The true radicalism in the doctrine of God can only be a continual destruction of an idol
Karl Rahner
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The true radicalism in the doctrine of God can only be a continual destruction of an idol, an idol in the place of God, the idol of a theory of God.
Karl Rahner
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My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself. he is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of his presence.
C. S. Lewis
Stay with the idea that your most cherished picture or image of God…
Father/Mother
Rock
Ground of Being
Creator
Infinite
Good
…is only provisional, that it needs to die, that it only points to what is utterly inexpressible, deeply mysterious, beyond telling.
God is beyond words and images, beyond thought, unable to be “captured” or “held”- God who reveals and conceals. All this requires from us a willingness to discover God as a “beckoning word”, inviting us to explore a spaciousness where we can discover that our reality and the reality of God co-exists, without fear or rivalry or competition.
The image used in this post is one of the better known of Hildegard of Bingen’s illuminations.
It illustrates the unity of divine trinity, using images of a sapphire-blue human form, surrounded by multi-gold-colored circles, in the midst of a broad background and border, the human figure of Christ in the midst of the unknowable.
Laus Trinitati, que sonus et vita
ac creatrix omnium in vita ipsorum est,
et que laus angelice turbe
et mirus splendor archanorum,
que hominibus ignota sunt, est,
et que in omnibus vita est.
Praise to the Trinity—the sound and life
and creativity of all within their life,
the praise of the angelic host
and wondrous, brilliant splendor hid,
unknown to human minds, it is,
and life within all things.
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
1 Comment
Thank you, Philip, for Approaching God, Letting Go of God.