A Little Unbelief... ...is not always a bad thing

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SedesDomi

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I do not believe in a God whose will or motives are crystal clear to me. And as a person of faith, I find myself deeply suspicious of those who claim such insight. My faith carries within it a healthy dose of skepticism. Paul Tillich cautioned in Dynamics of Faith that “literalism deprives God of his ultimacy and, religiously speaking, of his majesty. It draws him down to the level of that which is not ultimate, the finite…. Faith, if it takes its symbols literally, becomes idolatrous! It calls something ultimate which is less than ultimate. Faith, conscious of the symbolic character of its symbols, gives God the honor which is due him.” This same perspective was expressed by Abraham Joshua Heschel in Man Is Not Alone (we can safely add “will of God” to what he says of God): “God cannot be distilled to a well-defined idea. All concepts fade when applied to His essence. To the pious man knowledge of God is not a thought within his grasp….” Or perhaps Martin Buber put it most succinctly: people “draw caricatures and write ‘God’ underneath.” Perhaps all three are telling us that in the face of the symbolic literalism of the “well-defined idea” or the caricature, true faith demands of us a certain measure of pious atheism.
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I would go a step further: a true Christian is a true atheist.
 
SedesDomi said:
I would go a step further: a true Christian is a true atheist.
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Isn’t that rather difficult for a religion where God has been reified - ie where the core of belief is a physical manifestation?
 
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