God: Dimensions of Meaning

To echo a comment made...by Paul Tillich, one of the twentieth century's two most important Prostestant theologians: if, when you think of the word "God," you are thinking of a reality that may or may not exist, you are not thinking of God. Tillich's point is that the word "God" does not refer to a particular existing being (that's the God of supernatural theism). Rather, the word "God" is the most common Western name for "what is," for "ultimate reality," for "the ground of being," for "Being itself," for "isness."

So, what meaning or content can we give to personal language for God? Thus far I have been able to see three dimensions of meaning:

Whatever God is ultimately like, our relationship to God is personal. This relationship engages us as persons at our deepest and most passionate level.

I am persuaded that God has more the quality of a "presence" than of a nonpersonal "energy" or "force." To use language Martin Buber used, I am persuaded that God has more the quality of a "you" than of an "it," more the quality of a person than the quality of an impersonal "source." I see this sense of God as a presence, as a "you," as grounded in experience.  I also see it reflected int he centrality of the notion of covenant in the Jewish and Christian traditions. We are in a covenantal relationship with "what is" and covenant is an intrinsically relational model of reality.

Moreover, I think God "speaks" to us.  I don't mean oral or aural revelation or divine dictation. But I think God "speaks" to us--sometimes dramatically in visions, less dramatically in some of our dreams, in internal "proddings" or "leadings," through people, and through the devotional practices and scriptures of our tradition. We sometimes have a sense--I sometimes have a sens of being addressed.

-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 72-73