Or, to say it in modernity's terms of the turn to the subject, the question is whether
we constitute God or God constitutes us.
Not exact matches
God's presence is the offering of relevant alternative ways of creatively responding to the past
or to the total environment, as this also participates in
constituting the new occasion.
Yet through all these diversities of phrasing — whether faith was thought of as a power - releasing confidence in
God,
or as selfcommitment to Christ that brought the divine Spirit into indwelling control of one's life,
or as the power by which we apprehend the eternal and invisible even while living in the world of sense,
or as the climactic vision of Christ as the Son of
God which crowns our surrender to his attractiveness,
or as assured conviction concerning great truths that underlie and
constitute the gospel — always the enlargement and enrichment of faith was opening new meanings in the experience of fellowship with
God and was influencing deeply both the idea and the practice of prayer.
The fact that the sign is often
constituted by a natural substance, such as water
or oil, points to the goodness of
God's creation.
Even supposing that two such pure opposites could
constitute one individual
or entity, this entity seems to have little to do with anything that has been meant by
God.
Worse still — and more to the point of my concern — the translation of the one Word of
God into direct social and political terms has meant that the churches neglect the message for which they do have sole responsibility, that which
constitutes their specific raison d'etre, and which no other agency in the world is called on
or is competent to proclaim: the gospel of Holy Scripture which has the power to make people wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15).
If there is a «treasury of the Church» (D 550 - 2,757,1541; Paul VI, Indulgentiarum Doctrina) which consists actually in the active union with
God of all justified Christians, then this, too, makes it clear that all acts of those justified in the Holy Spirit
constitute the very life of the Church, hence that the action of the Church is not the same as the action of her official representatives
or what is done explicitly in their name.
«Finitude, limited scope, birth and death
constitute the definiteness
or concreteness of our lives as contrasted with
God's.
If the Trinity is not organized democratically, it will be a quaternity, i.e., three personally ordered subordinate societies which correspond to the three persons of the Trinity, plus a fourth society, whether personally ordered
or not,
constituting their unity as one
God.
It affirmed that the church is
constituted by the will of
God» not by the will
or consent
or beliefs of men, whether as individuals
or societies.
It is not merely something interesting
or obscure that is told him about this beginning, but what and only what
constitutes the very foundation of his own existence as a life in
God's presence.
There is in Bloom's American religion no «sacred canopy,» no civil
or public
or societal religion, no law - making
or ethos - shaping impulse
or achievement, no objective witness to the
God who orders and
constitutes, no communalism, no sacramental element, no socially transforming faith.
That Jesus was fully human does mean that the actual occasions
constituting Jesus as a living person were not in any instance the actual entity
God or, if
God is conceived as a living person, the actual occasions
constituting the divine life.
In fact, logical interdependence is wholly compatible with the classical position that
God's knowledge
constitutes or creates its objects and thus is causally independent of them.
That is, we know
God in terms of his vision (his ordering of relevant possibilities), and this ordering
or vision is
constituted by the conceptual
or mental feelings of a physical process.
Since institutional
or public religion is a manifestation of group consciousness, the group consciousness and group conscience of ancient Israel
constituted its experience of
God's presence (INNW 32).
Acts of harm (whether against people
or the natural world) would then
constitute a trespass against the whole, against self, and ultimately, against
God.
Even as we are the selves we are only in relation to others and most directly to the others, the organs and cells, that
constitute our own bodies, so
God, too, exists as the supreme self only in relation to the cosmic body which is the world
or the universe as a whole.
God's Planet by owen gingerich harvard, 192 pages, $ 19.95 According to a famous formulation of Stephen Jay Gould, science and religion
constitute «non-overlapping magisteria»
or «NOMA.»
act as a distinct causal agent upon the parts which
constitute him and the cosmos.48 Moreover, panentheism includes the notion that
God's abstract essence
or eternal existence is logically independent of, and hence distinguishable from, every particular world.49
Moreover, he declares that
God is so highly exalted above the creatures that his immediate knowledge of all their states does not
constitute a tyrannical
or objectionable invasion of their rightful privacies.53
God is the immediate creator of the novel values
or patterns by which an event is
constituted as the harmonizing of a multiplicity.
Each continues, of course, to console himself with the delusion that his special system of theology
or his particular interpretation of the meaning of the Word of
God constitutes a universal frame of reference within which the other person is
or ought to be included and that consequently communication between them ought to be possible.
Although Dainichi is not a reality Christians
or Shingon Buddhists name as
God, like
God, Dainichi is the chief example of what
constitutes Life.
But to say that the
God who reveals himself is a hidden
God is to confess that revelation can never
constitute a body of truths which an institution may boast of
or take pride in possessing.
Though the thinking of our animistic ancestors may seem to us naïve, it remains true that a multitude of whimsical
gods, so
constituted that they are likely to be pleased
or displeased by almost anything, is not incongruous with the welter of man's joys and miseries, befalling him, at least when superficially observed, with irrational capriciousness.
Or, one might say, it is the will to shatter the false scandal
constituted by the absurdity of the mythological representation of the world by a modern man and to make apparent the true scandal, the folly of
God in Jesus Christ, which is a scandal for all men in all times.
The priest
or pastor is sometimes confused today as to what
constitutes his real role, for it seems so much more limited than it was in an earlier day when he was a «father - in -
god» to his flock in every possible way.
For most of European history from the emperor Constantine's embrace of Christianity onwards there has been a strong tendency to identify worship of
God with loyalty to and reverence for the tradition and authorities that
constitute the Holy Roman Empire,
or its competing fragments in the Middle Ages,
or their successor nation states,
or one's home town and its familiar «way of life.»
And the «mighty deeds of
God,» which
constitute the experience of
God's power, are no longer limited to a particular people, a particular language
or cultural group.
Among them were pantheism and the positions that human reason is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood and good and evil; that Christian faith contradicts reason; that Christ is a myth; that philosophy must be treated without reference to supernatural revelation; that every man is free to embrace the religion which, guided by the light of reason, he believes to be true; that Protestantism is another form of the Christian religion in which it is possible to be as pleasing to
God as in the Catholic Church; that the civil power can determine the limits within which the Catholic Church may exercise authority; that Roman Pontiffs and Ecumenical Councils have erred in defining matters of faith and morals; that the Church does not have direct
or indirect temporal power
or the right to invoke force; that in a conflict between Church and State the civil law should prevail; that the civil power has the right to appoint and depose bishops; that the entire direction of public schools in which the youth of Christian states are educated must be by the civil power; that the Church should be separated from the State and the State from the Church; that moral laws do not need divine sanction; that it is permissible to rebel against legitimate princes; that a civil contract may among Christians
constitute true marriage; that the Catholic religion should no longer be the religion of the State to the exclusion of all other forms of worship; and «that the Roman Pontiff can and should reconcile himself to and agree with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.»
31As is evinced by the following quotations from Nobo: «Moreover, each completed stage in the supersessional development of
God's consequent nature is causally objectifiable because it
constitutes a complete physical synthesis produced by the consequent creative activity out of all the attained actualities already in existence relative to the beginning of that stage of the divine development (PR 523 - 524)»; its continuation: «In this account, the primordial nature and each already completed stage of the consequent nature represent each a specific,
or relative, satisfaction of the divine concrescence.
The universe, at those parts of it which our personal being
constitutes, takes a turn genuinely for the worse
or for the better in proportion as each one of us fulfills
or evades
God's demands.
It
constitutes a firm rejection of any notion of karma
or kismet that would make
God or destiny
or behavior in a past life
or childhood mistreatment responsible for one's actions.
Religion, after all, is
constituted by symbolism — whether in primitive amulets, totems, and rituals, the earth and sky
god mythologies of ancient civilizations, crucifixes and relics of the medieval church, formalized texts and creeds of the world's great modern religions,
or even the sacred rites and markers we use to define ourselves, our relations to nature, our sense of personal identity, and our collective loyalties and destinies.