As a follow-up to last week’s reflection about Christian Nationalism, a brief reflection this week about God.
Perspectives on God are important. In Genesis, first book of the Hebrew Bible, we read that God created humanity “in God’s own image.” (Genesis 1:27) But periodically over the years, some people have tried to make God in their own image and likeness. Vindictive images of God have been used by Christian Nationalists to control, manipulate and even destroy people.
I don’t understand God as a vindictive and hard-nosed authoritarian. In the New Testament, such an understanding of God does not resonate with the historical Jesus’ understanding of God, as his loving Father.
Unfortunately, some medieval Christian theologians did have distorted authoritarian notions about God, and they passed them on to future generations. Anselm the famous Archbishop of Canterbury from 1033 until his death in 1109 is a good example. Anselm saw God as a nard-nosed judge and taskmaster. Anselm believed that human sin and human disobedience to God, going back to the first humans, had defrauded God of the honor that God was due. That offense to God’s honor, Anselm taught, had to be compensated for and repaired.
Anselm said that God could only be satisfied by having a being of infinite greatness, God’s very own Son acting as a human, repay the debt owed to God and thereby satisfy the injury to God’s honor. In other words, God would only be happy when God’s own Son was tortured and suffered a cruel death. What a strange image of God. Catholic theology has called it the “Satisfaction Theory of Atonement.”
Jesus and early Christians, however, clearly understood God as loving and kind. That is essential. That is where we begin. As my Nijmegen Catholic theological mentor and long-time friend Edward Schillebeeckx OP (1914 – 2009) often said: “Christianity began with an experience, an encounter with Jesus of Nazareth which caused people to discover new meaning and to direct their lives in a new direction.”
The clear message of Jesus was and still is that the Divine Presence is here, with us, and with all of creation. God is not simply “out there” in some far-off realm. The Jesuit philosopher and theologian Karl Rahner (1904 – 1984) stressed, however, that people do not come to know God by solving doctrinal conundrums, proving God’s existence or engaging in an abstruse metaphysical quest. Rahner stressed the importance of Divine mystery as very simply an aspect of our humanity.
Our challenge is to live that Mystery with openness and calm reflection. That Mystery, which defies exact description, is God. Religious doctrines have their place but can never totally explain or define that Mystery.They are symbolic or analogous pointers toward God. When people focus only on the pointers, however, they really miss the point.
As contemporary believers we have to ask how we can develop better pointers that really help point people towards God. We need pointers anchored in all the complex realities and needs of our time, enabling people to believe and deal with human suffering with serenity and courage. Many of us learned about God at about the same time we also learned about the Easter Bunny. As we grew in awareness, our understanding of the Easter Bunny phenomenon evolved and matured. But for many people their religious belief has remained somewhat static and adolescent.
Divine revelation is not an event that happened once in the past. It is an ongoing and creative process that requires human perception and contemplation. Revelation is a part of reality. We are called to be open, alert, and contemplative. Faith means trust, commitment, and engagement. But too often it is mistakenly understood as simply an intellectual assent to ecclesiastical propositions.
Today, as science itself says there is so much we still don’t know. It is time perhaps to return to a theology that asserts less and is more open to mystery and calm and reflective exploration. This may not be easy for contemporary people so used to getting instant information with a click on a cellphone or checking their favorite website or social network.
The image of a domineering and controlling God is an archaic image. We journey today with a different and more of a traveling-companion God, even if we struggle with descriptive words about God. “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:12) The true and essential work of all religions, but especially Christianity, is to help us recognize the divine image in everyone and everything.
My concluding reflection this week comes from the priest and theologian Ronald Rohlheiser OMI, a friend who also completed his doctorate at the Catholic University of Leuven: “God lies inside us, deep inside, but in a way that’s almost non-existent, almost unfelt, largely unnoticed, and easily ignored. However, while that presence is never overpowering, it has within it a gentle, unremitting imperative, a compulsion towards something higher, which invites us to draw upon it. And, if we do draw upon it, it gushes up in us in an infinite stream that instructs us, nurtures us, and fills us with endless energy.”
Our perspectives on God are important and worth sharing. For me, God is my traveling companion on the great journey.
- Jack
Another Voice 
I’ve just tried to comment on this in your comment’s section. For some reason I couldn’t make it work. I completely agree with your remarks about our image of God – there are no angry gods, only the God revealed by the self-giving love of Jesus Christ who lays down his life. But I must come to the defence of Anselm and the medieval tradition. You make it sound as if Anselm’s God was an angry and punitive one who could only be satisfied by the suffering and death of an innocent victim. But for Anselm (Cur Deus Homo) the point was that Justice was defeated by Mercy – God’s mercy – in the crucifixion of Christ. Because it is not an ‘angry God’ who demands the sacrifice of an innocent man in order to be propitiatiated. It is God himself who pays the price, who suffers and dies. It is only in the context of Anselm’s incarnational theology that you can understand this. Not God demanding a human victim, but Justice defeated by Mercy, and the Mercy being the suffering and death of God.
You see the difference?
All the best Gilbert Márkus
Many thanks
Jack
Thanks for this reflection Jack. Having attended Saint Anselm college as an undergrad Theology major, your reference to the satisfaction theory brings back a lot of what I used to profess. In my years of teaching, I have found the story of the “Lost Son” to be tremendously disturbing to students. There is something about a God who unquestioningly welcomes back the arrogant one who may not even be authentic in his repentance (he did practice his speech after all) which goes against the widely held belief in a God who demands we prove our worthiness to be loved, or “allowed into heaven”. It just doesn’t make sense to love like that! In class we are currently reading “Tattoos on the Heart” by Greg Boyle, SJ, who powerfully demonstrates how our belief in God (and humankind) directs how we respond to others through his “Homeboy Industries” movement he started for gang members in east L.A. In a recent interview he two quoted which really jumped out at me:
“There is nothing more consequential than your notion of God…If your God is puny, then you have to be, but if your God is spacious, then you’ll be intimately welcoming and generous.”
“Everyone is unshakably good. No exceptions.”
Many thanks Daniel!
Jack
Jack — this is a great opportunity to push your thinking (which I strongly embrace) forward to the applications/consequences for today’s Catholics who received catechetical instruction prior to the Second Vatican Council and the great theological literature that flowed from it. For those who seek to remain pre-Vatican II, the Deposit of Faith seems to be their battle flag as they embrace the role of defender. The Irish Penitentials offer no help in disabusing them of their rigidity. I prefer to stand on the wisdom of Yuval Noah Harari’s current offerings Sapiens and Homo Deus. A fundamental premise that he offers, The use of human language to describe deity is an impossible quest. That practice has severely harmed Catholic theology by not asserting this reality at the beginning of any and all theological, doctrinal, or catechetical statements/teachings. I think that this helps to define the current challenges of a bifurcated Catholic church.