06/09: Referring to God, continued.
Category: Thinking Out Loud
Posted by: an okie gardener
My previous post, musing about referring to God, prompted this response from Loy Mershimer that I think deserves posting. (Any friend of Barth is a friend of mine.)
Great questions.
I believe the discussion distills to this issue: to what degree does one trust divine Revelation over one's personal revelations [and declared self-need in defining the Other]?
Barth framed this issue in the nature of God [unknowable except by self-revelation] and the nature of that divine Revelation as salvific. I've yet to hear a good answer to his objection to renaming God...
Here is Barth’s argument in a nutshell: To arrogate to oneself the ability to subjectively rename the Trinity is to assume that one apprehends the objective essence of the revelation itself, the ‘infinite and spiritual essence’ of the One being named -- a categorical impossibility.
Barth thus reveals the human renaming of divinity [re-imagining, etc.] a failure of human arrogance: mere postmodern idolatry.
All we know of God is what God graciously self-reveals. And that revelation is the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit: relational, integral ontology.
Regarding the pronouns of God and the images of God, James Torrance notes that there are zero feminine metaphors for God in Scripture; there are three similes which are feminine.
Of course, the linguistic value of such distinction is simple: metaphor is used to show something of essence, simile something of function.
Perhaps the whole discussion would be more simple if people understood that God is Spirit -- not male or female -- and that reasoning back onto Him from flawed earthly fathers is faulty 'theology from below,' with self as the arbiter of right [subjective epistemology].
It is deeply regretful that hurtful masculine models have apparently wounded a generation of sensitive sons and daughters from receiving God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit...
George MacDonald, in his sermon "Abba! Father" describes the whole of human misery in the inability of human children to call God Father:
The refusal to look up to God as our Father is the one central wrong in the whole human affair. The inability to do so is our one central misery. Whatever serves to clear any difficulty from the way of the recognition of the Father will more or less undermine every difficulty in life.
He goes on to say that the very key of healing for those wounded by earthly fathers is in the recovery of God as their real Father: Provocative, practical considerations of this whole discussion!
Great thoughts! Thank you...
Loy
p.s. Torrance has a little book entitled Worship, Community & the Triune God of Grace -- it might be worth a read!
Loy's website is here.
Great questions.
I believe the discussion distills to this issue: to what degree does one trust divine Revelation over one's personal revelations [and declared self-need in defining the Other]?
Barth framed this issue in the nature of God [unknowable except by self-revelation] and the nature of that divine Revelation as salvific. I've yet to hear a good answer to his objection to renaming God...
Here is Barth’s argument in a nutshell: To arrogate to oneself the ability to subjectively rename the Trinity is to assume that one apprehends the objective essence of the revelation itself, the ‘infinite and spiritual essence’ of the One being named -- a categorical impossibility.
Barth thus reveals the human renaming of divinity [re-imagining, etc.] a failure of human arrogance: mere postmodern idolatry.
All we know of God is what God graciously self-reveals. And that revelation is the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit: relational, integral ontology.
Regarding the pronouns of God and the images of God, James Torrance notes that there are zero feminine metaphors for God in Scripture; there are three similes which are feminine.
Of course, the linguistic value of such distinction is simple: metaphor is used to show something of essence, simile something of function.
Perhaps the whole discussion would be more simple if people understood that God is Spirit -- not male or female -- and that reasoning back onto Him from flawed earthly fathers is faulty 'theology from below,' with self as the arbiter of right [subjective epistemology].
It is deeply regretful that hurtful masculine models have apparently wounded a generation of sensitive sons and daughters from receiving God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit...
George MacDonald, in his sermon "Abba! Father" describes the whole of human misery in the inability of human children to call God Father:
The refusal to look up to God as our Father is the one central wrong in the whole human affair. The inability to do so is our one central misery. Whatever serves to clear any difficulty from the way of the recognition of the Father will more or less undermine every difficulty in life.
He goes on to say that the very key of healing for those wounded by earthly fathers is in the recovery of God as their real Father: Provocative, practical considerations of this whole discussion!
Great thoughts! Thank you...
Loy
p.s. Torrance has a little book entitled Worship, Community & the Triune God of Grace -- it might be worth a read!
Loy's website is here.
A Waco Farmer wrote: