Yet more to learn
21/02/15 04:17
I think about God a lot. In a way, it is what I do for a living. I know that I spend my time planning and leading worship, administering an institution, calling on and serving people, and attending meetings. But I think it is fair to say that My life is dedicated to listening for and responding to God’s call.
As a person who think about God a lot, I have formed images of God. I have a sense of who God is and who God isn’t. My image of God is informed by the images that have been shared by a lot of others. I study ancient scriptures and try to understand how our forebears understood God. I read the words of theologians and philosophers and look for similarities and differences in the ways that God is understood.
In all of this one of the things that I have come to know about God is that God is beyond our capacity to understand. I know that there are many people out there who believe that God is a simple notion. Most often I hear those kinds of arguments from those who are trying to persuade others not to believe in God. They dismiss God as a simple human construct, and idea we have formed in our minds with no external reality. The problem with that conversation is that I don’t believe in the god that they don’t believe in, either. What I mean is that when I talk about God, I’m talking about something entirely different reality than what seems to me to be a rather simplistic notion of some human projection. If we are talking merely about a human invention, we aren’t talking about the God in which I believe.
Being beyond human knowing also means that our language fails us when we talk about God. We can use analogy - and we do - a lot. God is like a loving father. God is like a nurturing mother. God is like a lot of things. But an analogy only points us in a direction - it does not fully describe that which is beyond description.
In classical theology, which is, of course, a human invention, albeit one that has taken many generations to develop, the trinity is a concept that attempts to provide a pattern for understanding that God is at once close and personal and at the same time beyond our ability to fully grasp. In Jesus we discover a real, living, breathing human being who relates to us as we relate to one another, who lives and loves and, yes, who dies in the way that all humans do. In God the Creator we encounter aspects of God that are beyond our human conception of time and space. God is literally everywhere and every time all at once. And God is the creative energy that brought forth all that is. But, of course, God is more. By being Jesus and God the Creator at once, God is continually in relationship. God is relationship. It has been described as a divine conversation. And God is more. Often we use the words Holy Spirit to describe that aspect of God that is always beyond - always more - always undefinable and uncapturable. We glimpse God the Spirit. We experience God the Spirit. And yet we never fully understand God the Spirit. The theologians also remind us that it is impossible to discuss or understand one of the “persons” of the trinity without the other two. Of course it is impossible to fully understand God.
As a student I struggled with systematic theology. This may be in part because my way of thinking is less systematic and less organized than others. You can sense that if you read several of my blogs. I cover a different topic every day and there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why a particular topic comes up when it does. My mind is not, by its nature, very systematic. When I try to organize - and believe me I do - I find myself with many different possible patterns but no single design. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve tried to index the blogs or even select a group of “the best of the blog.” So far I’ve failed each time.
There is, however, another reason why systematic theology remains so challenging for me. When I read a particularly complete systematic theology such as Paul Tillich’s amazing three-volume work or Karl Barth’s Theology fo the Reformed Confessions I find myself at once amazed at how thorough their thinking is and yet how much is left out. You could read nothing but theology for a lifetime and you still would easily be able to point out aspects of God that have not been covered. What we are able to systematize is only a small corner of our own understanding. There is far more in this vast universe that we haven’t fitted into the patterns of our thinking.
This is abundantly true when on reads various theologies of spirit. The 20th Century Pentecostal movement talked about the spirit a lot, but wasn’t marked by serious academic thought. The books are inconsistent, full of logical errors and hardly systematic. It is the challenge of writing, or even talking, about the spirit. It is not an easy task.
It is critically important that we continually remind ourselves that all of these books and all of our ideas are only our understanding of God - our image of God. They are not God. Because when we confuse our image of God with the reality of God we being to think that what happens to us should be somehow universally applied. Everyone ought to see what I see! Everyone ought to believe what I believe! Those thoughts are literally dangerous. Too much violence in this world has come from people who thought that their ideas about God were God. They then tried to impose those ideas on others in ways that were violent and destructive. God is not the source of the violence - the inability to understand God can be.
It is critically important for me to remind myself and others that I don’t fully understand God. I don’t possess God. My image is far short of the reality. I am a student who is continuing to learn. As our forebear John Robinson declared, God has “more truth and light yet to break forth from the Holy Word.”
As a person who think about God a lot, I have formed images of God. I have a sense of who God is and who God isn’t. My image of God is informed by the images that have been shared by a lot of others. I study ancient scriptures and try to understand how our forebears understood God. I read the words of theologians and philosophers and look for similarities and differences in the ways that God is understood.
In all of this one of the things that I have come to know about God is that God is beyond our capacity to understand. I know that there are many people out there who believe that God is a simple notion. Most often I hear those kinds of arguments from those who are trying to persuade others not to believe in God. They dismiss God as a simple human construct, and idea we have formed in our minds with no external reality. The problem with that conversation is that I don’t believe in the god that they don’t believe in, either. What I mean is that when I talk about God, I’m talking about something entirely different reality than what seems to me to be a rather simplistic notion of some human projection. If we are talking merely about a human invention, we aren’t talking about the God in which I believe.
Being beyond human knowing also means that our language fails us when we talk about God. We can use analogy - and we do - a lot. God is like a loving father. God is like a nurturing mother. God is like a lot of things. But an analogy only points us in a direction - it does not fully describe that which is beyond description.
In classical theology, which is, of course, a human invention, albeit one that has taken many generations to develop, the trinity is a concept that attempts to provide a pattern for understanding that God is at once close and personal and at the same time beyond our ability to fully grasp. In Jesus we discover a real, living, breathing human being who relates to us as we relate to one another, who lives and loves and, yes, who dies in the way that all humans do. In God the Creator we encounter aspects of God that are beyond our human conception of time and space. God is literally everywhere and every time all at once. And God is the creative energy that brought forth all that is. But, of course, God is more. By being Jesus and God the Creator at once, God is continually in relationship. God is relationship. It has been described as a divine conversation. And God is more. Often we use the words Holy Spirit to describe that aspect of God that is always beyond - always more - always undefinable and uncapturable. We glimpse God the Spirit. We experience God the Spirit. And yet we never fully understand God the Spirit. The theologians also remind us that it is impossible to discuss or understand one of the “persons” of the trinity without the other two. Of course it is impossible to fully understand God.
As a student I struggled with systematic theology. This may be in part because my way of thinking is less systematic and less organized than others. You can sense that if you read several of my blogs. I cover a different topic every day and there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why a particular topic comes up when it does. My mind is not, by its nature, very systematic. When I try to organize - and believe me I do - I find myself with many different possible patterns but no single design. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve tried to index the blogs or even select a group of “the best of the blog.” So far I’ve failed each time.
There is, however, another reason why systematic theology remains so challenging for me. When I read a particularly complete systematic theology such as Paul Tillich’s amazing three-volume work or Karl Barth’s Theology fo the Reformed Confessions I find myself at once amazed at how thorough their thinking is and yet how much is left out. You could read nothing but theology for a lifetime and you still would easily be able to point out aspects of God that have not been covered. What we are able to systematize is only a small corner of our own understanding. There is far more in this vast universe that we haven’t fitted into the patterns of our thinking.
This is abundantly true when on reads various theologies of spirit. The 20th Century Pentecostal movement talked about the spirit a lot, but wasn’t marked by serious academic thought. The books are inconsistent, full of logical errors and hardly systematic. It is the challenge of writing, or even talking, about the spirit. It is not an easy task.
It is critically important that we continually remind ourselves that all of these books and all of our ideas are only our understanding of God - our image of God. They are not God. Because when we confuse our image of God with the reality of God we being to think that what happens to us should be somehow universally applied. Everyone ought to see what I see! Everyone ought to believe what I believe! Those thoughts are literally dangerous. Too much violence in this world has come from people who thought that their ideas about God were God. They then tried to impose those ideas on others in ways that were violent and destructive. God is not the source of the violence - the inability to understand God can be.
It is critically important for me to remind myself and others that I don’t fully understand God. I don’t possess God. My image is far short of the reality. I am a student who is continuing to learn. As our forebear John Robinson declared, God has “more truth and light yet to break forth from the Holy Word.”