A personal God

A personal God

Many thelogians and Christian believers have no problem speaking of God in personal terms

For example, they assign to God attributes such as loving, forgiving and trustworthy, which have strongly personal associations

Another example, the Christian practice of prayer strongly resembles the relationship between a parent and a child.

A sinful person, repenting their sins, compares strongly to two aliented people consolling their relationship, such as alienated husband and wife 

Martin Buber: I-it, I-you, and I-thou relationships

• Buber believes that the relationship between a human and any object is an I-it relationship. I-it knowledge is indirect and contains specific content.

• The there is the I-you relationship, the relationship there is between 2 humans; and I-you relationship includes two active persons/participants. On this basis, Religious experience is a form of an I-you relationship - an expereicne of something, knowledge being indirect and immediate

• Finally, Buber speaks of an I-thou relationship, which is the direct and eternal relationship between God and a bliever. For Buber God is the eternal thou

Problems with a personal God

• Spinoza - Humans should love God but God cannot recipricate this. Spinoza sees got as the perfect being and therfore forever unchanged otherwise he would not be truly perfect. Love implies a change in the person, therfore God canot love humans as we understnad it.

• A personal God might imply that God is like a person, which demeens him to our level and suggests he may be in a definite place, undermining the idea of a trnascendent God

• A personal God creates problems with the trinity. If God is one person as the view of a personal God suggests, he cannot be three persons as the Doctrine of the Trinity says.