(Ir)religiosity

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When Personal Becomes Impersonal

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Most people usually have strong opinions has to the nature of God, specifically whether God is personal or impersonal, transcendent or immanent.  I wonder if this is really just another false dichotomy that we have constructed for ourselves to put us at odds with one another.

What if it’s not either/or?

What if there is some truth to both positions and by recognizing that we come even closer to wrapping our heads around God?

It seems to me that that is the case because God is beyond our conception, beyond our images, and beyond our language.  All of these can only begin to point to God.

I wonder what happens when we insist that others adopt the same names and images for God that we do?

Recently I was commenting on a blog post about inclusive language and the use of personal pronouns and gender references for God.  As I read and commented I was struck about something.  By insisting that God is completely personal and that others must refer to God in the same way that we do (same pronoun, gender, etc.) are we not essentially de-personalizing God for someone who may have a different connection than we do?

Here’s another way of putting it.  In our overly zealous contention that God must personal for all in the way that S/He is personal to us, are we not making God impersonal for others? Does the act of personalization reverse itself here?

I think it may.  What do you think?

Written by Blake Huggins

January 14th, 2009 at 7:30 am

Posted in Uncategorized

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  • http://www.intensedebate.com/people/Florin Florin

    It is true that we need to embrace the paradoxes of God's nature, i.e. transcendence/immanence etc., but we also have to take a fresh look at what we mean by them when we use them. These are terms that have accumulated a lot of ballast in time.

    Your last point is a great illustration for what I wrote today in my blog. God can be to me the same He is to you, but not necessarily. If I am unique (which I am) then His relationship to me will be "customized" so to speak, i.e. it has to be unique to me in some way.

    http://tinyurl.com/7w6jsc

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/blakehuggins blake

    Thanks for pointing out the need to always be mindful of the meaning behind these terms. That is so crucial. Often we throw them around and arbitrarily use them without thinking of their meaning or consequence. Again, I think Rollins is a great example of a contemporary thinker who is doing just that in a very accessible way. Two others that come to mind (not really contemporary ones) would be Meister Eckhart and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.