V. THE NATURE OF GOD: Part Two

In what I had promised would be the final post of this World View blog, with apologies, I’m afraid that I have gone on too long. So I will divide it into two posts, the second of which will appear in just a few days! As promised, I am raising two questions, both of which I have “sidestepped” so far:

• If there is a Supreme Being, what, if anything, might be said about what this Being is like—Personal/Impersonal? Benevolent/Undependable? Loving/Disapproving? Accepting/Judgmental?
• Given all that has been said, So what? What difference, if any, does it all make?

There is a reason I noted at the beginning of these final sections that I was drawn to John Claypool’s use of the phrase, “The Great Mystery,” to refer to God-by-any name. Despite the musings, ruminations, and reflections that I have, perhaps recklessly, “frozen” in written words, I must reiterate that it is in this topic that my intellectual humility—my reverent agnosticism—is at its zenith! And that increases when I move in my thinking from the “existence” of an Ultimate Reality to the “characteristics” of such a Being. But let’s begin.

What Characteristics or Qualities Might Be Ascribed to This Being?

I have set the parameters of my World View by identifying myself as a Reverent—perhaps Spiritual—Humanist. It should be no surprise, then, that I have identified as my highest priority the supreme value of persons, and have suggested that in Jesus—in “persons at their best”—we may touch “the near side.” It could logically follow, then, that if we are the “progeny” of a Creator, then that Being must also be “personal.” I confess that I find that a comforting belief and a part of my religious heritage, but it is a huge jump from my humanistic stance to imposing that characteristic on a Ground of All Being. More has been said about this in Christian theology and biblical studies—to say nothing of the theological and philosophical writings of every religion and culture in history!—than I have the knowledge or inclination even to begin to “unpack.” But I will say this now: while there are limits to what I can know, I do choose to believe and behave from time to time as though I have made a personal connection with—touched the “near side” of— The Great Mystery and I find comfort in the experience. More about that “down the road” before these posts are finished!

As will be clear later, I am personally hesitant to walk very far down this path, but I don’t want to entirely ignore the enormous volume of what has been said about what characteristics might be assigned to God-by-whatever-name. Perhaps a good place to begin would be with Rudolph Otto’s most famous work, The Idea of the Holy, published in 1917 as one of the most successful German theological books of the 20th century, and which has never gone out of print. Otto writes that while the concept of “the holy” is often used to convey moral perfection, it includes a non-ethical element, for which he coined the term numinous, based on the Latin word numen (“divine power”). He explains the numinous as a “non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling which can’t be defined in terms of other concepts or experiences.” And yet he spends three chapters trying to suggest aspects of numinous experiences.  For example:

“The feeling of it may at times [be] like a gentle tide, . . . . It may burst in sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul . . . .It may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of that which is a Mystery inexpressible and above all creatures” (Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, pp. 13-14).

In the Latin phrase for which he is best known, he describes it as the mysterium tremendum et fascinans: a mystery (mysterium) that is at once terrifying (tremendum) and fascinating (fascinans)—an experience that both repels and attracts.

Otto’s non-ethical approach has been obviously and understandably attractive, as it is to me, primarily because it begins with the experience of the individual person—as in “bottom up, not top down.” Again, more about that later. It is impossible, however, to ignore the moral dilemmas that emerge in the “standard” beliefs in the nature of God in Judaism and Christianity. There is comfort, of course, in believing in a good and compassionate God. And yet, the persons and the natural world that this God is said to have created are replete with love and hate, good and evil, constructive and destructive behavior, beauty and ugliness. Let’s look, briefly, at some of the dilemmas that arise, especially in Judaism and Christianity.

• One of the essential teachings of Judaism is the belief that God is not only righteous and just, loving and good, but also all-knowing and all-powerful. Then surely such a God must have known of the Holocaust and the imminent deaths of eleven million human beings, six million of whom were the ”chosen people.” How could an all-good and all-powerful God have allowed them to occur?

I won’t attempt to approach a solution to that question yet, but simply acknowledge that these, and other, inconsistencies, have given rise to understandable, ongoing controversy that belong to the theological/philosophical debate known as theodicy, meaning literally to “justify God,” perhaps the most difficult one in theology. To explore the various approaches taken to these matters would require more than the single additional post that follows. Neither I nor you, I’m sure, wish to pursue that now, but I do promise to provide a few examples before I’m done. So with apologies for the “open-endedness” that is left for now, here are a couple of other issues in that category.

In Christianity it emerges primarily in two places.

• The crucifixion of Jesus is said to have been required as “payment” for all sin, paving the way to salvation for all. Payment to who, or what? No moral law requiring it could exist outside of this Complete Sovereign’s control, so how does one reconcile such a brutal execution of this person—said to be this God’s Son—with a loving and compassionate God?
• This matter arises again on the Day of Judgment—turning to the words of Jesus as found in Matthew 25:31-46— when the “sheep” are separated from the “goats,” the righteous to heaven and the unrighteous to the eternal fire of hell—when justice would appear to triumph over love and compassionate mercy.

Some may dispute whether these are the authentic words of Jesus, but the account has become, nevertheless, basic Christian belief and doctrine, enshrined, for example, in the last lines of The Nicene Creed—“I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”  The belief that resurrection and eternal life are available only to those of the Christian faith is common to fundamentalists, evangelicals, and some liturgical believers. As noted earlier, however, there are some Christian liberals, and some adherents of other religions, who would include all who follow as best they can “the lights they have.” But even that approach leaves as an open question the fate of those who have not done “the best they can,” however that may be defined.

To return to the attempts to find some satisfying explanation for the “paradoxical” nature of God, I’ll just mention a few examples from the general realm of theodicy.

• A “Free Will” Mode, for example, suggests that if God were to intervene at every point of our wrongdoing, our free will would be compromised, so evil in the world is not entirely God’s fault. This doesn’t, however, account for natural disasters beyond human fault or control that kill and maim. 
• Another view is based on an Eschatological Hope—the belief that evil and suffering are only for a finite time in human history, that God will bring an end to it all, and that obedience to God in the interim requires resistance to evil and suffering.
• The notion of Faith and Trust tends to sidestep the question and affirm that God is ultimately good, has everything under control, and is to be trusted despite evil and suffering.
• Finally, a choice between Protest, which complains to God, who should never have allowed horrible things to happen in the first place, or Rejection, which sees theodicy as a mistaken approach to a problem that only God can truly answer. Both of these attempts to find a solution to this issue tend to affirm God’s mystery and goodness even amidst confusion and doubt, because one is not qualified to “justify” the Supreme Being. 

This is just a “taste”—less than a third—of the basic arguments that emerge in the attempts to grapple with the puzzling inconsistencies in the nature of a God presented as all-knowing, all-powerful, loving and compassionate in a world full of evil and suffering. Perhaps one answer—assuming such a Being does, indeed, exist—is to fall back, as I do, in grateful ignorance, upon The Great Mystery.

Despite my seriously questionable trustworthiness, I assure you that, since it is already basically written, the final post, to follow in a few days, will deal with the second of the two questions that this last installment on the nature of God was intended to address: Given all that has been said, So what? What difference, if any, does it all make?  Also included will be an account of a recent “eye-opening” experience that has profoundly influenced my choice to believe in a Divine Being and the nature of my experience of connection with that Being. I hope you’ll be willing to stay with me one more time!