Anchoring Peace

Column by Rev. Fran Pratt on 10 March 2022 2 Comments
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Question

 
John Shelby Spong wrote about a “non theistic” view of God. How do you understand this view and can those who have lived with a view of a personal God find satisfaction in such an approach? Do most progressives come to the non theistic view? 

Answer

 
Thank you James for your question, which has been, and today still is, also my question.

Being brought up as a young child, there was always the assumption in my family that God was a loving, caring God, with whom you could speak and relate to in a personal way. This theistic assumption carried right on into my time at Union Theological Seminary in NYC, where we were always referring to God doing this and doing that, not only in biblical times, but in today’s world as well. We all realized, as do you and I now, that God was not up in the sky, far, far away, but there was no answer as to where s/he was. Tillich talked about God as the Ground of Being, or Being-Itself. In a short essay, Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality, he laid the groundwork [no pun intended] for one type of what is called panentheism, the idea that God somehow inheres in the universe, but is different from it. I struggled with Tillich, and was never quite convinced that he succeeded in his attempt to bring Person and Being together. 

There are other ways to think about God. Deism, for example, views God as a creator who did his magic and left for another universe to take a nap. Never sure what such a God was good for. Pantheism asserts that everything is God. But, then, what’s the difference? And so we come back to panentheism, which appears in different contexts. Some believe that God is the consciousness of the universe, manifest of late in human consciousness. This allows for God to be everywhere, but nowhere in particular. Energy is another panentheistic candidate, since energy is everywhere. But… a loving energy field? Sounds like a stretch. A candidate of late has come from string theory, a modern understanding of reality that posits tiny “strings” of vibrating energy that are the building blocks of everything. The mathematics involved require at a minimum that there be 11 dimensions, 7 more than the 3 we are accustomed to dealing with, plus time. The idea is that God could be hiding in one of these dimensions, everywhere, unseen, but very active. 

How God is both person and loving, as well as Being, I have concluded, is a mystery beyond comprehension. Theology needs to make more room for mystery, just as science does, all the time. Why is there a universe? It’s a mystery. How is particle entanglement possible? Mystery. What was before the Big Bang? On and on. The heart of the Christian faith is also a mystery: that in some manner beyond comprehension, Jesus, crucified, dead, and buried, was - not resuscitated, an old body brought back to life - but resurrected, living again but in a new way that was and is totally incomprehensible. So, in one sense, the essence of theism lives on. We may no longer assert a divine providence wherein a supernatural being controls events or performs miracles or sends punishment for evil deeds. But we do have a God with whom we can relate, who is loving, who surrounds and upholds us, who is a God both personal and cosmic. A mystery, but no less true for being that mystery.

~ Dr. Carl Krieg

 

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