Purgatory: Is God a Person?
Just reading Brian Davies' book 'An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion'.
In the first chapter, 'Concepts of God', he differentiates between two general concepts of God - that of classical theism which sees God as beyond personhood, which was held by 'the majority of theologians from Augustine to Leibniz', and that of more contemporary theologians, including Swinburne and Plantinga, which he calls 'theistic personalism', and in which God is a person.
Given that I have always described the Trinity as God in three persons, I'm a little confused. Can anyone help me?
Corrected spelling of author’s forename. BroJames, Purgatory Host[/url]
In the first chapter, 'Concepts of God', he differentiates between two general concepts of God - that of classical theism which sees God as beyond personhood, which was held by 'the majority of theologians from Augustine to Leibniz', and that of more contemporary theologians, including Swinburne and Plantinga, which he calls 'theistic personalism', and in which God is a person.
Given that I have always described the Trinity as God in three persons, I'm a little confused. Can anyone help me?
Corrected spelling of author’s forename. BroJames, Purgatory Host[/url]
Comments
I suppose we try to understand (!) God as a person (or three persons, if you really want your head to start hurting) because each one of us is an individual person, and that's our frame of reference.
God is not a person.
Classical Trinitarian theology would say that he is three persons and one in being.
I was just quoting Jesus himself.
So I'm just going to note here that if we're going to use the term "person" to limit God (which seems to be in Telford's mind, though he did not explain his reasoning), that's a problem. But if we take it away and say God is not a person, in my experience that causes far bigger problems--because people automatically default to "impersonal then"--meaning uncaring, unable or unwilling to adjust to individual circumstances, not involved in relationships, incapable of emotion or social bonds, and occasionally "inanimate."
I think people default to this because nobody has any clear idea of what "super-personal" might mean. We can't get very far with our imagining when we have no exposure to it. And God would be the only one in that class, so... Saying God is super-personal turns into something like "God is God."
So if we're talking technically, I would indeed say God is super-personal. But if I want my hearer to have any idea what I'm talking about, I revert to "personal."
In Latin based languages which have (non sexual) genders the word is always feminine
e.g. la personne (French) die Person (German) both feminine gender nouns.
There was no gloss. I merely quoted the whole of the verse.
This means that God is changeable because he is capable of learning and because he can empathise with our pain, joy, and other emotions.
Classic Theism disagrees with this, seeing God as impassible and immutable. He is unchangeable because he is outside time.
He is unchangeable because He has been doing the same thing forever. Eternal learning is impossible for God. Any learning is. How does empathy change God?
For me ‘person’ implies humanness. I looked at the OED definition and it actually says ‘a human being regarded as an individual.’
So in my mind I can’t see God as a person, God for me is so far above personhood.
I like the idea that God cannot be an individual because God is simple, in a category of which God is the only one. So if God cannot be an individual then God cannot be a person.
And yet we say that we are made in the image of God, and some even teach that our aim is deification. ‘God became man so that man could become God’.
No, we also say that if we believe the creation narrative is a myth revealing fundamental truths that go far beyond the story.
No you didn’t. The bit in bold was your gloss.
Not my gloss. My opinion.
There is no logical link between the verse you quote and your comment.
None at all.
And this is where apophatic theology shines.
O.K., in your eyes dogs and cats and aliens are persons (shouldn’t that be people lol!). But is God a person? If so, why do you believe that? If not, why not?
To have empathy God would need to have feelings. Feelings are a change in emotional state. Therefore, to have empathy is to be changeable.
This too from Catholic Answers...
I have always believed that I am in a relationship with God. But that doesn’t mean that God is a ‘person’ I guess. Maybe God is a very different kind of person, a one of a kind person?
Requires argument. Why cannot one have consistent, unchanging feelings? I mean we're talking about God, right?
Are feelings the same as emotions? And where does the statement "God is love" fit into this?
In the context of God, could love be a state of being rather than a kind of emotion? Aquinas thought that love was something to do with will rather than emotion. Does that help?
Good response. God is local - immanent - everywhere infinite creation - natural and transcendent - is inside His dimensionless self. His empathy is local. Not absolute, not universal, not uniform throughout His ultimate non-extendedness, throughout His greater than infinite substance. He cannot not feel all suffering, all joy in the infinity of creation, being omnipathic. All of Him does not feel my arthitic left wrist, my pulse of fear as I nearly fell down the stairs. That would be absurd. God's empathy is not our empathy.
Unless you are using “feelings” to mean “sensation” - as in touch, or nausea or sensation - then yes they are. As opposed to other mental experiences such as, thoughts (of which ideas are a subset, and reasoning an action), memories and dreams.
And this is then borne out in the idea that we were made in the image of the divine, so our personhood is based on the personhood of divinity.
But none of it answers either question - what is a "person" and is God a person. And I don't think these are the right questions to ask. The personhood of God is a theological concept, so the only questions are what is this concept intended to convey?
And, FWIW, if you are getting philosophical, there is a far deeper question that does underpin this - what do you mean by "Is God"? How do you define existence, and does God possess this? Because that too will help define what you mean by personhood.
Yes. On what reading are they not?
Not in the least. You're advocating a belief in which God is utterly indifferent towards us, except that he like some automaton "wishes" us well. Because that's how he's programmed, even if he was programmed by himself.
God is unchanging not like a rock is unchanging in that it can't become anything else, but because God is everything God could change into already. The seed changes into the shoot then the sapling then the tree; God is already seed, shoot, sapling, and tree all at once (*).
(*) in so far as seed etc have positive qualities not possessed by the adult tree, which Aristotelian and Platonic philosophers would probably deny.
I think the God as Person idea came as a way of explaining the Trinity - three persons one being.
Not sure why I asked if feelings were the same as emotions - pretty dumb of me.
But, on reflection, this seems an important distinction, one that would affect the way you minister to someone who is suffering and in need of God's love and care.
My own thoughts, FWIW, is that God is suprapersonal. God is personal in the sense that we as limited humans can have a relationship with God. But God is supra personal in that he is beyond all classifications that we may like to impose upon him.
Does God empathise with us. Yes and no. ISTM that God knows of pain and suffering because God created us with the capacity to feel pain and suffering. And as part of His love He is empathy itself. However, I don't believe that our pain and suffering affect God emotionally. Nothing we can do or experience can change God.
In our pain and suffering we need can depend not only on God's empathy but hi on God's other healing attributes, chiefly amongst them love, but also holiness, graciousness, mercy, and forgiveness, all of which God brings to bear when we suffer and are in pain.
So what is going on when it seems his emotions toward us (or whatever) have changed? IMHO it's like we have moved (or God has moved us) from one "zone" of his emotional output to another. I'm thinking of something like the sun here. Stand in one location with regards to it, you're toast; stand in another (where there's shielding between you and it) and you're fine. Yeah, it's an analogy, but you see how it allows the sun to be the sun all the time while human beings have variable experiences of it? Come up with a better analogy, that'd be fine. But I think we make a mistake when we reduce God to being a LESS emotional being than ourselves--a robot or something. He's not. He's more.
I think he's a person by the description I previously provided--he thinks, he is an individual (or three, but let's not split hairs here), he acts on the world, he has emotions and social interactions and a moral sense--these things differentiate him (and us) from, say, rocks and grass. He is real, which differentiates him from fiction and lies. Thus, a person.
Really, let's turn it around the other way. Can anybody come up with a good description of "beyond personality" that is more than just "not-" on everything--and that clearly distinguishes the ultra-personal from the impersonal?
If not, I think we're better off classing God as a person. We'll go less wrong when we interact with him.
So while I’m accustomed to speaking of the three Persons of the Trinity as a term of art use of “person,” saying “God is a person” sounds to my ear like saying “God is a human.”
Maybe it’s because I don’t read science fiction.
It strikes me that for a much more fundamental Trinitarian reason, denying that God is a 'person', even if for the most laudable apophatic reasons, denies something that is essential and inherent in the Christian understanding of the nature of God.
Saying God is not a person, however one tries to avoid that implication, implies that he is impersonal. For that to be the case, either the Son is different from the Father or one would have to conclude that Jesus's personality and character is something that he inherited only from his mother. But then, if that were the case, his personality, his character, how we see him, would not be revealing anything of the divine nature. In him all the fullness of the Godhead would not dwell bodily (Col 2:9). Nor in him would the Word have become flesh and dwelt among us. The disciples would not have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth (Jn 1:14).
It might have been possible before Jesus was born to have said, based on what had until then been revealed, that God was too august, too holy, to be a person, to have a personality or a character, that he was simply in some super-human and alien way abstract, an entity or a Supreme Being. From that point on, though, that is impossible without descending into Arianism or another of the late antique heresies. That was one of the reasons why the early church was so adamant that Arianism was wrong.
The incarnation means that the personality and character that one sees in Jesus, the Christ, is also the personality and character of the Father and the Holy Spirit. If one asks what are they like, the answer is, Jesus.
That doesn’t really follow to me. I would say Jesus receives his divine nature from the Father and his human nature—his personhood, which is not the same as his personality, as I would understand it—from his mother.
It may well be idiosyncratic—I’ll readily admit that—but in my understanding and as I generally hear the words used, “personality” and “personal relationship” are not necessarily tied to personhood. I would quite readily say my dog has a wonderful, joyful personality. I would also say I have a personal relationship with my dog. (Well, to be honest, I probably wouldn’t say it that way, but I wouldn’t deny having such a relationship with him.)
But I would never say my dog is a person, despite his wonderful personality, because in my understanding that would be saying he’s a human. He doesn’t need to be a person to have a personality.