A Personal God
A Personal God
Down the ages, theologians and ordinary Christian believers alike have had no hesitation in speaking about God in personal terms. For example, Christianity has ascribed to God a whole series of attributes (such as love, trustworthiness, and purpose) which have strongly personal associations. Many writers have pointed out that the Christian practice of prayer seems to be modeled on the relationship between a child and a parent. Prayer expresses a gracious relationship which “is simply trust in a person whose whole dealing with us proves him worthy of trust” (John Oman).
One of Paul's leading soteriological images, “reconciliation” (see 2 Corinthians 5: 19), is clearly modeled on human personal relationships. It implies that the transformation through faith of the relationship between God and sinful human beings is like the reconciliation of two persons – perhaps an alienated husband and wife.
There are thus powerful reasons for suggesting that the idea of a “personal God” is integral to the Christian understanding of God. But such a suggestion raises a number of difficulties that require careful consideration. The following problems are particularly important.
These difficulties can, however, be mitigated. In response to the first, it may be pointed out that talking of God as “a person” is analogical. To say that God is like a person is to affirm the divine ability and willingness to relate to others. This does not imply that God is human, or located at a specific point in the universe. All analogies break down at some point. These aspects of the analogy are not intended to be taken up.
In response to the trinitarian difficulty, it will be noticed that the word “person” has changed its meaning significantly over the centuries. The word “person” does not have the same meaning in the two sentences which follow:
We shall explore this point further in Chapter 13, which deals in more detail with the grounds and nature of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity itself (see pp. 299–326). Our attention now turns to further exploration of the term “person.”
Defining “Person”
In everyday language the word “person” has come to mean little more than “an individual human being.” Yet there is greater depth to the idea of a “person” than a solitary individual. To understand why Christian theologians have placed so much emphasis on the idea of a personal God, we need to explore in greater detail what it means to speak of persons.
The word “person” derives from the Latin term persona, which originally had the sense of a “mask.” There may be an etymological connection between this Latin word and the Etruscan word for the goddess Persephone. (Etruscan was the language of a region of ancient Italy near Rome.) Masks were worn by those participating in her festivals, which tended, by all reports, to degenerate into orgies. By the time of Cicero (106–43 bc), the word had acquired a range of meanings. Although the sense of “mask” still predominated, important overtones had developed. Masks were used much in Roman theaters, being worn by actors to indicate the parts those actors were playing in dramas. Persona thus came to mean both “a theatrical mask” and “a theatrical character” or “a role in a play.”
This idea was picked up by the Latin-speaking theologian Tertullian (c.160–c.220), who was active in the third century. Tertullian saw how this idea could be used to help communicate some aspects of the Christian idea of God within Roman culture. A person was a being who speaks and acts. For early Christian writers, the word “person” is an expression of the individuality of a human being, as seen in his or her words, actions, and especially social relationships. A person is someone who plays a role in a social drama, who relates to others. A person has a part to play within a network of social relationships. “Individuality” does not imply social relationships, whereas “personality” relates to the part played by an individual in a web of relationships, by which that person is perceived to be distinctive by others. The basic idea expressed by the concept of “a personal God” is thus a God with whom we can stand in a relationship which is analogous to that which we could have with another human person.
It is helpful to consider what overtones the phrase “an impersonal God” would convey. The phrase suggests a God who is distant or aloof, whodeals with humanity (if God deals with us at all) in general terms which take no account of human individuality. The idea of a personal relationship, such as love, suggests a reciprocal character to God's dealings with us. This idea is incorporated into the notion of a personal God, but not into impersonal conceptions of the nature of God. There are strongly negative overtones to the idea of “impersonal” that have passed into Christian thinking about the nature of God.
This point can be more fully appreciated by considering the impersonal concepts of God associated with the classical Greek philosopher Aristotle and the seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–77). The English philosopher of religion C. C. J. Webb (1865–1954) pointed out the limitations of Aristotle's notion of God as follows:
Aristotle does not and could not speak of a love of God for us in any sense. God, according to the principles of Aristotle's theology, can know and love nothing less than himself. [...] He is utterly transcendent, and beyond the reach of personal communion. It is very instructive to study the modifications which Aristotle's faithful follower, St. Thomas Aquinas, has to introduce into his master's notion of God, in order to make room for the providence of God for man, and the communion of man with God which his religious faith and religious experience demanded.
Spinoza experienced the same difficulty in constructing his rationalist notion of God. He affirmed that human beings should love God, yet he could not see how this love could be in any way reciprocated by God. It is a one-way street. Spinoza did not permit the two-way relationship implied by a personal God who loves, and is loved by, individual human beings. For Spinoza, any passion on the part of God involves a change in his being. Either he moves to a greater perfection or to a lesser. In either case, the perfection of God is compromised, in that God either becomes more perfect (in which case, God was not perfect to start with) or less perfect (in which case, suffering leads to God ceasing to be perfect). As a result, Spinoza argues, it is not possible to speak of God loving anyone, as this proves to be inconsistent with the idea of a perfect God. This point is made clearly in his Ethics (1677):
Proposition 17. God is without passions, nor is God affected with any experience of joy or sadness. Demonstration. All ideas, in so far as they have reference to God, are true, that is, they are adequate: and therefore God is without passions. Again, God cannot pass to a higher or a lower perfection: and therefore God is affected with no emotion of joy or sadness. Q.E.D. Corollary: God, strictly speaking, loves no one nor hates anyone. For God is affected with no emotion of joy or sadness, and consequently loves no one nor hates anyone.
So what does it mean to be a “person”? Our attention now turns to a modern philosophical analysis of the idea of a “person” which is of considerable interest to Christian theology.
Dialogical Personalism: Martin Buber (1878–1965)
In each earlier chapter, we introduced the idea of the ancilla theologiae – the theological use of philosophy to clarify or illustrate some of theology's core themes. Many twentieth-century theologians appealed to the philosophical movement known as “dialogical personalism” to help clarify what it meant to speak of God as a person. One of the leading representatives of this movement was the Jewish writer Martin Buber.
In his major work I and You (1927; the German original is Ich und Du, which is often translated as “I and Thou” to bring out the fact that the “you” is the singular, familiar form), Buber drew a fundamental distinction between two categories of relations: “I–You” relations, which are “personal,” and “I–It” relations, which are impersonal. We shall explore these basic distinctions further, before considering their theological importance.
I–It knowledge is indirect, is mediated through an object, and has specific content. In contrast, I–You knowledge is direct, is immediate, and lacks specific content. An It is known by measurable parameters – its height, weight, color, and so on. We can give a good physical description of it. But a You is known directly. The English language allows a distinction to be made between “knowing about something” and “knowing someone.” Roughly the same distinction lies behind Buber's categories of I–It and I–You relationships. We know about an It – but we know, and are known by, a You. To “know about” something is to be able to express the content of that knowledge. Yet, strictly speaking, there is no content to “knowing someone.” The particular form of “knowledge” in question is relational, and thus cannot really be expressed in informational ways.
For Buber, an I–You relationship is thus mutual, reciprocal, symmetrical, and contentless. Both partners retain their own subjectivity in the encounter, in which they become aware of the other person as a subject, rather than an object. Whereas an I–It relationship can be thought of as the active subject pursuing and investigating the passive object, an I–You relationship involves the encounter of two mutually active subjects. It is the relationship – something which has no real content, but which really exists nonetheless – that is the real focus of personal interaction. It is, to use Buber's terms, “not a specific content, but a Presence, a Presence as power.”
Buber thus draws a distinction between the worlds of experience and relationship. In particular, Buber stresses the importance of reciprocity in an I–You relationship, which is direct and unmediated:
The You encounters me by grace – it cannot be found by seeking. But that I speak the basic word to it is a deed of my whole being, is my essential deed. The You encounters me. But I enter into a direct relationship to it. Thus the relationship is election and electing, passive and active at once. [...] The relation to the You is unmediated. Nothing conceptual intervenes between I and You.
What, then, are the theological implications of this approach to personhood? How does Buber's philosophy help us to understand and explore the idea of God as a person? A number of points should be noted, all of which have important and helpful theological applications. Buber noted some of these himself, especially in the final sections of I and You, in which he explored the implications of his approach to thinking and speaking about God – or, to use his preferred term, “the Absolute You.”
This emphasis upon a “personal God” raises a number of questions, one of which concerns the extent to which human experiences can be said to be shared by God. If God is personal, one can speak of God “loving” people. But how far can this be taken? Can, for example, one speak of God “suffering”?