Now, to start, putting forward "rules" for talking about God might seems strange to some of us. But this "grammatical" approach is common in theology. Theologians speak of "grammar" to monitor and police speech about God to provide some guardrails so that our talk about God doesn't tip into the idolatrous. "Grammatical" speech about God keeps all metaphysical confessions and distinctions properly in their place. "Ungrammatical" speech about God tips into metaphysical confusion or idolatry. Clearing up "grammatical" versus "ungrammatical" claims about God is Tanner's aim in positing her two rules. How can we keep our speech about God clear of a contrastive metaphysics, where God and creaturely agency are not pitted competitively against each other?
So, what are Tanner's two rules for speaking about God's transcendence in relation to creation?
The first rule is this:
Rule #1: "Avoid both a simple univocal attribution of predicates to God and the world and a simple contrast of divine and non-divine predicates."
Tanner comments on this rule: "In the case of univocality, God is really not transcendent at all. In the case of simple contrast, God's transcendence is not radical enough. We can call this first rule a rule for talk of God's transcendence beyond both identity and opposition with the non-divine."
Your head is likely spinning, so let me try to unpack this a bit. Going back to the temptations in Part 3, between deism and pantheism, Tanner here describes these errors as "identity" and "opposition." Pantheism is an error of "identity," or "univocality." That is to say, God can't ever be "identified" or "equated" with any creaturely reality or agency. In such an identity, as Tanner says, "God is really not transcendent at all." For example, God "exists" and creation "exists" but not in a univocal way, not in an "identical" way. "Existence" is different when speaking of creature versus Creator.
Swinging to the other mistake, deism, the rule also says we cannot make a simple contrast between God and the world. For example, in speaking of creaturely agency we can't say, "If God is active the creature is passive." Or, "If the creature is active God is passive." We also can't say, regarding God's presence, that, "If the creature is here then God is there." Again, that's deism, the notion that God exists at some remove from creature by way of power or presence. Such contrastive either/or talk about God, says Tanner, is a problem because "God's transcendence is not radical enough." As pointed out in Part 3, God's transcendence has to be so radical so that God can come close to the creature while not becoming the creature.
By following Rule #1 we avoid the mistakes of "identity and opposition" in speaking of God and creation. Rule #1 allows us to speak of God's transcendence and immanence "grammatically," avoiding the garbled sentences of pantheism and deism.
Tanner's second rule is:
Rule #2: "Avoid in talk about God's creative agency all suggestions of limitation of scope or manner."
The point of this rule, says Tanner, is to prescribe "talk of God's creative agency as immediate and universally extensive." More simply, God is active and present everywhere. We can never say that God "isn't" present or at work in a given situation or location.
Summarizing the impact of the two rules on theological speech about God, Tanner says:
Should Christians affirm [God's] involvement [with the world], the rule for talk of God as transcendent requires talk of it as a universally extensive and immediate agency. God must not be said to be at work to a limited extent on or with what pre-exists it. God must not be talked about as only indirectly efficacious of the whole in virtue of intermediate agencies. In either case God would take on the character of a finite agent; and the rule of talk of God as transcendent would be thereby be violated. According to our rules, then, statements about God's transcendence imply statements about a direct and comprehensive agency of God.
Again, this avoids deism, God as Watchmaker and creation as a watch. God doesn't "wind up" creation and step back, working distantly and indirectly via creaturely effects God once set in motion some time in the past. It's not a chain of dominos. God's agency is, rather, always directly and comprehensively at work.
The point for a conversation about mental health is that we cannot say, "God helps me 'through' this antidepressant." God doesn't operate deistically, at a remove, through a chain of intermediate causes. God is at work directly in the antidepressant, but also in a way radically unlike an antidepressant. As Tanner continues,
The reverse holds as well. When Christian discourse conforms to our rules, statements about God's creative agency imply statements about the radical transcendence of God. God may be talked about as a creative agent, immediately effecting every non-divine being in every respect by which it may be likened to or distinguished from other finite beings; but only if God's nature as a transcendent being cannot be captured by any characterization in the same terms of similarity and difference. Talk of that sort about God's creative agency makes sense only if Christian statements about God as transcendent conform to our rule.
So, God is directly at work in the antidepressant, but neither is God's action reduced or limited to what the antidepressant does for me.
In short, God is directly and comprehensively at work in all mental health technologies, but neither can God's healing be reduced to these technologies.
My hunch is that, right now, you have a confused look on your face. What's the win here? Why dig into these two rules?
In the coming posts I'll be unpack some implications, but for today let me say this to help hold you over. Think about our awareness of God's presence. When we take our antidepressant our default is toward a deistic imagination. I take my pill and hardly think that God is there, or doing anything to help me. But as I hope you can see, that imagination is "ungrammatical," a violation of Tanner's rules. Both of them. Rule #1 is broken because we're assuming that if I take a pill then it's the pill and not God helping me. And that breaks Rule #2 because I'm assuming God power to help me is absent in the pill taking.
A "grammatical" approach to the pill is to say: "God is here, directly helping me in this pill." But neither should I think that God 'just is' the pill, that God's presence and help for me is restricted to the pill, that God can't help my depression except through the pill. What these two rules are doing is bringing God closer to the pill taking (immanence) while being careful to not reduce God to the pill taking (transcendence). If we can do this, we have in hand a metaphysics that doesn't pit God against medication, or any therapy, in a competitive way.
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