The Sanctuary of Openness

Rebecca Ann Parker on Faith without Grasping
​

​
​To love God, truly and deeply, is to hold one’s certitude about God without grasping, knowing as Alfred North Whitehead said, “the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly.” For the love of God, we must let go again and again of what we think we know about God, repeatedly opening our mind and heart to new intuitions regarding an ultimate reality that has not finished revealing itself to us.

-Rebecca Ann Parker 
​

1. Epistemic Humility: Recognizing the limits of our own knowledge and being open to the possibility that our beliefs, no matter how meaningful to us, may miss the mark.
2. Epistemic Generosity: Actively seeking wisdom from others, recognizing that even if they see things differently from us, we have something to learn from them.
3. Apophatic Openness: A willingness to let go again and again of what we think we know about God, repeatedly opening our mind and heart to new intuitions regarding an ultimate reality that has not finished revealing itself to us.​

The Sanctuary of Openness
​

In her essay "The Sanctuary of Openness" in Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God, Rebecca Ann Parker quietly but firmly challenges those of us who claim "epistemic humility" but fail to embody "apophatic openness." She invites us to step into a sanctuary of openness where we practice the art of non-grasping, of letting so, so that can hear something deeper than our provisional and putative certainties.

She says that it's not enough to admit that we might be wrong about God, however we think about God; we must, in her words, "let go again and again of what we think we know about God, repeatedly opening our mind and heart to new intuitions regarding an ultimate reality that has not finished revealing itself to us."

The "letting go again and again of what we think we know about God" is what I mean by apophatic openness. It is a kind of self-emptying that is much deeper than saying "I might be wrong." It is instead an ongoing activity of relativizing our own views and intuitions, realizing that they may miss the mark, combined with a receptivity to what we might know in the future but do not yet know. We enter into a sanctuary of openness.

*
​
Such openness can occur privately, but it more naturally occurs relationally, that is, in our interactions with others, perhaps especially those whose views run counter to our own but whose motivations we appreciate. If we are open and relational thinkers, this means being open to the motivations and views of what we might otherwise dismiss as more traditional thinkers who believe, for example, that God knows the future in advance, that God is all-powerful, and that these views are consistent with the idea that God is loving.
The subject of our apophaticism, that which we cannot name but nevertheless feel, is the open future itself, understood as a beckoning presence: the lure of the not-yet experienced, the not-yet imagined, the not-yet understood, the not yet known.
​
Parker also speaks of certainty, understood as an assurance we might feel in relation to what we do think we know. It is not a dogmatic certainty, a certainty that we are "right" about God or about life. Rather, it is a sense of what seems plausible for the time being, what seems true for now. This truth itself can grow and change. Apophatic openness and provisional assurance can nourish one another.  The provisionality, existentially felt, is itself the calling of the apophatic future. It is what enables us to let go again and again of what we think we know about God.

*

Of these three kinds, epistemic humility can seem the easiest. At its minimum, it is simply knowing, intellectually, that we may be wrong in the way we think about God. More deeply, it entails knowing that we may be wrong emotionally as well as intellectually. We realize, intuitively, the finitude of our knowledge. We understand our limits.

More difficult is epistemic generosity, where we approach others with a recognition that, even as they may disagree with us, we may have something to learn from the ideas they espouse that we find disagreeable. If we are "open and relational" theists, for example, we may have something to learn from "classical theism," not simply intellectually but emotionally, It may have forms of wisdom we lack. And if we are classical theists, the same situation obtains. 

For people who have been traumatized by inherited beliefs, epistemic generosity may not be appropriate. If we have been burdened and perhaps assaulted by beliefs that have harmed you, there is no need to reconsider those beliefs, even as we need not hate the people who hold them. It is enough to be epistemically humble. On the other hand, if we are tempted to fall into arrogance about our own beliefs, quickly and easily dismissing other perspectives as obviously wrong, we may well be called into epistemic generosity. We are beckoned into a sanctuary of openness that is open to others and free from idolatrous self-centeredness. We must listen beyond our comfort zones, and recognize that the sanctuary of openness includes people who are different from us.

Apophatic openness is the most difficult, because it involves "letting go" of what we think we know, not just once in order to arrive at a higher truth, but again and again. It is a practice of unknowing. This ongoing process of unknowing can be unsettling, as it challenges our desire for certainty and control. However, it is through this very process that we become more receptive to the profound and often ineffable dimensions of spiritual reality.

At the heart of apophatic openness is a felt sense that the future is unknown and unknowable, because not yet determined. Open and relational theologians believe that it is unknown by God, because not yet determined; classical theists believe it is unknown by us, even as known by God. Either way there is a felt sense of the yet-to-be and the way it transcends our present points of view. We are lured into the not-yet by the not-yet itself. As Rebecca Parker points out, 

This spiritual path is known as the via negativa—the path of negation—in which, bit by bit, one dismantles nearly every claim about God. Negation empties your conceptual mind and takes you to a void, an unfilled space that I call “the Sanctuary of Openness,” a place carved open by what has been taken away. In this space of radical openness, a different spiritual and ethical awareness can begin to arise in our lives. For beyond saying “no!” there is a hidden “yes!” to something deeper that impels our no. As the philosopher Camus has observed, “Beyond the no of every true rebel there lies a yes.” That “yes” hidden within our “no” anchors our spiritual and ethical ground; it marks our deepest intuition of rightness and reality, but we may not even have a name for it.

Parker sees the calling from the future as divine. For her apophatic openness is inverse side of a beckoning presence that remains unseen and un-nameable and un-known. Apophatic openness is openness into the un-known, at once one and many.

In the Sanctuary of Openness, something beckons us beyond the idolatries we have rejected. The mind and heart can slowly become attuned to that which addresses us, which asks everything of us and offers everything to us while remaining unseen, un-nameable, and un-known. We sense that which abides with utter reliability and yet is elusive, that which is all pervasive and yet opaque, that which is at once one and many. We feel the presence of that which does not answer us when we call, and yet calls to us.

- Jay McDaniel

Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God

For decades, millions of Christians have been leaving church behind. Among those who have stayed, not only individuals, but entire congregations are rejecting traditions that fail to address the challenges of our contemporary world. They yearn, instead, for a profound relationship with the ever-present God who is loving, inclusive, persuasive, and uncontrolling.

This rich and diverse collection of sermons, essays, and worship elements explores how to preach, teach, and practice Open, Relational, and Process theological perspectives in local faith communities. It is a powerful resource for pastors, ministers of worship arts, lay church leaders, professors of preaching, worship, and practical theology, and anyone seeking a deep understanding of God that aligns with the Bible, science, and inclusive love and justice for all life on Earth.

More Commentary on Essays and Sermons
in Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God

1. The Rapture of Being Alive: Two Hymns by Sheri Kling
2. The Grace of the Empty Tomb: Notes on a sermon by Nichole Torbitzsky
3. ​The Craziness of Christian Love: Notes on a Prayer by Vikki Randall
4. Embracing the Moment: A Buddhist Perspective on Open and Relational Theology ​
5. Leaning into Withness: A Whiteheadian Reflection on a Sermon by Jonathan Foster​
6. ​A Sermon is Co-Created: Listening to a Sermon with an Open and Relational Heart​