Theism, a useful but not absolute model to imagine God

Jos Mara Vigil

Panam, Panam

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SEEING A long but not eternal history of the idea of God Anthropologists insist that homo sapiens has been homo religiosus since the beginning. This primate began to become human when it began to experience the need to understand the meaning of life, and began to perceive a spiritual, sacred, and mysterious dimension... We used to think that this religious dimension meant that there was a necessary relationship with a God, but now we know it hasnt always been like this. Now we have facts that during all of the Neolithic period (70,000 to 10,000 b.c.e.) our ancestors worshiped the Great Mother Goddess, confusingly identified with Nature. The idea of god is later, from the age of the agrarian revolution (about 10,000 years ago). The warrior god, masculine, who inhabits the sky and makes tribal alliances...is a recent idea about the divine, which is generalized and was primarily put forward in the agrarian religion. The Greek concept of God (theos) would later mark the West: it is theism, a form of conceiving of religiosity centering everything in the figure of god. The gods live in a world above ours, and they are powerful, but they have human passions. The Greek philosophers would criticize this too human image of the gods. Also Christianity would purify its image of God, that would continue to be, despite everything, extremely anthropomorphic: God loves, creates, repents, intervenes, pardons, redeems, saves, has a plan...like us, that, finally, ends up meaning we are created in his image and likeness. This all-powerful God, Creator, First Cause, Lord, Judge...remained in the center of the Western religious cosmovision, like the North Star of the religious firmament around which everything spun. It was not permissible to doubt God: Doubt was a sin, against faith. To believe or not believe in God: this was the decisive question. Science and modernity clash with God But since the 17th century, the advance of science has gone along with the diminishment of God in everything which had before then had been attributed to Him. Grotius said: everything functions autonomously, etsi Deus non daretur, as if God didnt exist. Science discovered the laws of nature; the fairies and spirits

were no longer necessary, the miracles disappeared, to the point of becoming unbelievable. Bultmann will say: it is not possible to be modern and believe in the world of traditional spirits. Not only science, also social psychology transforms us: the adult human being does not feel at ease with a paternalistic gap-filler God (Torras, 66). Bonhoeffer will say: God has retired, he has called us to live without him, in a lay holiness. If in the 18th century atheism began, in the 20th century, it was multiplied twelve fold: It was the religious option that increased the most. The a-theists, those without-Gods who are not people of bad will who want to fight against God, but people to whom God doesnt seem credible, or even intelligible, have increased in number. The classic idea of God began to be questioned. New approaches to the question The Western Christianity of the 18th and 19th centuries interpreted atheism as anti-clericism, and, in part, this was right. But later it would be recognized that in another significant way the critical atheists were right: We Christians have obscured more than revealed the face of God (Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes 19). We have defended bad images of God, and now there are many of us Christians who recognize that neither do I believe in that God that the atheists refuse to believe in (Arias, 42). But today we are taking even one more step: the concept of God itself, although purified by bad images, is a limited concept, and not universally accepted. Further: there are those who believe that certain concepts of God are even harmful because they transmit deeply mistaken ideas to Humanity. Baltodano (p. 210) believes it is urgent to change the image of God in his country, because the common image there is harmful. The question is new and very serious, what status should we give to the concept of God? JUDGING The idea of God has its problems We begin by recognizing the following: -the objectivization of God: it is a being, very distinct, but a concrete being, an individual who lives in the heavens, up there, far away...The immense major-

ity of believers believe him to be like this, literally; -He is a person: he loves, pardons, orders, has a plan...just like us...Isnt this an anthropomorphism? -he is omnipotent, Universal Lord and Judge, rewarder and punisher... a projection of the agrarian system? -he exercises and retains the ultimate responsibility for the course of history (doesnt this remove us of our responsibility?) -he is the Creator: absolutely transcendent, completely different from the cosmos...A radical dualism that puts the Absolute on one side, and the cosmic reality, drained of all value, on the other? -he has traditionally been a tribal God, of my country or my religion, who has chosen us and protects us against others, he has revealed the truth to us and gives us a universal mission over others...(?) Considered carefully, all of this isnt anything but one form of imagining God, but a form that for a long time has become unacceptable to an increasing number of people...who feel that they believe in God, but not in this kind of god, not in theos, who wouldnt be anything more than an agrarian form of imagining-conceiving of Divinity...God has to be something deeper than what this traditional faith has imagined as God. Establishing a distinction Its one thing to believe in the Mystery of God, in Divinity ultimate, inexpressible Realityand its another thing to believe that this Mystery adopts the concrete form of god (theos) (a being, up there, all powerful...). Believing in ultimate Reality, without the image of God Ultimate Reality cannot be so simple as this image of God-Theos...We cannot confuse what in reality is ultimate Reality with our idea of God. Theism is a model, a concrete form of imagining/conceiving of the divine, a conceptual instrument, a help, something not absolutely essential. It is a cultural instrument (Marina 222) that has shown itself to be extremely useful, friendly even; but this is not a description of ultimate Reality, which we cannot imagine. It is a human creation. Because of this it has gone through changes and is continuing to change: now it clearly seems evident, but humanity existed for a long time without it. Today it brings many people up short: they arent able to accept this form of imaging ultimate Reality. They feel that theism, imagining ultimate Reality as god is not the only way of relating to it, nor is it the

best, nor is it even always good. There is no need to disqualify theism which, for many people is helpful, even necessary. This is trying to recognize that it is only an instrument, and that other people may need another model that isnt theistic. Believing or not believing in god no longer is the question; what is decisive now is the spiritual experience of everyone person. ACTING Whoever feels good in their traditional theistic form can keep on with it; nobody should be harassed. Nevertheless, many people and communities would do well to take up this issue; it isnt good to be unaware of something just due to laziness. In general, we lack new images, new metaphors for God; the traditional ones are being spent, and no longer work for many people (page 228). Today, an increasing number of people are discovering that theism is incompatible with their actual perception of the world, and that outside of theism, paradoxically, they reconcile themselves with the divine dimension of reality, with the Divine Reality, a new name they are more respectful of than God. Theologians are constantly and clearly moving towards a post-theist Christianity, although there is still a lot to be done to adequately develop this intuition. One could be Christian and not be theist, not believe in god-theos but in divine Reality, in Divinity. One canand one shouldreread religions beyond theism (some are not theistic). Just as the model of god isnt indispensable, neither is the classic theistic form of religions. We can move beyond theism, but not beyond Ultimate Reality. Many people are already making a post-theistic reinterpretation of Christianity, in practice and in theory, and its useful to familiarize ourselves with this. (Spong 216). The spiritual experience of the human being is permanent, and it continues to deepen, but the images and explications that we have given to ourselves to understand and express them have varied, and they will vary, in conformity with our knowledge. The traditional argument over the existence of God (to believe or not believe in God...) is a discussion that doesnt make sense anymore...the theistic model is not absolute; it is so traditional that to many it seems indispensable, but it really isnt. The alternative to theism is not atheism, but rather post-theism, or simply, nontheism. Both forms are compatible with the spiritual experience of the human being. q

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