This test, Which theologian are you?, has been making the rounds among Christians in the blogosphere. It's a series of theological questions with which you strongly disagree to strongly agree or somewhere in between, and at the end it will tell you whose theology you most match. It's a fun little test. I'm not going to let on where I fall ... simply because I've taken it three times and come up with three different answers. But there is one statement in there that I thought I'd address because it is so likely misunderstood ... and frankly because the idea is just fun to me.
"God does not exist. Rather, He is the ground of our being." Do you agree or disagree? Well, I suspect that the vast majority of Christians answering this question wouldn't even get to the second sentence and would immediately disagree because, well, we all know God exists. This would be a mistake, of course, because if the statement "God does not exist" means "There is no such thing as 'God'", then the second sentence is nonsense. How can an entity that is not be the "ground of our being"???
The question, then, is not about whether or not there is a God, but about the word, "exist". If you look the term up in a reasonably good dictionary, you will find that the word originates from Latin and is formed by two components. The first is "ex" meaning "out of", and the second is "sistere" meaning "to stand". The original word meant "to stand out of". Beyond that, the concept of "sistere" could be taken, at its core, to mean "being". In other words, the first part -- "ex" -- is "out of", and the second part -- "ist" -- is ... "is". At its roots, the word, "exist" means "that which is out of that which is". It is rooted in Greek philosophy, where there is an "is-ness" -- an essence of being -- from which all things ... exist -- is out of.
If one understands this concept, then, one would have to agree that God is not out of any essence. Instead, God would be the essence out of which everything is. Or, as Paul put it, "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Indeed, Paul's phrase exactly captures the essence of the question with which we started. God does not have being out of anything. Instead, God is the essence of all that is. God does not exist in the original sense of the word; He "ist".
1 comment:
Very interesting indeed, especially since I was just reading 1 John which really gets into the concept of WHO God is.
There were several statements on that "test" that indeed I was not sure I understood what they meant and struggled with how to answer.
Thus the reason it is hard to understand a man's doctrines based on a title or sentence. It surely takes a lot of explanation and then some questions to be sure you comprehend what a person believes.
Again, the reason I will not say I agree with "total depravity" or such things, because it depends on who is explaining it as to what it means. I believe in predestination and election, but again that is to what each person believes it means according to the Word. Man's words and understanding of topics varies and thus so much confusion.
Post a Comment