Spongisms - Define God…
August 1, 2007
I do not know what the first Easter experience was. Neither does anyone else. The earliest record in Paul ascribed the Resurrection to an act of God raising Jesus into the presence of God. In Paul, God raised Jesus, Jesus does not rise. If this is an action of God then that act does not occur in human history. However, people living in human history seek to make sense out of that experience. Whatever Easter was it caused the disciples, who had forsaken Jesus in fear when he was arrested, to be reconstituted and empowered in dramatic ways. It caused his Jewish disciples to redefine God so that Jesus was included in that definition. It caused a new holy day, the first day of the week to be born and eventually to rival the Sabbath. So the effects of Easter were in history but Easter itself was not.
October 24, 2007
The second effect that is obvious is that whatever the Easter experience was it changed the disciples' understanding of God and how Jesus was related to that understanding. When we turn to the witness of Paul, who wrote between 50-64 CE, he says in his epistle to the Romans that "God designated Jesus to be the Son of God" by the power of the "Spirit of holiness" and this designation was made operative in that God raised him from the dead. Long before any gospel writer had turned the Easter experience into a physical, resuscitated body, Paul had interpreted it as God raising Jesus into whatever God is and whatever God means. This transformation is then written back into the life of Jesus when, in the synoptics, Peter is made to call him "the Christ, the Son of the living God," though, as it was later indicated, it would not be until the resurrection that Peter would understand his own words. When John has Jesus identify himself as being one with God and when Thomas is made to refer to him as "My Lord and my God," the revolution was complete. It is quite clear that what Easter did to these Jewish disciples was to force a redefinition of God onto them so that forever after they could not see God without seeing Jesus as part of that definition nor could they see Jesus any longer as other than as deeply at one with God. It would be some four hundred years before the Christian Church would define this transformation in the doctrinal language of the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity, but the experience appears to have been connected to whatever it was that originally constituted Easter. People do not redefine God except when driven to do so by an experience that is undeniable. Whatever Easter was, it has to be big enough to account for this dramatic change.
November 7, 2007
I no longer define God as a being who exists somewhere outside the boundaries of this world, who possesses supernatural power and who intervenes in human history periodically to answer prayers, to do a miracle or to accomplish the divine will. That is nothing more than the "theistic" definition of God, and it must be recognized today as no more than a human creation. The theistic God is portrayed as a great big human being who has escaped human limitations. So deeply has "theism" captured the definition of God that the word "atheist," which literally means one who does not believe in a theistic God, has come to mean one who does not believe in any God at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchen and Sam Harris do not understand that distinction. That is certainly not my situation.
We have today finally begun to recognize that no human mind can grasp the reality of God, so human efforts to define God are as nonsensical as the efforts of horses might be if they attempted to define a human being. God is a reality that can be experienced but never defined. There is also the chance that when we think we are experiencing God, we are in fact facing only our own delusions. All religious systems are typically loathe to face or to admit that possibility…
January 9, 2008
Dear Jim,
The first thing that all religious people need to embrace is that no religious system can finally define God. That is not within the human capacity. I wonder why we have even thought it is. No one thinks that a horse, bound by the limits of a horse's consciousness, can define what it means to be human. Neither can human beings, bound by their human consciousness, define what it means to be God. That is both elementary and profoundly true.
Religious systems are also not just about religion. They are inevitably deeply informed by the culture out of which that religion system has grown. Christianity today is the primary religion of the West and, through its missionary efforts and colonial past, also finds expression in the Third World.
Islam is the primary religion of the Middle East. Hinduism and Buddhism are the primary religions of the East. Judaism, the mother of Christianity, is a minority presence in both the Muslim Middle East and the traditionally Christian West. It is difficult, perhaps even impossible, for one raised in a different culture to embrace in a full way the religion of a culture other than his or her own. I do not mean that a Westerner cannot become a Buddhist or a Jew, or that a Middle Easterner or a Chinese person cannot become a Christian - that happens regularly, but it is never quite the same as it is for one raised in the culture out of which that religious system grew. That fact has led me to a new and different kind of appreciation for religions other than my own. I am not supportive of conversion activities. I have had significant dialogues in my life with Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Moslems. I have been impressed by the fact that the religions of the world all appear to be addressing the same universal questions that my religion seeks to address. In our questions there is a remarkable similarity. It is in the answers that we give to these questions that we diverge and much of that divergence is the product of acculturation.
January 23, 2008
Dear Øystein,
It is easier to document how human beings affect the world than it is how God does. That is because human beings can experience God but they cannot define God. I do not understand the reluctance of human beings to understand that simple truth. The human mind cannot embrace what it means to be God. We cannot view the world from God’s perspective. We cannot show where God’s intervention was decisive.
If we could do that, we would presumably be able to explain why God does not always intervene. If God can be quoted or appealed to on one side of that ledger then we must also raise the other side.
June 18, 2008
The word God is a human construct. The attributes we connect with the word Godare human attributes. All of our creeds and doctrines of God are human creations. It could not be otherwise. We are human beings. We can only think with human minds. Vocabulary is a human creation.
If God is real, as I believe God is, I can experience God but I can never define God. I can never escape the limits of my human mind. Try to imagine an insect, limited, as insects are, to the consciousness of an insect, trying to describe what it means to be a bird! Try to imagine a horse, limited as a horse is by the consciousness of a horse, trying to describe what it means to be human. Try to imagine a human being, limited as human beings are to the consciousness of a human being, trying to describe what it means to be God, then you will begin to understand this issue perfectly. Unfortunately, great numbers of religious people, including religious leaders, are not able to do this.
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