22 The Sources and Norm of Black Theology skeptical about regarding culture as a point of departure for theol- ogy. God is still God and humankind is still humankind, even for the later Barth. That being the case, the only legitimate starting point of theology is the man Jesus who is the revelation of God. Whatever is said about culture must be said in the light of this prior perspective. But this style of theology worries Tillich. He wonders whether kerygmatic theologians like Barth are giving answers to questions that the modern world is not asking. Culture-that is, the situation of modern man-must be the point of relevant theology. For Tillich the danger of confusing the divine and the human, which is so important for Barth, is not nearly so important as the danger of giving answers that are irrelevant. In fact, divine-human identifica- tion is the risk of faith: The risk of faith is based on the fact that the unconditional element can become a matter of ultimate concern only if it appears in a concrete embodiment." It is the "concrete embodiment" of the infinite which must be taken seriously. Culture, then, is the medium through which the human person encounters the divine and thus makes a deci- sion. Barth and Tillich illustrate the role that sources and norm play in shaping the character of a theology. Though their sources are similar, they do not agree on the norm. It is clear in Tillich's writings that the apologetic situation is decisive in defining the norm of systematic theology, and he identifies the norm as "New Being in Jesus as the Christ," which is the only answer to human estrange- ment. Tillich appeals to the cultural situation regarding the norm, but Barth is kerygmatic in that he defines the man Jesus as wit- nessed to in the holy scriptures as the only norm for God-talk.. It is clear, therefore, that the most important decisions in theol- ogy are made at this juncture. The sources and norm are presuppo- sitions that determine the questions that are to be asked, as well as the answers that are to be given. Believing that the biblical Christ is the sole criterion for theology, Barth not only asks questions about human nature that arise from a study of christology, but he also derives answers from the man Jesus. Tillich, on the other hand, The Sources and Norm of Black Theology 23 deals with questions that arise from the cultural situation of hu- mankind, and endeavors to shape his answers according to that situation. Both approaches are conditioned by their theological perspectives. Because a perspective refers to the whole of a person's being in the context of a community, the sources and norm of black.theol- ogy must be consistent with the perspective of the black commu- nity. Inasmuch as white American theologians do not belong to the black community, they cannot relate the gospel to that community. Invariably, when white theology attempts to speak to blacks about Jesus Christ, the gospel is presented in the light of the social, political, and economic interests of the white majority. (One exam- ple of this is the interpretation of Christian love as nonviolence.) Black theologians must work to destroy the corruptive influence of white thought by building theology on sources and a norm that are appropriate to the black community. The Sources of Black Theology There are many factors which shape the perspective of black theology. Black consciousness is a relatively new phenomenon, and it is too early to identify all the sources participating in its creation. The black community as a self-determining people, proud of its blackness, has just begun, and we must wait before we can describe what its fullest manifestation will be. "We are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be..." (I John 3:2a). Even so, at this stage, a word must be said about the present manifestation. What are the sources in black theology? 1. Black Experience. There can be no black theology which does not take seriously the black experience-a life of humiliation and suffering. This must be the point of departure of all God-talk which seeks to be black-talk. This means that black theology realizes that it is human beings who speak of God, and when those human beings are black, they speak of God only in the light of the black experience. It is not that black theology denies the impor- tance of God's revelation in Christ, but blacks want to know what Jesus Christ means when they are confronted with the brutality of white racism. The black experience prevents us from turning the gospel into 24 The Sources and Norm of Black Theology - theological catch phrases, and makes us realize that they must be clothed in black flesh. The black experience forces us to ask, "What does revelation mean when one's being is engulfed in a system of white racism cloaking itself in pious moralities?" "What does God mean when a police officer whacks you over the head because you are black?" "What does the church mean when white churchmen say they need more time to end racism?". The black experience should not be identified with inwardness, as implied in Schleiermacher's description of religion as the "feel- ing of absolute dependence." It is not an introspection in which one contemplates one's own ego. Blacks are not afforded the luxury of navel gazing. The black experience is the atmosphere in which blacks live. It is the totality of black existence in a white world where babies are tortured, women are raped, and men are shot. The black poet Don Lee puts it well: The true black experience in most cases is very con- crete. . . sleeping in subways, being bitten by rats, six people living in a kitchenette." The black experience is existence in a system of white racism. The black person knows that a ghetto is the white way of saying that blacks are subhuman and fit only to live with rats. The black experience is police departments adding more recruits and buying more guns to provide “law and order," which means making a city safe for its white population. It is politicians telling blacks to cool it or else. It is George Wallace, Hubert Humphrey, and Richard Nixon running for president. The black experience is college ad- ministrators defining "quality" education in the light of white values. It is church bodies compromising on whether blacks are human. And because black theology is a product of that experi- ence, it must talk about God in the light of it. The purpose of black theology is to make sense of black experience. The black experience, however, is more than simply encounter- ing white insanity. It also means blacks making decisions about themselves-decisions that involve whites. Blacks know that whites do not have the last word on black existence. This realization may be defined as black power, the power of the black community to make decisions regarding its identity. When this happens, blacks The Sources and Norm of Black Theology 25 become aware of their blackness; and to be aware of self is to set certain limits on the others' behavior toward oneself. The black experience means telling whitey what the limits are. The power of the black experience cannot be overestimated. It is the power to love oneself precisely because one is black and a readiness to die if whites try to make one behave otherwise. It is the sound of James Brown singing, "I'm Black and I'm Proud" and Aretha Franklin demanding "respect." The black experience is catching the spirit of blackness and loving it. It is hearing black preachers speak of God's love in spite of the filthy ghetto, and black congregations responding Amen, which means that they realize that ghetto existence is not the result of divine decree but of white inhumanity. The black experience is the feeling one has when attacking the enemy of black humanity by throwing a Molotov cocktail into a white-owned building and watching it go up in flames. We know, of course, that getting rid of evil takes something more than burning down buildings, but one must start somewhere. Being black is a beautiful experience. It is the sane way of living in an insane environment. Whites do not understand it; they can only catch glimpses of it in sociological reports and historical studies. The black experience is possible only for black persons. It means having natural hair cuts, wearing African dashikis, and dancing to the sound of Johnny Lee Hooker or B. B. King, knowing that no matter how hard whitey tries there can be no real duplication of black soul. Black soul is not learned; it comes from the totality of black experience, the experience of carving out an existence in a society that says you do not belong. The black experience is a source of black theology because this theology seeks to relate biblical revelation to the situation of blacks in America. This means that black theology cannot speak of God and God's involvement in contemporary America without identify- ing God's presence with the events of liberation in the black com- munity. 2. Black History. Black history refers to the way blacks were brought to this land and the way they have been treated in this land. This is not to say that only American whites participated in the institution of slavery. But there was something unique about Amer- ican slavery namely, the white attempt to define blacks as nonper- sons. In other countries slaves were allowed community, and there 26 The Sources and Norm of Black Theology were slave rights. Slaves were human beings, and their humanity was protected (to some degree) by certain civil laws. Black history in North America meant that whites used every conceivable method to destroy black humanity. As late as 1857 the highest court of this land decreed that blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The history of slavery in this country reveals how low human depravity can sink. And the fact that this country still, in many blatant ways, perpetuates the idea of the inferiority of blacks poignantly illustrates the capabilities of human evil. If black theology is going to speak to the condition of black persons, it cannot ignore the history of white inhumanity commit- ted against them. But black history is more than what whites did to blacks. More importantly black history is black persons saying no to every act of white brutality. Contrary to what whites say in their history books, black power is not new. It began when black mothers decided to kill their babies rather than have them grow up to be slaves. Black power is Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, and Gabriel Prosser planning a slave revolt. It is slaves poisoning masters, and Frederick Douglass delivering an abolitionist address. This is the history that black theology must take seriously before it can begin to speak about God and black humanity. Like black power, black theology is not new either. It came into being when the black clergy realized that killing slave masters was doing the work of God. It began when the black clergy refused to accept the racist white church as consistent with the gospel of God. The organizing of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Christian Metho- dist Church, the Baptist churches, and many other black churches is a visible manifestation of black theology. The participation of black churches in the black liberation struggle from the eighteenth to the twentieth century is a tribute to the endurance of black theology. Black theology focuses on black history as a source for its theological interpretation of God's work in the world because divine activity is inseparable from black history. There can be no comprehension of black theology without realizing that its exist- ence comes from a community which looks back on its unique past, 28 27 The Sources and Norm of Black Theology visualizes the future, and then makes decisions about possibilities in the present. Taking seriously the reality of God's involvement in history, black theology asks, "What are the implications of black history for the revelation of God? Is God active in black history or had God withdrawn and left blacks to the mercy of white insan- ity?" Although answers to these questions are not easy, black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us, if God is not against white racists, then God is a murderer, and we had better kill God. The task of black theology is to kill gods that do not belong to the black community, and by taking black history as a source, we know that this is neither an easy nor a sentimental task but an awesome responsibility. 3. Black Culture. The concept of black culture is closely related to black experience and black history. We could say that the black experience is what blacks feel when they try to carve out an exist- ence in dehumanized white society. It is black "soul," the pain and the joy of reacting to whiteness and affirming blackness. Black history is the record of joy and pain. It is those experiences that the black community remembers and retells because of the mythic power inherent in the symbols for the present revolution against white racism. Black culture consists of the creative forms of expression as one reflects on history, endures pain, and experiences joy. It is the black community expressing itself in music, poetry, prose, and other art forms. The emergence of the concept of the revolutionary black theater with such writers as LeRoi Jones, Larry Neal, Ed Bullins, and others is an example of the black community expressing itself culturally. Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and others are examples in music. Culture refers to the way persons live and move in the world; it molds their thought forms. Black theology must take seriously the cultural expressions of the community it represents so that it will be able to speak relevantly to the black condition. Of course, black theology is aware of the danger of identifying the word of human beings with the word of God, the danger Karl Barth persuasively warned against in the second decade of this century: The Sources and Norm of Black Theology Form believes itself capable of taking the place of con- tent. . . . Man has taken the divine in his possession; he has brought [God] under his management." Such a warning is necessary in a situation alive with satanic creatures like Hitler, and it is always the task of the church to announce the impending judgment of God against state power which seeks to destroy the weak. This is why Bonhoeffer said, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." Suffering is the badge of true discipleship. But is it appropriate to speak the same words to the oppressed? To apply Barth's words to the black-white context and interpret them as a warning against identifying God's revelation with black culture is to misunderstand Barth. His warning was appropriate for the situation in which it was given, but not for blacks in America. Blacks need to see some correlations between divine salvation and black culture. For too long Christ has been pictured as a blue-eyed honky. Black theologians are right: we need to dehonkify him and thus make him relevant to the black condition. Paul Tillich wrote: I am not unaware of the danger that in this way [the method of relating theology to culture] the substance of the Christian message may be lost. Nevertheless, this danger must be risked, and once one has realized this, one must proceed in this direction. Dangers are not a reason for avoiding a serious demand.❝ Though Tillich was not speaking of the black situation, his words are applicable to it. To be sure, as Barth pointed out, God's word is alien to humanity and thus comes to it as a "bolt from the blue"- but which humanity? For oppressors, dehumanizers, the analysis is correct. However, when we speak of God's revelation to the op- pressed, the analysis is incorrect. God's revelation comes to us in and through the cultural situation of the oppressed. God's word is our word; God's existence, our existence. This is the meaning of black culture and its relationship to divine revelation. Black culture, then, is God's way of acting in America, God's participation in black liberation. Speaking of black art, Don Lee writes: The Sources and Norm of Black Theology Black art will elevate and enlighten our people and lead them toward an awareness of self, i.e., their blackness. It will show them mirrors. Beautiful symbols. And will aid in the destruc- tion of anything nasty and detrimental to our advancement as a people.' 29 This is black liberation, the emancipation of black minds and black souls from white definitions of black humanity. Black theol- "ogy does not ignore this; it participates in this experience of the divine. 4. Revelation. Some religionists who have been influenced by the twentieth-century Protestant theologies of revelation will question my discussion of revelation as the fourth source rather than the first. Does this not suggest that revelation is secondary to the black experience, black history, and black culture? Is not this the very danger which Karl Barth pointed to? I should indicate that the numerical order of the discussion is not necessarily in order of importance. It is difficult to know which source is more important: all are interdependent and thus a discus- sion of one usually involves the others. No hard-and-fast line can be drawn between them. A perspective is an expression of the way a community perceives itself and its participation in reality, and this is a total experience. It is not possible to slice up that experience and rate the pieces in terms of importance. Inasmuch as being refers to the whole of reality, reference to one aspect of being necessitates consideration of the totality of being. I have tried to choose the method of discussion that best describes the encounter of the black community with reality. I do not think that revelation is comprehensible from a black theological perspective without a prior understanding of the con- crete manifestation of revelation in the black community as seen in the black experience, black history, and black culture. For Chris- tian faith, revelation is an event, a happening in human history. It is God's self-revelation to the human race through a historical act of human liberation. Revelationis what Yahweh did in the event of the exodus; it is Yahweh tearing down old orders and establishing new ones. Throughout the entire history of Israel, to know God is to know what God is doing in human history for the oppressed of the land.