Thank you, Clark, for this nutshell summary of God-concepts since the Greek abstraction. It is a good starting point for pondering for me, because it contains just as many aspects about the topic I am able to have in mind at one time. Not without getting confused, but without getting completely blurred at least. So it (your summary) is a basis for getting a feeling, or different feelings towards the different varieties of "God": Pity? (So alone), Envy? (No.), Worship? (missing information about better or worse worlds.), Empathy? (yes, in case of process theology.) Maybe people can choose their belief in order to have a feeling they like to have, and maybe this is ok, if they reflect, why they want to feel this or that way, and not have an unreflected feeling like revenge, superiority, and then construct a God-concept out of that. I am too confused now to tell which feeling about God I want to have, but confusion (Tohu Va bohu) is always a good start.
Best,
Helmut
27. Oktober 2016 um 21:24 Uhr
"Clark Goble" <[email protected]>
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"Clark Goble" <[email protected]>
On Oct 27, 2016, at 10:29 AM, Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> wrote:I guess that the question whether there is God or not leads to the assumtion that there is God: Given that there is no God, everything has evolved by itself, but this self-creation requires a mechanism, which is intelligent, i.e. may be called "person", and the term "self" too implies a person, so what more do we need to assume a personal God? But the problem whith the assumption of nothing is, that if at the beginning there was nothing, then either there was not only nothing, but nothing and God, or the nothing has the capability to evolve into something, but then there was not nothing alone, but nothing and its capability, which may be called God. So, either way you look at it, a sole nothing at the beginning is not possible. So, if we want to stick with a beginning, this beginning state cannot be nothing, but eg. Tohu Va Bohu, which in the german edition of the bible is falsely translated with "oed und leer" (barren and empty), but more likely means some creative chaos. But why should, at any time, there have been only this Tohu Va Bohu, and not only at some places, while at other places something regular has yet evolved? I do not see a necessity to suggest a temporally singular beginning everywhere. And why should God have started with nothing? That would mean, that He has a curriculum vitae, finished His apprenticeship and works on His journeyman piece of art. But if God has a currivulum vitae, he has a vita, a life, is mortal, and not God. So I guess, that there is no beginning, and no nothing. But Tohu Va Bohu ok. My mother has detected it in my room when I was young. That is where I know the term from.
I think the issue is that the Greek philosophers abstracted their religion and more or less moved Zeus to either be the ground of being or being itself. You had that big allegorizing move towards the earlier myths. Then when Judaism becomes more monotheistic primarily during the exile there are moves to adopt a lot of the more Greek notions. Especially during the Hellenistic conquest of Palestine after the exile. With Christianity you have this merging of the Greek absolutist ideas of God as being with the Christian more traditional use of more personal theistic God. By the period of the end of pagan neoplatonism the ideas have merged in the doctrine of the Trinity - especially in the platonic twist given it by Augustine.
It’s worth asking whether this makes sense. There are always moves away from the more theistic conception towards the more Greek conception. Especially in mysticism. But you see it a lot at the end of the 19th century when strains of Hegelianism tend to dominate religious intellectuals. It’s God as being that gets the focus rather than Christology except as a symbol or icon of abstract ideas like ‘love.’ The countermove is of course going on at the same time and in the US comes to dominate.
The interesting rethink is to take the absolutist notions but reject the more static framework they’re found in. So you see this with Whitehead in the pre-war era and then the rise of process theology in the post-war era. In this scheme God has a life, albeit not a human one. Instead of being absolutely impassible he becomes the other extreme of most passaible and most related.
A lot of the “but that’s not what God means” really are adopting these earlier Greek religious innovations as the only way to think of God. But even historically in the western tradition there’s a lot more variety at play.
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