God : an open question / Anton Houtepen ; translated by John Bowden.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Houtepen, Anton, 1940-2010.

Contributor:

Bowden, John.

Standardized Title:

God, een open vraag. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

God.

Physical Description:

xiv, 389 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Continuum, 2002.

Summary:

One of the most substantial and important books to come out of The Netherlands in the last decade, God: An Open Question (the title is meant positively: even in our age the question of God can still be raised meaningfully) describes the cultural and philosophical background to the widespread contemporary abandonment of God.

The book falls into four parts. After an introduction describing the current situation, the first examines the process of secularization, cultural apathy about God in the West, and the separate questions raised about God in the midst of suffering, violence and injustice. Part two looks at areas which are difficult to explain without reference to God: the emotions, the holy, the sense of God, the phenomena of human history. Part three discusses the idea of God as the caring creator, Jesus of Nazareth as God's messenger and God as dynamic energy. The last part discusses the many forms and names of God and the plurality of religion, outlining a new model, 'God as the infinite', alongside other contemporary approaches. It also examines the relationship between revelation and experience.

A final chapter sums up all these parts and sketches out what a theology which allows God as an open question could mean for our culture.

Contents:

Introduction: A Culture without God? 1

1 Taking Leave of God: An Inevitable Process? Sociological, philosophical and theological interpretations of the so-called secularization process 12

Secularization: the loss of ground by church and religion 13

Secularization: a long history 17

Secularization: irreversible? 25

2 The Many Colours of Agnosis: The complex roots of taking leave of God 31

Trivial agnosis 32

Vindictive agnosis: religious complexes of fear and guilt as arguments against God 35

Rational agnosis: God as the unnecessary duplication or projection of human possibilities; the crisis of classical metaphysics 42

Agnosis as a moratorium: a reprieve for church and theology 46

3 The Despairing Question: Where is God? 52

Where is God? 52

Taking leave of theodicy 54

A believing theodicy? 55

The theological theodicy 59

A re-reading of theodicy as an open question to God 62

Epicurus 62

Plotinus 64

Augustine 66

Thomas Aquinas 69

Luther 72

Leibniz 73

Kant 78

Conclusion: the theodicy question as a symptom of passion for the good 80

4 Traces of God: The Human Emotions: Desire, trust, protest and forgiveness 85

The ambivalence of the critique of the Enlightenment 88

Theological reactions 90

Passion: stories about weal and woe, values and emotions 92

The way of the emotions 93

The Christian religious emotions 95

The life form of desire 97

The life form of trust 101

The life form of protest 103

The life form of forgiveness 105

5 The Holy that may not be Violated: A Sight of the Divine: Quests beyond postmodernism 109

Taking leave of the sacral according to Habermas 111

The aporias of Habermas's consensus theory 117

The new holy 118

The metamorphoses of 'the holy': a semantic clarification 119

Hieros, hagios, hosios 121

From the sacred to the holy: the choice of Emmanuel Levinas 123

The holy: a matter of care and reverence 126

Ten values for the holy 127

6 Can God be Found in History? The open space of the possible 131

The question: where is God? 131

No trace of God 131

Domain, dimension, dynamic? 133

Salvation history: the mighty acts of God? 134

God: the source of our belief in God? 135

History as the central point of observation 136

God no outsider 138

Theology of history 139

The category of 'history' in ecumenical dialogue 141

God in nature and history 143

History as open future 146

History: more than the sum of moments of encounter 147

Chronos and kairos 148

The narrative path of Paul Ricoeur 149

History and imagination: two aspects of the narrative, two forms of passion for the possible 150

Conclusion: a plea for a biblical theology on a historical basis 152

7 God who Creates and Cares: The Father of All Human Beings: Fragments of a liberating theology of creation 155

God in nature and in space-time 155

God's creation: an alternative to dualism 156

A reversal of perspective 157

God: Father, Son and Spirit 159

The creating God 164

The aporias in belief in the creating God 165

The hymn to the creation: creation as praise 170

Creation faith: belief in the possibility of good 172

The primacy of belief in the creating God 173

God's constant care: providence? 179

God's good creation as 'redemptio continua': the basis for another metaphysics 183

Creation and the role of the human being 186

Synthesis 187

8 The God of the Living: Jesus of Nazareth as God's Messenger 190

Who is Jesus of Nazareth? 190

A preview 191

Jesus, the oldest son of God? 194

Who he is: a question which remains 196

Jesus the Christ, but how? 197

Jesus: an open question to God 200

The mystery of his life: the kingdom of God 201

Jesus, the risen one? 207

The living from the dead 208

9 The Holy Pneuma of God: God's life-giving power 215

The Spirit of God and our longing for spiritual growth 228

10 The One God and the Many Religions: The truth that enlightens all human beings 233

Pluralism as a pattern of life 235

The intentions of Vatican II 239

Seeking truth: the unique task of Jesus 244

Exclusivism, inclusivism, parallelism? 245

Religious freedom for the sake of the truth 250

11 Infinite God: Towards a God who Allows Himself to be Thought 255

Three positions in a recent debate 255

Taking leave of metaphysics? 258

Truth as construct: the WordPerfect logistics 260

Does God add anything to thought? 261

Modernity: from the 'four in harness' to the 'three in harness' 264

Descartes: another way of thinking 266

Idol or icon: Jean-Luc Marion's picture of God 269

Symbol and sacrament: Louis-Marie Chauvet 272

Emmanuel Levinas: Totality and Infinity 274

God as more than necessary: Eberhard Jungel 276

12 Revelation and Experience, Hypothesis and Apotheosis: The unnecessary opposition between revelation and experience and the place and task of theology in academic work 281

Revelation 284

Experience 291

Models of revelation in the twentieth century 293

The symbolic universe of revelation-in-tradition. Some thoughts from theological language theory 298

Hypothesis or apotheosis? 303

Theology as a discipline serving human salvation 305

Apotheosis 310

Epilogue: God: An Open Question in Our Aporia 314.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [322]-381) and index.

ISBN:

0826459501

082645951X

OCLC:

50924734