Life After God: Finding Faith When You Can't Believe Anymore (Mark Feldmeir) -- A Review

LIFE AFTER GOD: Finding Faith When You Can’t Believe Anymore. By Mark Feldmeir. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2023. 210 pages.

Many folks have a difficult time believing/embracing traditional Christian understandings of God and the life of faith. Through the ages, the received faith has been encrusted with numerous cultural and philosophical elements. People wish for something purer, perhaps more in line with the original message. We've been questing now for several centuries for the historical Jesus. There are questions as to whether the original Jewish/Hebrew understandings of God have been corrupted by Greek philosophy and Roman/Western cultural dynamics. The world as we understand it does not lend itself well to belief in an omnipotent God who holds all power and thus can do as God likes. The realities of our world and many scientific discoveries have raised questions about whether we can continue to hold on to old beliefs. Perhaps there are other, better ways?

Mark Feldmeir is a United Methodist pastor and graduate of Claremont School of Theology. The UMC-related seminary is well known for being a center for the study of Process Theology, and the message that Feldmeir shares in Life after God is rooted in Process Theology, which is a theological movement/perspective that draws much of its philosophical foundations from the work of Alfred North Whitehead, a British Mathematician/Philosopher. Process theologians, including John B. Cobb and David Griffin, among others, have used the Process philosophical tradition as a lens through which to view religious traditions, including Christianity. While there are elements of this philosophically rooted theology that are attractive to me, especially its highlighting of the relationality inherent in its vision of God, I have several concerns and questions. At least for me, I have found the need to balance what I find of value with other theological perspectives. One of the concerns I have had with Process theology is that, in my view, its proponents often call into question the Greek philosophical foundations of the Christian theological developments and simply replace these foundations with Whiteheadian philosophy. Thus, instead of reading Scripture through the lens of Platonism, as Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa did, they read Scripture through the lens of Whitehead. While there may be problems with Platonism, I have often wondered what makes Whitehead more valuable except that it is more modern and scientific.

While I have concerns about Process Theology, Feldmeir has done a nice job presenting a Process-oriented vision of faith, one that recognizes that traditional presentations of God's so-called omnipotence are problematic. Because Process Theology uses a lot of Whiteheadian philosophical jargon such as the dipolar God and the idea that God lures entities it can be difficult to unpack. Feldmeir uses much less jargon in laying out his idea of a perspective on faith that might be attractive to persons who have trouble affirming traditional Christian beliefs. Some of the language is off-putting—at least I have found the use of the word lure off-putting. I know that Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James, and John to fish for people, but I much prefer words like invite and beckon, words that Feldmeir uses along with "lure."

The layout of the book is interesting in that the font is more modern, while sentences are laid out in more poetic form. In other words, it looks more like a collection of poems than a traditional prosaic book of theology. Nevertheless, despite the formatting it’s still a book of prose. It just has a different look, texture, and feel. That should make it more accessible.

The chapters invite us to address the problem folks have with God and envision something different. The first chapter speaks of the problem of God, raising the question of theodicy (defense of God in the face of the presence of evil). The book starts with an interesting story of an encounter with a professor confronting Feldmeir about his beliefs about God. I won't reveal the nature of the story, but I have it on good authority (my son who is nearing graduation from the same school) that CST students and alumni of the past decade or so will recognize the professor.

Chapter 2 invites us to consider the call of God by addressing the reality of unbelief in the traditional God and the alternative Process vision of God wooing not only humanity but all of creation. Process theologians like to dive deep below the atomic level, with God wooing the basic elements to work together to create the universe. Here Feldmeir offers a vision of God different from what is traditionally offered, a God who is relational rather than all-powerful. Again, he draws on Whitehead. It is in this chapter that Feldmeir, as is true of others like him, questions the translation of El Shaddai as God Almighty. It has become fashionable to conceive of the Hebrew word Shaddai as meaning not almighty but breast, thus the Breasted God. The problem with such revisioning of God is that it depends too much on etymology, something that easily gets us in trouble. I'm not sure the translation "almighty" is as debatable as he and others suggest. It's definitely not a Christian invention because the usage is found in the Septuagint, a Greek translation that predates the Christian movement by a couple of centuries.

The next step is to consider the aim or purpose of God (Ch. 3). Here Feldmeir raises a good point as to whether God has everything planned out, such that we are simply following the script (my analogy, not his). I agree that the future is open, though how wide is probably a matter of discussion. Then in Chapter 4, Feldmeir addresses the question of the nature of God. Here the discussion focuses on the question of whether God changes or not (traditional theism has often taught that God is immutable or unchanging), but is this the way God is envisioned within the Hebrew/Jewish tradition? Again, there is evidence that God does change, respond, and even grow. I do need to again address a bit of sloppiness. He suggests that there are two Hebrew names for God—Elohim and Adonai. That is a bit misleading. The two primary designations are Elohim (and forms of El such as El Shaddai and El Elyon) and Yahweh (the revealed divine name). Adonai is a circumlocution for Yahweh since most Jews do not wish to pronounce the sacred name of God and thus use Adonai (LORD) as a substitute.

In chapter 6, Feldmeir addresses the question of God's glory. It is here that he gets into the question of metaphysics and some of the details about the nature of God and how God is present in the universe. He notes the Platonic idea of forms and Aristotle's idea of substances. From there to Descartes and finally to Process metaphysics, beginning with Teilhard de Chardin and Whitehead. From them he takes the idea that reality is not a matter of forms or substances, which are largely unmovable, but events/experiences/occasions. He writes that Whitehead's big breakthrough involved the realization that "every real thing in the entire universe, whether conscious or not, has some element of subjective experience and some degree of individual freedom, however trivial. . .. This doesn't mean they have consciousness. But it does mean they have some inherent and intrinsic value" (p. 133). What he has in mind here are things like rocks and such.

Chapter 7 addresses the question of the "salvation of God," or ours. Here he speaks of how we might understand salvation, not simply as building a bridge between us and God, but as transformation such that we might have enlarged hearts and spacious souls. That leads in Chapter 8 to "the end, with god." This is a discussion of eschatology, including ideas of the end of the world and heaven. He addresses the question many ask about how we experience eternal life/heaven by suggesting that the focus is on experiencing God's shalom/wholeness in this life/world. As for the question of what happens when we die, he's not sure, but he does have a hope that looks a lot like what many envision—the restoration of relationships. Taking a clue from Process theology, the hope is that ultimately nothing is lost in God.

One of the challenges faced by Process Theologians is that this theology is so metaphysically/philosophically bound that one must almost embrace Whitehead before knowing how to engage with God. Feldmeir offers a more attractive, less jargonistic vision. For those who find this vision of God attractive and helpful, it might prove to be a first step toward a broader understanding of this vision of theology. I do have some concerns about sloppy biblical interpretation and assumptions I often find present in Process-oriented works, including the idea that Process Theology is a self-contained system that seems to have all the answers. For me, it has value as one contributor, but not as an entire system. For others, it may provide a useful system to embrace as a whole. What I can say is that Mark Feldmeir’s Life after God offers the reader a well-told narrative of theology that will be compelling to many.