Putting God back in the church

The whole argument about God’s existence or nonexistence is easily exposed as a kind of idolatry for both atheist and theist. This kind of god is a simple projection of our hopes, needs, desires and fears. As such, it acts as a mirror reflecting these concerns to us but closing the path to an interaction with the divine as “other”.

So, far from being a revision of Pyrrhonian scepticism in proclaiming the emptying of all known things, postmodernism - as its name implies - seeks to correct the errors of modernism.

By insisting on firm foundations for knowledge, modernism artificially limited what we thought we could know. Time and again in On Line Opinion’s comments section I am confronted by those who tell me I can’t prove anything.

That was the whole point in modernism, but postmodernism - even though it denies absolute foundations of knowledge - allows us to know enough to get along together.

We are reminded how recent the modern project is when we read St Paul, who tells us;

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Cor 13:12 NRSV)

and:

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. (2 Cor 4:7 NRSV) 

Rather than being about absolute foundations, scripture is conditioned by the transient nature of being and the movement towards a new reality. It’s the mentality of the nomad rather than of the settled people - of a people straining to see an emerging future rather than settling down to old verities.

The demise of the modern project of certitude allows theology to move outside the categories of being and absolute certainty to reclaim biblical speech about God.

What does it mean that God, in the first creation narrative, brings the world into being by his Word? “And God said, “Let there be …”, and it was so. What does it mean when, at the end of a prophecy, the prophet says, “Thus says the Lord?”

Who is this God who is identified with the sound of pure silence? But most puzzling of all, what do we make of the creative Word of God, which spoke the universe into being, becoming flesh.