God, Religion and its Symbols

How to Spell the word God Tim? (Tim is a Jews). Hm..let me try, "G..D." Hey Tim, you missed the word O!"  I know Tom. That's my point, God is too big even to be captured and encapsulated by word, so I rather not spell it fully so by doing that, I save myself from reducing His Transcendence. I think, this short make up story sum up what most religious people believe about God particularity for those who hold on Monotheism. Jewish, Islam and also Christian believe that God is the Unknown Whole, The Wholly Other and He is incomprehensible being as Evagorius of Pontus says, "God cannot be grasped by mind. If he could be grasped, he would not be God." The word of Evagorius resonates to what Tim was doing in the beginning of the story. 

In Islamic Theology, God is beyond concepts and language. This is described in the theology of oneness, Tawhid. If we ponder deeper this reality, we find out that in Christian Faith, God is described as feminine and also masculine. Why so? Simple. It is not either or/or both. God is beyond gender. He is not a human that can be categorized easily by either man or female although Christian put primacy on the Masculine. In fact, Christian describes God as love. Love is no gender

Moreover, His transcendency is also encompass the realm beyond nature (Excluding all version of Pantheism who believes that God is nature and nature is God).Therefore to use science to disprove God is actually an act of scientism for reality of the universe cannot be reduced solely to the physical world. Huston Smith was famously known as a people who reject the scientism attitude as it will boxed God since God by definition is definitely beyond the scope of science to have the last world. Huston always warn people to distinguished carefully between science and scientism. Science build. Scienticm destroy. Huston wisely says regarding this manner, 

"If there is anything greater than we are-angels, extraterrestrials, God-we have no idea how those superior intelligent work, and so there's no way we can mount a controlled experiment to see if they are there or not. We are like pack dog saying, we keep hearing there is something called mathematics. Is there? Let's put in test. We will put it to the sniff test."

The closest word to describe or to catch the reality of God is Mystery. However, we must note that mystery is not equal to mysterious. For if God is mysterious, all our attempt to describe God is a failure and at best is just a mere guess and opinion. To get the glimpse of meaning what is to say that God is a mystery more deep, we can describe God's mystery using the analogy of the sun albeit I know, it still have several short-comings. There are many dimensions we can touch and relate from this analogy. Sun help us to see the world. Without its light we cannot see things of the world. I venture to be in line with Plantinga''s epistemology that God is the basic preposition needed before we perceived the world. Kevin Vanhoozer describe this as, "First Theology."And as we know, human being throughout history know deep inside their heart, there is something more than what meets the eyes. And of course, without God, human cannot explain the gap of their existential longing satisfactory and the tendency to make the totems. Moreover, sun also bring us an idea that God cannot be comprehended as easy as we thought of. There is a very vast distance (Literally saying) between the sun and the world (earth). There is a blazing fiery heat that comes out of sun so that so we cannot come closer as we like to explore the world of sun. This theme come repeatedly in Judaism. Exodus tells the story of how seeing God can bring death. This again emphasized the impossibility to see God in the first place. Thus, the gap is so immense. If it is true of sun, what we can say of God, who create the sun in the first place? 

Rudolf Otto, a German Scholars prominently described God with the Latin phrase mysterium tremendum et fascinans, which may be roughly translated as “mystery that overwhelms and yet fascinate.” In other words, we can conclude God as a mystery not just could trouble our mind, yet it can attract our attention and heart. Bringing this fact in mind, Some argue that God can and should only then described with a special language for the ordinary language fails miserably. The special language here is called as symbolism. All effort and things to describe God is at best, a "symbol" that try to catch the unapproachable reality.Without this kind of understanding, we will fail miserably and prevent us to understand God in a right way. Symbol always point to higher reality than itself. However if every religion has their own symbols then the questions is, who got it right or close to reality? For Universalist they will says that all symbols are pointed to the "One" yet the difference symbol among religion, whether it is cross, lotus or crescents are just a matter of cultural conditioning. This is quite reasonable yet, how can the universalist settle the apparent contradiction between the explication of the symbol by the religious community, particularly of the theology that is coming from the symbol itself. The best answer from them is to say that religious symbol cannot be understood in propositions but in mystical experience. 

Pertaining this issue, Paul Tillich bring an interesting criteria on which the symbol need to be justified. If the symbol claim to be "[t]he only correct symbol", then the symbol is not appropriate since it diminished and downplay all other symbols. The only correct symbol should be the symbol that must be affirming yet negating itself.  Here, the solution is uniquely according to Tillich is come from the cross. In his book Dynamics of Faith, Cross is the symbol that affirming Christ as God yet at the same time, negating himself as God. This free the cross from absolutization of the finite symbol. If the symbol is taken to be the the absolute, according to Tillich this symbol is a "demonic symbol." Fascinatingly, christian symbol of Cross is the only symbol that can free Christian from the failure of finite symbol to forget their identity as finite symbol. By denying and affirming the symbol at the same time, this raise the status of cross as the symbol to be unique than the other kind of symbols. Why so? because cross is the only symbol that can bring the absolute to the max and the finite in tension to the max as well, without failing away to be "demonic", in Tillich's term. There are more discussion that we can dig deeper from this but at least, we can conclude that all religions affirms, there is always a space for God that is belong to God Him-self. There is always a cloud of unknown that need to be set in its proper place. Yes, God might reveal some knowledge of Him to human being through the means of revelation, so that we know Him in some extend, necessarily. Yet, it's only a top of an iceberg. As the result, no one can claim arrogantly, "I am God expert!" This is the kind of Pharisees that Jesus critique in the past.