Re: Concordist sequence--why be a concordist?

From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Sun Jun 29 2003 - 20:15:45 EDT

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    From: "Don Winterstein" <dfwinterstein@msn.com>

    > 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."

    Don responded:

    > 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?

    What I thought I said was that God is MORE THAN a person. I find the word
    "person" too restrictive.

    > I don't see it that way, and neither does the Athanasian
    > creed (for what it's worth).

    Given that the Athanasian Creed is a humanly crafted document, there is no
    reason that I am bound to take every word of it as truth.

    > 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.

    I see no reason that you could not have a personal relationship with a
    Sacred Reality that is personal, but at the same time more than "a person."

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

    Of course, I did not say that God was not fully a person, but that God was
    more than 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.

    I would not restrict God's being by the same term that limits our own being
    -- a "person."

    Howard Van Till



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