V. THE NATURE OF GOD: Part One

This final section of my World View, in two posts, could have as easily been titled The Nature of “Ultimate Reality” or a “Supreme Being” or, in John Claypool’s attractive phrase, “The Great Mystery,” because I have reached that point where my intellectual humility—my reverent agnosticism—is at high tide! My thoughts about an Eternal Being are paradoxical, emotional, and sometimes thought-puzzling. There is an unreflective part of me, inevitable because of my background, that thinks in biblical categories; philosophically, personalism and ontologism as well as existentialism and process philosophy are attractive, as mentioned earlier; and in the most private corridors of my mind, I sometimes falter in thinking about it at all. All of that will be evident in what follows.

It makes sense to begin where I left off in the previous post—I may choose to “believe” and, in my best moments, I am inclined to do so—but I cannot “know.” I have little patience with the cocksure, the dogmatist who has summed up the universe and the God of it in a neat formula. The universe is not fully explainable—no intelligent science or theology has ever claimed to try. And a Supreme Being is greater than that? What then? Can anything be said about such a possible Being from out of human experience and translatable into our experience? Perhaps—at least I’m going tiptoe into an effort to do so, but with the caveat that what follows in these reflections is not intended to be even in the same neighborhood as self-assured assertions.

The first and, for me, immediate conclusion is that I must think in terms of symbolism, as humans have obviously done. We take some element of our experience and lift it up as far as we can reach: we speak of a Rock, a Fortress, a Helper, a High Tower, a Father/Mother/Parent, Overseer, the Ancient of Days, the Fashioner, the Bright and Morning Star; and Christians say they see the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus. All of these, and more, are symbols drawn from the arena of human experience.

In recognizing that all of our thoughts of such a Reality are inadequate, it can be tempting to give up saying anything at all and, as I have intimated, there are times when I feel that way. It’s what Paul Tillich meant when he spoke of “the God-above-God”—when we have said all that we can say, God is yet beyond that.

But to leave the matter there lands me in too vague a territory to say anything at all . . . and, perhaps, that is the dilemma I must live with. But, once again, in my better moments, I have to acknowledge an undeniable need and propensity to ruminate, explore, and test the boundaries of the belief systems that have been a part of my life.

As noted in a previous post, Harry Emerson Fosdick—one of the earliest mentors of my long and introspective journey—spoke of Verazzano, the early explorer, who landed on a peninsula on the east coast of America and, looking out over Chesapeake Bay, thought it was the Pacific Ocean. Laughable? Perhaps, but in some ways he was right—there is a Pacific Ocean; it does exist. In general, he had the right direction—it was 2500 miles further on, but he was headed right. And Cheseapeake Bay has the same kind of water in it as does the Pacific. In other words, it is truer to think of the Pacific in terms of Chesapeake Bay than to deny the Pacific altogether. In Fosdick’s phrase, Verazzano was “wrongheaded in the right direction.” Perhaps I can hope that the symbols drawn from our experience that we employ in speaking of The Great Mystery are, as well.

For an example, I must fall back on an analogy which, once again, I borrowed from Fosdick, although the experience is personally real and meaningful for me. Every time I go to the beach or take a flight to travel abroad, I fall in love with the sea again. Now I don’t know the whole sea—although I have flown over large expanses of it, wide areas of it are foreign to me. But it also has near side. It washes up on the beach where I happen to be. I can sit beside it, bathe in it, sail on it, be lulled to sleep by the music of it. Could that be true of God, by whatever name? So beyond us that we can think only in symbolic terms, but there is a “near side?” In fact, it seems to me that the central question of religion is there: where in our experience do we think we touch a “near side” of the “Ground of All Being?”

While I have spoken of this historical instance before, I ask your patience, since this is crucial to the question posed: when the earliest followers of Jesus explored this mysterious twilight zone of all religions, they spoke of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In my opinion, neither these early followers of Jesus, nor the writers and purveyors of the New Testament documents, were ever aware of the theological controversies that would later brew over Trinitarian language—especially since it wasn’t in place as a “doctrine” until late in the 4^th century (by the Council of Constantinople’s alteration and expansion of the Nicene Creed), and even then the term “Trinity” was not used. On the contrary, for them it was not “doctrine” at all, but their experience that had gradually unfolded—they were expressing their belief in a Creator and Sustainer of their world; their confidence that in the life and teachings of Jesus they had seen what this Being was like; and their awareness of a divine presence in their lives. They were expressing their assurance that they had touched “the near side,” but it remained for later reflection to make of that uncritical experience such a theological puzzle that, as Fosdick put it (somewhat lightly), the Trinity is a doctrine which if one does not believe it, one might lose one’s soul, but if one tries to understand it, one is sure to lose one’s wits!

To follow that early experience of the New Testament world, if the “near side” of The Great Mystery is available, I believe that human lives and relationships at their best provide one supremely important place where we might touch it. And while I have experienced in my relationships both full lives and luminous moments of “persons at their best,” I tend to come back—inevitably because of my background—to the life and teachings of Jesus as the measure of “the best.” That, in my judgment, is what the notion of the “divinity” of Jesus was meant to say, not as “doctrine,” but as experience: that in his life and character we touch “the near side.”

And because he was offered to us as a model, there is also a near side available to us in those human relationships that mirror the best of his legacy. And while I am no expert, there are certainly other religions and belief systems that offer pathways to and models of admirable and exemplary human lives. For example, Huston Smith cites this brief quotation from Ramakrishna, the 19^th century Hindu mystic and religious leader: “The Lord has laid out different paths for different people suitable for their natures. . . . Indeed, one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with wholehearted devotion.” This openness to those who are seriously committed to other faiths, and this belief in a Divine Being whose “arms” are open wider than most religions would declare, is impressive and can be found in other religions as well. There arose in the Sufi division of Islam (a bit of a surprise to me) an openness to “every form” of religion—Muslim, Christian, Jew, Zoroastrian, etc.—as long as it was a practice of a “religion of Love.” And for those to whom belief in an Eternal Being is related to “a life to come,” some followers of Judaism believe that heaven is not a “gated” community—the righteous of any people and any faith have a place in it. And finally, some Protestant liberals have spoken of the Church “Invisible,” well-defined even by a Roman Catholic Pope, Pius IX, who said that persons who keep the “natural law . . . written . . . in every human heart, and . . . live honorably and uprightly . . . can attain eternal life.” The Church “Invisible,” then, includes all who follow as best they can “the lights they have.”

In fact, there are multitudes of people with high-minded, useful lives who are conscientiously involved in human service, lifting the quality of life, who adhere to no religion and do not recognize a Supreme Being at all. They, too, represent the best of persons and human relationships.

Indeed, if there is an Ultimate Reality beyond human life and the universe itself, and if there is a possibility of human interaction with such a Being—in spite of my being obviously captive to the primacy of human relationships as the “near side”—I am open to the prospect that it may come in many forms, places, relationships, and experiences. For example, the natural world itself—in its massiveness, its splendor, its awesomeness—can offer moments of a sense of connection to “something beyond.” Even traditional Christian theology speaks of the natural order as a source of “general” revelation. And who has not been caught up in an ecstatic experience of “something more” in the beauty of a piece of music, art, theatre, or, to come back full circle, a transformative “magic moment” in a loving human relationship. Feel free to expand the list yourself.

Enough, then, for this approach to this final topic. In what, I promise, will be the final post of this World View blog, I’ll raise 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?

I hope to “see” you as I post the final installment of these reflections on my World View.

August 25, 2022