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The quest for the living God — not an easy path
Cheers for the U.S. federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph for their public show of support for their sister Elizabeth Johnson!
Elizabeth Johnson is an internationally known theologian and a professor at Fordham University. She has done a great deal of work in the area of feminst theology. Recently, her 2007 book Quest for the Living God came under fire by the Doctrine Committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The nine-member group of bishops said, among other things, that the book failed to reflect the teaching of the magisterium. Johnson responded, saying in part that the bishops had seriously misinterpreted the book. Maybe that could have been avoided had the committee initially contacted Johnson to talk things over, a measure that’s included in committee’s own guidelines.
When the 900-member U.S. federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph gathered last week, it issued a corporate statement of support for Johnson. Around the same time, the Catholic Theological Society of America also publicly supported Johnson!
There are lots of issues involved in this matter – too many to address in detail here. And the situation continues to unfold.
To the Sisters of St. Joseph – way to go!! Standing together in regard to a justice issue is an important part of what it means to be sisters and what it means to be the church. For now, I’m going to re-read my copy of Quest for the Living God and savor it once more.
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Brava, Sisters! I’m going to ask my friendly local librarian to see if she can find us a copy.
I just ordered a copy from Amazon.
Maybe this is just me and my love for simple explanations but what is with this need for different kinds of theology? Feminist theology? Liberation theology? Eco-theology? Isn’t theology the study of God and by its very meaning (the study of God Who is all good) enough? Why is there a need to modify it? How about just theology. God is simple. God is truth. When things become overly involved and complex, confusion reigns and fallacy can being to look like truth.
I’m sorry but after having studied theology for many years, I never understood the need for having these qualifiers.
Hi Allison, sometimes the reality is in the complexity and confusion. I agree that all the different theological lenses can make things very complicated. At the same time, they offer a wide range of perspectives, enriching my understanding of God, church, community, etc. For as challenging as the various perspectives can be to me, they often give me new insights that help me grow in my relationship with God and the church.
Theology is a complex academic discipline – and all academic disciplines have subdivisions. Literature, for instance, has countless subdivisions. God is simple. But thinking about and studying about God is not a simplistic venture. That’s why it has taken 20 centuries to try to understand the doctrine of the trinity, to explore Christology. From the beginning – from our roots in the traditions of Judaism – the nature of God and the way in which God deals with humanity require that all the powers of human intellect be brought to bear upon these questions, in conjunction with the active movement of the Holy Spirit in order for us to fully embrace what God has offered us.
In other words, God doesn’t need qualifiers, but to comprehend God, the people who study God do need qualifiers to specify what they do. In another realm, for example, nuclear physics is different from astrophysics, but it’s all part of the same general scientific area.
Nicely said, Marsha and Marg! We are part of a living tradition, which is life-giving at the same time that it is challenging and demanding!
Thank you, ladies, for your responses. One other thing that must be avoided is entirely treating God with the head and not with the heart. Actually it must be a bipartite (or more) endeavor. If we focus too much on the head, the heart is lost. If we focus too much on the heart, the head is lost. I just think that sometimes, theologians enjoy chasing their proverbial tails in pursuit of “intellectual development” when really all they are doing is weighing down simple truth with complex arguments and elevated terminology.
LOL, Allison, how right you are! Multipartite, indeed.
And, FWIW, theologians aren’t the only ones who engage in tail chasing! That’s one of the reasons I have a job: untangling the abstract and presenting it in terms “real people” can understand and use (even though I find computer engineers a lot easier to understand than most theologians)!