I first came across the word theopoetics in the work of John Caputo who declares quite openly that he does not believe in a God outside of the cosmos, guiding and directing affairs, listening to and answering the prayers of those who call upon him. This God is a kind of ‘superman’ figure residing in the heavens but revealing himself to those of us who reside in middle earth so to speak – the region between heaven and hell. This is a God who, I was taught, loves us, knows every hair on our head, and to whom we can relate with love. Religions are full of images of God calling us, relating to us, forgiving us, answering our prayers and spiritual practices encourage us to develop a relationship with this God. And theology is the study of this God, seeking to know who he is and how he has revealed himself to us. For Christians this theological thinking has from time to time expressed itself in creeds and dogmatic statements that are meant to clarify just what Christians believe but are often expressed in philosophical and theological language that is outdated and irrelevant to many people. It leads to clarity and surety about the truths of religion as well as a rejection of what is seen to be false understandings and teachings.
I have a lot of sympathy with John Caputo because over the years I have come to question this notion of God and to long for another word that would express more clearly the mystery and reality of God as ‘other’. Prayers, homilies, readings at religious services seems to indicate a God who has agency and is ready to answer our prayers in a way that I can no longer accept. Often it seems to me that this simply confirms people’s belief in a super power outside of the cosmos and sets up expectations that cannot be met. I once made a retreat with a sister in my community who was quite distressed because she felt that God was not saying anything to her and it is said of Mother Teresa that for decades before she died she had no felt experience of God’s presence, something called the dark night of the soul. There are examples of people rejecting religion and God because of some disaster that had befallen them or prayers they felt were unanswered. Why did God do this to me?
One of the reasons for this I think is that we read scripture literally and many of us do not understand that scripture is a special genre of literature. Recently a friend expressed real frustration that she had never heard from the pulpit or for that matter in her religious education that much of what we read in the Gospels are in fact stories. But stories that are pointing to and expressing a truth. I believe and have taught that when it comes to religious language that it is not what it says but what it means that is important. Religious literature and language is like the finger pointing to the moon – to focus too much on the words is to miss the meaning and the message it has for us about life and how to live it.
The need to get away from this literal understanding has given rise to theopoetics which was new to me when I read the work of John Caputo but I have now come across it again in the work of Thomas J Oord and some research has shown that it was first used in the modern sense in 1971 by theologian Stanley Romaine Hopper. An article by Kellie Brown explains that theopoetics at that time was an attempt to offer new ways of thinking and speaking about God that people would find more relevant in the light of a lifeless theology that lacked imagination and discovery and had led to the Death of God movement. It came to the fore again in the 1990s within the evangelical church and “relies on a poetic thought process, which means this field of theological inquiry includes other artistic forms and ways of knowing. It invites us to embrace the mystery of the divine rather than expecting us to reduce the examination of faith to a scientific formula.” If I understand it correctly it is to see religious literature as poetry and to recognise that literature, art and poetry as well as the natural world are ways of knowing and understanding the Reality we call God. Is it perhaps to see everything as sacrament, to use a religious term - to see that the fully embodied human experience in whatever way we experience it is as a sign and a symbol of the Reality that we call God. And if this symbol embodies what it signifies then to embrace life and the reality of our experience of the world in which we live is to be in touch with the mystery of God. Perhaps no more is asked of us than that.
I have a lot of sympathy with John Caputo because over the years I have come to question this notion of God and to long for another word that would express more clearly the mystery and reality of God as ‘other’. Prayers, homilies, readings at religious services seems to indicate a God who has agency and is ready to answer our prayers in a way that I can no longer accept. Often it seems to me that this simply confirms people’s belief in a super power outside of the cosmos and sets up expectations that cannot be met. I once made a retreat with a sister in my community who was quite distressed because she felt that God was not saying anything to her and it is said of Mother Teresa that for decades before she died she had no felt experience of God’s presence, something called the dark night of the soul. There are examples of people rejecting religion and God because of some disaster that had befallen them or prayers they felt were unanswered. Why did God do this to me?
One of the reasons for this I think is that we read scripture literally and many of us do not understand that scripture is a special genre of literature. Recently a friend expressed real frustration that she had never heard from the pulpit or for that matter in her religious education that much of what we read in the Gospels are in fact stories. But stories that are pointing to and expressing a truth. I believe and have taught that when it comes to religious language that it is not what it says but what it means that is important. Religious literature and language is like the finger pointing to the moon – to focus too much on the words is to miss the meaning and the message it has for us about life and how to live it.
The need to get away from this literal understanding has given rise to theopoetics which was new to me when I read the work of John Caputo but I have now come across it again in the work of Thomas J Oord and some research has shown that it was first used in the modern sense in 1971 by theologian Stanley Romaine Hopper. An article by Kellie Brown explains that theopoetics at that time was an attempt to offer new ways of thinking and speaking about God that people would find more relevant in the light of a lifeless theology that lacked imagination and discovery and had led to the Death of God movement. It came to the fore again in the 1990s within the evangelical church and “relies on a poetic thought process, which means this field of theological inquiry includes other artistic forms and ways of knowing. It invites us to embrace the mystery of the divine rather than expecting us to reduce the examination of faith to a scientific formula.” If I understand it correctly it is to see religious literature as poetry and to recognise that literature, art and poetry as well as the natural world are ways of knowing and understanding the Reality we call God. Is it perhaps to see everything as sacrament, to use a religious term - to see that the fully embodied human experience in whatever way we experience it is as a sign and a symbol of the Reality that we call God. And if this symbol embodies what it signifies then to embrace life and the reality of our experience of the world in which we live is to be in touch with the mystery of God. Perhaps no more is asked of us than that.
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