Relational / Open Theology – Cordial Pushback

The Love that doesn't ebb.

Relational Theology

I enjoy collegial relationships and good friendships with a good and growing number of ‘Relational Theologians’ (aka ‘Open Theology,’ though there can be distinctions). These are people with whom “I hold difference with respect.” Normally, I engage them privately, but recently, one friend offered such a clear, concise description of his explorations in RT that he helped me clarify why I don’t ‘go there.’

First, allow me to lament some serious and, I think, unfair misunderstandings that can sabotage the conversation.

1. The label “relational theology” distinguishes itself from “classical theology,” which I think is unfortunate. First, it overlooks“patristic theology” altogether (generally 2^nd-8^th centuries) or conflates it with classical theology… but really only goes to battle with classical theology from the medieval and scholastic periods (at its height in the 11-13^th centuries). That’s odd.

2. Further, the label implies that previous theologies are not relational and even closed. I’d object to that and wish for more charitable assumptions. From its foundations, patristic theology has consistently proclaimed that God is love in trinitarian relation. To imply the church fathers don’t represent God as entirely relational is simply untrue. That’s unfortunate.

3. When describing classical theology, my RT friends focus on how folks like Aquinas (13^th century) were inclined to Greek philosophical categories (the big ‘omnis’) and leaned heavily on Aristotle. There’s some truth to that.

   But let’s be clear then: classical theology doesn’t signify the whole of the Christian tradition, as if the only categories are classical vs. relational. Skipping over the wisdom of the church fathers and mothers or painting them with the same brush as medieval theologians is not very responsible.

4. When we use standard theological terms such as omnipotent or immutable, we are not merely importing ‘Greek ideas.’ These are Latin terms that were used to describe attributes of God that the church saw revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures.
   More importantly, for Christian theologians, such attributes are never to be imagined apart from Trinitarian love. They are facets or adjectives of the divine nature: i.e., God’s unchanging, unfailing love. They don’t and can’t stand on their own as abstract qualities of God. Rather, they testify to God’s relationship to our story.

5. Caricatures of classical theology imagine those theologians reducing God to Aristotle’s ‘unmoved mover,’ therefore incapable of love, compassion, or relationality. You won’t find such reductionism in the Aquinas or Anselm.

6. The biggest stumbling stones for RT teachers seem to be words such as immutability (that God’s essence doesn’t change) and impassibility (that God is not subject to fleshly passions). These terms have nuanced definitions that need to be handled with care lest we misrepresent them.
   First, what is immutable? God’s love. God’s love is immutable in the sense of that God’s covenants are marked by faithfulness versus fickleness. He is not like other gods who turn away or turn against their subjects on a whim. The doctrine of immutability insists that God’s love is constant and infinite—always higher, wider, longer, and deeper than our comprehension. Thus, God’s love does not rise and fall or come and go—God’s love is an ever-flowing spring that never runs out.

   Further, God’s love is impassible. This does not mean God is unfeeling or unresponsive (like cold, hard granite). No. We never say that. Rather, this means that the ever-flowing spring of God’s love is not conditional on our response. God’s mercy is not turned on and off by our behaviour. Nothing can separate us from divine love.
   When God sees and hears our cries, we do see a response of compassion and care, where God ‘comes down’ to help. BUT that response arises from God’s own heart, from the depths of God’s loving nature. He is responsive, not reactive, and consistent rather than codependent. Simply put, impassibility means that God’s love is not subject to or jerked around by our passions. In Christ, we see the nature of God as empathetic (co-suffering) and Cyril will say he ‘suffered impassibly’—meaning voluntarily rather than constrained.

7. Some RT teachers also tend to a dualistic binary between so-called Hebrew thinking (good and pure) vs. Greek influences (an infection we should expunge). Some seem to think relational theology untangles our theology from the Greeks.
   Authentic questions: Does this mean the NT shouldn’t have been written in Greek? Or that you can erase the Greek-Hebrew synthesis in John 1 (the Logos) or in the Epistle to the Hebrews (of all people). Some regard the Epistle of James as the most Jewish book in the NT. Yet chapter 1 is all about immutability using Greek analogies—“The Father of lights, in whom is no shadow of turning.”

I could go on (and I do with my RT friends), but I think these points can be summarized around one fundamental problem: relational theology presumes to paint an picture of patristic and classical theology on its own terms. If we have learned anything from historical theology, it is that we shouldn’t learn what anyone believes from their opponents (think of poor Origen). That’s not relational. Ask us what we believe and if you’re representation is accurate and honouring. Above, I worry that I’ve risked misrepresenting RT, but I’ve done my best to reply to what they’ve told me or written. My one advantage is that I’ve never read a critique of relational theology before. That doesn’t mean I got it right.

Relational Ebb and Flow

Now, let’s get to this specific statement by my friend. If I’ve erred above, at least my friend gets to represent himself in his own words here:

“I have been working my way through Relational Spirituality to explore the relational ebb and flow that is present in all relationships at an experiential level.”

This is a consistent refrain I hear from relational and open theologians. I’m glad for it because it identifies and confirms our real point of difference—the precise spot where I believe relational theology falters. I’ll try to break it down.

1. I get the impression that RTers think divine love is not relational if it is constant. Some tell me that unless God’s love somehow ebbs and flows, approaches and withdraws, then God is not authentically relational. Here, they conflate the Greek word stasis (which emphasizes constancy) with the English term static (which implies inert). It also images that divine stasis is contrary to divine movement. The analogies of light or ‘infinite springs of living water’ should overcome that conceptual difficulty.

2. But I also suspect the dynamism of the human experience of fluctuating love gets projected onto God’s nature. God’s refusal to ever turn away or withdraw transcends the capacities of human love. That doesn’t make him non-relational. To say that a ‘relational ebb and flow is present in all relationships’ becomes deeply problematic if we apply it to Trinitarian love. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to one another and all creation in ever-flowing love that never ebbs.

3. I do believe our relational experience with God is dynamic, but the ebb and flow are not because God withdraws from us, but that we experience the ups and downs of our own passions, our own faithfulness, our own fickleness, while God’s love never ceases to flow through our lives.

   I’m a fan of Greg Boyd, but in his model, if I read him correctly, he applies this ebb and flow to the Trinity at the Cross. In his two-volume work, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, I have read and reread a description of the Father withdrawing from the Son at the Cross—not actively punishing him but withdrawing to give Christ over to the experience of felt-absence.
   I hope he doesn’t mean God the Father literally withdrew from his Son. In fact, I doubt it. Psalm 22 describes how Christ simultaneously experienced ‘felt absence’ and exercised complete trust that ‘he did not turn his face from me.’
   So too, remember that “God was IN Christ, reconciling the world to himself,” and that “all the operations of the Godhead in this world are undivided” (a patristic maxim). I am satisfied that Greg sees this ‘withdrawal of felt presence’ as a subjective experience we all know, but not an actual change in God’s relationship to us or union with us.

4. Relational theology draws from those Scriptures where God is said to come and go, has a change of mind, even repents of having made us. So do I. But it feels to me like they read these texts literally.
   But the Old Testament prophets, the New Testament apostles, and the early church fathers and mothers continually show us that those texts are using phenomenological language (how things appear from our perspective) to describe our perception—like the way we speak of the sun rising and setting. But in reality, “God no more turns from the sinner than the sun ceases to shine for the blind person” (Abba Anthony). Literalizing appearances and projecting the Scriptures’ wondrous rhetorical descriptions of felt distance is a problem, because it can imagine that our divine Lover’s nearness is actually contingent on our behaviour.

5. So, I would insist that Infinite Love shines on all, fills all, and is united to all in perichoretic relationship, without separation. We are not children on the beach beside an ocean, watching its tides ebb and flow. Rather, prior even to our response to God, we are immersed in the ocean of the Lover’s unfailing love… IN God’s ocean of love, “we live and move and have our being.” That’s the ‘Greek thinking’ of Paul’s gospel of grace, rooted in the Hebrew tradition of the I AM.

6. Rather than an unmoved mover, we see our Bridegroom as one who never leaves or forsakes us, faithful to his unbreakable covenant that is stronger than death. Sadly, the ebb and flow we do regularly feel gets transposed into a God who withdraws or turns away (“God abandoned me!”)—and sometimes forever. This is consistent with conditionalist or annihilationist eschatologies, which some relational theologians embrace (e.g,. Clarke Pinnock).
   But from Solomon to Paul to Gregory of Nyssa we hear far from ebbing, even for an instant, the divine Lover never stops pursuing any of us, even into Sheol. The dynamism of divine love is not tidal… it is expressed as relentless, as stronger than the grave,

7. I’m thankful for my RT friend’s clarity. Other relational theologians may see it differently, but his description is consistent with my conversations. To me, the RT God doesn’t sound more relational or more loving, and certainly not more trustworthy. To me, he sounds like a human husband whose love can, on any given day, grow further or shrink back. In fact it must for it to be real relationship! But here’s the better news:

8. God’s love and relationship to us is not to be inferred from my experience of human relationships or even by my fluctuating sense of God’s presence. Rather, 1 John says, here is how you know the love of God; here is the relational dynamic running through apostolic and patristic theology from the beginning:
   The love of God is revealed in the ultimate kenotic pursuit of Christ on the Cross, who gives himself entirely to us (and never stops or retreats), even into the grave. Trinitarian relationality never sees God coming and going, but always God and humanity inseparably united IN the hypostatic person of Christ. I.e., You cannot separate Christ. His divine and human natures are inseparable and that’s where we are located: en Christo, and therefore within the Trinitarian relationship.

Holding Difference with Respect

In my conversations with relational theologians, when I get a chance to explain what we actually mean, they are always gracious. We trust each other. We love each other. Sometimes they will even say, “Well when you say it that way,…” But I know they usually also continue to disagree. We’re both pretty invested in our perspectives. This is where we enjoy the charity of holding difference with respect.

This is my hope for this post: without any need to convert my RT friends, perhaps they will at least acknowledge and affirm that my patristic theology of God is likewise relational. It would be my preference if those who teach open or relational theology were to critique my approach rather than caricatures of it. I’ll promise to do likewise as best I can.