The Domestication of God

The sixth chapter of my book The Limits of Liberalism, which I am currently revising, slightly, and updating for re-publication at the end of this year, is titled “Limits of Liberal Views of God.” This blog post is based on parts of that chapter. 

Is God’s Transcendence a Problem?

Among theological liberals, there has been rather strongly stated opposition to what some label as “supernatural theism.” For example, the noted British scholar Karen Armstrong has publicly rejected what she calls “the God of supernatural theism.”

This opposition is, in other words, a rejection of the transcendence of God, the idea/belief that God is “above” and “beyond” the natural world that we humans can know by science.

Since there is a tendency to think that all knowledge of the physical world (nature) can be obtained by modern scientific means, whatever is considered not a part of nature is, therefore, supernatural.

Consequently, belief in a “supernatural” Creator of heaven and earth, the concept of God who is somehow not completely an integral part of the natural world, is rejected.

For modern people, for whom liberal thinkers seek to speak, the transcendence or “otherness” of God—or the “infinite qualitative distinction” between God and human beings that Kierkegaard emphasized—is seen as a problem to be overcome by a newer, more enlightened, view of God.

Is God’s “Domestication” the Answer?

Over the last seventy years especially, many liberal theologians and philosophers have rejected the concept of God’s transcendence by emphasizing the complete immanence of God.

William C. Placher was a leading postliberal theologian in the United States. Back in 1996, he published a book titled The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong.

In his book, Placher (1948~2008) contended that the shift from a transcendental theism to an immanental pantheism led to what he calls (and titles his fifth chapter) “the domestication of God”—a pregnant phrase that indicates a significant aspect of the limits of liberal thinking about God.

That is part of the reason that Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre quipped in 1966, “Theists are offering atheists less and less in which to disbelieve.”

What about Experience of God?

In the fall of 1957, I began my final two years of college as a transfer student at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. One of my courses that fall was Philosophy of Religion.

Professor Murray Hunt chose Philosophy of Religion as our textbook. It was authored by the Quaker scholar D. Elton Trueblood, Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and published earlier that year.

Because of that course and Trueblood’s book, the philosophy of religion became my main academic interest, and it remained so for decades.

Part II, the heart of Trueblood’s book, is titled “Theistic Realism,” which, although he doesn’t use those words, is a rebuttal/rejection of the movement toward the domestication of God.

Trueblood begins “The Theistic Hypothesis,” the first chapter of Part II, with these words: “God, when carefully defined, either is or is not.” He then goes on to explain,

To say that God “is” means to give assent to the proposition that the idea of God is not merely an idea in the minds of men, but actually refers to what is objectively the case—something which was before we came to be aware of it and which now is, independent of our awareness or lack of awareness (p. 79).

Those who have sought to domesticate God have often spoken of the “God within” human beings. Thus, God is understood as a subjective experience of individual persons. This stands in contrast to the theistic realism Trueblood expounds, and his position, I believe, is far more coherent.

The last chapter of Part II is “The Evidence of Religious Experience.” I was studying philosophy of religion because I was preparing to become a Christian pastor—and I was preparing for that vocation (literally) because of what I firmly believed, and still believe, was a definite “call” by God.

My experience was not highly ecstatic or “otherworldly.” It was much more like the “still small voice” that the prophet Elijah heard (according to 1 Kings 19:12, KJV). But it was unquestionably real.

Those who wish to domesticate God would explain my, and Elijah’s, experience as only a subjective one. But I am convinced that making everything related to God subjective, or immanent, is one of the debilitating limits of liberalism.

Plantinga's Prestigious Prize

Alvin Plantinga is not a well-known name among the broader public, but his is one of the best known and most respected names among contemporary Christian philosophers. Yesterday (Sept. 24) he was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize at The Field Museum in Chicago.

Who Is Plantinga?

Alvin Plantinga is an American philosopher whose main work is in the philosophy of religion and epistemology. He served as president of the Society of Christian Philosophers from 1983 to 1986.

The son of first-generation immigrants from the Netherlands, Plantinga was born in 1932. He graduated from Calvin College, where his father was then teaching, and then after completing his Ph.D. at Yale University, his teaching career was mostly at Calvin College and the University of Notre Dame.

Plantinga’s most influential books are God and Other Minds (1967), and a trilogy of books on epistemology, culminating in Warranted Christian Belief (2000). The later was revised for a wider audience and published as Knowledge and Christian Belief in 2016.

Also, Alvin Plantinga is the title of a book published in 2007 by Cambridge University in their “Contemporary Philosophy in Focus” series. 

Meeting Plantinga

The Society of Christian Philosophers organized a conference on the campus of Peking University in the fall of 1994. I was able to fly from Fukuoka, Japan, to Beijing (about a 4½ hour flight) and attend that stimulating meeting.

There were several top Christian philosophers from the U.S. there, but it was Plantinga whom I most wanted to hear—and I was not disappointed in what I heard at the meetings and in the personal chat I had with him while walking across the spacious campus of Peking University, the premier university in China.

That academic meeting, which fruitfully focused on dialogue between the Christian philosophers from the U.S. and the Chinese philosophers who taught at Peking University and were atheists, was led by Plantinga. I was impressed by his brilliant mind, his respect for the Chinese scholars, and his deep and reasoned Christian faith.

Plantinga’s Prize

John Templeton was a financial investment whiz and a philanthropist. According to the Templeton Prize website (see here), Templeton (1912-2008) “started his Wall Street career in 1938 and went on to create some of the world's largest and most successful international investment funds.”

After becoming a wealthy man, in 1972 Templeton “established the world's largest annual award given to an individual, the Templeton Prize, which honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.”

The first Templeton Prize was awarded to Mother Teresa, and a wide variety of religious practitioners and academics have received the prestigious, and lucrative, prize in the succeeding years. (This year Plantinga received $1,400,000 as the recipient of the Templeton Prize.)

Some “liberals” have been critical of some choices for the Templeton Prize, such as Billy Graham in 1982 and especially Charles Colson in 1993 and Bill Bright in 1996. But most recipients have not been conservative Christians; for example, the Prize was awarded to the Dalai Lama in 2012 and to Desmond Tutu in 2013.

(For those of you who have the time and interest, I recommend opening the Templeton Prize website, here, and following the links to the various articles and videos found there.)

I am grateful to Alvin Plantinga for the significant contributions he has made to critical thinking as a Christian philosopher. His being chosen as this year’s recipient of the prestigious Templeton Prize accentuates the fact that Christians can, indeed, be deep, cogent thinkers.