From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Thu Jul 10 2003 - 08:48:26 EDT
Good morning Glenn,
You wrote:
> I think I have a better formulation of my query to you. There is a danger
> of us doing what we would never ever think of doing. While broadly I agree
> with you that we all do the best we can to make sense of the world, one
> must be very careful in these things of creating our own god.
In a sense, I think we have no other choice. But I need to clarify that
carefully.
God is what God is, independent of how we portray God. (In place of "God" I
might prefer to use the less restricted [by personification] term, The
Sacred, but let's not worry about that for now.) However, I believe we must
recognize that we -- as individuals and as communities, whether consciously
or unconsciously -- do indeed craft our own portraits of God.
That being the case, then I think we are obligated to do so as thoughtfully
and self-consciously as possible, and using all of the resources available
to us. It is at this point that I ask, why impose any artificial limitation
on these resources, like designating one particular collection of ancient
religious texts (the Hebrew and Christian canons, for example) as the sole
source of material to use in crafting our portrait of God? Furthermore, by
so designating one text as the sole source/authority, a person or community
is in danger of idolizing that one text. As I have said on numerous
occasions, I see biblicism bordering on bibliolatry as a real and present
danger in conservative Christian communities today.
> If we take
> what we like about god and chuck what we don't like, then what makes us
> different from the idolators of old? The fact that we don't carve our view
> into stone is not a lot of consolation.
Agreed. But we must thoughtfully distinguish between God and portraits of
God, especially those portraits inherited from portrait artists of the past,
portraits cast not in stone, but in words that have been elevated, by human
decision, to the status of canon.
> Secondly, if God is nothing more than each man's creation (something that
> many of my atheist friends would claim) then I don't see how there can be
> any transcendence or claim on my life. If I am God's creator, then he is at
> my beck and call rather than vice versa.
As I said above, God is what God is, independent of how we portray God.
However, I believe we must recognize that we -- as individuals and as
communities -- do indeed craft our own portraits of God. We do not "create
God," but we do craft portraits of God, and I see no reason to pretend
otherwise. Perhaps our atheist friends would even respect us for that
honesty and candor.
> So would it be fair to say that you follow what I understand to be the
> pattern of the Eastern Orthodox Church which places tradition (an
> extrabiblical source) on par with the Bible, with the exception that
> instead of tradition, it is experience?
In constructing our portraits of God, I think we are obligated to use all of
the resources available to us -- portraits inherited from the past (canon,
tradition), our own human experience, the experience of other humans,
history, science, ......... In some circles this list is 4-fold: Scripture,
tradition, reason and experience. Not a bad way to go.
Howard Van Till
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