Theology for Skeptics: Reflections on God

by Dorothee Sölle

Here one of the most widely read theologians of our time returns to the most basic question of God. Yet she does so with a twist. Soelle's work invites the reader on a personal quest for a new, world-embracing notion of God, one that can counter the gravitational pull of first-world people's political apathy, material acquisitiveness, and spiritual numbness. In these nine short chapters, Soelle seeks to leverage our incipient desire for social, political, and gender justice into commitment to God's justice. The question of God becomes, then, not an argument or even a summons but a deeper engagement with life itself and its central mysteries. One of Soelle's most beautiful books, Theology for Skeptics is a brave confession and an engaged meditation on the central themes of religion.

Genres: Theology, Religion, Christianity, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Spirituality

126 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Dorothee Steffensky-Sölle was a German liberation theologian and writer.

Sölle studied theology, philosophy and literature at the University of Cologne. She became active in politics, speaking out against the Vietnam War, the arms race of the Cold War and injustices in the developing world. Notably, from 1968 to 1972 she organized Cologne's Politisches Nachtgebet (political night-prayers). Between 1975 and 1987, she spent six months a year at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where she was a professor of systematic theology.

She wrote a large number of books, including Theology for Skeptics: Reflections on God, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (2001) and her autobiography Against the Wind: Memoir of a Radical Christian (1999). In Beyond Mere Obedience: Reflections on a Christian Ethic for the Future she coined the term "Christofascist" to describe fundamentalists. Perhaps her best-known work in English was Suffering, which offers a critique of "Christian masochism" and "theological sadism." Sölle's critique is against the assumption that God is all-powerful and the cause of suffering; humans thus suffer for some greater purpose. Instead, God suffers and is powerless alongside us. Humans are to struggle together against oppression, sexism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of authoritarianism.

"I believe in God who created the world has not done such a thing that always must remain, not the ruled by eternal laws, which are immutable, not by natural systems of rich and poor, experts and uninformed, rulers and extradited. I believe in God, who wants the appeal of living and the change in all states through our work, our policy".

Reviews

[Luke Hillier · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW!!! This was my introduction to reading Soelle and easily catapulted her to the top of my list of favorite theologians. I can honestly remember few reading experiences that felt so deeply resonant, as if she were articulating so beautifully the convictions of my mind and longings of my spirit. While her methodology is easy to critique within a more orthodox context, it's clear from the title forward that Soelle is primarily concerned with connecting to "skeptics" who've long since thrown out some of the rules of engagement many Christians hold to. In that sense, I actually found her evangelical fervor to be almost surprising; this does not read as a stuffy academic but rather someone with a real fire in their bones and fervent belief in what she's talking about.

This makes more sense the deeper you read. For Soelle, it's the idolatry of science that's come to parallel "Christofacist" religiosity that have both borne the fruit of injustice and apathy in light of it. She expresses a deep sense that the world is in desperate need for transformation that won't be possible without the sort of conversion she described. Her talk of God as the eternal co-sufferer who draws us into sharing sacred sorrow with a promise to encircle us in the pain and transform it into the mobilizing anger and joy of solidarity is unspeakably compelling and profound and gorgeously written. Flipping through the pages, there are so many sections I underlined and scrawled excitement in the margins towards, it's just such a wonderful piece of theological work. I have no question that many, many would easily disregard it with disdain and even understand why, but for me, Soelle's written an amazing little book that I honestly credit with reigniting some of the spark in my own skeptic's spirituality.

[Chet Duke · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first three chapters focus on the images and names of God. She begins by sharing her concerns with the androcentric conception of God, specifically the retaining of omnipotence and love in the “father image” of God after Auschwitz. She wants to relativize the symbols we use for God, ridding God of images of dominance so that theological language can “go back to the mystical tradition” (28). Thus, instead of completely overthrowing the father-language of God, Söelle wants to appropriate the language in anti-authoritarian, anti-patriarchal ways. However, one gets the sense that Söelle distrusts those who still adhere to this way of God-talk, and she suggests that “patriarchal Christianity,” which is fixated on authority, be replaced. The God of patriarchal religion “can at most represent a kind of protection from catastrophes for true believers; he does not have liberating qualities” (48). Feminist theology is unconcerned with debates about the existence and/or attributes of the “wholly other” God; rather, feminist theology focuses on the question, “Does God occur also among us?” Questions about the “omni” attributes miss the point of God. Söelle believes we should abandon a model of divine transcendence that holds “God-above-us” for a “God-within-us” model, since this overcomes the false hierarchical, masculine construct of God and enables one to engage in liberating mysticism. 


In chapter four, Söelle focuses on some of the difficulties with prayer, and she offers personal reflection on the story of Jacob wrestling with God. She insists that praying and struggling belong together, since oftentimes our personal experience with God is similar to a struggle with one who is a “dark God,” failing to remember those that are suffering. We struggle with God, according to Söelle, in order that God might become visible in our midst.

Chapter five, titled “God’s Pain and Ours,” deals most directly with Söelle’s perception of weaknesses in theodicy. Drawing on Elie Wiesel’s account of the “Trial of Shamgorod,” Söelle suggests that anyone prone to defend God is (as the character in Wiesel’s account) wearing the mask of the devil. She says that the problem of theodicy is an evasion, “a denial of suffering” (63). She presents three views. First, if God is omnipotent and comprehensible, then the God who allows Auschwitz is purely wicked. Second, a God who is omnipotent and incomprehensible cannot withstand scrutiny, since belief in this God is a paradox and thus he becomes dead to us. Third, Söelle presents a God who is love and is not omnipotent. This God, “stands on the side of victims and is thought to be capable of suffering” (65). This position, which denies divine omnipotence, was a fairly common position among Christian and Jewish theologians after WWII, and Söelle lists those in her company (Abraham Heschel, Elie Wiesel, Hans Jonas, Harold Kushner, etc.). She lumps Bonhoeffer into this group, but I hesitate to agree with her that he affirmed Patripassianism.
Nevertheless, Söelle takes her cues from liberation theology, specifically those suffering in El Salvador. The testimonies of Christians suffering in the Third World are, for Söelle, instructional for what it means to believe in God. She wonders what right those in the First World have to even ask the theodicy question. As one considers God suffering with us, one frees oneself from patriarchal, hierarchical thinking about God, according to Söelle; the God who suffers with us is inherently feminine and motherly. If God were truly transcendent, according to Söelle, then he could not connect with us in our pain. After reflecting on the pain of her contemporary El Salvadorian brethren, Söelle suggests that the “most important image which the Bible uses for God’s pain in the world is an image from the experience of women, an image of giving birth” (76), and she shares the intimacy of joy and pain. Söelle thinks we should appropriate suffering, understanding it is part of one’s life and freedom, recognizing it as a moment of solidarity with the Christ. Community and solidarity are the two key theological elements we see in suffering. 



In chapter six, Söelle recounts three phases of Christian life. First, “The Village” is where we are rooted in a religious tradition where the religious sensibilities of our ancestors inform our social and intellectual life. Some people never leave this phases of life; however, the majority of people migrate to the second phase, “The Big City.” In the second phase, religion loses its influence over people, since most people prefer secularism in this phase over any kind of religious imposition. However, Söelle points out that many in the city find the secular disintegration of ritual and custom unsettling enough to send one back to the search for religion. This is where one lands in the third phase: the conscious formation of new forms of religion (86). This is a conscious, critical religious decision in which one critically accepts (selectively) that which is good. Here she says, “Must I believe and follow each word in the Bible? The answer to this is a clear no. Even the strictest Bible believers do not marry the wife of their brother when he dies! With the departure from the religious village, authority—of the pastor, scripture, or the official church—is gone; it cannot be reinstituted. Anyone who comes to a critical affirmation of faith after an intensive debate in the second phase is now struggling for the development of new forms of religious life” (87). In light of this, Söelle suggests that many today only identify Christianity with the village, and thus as a faith without hope. She seeks to construct a “Christology from below.” She begins by affirming something of God is extant in every human person. She then offers some troubling (from the perspective of Christian orthodoxy) points on the “idolization” of Jesus, suggesting that Jesus is not the decisive occurrence for anyone in particular; rather, “Christ” becomes something of a collective placeholder for the ideal for which we should live. Finally, Christ is the Man for Others, and this model should shape our orientation towards others. It Is this service of fellow-man and not miracles, resurrection, victory over sin, etc. that allows us to see into God’s heart, according to Söelle. 



Chapter seven, “Cross and Resurrection,” lays out three religious positions regarding suffering: (1) The “Sado-masochistic Theo-ideology of God as a hangman;” (2) The “painfree dream of the soft deity;” and (3) “faith and hope that binds people to the poor man from Nazareth” (100). In the freedom of love, we learn to embrace suffering, not to belittle it. Growth into love is itself a form of vulnerability. On the question of the “literalness” of the resurrection, Söelle wonders what would change about Christianity if it was shown that it did or did not happen. She asserts that, in any case, it is unprovable. She assumes that the resurrection is an existential answer to a question that often diverts us from what we know objectively of “the poor wretch from Nazareth” (106). Thus, she avoids altogether the scientific questions pertaining to the resurrection, pointing instead to the existential significance of the event as it is bound up with the cross. 
She does, however, reserve chapter eight for her thoughts on technical rationality, technocracy, and the religion of science. I appreciate her thoughts on the limits of science and some of the moral indirection of scientific “progress,” but she paints with too broad a brush and treats “science” as static. She’s also not alone among theologians and philosophers in her context treating “science” in this way. 
For Söelle, religion cannot be compartmentalized like any other academic discipline or special interest; rather, religion is a universal phenomenon that provides wholeness to one’s experience. “Religion does not pull me out of the whole but rather lets me be on the lookout directly for it and to miss it when it is absent” (111). She also uses the final chapter to offer some concretion as to what she believes about God, creation, responsibility, etc. From here, she explains the importance of being whole in a fractured world. She concludes by sharing three characteristics of dynamic holism (borrowing from New Age Spirituality) that enable one to live more holistically, and she adds the fourth element that is missing (an element of justice): 
1. The unimportance of material values, an indifference—astonishing for the generation of scarcity—toward material incentives and rewards, a new form of incorruptibility, and an often vague search for spirituality.
2. Skepticism toward science and technology, which are understood as means for subjugating nature and controlling people. The productive side of this skepticism is not demonization of technology but affirmation of “soft” technologies.
3. An orientation toward nature which is different in principle, the readiness to protect it, even to enter into a covenant with it against the powers inimical to life. 



Chapter nine, the final chapter, is a reminder that the people of God are still experiencing an exile. The minority that has not given itself to the system of progress and power lives with a knowledge of “the death that governs us” (124). That God’s people hold the memory of the Exodus (God making people free) simultaneously with the vision of the coming Messiah offers us comfort and hope in the midst of our ever-increasing knowledge of death. In light of this, Söelle calls readers to the work of liberation, basking in the beauty of God by making that beauty visible in comforting the weak, living courageously in the face of a dying world. 



As an orthodox Christian, this was a difficult book to walk through. Söelle is writing with a heavy heart for the church and her contemporary culture, a culture of war-making, social injustice, religious ambivalence, and existential despair. I appreciated her attention to weaknesses in many strains of contemporary Christian thought (especially with our zeal to offer inadequate theodicies). However, I found much of what she offered in its place to be wanting and lacking biblical, substantively Christian theology, especially as it pertains to Christology. Much of the book echoed vague New Age mysticism and pantheism instead of distinctly Christian ideas. If Christ is not the decisive individual in the story of God’s work in creation, and “orthodoxy” is normatively pitched to be “too dogmatic and rigid,” then it’s hard to sell that this is a distinctively Christian work for me.
This work was very much out of my experience/personal interest in theological sub-genre, but I am glad I read it. Söelle has had an impact on contemporary feminist liberation theology, and this little book offers a window into some major questions and themes in that tradition.

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dorothee Sölle war mir schon länger ein Begriff, jedoch ohne dass ich je etwas von ihr gelesen hätte. Durch meine Mutter kam ich nun dazu, diese Lese- und Wissenslücke aufzufüllen.

Sölle denkt Gott weg vom männlich-patriarchalen Gott der meisten Theologen und setzt sich ein für einen Gott, der auch mal schwach sein kann/darf, und genau deswegen seinen Menschen helfen kann. Sie führt einige interessante Beispiele an und erzählt auch von Erlebnissen aus ihrem eigenen Leben.

Da die Autorin selbst sehr gebildet ist, schreibt sie auch entsprechend. Obwohl nur ein kurzes Buch mit gesammelten kurzen Texten, lässt sich das Werk doch nicht einfach so weglesen. Ungeübte Leser könnten hier Schwierigkeiten bekommen (meine Mutter musste pro Seite mehrere Worte nachschlagen und ihre Bedeutung notieren).

Für alle, die sich einen Einblick in die feministische Theologie wünschen, bietet das Buch einen guten Start mit vielen neuen Eindrücken und Gedanken Sölles. Auch als Einführung in die Arbeit der Autorin eignet sich dieses Werk hervorragend.

[Elisabeth Bialosky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably more of a 4.5 for me but I rounded up. It's been a long time since I've actively read theology and this one was definitely a perfect read, especially for those questioning how people can be religious in contrast to how hierarchical organized church performs. The section where Sölle discusses names and images of God particularly stands out to me when she says, "A God who does not exceed God is not God. God imprisoned in a certain language, limited by certain definitions, known by names that have established certain sociocultural forms of control, is not God but instead becomes a religious ideology." To so many people who question Westernized authoritarian images of God and God talk, Sölle refutes this as being true to Biblical traditions, as well as an authentic characterization. While I will never be able to get behind the Western approaches to God and religion, I love liberation theology and Christ and God as seen through the lens of suffering and pain. I gave 4.5 though because I think her criticism of science is a little unfair and lacking nuance. I know she was writing in early 1990's and times have changed, but I don't think science is inherently as evil as she claims it to be.

[Kiwi Comiendo Kiwi · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The priests and theologians have talked so long that we have become mute. They have locked God up in Bible and liturgy instead of using Bible and liturgy as eyeglasses for understanding our everyday lives."

En contraposición al teísmo clásico de los medievales, racionalista, lógico y filosófico; existe un teísmo político, no en el sentido medieval, teocrático y autoritario, sino manifestado como el ardor de la búsqueda de Dios en las redes de sufrimiento y corrupción humanas. Un teísmo que se vivencia no con temor y temblor sino con la lucha contra la injusticia y la reverencia ante los oprimidos.

Dorothe Solleë fue una teóloga luterana, involucrada en movimientos pacifistas y feministas, que creció bajo la conciencia alemana de la posguerra. Su teología para escépticos busca lo que significa creer en Dios en un mundo en donde el holocausto ocurrió. Y lo que significa es que no podemos creer en Dios en la misma manera que antes, la visión de un legislador omnipotente que a la vez tiene un corazón es imposible de mantener después de Auschwitz. Pero esto, argumenta Solleë, no significa la muerte de Dios, sino el renacimiento de Dios de las cenizas de sus antiguos símbolos.

Los primeros capítulos focalizan el análisis desde la perspectiva mística. La tradición mística busca conocer a Dios con experiencias personales, lo cual implica el abandono de símbolos, el encuentro con un Dios que constantemente excede sus símbolos y nos revela la insuficiencia de las imágenes. La idea de que Dios es exclusivamente Padre y no Madre, de que es Él y no Ella, es uno de estos casos en donde la profundidad de Dios se vuelve inaccesible, se ha erigido un ídolo de la masculinidad, y esta idolatría impide a Dios ser Dios. Si Dios verdaderamente, como dice la teología tradicional, es incorpóreo y trasciende el sexo, no habría diferencia entre rezar el Padre nuestro o la Madre nuestra, pero los teólogos no siempre siguen sus mismas conclusiones.

La teología del proceso, enfoque tomado en este libro, tiene un choque principal con el teísmo clásico: la negación de la omnipotencia. Mientras más enfatizamos la soberanía como el atributo máximo de Dios, más profunda será su apatía ante el sufrimiento. Un Todopoderoso que permite el holocausto no ayuda a nadie. La tarea cristiana es encontrar a Dios en el sufrimiento, no el sufrimiento como una sumisión ante los poderes del mundo, sino el sufrimiento como una experiencia transformadora, comunal, el sufrimiento de las iglesias pobres, el sufrimiento de los teólogos de liberación, el sufrimiento de sacerdotes en dictaduras latinoamericanas. Las prácticas católicas de pena demuestran esto: el sufrimiento no es sólo mío, debo compartir el dolor del otro y compartir de mi dolor con el otro.

Y Cristo es nuestro máximo ejemplo. El Cristo campesino que vino a sumergirse en nuestra miseria y cubrirse de nuestra soledad. Un cristiano es alguien que se está acercando a Cristo, y mientras más nos acercamos a Cristo más vulnerables nos hacemos. Los capítulos sobre Cristología y la crucifixión son los mejores. El rechazo a la idea sadomasoquista de que Dios derramó su ira en su Hijo para perdonar a los culpables no significa que Dios sea ajeno al sufrimiento. Dios sufre con nosotros, el Lama Sabactani es el mayor testamento teológico concebible.

En general una buena reflexión, no sé si estoy de acuerdo con todo, pero las ideas son siempre iluminantes y relevantes.

[5greenway · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loads of really useful stuff in here, challenging calls to thought and action. At times, theoretical stuff could have been handled with a bit more clarity (probably more my brain) and the first half was better than the second, but well worth reading.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a deeper and more academic read into the magical play of faith and doubt.

[Jessie lexi norman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this book

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first few chapters focus and patriarchy and misogyny. Chapter 8 speaks most to me.

[Benjamin Merritt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to try to read something by Dorothee Soelle after being introduced to her thought in John Cobb's book on political theology. In Theology for Skeptics, Soelle presents a credible and poetic way of talking about God in today's world in a way that offers hope and liberation to the most vulnerable. Our God-talk can always use refining, and this perspective (basically a feminist liberation theology) is worth hearing out.

Reminds me a bit of essays I read by Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendell in Passion for God. I appreciate what both of them are trying to do (and here it is articulated very well!) but worry that much of it is not grounded enough in Scripture and tradition; indeed the authoritarian nature of these things seem to be something Soelle is reacting against. Still, this was a very enjoyable and accessible read.

[Beau · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have found myself, these days, alienated from the faith of my youth. Yet reading "Theology for Skeptics" I felt as if I had "come home." There is something deeply honest about Soëlle's theology and writing. She is in no way naive about the world having lived at its margins--or at least identified closely with those at its margins. And yet she continues to pinpoint what is so achingly vibrant for those of us who doubt. I felt once again called to faith, to be "in Christ" in a way that does not render the man from Nazereth simply the answer to a quiz question, but calls me to be "in him" a man or woman "for the world." I'll be coming back to this text many times in the years to come, I expect.

[Steve Hirby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Provocative and liberating theological stance, and wonderful to read in a group because of the discussion it prompts.

[Jane Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Astute and practical theology with sense of humor. Poetically written

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful confession

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have yet to read something by Soelle which I don't love.