Where is God? A four fold problem.
Where and what are of course one and the same.
1)The easiest by far place to place a God is of course within the human mind. Soup up a mind, confuse it with the world and bingo one ha a God. The patterns of the seasons or the tides of a life become then as a God for us all. We echo a divinity that is always creature than us. As a way to dovetail a mind into the world this pagan methodology is unsurpassed. Who has not invoked God(S0 in someway. Who cannot feel that odd and deeply intuitive link between ones own thoughts and something beyond oneself. However rewarding however this appeal is, the methodology always comes up against the same basic buffer: Humean problem of scale. It is all very well to transfigure Gods into our own minds and visa versa, and yet with us we have at times at least an illusion of the self and a demand that everything in our minds hook up. The problem is then that this illusion this hook up is defined in terms of the natural part of a divinity. One can think of a world that is hooked together in the threw of a certain series of fates, and yet, and yet, a self conscious god arranged across all these fates good and bad? A dispassionate God which smiles equally at the good and the bad? A problematic god who kills as well as he creates? God becomes the God of beetles and the God of flu – the God whose pastoral care is problematic and complex….A god who does not really seem that responsive to what he creates.
God therefore by becoming self conscious becomes forced to account for himself – and promptly hits very heavy water.
2) the God of the beyond. Any self respecting all powerful divinity at this point will of course need to translocation elsewhere. It will therefore move beyond the world . this beyond theretofore offers the pretext for creation. God creates thing world in the light of fate and for some reason beyond any understanding. God therefore has a purpose for us and for creation. He thinks like us, but just not in this world. God’s self consciousness is then an excess that breaks itself within creation or across the creative. As he is self conscious he creates a world, this world because he can from his vantage point know it is the best (others were possible). This God then only has the fig leave of a morality ultimately derived form this within one axis of creation to guard him against the I chaos or infinity. That is only is morality and fate are transfigured into he same problem so God chooses the fate as best, does this move beyond realistic. If one rejects that God need operate outside creation as he does within creation then the enter picture is sewed or made more complex. Or to put it another way Self-consciousness jerks a god beyond creation, but not beyond the orbit and rigours of having a mind. God mind be beyond the world but he is beyond as our mind – and pitched into the many myriad universes as if we were a human mind framing the problem He is therefore nowhere other than a void and yet he is in the void as we would be, if we were lifted from here.
Humanity and the human mind then creates a privileged point of axis within a divinity (or better any self conscious flicker does). Self consciousness transfigures itself (and god rot the rest it says), but at the cost of morality as such (as many people will be condemned in God’s choice) and at the price of ignoring the fact that we are self conscious within the context of our world and our consciousness reflects that. One cannot then easily abstract that consciousness and place it beyond all worlds and expect it to be one and the same. Or if one could it would only be the emptiest abstracts that could be shared, which rips the heart out of the argument in the first place.
God beyond as a mirrors of self consciousness is essentially then more our creation and reflect more of our vanity then any amount of Pagan God.
3) God of reasons within creation. Perhaps then god I some impersonal force animating this creation but pantheistic dream or me and you being together – woooo! God would therefore keep the power of animating feelings and yet also keep the between in consciousness. God would then be that which forced us to hoop into our connection with ours and our permeability with creation. We are firmly a part of creation and not a kingdom within it.
This God is then ultimately the god of the beyond. He is the god who is in everything and yet in it as he is going elsewhere, a s he is building it in laws or fates or whatever takes your fancy. Or to put it another way, the problem of such a god is he s a bit of a dabbler in creation. He does not really act,. Rather he has a Charta of principles and a series of sheerings and attempts to match the one with the other, and hint to errant humanity the match. One has symbols and times drawing one into rather a normal beyond therefore. This god lapses I morality a little to readily.
Or else he collapses into a series of ethics about restraints and respecting Matter nature or whatever. He is everywhere and we ought to remember than. God therefore becomes outside to us as a pattern is outside. N outside which is in us as the wisher to behave the remembering that we ought not to fart in church or do anything too naughty. We are all in this and should leave the place tidy for others. God becomes then the mirror of manner is a world without the. Or better if becomes in the name of gender and balance the fixing of manners. Do not burp in front of god is not respectful; (in spite of the fact that God would be in the fart as much as anything else).To make then God the beyond of every as such is to loose the power of the divinity to actually be everywhere. It looses the sense of that everywhere in the bland realties that everywhere all too easily encompasses.
4) Or o put it another way, If God we really in us we are going to actually have to define feeling s and passion which hook us up not to an abstract divinity as such but rather involve us sharing what…Our feeling (but what does this mean?) hat does it mean to be a part in the feelings of others> a art in the feelings a god which is in others as oneself (and with due emphasis on both these words). What does a divinity beyond the encompass of a feeling and yet within it lend to that feeling/ bee more interesting what does a God which is in ones body and hooking it up to others and so rendering pen to do many things and many more things and still more bequeath the body and the mind as they grasp to understand that nature. What does it allow the finite elements of creation, what does it force them to think? Does it force or is it more sublet? What does it mean therefore to stop being ones own body as God will not necessarily understand the understand what this own is? What does it mean to stop having ones own feeling as wall? What does it mean to tie perceptions to and through other? What ? What?
How then can one thin oneself into other shoes and across othering places in this world? This is all the more problematic because if God is into the finite he must also encompass the two hidden strands of the Godhead above. That is god must be infusing choice as it is chosen in the will, he must therefore encompass at the point of acting many other universes (defined in the reaction to this action), but also he must be in the fates, in the eventual respond. He must therefore not know his mind until we do and yet allow for that mind in fate. He must therefore inhabit both many times and yet also this one- be causal and yet also invent the frames in which causes are. This must be done as we are in him as finite things and a part of him.
This is in enriches up with actions and more action, he opens universe for us, or we are his opening his actions, we a s a part of this infinite capacity for action. We are also in him then as these action area and bound results follow, results that three god always takes up into new actions (including the pumping out of all action in the chain of causes).
In short we must be gripped by the intellectual love elf god as spinoza understands it. We must be gripped therefore in the lack of self interest and the giving up in minds of what they are. must be gripped in the love creation has for itself. A love which is blessedness as virtue itself. A powerful calling.