Monday, January 12, 2015

"Latent" Christians

The following is a comment from a  Facebook forum that I participate in, "Celebrating Creation by natural Selection."   I would prefer to use the term  "latent" instead of "honorary," but otherwise, I think there is great wisdom and potential in this Acts 17 approach.

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Then I got an unexpected compliment from an atheist friend, "Well in fairness David, most of us atheists like you and would be happy if you considered us as honorary Christians "

I wanted to share my reply to that as an opportunity to say something about how I view the way non-Christians variously conceive of God.

Other religions do not strike me so much as wrong as they are mesmerized by a particular singular truth about God.

So to what my friend said, "most of us atheists like you and would be happy if you considered us as honorary Christians " I replied,

"I actually do that.

I believe everyone who belongs to a tradition/ viewpoint with any kind of history or staying power has a deep insight on God and has some participation in the Truth about Him.

Hindus are excellent at being in awe of God's everywhere-ness and that he fills all things, His immanence. This is something very right about God.

Deists are excellent at conceiving God as the ground of the reason and intelligibility of the world, His transcendence and otherness. This is something very right about God.

Buddhists are excellent at seeing the darkness and incomprehensibility of ultimate Reality. This is something very right about God.

Atheism is excellent at emphasizing the radical unknowability of God. This is something very right about God.

I see Christianity as being the most excellent in bringing together each of these views and balancing each one's truth with it's shadow truth (opposing views) to form a comprehensible whole (cata'holon) or catholic truth.

In short, yes, I see a lot of "honorary Christians" on these here forums>

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