OTHER BOOKS BY DOUGLAS JOHN HALL
Hope against Hope (1972)
The Reality of the Gospel and the Unreality of the Churches (1975)
Lighten Our Darkness: Towards an Indigenous Theology of the Cross (1976)
Ecclesia Crucis: Church of the Cross (1980)
Has the Church a Future? (1980)
The Canada Crisis: A Christian Perspective (1980)
The Steward: a Biblical Symbol Come of Age (1982)
The Stewardship of Life in the Kingdom of Death (1985/88)
Imaging God: Dominion as Stewardship (1986)
God and Human Suffering (1986)
When You Pray: Thinking Your Way into God’s World (1987)
The Future of the Church: Where are We Headed? (1989)
Thinking the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (1991)
Professing the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (1993)
Confessing the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (1996)
God and the Nations [with Rosemary Radford Ruether] (1995)
The End of Christendom and the Future of Christianity (1995)
Remembered Voices: Reclaiming the Legacy of “Neo-Orthodoxy” (1998)
Why Christian?—For Those on the Edge of Faith (1998)
Etre image de Dieu: Le stewardship de l’humain dans la creation (1998)
The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World (2003)
Bound and Free: A Theologian’s Journey (2005)
The Messenger: Friendship, Faith, and Finding One’s Way (2011)
Waiting for Gospel: An Appeal to the Dispirited Remnants of Protestant “Establishment” (2012)
What Christianity Is Not
An Exercise in ‘Negative’ Theology
Douglas John Hall
WHAT CHRISTIANITY IS NOT
An Exercise in ‘Negative’ Theology
Copyright © 2013 Douglas John Hall. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Cascade Books
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
isbn 13: 978-1-61097-671-8
eisbn 13: 978-1-62189-541-1
Cataloging-in-Publication data:
Douglas John Hall, 1928–
What Christianity is not : an exercise in ‘negative’ theology / Douglas John Hall.
xviii + 176 p.; 23 cm—Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
isbn 13: 978-1-61097-671-8
1. Theology. 2. Negative theology. 3. Christianity—Essence, genius, nature. I. Title.
bt60 .h31 2013
Scriptures marked (RSV) are from Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scriptures marked (NRSV) are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Manufactured in the USA
FOR
Anne-Sophie Catherine Hall
Daniel Alois Johann Friedrich Hall-Kircher
Samuel Keith Hall
Rebekka Rose Daniels
Jakob Ernest Christopher Daniels
Kyle Tucker [Chaim] Daniels
Olivier Solomon Thayendanegea Hall-Gauthier
Sophia Rachelle Hall-Gauthier
“All faith systems have been at pains to show
that the ultimate cannot be expressed
in any theoretical system, however august,
because it lies beyond words and concepts.
But many people today are no longer
comfortable with this
apophatic reticence.”1
* * *
Bonhoeffer was convinced that Western
Christianity is “so soaked in
religious consciousness” that
the question of “what Christianity really is”
will find answers only after
years of intense theological struggle.2
1. Karen Armstrong, The Case for God (New York: Knopf, 2001), 320.
2. Partly paraphrased from Larry Rasmussen (with Renate Bethge), Dietrich Bonhoeffer—His Significance for North Americans (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 67 (italics added).
Dedication
To My Grandchildren
Beloved Children,
I am dedicating this book, which I intend to be my last, to you. To my own astonishment, I have become an old man; and like most grandparents I spend a good deal of my time these days wondering about the future—your future—which I shall not see. Whether the world of tomorrow will be better than yesterday’s world, or worse, no one can say; but that it will be different from the eighty-four years I have known so far is obvious enough. Some of the problems we have already experienced—problems of the environment, of the difficult encounters between nations and peoples heretofore isolated from one another, of the enormous and indecent gap between rich and poor, of the use and abuse of our limited planetary resources: some of these and similar problems will probably increase in your lifetimes, or become yet more complex. One can only trust that there will be enough human ingenuity and wisdom in your generation and those to follow that the human species will find the will and the courage to embrace and act upon the best dreams of the past.
Part of that past, the Christian faith, has occupied most of my adult years on this good earth. You all know that