God

God. The absolute and real who is, than which nothing greater can be conceived, the unproduced Producer of all that is, without whom nothing that is could be or could remain in being; or, alternatively, the projection into supposed reality of human fears, neuroses, and abject needs (Freud), or of human ideals which can never be realized (Feuerbach), or of the requirements to perpetuate the conditions of alienation in the interests of some party (Marx); in this second case, language about ‘God’ is a surrogate language about humanity or human persons (‘Theology is anthropology’). The possibility of so wide a contrast between theistic realism and psychological unrealism arises because God (supposing God is) is not an object among objects in a universe, able to be discovered and/or explored, as are atoms, quasars, and the dark side of the moon. Nor is God the conclusion of an argument, although argument points to the probability of God, at least in the sense that the universe makes more sense if it exists as a consequence of one who produces and sustains it, than otherwise. For examples of such arguments, see QUINQUE VIAE. Since God cannot be produced as an object among objects, and since God is, whether this or any other universe happens to exist, it follows that God cannot be described in language, since God is far apart from humanly apprehended categories in time and space (i.e. is transcendent). In all theistic religions, this has led inevitably to apophatic theology, to the recognition that we can only say with confidence what God is not, (e.g. via negativa, neti neti, ein-sof).

Theistic religions have always been aware of the inadequacy of human language about God (hence the importance of analogy). Even in the human affection of worship, it is known that no words or images can contain or describe God, and yet the experienced consequence of God creates its own and continuing demand for, or invitation into, relationship. Religious and theological traditions then offer the inadequacies of language, sign, symbol, icon, etc. (or images in the case of Hindus), as a means of initiating an apprehension of God which is qualitatively sui generis—one which is capable of lifting life from the mundane to a point of balance and rescue where the entire universe is seen as a start and not as a conclusion.

In the terms, therefore, of a critically realistic theology, religions accept that anything which is said about God is approximate, provisional, corrigible, and mainly wrong; but the question still remains, Is it wrong about some One? Even those religions which are most secure in their confidence that God has overcome the epistemic gap of transcendence, by revealing his word and his will, accept that all revelation is conveyed contingently through words which are not identical with that concerning which they purport to be about—in terms which are approximate. In the end, all religions are bound to issue the invitation, ‘Taste and see’. The experience and procedures of relatedness to what has been described in those approximate ways as El, Zeus, Allāh, Viṣṇu, Amida, Brahman, etc., have built up through the millennia an impressive reliability of reference and relationship—and a reliability which has encouraged constant correction as successive generations have learnt, with increasing security, something more of the nature of the One with whom they have to deal. At the same time, that which is God has seemed, unequivocally, to be, so to speak, ‘dealing with them’: it is in this way that the major transformations in the human understanding of God have been made. In ways (which humans have tested and winnowed through time, and in virtually all cultures) of prayer, worship, sacrifice, contemplation, meditation, art, music, artefact, the reliability of the communities of faith has been tested. In each tradition, there emerge characterizations of God which impress themselves on the style in which its adherents live. In Judaism, the major emphasis is on holiness, in Christianity on the commitments of love which reflect a relatedness in the Godhead itself; in Islam on mercy and demand; among Hindus on the real presence of God in every circumstance.

The logic of God, therefore, remains, that if God does indeed turn out to be God, it is God that God will turn out to be. The ways and the words of human attentiveness to God leave such a mark on the possibilities of life now, that the nature of the future remains open: it is necessarily the case that All remains yet to be known.