Wrestling with God

Wrestling with God

Paul O. Ingram

WRESTLING WITH GOD

Copyright © 2006 Paul O. Ingram. 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 & Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

A Division of Wipf & Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

ISBN: 1-59752-495-6

EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-7051-9

Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Ingram, Paul O., 1939–

Wrestling with God / Paul O. Ingram

xii + 116 p.; 23 cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-59752-495-6 (alk. paper)

1. Christianity and other religions. 2. Christianity and other religions—Buddhism. 3. Buddhism—Relations—Christianity. 4. Religious pluralism. I. Title.

BR128 I54 2006

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Preface

My favorite text in the Pentateuch is the story of Jacob’s wrestling match with God at the Brook of Jabbok:

And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, Let me go, for the day is breaking. But Jacob said, I will not let you go until you bless me. And he said to him, What is your name? And he said, Jacob. Then he said, Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. Then Jacob asked him, Tell me, I pray, your name. But he said, Why is it you ask my name? And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved. The sun rose upon him as he passed Peniel, limping because of his thigh. (Gen 32:24-31)

Thus did Jacob the wrestler become Israel: he who wrestles with God and wins.

I have long thought that the story of Jacob’s combat with God at Jabbok is a paradigm for the journey of faith. According to biblical tradition, there is never a time when God is not present in creation or in human history, so there is never a time when we are not encountering God, even if we are not conscious of the encounter. But consciousness of God’s presence invariably initiates a struggle that can be bruising. In Christian experience, the life of faith is always a struggle that engenders what Luther called theology of the cross because faith calls us, like it called Abraham, to a journey that takes us beyond the safe conventionalities of cultural and social boundaries. Faith is God’s way of starting a fight with us. A hip—or something else—will be thrown out of joint and we will limp through the remainder of our lives. Yet like limping Jacob, we are not defeated even as our wrestling match with God leaves us with scars.

In its original context in the Pentateuch, the story of Jacob’s encounter with God at the Brook of Jabbok is a central paradigm for the Jewish community’s wrestling match with God through the Torah, God’s instructions given to the people of Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai. God’s Torah instructs people about how to live with justice and compassion toward all human beings as well as in harmony with nature. But it’s one thing to be chosen by God to live according to the Torah so as to be a light to the nations, as the prophet Isaiah put it. It’s quite another thing to figure out how to guide one’s life in accordance with the Torah’s commandments. So in imitation of Jacob, Jewish history is a never-ending wrestling match with God to figure out what the Torah means and how to implement it in Jewish life. It is for this, according to the Exodus traditions, that Israel was chosen: to wrestle with God through study of the Torah as interpreted through the lenses of rabbinic opinion in the Mishnah, Gemara, and Talmud.

The struggle to be God’s Chosen People has cost the Jews dearly, for no religious community has suffered as much persecution as have Jews. Atrocities committed against the Jewish community by Christians have their origins in the anti-Judaism of the New Testament.1 After the fourth century, Christian anti-Judaism was transformed into Christian anti-semitism, the beginning of a sixteen-hundred-year history of persecution that is so violent that the survival of the Jewish community seems itself an argument for the existence of God. Not even the Holocaust could extinguish Judaism’s light to the nations.

The story of Jacob’s wrestling match with God at Jabbok has also been a paradigm for Christians. Jürgen Moltmann, caught up in the terrors of the end of World War II, wrestled with God to survive the abyss of his participation in the war’s senselessness and his guilt about the Jewish death camps. He emerged from his confinement in a prisoner of war camp in Scotland limping. His wrestling match with God continues through the discipline of theological reflection.2 For Moltmann, the story of Jacob’s fight with God is a paradigm of the life of Christian faith.

There is an odd thing about this story. Jacob doesn’t quit even after God dislocates his hip. Jacob just keeps wrestling, refusing to stop until God blesses him. But while not defeated by God, he will walk with a limp for the rest of his life. According to St. Paul, the life of faith is initiated by God and both Jewish and Christian experience is evidence that faith does not make one’s life easier, but harder. As there’s no cheap grace in Jacob’s encounter with God, so there is no cheap grace in the Christian experience of Christ. Of course, my particular wrestling match with God has not been as dangerous, and certainly not as profound, as Jacob’s or my Jewish brothers’ and sisters’ or Moltmann’s. Yet the life of faith, I think, entails a life of struggle for all faithful persons. And like Jacob at Jabbok, wrestling with God in faith will not defeat us, provided we don’t let go. But the fight will leave us limping. Nor will the struggle of faith ever come to an end while we are alive. So like Annie Dillard, Sometimes I ride a bucking faith while one hand grips and the other flails in the air, and like any daredevil I gouge with my heels for blood, for a wilder ride, for more.3

My ride began forty years ago and was given its first public expression in 1997 when I published a book entitled Wrestling with the Ox: A Theology of Religious Experience.4 In this book I appropriated the Ten Ox Herding pictures from the Zen Buddhist tradition as a metaphor for the themes I wanted to address. The Ten Ox Herding pictures are a symbolic portrayal of the ten stages of Awakening as portrayed in Mahayana Buddhist teachings. Each picture provided the title and themes for the ten individual chapters of the book. My colleagues in the Department of Religion at Pacific Lutheran University were particularly helpful critics when I wrote this book, both in terms of clarifying the reason for writing Wrestling with the Ox and clearly formulating the issues with which I was concerned as I wrote: (1) conceptualizing a Christian pluralistic theology of religious experience primarily in dialogue with Buddhism, but also in conversation with Confucian, Taoist, Hindu, Jewish, and Islamic traditions, and (2) specifying how the academic discipline called history of religions might be put to use as a form of theological reflection to help Christians advance in their own faith journey.

Consequently Wrestling with the Ox evolved into a description of various theological options that might be appropriate for Christians as they interact in dialogue with non-Christians. While I am pleased with this book, the process of writing it brought to light unresolved questions regarding my own particular Christian faith and practice. Once again, my colleagues urged me to reflect on these unresolved questions in another book. So, inspired by Jacob’s fight with God at the Brook of Jabbok, Wrestling with God is a theological reflection on these unresolved questions. My overall contention is that Christianity is now in a process of decay and that dialogue with the world’s religions—especially Buddhism—and Christian dialogue with the natural sciences are the two most important intellectual foci for thinking Christians. My thesis is that through such dialogue Christians can hope for the emergence of new forms of faith and practice that are relevant to the complexities of contemporary life.

Writers need critical readers. I am particularly grateful to K. C. Hanson, who is chief editor of Cascade Books, for publishing Wrestling with God, and for the encouragement of another editor at Cascade Books, David Root, whose enthusiastic support for this project was evident from the earliest days of its writing. In particular, David asked very penetrating questions in regard to areas that needed my clarification, and I have carefully listened to his suggestions and critique with gratitude. Heather Carraher did wonderful service as a proofreader. To all of these generous people at Cascade Books goes my deepest appreciation for their professionalism.

An English major from Pacific Lutheran University deserves special thanks. Jacob Freeman read through the manuscript with an expert eye for typological errors and the sometimes vague sentence structures that often plague a manuscript like a Chinese Hungry Ghost. Any one who is a teacher can spot excellence in young students from a mile away. Thanks, Jacob, for all your good work.

One of the joys of my professional life is my association with seven faculty colleagues in the Department of Religion at Pacific Lutheran University. Our department has encouraged a deep sense of interdependence and mutual support for both teaching and scholarship that is unusual in academia. In regard to the writing of this particular book, these friends and colleagues have in their own particular way made it possible for me to write a better book than I could have written apart from their always focused and well intentioned criticism.

Patricia Killen, whose academic specialization is American religious history, was a very helpful source for my understanding of what she calls the art of theological reflection, about which she has written a book5 and which underlies one-third of the material of chapter three. She also read and commented on chapters two, four, five, and six. Writers need critical readers, and Patricia is among the best there are.

Robert L. Stivers is a specialist in Christian ethics. Bob and I have worked together for thirty years and currently co-teach a course entitled Religion and Culture that focuses on environmental issues and what dialogue with the world’s religions can contribute to resolving the current ecological crisis. Bob’s review of chapter four, where I take on issues of Buddhist and Christian social engagement, clarified for me the distinguishing character of Christian social ethics of which I had not been fully aware.

Samuel Torvend teaches European Church history as well as courses on Luther and the Reformation. His careful reading of my remarks on Luther and other aspects of church history referenced throughout this book owe much of their clarity to Sam’s demand that I describe historical events and persons accurately and coherently.

Two of my colleagues in biblical studies, Douglas Oakman and Alicia Batten, offered substantial criticism and encouragement as I wrote chapter two, especially my references to the story of Jacob and God at the Brook of Jabbok and a text from the Gospel of Mark (9:33-40) that is the source of my sermon in chapter two. Biblical criticism is an art, and Doug and Alicia are among the more creative biblical scholars now working in North America.

Marit Trelstad and Kathlyn Breazeale, fellow graduates of the Claremont Graduate University (except that I go back further in time), have been wonderful conversation partners in process philosophy and theology. They offered substantial critique on the various elements of Whiteheadian process thought that I brought into each chapter in this book, but especially in regard to the material on the natural sciences in chapters five and six. Marit and Kathi are also first-rate feminist thinkers who made sure that I worked hard to free my worldview (and this book) from the false pretensions of patriarchal dogma in whatever form it assumes.

This book is dedicated to Patricia, Bob, Sam, Doug, Alica, Marit, and Kathi, whose collective intellect, support, and friendship through the years has felt like grace that is amazing.

Finally, my wife, Regina, a medical social worker who is theologically trained, always supports my work. I can’t imagine my life as a writer without our conversations before and during the writing process.

Tacoma, Washington

December 22, 2005

ENDNOTES

1 See Rosemary Radford Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (New York: Seabury, 1979).

2 Jürgen Moltmann, The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997) 1–2.

3 Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinkers Creek (New York: Harper and Row, 1974) 269.

4 Paul O. Ingram, Wrestling with the Ox: A Theology of Religious Experience (New York: Continuum, 1997).

5 Patricia O’Connell Killen and John de Beer, The Art of