St Luke's Church Eccleshill - Articles from "The Link"

A positive definition of God

Dear John,

In last month's Link you said you were not keen on St Anselm's definition of God as "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" because you felt it is fundamentally negative. I wouldn't describe it as negative: it is apophatic in that it declares that God is beyond human conception and by implication cannot be known in terms of human categories or terms. I do like answers and explanations, but where God is concerned won't we just have to settle for enjoying the questions and the exploration?

Fiona Jenkins.

Dear Fiona,

My dictionary says "apophatic" means "pertaining to a knowledge of God obtained through negation". I was trying to say that mathematics made progress once Cantor had found a positive quality of infinity rather than simply the apophatic "not finite", and I think we make better progress in theology if we try to say positive things about God rather than negative ones.

Yes, God is "without body, parts or passions, infinite, uncreated, incomprehensible" and so on, but I don't think this helps. Here's a positive approach instead ...

God is creator. Of what? The universe. What is the universe? Positively, the universe is what we can see: the matter we are made of, the space and time which it occupies, and those things which we can only observe with special equipment like telescopes or microscopes or diffraction gratings or mass spectrometers and so on ... .

The question then arises: is the universe a closed system complete in itself which exists in its own right without any outside agent to mange it? Or is there some other agency outside the universe which is its cause and which can influence it? How can we know? And what might such an agency be like?

I think there are two advantages of proceeding in this way. The first is that it does not presuppose the nature or character of the external agency which we might call "God", so it gives us a common vocabulary with those who don't start where we start. The second is it leads directly into questions like "How do we know which view is right?", "If God wanted to reveal himself how would he do it?" and "Has God ever intervened in the world?", and that leads us into a discussion of the person of Christ and the resurrection, which is after all the key piece of good news which Christians have always wanted to share with the world.

I agree we cannot reach out of the universe and encompass God. But he can reach in and reveal himself, and he has done so in the birth and rising again of Jesus.

John Hartley

	*St Luke's Church, Eccleshill - The Link* magazine** The Link is published monthly at 40p (Senior Citizens 35p), and we deliver free within the parish and post copies (at the reader's expense) to those who request it. Please contact us if you would like a free copy for a trial period. October 2004, Page 9.
Home Page. Index of articles: by subject, by date. In this issue: (October 2004) Staffing, Song, Ramadan, HC bread, Define God. Other articles on logic.	A positive definition of God Dear John, In last month's Link you said you were not keen on St Anselm's definition of God as "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" because you felt it is fundamentally negative. I wouldn't describe it as negative: it is apophatic in that it declares that God is beyond human conception and by implication cannot be known in terms of human categories or terms. I do like answers and explanations, but where God is concerned won't we just have to settle for enjoying the questions and the exploration? Fiona Jenkins. Dear Fiona, My dictionary says "apophatic" means "pertaining to a knowledge of God obtained through negation". I was trying to say that mathematics made progress once Cantor had found a positive quality of infinity rather than simply the apophatic "not finite", and I think we make better progress in theology if we try to say positive things about God rather than negative ones. Yes, God is "without body, parts or passions, infinite, uncreated, incomprehensible" and so on, but I don't think this helps. Here's a positive approach instead ... God is creator. Of what? The universe. What is the universe? Positively, the universe is what we can see: the matter we are made of, the space and time which it occupies, and those things which we can only observe with special equipment like telescopes or microscopes or diffraction gratings or mass spectrometers and so on ... . The question then arises: is the universe a closed system complete in itself which exists in its own right without any outside agent to mange it? Or is there some other agency outside the universe which is its cause and which can influence it? How can we know? And what might such an agency be like? I think there are two advantages of proceeding in this way. The first is that it does not presuppose the nature or character of the external agency which we might call "God", so it gives us a common vocabulary with those who don't start where we start. The second is it leads directly into questions like "How do we know which view is right?", "If God wanted to reveal himself how would he do it?" and "Has God ever intervened in the world?", and that leads us into a discussion of the person of Christ and the resurrection, which is after all the key piece of good news which Christians have always wanted to share with the world. I agree we cannot reach out of the universe and encompass God. But he can reach in and reveal himself, and he has done so in the birth and rising again of Jesus. John Hartley
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