GEN571 Theology is the art of seeing the world from God’s point of view. We humans, however, see the world from our point of view, especially since the Enlightenment. … Theology [] works with traditions and experiences which see God as the determining actor in nature and history, or at least as an active partner in these realms. Human awareness of God through personal experience becomes central in the theological perspective. We sense God in nature, in our personal lives, and in the our life as a society and we acknowledge God’s influencing presence. Human awareness of God through the voices of others embodied in traditional texts is also central to the theological perspective. We read these texts and they echo in our heart. We listen to these other voices and they resonate in our minds and souls. This point of view is theocentric. Theologians try to give expression and coherence to it. In this view, humans are formed in the image of God. [citations]. How does the human record of doing evil and good look from God’s point of view? In the beginning, there was only God. And God was personhood personified—capable of joy, anger, love, appreciation of beauty, humor, frustration, contentedness, relief, and many other affections. But there was no being outside God’s self with whom God could relate. So God created the universe, first the forces of nature and afterwards humanity, for the forces of nature do not have personhood while humanity has been given that special divine gift. Initially, God set humanity fully within nature, unaware and incapable of good and evil but, in this state, humanity was not fully person. So God offered humanity knowledge of good and evil, which made them wholly person. When human kind turned to evil, “God regretted that He had made humanity in the universe and He was deeply sad in His heart. God said ‘I will obliterate humanity with which I made from upon the face of the universe, humanity together with the animals the creeping things, and the birds of the sky, for I regret that I made them.’” When humanity was restored, God established a general covenant with them but chose one man to be a loyal servant. When that man’s family grew large, God gave them a Torah with laws, instructions, warning, and promises, intending that these should guide them toward good and away from evil. Again and again, God’s people sinned and God punished them but still humanity did not avoid evil and do good. And God was deeply pained and knew grief. … [
Jeremiah 31:10 and midrashic citations;
Zohar 3:74b] From God’s point of view, then, God gave humanity commandments but we ignored them, or denied them, or reduced even the ethical commandments to ritual, making instruction into magic and guidance into superstition. From God’s point of view, God gave us reason and the power to legislate for ourselves but we distorted that reason and abused that power, “fattening our hearts, stopping our ears, and averting our eyes lest we really see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and understand in our hearts.”
Isaiah 6:10 From God’s point of view, God gave us freedom and responsibility, especially after the Enlightenment, but we betrayed that responsibility and turned against that freedom replacing liberty with tyranny and tolerance with bigotry. From God’s point of view, God gave us all the technology we could possibly want but, even though we used it to create good, we also used it to do evil, rating concentration camps as well as antibiotics, and nuclear bombs as well as computers. To put it simply, from God’s point of view, humanity has been repeatedly sinful. Even though God has been gracious and forgiven us, we have turned again and again to sin. This is God’s distress, God’s anguish. This is God’s sorrow, God’s grief. One might say, this is God’s despair.
Isaiah 1:2-3. BANAL 106-8
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