Abstract
This chapter compares and contrasts nine different conceptual models of God: atheism, agnosticism, deism, theism, pantheism, polytheism, henotheism, panentheism, and eschatological panentheism. This essay justifies employment of the model method in theology based on commitments within philosophical hermeneutics, philosophy of science, and the theological understanding of divine transcendence. The result is an array of conceptual models of the divine which have reference, but which make indirect rather than literal claims. Of the analyzed models, this essay defends “eschatological panentheism” as the most satisfying model for Christian constructive theology. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.
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Notes
- 1.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, Paul Siebeck, 2nd edn., 1965); English trans. By Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum, 2nd rev. edn., 1994).
- 2.
“What we need is an interpretation that respects the original enigma of the symbols, that lets itself be taught by them, but that, beginning from there, promotes the meaning, forms the meaning in the full responsibility of autonomous thought.” Paul Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil, tr. by Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967) 349–350.
- 3.
David Tracy describes theology as “second-order reflective language reexpressing the meanings of the originating religious event and its original religious language to and for a reflective mind.” The Analogical Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1981) 409.
- 4.
“Broadly speaking, a model is a symbolic representation of selected aspects of the behaviour of a complex system for particular purposes. It is an imaginative tool for ordering experience, rather than a description of the world…[models in science] are mental constructs devised to account for observed phenomena in the natural world…such models are taken seriously but not literally.” Ian G. Barbour, Myths, Models, and Paradigms (New York: Harper, 1974) 6–7.
- 5.
Ibid., 30.
- 6.
Ibid., 7.
- 7.
Critical realism is not actually entailed in the idea of model, even if it is a natural partner. One could employ models and still embrace a strictly utilitarian understanding of their scientific value. Something like critical realism is fitting for theology because theology’s object, God, requires non-literal referential ascriptions. Arthur Peacocke argues, “Critical realism in theology would maintain that theological concepts and models should be regarded as partial and inadequate, but necessary and, indeed, the only ways of referring to the reality that is names as ‘God’ and to God’s relation with humanity.” Theology for a Scientific Age (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993) 14.
- 8.
“Fertility” most directly summarizes the second of these features, namely, evoking a progressive research program. Here, I use “fertility” to represent the composite of all three.
- 9.
Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement, tr. by A. G. Hebert (New York: Macmillan, 1931).
- 10.
H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper, 1951).
- 11.
Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (New York: Double Day, Image, 1978).
- 12.
These criteria of explanatory adequacy are a modified version of Alfred North Whitehead’s description of speculative philosophy evaluated by logic, coherence, applicability, and adequacy. Differing from Whitehead, I make adequacy the covering concept and substitute comprehensiveness for his adequacy. See: Process and Reality, corrected edition, ed. by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New York: Free Press, 1978) 3–4.
- 13.
Among the divine names, none “exhausts” God or “offers the grasp or hold of a comprehension of him. The divine names have strictly no other function than to manifest this impossibility.” Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, tr. by Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991) 106.
- 14.
This is a point where general philosophical descriptions of monotheism or classical theism are insufficient to account for the distinctively Christian experience with the divine. Christians experience the a se God of Israel as free, free even from what philosophers might dub the divine nature. God is free to become human and to take humanity up into the divine life. Karl Barth, among others, insists that the Christian understanding of God must include the “humanity of God” revealed in the Christ event. Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1968).
- 15.
Paul Kurtz, Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal (Buffalo NY: Prometheus Books, 1986) 22.
- 16.
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006) 31, Dawkins’ italics.
- 17.
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (3 volumes: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951–1963) I: 235.
- 18.
Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, tr. by Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991) 82.
- 19.
Doubt can be “part of the intellectual process of religious belief.” Geddes MacGregor, “Doubt and Belief,” Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, edited by Lindsay Jones (14 Volumes: New York: MacMillan, Gale, 2005) 4:2424.
- 20.
See: Allen W. Wood, “Deism,” Encyclopedia of Religion, 4:2251–2252.
- 21.
The term ‘pantheism’ goes back to John Toland (1670–1722).
- 22.
“I am Brahman,” aham Brahmasi, points to the ultimate and essential oneness of individual self and of Supreme Self (atman), and the comprehensive reality behind them both, Brahman. Interestingly, within the Advaita tradition, two versions of Brahman have appeared; nirguna Brahman, the sublime divine reality so transcendent that it stands beyond all attributes, and saguna Brahman, a concept of the divine which includes attributes similar to the personal God of theism. Of these two, the founding exponent of Advaita, Sri Shankaracharya (788–820 CE), commonly known as Shankara, embraces only the first. Despite myriads of gods and goddesses in Hindu practice, nirguna Brahman has become the dominant Hindu concept of ultimate reality, of the truly divine.
- 23.
See Ted Peters, The Cosmic Self: A Penetrating Look at Today’s New Age Movements (San Francisco: Harper, 1991).
- 24.
One problem with joining a club of monotheists is that the alleged divine nature promulgated by monotheism accounts solely for divine transcendence; and the emphasis on divine immanence revealed in the incarnation is difficult to account for conceptually. A related problem is that the club of monotheists gives precedence to the unity of God, rendering subordinate what is revelatory for Christians, namely, the Trinity. So important is this that Karl Barth places the revelation of the Trinity in the methodology section of his Church Dogmatics, prior to the section on God. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 Volumes (Edingburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936–1962) I:1.
- 25.
Wesley Wildman distinguishes between determinate entity and ground-of-being theisms. “Determinate entity views assert that God is an existent entity with determinate features including intentions, plans, and capacities to act…By contrast, ground-of-being theologies challenge the very vocabulary of divine existence or non-existence. They interpret symbolically the application to ultimate realities of personal categories such as intentions and actions, and regard literalized metaphysical use of such ideas as a category mistake.” “Ground-of-Being Theologies,” in Philip Clayton and Zachary Simpson, editors, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) 612–613. As we saw earlier, contemporary atheists reject determinate entity theism. They do not seem to address ground-of-being theism. If they did, they probably would reject this as well.
- 26.
See: Clark H. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2001) and “Open Theism: An Answer to My Critics,” Dialog 44:3 (Fall 2005) 237–245. Philip Clayton tries to tie open theism, process theology, and Trinitarian atheology “…kenotic trinitarian panentheism is a view that open theists can, and should, accept. Yet, at the same time it also retains the most fundamental contributions of process theology. The being of God is not identical to the events in the world…almost no process theologian actually accepts a full identity between them…there are a number of viable ways for process thinkers to be Trinitarian theologians.” “Kenotic Trinitarian Panentheism,” Dialog, 44:1 (Fall 2005) 254.
- 27.
The term ‘panentheism’ goes back to K.F. Krause (1781–1832), an interpreter of Hegel and Fichte. See: Charles Hartshorne, “Pantheism and Panentheism,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, 10:6960–6965.
- 28.
Panentheism “differs from much traditional theism insofar as the latter stressed the mutual externality of God and the world, with God conceived as occupying another, supernatural, sphere. It differs from pantheism when pantheism is understood to be the identification of God and the world.” John B. Cobb, Jr., God and the World (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1969) 80.
- 29.
“Theology, as the way in which we interpret existence in a world where God is for us, will be expressed in relational language,” writes Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki. God, Christ, Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1982) 3. She adds: “It is not theology about feminist issues, but it is feminist theology.” Ibid., vi, Suchocki’s italics.
- 30.
N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Volume III of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) 735–736.
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Peters, T. (2013). Models of God. In: Diller, J., Kasher, A. (eds) Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_5
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