John, I took your recommendation and am reading Sherry Waddell’s Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus.
It raises many questions.
You can’t have a personal relationship with God unless you believe God is personal, and according to a Pew survey that Wadell refers to, 30% of Catholics believe in an impersonal God.
Strictly speaking, God is no “a being” or “a person” or “personal.” These are analogies by which we speak of God – or by which God speaks of himself through revelation. This is apophatic theology – but I doubt that is what most people mean.
C.S. Lewis wrote:
A good many people nowadays say, `I believe in a God, but not in a personal God.’ They feel that the mysterious something which is behind all other things must be more than a person. Now the Christians quite agree. But the Christians are the only people who offer any idea of what a being that is beyond personality could be like. All the other people, though they say that God is beyond personality, really think of Him as something impersonal: that is, as something less than personal. If you are looking for something super-personal, something more than a person, then it is not a question of choosing between the Christian idea and the other ideas. The Christian idea is the only one on the market.
God is not less than personal, but more than personal. A human person is an image and likeness of God, but God is uncreated and man is created.
We know God in Jesus. He is fully and completely human but not a human person. He is a divine, uncreated Person whom we come to know not in the flesh but in the Spirit (more on this later).
It is hard to know what people mean by an impersonal God – something that is less than we are? Something like gravity, or dark energy, or the Force in Star Wars?
I suspect that they have not even thought about it much. But why would the call God impersonal. Again, I suspect it is not apophatic theology, but something else.
A lack of considering the Incarnation? God manifested himself through a human being, so the human is the highest and best image and likeness of the Divine. God nursed, learned how to walk, had friends, was sad, happy, affectionate, tender, suffered, and tasted the bitterness of death. As one thinks about this, it is hard to see why one would call God impersonal. What could these Catholics mean? I wish that Waddell had explored that.
No mere human person could have a personal relationship with each and every one of us. But this Divine Person with the two natures alone is capable of doing that. Our personal relationships are all exclusive of someone else, His are unique with each human person but never exclusive. Deo Gratias
Leon, I posted some things here, and they seem to have vanished.
Should I assume they are not wanted?
Some posts from the Intentional Disciples forum…
Sherry Weddell: It seems that he is puzzled about the exact meaning of ‘impersonal” God but of course, 21st century people use such terms in vague, idiosyncratic, and personal ways – not in dictionary terms. It would probably be really valuable for us to ask them to tell us about the God they don’t believe in. Of course, the Pew Forum surveyors didn’t bother to check with me in advance about the questions to ask. These are NOT my questions – I would have given anything for them to press further in certain areas but they didn’t. In any case, the primary revealed categories that we have been given by Jesus himself are personal: “Father/Son” “bride/bridegroom”, and “friendship”. As Christians, we are being called to enter into Jesus’ own relationship with the Father which Jesus revealed to us many times as being one of deep intimacy: “Abba”
Sara Silberger: I’d say there are two big categories of “impersonal God.” One is what Podles describes- the Force, the “Universe,” “Energy” with a big E- and the other is a God who looks more like the Biblical God but isn’t accessible for regular everyday people to have a personal relationship with, who has very limited personal concern for most of us, isn’t aware of our existence except on a corporate level. Maybe like the way you’d feel about the CEO of a huge company if you were an entry level employee.
Carole Brown I’m trying to decide if he’s a heretic or not. “Strictly speaking God is not a ‘being’ or a ‘person'” (????) He goes towards redeeming this comment by saying that God is more than personal (super-personal, tri-personal?)–and his statement about the Incaration is true. But I think it may be a bit careless to say that this is only “analogous.” God is “being” itself…..language falters to get at it, but when God revealed himself, it was a real revelation, real communication of the truth about himself. God accomodates himself to us, but that doesn’t mean he is other than what he said he is…he just is so in a way that would blow our minds.
John Weidner: I’ve sometimes had the (completely illogical) feeling that God will of course prefer the cool kids in the in-crowd, and be bored with me, and never invite me to any parties. That’s sort of impersonal to just me personally.
I wonder if the belief that God is impersonal is really more an expression of the “silence” we have about speaking of personal faith. Possibly some people don’t really believe that God is impersonal, but just say so to avoid an uncomfortable topic.
More from the forum…
Carole Brown: My gut instinct is that those who responded to the Pew Survey probably did NOT mean that they think of God as an impersonal “energy” like electricity or something. They probably meant that he’s not like a “person” in their lives, and thus they don’t have a personal sense of relating to him any more than they do Abraham Lincoln. But that’s just a guess. There are also loads of people who believe there’s “something out there” that caused the universe to come into being….but they don’t speculate on what it is, and don’t mind if it stays wherever it is and keeps doing whatever it does without getting involved in their own life. In that regard, it’s “impersonal” in the same way that junk mail is impersonal. Sure, someone is sending it, but they don’t necessarily care about me.
Sara Silberger: I suspect (although maybe it’s judgmental of me) that there are people who are scared about what it would mean in their life for God to be personal, and so they talk themselves into the concept of God as an Energy.
Sherry Weddell: I think we need to remember that there are many people out there involved in New Age-like practices, Twelve-Step groups, mindfulness training, various forms of Buddhism who do really talk as though the “universe” is behind you. And I’ve found that sometimes people use “”God” language when around believers in God simply to fit in better but they really don’t believe in a personal God as such.
Bobby Vidal: This is a great conversation. In my experience I was providing formation on the practice of virtue to some potential catechists and we talked about the cardinal virtues and I said to them “this is not yet Christian” and then introduced the theological virtues and discipleship and suddenly the light blub went on for them and for me. I understood that quite literally individuals can hold onto the God of reason and moral goodness, but where they begin to struggle is with the God of revelation who wants to share His life with you, hence they struggle with Jesus who is the fullness of revelation. It was a huge eye opening experience for me.
Tom Kreitzberg: Carole Brown, there’s nothing particularly heretical in what you’ve quoted. God *isn’t* a being — or it might be clearer to say He isn’t *a* being. He is, as you say, Being Itself, which is quite a different thing altogether.
As for God not being a person, I’m reminded of St. Augustine’s line from De Trinitate (V, 9): ” For, in truth, as the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, and that Holy Spirit who is also called the gift of God is neither the Father nor the Son, certainly they are three… Yet, when the question is asked, What three? human language labors altogether under great poverty of speech. The answer, however, is given, three ‘persons,’ not that it might be spoken, but that it might not be left unspoken.” We know God is Three in One. We don’t know what the Three that are in the God are — strictly speaking, I suppose, they aren’t even a “what” — so we call them “Persons.”
The reason people, including many Catholics, think God is impersonal is because they don’t know the “kerygma,” the life and works of Jesus Christ. They think in general terms, not realizing the incarnational principle: that God became one of us to save us.