After I wrote my last post, I was reminded of another solution to the problem of making gods in our own image, one put forward by Bruce McCormack, professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton. McCormack focuses on an age old debate over the theology of Karl Barth. Barth wrote, in part, to refute “consciousness” theologians who, according to Barth, had been making god in their own image. In contrast, Barth’s theology sought to assert the transcendence of God. The question many have asked since is: did he succeed? McCormack, in a novel interpretation of Barth, seems to think that Barth has thrown the image making upstairs – instead of man making…
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A Picture of the gods
One of the ways to get a picture of God is to abstract from experience and maximize the property. For example, one might think something as good and therefore understand goodness. One might conclude that God is maximally good. Perhaps one might think of intelligence and conclude that God is maximally intelligent. And when one has built a collection of properties–maximal knowledge, strength, presence–one has a kind of theology of abstraction. God is a collection of abstracted properties of human experience. I met a man who lived on the Potomac River. When the space shuttle, Discovery, flew by on a hot sunny day, the man rushed into his yard with his iphone. He hastily…