Hospitable God

The Transformative Dream

George Newlands, Allen Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317121206
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Exploring the hospitality of God, and its implications for human thought and action, this book examines the concepts of hospitality as cognitive tools for reframing our thinking about God, divine action, and human response in discipleship. Hospitality is imagined as an interactive symbol, changing perspectives and encouraging stable environments of compassionate construction in society. Human rights are of crucial importance to the wellbeing of the people of our planet. But there is a sense in which they will always be an emergency measure, a response to evils as they are happening. The authors argue that a hospitable comparative theology reaches out to bring Christian hospitality into the dialogue of world religions and cultures. It will respect the identity of particular groups and yet will strive for a cosmopolitan sharing of common values. It will respect tradition but also openness to reform and re-imagining. It will encourage convergence and development in a fluid stream of committed hospitalities.

Part I God the Hospitable

Chapter One God the Hospitable in Christian Thought and Action

DOI: 10.4324/9781315587042-1

The project

Hospitality is a concept with which we are familiar. All of us offer hospitality in one way or another. In Europe and in the United States we probably think first of who we would like to invite, who would fit in well with the other guests we have in mind, issue an invitation several days in advance, look around the house to see that it is not too obviously untidy, buy in and prepare some appropriate food and drink, and then await our guests. We might reflect on the things they might like to talk about. When they arrive we try to make them feel at home, and to entertain them in such a way that they will have an enjoyable visit. After they have finally departed we may ask ourselves whether we think the visit was as enjoyable all round as we had hoped it would be, and what we might do to improve things in the future. This is the stuff of a million occasions of everyday hospitality, one of the pleasures of our lives. Sometimes of course even everyday hospitality brings particular challenges. And sometimes hospitality requires much greater effort, brings extraordinary problems and requires the taking of considerable risks.

In these pages we explore the implications and possibilities inherent in hospitality as a comprehensive reframing of our understanding of the nature of God of faith, and of discipleship as attention to the delivery of human rights. We recognise that everyone approaches this subject from a unique perspective, both as individuals and as members of different cultural traditions, communities and societies. The aim is to communicate with people who are interested to develop their search for and understanding of faith. Some of the illustrations will inevitably come from the technical discussions of professional theology. They will be used to suggest ideas to the inquirer rather than to insulate discussion within the academic guild. A concerted effort is needed to offer progressive alternatives in the basic areas of the nature and the grounds for faith, the understanding of the nature and existence of God, the mystery of divine action, and the contemporary significance of salvation in the context of human rights.

* * *

Hospitable God may sound dangerously like a particularly comfortable religious title, a coffee-table Christianity to soothe away the cares of the actual world in which we live. This is indeed an avenue that could be and often is pursued. Coffee tables have their value:

Throughout history, all civilized societies have had places where people could get together and socialize, share gossip discuss ideas, or just unwind. These public gatherings are vital to a culture’s health, and they have always reflected the national character of their patrons: London had its boisterous pubs, Paris its relaxed sidewalk cafes, Beijing its formal and proper tea-houses, 1950s America its wholesome soda fountains and malt shops. Today, we have the cozy, indulgent coffeehouse as our social hub, and Starbucks is the first company ever to have taken this kind of communal place, standardized it, branded it, and sold it to the world at large. (Clark, Starbucked, 2007, 12)

Hospitality is a word easily abused – for example in some of the less salubrious aspects of the contemporary hospitality industry, and in much of the lavish hospitality extended to their peers, often at the expense of impoverished employees, by power elites through the ages. Dreams may encourage illusion, and hope may sometimes be dangerous distraction from reality. Nevertheless, we believe hospitality to be a concept which may help us to focus and express central aspects of the Christian gospel, of the understanding of God, humanity and human community.

Far from being a comfortable option, it invites an engagement which may seriously and comprehensively challenge much that has been taken for granted and which may produce unexpected and disturbing results. It cannot be emphasised too heavily that hospitality carries risks. This book should perhaps carry a health warning: HOSPITALITY MAY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH. It has led to danger and even death. This is sometimes the cost of discipleship. We need to remember too that talking of hospitality will not necessarily make us more hospitable. Hospitality is a hard test which we regularly fail. But at least we can try to keep the aspiration before us. Genuine hospitality as understood in the light of faith may have to be distinguished from more limited forms of openness, which involve the sharing of privilege. That will be part of the specificity of Christian hospitality.¹

1 We are indebted to Richard Amesbury and Andrew Forsyth for stressing this dimension, and to Gretar Gunnarsson for pressing the question of criteria and truth conditions.

It would be deeply inhospitable, not to say just plain wrong, to suggest that hospitality is a prerogative of Christian faith alone. Wherever human beings come together there are choices to be made, hospitable or inhospitable. This has been the case since the earliest human beings walked on the planet. It remains so today. Human beings are not the only species which has been shown to interact and cooperate in joint action. But human beings appear to create the most productive of relationship and also the most destructive:

‘But before you sacrifice yourself for him, think about this: Would he do the same for you? Have you ever wondered why he doesn’t include you in games when he has guests? Why he only plays with you when no one else is around? I’ll tell you why, Hazara. Because to him you’re nothing other than an ugly pet. Something he can play with when he’s bored, something he can kick when he’s angry. Don’t ever fool yourself and think you’re something more.’

Amir agha and I are friends, Hassan said. He looked flushed.

‘Friends?’ Assef said, laughing. ‘You pathetic fool! Someday you’ll wake up from your little fantasy and learn just how good of a friend he is. Now, bas! Enough of this. Give us that kite.’ (Hosseini, 2005, 65)

There is a danger of stretching the concept of hospitality so thin that it empties it of any real conceptual force or purchase. That is a serious issue: where everything is everything, nothing is anything. We explicitly hold that the encompassing divine love of God, creator and redeemer, may be distinctively reframed as divine hospitality in all its dimensions. We have tried consistently to construe hospitality as specifically characterised by its grounding in the God of Jesus Christ. We see this character as porous in its enactment, stretching out into every area of creation somewhat like a gravitational field, capable of intensification in determinable respects in local matrices. In this way the universal becomes precisely focused in the specific.

There is always a need for fresh and positive interpretations of faith, provided that they take full account of the uncomfortable situation in which millions of our fellow human beings continue to live and die – the ever present world of ‘Naught for your comfort’. There is a clear need for renewed effort to develop a progressive and viable interpretation of Christian faith, for people for whom the ‘eternal verities’ are increasingly viewed as neither lasting nor true. We attempt to anchor hospitality in the lived experience of individuals and communities.

What is hospitality? To be hospitable is to develop certain mindsets, habits and character. This includes certain distinctive elements, including for theology distinctively Christian elements. In Western countries we seek to be hospitable in a often secular society which was itself partly created by the church, though there was always conservative reaction and division on this issue. Now in some ways our secular society can become a problem for the church.

The church should be porous – but this depends on the situation – e.g. in some Scandinavian countries, in countries with established or quasi-established churches and in ‘Mainline’ churches in the United States there can be a ‘thinning out’ in such a way that everyone belongs to the church but this may mean less and less, and the challenge and centre of the gospel can be obscured. In being hospitable there is a need for flexibility: in different situations different emphasis may be needed. There is no ‘one size fits all’ template which can be applied. Hospitality is then actualised differently in different specific contexts. Borrowing a metaphor from Jeffrey Stout (2003, 308) we may say that hospitality resembles a series of currents in a flowing stream of culture and tradition, rather than a normative framework.

Currents and norms?

Hospitality, we suggest, resembles a series of currents in a flowing stream of culture and tradition, rather than a normative framework. Now the reader may well feel anxious about being swept downstream in a confusion of swirling currents. Readers accustomed to a sharply delineated framework of confessional theology or epistemological purity may be sadly inconvenienced by what now follows. They may find the law confused with the gospel, the doctrine of election deselected, the internal operations of the Trinity inarticulate, the doctrine of analogy anaesthetised. They may feel helplessly caught up in a tide of soft-centred philoxenomonism. There will inevitably be confessional influences and epistemological choices, but they will not be highlighted. The intention at here, though we do not expect to succeed as we would like to, will be ecumenical and inclusive, concentrated on contribution with various conversation partners to the human actualisation of hospitality. Let’s try to flesh this out further.

What is the book’s starting point in thinking about hospitality? For us it is the Christian gospel. There is indeed a vital distinction to be made between the standing requirements of the law and the spontaneity of the gospel. How does the starting point sanction one’s thinking about hospitality? We are called to a discipleship which in our view can be expressed effectively through hospitable engagement. In what way does this starting point determine how one thinks of hospitality? This is the basis of our approach to a widening conversation with very different partners. Hospitality is understood as a programmatic and summative concept which helps us to articulate in thought and action the unconditional love of God.

How can a book explore currents without being inhospitable to the reader in its structure? We think it can be most easily read as a cumulative case for hospitality instantiated from many sources, rather than as strict exposition of a single line of logical argument. We should be glad to see a sense of continuity arise from the connected issues as the book is read. The interdisciplinary, constructive, communal models of approaching truth and rationality which we look for in appropriately rational theology should arise most effectively from the convergences of unforced consensus rather from a given dogmatic framework. When we say that the case being made in this book is for a comprehensive intellectual and social cascade of effort in hospitality, we are seeking to bring a distinctively Christian perspective on the hospitable God to the table of global conversation, not as a trump card but in humility, as the mandate which faith has given us. The goal of the book is to encourage people to think and practise more hospitality, for Christian people to do this as a way of discipleship and for others to do so as a contribution to human flourishing. In the face of evil and suffering, this is an aspiration for the realisation of God’s future which has immediate implications for present conduct. We cannot know for certain that hospitable action will always be effective or that we will get things right. But we know from our faith what is NOT hospitable. Here is the way of patient discernment rather than of fideistic intuition.

There is a relationship between hospitality and justice in the our project. How is hospitality always linked to justice? What is the difference of this kenotic hospitality described from love? The relations between love, justice and hospitality are precisely an area where dialogue with philosophy and politics may be fruitful. Justice as fairness, love as including equality, are clues to this problem, and both are mandated, inclusively though not exclusively, by the gospel of God in Jesus Christ. But are there not inbuilt contradictions in a theological argument for hospitality? How can we take such a critical stance against the tradition of judgement within the Christian tradition whilst also holding up the prophets as a good example of human hospitality? It may be that shameful episodes in the tradition may help us to see what the spirit of Christlikeness involves and does not involve.

We speak in this book of hospitality, humanism and liberalism. Why does a theology of hospitality need to be ‘humanist’ and ‘liberal?’ It does not. But we approach this subject from a progressive Christian perspective, which we deem to be potentially sensitive to the need for a modest and humble approach to engagement. But are we not equally open to hubris? Is there not a sense in which the meaning of the word ‘hospitality’ is a given, and this allows us to name hospitality in all the different communities, traditions and histories? However, when we go on to say that ‘we have tried consistently to construe hospitality as specifically characterised by its grounding in the God of Jesus Christ’, are we then saying that OUR identifications of hospitality are the definitive identification of hospitality?

What then is the purpose of our survey? What is at stake in skimming different traditions and establishing that each has some degree of openness that we can label as ‘hospitality’? We conclude that there is a wide culture of hospitality that continues to develop – without this legacy we should not be in a position to recognise and advocate hospitality. Would it not be helpful to make this clear before the survey is undertaken? That would be to prejudge the outcome. To put the issue another way: which flourishing, who’s hospitality do we have in mind? When we affirm that hospitality is a concept and a reality vital to the flourishing of humane society, we mean: hospitality according to Christian faith, as central to God’s purpose in creation and reconciliation, and to the flourishing of all humanity created in the divine image.

God in contemporary society

No satisfactory proposal for the understanding of divine hospitality today can overlook the state of religion in the twenty first century, in many ways different from that of past ages. A profound analysis of the modern predicament about religion is made by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age (Taylor, 2007). Unlike many writers on the subject, he does not claim to have all the answers to a complex issue. The book documents a change in the conditions of belief.

The shift to secularity in this sense consists, among other things, of a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged, and indeed unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace. (Ibid., 3)

We live in a co...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• PART I GOD THE HOSPITABLE
• PART II REFRAMING FAITH IN THE HOSPITABLE GOD
• Appendix: An overview of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age
• Bibliography
• Index