know, no writer of systematic theology or catechism teacher has ever made a statement like, "We know about 95% of what God is like," but often times that's the way it comes off, if not higher. In all the rigmarole of arguing theological principles (often times even those veiled in mystery), we often completely forget about the part of God that he has not or can not reveal because it is too grand. Its natural, of course, to spend time on the known. We have to, in fact, because we can't have seminary classes where all we do is wonder. Wondering is hard to grade.

But try this on for size. Let's say, apophatically, that we know 3% of who God is and the workings of the universe. Would that be enough for salvation? It has to be, because the Bible says so. Could it be that God is big enough that we only know .0000001%, and that's enough? Of course it is....God's infinite. Now what kind of implications would this have for theology? How much time would you spend on systematics? How much time would you spend in the Word? How much time would you spend in prayer? There's a lot of implications here.

So maybe .00000001% creates a deistic God or an impersonal God. I'll compromise. How about 20%. No? You still want 95%? I think the origin of the earth, the mystery of human choice, and the spark of life at conception should be worth at least 6% on this scale. So no, I won't buy at 95%.

Here's the point: don't promote a theology that explains God 100%. Its an easy trap to fall into. In fact, I would argue that many of the Reformers and the systematic theologians who followed them got stuck trying to explain 100%. What if we acknowledge only 50%? What does that do for church splits? How many denominations would we have? 50% less? Where does that put my discussion of new churches joining denominations?

In many ways, the Reformation was a reaction against the RCC claiming they had too high a percentage. In many ways, the non-denomitional movement and the Emerging Church is a reaction to our assertion that we know too much. You know what? They're probably right.

I love theology, I really do. I wouldn't be at seminary if I didn't. I wouldn't write in this blog if I didn't. But I want to give theological discussions and catechisms and treatises and even (gasp) the Bible a perspective check. Where do you fall on how much you think we know about God and the way things are? 10%? 98%? 40%? Where does your church (to an outsider) stand?

Let's roll.

Experiencing God Diffently in Worship

This past weekend was the General Assembly of the Church of God in Michigan, and I served my role as a delegate. This is my second year going, and so I'm more free to notice things rather than try to remember everyone's names and network with lots of new people.

I had a sort of epiphany during our closing worship service. Our worship leader was an African-American woman who I thought looked like Condoleeza Rice and her TV anchorman husband on the bass guitar. She had lots of energy and was a great worship leader....for her context. I was sitting up in the front corner, so I got a chance to observe almost everyone in the place. First of all, I noticed her own son, with his head on the table, probably napping-clearly uninterested sitting at the table next to me. Next I noticed the large contingent of African-American leaders in the group experiencing worship like they had been all weekend - fists pumping, amen-ing, mmhmm-ing, raising hands, etc. Then I noticed a large contingent of middle-aged white people: a little milder than their African-American cohorts, but still with hands raised, swaying, pointing to heaven, etc. I noticed the few people in my age group (20-30), mostly youth pastors, interacting with the music but not selling out. Finally, I noticed my table, good stone-faced Danish people from my church, similar to the Dutch ones I'd grown up with.

All this got me to thinking: how do I experience God, and do I look down on other people if they experience Him differently? I'm met with this constantly in Detroit at Sinai-Grace Hospital. Often times, the God of the African-American Baptist people I talk with seems so much different than my own that I feel like I have more coherence with my Orthodox Rabbi professor. In that case, it may just be that my Rabbi is used to putting his theology into logical categories, like I am. In worship, I'd probably place myself between the arm-folded Danes and the charismatic middle age types.

I think one of the ways that this really rears its head is worship style. The truth of the matter is that those of us who are worship leaders have all drank the "experiential" kool-aid to some extent. We have to because its undeniable. What's interesting for us as is that our jobs, by their very nature, seem to require us to pander to whatever the current generation is because we're at a point in time where the way people experience God has changed drastically and distinctly in the last 50 years. We still have people in our benches that experience God best through straight-up organ hymns. Then, even though the CRC seems to completely have missed this step, there is an entire generation of "big worship" people. This is the classy-suited-big-haired-mega-church style people who sing all songs that were popular from about 1985-1993 (Majesty & Thy Word are classics and, interestingly, not that dissimilar). There's a surprisingly large amount of these people - they're Wimber's folks - raising hands, yelling amens, but still very skeptical of modern worship or emerging church stuff. Finally, there's this whole generation coming up now that identifies with the emerging style of worship or the Chris-Tomlin-modern style of worship. Add into that a fairly consistent worship African-American gospel style, and you've got 4 different kinds of oil being thrown into water.

So, is it okay to say one way is preferable to another, or do we have to acknowledge all as equally good, in true politically-correct style? Now, I regularly get disgusted when I watch Christian cable television, even though I know many churches in the South that eat that stuff up. I find the theology of many of the patients (and the pastors) I meet in Detroit poorly-formed and illogical (not just because I disagree, but I objectively think its illogical). You can really take this argument a long way. If your experience of God is co-equal with everyone else's (as my CPE program tells me it is), then you have zero basis for questioning an experience that is Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu. These are just different experiences of God, be they in other faiths, or in other theologies (ways of talking about God).

Ultimately, someone has to make some sort of qualitative statement, so here goes one try: I think that emerging/modern worship is more seeker-friendly than "big worship" or organ-based hymns. Now that might evoke a "duh" out of you because you know there's no churchplant in any denomination that has ported in a pipe organ in the last 10 years, but really, that's a judgmental statement. Do I think there's a place for other experiences of God? Yes. But I think we have to be realists here. Churches that have not gotten modern, emerging or experiential in their worship have shrunk, as a general rule. Now, there are churches that do traditional worship REALLY well that manage to grow, but I would offer that quality tradition is simply a better prescription for delay of the inevitable than others have found.

So try this on for size: I felt uncomfortable in our GA's worship service today because of all the amen-ing, hand-raising, fist-pumping, liturgical-dancing, and old-people-that-can't-clap-on-the-beat. And, for a while, I felt guilty for being uncomfortable. After all, I'm a worship pastor, I should be able to "get into" all sorts of worship, and usually I can. But I couldn't help thinking to myself: if I took a non-Christian in here right now, they would be scared shitless and think we are crazy. Now, some might say its because the Spirit was moving. But last I checked, the Spirit also empowered mission and God is not in conflict with Himself. I don't have a good answer for this question, but I do know that I can be most faithful to my calling by playing coffee-house-style-white-20-something worship music in my context and its growing the Kingdom. By their fruits shall you know them. Can we be evaluative of people's ways of experiencing God, or is that just politically incorrect?