Theology is Earth Science
John Shuck
February 5th, 2006
First Presbyterian Church
Elizabethton, Tennessee
Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you.”
Gospel of Thomas, 3
I have to say up front that I like the Gospel of Thomas. I have been fantasizing about sending an overture to the Holston Presbytery to include the Gospel of Thomas in the Bible. Think that would go over?
New Testament scholar, Charles Hedrick, has suggested that our Scripture ought to be a loose-leaf notebook. Add some pages; remove some. Let people decide on their own those texts that are authoritative and those that are not. It would force us to give up our idolatry of the Bible in which we see it as some kind of magical book that came down from heaven on a golden platter. It would keep us from putting a halo around bad texts. It would keep us from thinking and declaring and acting as though we possess the truth because we have the right book.
The loose-leaf scripture makes it impossible to justify one person’s oppression of another because of what “the Bible says”. If someone tells you that you cannot receive communion, or can’t speak in church, or can’t be a minister, or can’t go to heaven, or have to cry and weep and repent all day, because of some passage in the Bible, then, you can pull out your three ring binder and say, “Well, gee, I have already removed that page and I have replaced it with up to date information!”
Wouldn’t that be great?!!
No one could appeal to the authority of scripture because in the end each person’s three-ring binder contains or potentially could contain different scriptures. What would this mean? This would mean that every argument, opinion, proposition or plan of action would have to stand on its own merit.
So, for example, if you wanted to convince the community that women should have their heads covered when they are in worship, you could appeal to I Corinthians chapter 11. But others in the community may have already removed that chapter from their loose-leaf notebook. Your appeal to divine revelation and its authority will have little effect. If you want to convince people of your proposition, you will have to convince them that it is reasonable. If you want to convince the women of the church that they need to have their heads covered, you will need to do better than say, “The Bible says”. In a loose-leaf Bible church, your argument will stand or fall on its own.
Revelation is the crutch people rely upon when they cannot make a reasoned argument. If Reverend X cannot convince you by reason or evidence, then he will appeal to some kind of divine authority such as the Bible, a Creed, the Pope, or his own charisma as a sign of divine communication.
It is amazing how many of us have allowed ourselves to be bullied by this for so long. Institutionalized superstition is still alive and well and doing damage. They all seem to know, without a doubt, where the kingdom of God is to be found, the way to get there, and who is in and who is out. My hunch is that everyone in this room has a story to attest to that.
This is where the Gospel of Thomas comes in.
Jesus said,
"If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you.”
Gospel of Thomas, 3
Jesus, in Thomas, was I think, spoofing those who claimed to know more than they reasonably can know. The birds and the fish know more than they do. When I read this saying, this is what I hear. You may hear something different. This is what I hear:
If you are looking to find God or the kingdom, happiness, life, peace or whatever you want to call it, there are people who are willing to give you the answers. They will back up their answers with symbols of authority. But when it comes right down to it, you have everything you need within yourself and outside yourself. Make your own decisions and trust your instincts.
It makes sense to me. I like the Gospel of Thomas.
You will notice that the Gospel of Thomas is not in the Bible.
Christianity was quite diverse in the early centuries. It wasn’t until the Council of Nicea, 300 years after Jesus, that orthodoxy exerted its full power with the blessing of Emperor Constantine. For him, Christianity proved to be good medicine to fight the enemies of Rome, especially Christianity that was unified with clear boundaries. It was easier to control and through it control others.
The Thomas Christians did not survive. They had to go underground. Maybe the Thomas Christians were too free thinking to make it in the orthodox world. But I like them. That is why their Jesus has a place of honor in my loose-leaf bible. I don’t actually have a loose-leaf Bible. What I mean to say is that some of what Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas speaks to me as much and in many cases more than other texts in the Bible.
Irish theologian, Anne Primavesi, offers an ecological interpretation to this passage. The book I am quoting from by Anne Primavesi is Making God Laugh: Human Arrogance and Ecological Humility. She makes the argument that human beings can speak to God. They can speak about God. But to speak for God is the height of human arrogance.
She offers an interpretation of this saying in Thomas to make her point that the birds and the fish might have something to teach us about God.
She translates Thomas, saying 3 this way:
If your leaders tell you,
Look! The kingdom (of God) is in heaven!
Remember.
The birds who fly the heavens have always known this.
If they say
It is in the seas!
Remember.
The fish have always known it.
The fish and the birds have been around a lot longer than homo sapiens. What was God doing all of those billions of years before humans decided that they alone could speak for Her? And then turn Her into a Him. Maybe we ought to ask the fish. Seriously, maybe we ought to consult the birds.
What I am talking about is the source of theology. If theology is loosely translated as conversation about God, then what is the source of theology? Traditionally, the main source of Christian theology has been the Bible.
Logic it seems to me would suggest that this source is far too narrow. If we are talking about Goad as the word we use to describe the foundation of the universe, then what was God doing before homo sapiens arrived on the scene to write the Bible?
At best the stories in the Bible are no older than 2,000 BCE. At that date, I am referring to the myths from which the myths of the Bible are derived. Oral tradition would put the earlier myths earlier than 2,000 BCE. Even allowing for early human scribbles on the walls of caves, we are still in the realm of thousands of years. Think of the scale of things. Life on Earth has evolving for four billion years. Written language including the Bible has been around for a few thousand years. The difference in time is beyond comprehension. Again if we imagine that the word “God” represents some kind of reality, that reality has been doing its thing with Earth and its inhabitants for billions of years before homo sapiens arrived. As the Gospel of Thomas says, creatures of Earth literally did precede human beings in the experience of God. Not to mention what Gad has been doing beyond Earth.
So it is quirky to say the least, to assume that our primary source of information about God would be in a collection of books written by and from the experience of a certain tribe of humans a few thousand years ago. Of course, the only way Christians can claim that is by appeal to special revelation.
But special revelation, I believe, is no longer viable as the key source, or even a credible source, for theology in the 21st century. We know too much about the history of the composition of texts for starters. There is nothing outside of a circular argument that allows me to claim that my text or my creed is true or comes from God. Special revelation removes itself from other modes of inquiry. There can be no special pleading when it comes to search for truth.
If we do not allow, and I think it is correct not to allow, special revelation as the primary source of information about God, then what is the source of that information? What then, is theology?
Theology, to use a phrase from Anne Primavesi, is Earth science. It is at least Earth science. It is more than Earth science. It is astronomy, physics, biology, zoology, chemistry, and all of the physical and life sciences. Since human beings are a part of Earth’s history, even though we are latecomers, theology does include the study of homo sapiens as well—anthropology, mythology, sociology, economics, poetry, music, art, philosophy, spirituality, and other human studies are also sources for theology.
The point that I am attempting to make is this:
If Christians desire to speak meaningfully about God—God as the foundation of the universe—and not just a little idol we have created for ourselves, then our sources for this conversation must be far larger than our won traditional texts. One of those sources is Earth’s story. It is the story of Earth’s species, their evolution and their participation in life. It is the story of the birds and fish that have preceded us. It is the human story too. It is the story of our evolution and of societies and the way of meaning-making. It is all part of Earth’s story.
I started off my sermon with praise for the Gospel of Thomas. The very existence of this document has been helpful to me in shattering idols—namely my idolatry of the Bible and of the Christian creed—to the extent they are considered absolutes. Recognizing that our absolutes are idols and shattering them is another metaphor for the via negativa or the way of letting go. We let go so that we are empty in order that we may receive.
I am beginning to realize that if I am interested in God, more than my little idol that I call God, then Earth’s story needs to be in my loose-leaf bible.
What is in your loose-leaf bible?
i Anne Primavesi, Making God Laugh: Human Arrogance and Ecological Humility. Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 2004. P. 16