Tom Norris

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The Many and the One, The One and the Many

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     The most basic Universalist theological premise is unity. An example of a church that embodies this is the Universalist church in South Florida, whose very name, The Church of the Way of the Messiahs, sends a revolutionary message which advocates that all humans are Messiahs-in-potential, Christs-in-possibility, Buddhas-in-time.  Like all Universalist groups it has incorporated many seemingly disparate theological strands from various Eastern, Western and Native traditions into its faith system.  Yet, upon close examination they are not so disparate.  Common themes and spiritual patterns soon emerge.  This is clearly laid out in the church’s 1997 revelatory document, A Universalist Manifesto, particularly in the tenth principle:

10.  We recognize and affirm the limitless beauty and truth of the Divine Creation Spirit, the Holy Spirit that reveals itself through the many religions and peoples of faith throughout history and throughout the world.  We acknowledge that a Divine Creation Spirit of all nations, of all peoples, of all creatures appears in many forms of Revelation through Divinely-guided Teachers, oral and written scriptures, and individual inspiration among all the peoples of the world.  We call these revelations, inspirations, and teachings the loving, universal, divine truths of Great Spirit that shine through time, culture, personality, history, and geography.

 

     From this it is clear that God has not come only through one human being or through one religious tradition.  For example, as much as Universalists love, admire and honor Jesus, they would not especially disagree with Christian theologian, William Sloane Coffin, who stated in effect that God may be defined by Jesus, but not confined to Jesus.   The more one investigates various spiritual heritages, teachings, and scriptures, the more one comes away with the distinct feeling that God has been speaking with one voice through many voices; that, despite the cultural, literary, historical and geographical differences between these spiritual voices, there is an essential truth underlying all religions.  This is not a new message.  Karen Armstrong points out that Islam not only has a long history of tolerance of other religions,  but even carries a Universalist flavor.
     "The religion of al-Llah that Muhammad would shortly begin to preach in Mecca had begun not on Mount Hira but on the day of Creation.  God had made Adam his kalipha or vice-regent on earth and after that time He had sent one prophet after another to every people on the face of the earth.  The message had always been the same, so all religions were essentially one.  The Qu’ran never claimed to cancel out previous revelations, but in principle one cult, one tradition, one scripture was as good as another. "

     Muhammad himself told overzealous followers more than once, “Say not that I am better than Moses.”  And, another time, “Let none of you say that I am better than Jonah.”  He knew the revelation from Gabriel quite well, in which it says, “We make no distinction between any of His messengers.”  (Qu’ran, Surah II, 285)  All of the Qu’ran’s prophets and messengers (including Jesus and Mary) are very special ones called to God’s work, but none is greater than the other in God’s eyes.
     Closer to home, in 1893, the Hindu Swami Vivekananda addressed the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago and brought that staid body to its feet with his compelling, fresh advocacy of Universalism learned at the feet of his teacher, Ramakrishna (1836-1886), the great Hindu Saint and religious reformer mentioned earlier.   Lewis Hopfe and Mark Woodward report of Ramakrishna, once a priest of Kali, "He later became convinced that behind all religions was a single reality that might be called God.  His religious experience with Christians and Muslims, as well as Hindus, convinced him that truth was essentially one."

     Pursuing this idea that critical theological truths are essentially one, Universalist Theology also has an interesting take on the nature of the Supreme Being.  As odd as it may seem to a Christian, Jewish or Islamic theologian, Universalists may perceive God from both a monotheistic and pantheistic perspective.  The Pantheism of most indigenous, shamanic peoples around the world and throughout history views the Creator and Creation as one.  God is experienced throughout all of nature and all of nature is alive.  God dwells within and through everything.  Thus, for us there is one God and this God is part of all things.  The modern Christian Panentheistic Theology  of Charles Hartshorne, Matthew Fox,  and Jurgen Moltmann has come achingly close to embracing this same principle of pantheism.  Alan Gragg provides Hartshorne’s definition of panentheism as "…that literally everything exists in God and that God, like the universe, has no external environment. All actualities are actual in God, and all potentialities are potential in God.  He is the Whole in every categorical sense, all actuality in one individual actuality, and all possibility in one individual potentiality.  Panentheism thus differs from traditional theism by asserting that all the world is entirely inside God instead of outside him….."

​Richard Bauckham expands upon this as he notes Jurgen Moltmann’s "growing stress on the immanence of God in creation, as his eschatological panentheism (the hope that God will indwell all things in the new creation) has been increasingly accompanied by a stress on the coinherence of God and the world already.  As the Spirit, God is already present in his creation, both in suffering the transience and evil of the world and in anticipating the eschatological rebirth of all things. "

​    This is a God who is both transcendent and immanent , holy individual and wholly community.  It is not particularly necessary to explain this seeming paradox, for it is simply one of the many Mysteries of God.  This can be seen through the first, fifth, and seventh principles in A Universalist Manifesto:

1.  There is one Divine Creation Spirit of All That Is, Seen and Unseen, Known and Unknown, Understood and Not Understood.

5.  The Divine Creation Spirit is the One and the Many, the Many and the One.  The Divine Creatress-Creator is female and male, infinitely large and infinitely small, Spirit and Substance, Light and Dark, beyond understanding and wonderfully simple, Manifest and Unmanifest, Mind and Heart.  The Great Spirit is All That Is.

7.  Along with all our relations, we are constantly in Oneness with Great Spirit, knowingly or unknowingly, in lightness or in darkness, in the physical or in the spiritual, as we are all the divine manifestation of Great Spirit, and in All That We Are, we are the Many and the One, the One and the Many.

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    Ninian Smart might observe within his Experiential and Emotional Dimension that Universalist theology seems to combine the two poles of religious experience he postulated.  At one pole there is Rudolf Otto’s sense of the numinous; God as Other.  This outside, holy Other is a Mystery beyond comprehension.  At the other end is the contemplative experience where there is no outside Other, only an inner truth or non-other.   Clearly, Universalism is an integrationist theology.  Consequently, within this expansive universe of meaning, one is at liberty to experience the presence of God as Mother and Father, as communion and community,  as partner and friend,  as outer Other and as inner Self.  If God is the Many within the Oneness (the diversity within the unity), then why cannot God be experienced this intimately and personally?  More and more God is emerging as a personal experience in the postmodern world.

    It is not just church teachings and scripture that help us define our theological identity, but also our biography, our life experiences.  Where we are born, when we are born, who raises us, and what community or society we live in will have more influence on our views of our God, ourselves, and our world than almost anything else in the world.   In other words, our religious affiliations and beliefs are almost solely a result of geographical, historical, and cultural context.  Recognizing the sociological (family and societal), geographical, historical, and anthropological (cultural) influences on our development, it will make a world of religious and theological difference if you are born in Jakarta, Rome, Cairo, Calcutta, Llasa, Buenos Aires, Stockholm, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Shanghai, or Detroit.  It will make a world of religious and theological difference if you are born in 1450 BCE, 300 BCE, 300 CE, 1450 CE, 1900 CE, or 20013 CE. With this in mind, then, let us look at a few ways God can be experienced.
    As Elaine Pagels tells us, the early Gnostic Christians used to start their prayers to both the Divine Mother and Father.   One can almost sense the comfort received in their prayers to a nurturing set of protective, loving parents in a hostile world of Roman occupation and persecution.  Fast forward 2000 years and we discover Christian Womanist and Mujerista Liberation Theologians for whom God is personalized to their own life experiences as African-American and Latina Women, both as individuals and within their specific communities.   With this in mind Stephanie Mitchem shifts the theological playing field by noting that black women understand God “as a partner in life rather than a distant observer,”   and asking,
"Where is God in the experiences of black women?  By what name should this God be called?  What does it mean to live a life of faith?  How should black women respond to God’s call? "

    God as black woman in Harlem or African woman slave?  God as Latina women in the slums of Peru or Los Angeles?  Why not?  How long have we had to accept the narrow, European and North American definitions of God as fact and reality?  God as old white grandfather on a throne.  Jesus as pale, slight, light-haired North European.  God is far more expansive than anything we could envision, so perhaps our hopes, our dreams and our imagination are the best places to begin.  A limitless Creatress-Creator requires limitless vision.
     So carrying our mandate of expansive definition even further, Sallie McFague, feminist liberation theologian and Christian minister, suggests the idea of God as friend—and even as lover.

"God as lover is the one who loves the world not with the fingertips but totally and passionately, taking pleasure in its variety and richness, finding it attractive and valuable, delighting in its fulfillment.  God as lover is the moving power of love in the universe, the desire for unity with all the beloved."

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