The Game of God, Part 6: The ever-elusive God
“Why is the biblical God so elusive?” Bishop Robert Barron asked in a recent reflection. Answering his own rhetorical question, he said, “Because he brought the whole of the finite universe into existence. God must be other in a way that transcends any and all modes of otherness discoverable within creation.”
“Why is the biblical God so elusive?” Bishop Robert Barron asked in a recent reflection. Answering his own rhetorical question, he said, “Because he brought the whole of the finite universe into existence. God must be other in a way that transcends any and all modes of otherness discoverable within creation.”
Let me say it in a way that I understand better: The way we “understand” God can’t be God, because God transcends any way we might possibly conceive of him, which seems to maybe go beyond even God the Father, the Trinity or YHWH (יהוה).
This doesn’t mean that we can’t continue to operate within the Christian framework we understand, the one that Jesus gave us. Indeed, if Jesus said it, it is good enough for me. And perhaps we will find out the truth when we die and go to heaven with Jesus.
But is God beyond heaven?
That makes me think even further: God might be beyond even heaven; that is, even in heaven we might not fully understand this elusive God. I mean, we are the creatures and in heaven we will still be God’s creatures. Can the creature ever fully comprehend the Creator?
Maybe in heaven we will be with Jesus and his Holy Spirit, and all the saints and angels. And just like we are aware of the presence of God here on earth, maybe we will be aware of the presence of “the Father” in heaven, too, and his Trinitarian relationship with the Son and the Holy Spirit. But the totality of the elusive God — will we ever be able to comprehend, even in heaven?
God the Father and the resurrected body
Thinking still further, the Catholic religion puts a lot of emphasis on the resurrection of the body. The “Angelic Doctor,” St. Thomas Aquinas, surmised that along with Jesus, we will have glorified bodies. It will be the best body we might have potentially had, but never quite realized, on earth. Jesus had an earthly body, but God the Father never did. So the fact that God the Father did not participate in embodiment might add support to the conjecture that heaven is beyond heaven itself.
Going forward
Exciting revelations keep coming, as long as we are open to them and keep searching, as St. John Paul II encouraged us to do in Fides et Ratio. Openness and searching are not always comfortable exercises; but, then, what exercise is comfortable? We push ourselves, and then we rest; and in that rest we sometimes achieve greater understanding of what is revealed to us. And that does give us some comfort; at least, momentarily, until we start searching again.
Thomas Dorsel, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of psychology and a graduate of the University of Notre Dame. He lives on Hilton Head Island with his wife Sue and is a parishioner at St. Francis by the Sea Church. Visit him at dorsel.com.
