Proposition: The ‘God’ language I find to be most credible is found when discussing/considering the human geist (German for ‘spirit’, ‘self’, ‘mind’). The point is not that the human geist is equivalent to ‘God’, but that language about the human geist is as near as I come to ‘God’ language that does not veer off into anthropo-, socio-, and/or cosmomorphic language that falls short of ‘God’ and that easily/frequently becomes idolatrous. Is this a way to understand Bonhoeffer’s prison correspondence reference to ‘unconscious Christianity’? Can any language about ‘God’ avoid an idolatrous reduction of the word ‘God’?
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Friday, March 6, 2009
A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #95
[December 1999 journal entry]
Proposition: The ‘God’ language I find to be most credible is found when discussing/considering the human geist (German for ‘spirit’, ‘self’, ‘mind’). The point is not that the human geist is equivalent to ‘God’, but that language about the human geist is as near as I come to ‘God’ language that does not veer off into anthropo-, socio-, and/or cosmomorphic language that falls short of ‘God’ and that easily/frequently becomes idolatrous. Is this a way to understand Bonhoeffer’s prison correspondence reference to ‘unconscious Christianity’? Can any language about ‘God’ avoid an idolatrous reduction of the word ‘God’?
Proposition: The ‘God’ language I find to be most credible is found when discussing/considering the human geist (German for ‘spirit’, ‘self’, ‘mind’). The point is not that the human geist is equivalent to ‘God’, but that language about the human geist is as near as I come to ‘God’ language that does not veer off into anthropo-, socio-, and/or cosmomorphic language that falls short of ‘God’ and that easily/frequently becomes idolatrous. Is this a way to understand Bonhoeffer’s prison correspondence reference to ‘unconscious Christianity’? Can any language about ‘God’ avoid an idolatrous reduction of the word ‘God’?