From: Don Winterstein (dfwinterstein@msn.com)
Date: Mon Jun 30 2003 - 06:23:25 EDT
George Murphy wrote in part:
>Discussions of whether or not God is "personal" of course require some
understanding of what we mean by "person." We can give various formal definitions, such
as the classic "individual substance of a rational nature," but our understanding of
what "person" means is inevitably influenced by our understanding of what it means to
speak of human beings as "persons." Which is to say that our application of terms
involving personhood are analogical. & this is as true of claims that God is
"impersonal" or "more than personal" as of the claim that God is "a person."
Yes, the definition of "person" is crucial. My own definition is subjective and operational: A person is a being with whom I can interact on a spiritual level. By this definition I don't really know for sure that a person is a person unless I interact spiritually with him or her. By extrapolation from experience I assume that all creatures with living human bodies are persons. God and angels of both kinds (good and evil) are also persons. No one else qualifies that I know of.
Then, what does it mean to "interact spiritually"?
Theologically my definitions have little to recommend them, but as concepts for religion and religious experience they work well.
These definitions actually originated with vivid spiritual interactions with God, which at first I interpreted to be the kind of thing the NT talks about when it mentions "knowing God" or "receiving the Spirit." The interactions had to be spiritual, because God as I knew (and know) him has no body. If one once knows God vividly, one can detect him when he is much less vivid, as he is most of the time. So knowing God can mean different things to different people and even different things to the same person at different times. When God is not vivid, he often seems more like a life force or some such thing than a person. That is, you can't do much satisfying interaction with him when he's not vividly present; but it's still comforting to know he's there.
Whether this concept of person has any value for theological discussion or even general communication I'm not sure at the moment, so the wise thing to do perhaps is to drop the subject for the time being.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From: George Murphy
To: Howard J. Van Till
Cc: Don Winterstein ; ASA@calvin.edu
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2003 8:04 PM
Subject: Re: Concordist sequence--why be a concordist?
Howard J. Van Till wrote:
>
> 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."
Discussions of whether or not God is "personal" of course require some
understanding of what we mean by "person." We can give various formal definitions, such
as the classic "individual substance of a rational nature," but our understanding of
what "person" means is inevitably influenced by our understanding of what it means to
speak of human beings as "persons." Which is to say that our application of terms
involving personhood are analogical. & this is as true of claims that God is
"impersonal" or "more than personal" as of the claim that God is "a person."
The term "person" has a rather complicated dual history via Greek and Latin, and
has contributed both confusion and clarity in its use in trinitarian theology. Some
modern trinitarian theologians aren't happy with the baggage connected with the term and
have suggested alternatives, such as "mode of being" (Barth) or "identity" (Jenson).
If we are going to use the category of person, My own inclination is to agree
_linguistically_ with Howard about God being "more than personal" in the sense that the
one God is indeed three persons. But given his views on christology, I'm afraid that's
not what he means.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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