What Do We Mean by 'God'?: A Little Book of Guidance (Little Books of Guidance) - Softcover

Ward, Keith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1640650334 ISBN 13: 9781640650336

Publisher: Church Publishing, 2018

Synopsis

Language about God is something like the language of poetry--intended not to increase our information about the world--we know facts about the world already--but to evoke in us a certain attitude or way of looking at things or feeling about things. What sort of view of the world, then, is language about God trying to convey? Keith Ward suggests it is that the world is an expression of a reality beyond it. In this book, he unpacks the meaning of the word God and explains why we need to get rid of the crude and unhelpful assumptions that still abound. This is a book for all who are curious about how God, and God's actions, can be understood today.

About this title

About the Author

KEITH WARD recently retired as Regius Professor of Divinity and head of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford. A priest of the Church of England and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, he holds Doctor of Divinity degrees from Cambridge and Oxford Universities. He was formerly Dean of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and Professor of History and Philosophy of Religion at the University of London.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

What Do We Mean By 'God'?

A Little Book of Guidance

By Keith Ward

Church Publishing Incorporated

Copyright © 2015 Keith Ward
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-64065-033-6

Contents

1 Who or what is 'God'?, 
2 How does the universe point to God?, 
3 Does God have a purpose?, 
Further reading, 

CHAPTER 1

Who or what is 'God'?

For many people today believing in God is really quite difficult. There are lots of ideas of God around which people find distasteful or unacceptable. For example, two of the best known paintings in the Western world portray God in ways that, unfortunately, give rise to quite false ideas of who, or what, God is. One is Michelangelo's painting of the creation of Adam, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In that painting, God is shown as a very well-developed, well-muscled specimen of humanity with long white hair and a flowing beard. He is just like Adam but a little older and with a bigger beard. This sort of representation of God in art was, of course, quite unknown in ancient Jewish tradition, which expressly forbade the making of any images or pictures of God at all. In Islam, too, no pictures are allowed in mosques, which is why such beautiful techniques of writing in decorative Arabic script evolved in that tradition. It might well be held that Michelangelo, for all his genius, broke that ancient prohibition on picturing God, and subsequent Western thought has paid the price.

Another well-known picture of God creating the universe is seen in 'The Ancient of Days', by William Blake. Again, God is a well-muscled human being with a flowing beard and long white hair. In his hand he holds a pair of compasses, with which he is measuring out the world. When Blake drew this picture, he was in fact portraying the sort of God that he thought was a bad God, an interfering measuring God who squashed and repressed the human imagination. For Blake, this was a sort of anti-God. Unfortunately, most people do not realize that, and they take Blake's picture to be a depiction of God as he really is.

These paintings have had an unfortunate effect, because they are such good paintings and because the power of visual imagery is so strong that we find it hard to get out of our minds the idea of God as a man with a long flowing beard sitting just above the clouds or in the sky. We can get more sophisticated, and say, 'Well, I know that there is no actual physical form in the sky. We have been up there in space-ships and satellites, and we know there isn't anything there. And I know that he isn't just a little bit further away either, just beyond Alpha Centauri. No, God is not physical at all. He is a purely spiritual being.' But even if we try to get sophisticated, we might still think of God as a particular being: a purely mental being, who thinks in much the same way as we do, one thing after another; who decides, in much the same way as we do; who makes up his mind whether to do this or that, and perhaps changes it at a later date; and who feels in much the same way that we do, so that he feels sad when we do something wrong and happy when we do something good (which must mean he's depressed most of the time). In general, he has pretty well human feelings.

So God is seen as very much like an invisible human being, an immortal one; like the old Greek gods, he is human in character but immortal and invisible. This God is still a mind, rather like ours though better; he is out there somewhere; he is apart from us. He is perhaps just beyond the edge of the universe; he is a separate being. So we say that God is transcendent; he transcends everything in the physical universe. But he is, nevertheless, another mind.

But this is just as false a picture of God as is Blake's or Michelangelo's. It is quite essential, when we start thinking about God, to put this picture out of our minds completely. Whatever God is, he has never, in the orthodox Christian tradition, been thought to be a finite mind, even if very wise and powerful, somewhere in or just beyond the universe. That is why one of the chief ways the early Christians chose to describe God was to say that God is 'infinite'.

Why must God be infinite?

When we say that God is infinite, we mean that God is not limited by anything else. There is nothing which sets limits to God and so makes God finite. God is not just one thing among other things of the same sort. But that means that we cannot think of God as a being, even as a very large being, who exists in addition to the universe – because if God were outside the universe, God would be limited by it and excluded from it. Theologians have sought many different ways of trying to express this point. Some have said that God is 'not a being, but Being-itself.' Some have said that God is 'the unlimited ocean of being.' Others have said that God is 'self-subsistent Being'. The common concern has been to deny that God is another thing, something like the things in the universe, but somehow bigger and better.

The idea that God is infinite is a very hard one to grasp, and perhaps the best most of us can do is to think in terms of some picture which may help us to think of it. As long as we remember that it is no more than a picture, which may be as misleading in its own way as Michelangelo's Old Man in the Sky, I would tentatively suggest the following way of thinking about God.

Instead of thinking of God as an invisible mind or person, somehow separate from us, try thinking of God as the one unlimited reality which includes us and the whole universe within itself. We are all finite and limited. But we are all parts of one reality which is unlimited and infinite; and that reality is 'God'. So I suggest that we might try thinking of God as the one unlimited reality of which all finite things – you, me, the trees, the stars, the galaxies – are parts.

Of course, I am not just saying that the universe is God, that God is nothing else but the physical universe. That would be quite wrong. If I said that, I would only be using the word 'God' to stand for what everybody else calls 'the universe'; and I do not mean that. But the universe can be seen as part of God. In the New Testament it is said that 'in him we live and move and have our being' (Acts 17.28). Here is the idea that we are included in the infinite God.

If we say this, there is the danger that we might start thinking that, if we are 'part' of God, we are not free or responsible for our own actions; or that even evil things show what God is. To avoid this danger, we can use another picture and say that the physical universe is a collection of finite things which have their own proper natures, and many of these things have a real, though partial, freedom. God is completely different from anything in this universe, because God alone is unlimited and wholly self-determining. Nothing in the universe can ever be separated from God, and so everything is 'in him'; yet all finite things have their own proper being which makes them quite distinct from God. God has to be so unlike the universe, so unlike all finite, limited things that we cannot even imagine God properly. That is why, in the Old Testament, images of God were prohibited. Any image is bound to get God wrong; any image is bound to be finite.

All our words are about finite things. When we use a word for something, like a table or a chair, we use that word to pick out something which is different from other things, which marks out the limits of the thing, which refers to a finite reality. All our words have to do that; for they pick out slices of reality by marking off their limits from other things. So none of our words can apply properly to God. If God is infinite, and if all our words must apply to finite things, then none of our words are going to describe God properly. We cannot have words which are exact descriptions of God; nor can we have pictures which are exact representations of God.

I have said two main things. First, God has usually been thought by Christian theologians to be infinite, unlimited. This idea of infinity shows us two things about God. One is that God is not outside the universe, another finite being somewhere beyond the universe. God is not a tyrant God who keeps interfering with the universe from time to time, poking a finger in to keep the clockwork going or to put things right every now and again. God is not a finite being outside the universe; that is the first thing. So forget all those pictures of God as an old man with a beard.

Second, God, being infinite, cannot be exactly described by any human words or exactly pictured by any human images in any way. Even though God is not outside the universe, neither is God just the sum total of things in the universe. God is something which is completely indescribable. You could say – though it might be a little misleading – that God is the infinite source or origin of the universe. God is the infinite being which is expressed through the finite beings in the universe. The philosopher Plato once said, in what I think is a very beautiful phrase, 'Time is the moving image of eternity'. So we might say that the whole of space and time is the finite image of the infinite God. The whole of the universe expresses, in finite ways, a being which cannot itself be described.

So I am not saying that God is to be identified with the universe, with the finite things that we see around us. And I am not saying that God is another finite being outside the universe. I am saying that, if God is infinite, God cannot either be put 'into' the universe or put 'outside' it. What we have to say is that the universe may express this God in some way, though God cannot be described as a finite being at all.

How may we speak of God?

You may think that, even if it is true that God is infinite, there is nothing much that we can say of such a God. How could we know what such a God is like? If, as I have said, none of our words can give an exact, correct description of God, so that we cannot say that God is thinking or feeling or desiring or willing, in the way that we think, feel or will; if all of these are only more or less inadequate pictures of God, does that mean that we cannot really say anything true about God at all? In one way it does. And that is a very important fact about God. Anything we say about God is only partially or inadequately true, in the sense we must mean it. All our words are inadequate to express the reality of God.

But sometimes we can convey important truths without being able exactly to describe them. The most obvious way in which this happens is in poetry. Paintings and music are important too, of course, but I want to consider poetry because poetry uses words. To most people, if they are prepared to make the effort, poetry can be so important that it transforms our whole view of life, our ways of feeling and knowing, our appreciation and perception of the things around us. It can convey things to us that could not be conveyed by a straightforward piece of prose.

Language about God is something like the language of poetry. When a poet writes a poem, he is trying to express something that he has seen about the world, some personal vision of the world. He is not trying to describe it in prose; that might be quite impossible. He is trying to evoke it, or convey it, or express it in a unique poetic way, through this particular use of language. The poetic use of language is not to increase your information about the world. We know facts about the world without having poetry. The use of words in poetry is to evoke in us a certain attitude or way of looking at things or feeling about things.

Of course, different poets have very different ways of looking at things. Some are very depressing or pessimistic; some are optimistic. Some are facile; some superficial. Some poets are very good; and others – most of them, I am afraid – are very bad. Not all poetry is religious, by any means; and not all poetry is good. But poetry is trying to convey something which cannot be conveyed simply by stating facts. It is trying to convey, let us say, a distinctive way of looking, that can only be understood and appreciated by learning to respond properly to poetry, by becoming at least imitative poets ourselves.

Now I think that language about God is very similar. It expresses a way of seeing, a certain attitude towards the world, a certain commitment and emotional response towards the world. Language about God can only be appreciated by our learning to take it on its own terms, by learning to experience for ourselves or at least to understand, the vision which it is conveying. So that reading language about God – and I do not mean dry academic theology, but the living language of worship and prayer – is conveying a distinctive approach to the world which we can learn to appreciate, by practice and sensitivity of approach. We may not appreciate it, just as we may not appreciate poetry. But it is possible to do so, and it may be important that we try.

If this is the use of religious language, what sort of view of the world is it trying to convey? I think we might say it is trying to convey that the world is the expression of a reality beyond it. I think that this is the reality which lies behind the picture of God being 'the maker of heaven and earth'. That picture almost irresistibly makes us think of the bearded muscle-man with his compasses, moulding the sky and the ground out of some sort of clay or primeval energy. But we know by now that we must discard such pictures once we have left the nursery school. What we have to say is that there is an infinite, literally indescribable reality which is the source and origin of all finite things, which expresses its character in and through them, and which is the true and enduring basis of whatever reality they have. To say that there is a 'maker of heaven and earth' is to say that the world of finite things is seen most truly when it is seen as the expression of a source and origin which is its essential truth and reality.

It is possible to look at the things in the world in many different ways. One way of looking at them for example, is the scientific way, as when you look at something and ask, 'How did it come to be the way it is?', 'Why is it as it is?', 'What laws does it obey?' and so on. That is one way of looking at the world. It is a dispassionate, analytical way which gives rise to science. Another way of looking at things is to see their beauty – not to ask how they came to be as they are, or what they are made of, but just to appreciate them, to regard them as beautiful in their own right. That more contemplative attitude is another distinct approach to the world. There is also an ethical or moral attitude. Then we do not just contemplate things, or ask how they arose. We ask rather what their needs are, how we can help them, or what they may claim from us. That is yet another attitude and is different from either the aesthetic attitude or the scientific attitude.

These are three sorts of attitudes we take to things in the world – the scientific, the artistic and the moral. The religious attitude is another, quite distinctive, sort of attitude. The religious attitude is one which sees the things of the world as pointing beyond themselves, as having a meaning which goes beyond their own reality. We are not asking the question, 'How does it come to be the way it is?' – the scientific question. We are not asking, 'How can I appreciate the beauty of this more fully?' – that is the aesthetic attitude. We are not asking, 'How can I help this being?' – that is the moral attitude. We are asking: 'What does this thing express about the nature of the underlying reality which gives it being and which keeps it in being? What is this saying about the fundamental nature of the world?' In the religious attitude, you might say that we are looking beyond the parts of the world to the whole, to see what lies behind and is expressed in things.

Of course, the religious attitude assumes that there is something which underlies the world which appears to us, that behind the finite realities in space and time there is an infinite reality which is appearing to us, which is 'revealing' itself to us in these finite things. The religious attitude is one which takes finite things as revelations of an infinite reality lying behind them, lying both in them yet also through them. 'Revelation' is the important word here. It literally means an unveiling, a drawing-apart of the veils of appearance to disclose the reality which underlies them. You can say that you have an experience of God when that revelation occurs, when the veils of the finite world are, as it were, drawn aside and you see the infinite reality which underlies them.

But you cannot describe that reality in prose. It needs the poetic approach, and it needs that direct personal experience of your own to see it; it has to happen to you, before you really appreciate it. But of course you can read about it happening, in the great religious works of the world. When you talk about 'revelations', you are really talking about these moments when people have seen the infinite expressed in certain finite things in the world.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1640650334
• ISBN 13: 9781640650336
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 64