Theological Reflections at the Boundaries

Paul O. Ingram

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781610974059
  9781498213974
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630874070
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

The interdependence of boundary questions and the experience of cognitive dissonance reveal that knowledge in all fields of inquiry is always incomplete and tentative. The issues are particularly acute for Christian theological reflection. Ingram illustrates the importance of boundary questions and cognitive dissonance as a means of creatively transforming contemporary Christian theological reflection through dialogue with the natural sciences and the world's religions, particularly Buddhism, filtered through the lenses of Whiteheadian process philosophy.

1

On Theological Reflection at the Boundaries

News from the Hubble Space Telescope or from a nuclear accelerator or the human genome project will not be scientific proof for the existence of God. Nor do the sciences rule out the existence of God. Seen theologically and coupled with a post-Einsteinian perspective, the universe offers signs of grace because its immense scales macroscopically and microscopically can serve a believer as an icon of the greatness, creativity, and generosity of the God who breaks all boundaries. The God of a universe such as this cannot be a small tribal god. Here the mystics of all religious traditions are in agreement; anyone who thinks that they know what God is, or is not, is either very stupid or in need of a psychiatrist. God is the ultimate mystery, beyond the capture of all imagines, experience, doctrines, languages, or scientific theories. Both scientific theories about physical processes and theological language about God are metaphorical symbols that point to boundaries separating what can reasonably be known from that which transcends what is known. Appropriating a Zen Buddhist metaphor, they are fingers pointing at the moon, but they are not the moon, and it is foolish to identify fingers pointing at the moon with the moon. This is so because scientific descriptions about natural process and theological reflection about God always take place at the boundaries between immanence and transcendence. There are always “boundary” or “limit questions.”1

In the natural sciences, boundary limits are questions that arise in research that cannot be answered by means of the scientific methods used to describe physical processes. Boundary questions arise because (1) scientific methods of investigation are intentionally limited to extremely narrow bits of physical reality while simultaneously ignoring wider bodies of aesthetic, moral, and religious experience, which (2) results in the incompetence of scientific methods to address aesthetic, moral, and religious experience. Furthermore, in agreement with Karl Popper, most working scientists believe that scientific theoretical constructions are intentionally falsifiable. Often, scientific explanations themselves require expanded theoretical explanation.

For example, Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion provide a general theory of the gravitational motion of terrestrial objects, such as falling apples and the orbits of planets in our solar system. But Newton was unable to offer a physical theory of gravity itself and was deeply troubled by the notion of “action at a distance,” which he believed was intrinsically impossible in a universe governed by a lawful creator deity. So he concluded that God keeps the orbits of planets from changing so that, for example, the moon and the earth do not collide. Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, while maintaining Newton’s three laws of motion, minus Newton’s theological commitments, fills this gap in Newton’s theory by exploring gravity as the warping of space by objects such as planets, stars, galaxies, and (on Earth) apples falling from trees—rather than action at a distance under the controlling power of God.

This is an example of how a scientific boundary question often creates methodological constraints that often lead to deeper knowledge of the universe’s physical structures. Yet in doing so, scientific boundary questions also generate metaphysical questions along with descriptive scientific questions. For example, the “standard model” of big bang cosmology imposes a temporal boundary (13.7 billion years ago) that constrains what we can know about the universe. Why is there a universe at all? The standard response is that cosmologists can describe how the universe originated with a high degree of probability after the first three minutes from t=0, but are ignorant about why the universe exists. Here, a boundary question generated by the application of scientific methods in physical cosmology creates a metaphysical question that cosmology is incapable of answering. Whenever such scientific boundary questions occur, an opening is created for science-religion dialogue in general, and theological reflection in particular.

Boundary questions are not limited to the natural sciences. Theo-logical questions incapable of solution through the application of theological or philosophical methods arise at the boundaries engendered by what Joseph Campbell called “the universals of human experience,” meaning experiences all human beings undergo no matter what their cultural or religious environments might be. For example, the experience of suffering raises the theodicy problem for classical Christian theism. How can a loving, omniscient, omnipotent creator of the universe permit unmerited suffering? Here, the assertion of God’s unlimited creative power and unlimited love creates a boundary question that cannot be resolved apart from rethinking the nature of God, as in process theology.2

This is so because in science and theology, boundary constraints generate the experience of cognitive dissonance. Which is not to say that boundary constraints with their resulting cognitive dissonances do not imply that reliable knowledge is impossible in the sciences or in theology even as boundary constraints imply that absolutely certain knowledge is impossible. But to conclude that scientists or Christians (or Buddhists, Muslims, or Jews) cannot obtain certain knowledge via scientific methods or the practice of theological reflection does not imply that the sciences have not amassed an incredible body of reliable knowledge about physical reality, or that Christians have not accumulated large bodies of reliable knowledge about the structures of human existence.

Accordingly, we need to understand that knowledge in any field of inquiry is always incomplete and a bit tentative, no matter the degree of truth or profundity. The goal of theological reflection, in my case through dialogue with the world’s religions and the natural sciences, is to deepen knowledge as a means of creatively transforming Christian faith and practice. But if the interdependence of boundary questions and cognitive dissonance is ignored, dialogue of any sort is cut off at the knees before it begins.

The Dynamics of Cognitive Dissonance

I first encountered the concept of “cognitive dissonance” as an undergraduate philosophy major in the work of Polish microbiologist and historian of science, Ludwik Fleck.3 More recently, at a conference at St. Anne’s College, Oxford University, I encountered an application of Fleck’s concept to the science-religion dialogue in the work of intellectual historian Barbara Herrnnstein Smith. She has applied the concept of cognitive dissonance to a number of fields, including literary studies, science-religion dialogue, theology, politics, the sociology of knowledge, and constructivist historical theory and epistemology.4 Accordingly, the following interpretation of the dynamics of cognitive dissonance is inspired by the work of these two Fleck and Smith.

The experience of cognitive dissonance has several interdependent dimensions. Physically, it is an impression of inescapable noise or acute disorder, a rush of adrenaline, sensations of alarm, a sense of imbalance, chaos, at times feelings of nausea and anxiety. These forms of bodily distress can occur when one’s ingrained, taken-for-granted sense of how things are, will be in the future, or should be is suddenly confronted by something very much at odds with it. Perceptually, cognitive dissonance may be experienced as a wave of vertigo, for example, at the sight of human disfigurement.

Besides sensory or aesthetic experience, precepts that engender cognitive dissonance can be more or less intellectual, as well as textual. Thus a sense of intolerable wrongness in some politician’s description of the issues at stake in an election, or a fellow academic’s theoretical description of an issue, can set one’s mind on edge and produce a flurry of corrective intellectual activity: letters to the editor, rebuttals, essays, and books. The corrective impulse here is likely to be particularly energetic when one experiences the wrongness as one’s responsibility; not, that is, as one’s “fault” but as bearing on one’s social and professional identity, so that a response seems summoned and obligatory. In all of this, the goal is to end the pain, to get things to ‘”feel right,” that is, “back to normal” again.5

But exactly how one responds to cognitive dissonance will depend on the various features of the situation itself plus one’s own relevant dispositions. Thus while there is no single form of response to an experience of cognitive dissonance, individuals, communities, and cultures possess characteristic styles of response to a perceived anomaly. For example, some people and communities draw ideological boundaries around themselves as a prophylactic shield to block out cognitive dissonance, which is the standard strategy of fundamentalism in all its forms. Other communities attempt conversion, while others are prepared to rearrange their worldviews to absorb cognitive “others”; some communities regularly sally forth to slay “the other.” This last point entails violence against what is perceived as cognitively other—from domestic abuse and vigilante justice to inquisitions and international crusades that may accompany the attempt to right what ever is perceived to be wrong. As the history of religions demonstrates, particularly in Christian tradition, but also in other religious traditions, the pursuit of normative rightness—truth, health, morality, reason, or justice—at times has its own violent motivations and expressions.

Here lies the relevance of cognitive dissonance for the practice of theological reflection: if what I believe is true, then how can another human being’s skepticism of my beliefs be taken seriously? The stability of every belief, every worldview, every religious tradition depends on a stable explanation for resistance to that belief, worldview, or religious tradition, coupled with a coherent account of how beliefs, worldviews, and religious traditions are formed and validated. This is the classic role of apologetic theology in Christian tradition and Buddhism’s “philosophy of assimilation,” according to which Buddhism incorporated non-Buddhist ideas and practices into itself, even as Buddhism rejected what could not be assimilated in transmitting itself throughout South and East Asia.6

According to Smith, there are two “favored solutions” to this p...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Chapter 1: On Theological Reflection at the Boundaries
• Chapter 2: “That We May Know Each Other”1
• Chapter 3: A Christian’s Dialogue with the Buddha
• Chapter 4: Is This All There Is?
• Chapter 5: “Who Do You Say That I Am?”
• Chapter 6: Social Engagement with Unjust Systemic Boundaries
• Chapter 7: The Final Boundary
• Bibliography