Course Syllabus
CONCEPTS OF GOD
Philosophy 199
Winter Quarter 2008
Course Instructor: Richard C. Lang
Credit Hours: 2 credits
Thursday afternoons, 3:00-5:00 p.m.
Class Size Limit: 40 students
General Description:
This course examines the history of the concept of God in the Western religious, philosophical, scientific and cultural traditions. We will give special attention to the 17th Century Age of Reason, the 18th Century Age of Romanticism, the 19th Century Age of Ideology, the 20th Century Age of Anxiety, and the 21st Century Age of Globalization. We will also examine the analogical, symbolic, dialectical and symbolic nature of religious language, and its complex relationship to philosophy, history, science, linguistics, literature, poetry and the arts.
Course Objectives
Students will be able to:
- Identify the viewpoints of the leading thinkers in the western intellectual tradition who have addressed the question of God. These thinkers include Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, John Scotus Erigena, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Al-Ghazali, Anselm, Averros, Maimonides, Bonaventure, Aquinas, William of Ockham, Meister Eckhart, Giordano Bruno, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Rene Descartes, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Ludwig Feurerbach, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (to name a few).
- Identify and discuss the “divine attributes” as developed in the thinking of classical theism, and the various ways that these “divine attributes” have been contested, qualified and challenged in the modern period
- Identify the major scientists of the modern period who have had a profound influence upon the ways people conceive of God
- Discuss the relationship between four historical phases of religious development: the local, canonical, critical and global phases of development
- Discuss the dialectical tension within religious traditions between the conserving influences of exemplar, community, scripture and tradition on the one hand and the liberalizing influence of philosophy, science, poetry and the arts on the other
- Discuss the analogical and symbolic nature of religious language in its complex relationship to philosophy, science, history, myth, poetry, imagination and the arts.
Required Texts:
God: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Keith Ward
The Experience of God: Icons of the Mystery, by Raimon Panikkar
Evaluation Techniques
Students will be graded on the basis of attendance, participation, weekly written assignments and self-assessment paper. All students are expected to attend all class sessions. It is the responsibility of the student to inform the instructor in advance if he or she is unable to attend class. Unexcused absences will definitely affect the final grade.
Writing Assignments
Students will write a two-page paper each week that summarizes and responds to the text reading assignments.
In addition, they will write a two-page personal growth self-assessment paper at the end of the course, reflecting upon what they have learned about themselves and their own construction of reality.
Contact Person
Rich Lang, office phone: 488-2304; omegahouse@charter.net
Session One: Various Concepts of God
| Revealed, Intuited | Real – Symbolic – Myth – Illusion | Discovered, Constructed |
| Objective | Unity-Differentiation-Relation | Subjective |
| Knowable: Revealed | Revealed & Concealed | Unknowable: Hidden |
| Transcendent (Beyond) | Relational | Immanent (Within) |
| Transpersonal | Personal | Impersonal |
| One: Monotheism | Unitive Pluralism | Many: Polytheism |
| None: Atheism | Nirvana / Brahman | All: Pantheism |
| Masculine | Yang/Yin | Feminine |
| Authority | Covenant | Equality |
| Truth: Mind | Truth & Love | Love: Heart |
| Good: Will | Goodness & Beauty | Beauty: Soul |
| Sagacious: Asian | Prophetic: Abrahamic | Mystical: Vedic |
| The Divine, Essence | The Human, Emergence | The Cosmos, Emptiness |
Part I:
God: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Keith Ward
Essay and Discussion Questions
Session Two: Chapter 1: A Feeling for the Gods I
1. God, Literalism and Poetry 1;
What is the difference between a “literal anthropomorphic”, “symbolic realist” and “mythic non-realist” interpretation of the word God? Why is the word God ambiguous and problematic?
2. A World Full of Gods 4;
What is a “muse”? What does it mean to see the world as ‘full of gods’, as the Greeks did?
3. Descartes and the Cosmic Machine 7;
Who are Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton? What are their definitive books? What does it mean to see the world, like Descartes, and Isaac Newton, as the cosmic machine?
4. Wordsworth and Blake: the Gods and Poetic Imagination 9;
Who are Wordsworth and Blake? What are their definitive poems? What role did they give to the poetic imagination? How were the 18th Century Romantics different from the 17th Century Rationalists? Who is the god Apollo?
5. Conflict Among the Gods 14;
How were the ancient Greek gods different from they way they were portrayed by the 18th Century Romantics? What does conflict among the gods represent in human experience in the world?
6. Friedrich Schleiermacher: A Romantic Account of the Gods 18;
Who is Scheliermacher? What is his definitive book? How did he re-interpret the meaning of religion? What did he mean by saying that it is not really about creeds and speculative beliefs? What was it about for him? What does Schleiermacher mean by religious feeling?
7. Rudolf Otto: The Sense of the Numinous 24;
Who is Rudolf Otto? What is his definitive book? What does he mean by the sense of the “numinous”?
8. Martin Buber: Life as I-Thou Encounter 31;
Who is Martin Buber? What is his definitive book? What does he mean by ‘I-Thou encounter?
9. Epilogue: The Testimony of a Secularist 33
Who is James Frazer? What is his definitive book? What feeling do you get from Frazer’s description of the gods of antiquity? What do you make of the fact that Frazer, a modern secularist, has a feeling for the gods?
Session Three: Beyond the Gods 36
Prophets and Seers 36;
What are prophets and seers? What are the names of several of the major biblical prophets?
Basil, Gregory Palamas and Maimonides: the apophatic way 44;
Who are Basil, Palamas and Moimonides? What did they write? What is the “apophatic” way? How is this contrasted with the “kataphatic” way? What is the paradox of these two ways?
Thomas Aquinas: The Simplicity of God 50;
Who is Thomas Aquinas? What is his definitive book? What does he mean by the “simplicity” of God?
The
What are Aquinas’ five ways of demonstrating God? What is the current intellectual status of these five arguments?
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, al-Ghazali, Sankara 57;
Who are these three individuals? What were their religious traditions? What are their central concepts of God? What are the similarities between them?
The Doctrine of Analogy 60;
What is the doctrine of “analogy”? What is the “analogical imagination” with respect to language about God? What is the strength and weakness of speaking “poetically” about God through the language of analogies, metaphors, stories and parables?
Three Mystics: The Cloud of Unknowing, Teresa of
What is a “mystic? Who are these three mystics? What are their definitive writings? What kind of language did they use to describe their experience of God? Why does the kind of language we use make a difference?
Session Four: The Love that Moves the Sun 67
1. The 613 Commandments 67
What is the point of all the commandments in the Jewish Tradition? How do modern secular people sometimes misunderstand the meaning of these commandments?
2. Pigs and Other Animals 69
What speculation does the author give as to why pigs may have been regarded as “unclean”? What is mana power?
3. The Two Great Commandments 71
What are the two great commandments? Where are they found in the Old Testament? In the New Testament?
4. The Ten Commandments 73
What are the Ten Commandments? To whom were they given and within what context? Is there a problem with applying the Ten Commandments as universal law for all peoples and societies?
5. Jesus and the Law 78
How does Jesus understand the nature of the law, or Torah? What does he mean when he says that he has not come to destroy the law but to full the law?
6. Calvin and the Commandments 80
How does Calvin re-interpret the Ten Commandments and apply them to the Christian faith community?
7. Faith and Works 83
What is the meaning of the debate between “salvation by faith” vs. “salvation by works?” Who is John Calvin? What did he write? How does Calvin’s emphasis on divine election (pre-destination) and human faith create new problems while attempting to solve old ones? Why does Calvin’s doctrine of divine election by grace create less anxiety in some people and more anxiety in others?
8. Theistic morality as fulfilling God’s purpose 85
What is the essence of theistic morality? Is it primarily rooted in fear or love?
9. Kant, The Categorical Imperative and Faith 88
Who is Kant? What did he write? What does Kant mean by the categorical imperative? Why did he want to construct an autonomous ethic that did not depend upon religious faith?
10. God as Creative Freedom, Affective knowledge and Illimitable Love 96
What practical difference does it make of we conceive of “God” in these terms? To what is this view of
God being contrasted? How does one’s “God concept” impact one’s actual life and relationships?
Session Five: The Poet of the World 140
The Timeless and Immutable God 140
Why did the ancients conceive of “God” as Timeless and Immutable?
The Rejection of Platonism (Plato) 144
Who is Plato? What did he write? What is Platonism? What is it about Platonism that was rejected in the modern period? What is Christian Neo-Platonism? How is it different from Classical Platonism?
Hegel and the Philosophy of Absolute Spirit 148
Who is Hegel? What did he write? What is the essence of his philosophy of Absolute Spirit? How does he radically re-interpret the meaning of Christianity?
Marx and the Dialectic of History 152
Who is Karl Marx? What did he write? What is the essence of his philosophy of “dialectical materialism”? What does it mean that he turned Hegel on his head? What was Marx’s view of religion?
Pantheism and Panentheism 158
What is pantheism? What is panentheism? What is the difference between them? (Read the wikipedia articles). What is transcendental idealism? What is process theism? How are they different?
Time and Creativity 162
What is the significance of time and creativity according to the pan-en-theistic conception of God? How is this different from both the traditional pantheist and theist views?
The Redemption of Suffering 164
What is meant by the idea of “the redemption of suffering”? What is meant by the pan-en-theistic idea that God suffers and is moved by the suffering that happens in the cosmos? How does this contrast with the traditional classical (Greek influenced) theistic idea of the “impassibility” of God? How does this view correlate with the traditional Jewish conception of God?
History and the Purposive Cosmos 167
What is the difference between conceiving history and the cosmos as “purposeless” and “purposive”? What practical consequences follow IF these are viewed as mutually exclusive propositions? Can they both be “partly right”, or must one choose between them? Can there be two ultimate realities, one personal and the other impersonal? Can there be one Ultimate reality with dual aspects, one purposeful, that is, active will, and the other purposeless, that is, passive void? Are the ultimate reality of Being and Nothingness, Essence and Emptiness mutually excusive propositions? Can they be dialectically integrated? What are the implications for global dialogue between Theism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Naturalism?
Process Philosophy: Whitehead 171
Who is Alfred North Whitehead? What did he write? What is process philosophy? What important modern religious thinkers and theologians have been deeply influenced by Whitehead?
The Collapse of the Metaphysical Vision 175
Why did “the metaphysical vision” collapse into metaphysical skepticism? Was the metaphysical vision of Whitehead proven false, or did it simply go out of fashion? What impact do you think wars and calamities have on intellectual movements? Why are some people metaphysical (or cosmological) optimists and others metaphysical (or cosmological) pessimists? What’s the difference?
Session Seven: The Darkness Between the Stars 179
1. Pascal: Faith and Skepticism 179
How is Blaise Pascal? How does he attempt to resolve the struggle between faith and skepticism?
2. A.J. Ayer: The Death of Metaphysics 182
Who is A.J. Ayer? What did he write? What is his argument for the death of metaphysics? What is rationalism? Positivism?
3. Scientific Hypotheses and Existential Questions 185
What do we mean by “scientific hypotheses”? What are the basic existential questions? To what extent can scientific knowledge answer the existential questions? Why or why not?
4. Kierkegaard: Truth as Subjectivity 188
Who is Soren Kierkegaard? What did he write? What does he mean by the idea that truth is subjectivity?
5. Sartre: Freedom from a Repressive God 191
Who is Jean-Paul Sartre? What did he write? What is his conception of God? What did he mean by the idea that existence precedes essence? What would it mean if essence precedes existence? What would it mean if essence and existence were two aspect of the same complex reality?
6. Heidegger and Kierkegaard: The Absolute Paradox 193
Who are Heidegger and Kierkegaard? What did they write? What do Heidegger and Kierkegaard mean by identifying God, or Ultimate Reality as the absolute paradox?
7. Tillich: Religious Symbols 196
Who is Paul Tillich? What did he write? What does he mean by the idea of religious symbols?
8. Wittgenstein: Pictures of Human Life 199
Who was Wittgenstein? What does he mean by the idea of various interpretative communities embodying different pictures of human life?
9. Religious Language and Forms of Life 202
What does he mean by the idea that various religions (and ideologies) are self-referential language games and forms of life? What is meant by the idea of a hermeneutical circle?
10. Religion and ‘Seeing As’ 205
What is meant by the idea of religion as ‘seeing as’? Is this different from wishful thinking?
11. Spirituality Without Belief 209
What does it mean to have spirituality without belief in God?
12. Non-Realism and God 212
What is religious non-realism? What is Jewish and/or Christian atheism? Is this an oxymoron?
13. The Silence of the Heart 215
What is meant by the silence of the heart?
Session Eight: The Personal Ground of Being 219
1. God as Omnipotent Person 219
What is the difference between classical theism and process panentheism with regard to the question of whether God is conceived as omnipotent (all powerful) or not?
2. The Problem of Evil 223
What is the problem of evil for those who believe in an all-good, all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God? What are some ways that theists have sought to resolve this problem? What is the problem of good for those who believe that existence is meaningless and absurd from top to bottom?
3. Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil 224
Who are Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche? What is meant by the idea that reality is beyond good and evil? What are its ethical and social consequences? What is the difference between detached philosophical nihilism, unconscious philistine nihilism and predatory barbarian nihilism?
4. Omniscience and Creative Freedom 227
How do traditional theists and process panentheists reconcile divine omniscience (all knowing) and natural creative freedom differently?
5. God: Person or Personal? 228
What is the difference between describing God as a person and describing God as personal? What is the difference between literal anthropomorphic language and analogical anthropological language about God?
6. Persons as Relational 231
What does it mean to describe God as relational?
7. The Idea of the Trinity 234
What is the idea of The Divine Trinity? How has it been variously interpreted?
8. The Revelatory Roots of Religion 237
According to the author, what are the revelatory roots of religion?
Summary:
Explain what Keith Ward means by each of the following ideas:
1. God as the powers of being
2. God as the one beyond speech
3. God as the perfect good
4. God as self-existent creator
5. God as self-realizing spirit
6. God as ultimate good of being
7. God as personal ground of being
Which, if any, of these conceptions of God are meaningful and illuminating to you?
Part II:
The Experience of God: Icons of the Mystery, by Raimon Panikkar
Session Nine:
Chapter 1: Speaking of God. Chapter 2: The Experience of God
1. Speaking of God
Requires a prior interior silence. Has its own style. Involves our whole being. Regards God alone. Needs the mediation of a belief. Regards symbol and not concept. Includes several meanings. Does not exhaust the divine.
Leads back to a new silence.
Elaborate upon what Raimon Panikkar claims to be the nature of speech about God. What conventional ways of thinking and talking about God does this question and challenge?
II. The Experience of God
The silence of life. Constituents of the experience. Faith, acts of faith, and belief. The triple horizon of divinity.
Fragments on the experience of God. Of initiation. Passive attitude: yin
Elaborate upon what Raimon Panikkar claims to be the characteristics of the experience of God. What conventional western, archetypally masculine way of approaching the experience of God does this question and challenge?
Session Ten:
Chapter 4: Privileged Places of the Experience of God
Love. The Thou. Joy. Suffering. Evil. Pardon. Crucial moments. Nature. Silence. Propitious Places.
Elaborate on what Raimon Panikkar means by identifying the above list as privileged places of the experience of God.
Personal Growth Self-Assessment Questions:
1. As a result of this study in Concepts of God, what ideas and insights have been most engaging and illuminating to you?
2. What thinkers that we have encountered – theologians, philosophers, scientists, and poets -- have been most significant and intriguing for you?
3. How would you articulate your evolving concept of “God” or “no-God”, whatever that means to you?
4. What would you say is the personal and cultural value of studying and reflecting upon the history of concepts of God, regardless of whether one happens to believe in a definitive concept of God or not?
