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What do you define God to be? My definition of what God is is the Classical definition. "We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything [i.e., "not any created thing"]. Literally God is not, because He transcends being."
I don't think you understand just how significant attributes are that you think are esoteric. Classical Theism entails:
God is closer to me than I am to myself. He is always at all times the source and grounding of my being. It's not a domino situation. It's more of a Molecules > Atoms > Elementary Particles > ... > God situation. God cannot blink out of existence. For one thing, it is not in His nature to do so. But for another thing, it would be the end of existence for everything.
Morality and the Euthyphro dilemma. Is Goodness a standard outside God or is goodness whatever God decides? Pick one of these and there are problems. Classical Theism solves this dilemma because Goodness is tied to God's nature and to ours. It is not a standard outside God, it is not an arbitrary decision by God, it is sourced in God's nature and flows out into our own natures. You hint at this, "if God were not Good then he would not be deserving of worship." I agree! If God and Goodness are different things there is a problem worshiping Him.
There is an order and explanation to everything. All is willed by God, there are no competing powers. There is a consistency to the universe that we can trust.
God is unchanging and perfect. He cannot become more perfect. He already is absolutely perfect and there is no defect in Him.
In His very nature we find the grounding and explanation of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
If you take all this away, I'm not sure what is left that is worship-worthy. I'm not going to say "nothing," because I really would need a year or so to try to fill up the holes left by rejecting Classical Theism and see where the balance lies. I do know that when I was a teen/young adult, before I began to learn about Classical Theism, I was well on my way to becoming atheistic because Open Theism just isn't satisfactory to me.
Even when there are miracles, all that tells me is that there are things we don't understand about the universe yet or that there are aliens/fairies out there with superpowers. Especially if you believe like I do that humans have a natural psychic ability. The importance of God isn't clear until I understand His relationship with everything.
And this relationship with everything wholly informs what I understand to be the goal of the Spiritual life. This comment is already long enough but if you are curious about what I mean, "Fire Within" is one of the best books on the topic.
That's great, God loves all His creatures and it is certainly possible that you have experienced His intervention in your life. Most Catholics I know would say the same. I wouldn't say there are 0 philosophical converts to Catholicism, but the more normal situation is to have an encounter with Jesus, Mary, the rest of the saints, etc.
What would you say to someone who had a direct vision of God telling her, "I am He who Is, you are she who is not?" It's a very Classical Theist way for God to describe Himself
I have definitely heard God's voice. He told me who my husband was going to be. I honestly find it more surprising that someone hasn't heard God's voice than someone has, though perhaps it is hard to recognize.
Fair, but there are biologists who do study such things and in general I expect you trust what they say about inheritable traits. Likewise, a personal relationship with God does not preclude trying to learn more about Him through the methods we have available, and many people do interrogate this area.
Let's say you have a wife who you love. Imagine saying, "I don't need to know more about her, I love her! Asking her questions about how her day went or what she's thinking right now would be getting in the way of the personal relationship I have with her." It doesn't work that way! Instead, love generates a desire to learn more about the beloved. Philosophy is one means of truth finding.
The majority of Catholics do not study philosophy. The majority of Christians are probably not Classical Theists. Open Theism has been very common for many centuries among those who aren't into philosophy. At least it's not Moralistic Theraputic Deism, which is what most people in America fall under.
You aren't sure about our ability to come up with satisfactory axioms. That's not uncommon. You are creating philosophical axioms in your comments that I do not believe hold water - but you are likely unaware that you are doing so. Rejection of philosophy does not mean you can get away from doing philosophy. Instead it just means you are doing bad philosophy.
One uncontroversial thing we can do with philosophy is demonstrate logical contradictions. This doesn't require the underlying axioms to be correct, in fact we are proving the axioms false. This is why most theology surrounding God's nature is called Negative - or Apophatic - theology. I can say a lot about what God is not, and He is not embodied, He is not limited, He is not confined to one place. He is not composed of many parts. He is not beholden to an outside standard of Goodness.
I absolutely agree, but I would never in a million years try to figure out how her day went from first principles. Philosophy can inform religion but in the end I think it's just harder and less easily falsifiable than most other methods. I wouldn't even try to identify her from first principles. My wife is my wife, not "the woman who I must have married, given that I am a married man and so must have married a woman."
Everything is "philosophy" in the sense that there are underlying truth claims and axioms, yes. When I say philosophy I'm referring to the most esoteric extreme of logic where you rely on first principles as much as possible. The cosmological argument is a towering edifice of logic constructed atop many sub-arguments, which again, most people (including philosophers) simply don't find convincing; whereas arguments like the one you've just made are more simple and can be addressed directly (as I'm doing now) without delving into unfathomable philosophical depths.
And this gets to the crux of the question. I consider my definition of God imperfect and incomplete, the same way that I can't wholly define my dad. At best I can identify him. If my dad (we'll call him John) were to tell me his name is actually Jake he would still be the same person. Even if he were to tell me he was an alien all along, not human, he would still be the same person I identify as John. If he were secretly evil he wouldn't actually cease to be John; I would just be wrong about who John was.
Saying "if the entity who sent Christ for me doesn't conform to my definition, it's not the same entity" is treating God like an idea rather than a real person. It's placing your definition of God above reality. My dad could be wholly different from the person who I think he is and still be the same person. He could even not be my actual father and still be the same person. "My dad," "John," etc. are all identifiers for the person, not definitions.
That's not to say I don't have a definition of God, but as I hope I've made clear, even if I'm wrong about the very most fundamental elements of that definition, he's still God; he just may not be worthy of worship.
Why is the Father God and not Jesus?
God to me isn't a Person, He's a Nature that three Persons share. That's why I can't tell you if someone is God without knowing what it is. That is probably a huge unspoken difference here, when I say God does something I could be referencing the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit.
So you hold the Father specifically in esteem because He is our creator, and when you say God you mean the Father. How odd my responses must seem to you! In that case, if you tautologically define God as the Father, then the question becomes different as to would God be God if he did not have God's nature. I don't feel like that brings me any closer to understanding why God matters to you. The word "God" has great significance that I feel like you're copying the vibe of but then using it to refer to something else. Like having a conversation about Jesus and then someone reveals they've been talking about their gardener this whole time.
With your wife, I'm wiling to bet you do reason from first principles sometimes. By this I mean, you know she is a woman, which means that she has weeks where one hormone is dominant, weeks were another hormone is dominant, sometimes gets pregnant, etc. Knowing this, I suspect that your response to her changes depending on knowledge you have of her that pre-exists knowing her. You know pregnant women need late night ice cream randomly, for example, even before the experience of your wife kicking you out of bed at 11PM to go get pickle juice and chocolate.
They both are.
Yes, me too.
Eh, I do think they're separate people, but when I say "God" I'm referring to the Father or to the other two acting in his stead. I certainly hold them all in esteem as God.
Anyways, I don't really see why you bring up the trinity here. Jesus said his Father sent him, and his father is God, so I think it's accurate to say that God sent Jesus even if you hold to the Trinitarian definition.
This still isn't first principles; first principles would be something like inventing the concept of women from whole cloth based on extremely abstract ideals. I'd describe what you're talking about as top-down reasoning (applying principles to reality), as opposed to bottom-up reasoning where you observe reality and try to build principles from your observations. When I talk about first principles I'm referring to the cosmological argument, the ontological argument, and similar arguments.
And this is where we disagree! I think the entity that is described in the Old and New Testament is God even if his actual nature is very different from what I expect.
It's reasoning from nature. You deduce your wife's nature from your senses and then reason from that nature to other things.
It's the same with me and God, just His nature is different from your wife's.
Have you ever had someone who agrees with the Cosmological argument explain it, asked them questions, etc? Or is your exposure mainly by people who don't agree with it giving their rebuttals?
But then what does God mean? Is it any different from telling me that the entity described in the Old Testament is a Lion or a Blogalsnarf? It doesn't mean anything to be God unless there is a something that God means.
You're still using "God" as something other than an identifier.
God is whatever person or entity did the things described in the Old Testament, performed the Atonement, etc. It's not a definition, it's an identifier. It doesn't have to mean anything--identifiers, such as our names, generally don't mean anything at all. And God isn't "a god", he's God; if the word were "Blogalsnarf" it would work just as well to signify who it is that we're talking about.
If your concept of God is more closely tied to the definitional one (God as the first cause) then to your direct experiences with him, then in my hypothetical, the being who performed everything in the Old Testament, performs miracles, atoned for our sins, etc. would not be God. They would instead be two separate entities, who I'll call scripture-god and platonic-god, and it would be questionable whether the latter even exists (in this fake hypothetical, of course).
I think this is wrong. Our belief in God should be based on direct experience with him, and relatively direct experience (e.g. through scriptures, through others' accounts with him), much more than it should be based on philosophy. This is the point of my whole line of questioning. I'm not saying philosophy is wrong, but in the end if reality and philosophy conflict, reality should win out; and even if you think they will never conflict, it still matters that you give reality precedence on the off chance you happen to be wrong about the philosophy.
I haven't read any rebuttals of the cosmological or ontological arguments, they just seem obviously wrong to me. If you'd like, I'll read into them some more to make sure I understand them, and then take you up on the implicit offer, thanks.
We are running into the problem here where I believe it is clear that the God of the Old and New Testament clearly identifies with Being itself, "I Am Who Is." St. Paul explicitly links together the Greek concept of the God of the philosophers with the God of the Bible in Acts 17 by quoting a Greek philosopher and identifying that definition of God as the one he has come to preach. Then there are hundreds of other places where it's clear that God is not in the created order, not changing, sustaining the being of everything at all times. (Psalm 102:25-27):
Acts 17:27-28:
My belief in God is based on my direct experience of Him in my life, including revelations through contemplation and meditation. It is based on the Divine revelation of the Bible and the personal revelation that Christians have recorded throughout the centuries. And these both point to the Classical conception of God. Learning more about the classical conception of God helps me then go back and interpret the revelation I have received and which was revealed through the public ministry of Jesus Christ. It is all a positive feedback loop bringing me deeper and deeper into Love.
Without the positive feedback of the classical conception of God, though, my spiritual life went nowhere. What does it matter if God isn't all that He is? If he's just like some alien dude who did everything in the Bible? That has no implications on who I am, what morality is, the Good, the True, the Beautiful. If He doesn't actually explain anything, if He's not actually the Summum Bonum? I'd be left with a cool role model but if I disagreed with His actions it's conceivable that my judgements are better than his. The Cool Role Model called God is just a potential tyrant.
Fantastic response. Would fit in well with “Your God Is Too Small” by J.B. Phillips.
Thanks, a title like that is worth the immediate Kindle buy!
I listen to a podcast, "What God is Not," and the title has been in my head a lot in this conversation. But also so much of the Podcast is the spiritual experiences of a Byzantine priest and nun, and their spirituality is so clearly dependent on God being so Other to them. It's really beautiful and inspiring to see the witness of a healthy spiritual life going though everyday matters.
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