Non-Competition
The concept of ‘non-competition’ has in recent years taken on almost ubiquitous quality. God and creation, it is said, are not deadlocked in a type of competitive relation. God and creation are compatible with one another, and do not exist in ontological competition. The presence of one does not imply the absence of the other. There is no ‘tug-of-war’, where the advance of one means the loss or diminishment of the other. Saying this means that God can be God, and creation can be creation, without denying the fundamental integrity of their respective beings.
But as is typical, when one note is sounded so strongly, it is not long until others come along and argue for an equal emphasis on the other. So there seems in some quarters to be push back on the concept of ‘non-competition.’ See for example the recent article by Chris Beeley on Rowan Williams and Ian McFarland (an excellent article, to be sure).
I cannot help but feel that the controversy is misplaced on a popular level. What folks like Beeley get right is that non-competition tends to serve at times as an a priori metaphysical principle, superimposed on Christology. What this means however is that non-competition itself is not wrong, but that it is a conceptual tool that can be wielded rightly or wrongly. I am not sure that we can oppose ‘non-competition’ so completely when figures as different as Kathryn Tanner, Karen Kilby, Robert Jenson, Rowan Williams, Ian McFarland, and plenty others profess adherence. That is to say, there is no single principle of ‘non-competition,’ so to speak, but a general concept that can be enlisted in various ways, towards a variety of ends.
I take ‘non-competition’ to be a rather common sense assumption about God and creation. If God and creation can somehow exist together (which I take as essential for Christian Theology), then they are not fundamentally in competition with one another on an ontological level. We can of course interrogate how they exist together, to what extent they are compatible, but that they do seems beyond question.
Where the rubber meets the road, I think, is where the principle of non-competition comes into play. Beeley’s concern with Williams and McFarland is that the two of them assume a principle of non-competition, and then use this to unfold their Christology in problematic ways. Contrast this with someone like Robert Jenson. He claims that ‘God is roomy,’ that God is not ‘one thing’ and creation another. All the same words that Williams uses! But he does not assume this in advance. In fact, the reasoning is quite simple: Jesus Christ is God, and he is a human being, and he is one subject. Thus, God and creation are compatible with one another. No competition.
Add to this the fact that non-competition is wielded towards very different ends. As Beeley notes, Williams and McFarland tend to use non-competition in their Christologies to ensure that we do not so easily conflate Jesus of Nazareth with God the Son, so that there is a level of ‘asymmetry’ involved. Contrast again with Jenson, who uses non-competition to insist ever more strongly that we cannot allow any daylight between God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth. They are strictly and undialectically identical. Compatibilism is wielded in different ways, towards different ends.
So no, I do not think we should reject non-competition out of hand. I do not think the reaction to the current trendiness of theological compatibilism should be a blanket rejection of non-competition. Instead, theologians need to investigate how the principle is being used, towards what end, and only from there decide whether to accept it or reject it.