THE DOCTRINE OF GOD (CONTINUED)

In spite of the difficulties relative to defining the doctrine and idea of God, the quest continues to obtain  an understanding  of what and who God is.  Because we cannot understand God in God's full essence and nature,  is no reason to give up on trying to articulate an idea of God that makes it possible for us to acknowledge and affirm the existence of God, in spite of the reality that we are "living with the questions."

All the answers that can be offered to the myriad of questions concerning the nature of God, each answer has its power and persuasive adherents.  Those who emphasize the knowability of God by reason have offered one version or another of the classical "proofs" of God: the cosmological, from the existence of the finite world, the teleological, from the order of the finite world, the ontological, from the implications of the concept of God itself as a concept of a perfect and so necessary being ; and the moral argument, from the implications of moral existence.  These widely variant forms of philosophical approach have been united in in arguing that any theology intellectually respectable enough to speak to modern, intelligent people must represent its religious heritage in the intellectual form of such a rationally grounded philosophical theology.  Without such a philosophical base for our knowledge of God, our certainty of the divine reality and our comprehension of the relation of this concept to our other concepts will be seriously lacking.  As a consequence, the idea of God will increasingly be regarded as merely subjective and idiosyncratic, a private matter of "feeling," and therefore unreal, a private image unrelated to to the width of all experience, vacant of content, and in the end meaningless (Gilkey, op. cit. p. 101).

There are those who have shared a jaundiced view of culture's reasoning  and of its philosophical "proofs"; on religious grounds they have emphasized the transcendence and mystery of God.  They are not at all unaware that most contemporary philosophy has come to regard metaphysical speculation and all proofs of a divine reality as representing a dubious and uncritical use of reason, and therefore itself devoid of certainty, objectivity, or meaning.  They also have sensed the ideological and invalid character of such "modern" thinking.  For them modern thought, far from providing an objective and valid ground for our ultimate faith, itself represents a significant aspect of the modern problem, needing itself new principles of illumination if it is to help our religious existence (Ibid.).

More important, the main problem of the knowledge of God, they insist, is not that we cannot know God with our finite minds, but that in fact secretly we do not all wish to know God.  Thus natural theology represents the persistent and systematic attempt of self-sufficient people to create a "God" of their own and so to avoid relationship with or knowledge of the real God.  A philosophical God, the product of our own metaphysical thinking and the construct of our own wayward modern wisdom, may be infinitely more comfortable for us to live with.  Nevertheless, such a "God: is a far cry from the real God who confronts us in judgment and may confront us therefore also in grace.  Furthermore, the very center of Christian promise resides in the re-creation of what we are, and of how and what we think, not in their mere extension and solidification.  Thus God-not "our own words to ourselves"-must speak to us in revelation. Such an event of revelation provides the sole basis and the sole norm for the religious existence of the Christian community from which and for wish valid and legitimate theology speaks.  To be sure, theology does not speak to the world as well as to the church, but in its speech it must seek to represent not the wisdom of the world, but the message of the Gospel, not the word of humanity, but the Word of God. Theology may use philosophy in explicating this message in coherent and adequate form.  Its primal obligation, however, is to be faithful to revelation and not to pressures of public rationality as the world defines rationality.  Faith therefore precedes and controls the use of reason in theology, i.e. "I believe in order to understand," rather than I understand in order to believe" (Ibid., pp. 101-102)

Therefore, we understand that the doctrine of God has its rational component and foundation.  Having said that, we deal with the issue of whether theology constructs God in a human image, or whether the human, as the Scriptures state, are created in the image and likeness of God.  Theology also has its revelational component, i.e. bases itself on the divine self-disclosure, which comes at God's initiative.  Theology sees to it that the language it uses about the divine is a a language of concepts and terms that are understandable to whose who are engaged in the theological task, whether they be lay, ordained, or professional in their engagement.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Visiting Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary