God Is Not Nice by Ulrich Lehner, Ave Maria Press, 160pp, £15
Near the middle of his new book, the German philosopher Dr Ulrich Lehner says: “The way previous generations have understood God has been destroyed.” It’s a grim diagnosis of how our modern era has affected the human soul and our capacity to contemplate the eternal things. What has been lost is a true belief in God’s mysterious nature, and a corresponding reverence that manifests itself in our liturgies and our lives.
This book is not simply an elegy for what has been. Instead, Lehner writes that the traditions of the Catholic Church are just as sound and life-giving today as they were in ages past. The stuff of sainthood is all around us, he believes. All we must do is claim and practise it.
God is Not Nice was inspired by interactions Lehner had with students in his classes at Marquette University, where he realised that the God of these students’ imaginations had little in common with the God of Scripture and Catholic tradition. Pop culture theology (sadly often taught in Catholic schools and parishes) gives us a God of niceness, of convenience, of vapid sentiment and vague supportiveness. Lehner believes that the honest reader will quickly recognise the pervasiveness of these contemporary notions of God, even in the lives of faithful believers, and he moves on swiftly to exploring how to change things.
The first step to curing contemporary spiritual flabbiness is to recognise how widespread it is. Lehner sees many culprits: from Enlightenment notions of individualism to scientism. He pinpoints and dismantles ideology after ideology, demonstrating how each constitutes an assault on a proper understanding of the human person and his relationship to God.
The book’s 11 chapters each grapple with a characteristic of God as we encounter Him in the Scriptures and the tradition of the Church, a characteristic that has been watered down or lost entirely in contemporary theology. In each chapter, Lehner summarises the history of the ideas that led to the current situation. Here, he does a remarkable job of rising above the fray of Catholic historical and liturgical politics. Though it seems likely that Lehner has a strong appreciation for more traditional forms of liturgy, he does not allow this squabble to distract from his overarching themes. In another instance, he includes a quotation from Martin Luther and commentates favourably on it, demonstrating his charitable approach to those with whom he maintains disagreements.
One of the less common – and most intriguing – cases Lehner makes against modern thought is his implication of Adam Smith, the father of free-market economics, in the story of the long loss of reverence. He argues that the rise of capitalism, manifested in the Industrial Revolution, contributed to a modern revival of Pelagianism (the belief that doing good works can earn someone a place in heaven).
Capitalism transformed society, Lehner says, making human interactions based primarily on exchanges (wages, salaries, and prices being the new arbiters of value). “Heaven,” he writes, “became just like any other business deal: an exchange of goods.” As Catholic thinkers like RR Reno, not to mention Pope Francis, engage more openly with the question of whether the free market is commensurate with Catholic social teaching and human flourishing, Lehner’s chapter on the subject is thought-provoking.
The book reads as a who’s who of ideas, a swift and articulate summary of the arc of human thought from the 13th century up to today. Lehner’s prose is deceptively accessible – one forgets that one is reading precise summaries of such complex thinkers as St Thomas Aquinas, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Gabriel Marcel and Martin Buber. Lehner has a gift for explaining difficult ideas and patterns of thought succinctly and clearly without lapsing into an artificially casual tone.
One slightly off-putting note about the book is its design. The cover of the paperback prepares the reader for a pop theology book, downplaying the heft of the content. It may seem like a small thing, but much like a wine label, a book cover is a significant part of the marketing, and the cover of this one may cause more philosophically inclined readers to skip it.
God is Not Nice is indisputably a challenging book, tackling some of the most deep-seated assumptions of the modern age. It deserves to be read carefully and discussed thoroughly by serious Catholics (and Protestants). One of its most valuable contributions is Lehner’s commitment to revitalising some of the least understood, most reviled words in our language – submission, fortitude, chastity, surrender – words that, as he writes, have true power. This book has the potential to inspire more Catholics to become comfortable thinking and speaking about their faith, themselves and God in those terms. As such, it is a welcome resource.
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