God Talk – Talking About God

If you have not read the first GOD TALK post, read it HERE As described in my first post, GOD TALK is a multi-facet subject. Today’s post focuses on Talking about God.

I begin with GOD TALK — Talking about God for several reasons.
First, Taking about God is a likely occasion to violate God’s command: “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God…”
Second,Talking about God in in our society is ubiquitous, in secular or sacred venues . Talking about God in sacred places, expected and appropriate, even required, can misuse the name of the Lord .
Third, it is personal, I talk a lot about God. Communication with and about God is essential to spiritual formation.My study and engagement with GOD TALK has sensitized me to my vocabulary and syntax in reference to God, exposing ignorance, naïveté and problematic motives. New insights and challenging questions abound.

We start with the first Gordian Knot ¹  an intricate problem especially  : a problem insoluble in its own terms —often used in the phrase cut the Gordian knot encountered.

Augustines’ Quote

I found Augustine’s quote to be particularly “knotty”. It presumes talking about God yields wonder; a stark contrast to contemporary presumptions of certainty when Talking about God. As Richard Beck sees it, “…the root of the problem in religion is this conviction that I am in possession of the Truth. It is the certainty of religion that makes it dangerous.”
For example: House Speaker Mike Johnson says that weeks before he became Speaker, God told him “very clearly” to prepare to become a “Moses” who will lead the nation through a “Red Sea moment.” More recently, Speaker Johnson, in reference to pending legislation, posted —
“ All this is from GOD, who reconciled us to himself through CHRIST and gave us the Ministry of Reconciliation. (I Cor. 5:8)
Johnson is unequivocal Talking about God, baptizing his election and the legislation as being from GOD. There is risk in using Johnson as an example, but he is in good company. Most Christians, including myself, talk about God in similar, unequivocal ways. Staying with Augustine’s point, understanding [being unequivocal] voids “from GOD”. Hopefully you are beginning to share some of the cognitive dissonance I am experiencing.
Richard Beck frames this Gordian Knot well:

Because of God’s radical Otherness in relation to creation, we cannot use language univocally in relation to God. That is to say, words cannot mean the same thing when we apply them to both humans and to God.
Our language about God cannot be literal. Our language about God can’t be univocal, but neither can it be equivocal, where words come to mean such radically different things they lose all coherence.
…we face a challenge in talking about God. We need to avoid both univocity and equivocity. Our words about God can’t be literal, but neither can they be used in such radically different ways so as to lose all meaning. Words have to protect God’s difference, but also keep tethered to reality.  How can we perform this balancing act?
https://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2020/04/gods-omnipotence-part-5-power-causality.html

This orthodox perspective from Alexander Kalomiros. doesn’t untie the knot but fuels further thought and conversation.

Do not seek to understand God for it is impossible. Simply open the door of your soul so His presence may fill you and illumine your mind and heart, warm your body, and enter your veins. Theology is not a cerebral knowledge but a living knowlege that is directly relevant to man and sustains and possesses the whole man. A cold, cerebral man cannot know and discourse on divine things, even if his head contains an entire patristic library. He who is not moved by a sunset, a tree, or a bird cannot be stirred even by the Creator of these things. In order to grasp God and be able to talk about Him to others you must be a poetic soul. It means that you must have a heart that is noble, sensitive, and pure. You must be as an ear that is turned to the whisperings of the Infinite, and as an eye that sees through the bottomless depths while all other eyes see only pitch blackness. It is impossible for timorous souls and stingy hearts to discourse on divine things.

Nostalgia for Paradise, by Dr. Alexander Kalomiros. 

How are we to talk about GOD? More Gordian Knots to come

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

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   an intricate problem especially  : a problem insoluble in its own terms —often used in the phrase cut the Gordian knot