In our last two eNewsletters, two concepts of God, two primary ways of thinking about God and the God-world relationship described in chapter four of Marc’s book The Heart of Christianity were identified: supernatural theism and panentheism.
The Heart of Reality
Here are the first sentences of that chapter entitled, “God – The Heart of Reality”:
At the heart of Christianity is God. Without a robust affirmation of the reality of God, Christianity makes no sense. And just as important, how we “see” God – how we think of God, God’s relationship to the world, and God’s character – matters greatly.
He then “unpacks” – a word he used often – supernatural theism and panentheism as characteristic of an earlier and emerging paradigm respectively.
God – a name for What Is
There are many conversations these days about the nature and reality of God. The “new atheists” tend to assume the predominant notion of God for Christians is the God of supernatural theism. And they don’t believe in that God. Neither did Marc. Nor many of the rest of us. There are some who suggest that God is a uniquely human construct. Without humanity there would be no God. For others, God represents what matters to us, what we value. Others note that God, like Jesus, looks remarkably like his biographers. God is a human projection. And if we talk about God’s “character” how can we not anthropomorphize? For many God is primarily associated with an unbelievable belief system. God as a “reality” has lost location and meaning. The name of God has become a stain on the name of God. So to use the word “God” at all is more problematic than useful. Was it Meister Eckhart who cried out, “Oh God, save me from God!”?
Considering panentheism, as another idea about God, Marc recalls Paul Tillich: “if, when you think of the word ‘God,’ you are thinking of a reality that may or may not exist, you are not thinking of God. Tillich’s point is that the word ‘God’ does not refer to a particular existing being (that’s the God of supernatural theism). Rather, the word ‘God’ is the most common Western name for ‘what is,’ for ‘ultimate reality,’ for ‘the ground of being,’ for ‘Being itself,’ for ‘isness.'” (The Heart of Christianity, pg. 69.)
What language can we use to talk about or describe God? Distinct from beliefs and creeds and magical thinking, “God” for many of us – Christians or not – continues to be a referent for lived experience.
Lived Experience
And lived experience here and now, the entire spectrum of it, can evoke awe and wonder. Moments of serendipity or synchronicity or happenstance can catch our breath or locate us, or awaken us somehow. Like Mary Oliver seeing snow geese or my seeing the petals of two-dozen tulips drop one by one and then in silent clusters moments after Marcus died. What is seen is really seen… and what we might think as ordinary becomes epiphanic. (See: “Remembering the morning Marc died” in Continuing the Conversation on our website. www.marcusjborg.org)
Lived experience. Some of us may still want to call that “God”…
What do you think about what we call “God”? Problem or not? And even more than what you think, what are some of your experiences that you consider “God?”
Or is there another question to be asked…?
In the meantime, a poem by Mary Oliver.
Snow Geese
Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
One fall day I heard
above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was
a flock of snow geese, winging it
faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the color of snow, catching the sun
so they were, in part at least, golden. I
held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us
as with a match,
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,
but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.
The geese
flew on,
I have never seen them again.
Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won’t.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.
