Donald G. Bloesch. God the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Love. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995.
Bloesch lived from 1928-2010. He was an evangelical theologian and prolific writer.
"The God of the Bible cannot be described in univocal language, only by means of analogy, metaphor and simile." (page 32).
"The God of philosophy is capable of being thought and thereby mastered. The God of theology remains hidden and inscrutable until he makes himself known" (p. 32).
God is "being-in-person" (32).
"How God accomplishes his purposes in conjunction with human effort and striving is a mystery that lies beyond human comprehension. Like creation and redemption, providence is a mystery open only to faith" (116).
Bloesch considers both determinism and indeterminism to be heresies (ibid.).
On pages 116-117, he poses some interesting questions about God's putative relationship to creatures and time.
With regards to determinism and indeterminsim, I just finished Maurice Blondel's Action, it's extremely difficult (for me) to get (the French philosophical style is so irritating sometimes, it's like they wish they were poets instead of philosophers), but ... I highly recommend it.
ReplyDeleteI would love to know what Bloesch (I've never read him before) means by "being-in-person," and how he distinguishes the God of Philosophy from the God of Theology, is he just talking about natural vrs revealed theology?
I know what you mean about the French style. IMO, Descartes is usually accessible, but the contemporary French thinkers can be tough to grasp.
ReplyDeleteThe distinction Bloesch has in mind is natural versus revealed theology: Blaise Psacal exclaimed that the philosophers' god is not the God of Abraham, saac and Jacob.
I will quote directly from Bloesch and provide some context to his statements:
Theology is free to use philosophical terminology in order to elucidate
biblical meanings, but it must not become bound to this terminology.
Philosophical concepts can serve the gospel but must not be allowed
to force the gospel into a conceptual mold. The God of philosophy is a
metaphysical first principle. The God of the Bible is the supreme metaphysician. The God of philosophy is capable of being thought and thereby mastered. The God of theology remains hidden and inscrutable until
he makes himself known. The tradition of Catholic and Protestant scholasticism generally sees philosophy as a preamble to theology. Philosophy furnishes a rational foundation on which to build a superstructure with the aid of divine revelation. We begin with a general concept of being or goodness and then attribute to God the fullness of being. God becomes the ens perfectissimum ("the most perfect being") or the ens realissimum ("the most real being"). But the God of the Bible is not simply the perfection of being or the principle of being but being-in-person.' Nor is he a personified being but the dynamic of an eternity who embodies being. He is "not a static perfection but the absolutely unlimited Act and Energy" (Mascall).2 He is not simply the supreme being (ens) but the act of being (esse), "the very act of being which is prior to all beings" (Macquarrie).3 He is the being who in the reality of his person realizes and unites the fullness of all being in himself (Barth).4
In the scholastic tradition God is sometimes described as ens causa
sui ("the cause of its own being"). Yet this concept can be misleading
because God does not simply produce himself God gives himself-to
himself and to the world that he has created. According to Barth, "If we
say that God is a se, we do not mean that God creates, produces, and
causes himself, but that ... he is the one who already has and is in
himself everything."5 For Arthur Cochrane, "What God creates and
causes is not himself, but a reality distinct from himself."6 Philosophical theology has also defined God as actus purus, a concept derived from Aristotle to denote the final perfection of completely realized form, the fulfillment of all possibility. The truth in this notion is that "in God there is no mere potentiality or receptivity, or need, but that
God is the pure activity who posits, creates, gives." 7 But if pressed too
far this concept serves to obscure the biblical affirmation that God is not
pure unceasing activity but a person who acts in freedom. This is why
we must add et singularis to actus purus: God is a particular being and
not simply the principle of activity.8
Fascinating, I agree to a degree, although I do think David Hart had a point when he wrote that if the God of revelation isn't the God of philosophy he is a false God, meaning that one can demonstrate philosophically that a first cause transcendent reality exists, who grounds all being, consciousness, and the transcendentals, then we know such a God exists, if the God of some revelation is NOT that God, then there must be some God that is that God which is not the God of that revelation.
ReplyDeleteI do get the move that Bloesch is making (some what Barthian no?), and I also agree we cannot let our philosophical priors determine our interpretation of revelation, but I do think that one must always hold revelation up to the light of reason, which is why I think that apologetics is a necessary part of theology.
Bloesch might agree with Hart to some extent, but I think he and Pascal are thinking about gods like Aristotle's Nous or First Mover and possibly even the God of Thomism, who is actus purus, etc.
ReplyDeleteI used to incline toward a Lockean view of revelation, and I still believe that approach might prevent spiritual abuses. However, I now even more firmly agree with Qoheleth that man will never find out the true God's work from start to finish: we will never fathom it despite our best efforts.
On the other hand, I vigorously disagree with Bloesch about theological language as it pertains to metaphor and analogy.
Besides Barth, I cannot help but think that Heidegger's Sein und Zeit had some influence on Bloesch's comments about God as being-in-person. It's a possibility.
See https://repository.westernsem.edu/pkp/index.php/rr/article/download/1348/1446/
ReplyDeleteBloesch does mention Heidegger in the article