[October 2000 journal entry]
Bonhoeffer asked in his 30 April 1944 prison letter -- “How do we speak of God -- without religion, i.e., without . . . .”? I think he was looking intently across the threshold into ‘non-religious’ territory. Before answering him, I would ask how he is nuancing the word ‘God’ in the question. I face at least two other questions re attempting to “speak of God” – an ‘if’ question and a ‘should we’ question -- before getting Bonhoeffer’s ‘how’ question. My variation on a ‘non-religious’/‘from below’ approach leads me to respond to Bonhoeffer’s question with four proposals -- (1) to speak of ‘God’ in a ‘religious’ way is no longer an option (for me, at least), (2) silence is more essential and central to experiencing ‘God’ than is any attempt to speak of ‘God’, (3) the reality to which the word ‘God’ points transcends all efforts to speak of ‘God’ (a Berdyaev-type point re anthropo-, socio-, and cosmomorphic language), and (4) attempts to speak of ‘God’ are most insightful and least vulnerable to idolatrous language when addressing who/what ‘God’ is not.
Bonhoeffer asked in his 30 April 1944 prison letter -- “How do we speak of God -- without religion, i.e., without . . . .”? I think he was looking intently across the threshold into ‘non-religious’ territory. Before answering him, I would ask how he is nuancing the word ‘God’ in the question. I face at least two other questions re attempting to “speak of God” – an ‘if’ question and a ‘should we’ question -- before getting Bonhoeffer’s ‘how’ question. My variation on a ‘non-religious’/‘from below’ approach leads me to respond to Bonhoeffer’s question with four proposals -- (1) to speak of ‘God’ in a ‘religious’ way is no longer an option (for me, at least), (2) silence is more essential and central to experiencing ‘God’ than is any attempt to speak of ‘God’, (3) the reality to which the word ‘God’ points transcends all efforts to speak of ‘God’ (a Berdyaev-type point re anthropo-, socio-, and cosmomorphic language), and (4) attempts to speak of ‘God’ are most insightful and least vulnerable to idolatrous language when addressing who/what ‘God’ is not.
