Critical Questions and the Christian Faith
Unlearning the Western Concept of God
by Douglas Miller
18th September, 2003
Different concepts of God
When people say "my concept of God is ...", normally one of three options follows.
Some say that God is like another mind, distinct from our own, of infinite wisdom, power and love, who made the world and watches over it. This is basically the view of the Western Christian Tradition, and closely resembles those of Judaism and of Islam.
Others say that God is the soul of the Cosmos, is Nature, is Reality at its deepest level. They say that all our consciousness shares in the Divine consciousness, so that we and the Cosmos are divine. This is basically the view of classical Hinduism, of neo-Platonic philosophy, and of much New Age thinking.
Others again say that there is no God. This usually means that they deny the first option, and claim that there is no mind who watches over the life of the World.
Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa
In the closing decades of the Roman Empire, two major thinkers sought to clarify the Church's understanding of the Christian Faith. Both grounded their teaching by appealing broadly to the whole of Scripture. Both drew on a thousand years of Greek philosophy, especially on Plato, but not uncritically. Between them, they laid the foundations of medieval Christian thinking, and took important steps toward creating the modern world.
One was the Latin writer Augustine (354-430), whose thinking dominated Western Christian orthodoxy for the following fourteen centuries. In general, the Western Churches, Catholic and Protestant, stand in the heritage of Augustine.
The other was the Greek writer, Gregory of Nyssa (c.330 - c.395), one of the Cappadocian Fathers. His writings are among the most influential in shaping the Eastern Orthodox Tradition.
These two writers spoke of God in ways that used the same words, but with rather different underlying assumptions. This paper seeks to point out how these different assumptions lead to very different ways of thinking about God.
Augustine's concept of God
Augustine developed the view that God could be described by analogy with the human mind. God is like another Mind, of infinite wisdom, power and love. Augustine was always careful to say that this is a comparison only, but it is the best analogy that we have.
So Augustine took attributes we use to describe human thoughts and decisions, such as goodness, wisdom, freedom and love, and took them to be attributes of God by analogy. He affirmed that God is justice, wisdom, freedom, power and love.
However, the moment one uses these words to describe God, one must say that God is perfect justice, perfect wisdom, perfect freedom, perfect power and perfect love. We must say that each of these are without limit and without fault. God is all-knowing and all-powerful. We feel impelled to say this, because anything less would say something unworthy of God.
Augustine's use of these idealised attributes derives from concepts of idealised justice, love, etc in Platonic philosophy. Augustine thought in continuity with Platonism, although his concept of God was more personal than theirs.
When people in the West speak about "the traditional concept of God", they mean a faded memory of the concept that Augustine developed.
Gregory's non-Concept of God
By contrast, Gregory affirmed that God is utterly beyond description in human words, or picturing with human concepts. This is because all our words describe realities in space and time, and it is impossible for us to imagine that which is not in space and time. Certainly, God exists, but we can never say what exists, even by analogy.
All we can ever say about God in human language, Gregory said, is recall what God has done in human history. This is all the Bible ever does. It never offers a description of God, only an account of what God has done in our world, in human history. The Bible tells us that God led Israel out of Egypt, that God spoke through the prophets, that God sent Jesus Christ into our world to live and die for us. When Isaiah and John on Patmos saw awesome visions, they saw God's glory, a virtual image that God projected to them in their visual language, they did not actually see God.
So the task of theology is not to offer a concept of God. Its task is iconoclastic, to destroy concepts of God in our minds, for concepts are idols that prevent us from being open to the Living God.
So, when we say that God is a God of justice, wisdom, freedom, power and love, these are not words that describe God, they are not attributes of God. They only describe God's actions in human history. They are God speaking to us using our human language and concepts.
For Gregory, we can never reach behind God's actions to offer a description of God. Gregory's rejection of idealised attributes marks a sharp break from Platonic philosophy. People who see the Cappadocians as Platonists do not understand them.
The question of the Trinity
These two approaches led to two different ways to speak about the Trinity.
The question of the Trinity arises out of God's self-revelation in the New Testament. We learn from the Synoptic Gospels to adore and worship God the Father, together with the human Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. We learn from Paul and John that Jesus is the Son of God, the Word made Flesh, and the Spirit is the Spirit of God. The three are clearly distinct, and yet are clearly together.
So what does the Church mean when it says that Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are truly God with the Father, yet are distinct from the Father? This reduces to the formula: "one God in three persons". For many Christians this formula seems a mysterious piece of self-contradiction. What does it mean?
Augustine's account of the Trinity
Augustine's account of the Trinity began with his concept of God as a Mind of infinite love, power and justice. Augustine noted that Christ is the Word of God (John 1:1), and the Spirit is the will of God. He then explained the Trinity by comparing the three persons with the human mind, its thought, and its will. One could not imagine a mind without thought or will. One could not imagine thought or will without a mind. The three necessarily go together. The Trinity is like the human mind.
Augustine's account of the Trinity is simple, clear and free of contradiction. It is much more helpful than comparisons with triangles and shamrocks that one often hears. But it is deceptively simple, because it leads to thinking of God primarily as one Mind rather than three persons. It fails to be an account of three persons acting freely in cooperation, it fails to be a Trinity. It is more like different aspects of the One Mind.
Augustine's account set the pattern in the West for the following twelve centuries. So Western books of theology would all begin with a chapter about the attributes of God in general (e.g. wisdom, love and power), followed by a chapter about the three persons explained within the parameters set by the first chapter.
Gregory's account of the Trinity
Gregory of Nyssa discussed the question why we believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but yet say "there is one God", or "there is one Goodness or one Power and one Godhead", in two of his letters. They are: On the Holy Trinity, to Eustathios, and On why not three Gods, to Ablabios. In both letters, his argument runs as follows.
He begins by affirming that the Nature (physis) of God is beyond all description or naming. We can never describe God. We can only speak of God's actions in human history. Words like goodness, wisdom or power are not attributes of God, they are attributes of God's activities (energeia) in human history.
This means that all talk about oneness or threeness can only refer to God's actions in history.
When we look at God's actions in history, we learn to speak of three persons. The Gospels teach us to worship and honour the three persons: God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Paul and John tell us that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and is the Word of God through whom the world was created. So we speak of the three persons because God has come to us in our history as three persons.
But these three persons, are not like three human beings, each in separate places, with different opinions, doing different tasks. Rather we find that every action of God is an action of the three persons working together. Thus we read that God created the World, through his Word, and by his Spirit. We read that God spoke his Word through the Prophets, who were inspired by the Spirit. We read that Christ was sent by the Father, and conceived of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. We read that the Father declared "this is my beloved Son" at Jesus' baptism, and that the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove. We read that where the Gospel is preached, Christ speaks to people through it, and the Holy Spirit nurtures their response to Christ.
In each case, the New Testament writers tell us that every action of God begins in the purpose of the Father, is carried out by the Son/Word, and is completed by the Holy Spirit.
This means that every activity of God involves the three persons acting together, so the activity yields one result, not three; and the wisdom or goodness of God seen in this action is one wisdom or goodness, not three. Hence we say that these three persons are rightly referred to as one God.
So Gregory concludes, when we look at God's actions in the Scripture, in every action we see threeness and oneness at the same time. We see the three persons together fulfilling one purpose and doing one action. That is what Gregory meant by three persons yet one God. His answer is also simple, clear and free of contradiction. The Trinity is not a statement about metaphysics. It is not about the indescribable Nature of God. It is a statement about God's actions in our history.
God as immortal, infinite and eternal
It goes without saying that, unlike human beings, God has no shape, or place in the Cosmos, and no beginning or end. In terms of classical adjectives, God is invisible, infinite, immortal and eternal.
For Augustine and the Western tradition, these are attributes, they state what God is. He would have said they are negative attributes, they state what God is not, but they do state something that is true about God.
For Gregory and the Eastern tradition, they state a silence, they are a refusal to describe God. They are used to help reject any picture or concept of God that may be in our mind.
The difference may seem subtle, but it became very clear when the Church had to deal with the Nestorian controversy.
Nestorius (c.430) emphasised that God is almighty, infinite and eternal, whereas we humans are weak, localised and mortal. Hence there is an infinite qualitative difference between God and any human. Nestorius' view was hardly original, it was supported by a thousand years of Greek philosophy. It seemed self-evident. It still does.
But if this assumption is true, then what does the Gospel story mean? If the Word of God is almighty, infinite and eternal, and the human Jesus was weak localised, and mortal, how can the word of God become human? How can Jesus be the Divine Son of God become human? So Nestorius suggested that this should not be taken literally. Instead, Nestorius proposed that the infinite, eternal Word of God and the localised, mortal human Jesus are distinct from each other. The Word is divine and Jesus is human, but the human Jesus was so in tune with the Word of God that they "were one". All this must follow if God is infinite, and humans are not.
Like many before and since, Nestorius failed to see that he had solved an intellectual problem, but had missed the whole point of the Gospel. If Nestorius' views were true, then God has not felt human pain, doubt or fear, and the human race has not needed God to provide a Saviour. It has provided its own. This teaching may be intellectually coherent and sensible, but the Gospel was no longer found in it.
In response to Nestorius, the Church needed to be very clear that words like infinite and eternal are not descriptions of God, but are a silence that cannot describe the Nature of God. In particular such words do not limit the God's freedom to be or become what God chooses to be or become. They do not limit the Son's freedom to empty himself of divine knowledge and power to become human and live a human life of obedience to the Father, feeling fully human doubt, pain and fear like ours.
When we preach the Gospel, we must be clear that the Son is God beyond description, is truly divine with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and equally we must be clear that the Son has become truly human and known fear, pain and frailty like ours, and followed the Father's will even to his death, feeling all the emotional struggles that we would experience. To be the Gospel, our message must be serious about both the true deity and the true humanity of Jesus.
This is not purely an ancient and academic issue. The same inability to reconcile the Divine Sonship of Christ with his true humanity, leads some preachers to focus on Jesus purely as teacher and good example. Disciples of Nestorius abound in all mainline Protestant churches.
God's love, power and justice
Thinking about the perfect attributes of God in the Western Tradition has given rise to many insoluble problems of quite profound existential importance. These problems have made it harder to believe in God with each successive century.
The problem of evil is one example. If God is all powerful and all-loving, then why does God allow evil events to happen? Given that evil events do happen, then either God is not all-powerful or not all-loving. This very obvious and very pressing problem is one major reason for the rise of atheism in the West. The all-loving and all-powerful God clearly does not exist.
There is much we could say about this question, but any response should recognise the contradicitions that must arise whenever we attribute idealised Platonic attributes to God. Instead we should begin by worshipping the Living God of the Scripture, who acts in love toward us, but nonetheless acts as God freely chooses to act, without being constrained by idealised attributes that we might use as a calculus to project what God must do.
The conflict between God's love and God's justice is another example of idealised attributes leading to strange and doubtful conclusions. As Anselm (c.1097) stated, God's justice demands the punishment of the sinner, but God's love demands that the sinner be forgiven and accepted. It seems God is left with few options and must do as justice and love demand at the same time. How can God do that?
Following Anselm, the whole Western tradition has focused on Christ's death in place of sinners as the event through which we are forgiven. This is seen as the only path that God can fulfill the demands of both love and justice in the one action. The theory has a deep emotional appeal, but it appears artificial and seems to make God subject to harsh and unreasonable rules of justice.
Predestination, foreknowledge and freewill
The question of predestination and freewill is another example. Do we turn toward God because God chose us and drew us to him (as Augustine and Calvin suggested), or because we decided to (so Pelagius and Arminius)? If it is the first, then it seems God has decided for us, and our decision has no more meaning than the action of a puppet. If it is the second, then it seems that our relationship with God remains deeply uncertain, resting on the future of our fickle decisions. Neither answer is satisfactory, both have insoluble problems. These problems arise as soon as we think there is a reality called God's purpose that we can directly know about and discuss.
The question of foreknowledge is related. Does God know what we will decide before we decide it? If God does, then are our decisions really free or are they already fixed before we make them? If God does not know the future, then God's knowledge is limited. If God knows what we will decide, and does not act to prevent it, then is not God also responsible for the evil that we do? This cluster of problems arise if we assume that God's knowledge is an attribute we can consider and describe.
Conclusion
The history of the Western Church shows major fluctuations between one emphasis and another, each having important reasons: between love and power, between love and justice, between predestination and freewill. There have been similar fluctuations over law and grace, or over order and liberty. These idealised attributes create a contradictory account of God.
These problems are loosened when we realize that the Scripture tells us about the actual intervention of God in a given events in history. Not what an ideal God should do, but what the Living God has actually done. The variety of acts of God in the Scripture teaches us not to generalise that God must always act according to our ideal rules, but that God acts freely and spontaneously. We are not called to worship an idealized God of love, but the Father of Jesus Christ, who welcomes us into the fellowship of the Trinity through the life, death and resurrection of the Son of God.
The conclusion is that, to be open to the Living God of the Bible, we must unlearn all concepts of God, and in particular we must unlearn the concept of God described in term of ideal perfect attributes, which we receive from the heritage of Augustine.
