Richard T. Nolan
GOD OR ULTIMATE REALITY
With the assumption that reality is found exclusively in the natural order biblical religion interprets deity as a personal agent. For Cherbonnier, the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities are to be interpreted within this perspective, in order to understand their common heritage accurately. Sharing this position on God is Kirkpatrick, who wrote: "God in our argument is conceived as a being beside other beings. He is a being who shares the general characteristics of all personal beings."1 With him is Dilley, who noted:
The categories which come to the fore in this interpretation of God's nature are person and the various qualities essential to personality, namely metaphysical separation from other persons (yes, God is a being alongside other beings, although their creator), mind, emotions, and the ability to act. God is literally related, to his creation, affecting and being affected by it, is literally involved in space and time, literally suffers and literally intervenes in the historical order to bring about the accomplishment of his purposes, so far as he can... God is a free, personal being with various super powers .... God has all the essentials which constitute personality.2
THE UNIVERSE
Contrary to the non-physical dimension of mystical religion, biblical religion is grounded in the physical (the visible and the invisible) with a God who acts. The primary distinction between atheistic naturalism and biblical naturalism is then not by the latter's appeal to anything or anyone supernatural, but by the latter's assumption that the physical is most adequately interpreted within a theistic perspective and commitment. In this sense, the common positions of the atheistic and biblical naturalists with regard to their physical monism bind them together more harmoniously in a philosophic sense, than would the conflicting ontologies of perennial philosophies and any form of naturalism. This implies a greater kinship between physical scientist and biblical theologian than between the latter and any classical Hindu or Buddhist philosopher.
HUMAN NATURE
Finite reality is sole reality, created by God. Though the process of creation is a scientific mystery, both the ex nihilo explanation held by Cherbonnier and the bringing-order-out-of-existing-chaos interpretation view God and world as compatibly existing in time and space. Because the Biblical God is the Creator and his will is sovereign, history is not without purpose. Presided over by a Creator who confers freedom on his creatures, historical events have the overarching purpose of conforming to God's will of love. Though capable of frustrating the immediate goals of the Creator, a capacity which could be recalled, participants are, knowingly or not, willingly or not, under his ultimate sovereignty.
Each person is a unique child of God with the capacity to choose allegiance to the biblical God or to an idol. Human existence begins in the physical world as a visible person of a basically good body and soul, conceived as "flesh-animated-by soul, the whole conceived as a psychophysical unity."3 The total personality, minus the flesh after death, may continue normally invisible for all time, but yet physical (hence, the term "resurrection of the body").4 The fulfillment of personality requires love, agape.5
RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE
Though one might construct a priori a theistic naturalism, biblical religion rests primarily upon a posteriori knowledge of God, his participation in the world. Religious knowledge is conditional upon God's choice to reveal himself, particularly his intentions, purposes, or will through specific acts. Hence, revelation is a key motif in biblical thinking.
Revelation or "God's word" is communicated through literal language as well as myth, metaphors, etc. Through an encounter such as Abraham or Moses had, through prophesied outcomes of national idolatry, and through myths such as the Adam and Eve stories, God's will and relations with mankind are revealed but not always recognized by his community. Unlike the mystical experience of achieving Oneness with the Other through profound meditation, the biblical encounter with God, however communicated and portrayed, must await his initiative. The clarity of interpretation by man is dependent upon the right alignment of man's heart, not merely a sharpness of his intellect.
CONSEQUENCES FOR LIVING
It is clear in Cherbonnier's writing that love, agape, is the basis for a biblical axiology. This kind of love is truly liberating: "...to live truly is to live in a relation of agape with one's fellows."6 This kind of love, however, stands in direct opposition to its mystical counterpart eros.
Consequently, life within biblical religion regards human existence as an opportunity to live in communal agape. Though many persons, if not most, will choose to become idolatrous and others will know nothing but false gods, there is always hope that God's purpose for mankind, his intention of agape for all peoples, will become real. In the meantime, those persons choosing God's will as their life orientation will be fulfilled with the agape they experience, though they will struggle with their own lapses into idolatry and its consequences. Finally, there is the conviction that the true God is sovereign, regardless of the corporate condition of mankind at any given moment, and that forgiveness is available when agape is truly sought.
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1Frank G. Kirkpatrick, The Idea of God in the Thought of John Macmurray: Its Basis and Some Implications (unpublished Ph.D. thesis; Brown University, 1970), p. 166.
2Frank B. Dilley, "Is Myth Indispensable?" The Monist, L (1966), p. 589.
3Robert McAfee Brown, "Soul (Body)," Handbook of Christian Theology, p. 355. Also, Cherbonnier, “Judaeo-Christian Sources,” pp. 14f.
4Robert McAfee Brown, "Immortality," A Handbook of Christian Theology, p. 184
5E. La B. Cherbonnier, Hardness of Heart (New York: Doubleday, 1955), p. 188.
6Ibid., p. 48.
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Dr. Edmond La B. Cherbonnier is Professor of Religion Emeritus, Trinity College, Hartford, CT.
Dr. Frank B. Dilley is Professor of Philosophy, University of Deleware.
Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick is Professor of Religion, Trinity College, Hartford, CT.
Please visit the subsites containing writings by Drs. Cherbonnier and Kirkpatrick.