Re: Concordist sequence--why be a concordist?

From: Don Winterstein (dfwinterstein@msn.com)
Date: Sat Jun 28 2003 - 03:07:43 EDT

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    Howard Van Till wrote in part:

    "...As I use the term here, "the Sacred" does indeed have a personal
    dimension. But "the Sacred" is much more than a person. One problem that I
    have observed in common usage of "God" is the way in which the name "God"
    functions as a personification of the Sacred, diminishing the Sacred to a
    divine Person, often an amplified version of a human person."

    Are you saying that God becomes something conceptually less than he really is if we conceive of him as a person? Is Jesus as a human person somehow less than God? I don't see it that way, and neither does the Athanasian creed (for what it's worth). To me one of the great joys of Christian teaching is that God, despite being all that he is, is a person with whom I can have a personal relationship.

    What kind of abstraction would love of God become if God were not fully a person?

    Our personhood derives from God's personhood, and because he and we are persons, we can have a mutually satisfying relationship. A great mystery of the creation is how God could have generated creatures out of raw matter that can know him and be compatible with him as a person.

    Don

    >
    > Howard,
    >
    > Is "the Sacred" personal? Can a human being have a personal
    > relationship with "the Sacred"?
    >
    > Just exploring your choice of words here.

    Yes, as I use the term here, "the Sacred" does indeed have a personal
    dimension. But "the Sacred" is much more than a person. One problem that I
    have observed in common usage of "God" is the way in which the name "God"
    functions as a personification of the Sacred, diminishing the Sacred to a
    divine Person, often an amplified version of a human person.

    Christian theology has also dealt with the same problem. I was taught that
    God was personal, but not just a divine Person. Nonetheless, the familiar
    label "God" allows people to forget that important distinction.

    So, Terry, I often find myself using "the Sacred" instead of God to avoid
    the problem of letting the personification "God" diminish or restrict the
    multidimensional character of the larger reality, "the Sacred."

    Howard Van Till

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