Timothy Stoner

A Ticklish Convergence: Part One

Posted on 28. Oct, 2010 by Tim Stoner in Emergent Theology, Essays, The Church

Phyllis Tickle is a woman to be reckoned with. She is the author of many books, one of her most  recent, The Great Emergence, describes the huge transformation taking place in how Christianity is understood. According to her blog “She is founding editor of the Religion Department of Publishers Weekly, the international journal of the book industry. . . . She is an authority on religion in America and a much sought after lecturer on the subject.” I have been reading up on her because a friend who has been deeply impacted by her recently wondered if I’d ever read her books and what I thought of her. I hadn’t, but decided I would find out. 

The first thing that jumped out when I typed her name in the search engine was that she spoke in my home town last year. She was the featured speaker at Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids on May 14, 2009. Her subject was “The Feminine Attributes of the Holy Spirit.” My curiosity was successfully piqued, as a good title ought to do. 

She began with Genesis 1:26 in which we are allowed to listen in to the intra-Trinitarian monologue in which God declares, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness. . . .” We are then told that “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27). Tickle went on to draw the conclusion that here we have the “beginning of our understanding that God is both male and female; God is both mother and father, . . . It’s the beginning of our understanding that there is more than one thing under the name of God and that it is both male and female.” 

Now I am not a pedant. I think her choice of language is unfortunate here–giving her every benefit of the doubt. However, also given the obvious trajectory of our zeitgeist towards a resurgent paganism, I would go further and say it might even be properly termed careless, but not necessarily out of bounds, if by it she means to say that God has qualities that are reflected in the male and female of the species. It would be more accurate to say that the male and the female are icons of God in unique and distinct ways. Rhetorical shock tactics have their place, but a teacher needs to tread that terrain with great caution lest she lead her unwitting followers into a field of clover strewn with landmines, trip-wires and fatal booby-traps.

I only make this point in passing, but it will become more relevant later, this passage in Genesis is not only about the dignity and honor of maleness and femaleness, it is also about the dignity and honor of heterosexual marriage. And, as we are instructed by Paul in the NT, this institution is also an icon meant to paint a beautiful and holy picture of the love of Christ (the masculine) for the Church (His Bride–the feminine). Paul calls this a “profound mystery.”

Tickle heads boldly into more controversial waters by talking about the impact that globalization is having on our view of other religions. “We are hearing more and more about all religions are the same,” she says, “That all religions go to the same place, that all religions are very alike, that probably they all speak to the same God, and they differ from each other only in that they are in different cultural contexts.” At this point, of course, I am waiting for a disclaimer, a caveat, a caution. What follows is quite a bit less than that: “There is a degree of truth that says most religions share a common wisdom. That is to say we want the same for humanity, we believe in some of the same moral values. That is absolutely true.”

I am trying to rid myself of all vestiges of entrenched religious hysteria, so, I take a deep breath here and think about what Tickle has said and more importantly, what she has not said. She speaks with the modulated and judicious tones of a politician (or, in her case, an intelligent academic). She chooses her words with admirable care. They are disarming. They are not the slightest bit threatening or offensive. They are, actually, anti-offensive. They fall softly on the ear and run down the back like perfumed massaging oil. 

Tickle states that the movement she is a part of (Emergence Christianity) is “radically Jesus centered” which I am delighted to hear. Taking her at her word, this question then inescapably follows:  Does Jesus agree with Tickle?  There are two parts to this question: First, do the words of Jesus support the claim that all other religions are alike and share a “common wisdom;” and secondly, do His actions give credence to Tickle’s rhetorical posture in addressing other religions?

Jesus was confronted with at least one other religion during His ministry in Palestine. Its teachers are referred to pejoratively by John as “the Jews.” They were devotees of Moses and traditionalist followers of the Torah as interpreted over the centuries by the ancients. Their understanding was that slavish obedience to the commandments, regulations, and Jewish liturgical rituals earned merit with God and was the basis for His favor and acceptance. They regarded themselves as vastly superior to pagan, Gentile “dogs.” They also looked down their noses at the mass of un-schooled Jews who were not as circumspect (and thus not as holy) as they.

How did Jesus respond to them? Not only did He fail to find common ground with these “teachers of the Law,” He directly contradicted them. He publicly exposed them. He mocked and blistered them with epithets: “blind guides, hypocrites, liars, wolves, sons of Hell, murderous vipers.” He went so far as to claim that “All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers. . . . The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (Jn. 10:7-10).

Jesus claimed that all others who preceded Him sincerely offering alternative spiritual insights and paths to salvation were not only in error, but actually dangerous. They were stealing truth and replacing it with lies. Thus, examining the data objectively, in addressing Himself to purveyors of other truth claims, Jesus, our primary exemplar, is the exact opposite of Tickle both in word and in demeanor.

However, her commentary on other religions was not completely lacking in distinctions, for she added this caveat: “But, religions differ in their mysteries. And it is the mysteries we must hold to ourselves as Christians and say, ‘this is what makes us Christian.’” If one is radically Jesus-centered one must get her cues from Him. Going back then to Him, what we discover is that what He found repulsive–actually destructive and deadly–about the competing ideology of His day were not its mysteries but its clarities. He was at war with what they taught. Simply put, He rejected their statements not their secrets.

What angered Him so profoundly about these devotees of rabbinic Judaism were the lies they spoke. This is why He accused them of being children of the Devil, “for when he lies he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn. 8:44). This is why He declared Himself to be the Way, the Truth and the Life (Jn. 14:6) and why His autobiographers record that He chose to precede His remarks (over 70 times) with the formula: “I tell you the truth,” rather than “I tell you a mystery.” 

During the period of the primitive church there were scores of mystery religions and the leaders, including the Church Fathers we are once again learning to revere, opposed them all. The battle was engaged immediately after the death of Jesus when Paul wrote to Gentiles in cultures saturated with mystery cults: “have nothing to do with godless myths” (I Tim. 4:7) and continued unabated for centuries.

When Paul mentions “mystery” in the context of the Gospel, he is referring to a secret that has now been brought out into the light. Thus, what distinguished Christianity from all the competing mystery religions was not its secret rituals or paradoxes but its historic truth claim about a God become man, become Savior, Vicarious and Victorious Sacrifice, who rose from the dead to redeem the cosmos and provide salvation to all men who submit to Him in faith. 

Most of the pagan mystery religions also had their female goddesses with secret rituals, many involving mystical sexual fertility rites. This is one of the reasons why they were rejected so strenuously. This revulsion can be heard when Paul writes: “among you there should not even be a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity. . . for it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret” (Eph. 5:3,12). 

I find it intriguing that the mystery that Tickle emphasizes as distinctive and foundational to Christianity is the Trinity, while ignoring the most obvious mystery that the creation narrative establishes: the mysterious spiritual significance of the marital union between male and female. This omission is even more striking when later in her talk she does not pull back from describing the relationship between the indwelling Holy Spirit and the believer as “an erotic relationship.” It does not take long to understand the reason for this strange exclusion when one reads her book The Great Emergence. Her choice of words also gains troubling significance. 

To be continued . . . .

Tags: Christianity and other religions, Emergent and Emerging Christianity, feminist Christianity, homosexuality in the church, mystery cults, mystery religions, Phyllis Tickle, the divine feminine, the Great Emergence