God and the Physical World Flashcards
Creation in Genesis 1/2
GENESIS 1 - earth a 'formless void Day 1) Light created, day and night created Day 2) The sky Day 3) Oceans, land and vegetation Day 4) Sun and Moon Day 5) Fish and birds Day 6) Mammals and Humans* Day 7) Rest
GENESIS 2) Day 1) Light and dark, day and night Day 2) Sky and sea seperated Day 3) Earth and sea seperated, plants Day 4) Sun, moon, stars, time Day 5) Birds, sea creatures Day 6) Animals and Humans* Day 7) Rest
Ward
1) Distinction between God and Creation: No pantheism. A distinction between God and his creation, both immanent and transcendent
2) Goodness of creation ex nihilo (out of nothing). Evil comes as a result of the creation of darkness: > Problem of evil – theodicy - “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. Isaiah 45:7”
3) Image of God
4) Stewardship>dominion
(i) Western Xnity: God separate from ‘fallen’ world as God is perfect
(ii) Eastern Xnity: Creation good despite faults. Stewardship, not dominion
Migliore’s models of creation
- Generation
- Formation/Fabrication: God as builder (ps 127:1). Suggests intention, but undermines ex nihilo understanding as substance needed to fabricate. Also makes creation seem sub-personal
- Emanation: like an overflowing of God’s self. Captures the fullness of God in creation but implies involuntary action
- Mind/body: body as world, mind as God. Captures reciprocity of relationship, but not graciousness of creation
- Play: Creation is a free creative action. Shows willingness, participation, and intimacy
Dialogical model
Kierkegaard and Bultmann: God’s presence restricted to human experience (eg guilt, sin, foregiveness). Allows constant relationship with God – only in individual’s inner world.
Buber (I-Thou Relationship): Locates God in context of an immediate encounter between individual and an indefinable personal mystery (Thou)
BUT
- Suggests God has indifference to physical world
- No credit, or questioning, of God’s action in the world
- Neglects socio/political dimensions (Liberation Theology criticism)
- Demythologisation of the resurrection. Now only an event on a personal level
Process model
- God is dipolar. One pole is the world (physical) and the other is mental
- God therefore suffers as his creation does as God is partly immersed in the world himself
- God has only a sympathetic influence as it denies God’s omnipotence. Even if God had the absolute possible power God could not prevent evil.
- –> Is such a God equal to a traditional God, or worthy of worship?
Hindu creation story: Purusha Sukta
- Cosmic man, Purusa, is dismembered
- 1/4 immanent: “All beings are a fourth of him/three fourths are the immortal in heaven”
- Becomes the people (castes)
- Suggests loving/willing sacrifice
Hinduism: Non-dualism of Sankara
- Sankara believed that only one thing existed, Brahman.
- Brahman and the atman inside people were effectively the same thing and the physical world did not truly exist
- Prakriti is maya, producing avidya, and we know only the illusory and mundane reality
- According to Sankara, this conceals brahman. Ego interacts with this level of reality, not the Atman
- -> So God has no connection to physical world
Hinduism: Qualified non-dualism of Ramanujah
- ‘Mundane’ reality is not an illusion. Cannot be because illusion cannot come from Brahman (God is perfect) and cannot come from self (self is product of illusion). Cannot conceal brahman because cannot begin or end brahman (brahman is eternal).
- Maya is therefore real. Distinct from God and a participant in God at the same time. Here we become trapped because we follow selfish desires
- Jiva acts but God is inner controller. Cannot affect the world directly, only God’s intervention can. Yet he remains the inner controller of each soul
- Followed Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi. Believed in Vishnu’s divine intervention in the world Eg as Krishna, Rama and in the future as Kalki
Christianity: Dualism
- God creator of everything (see Nicene creed)
- God is efficient and teleological cause, but never material cause
- Initial trend on creation oppositions: God and Satan, God and world, good and evil…
- Sources for Xn dualism were Jewish and Greek
Christianity: Qualified Dualism
- Xnity began to react against dualism of classical Greek metaphysics (Kung)
- Reaction against anthropomorphism was justified, but had carried with it an incorrect split between God and the physical world
- Aristotle’s god was dualist, Plato proposed distinction between material and spiritual world, neo-platonic God and world separate as world was overflowing of God
- —–>
- No evil counterprinciple in ‘nothing’ that existed before creation
- World is not God
- World is not God’s ‘creature’, too dualistic
- World has participation in divine being. Humans mad in image of God, God has participated in physical world through Jesus. Kung: “God’s unfolding”…
Hinduism: Dualism
Madhva (1199-1278)
- World is completely real and is created, preserved and destroyed by Vishnu
- Vishnu is architect and efficient cause
- Souls are real and the distinction between everything and God is completely real
Pantheism
God and the world are totally identical and God is totally immanent
Eckhart, Christian thinker, proposed that “God created the world in himself, and God’s own being spreads itself into all things so that in the ‘depths of the soul’ the mystic can experience the underlying unity of everything in existence with God” - Kung
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth within you?- Corinthians
Panentheism
- Panentheism claims the God is greater than the universe and that the universe is contained within God. Interpenetrates it, but is also infinitely beyond it
- Panentheism holds that God is the “supreme effect” of the universe. God is everything in the universe, but God also is greater than the universe.
- Events and changes in the universe affect and change
- God. As the universe grows and learns, God also increases in knowledge and being.
- Associated with Process theology
Evidence that the physical world alone offer a sufficient knowledge of God/UR
Natural theology is adequate:
- Pantheism
- Migliore’s analogy of eminence
- Analogy of attribution (Aquinas). A –> B, B has quality Q, therefore A –> Q. Let A=world and B=God
- Purusha Sukta: God is 1/4 immanent
Evidence that physical world gives understanding of God/Ur but revelation is needed
- Aquinas gives limited scope on what we can truly know
- St Teresa of Avila says that Bible must corroborate non-propositional revelation to ensure they are compatible
- 3/4 of God unknown in Purusa Sukta so revelation still necessary
