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548 - Together Bound: God, History, and the Religious Community |
Together Bound: God, History, and the Religious
Community
By Frank G. Kirkpatrick
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994. 195 pp. $35.00.
In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in philosophical theology and metaphysics among some Anglo-American thinkers. A few decades ago, many Anglophile philosophers thought that religious and metaphysical beliefs might be emotionally or morally helpful but could not be shown to be true or false and, so, were philosophically unimportant. This has now changed. Thinkers interested in religion direct their attention not to the verifiability of specific claims (for example, Jesus Christ rose from the dead) but, rather, to entire belief systems within which claims are made.
This book by Frank Kirkpatrick, Professor of Religion and Ellsworth Tracy Lecturer in Religion at Trinity College, is an example of the new metaphysics. Kirkpatrick gives an account of God as a personal agent who acts in specific moments to further the purpose of universal community. In -order to advance his position, Kirkpatrick must counter two dominant, strands of thought about God's relation to the world. One strand-the dualist-holds that God and the world are utterly distinct. While this position makes sense of the transcendence of God, it cannot account for genuine community between God and world. The other strand of thought-the monist-asserts that, metaphysically speaking, God is the ultimate and thus only reality. While this position makes sense of the Christian conviction that all reality is utterly dependent on God, it also cannot endorse a genuine relationship between God and world. Kirkpatrick endorses a pluralist position that asserts the transcendence and sovereignty of God but insists on the distinct reality of the world and historical agents. This position, he holds, makes more philosophical sense and is truer to Christian experience than the rival accounts of the relation between God and world.
In developing his position, Kirkpatrick draws on work in action theory among Anglo-American thinkers, notably John Macmurray and Edward Pols. These positions insist on the irreducibility of our experience of action; we cannot explain away human action in terms of causally determined "events" within the infrastructure of the natural order. Kirkpatrick's argument hinges on the cogency of an analogy between our experience of being agents and Christian faith's conception of the deity. Further, he must show how this allows him to make sense not simply of some master act on God's part, say, creation, but also of God's historical action. His claim is that, just like human actions, God's action is "the transcendent source and unifying power through which the causal infrastructure is used in the enactment of an agent's intentions." This
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550 - Together Bound: God, History, and the Religious Community |
means that an account of God as agent requires specifying God's intentions. Without knowing intentions, we cannot determine whether the causal infrastructure of nature was used to a specific end and, so, decide whether or not there was an action and actor. Christians know God's salvific intention from the Bible and because of their own interpretive tradition. This allows them to draw an inference, but not proof, of God's action in the world consequent on an agential, personal conception of the divine.
Kirkpatrick's book is written for scholars, but it will be of interest to students and laypersons as well. The philosophical position is such that the argument is virtually immune from extra-Christian questions or criticism. This will be seen as a strength by some readers. Kirkpatrick delineates a cogent account of Christian beliefs about God and world from the perspective of faith. This faith rests upon the affirmation, even in the face of evil, that "in the long run no actions which embody love can ultimately be frustrated or fail to be realized." For others-including this reviewer-it is important not only to think internally to Christian conviction but, also, to face the real limitations of existence. In a world of finite resources and diverse communities, belief in "long-run" outcomes for human benefit might just delude us from the gravity of our present actions for the future and this fragile earth.
William Schweiker
The Divinity School
The University of Chicago
Chicago, IL