M. Christine Morkovsky, CDP
The title of this book leads one to expect a scholarly exploration of divine suffering aided by process theology. Scholars have reflected on this topic for years, but calling suffering creative and relating it to the Blessed Trinity already shows Schaab is carrying the discussion into new territory. Taking theologian/scientist Arthur R. Peacocke as a mentor, she supports her views with careful theological reasoning. She also offers fresh metaphors and relates them to the latest findings in ecology as well as pastoral and feminist theology.
That Jesus suffered is quite evident, but can we say that God suffers? Yes, says Schaab. Not only do the Father, the Son and the Spirit suffer, but one can propose that each Person of the Trinity suffers in a distinctive way. Schaab is aware that thinkers like Johann Baptist Metz and Edward Schillebeeckx would object to some of her views while scientists like Ian Barbour, Charles Darwin, Ernan McMullin and John Polkinghorne as well as theologians like Thomas Aquinas, John Haught, John Hick, Walter Kasper Jürgen Moltmann, Jon Sobrino, and Daniel Day Williams would be supportive of some though not all of them. Instead of classical theism or pantheism, she prefers panentheism’s view that the being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe but is not exhausted by the universe. Process thinkers Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, however, are not among her references. She selects an epistemology of critical realism acceptable to contemporary science as well as theology and a methodology of inference to the best explanation. Chance and the cosmos as sacrament are among topics discussed.
Schaab accepts the foundational model of God as Trinity, but rejects Sallie McFague’s view of the universe as God’s body. God is the transcendent Creator of the cosmos and also exercises immanent creativity within evolution. God is not a detached observer but is directly involved in the continuing processes of the cosmos, exercising ongoing creativity in and through the world.
Those processes include suffering. For Schaab, if one admits that the supra-rational Creator suffers, it follows that God though transcendent is also immanent and though omnipresent is not immutable or impassible. God shares the suffering of the beloved creation while seeking to move it to new life and flourishing. Rather than propose God is timeless, she favors the view that the succession of events or states of consciousness exists within God. God creates each moment of time and simultaneously is present in every moment of it without being subject to created physical time. God limits divine omnipotence by making creation open-ended and human creatures free. Thus God must be conceived as self-limiting in knowledge and power, as source of both law and chance, and as vulnerable. Creativity and diversity in the universe delight God, but atrocities and destruction are cause for lament, empathy, and compassion in a God who is really related to the world, who is self-giving Love. God as suffering love is preeminently communicated in Jesus the Christ.
If the nature of God is personal, it is logical to suppose that God can suffer unconditionally in, with, and through creation. The Father initiates the cosmos; the Son becomes human; and the Holy Spirit works through the whole cosmic development. Like Peacocke, Schaab instead of investigating the immanent or economic Trinity adopts a relational ontology that focuses on the One God distinguished as personally transcendent, personally incarnate, personally immanent and in panentheistic relation to the cosmos. God is intimate, internal, and interpenetrating in the creative process, and similar differentiations might be made with regard to the divine suffering. God’s suffering in relation to the cosmos can be understood as transcendent sympathy, incarnate empathy, and immanent protopathy (defined as primary suffering immediately produced, not a consequence of another’s suffering). The divine suffering can be regarded as a response to results of natural evolutionary processes, to human choices or actions, or as immediately produced when the divine purpose of full flourishing of all being is obstructed in a given case.
The most appropriate image for the creative suffering of God, Schaab proposes, is the female procreative experience. A mother can be imagined as creating a being other than herself within herself. Seeing God as a pregnant mother can make it easier to recognize the interdependence of God and creation yet safeguard the distinct identities of God, the cosmos, and individual creatures. Schaab chooses three additional female images of God already in the Christian tradition to articulate the creative suffering of God: She Who Is, Shekhinah, and Sophia. These can deepen insights into divine suffering with, in, and under the cosmos.
What roles express the proper relationship of human beings in relation to their Creator when one emphasizes the profound relationship between creation and its Creator? Schaab selects seven used by Peacocke, each with a theological basis that entails ecological values and ethical action. These include interpreter, preserver, and co-creator. She adds an eighth model, that of midwife, which can also be pastorally effective. It emphasizes the intrinsic value of the cosmos and urges human beings to be responsible co-creators. Accepting this model can generate many new perspectives and fresh ways of regarding the mystery of the God who always yearns to bring about more abundant life.
This book is a valuable contribution to the American Academy of Religion Series. It is carefully researched but comprehensible for readers who may not know process theology in depth. Schaab honors her sources and, without being contentious, makes it clear when she goes beyond them. Her insights should stimulate others to creative thinking about perennial themes.