Re: Predetermination: God's controlling will?

From: Robert Schneider (rjschn39@bellsouth.net)
Date: Wed Jul 09 2003 - 14:07:23 EDT

  • Next message: Howard J. Van Till: "Re: Predetermination: God's controlling will?"

    The exchange between Howard and Josh reminds me of what Jacques Dupuis, SJ,
    wrote in his book _Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism_. He
    is commending the value of interreligious dialogue for deepening one's
    understanding of God. Here in part is what he wrote:

        "Thus the dialogue does not serve as a means to a further end. Neither
    on one side nor on the other does it tend to the 'conversion' of one partner
    to the religious tradition of the other. Rather it tends to a more profound
    conversion of each to God. The same God speaks in the heart of both
    partners; the same Spirit is at work in all [these words reflect RC views
    arising out of Vatican II]. By way of their reciprocal witness, it is this
    same God who calls and challenges the partners through each other. Thus
    they become, as it were, for each other and reciprocally, a sign leading to
    God" (p. 383).

        Where I see this view connecting with the present discussion is that
    while not setting aside the witness to God in the Christian scriptures, a
    Christian may in learning from his/her dialogue partner come to a deeper and
    broader understanding of God. The non-Christian's experience of the Sacred
    may enlighten and enrich that of the Christian. The same is true outside of
    interreligious dialogue: a Christian open to other sources of knowledge and
    experience of the Sacred beyond Scripture can benefit greatly from the work
    of the Spirit. It may well be that insistence that only the Bible presents
    authentic revelation of God, and the confusion between revelation and the
    interpretation of it that often attends such an attitude, cuts some
    believers off from a deeper apprehension (both spiritually and mentally) of
    God.

        Those of us who accept an evolutionary understanding of creation have to
    ask ourselves different questions about God and God's relationship to the
    creation than did our theological forbears who lived in a static and
    complete creation. And much of the imagery of God in the Bible rests in the
    matrix of a static world. If we understand that context, we do not betray
    it by concluding that some of the images of God in the Bible are, as it
    were, accommodated to the understanding of the people in the audiences of
    the sacred writers, just as some of us have argued for accommodation as a
    way to put in perspective images of nature in the Bible. Perhaps a good way
    to think about this is captured in the story in the Torah in which God
    answers Moses that the latter may not see God's face, but if he stands where
    he can look through a narrow cleft in the rock, he may catch a glimpse of
    God's back. It would be salutary to think that we are always catching
    glimpses of God's back and have yet to see God's face.

    Bob Schneider



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