God As A Shape

Bishop John Spong is a Christian reformer. His sought for reforms are based on 12 points, but the first one seems the most interesting: "Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shelby_Spong

Now, I'm not entirely sure what Bishop Spong means by Theism. According to Wikipedia:

Theism, in this specific sense, conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe. The use of the word theism as indicating a particular doctrine of monotheism arose in the wake of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century to contrast with the then emerging deism that contended that God, though transcendent and supreme, did not intervene in the natural world and could be known rationally but not via revelation.

Rowan Williams is just retiring now (March 2012) as the Archbishop of Canterbury (that is, the Church of England Grand Poo-bah). He didn't like Bishop Spong's 12 points and in 1998 on this point about theism, he had this to say http://anglicanecumenicalsociety.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/bishop-spong-and-archbishop-williamss-response/ :

Classical theology maintains that God is indeed different from the universe. To say this is to suggest a radical difference between one agent and another in the world. God is not an object or agent over against the world; God is the eternal activity of unconstrained love, an activity that activates all that is around God is more intimate to the world than we can imagine, as the source of activity or energy itself; and God is more different than we can imagine, beyond category and kind and definition.

Thus God is never competing for space with agencies in the universe. When God acts, this does not mean that a hole is torn in the universe by an intervention from outside, but more that the immeasurably diverse relations between God’s act and created acts and processes may be more or less transparent to the presence of the unconstrained love that sustains them all.

Well, that is interesting. It is odd when people think very hard about all this stuff they never say anything that is completely wrong.

So lets start over then. Bishop Spong says, "we need a new way to think of God that isn't theistic". Theism centres around the idea that God is "... personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe". Archbishop Rowan says, "Dude - you can't really know God -- MORE DIFFERENT THAN WE CAN IMAGINE -- but when God acts he is really full of love and he is not in contradiction with all the other actors/agencies in the universe but his love SUSTAINS THEM ALL and, therefore, we need to keep Theism."

I think that, despite all the silly old-man-in-a-beard-on-a-cloud baggage, God is a useful term. But why do we need God? We need to refer to God for the things we don't understand. It is clear, however, that what we don't understand changes over time. Therefore we should not be surprised to find that the shape of God changes over time. Bishop Spong, as I see it, is saying that it is time for a new shape of God to emerge. I agree. And even Archbishop Rowan's observation that God is "more different than we can imagine" can be taken as not really in opposition to this idea.

So when we reject Theism, we are rejecting "God's will". This is important. Because those people who do not believe that God is the shape of the divine unknown want to tell you what God's will is. Dress this way, eat this way, pray this way, and - most importantly - genuflect to religious doctrine and religious authority. If the point about God is to try and reach out towards an unknown and always changing shape, then you cannot kill other people or tell them what to do based on what God wants. That is why God is a best understood as a shape, not a little-man-with-a-beard-on-a-cloud.

And, of course, Archbishop's Rowan's elaborate and sophisticated rumination which is very interesting is, unfortunately, in the end just a screen for bringing the little-old-man-with-a-beard-on-a-cloud back into the middle of religion. I, for one, feel that this is just not acceptable.

The shape of God is best understood as an onion. The shape of God will shrink (as it has shrunk) as time goes by, but it is still an onion no matter how small it gets. Indeed, it gets more onionish -- and more beautiful -- as the layers are removed! So don't despair.


This, I think, is what Spong is about. The God shape is really only needed to explain the origin of the universe and the nature of life. Science, art, music, etc., are all tools to help peel back the onion; indeed, as the onion gets smaller, the differences between God and all these other things start to disappear. Which is good.

Those people who wish to sustain their own authority by relying on God's will (the scowling Islamic fundamentalists, the neurotically bobbing Jewish people praying to a wall, the silly Christian bishops in their funny hats, and on and on) see this as a threat to their hierarchical power, their fortunes, their dominance in God's name. They are right!