My Shirlie Guthrie painting

This painting is currently on display at the CTS bookstore and it is at such an angle that I didn't get a good picture. The top picture captures more the richness of the color and the bottom picture captures the sense of the composition. Guthrie was the latest in a line of theological personas to in habit Columbia. He studied under Barth and marks the passing of the old, conservative guard typified by Green and before him Thornwall and Girardeau, to a more modernist tack on theology. I was fortunate to have him in a couple of classes which he taught even though he was then an emeritus and needn't bother with new students. I had already been reading Barth when I came to Columbia, but in speaking with Shirlie, Barth's more important issues became imprinted on my mind. To me I have to remember that human beings trump ideology and that Jesus' concern was and continues to be with humanity and not the procrustean patterns of thought and answers that are continually brought up as universal solutions. And also, that in attending to the living word, Jesus, we realize our vocations and rediscover our vocations in our limits. Well that's certainly badly stated. Let me just say that theology has the possibility and recognizes the necessity for change. Before Barth (and Tillich, who I haven't studied very much at all) theology modeled itself on the definition of God in the Westminster catechism: infinite, eternal, immutable in all aspects of its being. And Reform theology was the apex of this perfection - especially Reform theology as voiced by Calvin through the scholastics like Turrentine and into the last century by Bavinck: the reiteration of God's eternal decree as trumping all human effort (and even any effort of God that might be contrary to God's eternal decree - some strains of calvinism actually worship the "eternal decree" and not the eternal decreer [but don't tell them that; it'll only upset them]). That's how I felt about the Reform theology I began with, Berkohf's: that it was an ultimate system that was very proud of its ultimacy. But that's the danger of any kind of scholastacism: that the system answers its questions (questions which are chosen to provide the opportunity for the very answers given) with finality and aplomb - all enemies being shown to be heretics, misguided, enemies of the faith, callow, calumnous, apostate, victims of illogic. Such a system can be wrapped around the soul for comfort - as long as there is no pain, or grief, or difficulty, or existential lack. The illusion of such a system is that one only needs Jesus for his salvific effects. Is it any wonder that this conservative Dutch reformed theology sanctions the worst evils of capitalism, and particularly the worst evils of racism, apartheid? But that is the beauty of worshiping the "eternal decree" and not the decreer: the power to steal and enslave and call it good comes from above - therefore my greed which issues in power and enslavement of you is God's perfect will. Barth repudiates all this. He points out the docetism inherent in such conservative theology and he goes back to scripture. He holds to the person of Jesus as the embodiment of scripture and exemplar of love in faithfulness, while claiming that we can not go beyond Jesus, that Jesus is more than a means of salvation, or that salvation is something separable from life in Christ, and therefore, costly discipleship. More importantly Barth says that we must be wary of imprisoning God in categories of omnipotence. That God's freedom is a freedom to limit and direct God's own activity, and that while the decree maybe eternal, it is at once working in real changeableness. That when the Old Testament speaks of God changing God's mind, that this metaphor is indicative of God's act qua act and not some play-act put on for human limitations. What Guthrie Got from this is the sense of theology has changeable: that the truth we have is a penultimate truth (which is a thought more prevalent in Brueggemann perhaps), and therefore theology is always discovering some new avenue for understanding God: feminism, liberation, process - these are all conversation partners in theology as a learning experience.
So my painting, with its deep green background and sky blue foreground, is the setting for a Lucien Freud take on the portrait: where threads of orange and blue and green weave together and knot into a likeness. It is a good enough likeness.