some thoughts on the Hawkins-Jones discussion

I think that Dr. Larycia Hawkins did the right thing in making public her theological discussion with her boss at Wheaton College. Here are some brief thoughts on reading it.

After affirming that she agrees with Wheaton’s creed, including its very vague (but typical) affirmation of “one sovereign God, eternally existing in three persons,” she engages a challenge by her boss Dr. Stan Jones. (You can read his whole letter here.)

In your letter you ask me to “clarify how it is that we worship the same God if Muslims cannot affirm that God is the Father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; or that God the Father is indeed the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; or that the Father did not spare his only begotten Son; or that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit coexist as a Trinity in eternal and self-giving love?”

Note that at the end here he’s using presently fashionable but historically unpopular “social trinitarian” lingo. To her credit, later on she points out that even trinitarian Christinas disagree on how to understand the traditional Trinity formulations.

I trust that we can peacefully disagree on theological points and affirm others like the Triune God (albeit there are differences here as well–Athanasian Creed, anyone?)

She’s quite correct that most readers don’t see a social trinitarian three-self idea in that creed, but rather a one-self view, or just an inconsistent profession of both – exactly one and three. And the disagreements go way beyond those who love, and those who don’t know what to make of the “Athanasian” creed.

She ignores Dr. Jones’s weirdly passive-aggressive accusation of blasphemy, which immediately follows what she quoted above. To wit, Jones says:

If blasphemy is understood as making statements showing profound disrespect or disregard for the true nature of God as understood in a particular religious faith, can you explain how your comments are to be understood as not falling into that characterization for either Muslims or Christians or both?

I assume that Dr. Jones knows that Muslims say we’re talking about the same god. That would leave only Christians. But what has Dr. Hawkins said that shows “profound disrespect or disregard” for God? It’s a ridiculous charge, which is why he pulls his punch.

Back to the “same god” issue, as I explained in my last post, there’s a lot that a Christian can say about “how it is.” But she more appeals to authority, citing theologians and popes. Fair enough, in a letter like this, I suppose. And political science is her field, not theology.

She confirms what I speculated before reading this – that (something that can be taken as) pluralism is part of what’s bugging the Wheaton leadership. After affirming her Christian commitment, she says,

This is not, to borrow Timothy George’s expression, “an easygoing ecumenism that would amalgamate all faiths into a homogenized whole,” for that would be both a distortion and a sign of disrespect. On the contrary, because I’m a deeply committed Christian who stands firm in the historic faith of faith of the Church that I speak with more nuanced confidence of the God whom we all seek in worship.

In the first part, she is denying any theory of religious pluralism on which the religions don’t differ, or don’t differ in any way that matters. Amen to that. In the last part, she stands firm in her claim that Muslims too are trying to worship God (which implies that they are referring to God.) I think this is correct. And she’s also correct that some evangelical Christian theologians agree.

It’s hard to see, then, how Wheaton has a leg to stand on, in seeking to remove her, when neither their required creed nor evangelicalism as such clearly clashes with anything she’s said. What is really going on here?

Unfortunately, she continues in a confused vein,

Like them [i.e. some evangelical theologians and some popes]  I acknowledge that the statement “we worship the same God” is a simultaneous “yes” and “no” to the question of whether Christians and Muslims (as well as Jews) turn to the same object of worship [i.e. God]…

This won’t do. One can’t reasonably answer yes and no to the same question. We must distinguish, tease apart multiple questions, so that it’s consistent to say “Yes” to one and “No” to the other.

But it gets better. She argues that the New Testament examples of Abraham and others show that one can have faith in God, so presumably worship God, without being a trinitarian. Point, Dr. Hawkins. Her opponents may reply that Muslims are not only non- but also anti-trinitarian. Still, it’s hard to see why that would prevent them from referring to God and intending to worship him rightly, even if this is in various ways unsuccessful (i.e. God doesn’t accept their worship). Notice that she never says that Islamic worship is just as acceptable to God as is Christian worship, or that in the two-way-interaction sense of “worship” Muslims successfully worship at all.

But I also fully understand that on the simultaneous “no” side, as [Dr. Timothy] George notes, while “Christians, like Muslims, affirm the oneness of God…[Christians] understand that oneness not in mathematical terms (as a unit)” but as a tri-Personal, perichoretic unity.

Honestly, this quotation is learned nonsense. Christians do say that there is exactly one God, so God is a “mathematical unity.” Some, even trinitarians, insist on this as meaning divine simplicity. In any case, no one has any idea, really, what “perichoretic unity” is supposed to be. To this she adds her own somewhat opaque statement:

I understand that Islam (and Judaism) denies the deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and leaves no room for the Cross and the Resurrection, but my statement is not a statement on soteriology or trinitarian theology, but one of embodied piety.

I’m not sure what a statement “of embodied piety” is. But I do get her point that yes, Muslims deny the deity of Jesus and that either he or the Holy Spirit is a divine person, as well as the crucifixion of Jesus. And she’s not, we infer, addressing the question of whether a Muslim can be saved. Then she adds an important clarification.

When I say that “we worship the same God,” I am saying… that “when pious Muslims pray, they are addressing the One True God, and that God is, simply, God.”

This is the reference claim the Christians philosophers have focused on, in discussing this controversy. Like her and a number of my Christian philosopher friends, I think that this reference claim is correct, and that it doesn’t imply any sort of substantial equality between Christianity and Islam. It is, though, important to Christian-Muslim dialogue. We need to agree on this for the conversation to progress, so that we get down to what really divides us, which is who is the best revealer of God – Jesus, or Muhammad?

After some other comments, she remarks:

You also ask me to speak of my understanding of the Eucharist.

Dr. Jones had noted that she focused on the human-to-human aspect of the communion ceremony, and he wants to know if she also affirms it as a memorial of Jesus’s atonement which reconciles humans to God. Her answer could be clearer, but she does imply that the ceremony has that meaning too.

Finally, an observation. Dr. Jones’s letter is steely, unfriendly, and confrontative. It looks like a document trying to lay a groundwork for firing, not any kind of ordinary theological correspondence or conversation between Christian educators. He starts with no greeting, and ends demanding an answer in two days! And it’s not clear to me whether he is the source or conduit of the demands – see below.

On the other hand, the person who posted this letter by Jones on Hawkins’s website inaccurately describes it as “Letter from Wheaton College: Charges of Apostasy Against Dr. Hawkins”. I don’t see any charge of apostasy, of leaving the faith there. Just a mean, inquisitorial bunch of demands, in a situation that one would think would have been better served by a private conversation/argument over coffee. Instead, “Larycia, if you don’t have a lawyer, you should get one.”

If her description of the process is even close to accurate, they’ve treated her very poorly. My inner pessimist (or realist) predicts a big-money lawsuit that Wheaton will be forced to settle.

I’ve been around universities for awhile now, so let me add two more points. First, it is quite possible that Dr. Jones here is simply carrying out the orders of those above him. This would explain why, according to Dr. Hawkins in her recent media statement, he at first thought her reply I’ve commented on here would be sufficient. But then it was not. University higher-ups, be they presidents or boards, often think that one important function of underling administrators is to do their dirty work for them. It may be, then, that the senseless opposition to Dr. Hawkins comes from above the provost level. So I wouldn’t view Dr. Jones as the only or main villain in the story. Second, this whole affair has to be profoundly discouraging to Wheaton faculty. Will they too be called to account for things they say on social media which allegedly conflict with alleged implications of Wheaton’s creed? Or is this all a cover for the real issue, which is her lefty “social justice” activism (e.g. serving on the board of this group)? Either way, it’s bad – either personal interpretations of evangelical theological correctness will be enforced, or a professor can’t be an active Democrat at Wheaton. At least, that’s how it looks to this outsider.