Hegel, Christianity, and Compass Psychotheology

I first read Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit when I was twenty-one, an entree to my lifetime study and enjoyment of the great philosophers who have influenced and shaped Western philosophy and religion. I read him again during my master's degree in philosophy, and again in later years when I was differentiating Compass Psychotheology from other systems of world beliefs.

Hegel

Georg Friederich Hegel (1770-1831) was born in the same year as Beethoven and the poet Wordsworth. At the age of 18 he studied theology at the University of Tubingen. During his mature years, he wrote four books in philosophy and was given the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin, where he remained until his death from cholera at age 61.  

Hegel was a Christian. And Hegel valued the rational mind. He integrated his perceptions of Christianity and Reason this way: Hegel saw the whole universe as the products of an absolute subject, an Absolute Mind. He wanted to underscore that the real world is more than the subjective conception of people's minds, that reality is rationality, or Thought. "Reason," Hegel said, "dominates the world and ...world history is thus a rational process."

The process of human history evolves from the tensions of polar opposites (thesis and antithesis) that give way to historical developments (synthesis), which in turn create new contexts for thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. For example, there exists an ever-recurring tension in any historical era between the freedom and autonomous will of individuals (thesis), the freedom and autonomy of nation-states (antithesis?), and the collaboration or clashing of nations in terms of peace or war (synthesis?). 

In this way the Absolute Mind, or the divine Spirit, becomes the external manifestation of human Will and its Freedom, and the good is "the realization of freedom, the absolute final purpose of the world." Because for Hegel reality is rationality (Thought, Idea), it seemed only logical that our knowledge of the Absolute is actually the Absolute knowing itself through the finite spirit of human beings.

Compass psychotheology, too, asserts that the personal-transcendent God revealed in Hebrew and Christian Scripture stands behind nature and the cosmos, interacts creatively with the people of every culture and nation, and is moving human history toward a climactic fulfillment of his plan and purposes for humankind.

God's Creation

Compass psychotheology, too, suggests that freedom of the will is a divine endowment in which Homo sapiens are imprinted with the image of God their Creator, and through which individuals live in tension between self will and God's unfolding will.

Compass psychotheology, too, sees creative tensions of polarities built into human nature and personality, and that these mirror to some degree the personality and nature of the divine as revealed in the incarnate Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, who upon his resurrection from the dead, became the Savior of the World, and the eternal destiny toward which human history is moving. 

The apostle Paul says it this way: "The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross" (Colossians 1:15-20).

These polarities include the transcendence of God as existing eternally apart from the created cosmos, and the immanence of God as manifested in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, both of whom as divine person intersect human history and influence persons and nations. These polarities are found in human personality, in the tension that exists between the compass points of Love and Assertion, Weakness and Strength, which are nevertheless synthesized into the unifying whole of self-aware identify, with freedom of choice and self-will.

Compass psychotheology diverges with Hegel's philosophy of Mind and Spirit in holding to the biblical narrative, in which humankind is fallen from the Will and Purposes of God, and must be rescued from sin by the atoning sacrifice for sin: Christ on the Cross. Persons can resist this offer of personal salvation, for it is not rational, and to believe in one's heart the scandalous "Good News" that the crucified God provides grace and forgiveness to all who repent and have faith Jesus.  

"The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God.  As the Scriptures say,

'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.^'

So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.  It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense. But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.  This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength" (1 Cor 18-25, NLT).

In the view of compass psychotheology, Hegel is one of the philosophers who, though great in intellectual sweep and motivational ambition, erred when he tried to remake Christianity into a philosophical instrument for his will and purposes. 

In avoiding the confrontation of the Old Testament prophets with the Hebrew culture, and the confrontation of Christ and the apostolic witness with the Gentile world, Hegel too facilely equated the good, the rational, the mind, and the spirit, with the Will and Purpose of the divine.

As a corrective against this kind of philosophical idealism and romantic optimism, compass psychotheology speaks of the categories of evil that characterize all persons via their human natures, personalities, and relationships. However, when persons deals decisively with their sin and self will through confessing and receiving Christ, other parts of Hegelian philosophy do indeed characterize what Christians call sanctification, growth in holiness, discipleship, or, in compass psychotheology terms, "self-actualization in Christ."

Here, then, we do find God and sinner reconciled, and the power of the Holy Spirit (who is the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son) at work in those who believe both to know and to do the will of God.

"Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect" (Romans 12:2).

Personally, I'm thankful for having read Hegel in my formative years, for he prodded me to stretch my mind and seek to see the big picture of the cosmos and the divine, in creative tension with the little picture of human history and individual life. And though I came to see these things through the lens of faith that illuminates reason, I can well understand why it was important for Georg Friedrick Hegel to see the universe through the lens of reason that inspires faith.