God
Ann Olivier would like a thread on God. So here are two classic texts on the Catholic Christian notion of God. The first from Augustine: ::
What then are you, my God? What, I ask, but the Lord God? For who is the Lord but the Lord? Or who is God but our God (Ps 17:32). Most high, utterly good, utterly powerful, utterly omnipotent; utterly merciful and utterly just; utterly hidden and utterly present; utterly beautiful and utterly strong; constant and incomprehensible; unchanging but changing all things; never new, never old; making all things new and leading the proud into old age without their knowing it (see Job 9:5); always active, always resting; gathering though needing nothing; sustaining and filling and protecting; creating and nourishing and completing; seeking even though you lack nothing [quaerens cum nihil desit tibi]. You love, but not hotly; you are jealous but without anxiety; you repent but without remorse; you grow angry but remain calm; you change your works but do not change your plan; you take back what you find, though you never lost it; you are never in need but rejoice at your gains; you are never greedy, but demand profits (Lk 15:17). People pay you more than you require (see Lk 10:35) so that you may be in their debt, but who has anything that is not yours? Owing nothing, you repay debts; you pay off debts and you lose nothing.
And what have we just said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? Or what does anyone say when he speaks of you? Yet woe to those who do not speak of you, since those who speak most say nothing! [Vae tacentibus de te quoniam loquaces muti sunt. ] (Augustine, Confessions, I, 4:4)
The second is from the First Vatican Council:
The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church believes and acknowledges that there is one true and living God, creator and lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immeasurable, incomprehensible, infinite in will, understanding and every perfection. Since he is one, singular, completely simple and unchangeable spiritual substance, he must be declared to be in reality and in essence distinct from the world, supremely happy in himself and from himself, and inexpressibly loftier than anything besides himself which either exists or can be imagined. (Vatican I, Dei Filius, ch. 1)
When I read these sentences in a graduate class one day, a Muslim student came up to me afterwards, very excited that this is what Catholics believe about God: “This is what we Muslims believe!” he exclaimed.
So far, theism, but Augustine certainly had a lot to say about the Trinity. Can Christians truly profess belief in their God without reference to the idea that God is three in one? The creeds suggest that they cannot. How would a Muslim then react? Would he/she be inclined to suspect tritheism?
Which God are we talking about? The “everyday” God whom we ask to intervene in history constantly to avert storms, heal the sick, determine the outcome of elections, and so on? Or the God of philosophy who is immutable and outside time and would not seem to be the kind of being to be listening to what we say, persuaded to act, and willing and able to intervene? The Abba (“daddy”) that Jesus taught about? Or the God of the Old Testament who wiped out the entire human race and most life on earth (except for the passengers in the Ark) because he regretted what he had created, and the God who commanded the total extermination of the Amelekites, including the women, children, and cattle?
The God I am talking about is the God of the Christian tradition, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, as believed in and understood, most imperfectly, in the light of reason illumined by faith in the biblical tradition.
Thanks, JAK.
It seems to me that Vatican I’s highly abstract description is of a remote summit of all perfections which inclines us to respect, not love. I notice that the word “love” is not used once in the description, which is really weird to me. It does present a concept of an infinite reality which I think needs to be a part of a more adequate concept of God. Without that infinity of infinite perfections we’d have a god who isn’t entirely godly. But except for the creator part, the description could have been written by Aristotle. The Trinity is not even mentioned. It’s pagan, really. Or does more description follow this text? At any rate, even if there is more, this part shows what counted most for the Vatican I participants — magnitude, power, and stability.
But to me it’s a metaphysical lump of extremes that add up to an extremely remote Something-and-Other. As one who loves philosophy, I find it fascinating when the medievals talk about His perfections, but I don’t think I’d be much inclined to *worship* such a God if that’s all I knew about Him/Her.
Augustine’s description is somewhat more personal, noting as it does that God is merciful and nourishing and that He has some other personal qualities. But the oppositions Augustine emphasizes among God’s qualities, are not appealing to me at all, at least not insofar as they are paradoxes. To me paradoxes are always failures, and God does not fail.
The revelation of God as personal, just, merciful and loving in the Psalms, Isaiah, Job and in Jesus’ teachings and in His own prayers, are much more revealing to me. Their relationships with God are interactive ones — they speak to God and God speaks to them. That’s what I think people crave the most — I-Thou relationships with God, relationships which differ from person to person, no doubt, but that doesn’t make them less real.
David Nickol –
You seem to take the O,T. stories of Jahweh the Monster literally. I doubt that they were meant to be. They involve the problem of evil, but on a divine scale. If they were literally true God would indeed be a Monster. Still, there is the fact of God’s creation causing untold misery due to the laws of nature, laws which He invented. So where is the justice there? I don’t think there will be an answer in this world. But I also won’t be surprised if I find my beloved minnie cats in Heaven (if I make it there). They will be recompensed, somehow, somewhere, sometime.
Yes, this is something we have to question Him about. And Job suggests that God thinks we *ought* to question Him about it in no uncertain terms.
I didn’t expect that anyone would think that this was all that Vatican I had to say about God. All I quoted were the first two paragraphs of a section on creation, undertaken by God out of his goodness, which I believe is not a bad description of love. If this is pagan, I’d love to know the pagans who held this before or apart from the biblical revelation. For the full text of “Dei Filius,” go to http://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/V1.htm#4 .
Ann: One of your favorite sighs is: Complexity, complexity. That is what paradoxes are about, stating often startling complexities. I might point out that the paradoxes state the two sides that must be taken into account. Let me take my favorite: “Quaerens cum nihil desit tibi”–”Seeking though lacking nothing.” This expresses with great succinctness that the God of revelation is a God who, like the shepherd of Jesus’ parable, goes off in search of the lost sheep, who, like Jesus himself, in the beautiful words of the Dies irae, “quaerens me, sedisti lassus”–”Tired by your search for me, you sat down”–the reference is to his sitting down at the well where he encountered the woman who had been married six times. Our God, then, is a God who searches, who seeks. But does he do this because he is need of what he seeks? Does he create because he needs creatures? Does he send his Son because he needs us? The utter graciousness, gratuity, of God’s love for us is that there is nothing selfish about it; God is not in search of anything for himself, for anything that he might be considered to lack or need. If this is one of the paradoxes you dislike, Ann, I would like you to explain why it is a failure. I believe it to be a stunning triumph.
I might say that I read the passage from Augustine in Latin when I was a college student and I thought then it was magnificent and still do.
I know it isn’t Catholic or even particularly Christian, but I like Wordsworth’s image of God in “Intimations of Immortality”:
“But trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our home.”
Thanks for the post, which made me go back and read the poem and appreciate it again.
Hello All,
I for one think that David N.’s question merits a bit more discussion, if for no other reason than so many of we Catholics believe God to be someone much like the homicidal maniac He would be if one interprets certain Old Testament stories literally and out of context. (The term “homicidal maniac” in this context is not mine. A colleague from one of my former universities taught a class where he argued that according to the stories of sacred texts such as the Old Testament, one should conclude that God is a homicidal maniac.)
I’ll limit myself to a single example for the moment: I recently learned that one of our fellow Catholics who appears occasionally on television ventured his opinion, on the air, that God caused Hurricane Katrina to strike because the City of New Orleans had permitted gay pride demonstrations during Mardi Gras. (Evidently he offered no explanation as to why Tulane and Loyola University of New Orleans were pretty much unscathed by Katrina. Shouldn’t these universities, where gay rights are presumably defended with vigor, have been especially hard hit?)
I know I am being both irreverent here and not particularly funny. My point is simply that this is the kind of God in which many of we Catholics believe. Over the last few years I’ve concluded that for many, both Catholics and nonCatholics, God is pretty much like the Great Pumpkin of Peanuts fame. And I think its small wonder that so many others (some of whom are my friends) consequently don’t want contact with Roman Catholicism or even any organized faith at all.
But if one rejects the idea that God is a terrible monster who must be appeased with the right rituals or prayers (growing the most sincere pumpkin patch, if you are Linus, or saying certain prayers revealed to certain saints, for some others), then how do we understand what God is like and how God really does intervene in human history?
Thanks for these quotations, and for the closing vignette. I find the points of connection and resonance between Islam and Christianity–especially in the reverence for the one God–to be edifying and tokens of a profound truth, and I am grateful for them. I hold no brief for those who say “We don’t worship the same God” because of the doctrine of the Trinity (there are those in the Catechism office who disagree with me). The doctrine of the Trinity is not, I think, meant to stamp out those points of connection or render them useless. The doctrine of the Trinity is rather an invitation deeper into understanding the inner the life of God as revealed in the New Testament. Our doctrine of God holds within itself many descriptors (oneness, greatness, sovereignty, freedom, mercy, etc.) that are points of access and solidarity for those who do not accept (or perhaps even understand) the being-in-communion of the Trinity.
I thought I’d add some passages from mystics, theologians, etc. that I excerpted and adapted as part of a packet I once made for students in a high school Theology class. Incidentally, the very first passage I included was exactly that same passage from St. Augustine, beginning and ending at the exact same points.
*****
Here’s the excerpts — again, adapted somewhat here and there:
Pseudo-Dionysius (c. 400s/500s), from The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology:
God is the Good, that which truly is and which gives being to everything else. He is the Cause and maker of being, of existence, and of nature. He is the Source and the measure of the ages. He is the reality beneath time and the eternity behind being. He is the time within which things happen. He is being for whatever is. He is coming-to-be amid whatever happens. From him who is come eternity, essence and being, come time, genesis, and becoming. He is the being immanent in and underlying the things which are, however they are…
…O Trinity! Higher than any being, any divinity, any goodness! Guide of Christians in the wisdom of heaven! Lead us up beyond unknowing and light, up to the farthest, highest peak of mystic scripture, where the mysteries of God’s Word lie simple, absolute, and unchangeable in the dazzling darkness of a hidden silence. Amid the deepest shadow these mysteries pour overwhelming light on what is most manifest. Amid the wholly unsensed and unseen they completely fill our sightless minds with treasures beyond all beauty…
*****
Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1328), from his sermons:
From Sermon 5b: Where the creature stops, there God begins to be. Now God wants no more from you than that you should in creaturely fashion go out of yourself, and let God be God in you… Go completely out of yourself for God’s love, and God comes completely out of himself for love of you. And when these two have gone out, what remains there is a simplified One. In this One the Father brings his Son to birth in the innermost source. Then the Holy Spirit blossoms forth, and then there springs up in God a will that belongs to the soul…
From Sermon 6 (adapted):
The Father gives birth to his Son in eternity, equal to himself. “The Word was with God, and God was the Word”… Yet I say more: He has given birth to him in your soul. Not only is the soul with him, and he equal with it, but he is in it, and the Father gives his Son birth in the soul in the same way as he gives him birth in eternity, and not otherwise. … The Father gives birth to his Son without ceasing; and I say more: He gives you birth, you, his Son and the same Son. I say more: He gives birth not only to you, his Son, but he gives birth to you as himself and himself as you and to you as his being and nature. In the innermost source, there you spring out in the Holy Spirit, where there is one life and one being and one work…
From Sermon 22:
What God gives is his being, and his being is his goodness, and his goodness is his love. All sorrow and all joy come from love…
…The earth can flee nowhere so deep that the heavens will not flow into it and impress their powers on it and make it fruitful, whether it likes it or not. This is how a man acts when he thinks that he can flee from God, and yet he cannot flee from him; every corner where he may go reveals God to him. He thinks that he is fleeing God, and he runs into his lap. God bears his Only-Begotten Son in you, whether you like it or not…
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St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), from the Dialogue, #167:
You, eternal Trinity, are a deep sea: The more I enter you, the more I discover, and the more I discover, the more I seek you. You are insatiable, you in whose depth the soul is sated yet remains always hungry for you, thirsty for you, eternal Trinity, longing to see you with the light in your light. Just as the deer longs for the fountain of living water, so does my soul long to escape from the prison of my darksome body and see you in truth. O how long will you hide your face from my eyes?
…You, eternal Trinity, are the craftsman; and I your handiwork have come to know that you are in love with the beauty of what you have made, since you made of me a new creation in the blood of your Son. O abyss! O eternal Godhead! O deep sea! What more could you have given me than the gift of your very self?
You are a fire always burning but never consuming; you are a fire consuming in your heat all the soul’s selfish love; you are a fire lifting all chill and giving light. In your light you have made me know your truth: You are that light beyond all light who gives the mind’s eye supernatural light in such fullness and perfection that you bring clarity even to the light of faith. In that faith I see that my soul has life, and in that light receives you who are Light.
*****
Julian of Norwich (c.1342-1416), from her Showings, Short Text Chapter 4:
…Our Lord showed me a spiritual vision of his familiar love. I saw that for us he is everything that is good and comforting and helpful. He is our clothing, wrapping and enveloping us for love, embracing us and guiding us in all things, hanging about us in tender love, so that he can never leave us. And so in this vision, as I understand it, I saw truly that he is everything that is good for us.
And in this vision he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut, lying in the palm of my hand, and to my mind’s eye it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, “What can this be?” And the answer came to me, “It is all that is made.” I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. And the answer in my mind was, “It lasts and will last forever because God loves it; and in the same way everything exists through the love of God…”
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Thomas à Kempis (c.1380-1471), from The Imitation of Christ, Book III, Chapter 34:
My God and my all! What more is there that I can want? What greater happiness can I desire? O words, you are sweet and delightful to the one who loves the Word and not the world nor the things of the world. … Indeed, when You are present everything is a joy, and when You are absent everything is tiresome. You calm the heart; You give it great peace and fill it with festive gladness. … To the man who takes his delight in You, what will not taste right to him? And to him who does not take delight in You, what can ever bring him joy?
…Great is the difference, in fact, vast is the difference between the sweetness found in the Creator and that found in creatures. Eternity is altogether different from time, and uncreated light is totally unlike created light…
O Light eternal, who transcend all created light, send forth a flash of Your lightning from on high and let it penetrate my heart’s inmost depths. Cleanse my spirit and give it joy, enlighten it and so vivify it that it may, with all its powers, cling to You in joyful rapture.
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Simone Weil (1909-1943), from her essay “The Love of God and Affliction” (adapted):
Before all things, God is love. Before all things God loves himself. This love, this friendship of God, is the Trinity. … The love between God [the Father] and God [the Son], which in itself is God [the Holy Spirit], is this bond of double virtue: the bond that unites two beings so closely that they are no longer distinguishable and really form a single unity, and the bond that stretches across distance and triumphs over infinite separation…
God is so essentially love that the unity, which in a sense is his actual definition, is the pure effect of love. Moreover, … there is the infinite separation over which love triumphs. This separation is the whole creation spread throughout the totality of space and time, made of mechanically harsh matter and interposed between Christ and his Father.
As for us humans, our misery gives us the infinitely precious privilege of sharing in this distance placed between the Son and his Father. This distance is only separation, however, for those who love. For those who love, separation, although painful, is a good, because it is love. Even the distress of the abandoned Christ is a good. There cannot be a greater good for us on earth than to share in it. … That is why the Cross is our only hope.
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Thomas Merton (1915-1968), from The Seven Storey Mountain Epilogue (adapted):
Before we were born, God knew us. He knew that some of us would rebel against His love and His mercy, and that others would love Him from the moment that they could love anything, and never change that love. … We all grow together in Him for Whom all things were created. In one sense we are always traveling, and traveling as if we did not know where we were going. In another sense we have already arrived.
We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are traveling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light.
But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!
For now, oh my God, it is to You alone that I can talk, because nobody else will understand. I cannot bring any other man on this earth into the cloud where I dwell in Your light, that is, Your darkness, where I am lost and abashed. I cannot explain to any other man the anguish which is Your joy nor the loss which is the Possession of You, nor the distance from all things which is the arrival in You, nor the death which is the birth in You because I do not know anything about it myself and all I know is that I wish it were over – I wish it were begun.
…I no longer desire to see anything that implies a distance between You and me: and if I stand back and consider myself and You as if something had passed between us, from me to You, I will inevitably see the gap between us and remember the distance between us.
My God, it is that gap and that distance which kill me.
That is the only reason why I desire solitude – to be lost to all created things, to die to them and to the knowledge of them, for they remind me of my distance from You. They tell me something about You: that You are far from them, even though You are in them. You have made them and Your presence sustains their being, and they hide You from me.
…Now my sorrow is over, and my joy is about to begin: the joy that rejoices in the deepest sorrows. For I am beginning to understand. You have taught me, and have consoled me, and I have begun again to hope and learn.
JAK –
About the concept in the Vat. I exerpt being like a pagan God (except, as I said, for creation) — I was thinking of Aristotle. Aristotle’s God was Thought-Thinking-about-Thought. You might say his God is cognition. There is no question of His loving us because He doesn’t even know we exist. Plato does say God is Love but the Good is not a god who loves us. We can love him in mystical experience, but he doesn’t love us.
The Vatican I section you quote does say that God creates because of His goodness, and He protects His creation, but the word “love” is mentioned nowhere in the rest of the section either. When it speaks about God it is about God as knowing, God as teaching through revelation and it’s about the magisterium, and there is much talk of belief/faith — in other words, it’s about knowledge, God’s and ours. There is no explicit talk at all about love.
Further, the interaction described is between God and man, but only through Jesus and the Church. There is no talk of interaction between individual Christians and God. Perhaps it wasn’t on the agenda of Vat. I to consider the I-Thou, man-God relationships. In fact, I don’t remember Vatican II talking about it explicitly either.
At any rate, I think it is needed. Consider how popular Buber’s work on the I-Thou relationships was among people of all faiths. The Catholic Church should get into that too. Or maybe it’s the function of the artists to reveal the sorts of individual relationships that are possible. And it is probably the saints who reveal God best of all. “Love” after all, is just as abstract as “good” and “beautiful”, and our concepts of all of them need filling in.
And, of course, there is the matter of prayer. God is often found in prayer, but the Church does precious little to teach us the many ways of prayer. Prayer too is an individual matter, but we can also learn about it from others.
I shouldn’t think that Vatican I intended by any of its dogmatic statements to invalidate what scripture already says about God.
John, in his letters, clearly and expressly states: “God is love.” And that same conception of God is implicitly stated throughout scripture. It really wasn’t necessary to have a counciliar definition reaffirming that.
Furthermore, God already has told us who and what He is — “I am.” And John (again) expands on that a bit in referring to Him as “Logos.”
In other words, God is Love, God is Truth and Reason. It is from these two foundational understandings of God that all the rest must necessarily follow, from being Almighty, Eternal, etc. to a communion of persons in One divine being.
God has already revealed Himself — who, what, where, when, why, and how.
Brendan,
Thanks for Meister Eckhart and St. Catherine of Siena.
Peter,
I like your questions. FWIW, my approach has been to lean heavily on what Aquinas says we know about God by reason, and then take the Bible to contain a set of “God experienced as” statements.
That way, the truth the Holy Spirit wants us to know by means of Scripture can sometimes be a truth about people and not necessarily God or God-pleasing genocide or it being good to kill your daughter in order to offer proper thanksgiving to Sky Daddy for letting you win that key battle.
Or you could think of Jesus, know he’s the Word, that he’s God, and if God inspired Scripture, because God cannot contradict Godself, no matter what the words might say, whatever this or that piece of Scripture means is Jesus. So really getting into it and smashing baby skulls on rocks in Psalm 137 is maybe somehow figurative for Jesus encouraging us to abandon ourselves to being compassionate and just. Or, going the other direction, maybe the truth conveyed by the Holy Spirit here is “celebration can drive us to extremes, so remember the virtue of temperance, lest you get carried away and smash baby skulls in your madness.” There’s no problem.
Get hold of some atheist tracts, review the tough verses they use to scandalize readers, and then imitate what I did above for a good time.
From the Uncyclopedia: “God is the supreme Holy Lord. He is perhaps best known for creating all of existence, with the exception of Himself, “
Ys, there it is in Vatican I as quoted by Fr K,: God is “completely simple”. This idea pushed forward to the forefront of Aquinas’s great mind so that it becomes the pivotal concept in his maturest account of God in the Summa Th. But it is a very difficult idea to sustain, for Muslims as much as for us. Its primary source is Plotinus on the One, whence it acquires prominence in Christian thought via the Arian Eunomius and then Gregory of Nyssa.
Meister Eckhart shows us God in a sermon:
“The Father laughs at the Son and the Son laughs at the Father, and the laughter brings forth pleasure and the pleasure brings forth joy, and the joy brings forth love.”
(Timothy Radcliffe OP, What Is the Point of Being a Christian? p 54.)
That love is the Holy Spirit, the New Law in our hearts, leading us from grace to glory by our free acts of knowledge and love. So let’s have something about glory and so also about God again, from Herbert McCabe OP:
“… when, in beatitude, a man understands the essence of God, the mind is not realized by a form which is a likeness of God, but by God himself. God will not simply be an object of our minds, but the actual life by which our minds are what they will have become.”
(Aquinas, St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae, Vol. 3. (la. 12-13), Knowing and Naming God, edited and translated by Herbert McCabe. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964), Appendix 1, p 100.)
I want this union. And that is why I don’t want the last two events of my life to be an impure thought followed by a brain aneurysm. In the United States alone, 28 people die every single day because of brain aneurysms. God only knows which of them failed to make a sacramental confession or an act of perfect contrition (and how could they be sure?) after their last impure thought and before their fatal aneurysm. No glory, no beatitude for these wretched souls. Only Hell for all eternity. No parvity of matter for sexual sins.
I wish the Vatican, with help from the Holy Spirit, Our Lady, and a crack team of top saints, would invent and provide to each parish one experience machine that could give users first-person knowledge of what counts as “consent” for God the Judge. Any other notion of “consent” is hardly of any use to those examining their consciences and trying to be sure they’ve confessed each and every impure thought and not let even one go undetected and unconfessed. Wait a minute, without this experience machine we are defenseless. We’ve been given a task — no impure thoughts unconfessed — required for salvation by the Church that cannot err on matters of faith and morals, but without this experience machine we don’t even have the tools needed to carry it out. We’re doomed.
Pray the word gets out. Work to raise awareness. Then they’ll have to give us the machine. Write the Holy Father: “O Servant of the Servants of God, you have lavished upon God’s Pilgrim People on Earth the Year of St. Paul and the Year of the Priest. Now give unto that same people so precious in God’s eyes the Year of the Impure Thought, Brain Aneurysm, and down into Eternal Hell Fire.”
The wonderful thing about this thread is that it could go on forever and still would not exhaust defining and describing God! “How deep are the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How inscrutable his judgments, how unsearvhable his ways! For ‘who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has given him anything so as to deserve return?’ For from him and throught him and for him all things are. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11: 33-36)
unsearvhable = unsearchable
Like most councils but unlike Vatican II, the first Vatican Council was called in order to respond to contemporary errors and threats to the faith. Originally, a very wide spectrum of issues was planned to be its agenda, but in the end, because of its premature suspension because of the outbreak of the Framco-Prussian War, it produced only two texts, dogmatic constitutions on the faith and on the Church, the latter, of course, reduced to a chapter on the pope itself originally planned to be simply one chapter in a large work on the Church. Similarly, the text on faith and reason is only part of an intended longer response to contemporary errors.
In other words, neither dogmatic text was intended to be comprehensive; neither says everything that might be said even about the topics chosen, and there is much to be said about God, creation, redemption, the Church besides those topics. It is a legitimate observation to point out what is lacking in Vatican I’s texts, but I don’t think it’s a legitimate criticism.
I chose the brief texts about God simply to have something with which to begin a conversation about God. I certainly didn’t think it the best text about God in our tradition, but it’s a start and it might even be worth further conversation about it.
@ Brendan, paraphrasing here, but there’s line from St. Catherine that’s something like, “God is in us and we are in God as the fish is in the sea and the sea is in the fish.”
Seems like you could contemplate something like that for years and still see new insights in it.
Also very fond of Teresa of Avila’s:
Christ has no body now on earth but yours; yours are the only hands with which He can do His work. Yours are the only feet with which He can go about the world; yours are the only eyes through which His compassion can shine forth upon a troubled world. Christ has no body on earth but yours.
Peter V.: I doubt that there are many Catholics who regard God as a homocidal monster, but if there are some, there are many of us Catholics who have no such notion and for whom the “Great Pumpkin” holds no appeal as a metaphor for God.
Ann: Whether or not Aristotle could have written about God what Vatican I said in those sentences might make for an interesting debate. In any case, he never said it, and the exception of creation is a rather large one, no? The sentences I quoted introduced what that Council wished to say about creation. As I said earlier, even if the word “love” does not appear in the decree, the reality is there in what is described as God’s plan of salvation, the supernatural goal for which he created man, the inner illumination that makes faith possible, etc.
You wanted a thread that would talk about God. I’d love to hear what you have to say positively about what Vatican I did say. Your first response indicated that you found some things noteworthy. Could you expand?
“Its primary source is Plotinus on the One.”
Long before Plotinus existed- “In The Beginning Was The Word, and The Word Was With God, and The Word Was God.” There is only One Word of God Who Is THE Perfect Communion of Love.
“Iam THE Way, THE Truth, and THE Life, no one comes to The Father except through Me.”-Christ
Perfect Love desires Salvation for One’s Beloved.
You seem to take the O,T. stories of Jahweh the Monster literally. I doubt that they were meant to be.
Ann,
“Meant to be” by whom? Did God inspire the Old Testament authors to write frightful stories about him that were not true? Did the Old Testament authors not believe what they were writing?
I don’t pretend to know what every schoolchild knows today, but when I was in school in the 1950s, we all knew the story of Noah and the Ark. It was (and still appears to be, if you take a quick look at books of children’s Bible stories on Amazon.com) a favorite story for children.
What is the official position of the Church today about the frightful behavior of God in the Old Testament? The Catechism of the Catholic Church says
How can passages in the Catechism like this be read without assuming that Noah was a real person (Job, too!), and God did indeed wipe out the entire human race except for Noah and his family?
I for one think that David N.’s question merits a bit more discussion . . .
Thank you, Peter Vanderschraaf!
This clause from the V1 text is interesting” and [God is] inexpressibly loftier than anything besides himself which either exists or can be imagined.”
I wonder what “loftier” translates. Perhaps “sublimior” or “altior”. Even with the modifier “inexpressibly” the suggestion of a comparison in loftiness is interesting. Is there similar language in Thomas? I see that Augustine addresses God as “summe” but is that most high or supreme? O’Donnell glosses: “furthest above”, viewed from beneath,not from afar, and he contrasts the common use of “altissime” (most high) in Ps. 7:18 and elsewhere in the OT.
On another topic I did not meant to suggest that Muslims and Christian worship different Gods, only that they have different narratives about the God they worship. I would just add that there is fascinating essay “The idea of Abrahamic Religions: A Qualified Dissent” by Jon Levenson to be found in the Jewish Review of Books, a new periodical of which I happened to to receive a complimentary copy. I suspect I am not the only one.
Joe Gannon:
Here is the Latin: “et super omnia, quae praeter ipsum sunt et concipi possunt, ineffabiliter excelsus.” The whole text of the Constitution can be found at: httpJoe Gannon: Here is the Latin: “et super omnia, quae praeter ipsum sunt et concipi possunt, ineffabiliter excelsus.” The whole text of the Constitution can be found at: http://vaxxine.com/pjm/vaticanI.htm
David N.,
There is an official position of the Church regarding the historicity of the Gospels, but not, to my knowledge, of the Old Testament. Quite the contrary: the figurative interpretation of Scripture has been going on since the beginning of the Church. There are examples in St. Paul. Hebrews is almost nothing else. Jesus interprets OT symbols in light of Himself.
This is from St. Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana: Those things, again, whether only sayings or whether actual deeds, which appear to the inexperienced to be sinful, and which are ascribed to God, or to men whose holiness is put before us as an example, are wholly figurative, and the hidden kernel of meaning they contain is to be picked out as food for the nourishment of charity.
David Nickol raises an interesting question, but it deserves another thread. If I understand him aright, he is asking what the role of inspiration is in the Scriptures and what the role of the human author(s) is. I am far from thinking I have the answers to these questions.
David Nichol: All I can say is that I managed to read that paragraph without ever assuming that the figures mentioned were real people or that there was a real universal flood. I’ve never been tempted to support expeditions to Mt. Ararat in order to locate the Ark.
Fr. K
Your rendering “Since he is one” is certainly correct, where the “official” version gives “Although…” But then they misspell “incomprehensibilem”.
As for the last clause in the paragraph “ineffably high above all else that is or can be conceived” in my opinion it serves no useful purpose, is not in the same careful stylistic mode as what precedes, hints at an unfortunate comparison, and should have been cut. But then no one asked me.
Didn’t Allah evolve from the Triple Goddess of the Arabs, Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Manet? (One of their symbols, the shamrakh, is similar to the shamrock of the Triple Brigid, used by St. Patrick to illustrate the Holy Trinity. Another symbol of the Arab Triple Goddess, which survives, is the crescent moon.)
And didn’t Yahweh evolve from a Thunder God of old? How do professors of theology, scripture studies, history of religion, et al. at Catholic universities present these issues? Is evidence from historical, literary, archaeological, anthropological sources about the development of Gods still acceptable, or does the mandatum restrict what may be taught?
(It’s been nearly fifty years since my theology and scripture courses, so I am curious about today’s practices.)
““Meant to be” by whom? Did God inspire the Old Testament authors to write frightful stories about him that were not true? Did the Old Testament authors not believe what they were writing?”"
David N. –
I do believe that the writers of the Bible were inspired by God. By that I don’t mean that God dictated the Bible to them but that by the action of grace (of which sort who knows?) they were enabled to see whatever truths about God, man and the world that God thought the people were *capable* of seeing at that point in history and which God thought the people *needed* to see at that point.
Sort of like the Santa Claus language game — a three year old can understand that a mysterious good person might leave the presents under the tree, so parents tell them Santa Claus was that person. (Actually, I think the Santa Claus story is a lot more complex than that, but it is a very powerful one, and even tiny kids see the points of it.) Do the parent intend to tell the truth? Of course. Think of the “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” response. It is only as accurate an account as the little ones are capable of, that is, it is a very concrete analogue of what Santa Claus really is. Like a lot of our language, it is *good enough* or “as true as possible under the circumstances”.
We also are not capable of understanding a totally accurate account of some things. I’m reading “Quantum” right now. It’s a fascinating work about quantum theory. Is it “true”/accurate? Well, as the author intends it, perhaps. But as *I understand* it, you can bet the farm the answer is No. Which brings up another facet of the topic of “the truth” — whose truth? The truth in the speaker’s mind or the truth in the mind of the spoken to? This has to be considered when talking about “the truth of Scripture” — whose “truth”? God’s? The writers? The readers? Which readers???
I see the story of the killing of that whole people and their cattle as an extremely exaggerated metaphor, an extreme rhetorical device conveying a hard truth. Did the writer believe it literally? Did his listeners? I don’t know, but expect that the less able amongst the hearers probably did. (Some people are through no fault of their own extremely dumb and some of them tend to be extremely gullible.) I don’t even know if the event happened. But the story certainly makes a point, tells a truth.
(I’m reminded of my old neighbor with 7 or 8 kids whose house was sometimes a little chaos system all its own. One afternoon his son Michael was behaving particularly badly. My neighbor yelled at him loudly (we could hear him next door), “Michael, if you don’t behave I’m going to tear your arm off and beat you with the bloody stump!!!!” He didn’t mean it literally, but his language was highly effective.)
I think that Scripture scholars are dependent on theories of human nature, on psychology and linguistics, not to mention archeology, etc., , and as I understand what they are saying in those fields these days, language is used in many more ways than was thought before the emergence in the 19th century of modern linguistics, sophisticated philosophy of language, and heuristics (theories of interpretation). In particular, the essential ambiguity of language and the importance of the *context* of a particular use now appreciated. (Good ole Wittgenstein is responsible for much of that appreciation, I think.)
I view Scripture as the most unusual language game of all, with one player Who is almost totally mysterious in Himself. What a challenge to try to understand His meanings. But I think that is one of the main things that the Church is for — to search for the Holy Spirits intended meanings.
In our age of science (and lack of appreciation of poetry) we tend to see language as being intended literally, as if that is the best way to convey meaning. Speaking literally is, to be sure, the paradigm of scientific language. But I don’t think that it is the way the language of wisdom works for most people. Much of the most important language is used to convey important information, but much of our most important language is also used to inspire, and to threaten us into action when necessary. And Jahweh knew that.
Sorry this is so long, but it only sketches answers to your terribly important questions.
Kathy
Funny you quote that; as David can tell you, I had several people call me a heretic when I pointed out how many Fathers thought that way with Scripture, and they were not extremely concerned with literalism per se. Obviously they thought there was history being told, but not according to the notions of modernity.
Gerelyn
One simple philosophical point is that there is a distinction between a names and concepts on the one hand and on the other the entities or supposed entities named or conceived The entity the Jews called YHWH did not evolve but the use of the name and the concept of what was named almost certainly developed over time. So also the understanding and use of the English word “god” has changed over time, but that does not mean that God evolved out of Woden.
David Nichol: All I can say is that I managed to read that paragraph without ever assuming that the figures mentioned were real people or that there was a real universal flood.
Fr. Komonchak,
Would you grant, though, that someone who did believe that Job and Noah were real persons, and that there really was a great flood, could read that passage from the Catechism without seeing a hint that Noah and Job were not historical characters?
Gerelyn: I was in school some fifty years ago, and I never heard of either of the two “evolutions” of Yahweh you mention. And I didn’t find it in any of the contemporary works I just consulted.
Well, yes, I would grant that, David. But there probably also are some people who think that God has a right hand, and bowels.
David can tell you, I had several people call me a heretic . . .
Yes! There was an extended debate on Vox Nova, a major focus of which was whether God commanded genocide against the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15. I pointed out the following footnote in the NAB:
A commenter named Kevin replied:
Well, yes, I would grant that, David. But there probably also are some people who think that God has a right hand, and bowels.
Fr. Komonchak,
It seems to me that taking the Catechism in its entirety, one would not be left with the impression that God had a right hand, or bowels. But one could every statement about Noah in the entire Catechism (I just did) without finding a hint that Noah was not a real person.
And of course the Catechism is unequivocal on the existence, of not of Adam and Eve, then two human individuals who are figuratively depicted in Genesis:
Hey, I thought we were going to talk abot God for once…
Let me say it was not my intention to turn this into a thread about how the Old Testament is to be read, but rather to point out that, in my opinion, we have a mix of incompatible notions about God. Leaving out the God of the Old Testement, there is the “everyday” God that I referred to above, and the God of philosophy (or theology). Here’s a story about the “everyday” God:
And that’s how we got St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, which to the best of my knowledge is one of the finest children’s hospitals in the country. But I am just wondering what a theologian would have said to the young Danny Thomas about seeking a sign from heaven about his career, or promising to build a shrine if he became successful. Did St. Jude intercede with God to boost the career of Danny Thomas? Exactly how does a saint, or God, grant someone a successful show-business career?
Suppose I want to win Mega Millions or Powerball. Would theologians advise me that it will increase my chances if I pray? And would theologians advise me that a particularly effective prayer would entail promising to do good works with, say, half of my winnings?
The “everyday” God is with us all the time, particularly when victims of a disaster are interviewed on television. Not long ago, I saw the parents of a murdered college student say they had looked forward to a bright future for their daughter, but “God had other plans for her.”
Before the 2008 election there was an “Election Novena,” which was supported by the USCCB. I am not sure the USCCB endorsed this specific wording, but at least some were promoting an election novena with the following intention: “For an outcome of the November election which is pleasing to Almighty God, and which best serves the eternal and temporal interests of all of His children.” It makes sense to ask the “everyday” God to help out in an election, but what would theologians say about it?
Hey, I thought we were going to talk abot God for once…
Kathy,
Yes, sorry. I should never have brought up the Bible in a discussion of God.
“I was in school some fifty years ago, and I never heard of either of the two ‘evolutions’ of Yahweh you mention. And I didn’t find it in any of the contemporary works I just consulted.”
————
(I asked about ONE evolution of Yahweh, not two. The other evolution I asked about was that of Allah. Sorry if my post was unclear.)
I was lucky to have professors unafraid of history, archaeology, etc. (A famous Benedictine priest for theology, Christology, metaphysics, etc., and for scripture studies, a nun who earned her Ph.D. in religion at Notre Dame in the days when women were not allowed to get Ph.D.s in theology.)
The notion of the evolution of the God of the Hebrews from an earlier Semitic storm deity is commonly understood. (If a character in a movie or a comic book does or says something bad, and there’s a clap of thunder or a bolt of lightning, everyone knows it’s GOD sending the message.)
There are numerous references to God thundering and sending violent weather in Hebrew scriptures: Moses on Mt. Sinai, of course, and many others.
Searching “thunder”, “thundered”, “thunders”, “hail”, etc. in the Bible yields many examples.
Three of many sources of information about the evolution of God: Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, by John Day; Israelite Religions, by Richard A. Hess; The Early History of God, by Mark S. Smith. There are popular works on the topic, too, including bestsellers by Robert Wright (The Evolution of God) and Jack Miles (God: A Biography).
(sigh)
That there are many images and notions of God in the Bible, some of them incompatible with others, is not, of course, new. Something like a demythologization of much biblical language already began in the late OT works, in Jewish literature (e.g., Philo), and in early Christian literature (e.g., Clement of Alexandria). I’m most interested myself in the elaborated Christian theological notion of God, and I had thought that this was also what Ann Olivier wanted to talk about. Perhaps she might let us know what she wanted to discuss.
One of Job’s most beautiful laments has to do with putting God on trial. If they appeared in court together, Job’s justice would be evident. So there is a time (turn, turn, turn) for interrogating God. But couldn’t we set that aside for one thread?
What about this?: God as Most-Natural vs. Supernatural. Point being, God not as an exterior force acting upon creation, but the very essence of nature, being, life, love itself. Conscious, yes, but beyond our experience of consciousness. Beyond, yes, but still natural. First cause, etc., still applicable. What might this mean if true?
Fr. Komonchak, thanks for starting this thread and for continuing to address it. I’ve appreciated each of your comments. Also thanks for your comments on the thread about the Belgian situation.
So there is a time (turn, turn, turn) for interrogating God. But couldn’t we set that aside for one thread?
Kathy,
This will be my last message, since I seem to be failing to make myself understood. But I am not talking about “interrogating God.” I personally don’t believe he wiped out humanity in a great flood or ordered the slaughter of the Amalekites. My point is that many individuals (myself included) think of God one way in certain circumstances, and another way in other circumstances, and a third way in yet other circumstances (and so on), and those different ways are incompatible with one another. And our “practical” understanding of God (for example, in what we pray for) may be quite at odds with our “academic” understanding of whether or how God works in the world.
“It makes sense to ask the “everyday” God to help out in an election, but what would theologians say about it?”
David N.–
One thing I love about Aquinas’ concept of God is that he has what I think is a very fine resolution of this problem of praying for favors. For Aquinas there are three sorts of duration, including everyday time and the time of spiritual creatures. The latter sort of duration includes man, who can somehow experience a piece of music as a whole without having to experience all the notes simultaneously, which, of course, would destroy the music. This implies that while we are in ordinary time we also exist somehow *outside* ordinary time in such a way that we can really grasp more than one instant at once. If we couldn’t we couldn’t experience a song, much less a symphony. Experience would just be one damn thing after another.
Thomas says there is also the duration of God, or “aeveternity”, defined by Boethius something like this: “the complete, simultaneous existence of all instants of ordinary and spiritual times”. Such a duration is simultaneous with all durations: it sees past, present and future times in one act in one infinite meta-instant. This being the case, when we pray to God in our ordinary time He “hears” the pray and makes provision by His (single-moment) foresight of His overall plan that He “will” create the answer to the prayer one way or another, yes or no, or at least that it will or won’t be answered in the way we ask. (Note: the use of the tensed verb “will create” is just a metaphor for the one act of God Who simultaneously understands all possibilities, plans which He will make actual, and plus His choosing of the future and His act of creation of it.) Awesome, to put it mildly.
Although Boethius lived in the 4th century, the sophistication of that idea parallels some of the sort of thinking we find in 20th century math. For instance, take the parallels postulate in Euclidean geomete
ry. Euclid says that one and only one line can be drawn through one mathematical point. But the Russian mathematician Lobachevsky iirc threw out Euclid’s postulate and substituted this notion: an infinite number of parallel line can be drawn through one point. I think that is analogous to Boethius’ notion that an infinite moments of time can exist simultaneously in God.
In other words, some of the problems we have with the Bible really are problems not with the Bible but with our own expectations and oversimplifications of the facts of this world. Realization that some philosophical quandaries have be dispelled allows hope that there are answers to some of our other basic problems about God, and if we keep truly open minds we might make progress towards finding the answers. Of course, it takes some intellectual work and willingness to think weird (no, *not* contradictorily), but that, I think, is to be expected. Our minds are finite containers trying to fill themselves with infinity.
Jesus explained the OT by saying it was because “of the hardness of your hearts.” So it was more wo/man doing those horrible things than God. Perhaps the most poweful words of Jesus is that God prefers “mercy over sacrifice.” Unfortunately, too many Christian leaders have quoted the OT in supporting their harsh idea of God. “Be merciful to me a sinner” is where God’s mercy lives.
Paul exhorts us to pray always and rightly so. What a gift that God invites us in constant conversation and union. Augustine made the most sense when he wrote that it is easier to say what God is not than what s/he is. Paul states that only God knows why God chose the Jews and who are we to question that. It is true of most things. God surpasses all understanding and who are we to question. Yet Jesus assures us that mercy is over sacrifice as God comes rushing to us as soon as we turn to God as we love with each other. The mercy of the Lord endures forever.
Ann: In the Summa theologica, Ia, q. 10, Aquinas distinguished among time, aeviternity, and eternity. It is the last of these that was defined by Boethius as “the entire and perfect possession of endless life at a single instant.” Only God is eternal in this sense; angels exist in the state of aeviternity; and earthly creatures in that of time. Because God is eternal, prepositions, adverbs, etc. that imply a before and after in him have to be used very cautiously and critically, as you say. All of this is crucially important for questions concerning providence, divine foreknowledge, primary and secondary causality, the possibility of contingency and freedom, the efficacy of prayer, etc.
Euclid says that one and only one line can be drawn through one mathematical point. But the Russian mathematician Lobachevsky iirc threw out Euclid’s postulate and substituted this notion: an infinite number of parallel line can be drawn through one point. I think that is analogous to Boethius’ notion that an infinite moments of time can exist simultaneously in God.
I’m not sure the analogy holds. Presumably, Boethius is expressing a truth whereas neither Lobachevskian (hyperbolic) geometry or Euclidean geometry is right or wrong, per se. They are merely different geometrical systems with interesting properties.
Once again there is a big difference between saying that YHWH evolved and that the way he was thought of evolved.
I have always been partial to a line from Buber’s I AND THOU where he writes that God is the one who is over against us who “cannot be expressed but only addressed.” I have always took his book to be inspired by the dialogical description of the covenant II will be your God/You will be my people).
Here is a thought for those who would like to follow this thread: is the most fundamental form of prayer intercession (as Herbert McCabe thought) or is it gratitude? I am interested in responses because, in a desultory fashion, I am attempting to write a little book on the theology of prayer.
Joe: Thanks for opening this thread.
REply to Lawrence Cunningham: I’d say: To the extent that we are immature Christians, then intercession is what we are most likely to take as primary. To the extent that we’ve “caught on,” then gratitude is primary. “Ontologically” (whatever that means in this context), gratitude is and ought to be, fundamental.
No doubt this will be of little help for your book, but here it is for what it’s worth.
Actually I don’t think that Buber would approve of a thread on which people talk about God because that tends to end in I-it discourse whereas God is a Thou by his very nature, one who can be addressed but not objectified.
JAK –
What I had in mind when I suggested this thread was any sort of discussion of what God is or might be. I’m interested in both the classical ideas and contemporary ideas (e.g., God as process) and whatever ideas others on the list might want to pursue. You don’t have to be a theologian to ask profound questions about God, and sometimes the questions themselves are signposts towards which way to turn for the answers. Plus I think different eras have their own particular questions and answers. Also, I’m sure lots of people here have ideas about God I’ve not encountered, never having had a course in theology. I’ve learned a lot here already. Yes, of course, theology does have a lot more to say about God than philosophy. (Note: I think “ideas of God” and “ideas about God” are not nearly the same thing.)
The Vatican I description of God is, I think, essentially the medieval one, and as such it is worthy of discussion. But since I’ve studied the medieval philosophical descriptions of God in some detail already, I don’t have too many questions about it. Also, that concept doesn’t inspire much love of what God must be, just humongous respect. The God of theology says a lot more and does inspire love.
OK, so our theological God doesn’t *always* inspire love. There is, of course, the problem of the creation of positive evils and the problem of Jahweh. But those are other threads. (Or are they?)
JAK –
Thanks for the corrected vocabulary. I’ve been wrong about that for 55 years. Sigh.
Antonio –
Yes, there are differences between Boethius’ idea of God’s duration and the Lobachevskian parallels postulate. But the space of Einstein’s relativity theory turns out to be a non-Euclidian one — iirc, the Lobachevskian kind of curved space that the cosmos is. So Lobachevsky turned out to be factual (maybe — the physicists are still arguing). I just wanted to call attention to the high level of philosophizing that Boethius did — his divine duration has an infinite number of instants in one instants as the Lobachevskian point has an infinite number of lines through it.
The thesis or dogma that God is “completely simple” goes back to Plotinus, not, pace Nancy, to the Johannine Prologue. To me it is the most intellectually fascinating of the divine attributes, as it was to Aquinas and Plotinus, and I particularly relish the way it hurls modern ideas such as “the suffering God” or “God as process” to the depths of the abyss. All the other attributes undergo a seachange when considered in the light of divine simplicity. It is in this sense a liberating, demythologizing idea.
It is a common error to suppose that scholastic theology sees God as Causa Sui, cause of himself. It is true that Plotinus toyed with the idea in his somewhat notorious Enneads VI 8, but it was rejected even within Neoplatonism and very firmly by Augustine and mainstream Christian theologians including Aquinas and Eckhart. Its modern form is associated with Spinoza, the idea that God is such that his essence implies his existence. Scholastic aseity is not to be equated with causa sui.
Larry: I wonder if we might add another possibility: prayer as desire, or should it be desire as prayer? There’s something primordial about that, I think.
“Euclid says that one and only one line can be drawn through one mathematical point. But the Russian mathematician Lobachevsky iirc threw out Euclid’s postulate and substituted this notion: an infinite number of parallel line can be drawn through one point. ”
Wrong. That should have been: Given one line, one and only one line parallel to it can be drawn through one point”, and “Given one line, an infinite number of lines parallel to it can be drawn through one point”. (I hope that’s right.) Sigh.
Desire as prayer maybe links up with what Proclus (who gave an “agapeic” role to eros in his philosophy) says: “We are always praying in the depths of our souls.”
Here are two paragraphs from Augustine on how we are to understand many of the Scriptural statements about God. They both occur in writings against the Manichees who argued that the Scriptures reveal two gods, the evil god of the Old Testament and the good God of the New. I think that the point of the second paragraph below is an important: it is not only with regard to the apparently unworthy things said in the Scriptures about God that we need to make the effort to understand them and to distinguish how they may be true of God in a way different from that in which they are true of human beings; no less an effort has to be made with regard to things that we think are worthily said of God. For example, God’s mercy or love is no less in need of such an effort than God’s anger or repentance. An important lesson for today, too, I think.
“We do not worship a God who repents, or is envious, or needy, or cruel, or who takes pleasure in the blood of men or beasts, or is pleased with guilt and crime, or whose possession of the earth is limited to a little corner of it.” (“On the Morals of the Catholic Church,” Ch. 1, 17).
“God does not repent as human beings do, but as God does, just as he is not angry the way human beings are, nor show mercy the way they do, nor is he jealous the way they are; but all these things he is ir does as God is or does. God’s repentance does not come after some mistake. God’s anger does not have the heat of a troubled mind. God’s mercy does not have the wretched heart of one who shares a suffering (The Latin word misericordia comes from “wretched heart”.) There is no envy in God’s jealousy. God’s repentance refers to the unexpected change in things under his power. God’s anger is sin’s punishment. God’s mercy is his goodness in helping. God’s jealousy is the providence by which he does not allow those subject to him with impunity to love what he forbids.
“The person, then, who so loquaciously criticized God’s repentance should first learn that hardly anything can be found that can worthily be said about God, and that we have to say most, almost all of the things we say about him by measuring them from what human beings say about themselves, and that how these things are to be understood of God is scarcely understood even by a few spiritual people. That is why it is most providential that the divine Scriptures, in speaking of him, descend even to the use of certain words that even to very carnal people appear absurd and unworthy when one is speaking of God. The fear that such things might be understood as they are in human beings and the discussion of how they could properly be understood of God teach us that the things in the Scriptures that to human understanding seem worthy of God are not to be understood or believed according to human behavior. It’s easy enough to see that repentance as human beings express it does not occur in God, but it’s not as easy to see that mercy also, as it is expressed among human beings, does not occur in God. Thus from what he admits he has to seek for, a person learns that he also has to seek for what he didn’t think he needs. Thus when God repents, he is not changed and yet he changes; just as when he is angry he is not changed and yet he punishes; and when he is merciful, he feels no sorrow and yet he sets free; and when he is jealous, he is not tormented and yet he torments.” (Contra adversarium legis et prophetarum, Bk. 1, 20:40)
Joe K: Yes – a very good point since the word desiderium is fundamental one in, especially, monastic literature about prayer.
Joseph Gannon: I do not agree – Buber wrote a lot about God but he did warn that ideas about God can be/are idols if not recognized as such.
” no less an effort has to be made with regard to things that we think are worthily said of God.”
Thanks for the great texts, JAK. I hope you’ll include both of them in that book of selections from Augustine we keep encouraging you to do!
Yes, the mercy and kindness of God revealed in creation are just as mysterious as His meanness and indifference. This, I think, is what many atheists fail to see or, sometimes in their rage, simply refuse to grant. Both good and evil require explanation.
I can understand Augustine’s attraction to Manicheeism. He rejected it, but i think he still left the great question unanswered: if God didn’t create the positive evils like pain, then who or what did? The Manichees said it was an evil God. All the great religions and theologies struggle with that question, except, I think, the Christian ones. Why has that been largely ignored? I think it’s because God required Jesus to suffer and because JEsus accepted the suffering Christians sense that He answers that question somehow. But, I think, it still just a very vaguely satisfying account, and it is a matter of faith, not reason. We still want an answer: How come it was even possible that Christ’s suffering could be justified? He was the most innocent of innocents.
R. C. Zaehner, whom I mention so frequently as extremely learned about mysticism, was also a very fine scholar of comparative religion. In many of his works he struggles with the question of the origin of suffering. He takes all the great religions seriously, and looks to them as well as to his own Catholicism for answers. Those who are ecumenically inclined might find his Gifford lectures interesting ( in “Concordand Discord”) and his last work “The City within the Heart” interesting. Also “The Comparison of Religions”. He was very controversial, even shocking, especially for a Catholic. Even the title of his “Our Savage God” is shocking, and I don’t recommend it for those whose faith is easily shaken.. But I think he was on to something. Unlike St. Augustine and medievals he doesn’t bypass the Manicheean challentge.
Ann: I am very puzzled by your implication that Augustine “bypassed” the Manichean challenge. He wrote some twelve works against Manicheans, engaged in debates with them, and referred to their teachings at various points in other writings. Is there some particular challenge you think he doesn’t take up? Or is it that you think his answers are not satisfactory?
A good article on Augustine’s anti-Manichean writings can be found at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=GcVhAGpvTQ0C&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=%22augustine%22+coyle+anti-manichean&source=bl&ots=j5vvL4ZJ7C&sig=eJkuHfoakjplsgf7JFnC7j4J3uY&hl=en&ei=wlkqTPKSKoKglAfIhM3DAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22augustine%22%20coyle%20anti-manichean&f=false
As for St. Thomas, he wrote a rather large work, De malo, and he was aware of medieval Manichees, e.g., the Albigensians. So I suppose the same question arises as for Augustine: Why do you think the two men “bypassed” the Manichean challenge?
Along with the divine simplicity, there is another Plotinian doctrine that deeply informs the thought of Augustine and Aquinas (the two supreme geniuses of Christian theology), namely: the non-existence of evil.
All that is is good. Being and goodness are convertible. Thus, “They are not well in their wits to whom anything that Thou hast made is displeasing” (Augustine Confessions VII — the major entry-point of Plotinus into the Christian bloodstream). This does not bypass Mani — it confronts him head on. (Symbolically, it is possible that Plotinus and Mani fought on the opposite sides of a military battle in the third century, the emperor Gordian’s eastern campaign.)
Even is a deficiency in being, it has no substantive existence.
This idea rejoins the wisdom of other religions such as Buddhism and Vedanta, and also the wisdom of the poets (Rilke’s “Ich ruehme”, “I praise”).
Correction: Evil is a deficiency in being.
JAK —
I know that Agustine argued against the Manichees on many fronts about many different issues. However, my point was that he did not address that particular part of Manicheean teaching that saw that there are positive evils in this world (e.g., pain in innocents) and that the cause has to be an evil god.
In Larrimore’s “The Problem of Evil” (a collection of classic texts on theodicy) he includes texts from Augustine’s “City of God” where he presents three basic arguments. One concludes that evil is a privation (great argument, except that there are some evils which are not privations), another is an argument that the evils of the world are explained by the fact that the presents of opposites make the world a more beautiful place (hardly persuasive, I say), and there is a third, more famous argument, that moral evil is a lack of a good will (a specific variation of evil as privation argument, another great argument).
I have never heard of any other notable arguments about God as the cause of positive evils (i.e., non-deficiencies, non-privations) in either Augustine or Aquinas. I’ve never read the de Malo, but know that when Aquinas asks in de Trinitata how a good God can create evil, he simply leaves the page blank. He is stymied. Later he asks the question again in different words, but I don’t find the argument convincing, and apparently neither do others because he is not known for it, unlike, say, his proofs for the existence of God which are generally considered at least worthy of consideration.
Yes, both authors present other arguments about the goodness of God and how He cannot be evil. But these arguments do not address the counter-argument of the Manicheean/Buddhist/Hindu/Humean/everyday folksean argument that a just and good God would not cause positive evil.
That is why I have such respect for Zaehner. He at least admits the problem and tries to find at least a theological answer. But he admits that his ‘way” is irrational, “foolishness”, And, of course, that is ultimately no answer at all, though it might contain the seeds of answer, I grant you.
I shouldn’t have said that Aquinas dodged the issue. He didn’t completely. He at least asked the question. He just didn’t really have an answer.
The privation view of evil also connects with the idea of Order. God is the creator of all goods, and the orderer of evils. In the phenomenological sense evil has a positive presence, but at the level of metaphysical insight it is adjudged to be a falling off from being and from the formed and ordered nature of being. There is not such thing as an evil will or an evil person, since person and will are in themselves good, and become evil only by declining from their own ontological goodness, or from order.
The benefit of this is that it allows a Buddhist type analysis of evil passions — such as hatred — that shows up their ontological deficiency, helping them to disappear.
The theodicy question of course remains intact. Even if evil is non-existence, why does a good God allow evils and disorders in his creation? Why permit such incursions of nothingness?
Teilhard would say it is in the nature of an evolutionary cosmos, drawn out of nothingness by the attractive power of the divine, to develop in this way, with much waste, disorder, and in the case of free beings moral evil. In the midst of this evolutionary crucible icons of ultimate good and of the final triumph of good are fashioned: Buddha, Christ, or Bach, Mozart — each of these the product of long centuries of deep cultivation.
Ann, I am having difficulty accepting the existence of “positive evil” and pain in innocents as a “positive evil” created by God. Is there a problem with the claim that pain is the privation of comfort?
Who could I read in order to come to learn more about the idea of “positive evil” and the claim that evil is not always a privation?
In the meantime, here is what I take people who agree with Aquinas on evil and God to say about something that might count as a “positive evil” for others, namely death by means of an insect gnawing on the brain and the pain this involves. What they say is persuasive to me, but I might be missing something:
God makes to be the action of the insect gnawing on the brain and this hurts John Smith, but the action created to be is good for the insect, and what the insect does to John Smith seems to be a privation, namely a privation of health and a bit of comfort, all of which is part of what it takes to be a good John Smith. So God creates the flourishing of the insect and doesn’t create the health and a bit of comfort that isn’t there in John Smith. No one can create health and a bit of comfort that isn’t there. Health and a bit of comfort that isn’t there is not creatable. That’s square circle stuff, right?
On evil as privation, see http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/king-aquinas.shtml
Aquinas discusses it in various places (but not in a work called De Trinitate — since he did not write such a work; I don’t think he discusses evil in his commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate either). So I don’t know where he is supposed to have left a page blank, nor indeed if such a gesture is possible in the case of manscripts of scholastic quaestiones.
“Privation” is a mighty powerful thing. It is evil for a human being to be deprived of sight. The stone’s lack of sight in contrast is not evil. Evil is not the latter kind of bare lack but a positively wrong and disordered lack of what something should have. But whereas sight is a fine ontological reality belonging to the form of humanity, blindness does not have the same ontological reality, it is defined merely negatively, as lack or privation of sight. The same can be said of all evils, their definition is merely negative, as a failure of being.
O’Leary: “The theodicy question of course remains intact. Even if evil is non-existence, why does a good God allow evils and disorders in his creation?”
I’ll take a shot at that below using what is perhaps my faulty memory of what Herbert McCabe OP and Brian Davies OP have written. If the attempt’s a failure, they don’t fail. If the attempt’s a success, I don’t succeed. I’m stealing ideas, but maybe not very well. I’m a total nobody, etc. Ok.
I think what they offer is also important in connection with Ann’s wondering above over whether Aquinas has a good rep on taking care of evil. I think he does have a good rep on that. And I think he does it all without even bringing faith into it.
Basicially, it’s time to stop worrying about a good God, as we are accustomed to using the word good.
People think there is a problem of evil when they think God’s goodness, power, and knowlege together PLUS take moral goodness to be the model for God’s goodness. They say, “God’s got knowledge of your suffering evil and power to prevent it but instead he allows it. So where’s your good God now, fool?”
But in order for there to be a problem, we have to model God’s goodness on human morality. But considering what Aquinas took to be knowable of God by means of reason, the moral model is inappropriate.
So why is the moral model inappropriate for God?
Morality has to do with flourishing, becoming good or failing to become good. There’s no becoming in God though, and so we shouldn’t apply our moral talk to him in a serious way. Upon observing that omnipotent God could have created more good than he did, we should not take that to be morally blameworthy of him. There’s no process of becoming that he compromised for himself by “failing” to make more good in creation.
What if we try to use moral talk anyway? What if we relate God to things like obligations or to virtues and vices?
First, obligations. Obligations occur because of contexts, but God isn’t in a context. God makes contexts to be. Context-free God has no obligations. And that includes him having no obligations to creation. He can’t fail at carrying out non-existent God-obligations to creation and so become bad. He has no obligation, for instance, to lessen the sufferings of babies who die screaming every single day or of their parents and their broken hearts.
Now to virtues and vices. Virtues and vices qualify dispositions. But God is simple and has no dispositions, virtues or vices. Without vices, he cannot be bad.
Such an account of God, I admit, differs in some respects from the image of a steady, caring Robert Duvall character who holds you tenderly as you die, as might appear in some human imaginations. But that’s our problem.
Oops. Fr. O’Leary asks why evil and disorder. I say, “I’ll take care of that,” but then only deliver the answer “it’s not because God is bad,” rather than deliver the answer to the original question: why? Sorry about that. I just don’t know why there isn’t more good.
Kip, I think it is wholesome to address theodicy in purely rational, philosophical terms. To do that one must pose the problem of evil in equally philosophical terms. The result aimed at should be to show that the existence of evil is not a fatal objection to the reality of a good and omnipotent God. (More ambitious explanations of why evil occurs, such as Leibniz’s, are a luxury.) Philosophy can show that both “the existence of evil” and “good and omnipotent God” are terms that need to be cashed in much sophisticated thinking, so that the question looks very different by the time we have formulated it adequately.
As to theology, the impassioned questioning of Job and the divine response (culminating in the paschal mystery) are on a different plane from philosophy — they do not attempt to give rational solutions to philosophical conundrums, but point instead to the trustworthiness of God, sealed in the Cross.
I heard a German scholar of St Anselm say “Philosophers have solved the problem of evil, and it remains only as a practical issue”; theologians say the opposite — the problem of evil is a shattering mystery but it is dealt with practically through faith in Christ.
Ann,
Isn’t “positive evil” inherently contradictory? So much so that it upsets all logic when we try to deal with it?
If we accept both “X is evil” and “X is positive”, we are accepting two contradictory truths, much more than if we accept both “X is holy” and “X is unholy”. And if opposite statements are both true, we are not going to get very far using rational analysis. As someone who believes evil is the absence of good, I guess I need a better explanation of what you mean by “positive evil”.
NB The story about Aquinas is that he discovered the answer to the Manichees while sitting at the table of St Louis. Perhaps the court of the saintly King is a better place to find an answer to the problem of evil than in the conjectures of a scholar obsessed with dualism?
I agree that Zaehner is hardly a guide to Christian orthodoxy. His field of research was the Persian traditions that formed the matrix of Manicheanism.
“Who could I read in order to come to learn more about the idea of “positive evil” and the claim that evil is not always a privation?’
Kip –
I’m afraid I don’t know of any considerations of the topic ‘the Christian God as (possible) creator of positive evil’, at least none that are expressed in the terminology of the Scholastic tradition, which I take it is where you’re coming from.
As I mentioned before, Augustine doesn’t seem to have faced the problem head on, at least not explicitly, and though Aquinas mentions the problem in the de Veritate, he doesn’t seem to have a notable solution to it. Neither do I know of any lesser Scholastic lights who approached the problem head on. By that I mean that I know of no Scholastic who considered the ontological possibility that a just and good God could create positive evils, especially positive evil suffered by innocent beings. This is the problem that theodicy tries to solve.
Augustine in the City of God (sections ) will clarify some things for you. He makes it clear that evil as privation is the *absencc* of something. But he seems unwilling to get into the fact that pains are *not* absences of something, they are positive realities which can even be distinguished from each other. For instance, the pain of being burned is quite different from the pain which is being nauseated or being. Those are sensations, but there are also painful emotions that can be distinguished from each other, for instance, the pain of losing someone in death and the pain of humiliation, or the experience of terrible fear. All of those things are definite, distinguishable realities. We call them “negative”, I think, not because the are nothings, or absences, but because we find them to be destructive of our happiness in someway.
A respected contemporary Protestant philosopher Alvin Plantinga is very much into theodicy, but is more concerned with the moral question: how can God *justly* create the suffering of innocents? That is different from the metaphysical question of how He can create them if pains are images of him. I haven’t read him.
Marilyn McCord Adams is a respected Anglican priest who has written extensively in theodicy. But, although she is possibly the best Ockham specialist there is, her approach is not a scholastic, metaphysical one. She edited “The Problem of Evil”, and you’ll find some clarification of the issues there no doubt.
There might be a Catholic existentialist who confronted the problem, but I don’t know much about them. It’s just very, very much an existential problem.
Plato and Aristotle are very little help, of course, because their God was not a creator and so He bore no responsibility for creating the pain and the suffering of innocents.
And, of course, there is Zaehner. No, he’s not your standard issue Catholic, but he’s at least as loyal to Church teachings as such mystics as John of the Cross and Eckhardt.
Was Zaehner a Catholic?
Not all pain is bad — pain can serve usefully as a warning symptom in the pursuit of health, and it is an element in wholesome strenuous exercise. The pain that is bad is meaningless pain, its badness is in part the privation or lack of meaning.
So much for metaphysics. On the more existential level, Christianity gives pain a positive, redemptive value, beginning with the Passion. But does this transform all pain into meaningful pain? Certainly not.
I see that he was a Catholic, and fell down dead on his way to Mass. Surely someone to be looked into again.
Read Julian of Norwich on her comments on Evil as the lack of good, and God is all good. So she was shown that evil does not even exist since God is everywhere. “All will be well” Even she admitted that is not what Holy Mother Church teaches (and she was always determined to follow Holy Mother Church), but she insisted that is what had been revealed to her. I find that most intriguing. It makes me marvel even more. But on the other hand would it not be a bit blasphemous to suggest that Jesus could become human and even give his life to save all mankind and He not succeed? We certainly cannot earn our own salvation. As the Israelites used to say “Non facit toliter omnes nationes.” In this life not everybody seems to be treated the same, yet each fulfills the purpose set for him. Evil and pain is part of the plan and as Augustine says, “God writes straight with crooked lines.”
Pain may be evil, but our ability to feel pain is a great blessing. One of the images of Resurrection is God taking away our stony hearts and giving us hearts of flesh, hearts that can feel.
I do not know how that fits with your idea of positive evil, but it must be relevant somehow.
This is an interesting discussion. Regarding the nature of God and the question of evil, I am reminded of something Fr. W. O’Malley wrote: only the sufferer has the right to offer an answer to why we suffer. Philosophy is of no use other than mental gymnastics when it comes to the personal experiene of evil and suffering, and a purely academic discussion of this topic seems indulgent. Ask the mother of a child dying of cancer, the father of a rape victim, the parents of a soldier killed by his own troops in an accidental crossfire. Ask them what they believe about God and suffering and the problem of evil. But do we dare? Are we ready to hear their answers?
Harold Kushner is a rabbi who has earned the right to speak about suffering not just because he is Jewish but because he lost a son to an incurable disease. Kushner suggests that tragedy has no hidden meaning; it has no meaning until we (the sufferer) provide it with one. It is the same answer that makes most sense regarding the Meaning of Life. We must ask not, What is the meaning of my suffering (life)? but, How can I give my suffering (life) meaning? And in pursuing meaning we turn to God, the God who knows us from before we were formed in our mother’s womb, the God who weeps with us in our loss, the God who forgives and foolishly welcomes the prodigal home without ever asking for explanation or exacting a punishment.
Ann,
Thanks for the references and descriptions. You mention Marilyn McCord Adams. In case you or anyone else would enjoy a brief interview in which she discusses her ideas about Horrendous Evils and God, here’s the link:
http://philosophybites.com/2009/07/marilyn-mccord-adams-on-evil.html
Jim McK –
Indeed, the notion of a “positive evil” is self-contradictory. But, given some other principles we start with, it does follow. So, as the logicians never cease to insist, something must be wrong with our thinking somewhere. And that’s the challenge — to discover where our thinking is going wrong.
” Philosophy is of no use other than mental gymnastics when it comes to the personal experiene of evil and suffering, and a purely academic discussion of this topic seems indulgent.
Mona –
What on earth makes you think that philosophers don’t suffer as much as anybody else? Do you think religious academics suffer less and feel less betrayed when their children die?
I agree that philosophy is not likely to answer the big questions, at least not very well. How is it possible that pain can image a good God?, and How can a just God cause the suffering of innocent beings? But many of us think that philosophy has been useful to some degree in teaching us how to cope with these problems. And there have been some answers. For instance, the notion of moral evil as a privation goes a long way to answering the question about God causing sin — He doesn’t cause sin, we do, and it is a lack of a due good, a destruction or frustration of something, not some positive reality that He creates. Further, this philosophical notion has proven useful to some people: God, they think, is also capable of obviating the apparent injustices of the suffering of innocents by compensating them generously in some other time or place or world. And there is Leibniz’ argument about this being the best of all possible worlds, and argument which some find persuasive.
Surely theologians can explore a whole different dimention through the lenses of their own suffering. There is a story about a Buddhist roshi whose son died. He wept and wept inconsolably. His disciples told him that he should follow his own teachings and not care, that there is no good or evil. But the roshi continued to weep bitterly, saying “But my son has died!” I dare say many western theologians understand him well and continue their researches.
Thanks, Kip, but I can’t hear her. (I’m very deaf.)
Fr. O’Leary –
I think you might find a kindred spirit in Zaehner. He very much appreciates the Asians. He was an ecumenist before his time, and given that Catholicism seems to be moving away from the West I don’t doubt that his works will eventually become important, or they should be. He is both an appreciator of and a critic of all the traditions. In some ways he was very much a rationalist but also accepted the fact that there are contradictions in some foundational matters. His faith was strong enough that even when facing these problems his faith wasn’t destroyed.
By the way, both Bernard McGinn and Thomas Merton have seen his work as valuable, though I doubt they agreed about some of his eccentric views; I await McGinn’s last volume on contemporary Christian mysticism to see what he else he thinks of Z.
and his scholarship was phenomenal. It was said he could learn a new language in two weeks, but unfortunately he didn’t get into Chinese and Zen, so he wrote little about the Tao and Zen. But he has a lot to say about early Buddhism (written in Pali).
Oops — should have been ‘Chinese and Japanese”.
I might add that he changes his mind so you won’t find him entirely consisent. See what he says about Teilhard, for instance.
In some ways [Zaehner] was very much a rationalist but also accepted the fact that there are contradictions in some foundational matters. His faith was strong enough that even when facing these problems his faith wasn’t destroyed.
Regarding such ‘foundational matters’, I wonder if Zaehner made a seperate peace — as I suspect the rest of us do.
I suspect so too. We call these contradictory foundational matters “mysteries”. But wouldn’t it be strange if we *could* understand everything?