Abstract
Between October 28 and November 6, 2019, the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh were delivered by Michael Welker, senior professor in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Heidelberg. This book’s publication was “essentially concurrent” with the lectures themselves, so there is minimal difference between the lectures and the text of this book (p. xii). Lord Gifford’s charge of promoting the study of natural theology looms large in this book as Welker refers to it at numerous points. He describes his central question as “whether and, if so, how human beings in their natural, social, and cultural existence can be understood as the image of God” (p. 3). He aims to answer this by employing a combination of empirical and historical research along with commonsense perception. He calls this approach “realistic theology” (p. 2).
Welker’s realism is evident in the first lecture, where he refuses to take the imago Dei for granted. Instead, he re-establishes the possibility that humanity exists in God’s image over against what he calls the abysses of human existence. In the second lecture, Welker, inspired by Hegel’s early writings, articulates a theory of spirit—both human and divine—that is multimodal and multipolar, attending not only to humanity’s intellectual life but also to human history and culture. Such an account can take seriously that when the divine spirit is invoked, those “receiving this outpouring are in their own turn ‘summoned’ to respond in a life-changing way” (p. 23). In short, a focused movement emerges. However, some of the concepts previously linked to the spirit—such as nature and life—are now seen as ambiguous and are of limited use without qualification.
Each of the four subsequent lectures treats an aspect of “life’s qualified creative powers” (p. 29), focusing on the pursuit of justice, freedom, truth, and peace. For these areas, the spirit is operative in multiple modalities, resulting in a dynamism that requires discernment on the part of human beings. Welker notes that this approach to the spirit “offers wholly new insights over against dominant forms of the traditional understanding of the spirit” (p. 25). Indeed, when viewed together, these chapters present something of a sociopolitics of the spirit where critical discernment takes place with careful attention to multiple layers of the surrounding world.
One of the hallmarks of the book is Welker’s numerous references to previous Gifford lecturers, engaging their contributions to the field of natural theology. By doing so, he provides a broader context to the book’s discussion. Furthermore, Welker’s realistic vision leads him to hesitate to use several common conceptual tools and approaches (such as natural law and life) in examining natural theology. As he writes, borrowing from Alfred North Whitehead, “all life lives at the cost of other life” (p. 55). His attention, then, is on humanity in its social, cultural, and religious setting. He sparingly invokes Christian revelation, which is a bit of a departure from his previous publications, especially concerning the spirit. Moreover, Welker’s work is not without some challenges. While he acknowledges that this multimodal approach requires discernment, the dynamism inherent in his proposal can at times leave the reader with more questions than answers, especially about how one adjudicates competing accounts of the spirit’s activity in the world or the extent to which discernment of the spirit within one context is translatable to another.
In God’s Image will be challenging and thought-provoking to most readers, and especially of most importance to those theologians and philosophers immersed in natural theological conversations. Not only does Welker take this task seriously, but he looks for more resources in order to reinvigorate its study. He notes that there is an inherent bipolarity of many other approaches to natural theology (especially those centered on nature and life). Even when it was recognized that this bipolarity did not adequately account for the spirit’s activity, overly transcendent and vague descriptions of the divine spirit took hold. Welker’s proposal, however, pushes beyond more entrenched approaches. Natural theology becomes more than pure transcendence or naturalism. The human spirit is seen as more than intellectual.
In this regard, his use of historical events (many of which are from Germany during and after World War II) and his attention to new cultural developments is significant, such as the rise of populism-fueled totalitarianism (p. 80). Additionally, he asks whether religions “promote the spirit of freedom through a willingness to remain critically and self-critically attentive to their own lapses, including in promoting equitable and just life circumstances in society?” (p. 84). In response, Welker surveys several recent pieces of scholarship, noting the ways in which institutional religious power is often confused (by those inside religious communities and by those outside) for religious freedom (pp. 85-86). In a similar vein, Welker seeks out popular sources in discussing the shape of natural theology, such as elite athletic competition and civil demonstrations, thereby bringing natural theology into conversation with contextual theology. In the end, Welker’s natural theological vision elevates the ways that the spirit calls and shapes people to live into what he describes as the grand destiny of human beings as the image of God.