God

God. The word is used both as a common noun, e.g. in polytheism, where a number of supposed existences claim belief, worship, and service, and as a proper name, e.g. in monotheism, where there can be only one such existence. Christianity affirms that God is a Trinity, consisting of ‘three persons in one substance’, the Father being the Source of all existence, the Son the Eternal Object of the Father's love and the Mediator of that love in creation and redemption, and the Holy Spirit the Bond of Union between the Father and the Son.

In the OT account of the Divine revelation to Moses, God makes Himself known in the name ‘Yahweh’ (‘I am who I am’) as the unique God who tolerates no rival. The Prophets developed the different aspects of God. Whilst for many in Israel Yahweh remained pre-eminently a national God, the idea of God as saviour of the Gentiles as well as the Jews had an important place, especially during and after the Exile (Is. 49: 6; Jonah). In the events recorded in the NT a new revelation was given. This was made through Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son, who revealed God as the Father of all men, whose infinite goodness had no need to manifest itself in material recompenses.

In the patristic age the development of the doctrine of God was determined by the data of Scripture, controversies with pagans, Jews, and heretics, and by the Greek philosophy which was the foundation of the education of most of the Fathers. Their wide speculations were gathered into a synthesis in the works of St Augustine, who gives several proofs for the existence of God, e.g. from contingency, from the order and beauty of the world, and from the moral argument of conscience. The Divine transcendence was stressed particularly by Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite; he saw God as beyond Being and most surely reached by apophatic theology, where concepts and images are denied and God known by unknowing. His translator, John Scottus Erigena, held that by reason God is known as the cause of all things, but not as what He is; a higher knowledge of Him is possible by contemplation, but even here only through theophanies which He grants to angels and believers.

One of the concerns of the Schoolmen was to investigate the Divine Nature by the method of rational proof, without direct appeal to revelation. St Anselm was the author of the Ontological Argument for His being. St Thomas Aquinas rejected this but elaborated his own five-fold proof for the existence of God (Quinque Viae). Trying to hold a balance between an anthropomorphic conception of God and an exaggerated transcendence, he developed the idea that there are three ways of conceiving God—by affirmation, negation, and eminence. Thus, while His goodness (way of affirmation) is asserted, He may also be called ‘not good’, i.e. not good in the way a man is called good (way of negation), and ‘super-good’, i.e. above all human ideas of goodness (way of eminence).

The shattering personal experiences of the Reformers was reflected in their intensely personal experience of God. M. Luther directed a tirade against the speculative theology of the Schools; J. Calvin emphasized His majesty and transcendence. Subsequent theology has veered between emphasis on His transcendence and His immanence, often expressed in pantheistic terms.

A decisive attack on natural theology was made by I. Kant, who in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781) sought to prove the impossibility of any rational proof of the existence of God; for him the only valid proof was from morality (‘I had to remove knowledge to make way for faith’). The step from the refusal of any metaphysical basis for belief in God to resting the belief on feeling was made by F. D. E. Schleiermacher. All religious statements must be derived not from logic but from personal experience and the origin of belief in God be sought in the feeling of dependence, common to human beings.

In the early 20th cent. there was a reaffirmation of the Divine transcendence. In Protestant theology it was associated particularly with the name of K. Barth. In RC theology it had its counterpart in the revival of Scholastic teaching. The so-called ‘death of God’ theology in the 1960s reflected a widespread dissatisfaction with philosophical Theism, some of which was inspired by reflection on the ‘silence of God’ during the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews (the Holocaust). Process theologians sought to reconstruct the concept of God; by depicting Him as in some sense developing through His intercourse with the created world, they presented Him as both transcendent and immanent, eternal and temporal, impassible and passible. Reflection on the silence of God during the Holocaust also lies behind the doctrine of God who suffers in the theology of J. Moltmann and E. Jüngel.