What if Christian theology was actually founded on love?

What if Christian theology was actually founded on love?

Jesus preached love.

Jesus taught love of God, love of neighbor, love of self, and even love of enemies. The apostle John, attempting to summarize the teachings of Jesus, simply declared, “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

Oddly, the two most prominent creeds in the Christian church, the Nicene Creed and Apostles Creed, do not contain the word “love”. As theologians attempted to understand the Christ event and the appearance of the Holy Spirit and summarize their implications, they missed the mark. Perhaps a new basis for Christian theology is needed, one that is more faithful to the truth of God revealed in Christ and inspired by Sophia, the Holy Spirit.

A Christian theology that is broad in scope, centered around one central insight, and addresses multiple aspects of Christian thought is called systematic. Here, systematic is used as a synonym for internally coherent or rationally consistent. Thus, to be systematic, a theology should not present accidental contradictions. It may utilize paradox, tensions in reason that spur the mind to deeper thought, such as those used by Jesus: “If you would save your life, you will lose it; but if you would lose your life for my sake, you will find it” (Matt 16:25). Contemplation of this challenging statement is intellectually fruitful, even as it denies us any easy answer or quick resolution. But in general, theology should make sense and not accidentally present claims that do not cohere with each other. Accidental contradictions produce only confusion.

The uniting theme of my systematic theology, as presented in The Great Open Dance, is agapic nondualism. As noted above, agape is the unconditional, universal love of God for all creation. Nondualism asserts that everything is fundamentally united to everything else; reality is interconnected. Agapic nondualism, then, claims that the love of our Trinitarian God, who is three persons united through love into one God, expresses itself within our infinitely related universe, such that nothing is separable from anything else, and no one is separable from anyone else. This insight will guide our thinking about God, creation, humankind, Christ, etc., allowing us to reinterpret them in a consistent manner.

The danger of systematic theology is over-ambition, the mistaken belief that this particular theology is comprehensive and answers all the important questions, thereby providing resolution. No theology can present a totalized interpretation of reality, and no theology should try, since totalization would reduce God’s overflowing abundance to an understandable system, thereby eliminating the available riches. Indeed, intellectual resolution would be a spiritual tragedy as it would stop all growth. Any claim to final adequacy masks a manipulative spirit that seeks control over the reader instead of humility before God.

Love, interpreted as agapic nondualism, can only produce a progressive Christian theology.

Although theology is about God, it is for humans, and it is for humans in their God-given freedom. Hence, we cannot achieve theological mastery or know God in Godself. Even as we trust that God’s self-revelation is truthful, God’s inner nature will spill over our minds like an ocean overflowing a thimble. By way of consequence, all theological proposals, including this one, are intrinsically partial and inadequate. Put simply, the power of the transcendent will always shatter any vehicle that tries to contain it. Old wineskins cannot hold new wine, and no wineskin can hold revelation (Mark 2:22).

Still, the effort of thinking about God is worth it because our concept of God will influence the quality and conduct of our life: “The belief of a cruel God makes a cruel [person],” writes Thomas Paine. Can belief in a kind God make a kind person? What if we believed in a kinder God?

In hope of a kinder God and our own transformation in the image of that God, this theology is progressive, in two senses of the word. First, the theology presented here will be ethically progressive regarding the pressing issues of our day. It will praise LGBTQ+ love, argue for the ordination of women and nonbinary persons to Christian ministry, advocate for equality between all races, cherish the environment, learn from other religions, condemn the militarization of our consciousness, and promote a more generous economics.

Just as importantly, the theology presented here will be fundamentally progressive. That is, it will present a theology of progress toward universal flourishing. God has not created a steady-state universe; God has created an evolving universe characterized by freedom. As free, we can grow toward God or away from God, toward one another or away from one another, toward joy or into suffering. God wants reunion, with us and between us, but does not impose that desire, allowing us instead to choose the direction of our activity, while always inviting us to work toward the reign of love.

God invites us into the great open dance.

Jesus’s first miracle was to turn water into wine (John 2:1–11). This miracle suggests a festive aspect of Jesus rarely expressed in Christian art. Jewish weddings in Jesus’s day were weeklong affairs of food, music, storytelling, and dance. The participants were segregated by gender, but everyone danced. So, although the Bible does not state that Jesus danced, from historical evidence we can infer that he probably did. After all, he wasn’t a Calvinist: Jesus inherited a religious tradition, Judaism, that reveres dance as an expression of the joy found through relationship with God: “Then the young women will dance with joy, and the young men and the elderly will make merry. I [YHWH, Abba] will turn their mourning into joy; I will comfort them, exchanging gladness for sorrow” (Jer 31:13).

Jesus implies his own love of dance. In his story of the prodigal son, the father hosts a party with celebratory dancing upon the lost son’s return (Luke 15:21–29). And Jesus condemns his own generation as one that does not dance even when music is played (Matt 11:16–17). The apocryphal gospel Acts of John (second century) explicitly depicts Jesus dancing with his disciples. In the ascribed words of the disciple John:

He [Jesus] gathered us all together and said, “Before I am delivered up to them, let us sing a hymn to the Father, and go forth to what lies before us.” So he commanded us to make a circle, holding one another’s hands, and he himself stood in the middle.

He said, “Respond Amen to me.”

He then began to sing a hymn, and to say: . . . “Grace is dancing. I will pipe, dance all of you!” “Amen.”

“I will mourn, lament all of you!” “Amen.” . . .

“The whole universe takes part in the dancing.” “Amen.”

“They who do not dance, do not know what is being done.” “Amen.”

The text reveals not just that Jesus dances, but why he dances. His dancing is tied to his openness to life—music and mourning, play and lament. Indeed, God and heaven join in this dance, as well as the disciples. They ratify Jesus’s perfect Amen, his sacred Yes to the agony and ecstasy of this-worldly being. For Jesus, who is the Christ, life is a great open dance into which we are all invited.

The Christian tradition is insufficiently loving.

Jesus’s great open dance is intimately connected to the God of love whom he preaches. His sense of loving interdependence—agapic nondualism—is not new to the Christian tradition, although it has generally been a minority report. The Great Open Dance will represent the Christian tradition through the lens of agapic nondualism, or divine love.

At times, this representation may seem untraditional, but traditionalism does not concern us. Given Christ’s revelation of God as agape, the Christian tradition must justify itself as agapic. Agape need not justify itself as traditional. We proceed in the conviction that agapic nondualism dovetails with Jesus’s great open dance, just as Jesus’s great open dance dovetails with agapic nondualism.

Too much Christian theology has been soul-stifling dogma rather than life-giving thought. No longer are people willing to practice faith out of denominational loyalty, tribal identity, or fear of divine wrath. Instead, people want faith to give them more life, and people want faith to make society more just, and people want faith to grant the world more peace. I am convinced that Trinitarian, agapic nondualism can do so.

To develop agapic nondualism I will, in the words of Kenneth Burke, use all that can be used, drawing from multiple thinkers to flesh out a theology of infinite relatedness. Our palette will include process, feminist, liberationist, womanist, and classical theologians, among others.

I will also present my theology as a story, tracing the biblical narrative from beginning to end: from the God of creation, through the incarnation of Christ, to the inspiration of Sophia, and concluding in the consummation of time. Theology functions as narrative because we love stories. People read more novels than essays and watch more movies than documentaries. Perhaps because we find ourselves within time—within a story—we also find ourselves intrinsically open to the power of narrative. Recognizing this openness, I have attempted to write my theology as narrative nonfiction. I do so fully recognizing that, as John Thatamanil notes, “Voyages to uncharted territories cannot be made with map in hand.”

To begin our journey, let us first consider our understanding of the social Trinity, developing a concept of God as three persons who cooperatively Sustain, Exemplify, and Animate the great open dance in which we all participate. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 34-38)

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For further reading, please see:

Burke, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Literary Form. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957.

Hikota, Riyako Cecilia. "The Christological Perichoresis and Dance." Open Theology 8, no. 1 (2022) 191–204. DOI: 10.1515/opth-2022-0202

Paine, Thomas. Collected Writings. Edited by Eric Foner. New York: Library of America, 1995.

Thatamanil, John. The Immanent Divine: God, Creation, and the Human Predicament. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006.