nature of the divine

Human concepts can only approximate the holy transcendence that cradles existence itself. Even our most correct perceptual and existential paradigm is going to be inadequate. Concepts are maps, models. And all models are wrong, as the saying goes, but some are useful. The inadequacy of the map may be vexing in its inherent omissions, but

... See more

Right now, the source of the meaning crisis is our lack of any shared aspiration. We have lost touch with what we have in common, and as a result, we have become alienated. We have become incapable of communion—with each other, with the universe, and with God. We have lost touch and have become disintegrated, incapable of intimacy. Yet God is... See more

The word “God” is like a stick of dynamite. It remains valuable precisely because its utterance sets off such potent cultural and conceptual reverberations. Whitehead, in his own way, used it to name something at once tender and cosmic, intangible yet inescapable, the poet of the world who does not create the world from nothing but helps us make... See more

To address both the frame problem and the fine-tuning conundrum, I propose that the continuum of possibilities is itself structured by what we may as well call a divine act. This is not the notion of God as an external watchmaker who meticulously designs each actual outcome. Rather, I draw on Whitehead’s process philosophy to argue that the divine... See more

The process conception of God offers both a source of refreshment and a sense of relevant novelty, as well as a sense of companionship, because this is not a God that exists outside the world. This is a God who suffers with the world, as much subject as object, as much a lack as a presence. I do think there is a radical negativity in this vision in... See more

There has been criticism of the very use of the word “God” because it comes with so much baggage. I do not believe in the God Richard Dawkins rejects, and I understand the desire to avoid the term altogether. Yet I remain hesitant to simply throw it out, because to do so might be to break with a lineage of philosophical and spiritual reflection... See more