Tim

Attwell
God for
grownups
‘Something happens at about age
ten to twelve that causes people
to stop asking questions or seeking
serious answers when it comes to
religious belief and faith.’
 About the author

Since he was a small boy Tim Attwell has always asked

questions: “Why is there something and not nothing?”
“When is something ‘true’ and what does ‘true’ mean
anyway?” “What is God and why is God so compellingly
attractive?”
He is as obsessively curious about nature as he is about
thinking: “What flower is that?” “Is that a sound argument?”
“What kind of rocks are those?” “What is that concept?”
Retired after forty years in rural, urban, suburban and
academic Methodist Ministry, he broadcasts religious
think pieces on radio, is an active member of the Mountain
Club and the Botanical Society of South Africa and is a
field and mountain guide.
Married to Barbara, they live at Scarborough – a little
village on the wilder side of the Cape Peninsula, south of
Cape Town.
God for Grown-ups
Tim Att well
 God for Grown-ups
© Timothy B. Attwell 2009
ISBN: 978-1-920218-40-9

Published by Electric Book Works, electricbookworks.com

Electric Book Works, 87 Station Road, Observatory,
Cape Town 7925, South Africa.
Contents
1–What is God? 7
2–Does the Bible matter? 21
3–What is the Church? 41
4–The Poetry of Faith 55
1
What is God?
Why the course title: “God for Grown-ups?”
Before we get on with the question “What is
God?” I ought to justify the course title “God for
Grown-ups”. Of course children are welcome, but
there are two reasons why this course is specifically
intended for adults – both of them having to do with
personal development into responsible adulthood.
The first reason has to do with the development of
cognitive and conceptual ability. In almost every field
of human enquiry it is assumed that our knowledge and
cognitive and conceptual ability develop as we grow older.
Under the broad heading of “operational thinking” we
develop in our ability to reason things out, ask questions,
make observations, experiment, test working hypotheses
and come up with ways of understanding at ever more
sophisticated levels. I say “almost” every field of human
enquiry because one field of thought where this doesn’t
 —God for Grown-ups

happen nearly enough, if at all, is religion. Something

happens at about age ten to twelve that causes people to
stop asking questions or seeking serious answers to those
questions when it comes to religious belief and faith.
The most common of these stoppages happens at
pre-adolescence. At that stage we resolve the question
of where and what God is by creating two parallel
universes: the material and the spiritual. This material
world and God are assigned to each one respectively
and the link between them is not thoroughly thought
out. Then we live the rest of our lives with an
inadequate dualism in which the two realms are never
quite reconciled. For everyday, practical purposes
the only way the “spiritual” or “God” dimension or
parallel universe can impact on the material, “this
worldly” realm is by “magic” or the supernatural.
This is plainly absurd, even when considered in purely
religious terms. Effectively we are saying that “God”, the
determining factor behind the whole material order,
can only have access to that order by suspending its
regular operation, which God originated! Clearly this
is an example of the failure of operational thinking.
So, to be even partly successful in exercising our
adult operational thinking when it comes to religious
belief we have to push beyond the capabilities of our
pre-adolescent years and beyond the oversimplified
dualism that divides reality into two irreconcilable parts.
 What is God?—

We have to think, in other words, as adults if we are to

give our concept of God and our religious convictions
any cognitive and conceptual credibility at all.

The second reason why this is called “God for

Grown-ups” has to do with the development of well-
rounded personality and maturity. Voltaire, Ludwig
Feuerbach and Sigmund Freud rejected religious
belief and faith as unworthy of mature adults on the
ground, they argued, that the concept of God is a
projection of human insecurity onto the cosmos.
People feel inadequate, they argued. As a result they
create a kind of “cosmic parent” whom they invest
with all the powers of omnipotence, omniscience,
omnipresence as well as immortality, infinitude,
immutability and impassivity that they themselves and
their all too fallible parents don’t have. This “cosmic
parent” then supplies what they are unable to supply for
themselves – rules to live by, knowledge beyond their
capacity, problem-solving skills they don’t have and so on.
“God,” says Voltaire, “is made in man’s image.” Well,
 10—God for Grown-ups

at least in the reverse image of human frailty. Then,

according to Freud, we remain fatally and neurotically
dependant on this “god” we have created and
never develop trust in our own capabilities.
In large measure Voltaire, Feuerbach and Freud
are correct. There is much religion that makes a
god of this imaginary cosmic parent and keeps
its devotees in a perpetual state of infantile and
neurotic dependency, robbing people of their
ability to think for themselves and meet challenges
confidently with the resources at their command.
But that kind of religion is not all there is. Neither is
that immature kind of religious faith a true reflection of
religious faith at its highest and most developed, as we find
it, for instance, in the prophecies of Jeremiah and Isaiah. In
the Gospels the contest between Jesus and the Pharisees is
almost entirely between life-diminishing religion and life-
affirming faith. The letters to the Romans and Ephesians
are towering expositions of faith that empowers people
rather than reduces them to servility and dependency.
Far from creating neurotic dependency, religious
faith at its best enables people to develop a profound
sense of their own worth, capability, interpersonal
competence and basic trust in life itself that sets them
free to engage with life confidently. When Jesus speaks
of enabling people to “have life in all its fullness” he’s
talking about people discovering an inner sense of
 What is God?—11

personal security and confidence both inside and outside

the secure “sheepfold” of their own comfort zones.
When St Paul writes of “doing all things through Christ
who strengthens me” or the letter to the Ephesians tells
of people growing to “a measure of the stature of the
fullness of Christ, to maturity”, they are not speaking
of infantile, neurotic dependency. They are speaking of
mature, capable, confident human beings confronting the
challenges of life in the full confidence of adult maturity.
If religious belief and faith are to have anything to
offer the vast number of people whose operational
thinking and personal responsibility have taken them
beyond the swaddling clothes of childhood, then
the expressions of that belief and faith have to show
evidence of the very best of adult thinking. Hence
the title of this course: “God for Grown-ups”.

Now we can ask the question: “What is God?”

In order to begin thinking about this question I find
it helpful to go all the way back to Aristotle, who lived
from 384 to 322 BCE. I know Aristotle wasn’t a biblical
 12—God for Grown-ups

figure, but he had a major impact on the way we think

today, especially in the realms of philosophy and science.
It is also helpful to go back to Aristotle because it
makes the point that what I have to say now is not new.
The ways of thinking about God that I am outlining
are not “modern” ideas, but ways of thinking that
have been around for well over two thousand years
and have been refined and developed at various times
in the history of religion in general and Christianity
in particular, not least by that great thinker of the
13th century CE, St Thomas Aquinas (1226–1274).
Unlike his mentor Plato (429–347 BCE), Aristotle
declined to separate “reality” into two parts – the
spiritual and the physical. In other words, he turned
away from the dualism we have already questioned.
What Aristotle developed were the concepts
of potentiality and actuality. Reality itself is in a
constant process of the actualisation of potential.
What can possibly be is constantly coming into
actual being. I know I am oversimplifying Aristotle’s
thought unmercifully here, but time is short!
To illustrate the point, the cells in your and my bodies
are continually renewing themselves as we sit here. For
instance, did you know that within a week from now the
cells that make up our skin will be completely renewed?
Meanwhile, there is an ongoing evolution of all the life
forms on Earth while the great galaxies unimaginably far
 What is God?—13

out in space continue to develop, as recent pictures taken

by the Hubble space telescope have shown. There is, in
other words, constant movement from what can be to what
is and shall be. Within this process, which I like to think
of as Cosmic Life, new life and existence pours forth in
unimaginable torrents. The Psalmist puts it beautifully:

The heavens are telling the glory of God

And the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech
And night to night declares knowledge.
—Psalm 19: 1 ff

Where I find Aristotle helpful is in the thought that

the process of actualising potential is not merely
driven by God, it is God. God is the term we use
for the process of the actualisation of potential,
the prior condition that provides for the coming
into life and existence of that which is not.
My favourite theologian, John MacQuarrie, uses the
expression “Holy Being” for this prior condition that
there should be anything at all – the reason there is
something and not nothing. “Holy Being” continually
“lets be”, says MacQuarrie. By this he means that Holy
Being both provides for possibility to become actuality
and for that new actuality to have distinct life in and of
itself, allowing it to exist and to do so on its own terms.
 14—God for Grown-ups

Notice what I am saying and what I am not saying.

I am not saying that “God” is behind the process,
designing and steering it. I am saying that God is
the process of the actualisation of potential.

Now, the problem with philosophy of this sort, which

is also the way of thinking that underpins much of the
practice of science, is that it is reductionist. It has a
way of reducing large, powerful, even overwhelming
experiences that we have to an apparently small size.
That is the burden of analytical thinking. It has its
uses, but it never quite tells the whole story!
Having “reduced” the concept of God to the process
of the actualisation of potential we therefore have to
expand it again if it is going to faithfully express the
magnitude and meaning of our experience of the process.
That’s where art, music, literature – especially poetry
– psychology and religious faith are critically important.
But before we get sidetracked into discussing the roles of
art, music, poetry, psychology and religion in responding
to the process of the actualisation of potential, let’s have
 What is God?—15

a brief look at a way of describing our encounter with

and experience of the actualisation of potential through
the eyes of another philosopher, the 20th-century CE
Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber (1878–1965).
Buber distinguishes between two types of relationship
between human beings and the reality in which we
participate. The first type of relationship Buber calls the
“I-it” relationship. In this relationship the “I” (that’s you or
me as self-conscious subjects) relates to another aspect of
reality as “it” – as an object, a “thing”, to be manipulated,
controlled and exploited. In this relationship the “I” remains
firmly in control. In formal philosophical and theological
terms this is called the “subject-object dichotomy”.
The second type of relationship Buber calls the
“I-Thou” relationship. This kind of relationship is
characterised by reciprocity. It is a mutual relationship
between two subjects, as distinct from a relation­
ship between a subject and an object.
The “Thou” which I encounter is a major contributor to,
and even to some extent the cause of, my own being. I am
not in control of a “Thou”; I am conditioned, shaped, by
a “Thou”. I receive and am shaped by the process whereby
potential becomes actuality. It is the prior condition and
“event” whereby I come into actual existence. Inevitably we
experience the actualisation of potential as an engagement
with that which is greater than we are, which conditions
us. In experiencing the actualisation of potential we are
 16—God for Grown-ups

engaged, in other words, not by an object, but by a subject.

But does that make me an “object”, a “thing” to be
manipulated? Not at all. A key element in the actualisation
of my potential is the emergence of consciousness of myself
and my capability of response. Remember MacQuarrie’s very
useful expression for the effect of Holy Being – “letting be”.
You can see this happening in that wonderful scene
in Isaiah chapter 6, where Isaiah becomes aware of God.
His first response is a statement about himself and an
awareness of his shortcomings: “Woe is me …” His second
response is also about himself, but it is an expression of
his emerging sense of capability when engaged by God (or
“the actualisation of potential”): “Here I am, send me.”
Here Isaiah is a thinking and emerging subject. There
is mutuality and reciprocity between Isaiah and the
prior condition for his existence – the actualisation
of potential, which I am calling “God”.
This is Buber’s “subject-subject”, or “I-Thou”,
relationship.
The “I-Thou” relationship, however, is not
restricted to our relationship with the prior condition
that there should be anything at all. The “I-Thou”
relationship, for Buber, can and should extend to all
the highest and best human relationships as well as
our relationships with all life and the cosmos itself.
But the ability to relate with all reality in an
“I-Thou” relationship stems from our relating to the
 What is God?—17

fundamental reality (the actualisation of potential)

as, what Buber calls, “The Eternal Thou”.
Formal theology calls this movement from the “subject-
object dichotomy” to the mutuality and reciprocity of
the “subject-subject” relationship as the “subject shift”.
In formal theology, from the earliest times of the
Church’s thinking, the actualisation of potential is not
an “object” or “thing” among other “things”, however
large, that we can examine and manipulate – simply
because we can only examine and manipulate anything
in so far as our potential has been actualised in the first
place. The translation of our potential into actuality must
always precede any action we perform. We can only
experience the actualisation of potential and address
what we experience in our emergence as actualised
existence, as that which conditions us, as “Thou”.

Earlier I mentioned, in passing, that great mediaeval

theologian Thomas Aquinas (1226–1274). He famously
employed the thinking of Aristotle in the development of
Christian thought.
 18—God for Grown-ups

Thomas Aquinas argued that the process of the

actualisation of potential always begins with that which
is actual. His famous example was that of fire and wood.
Fire is actually hot, he rather obviously observed. Wood
is potentially hot. Wood cannot make itself hot, although
it has the potential to become hot when it burns. Actual
fire, which is actually hot, must act on wood to translate
wood’s potential to become hot into actual heat.
That which actualises potential must therefore, says
Aquinas, be actual. To use Aquinas’s term, that which
actualises potential must be “Pure Act” and necessarily
comes prior to any potential.
“Pure Act” is the prior condition that there
should be anything at all, named as “The Eternal
Thou” (Buber), and that is what God is.

So you see, thinking about God is not thinking about

some disembodied spirit existing in a spiritual realm
removed from this very physical one we inhabit. Mature
religious faith is not devotion to some reality different
from the material universe. It is a way of engaging
 What is God?—19

with the universe we see and touch, taste, smell and

hear with awe and wonder; to address, with reverence
and deep respect, all that is and the prior condition
for it all to be; to marvel at the mystery of life itself
in its constant movement from potential to actuality,
and as a participant in it and beneficiary of it.
To trust God is to trust life; to worship God is to be
amazed by and in awe of the constant outpouring of life
and existence that happens in our own bodies as much
as it happens on this planet full of wonders and among
the distant galaxies. To love God is to be gripped and
overwhelmed by life itself and to celebrate it in all its parts.

Here is a prayer by Teilhard de Chardin SJ (1881–1955). He

says it for me:

In the life which wells up in me and in the matter which

sustains me, I find much more than your gifts. It is You
Yourself whom I find, You who makes me participate
in your being, You who moulds me. Truly in the ruling
and in the first disciplining of my living strength, in the
 20—God for Grown-ups

continually beneficent play of secondary causes, I touch,

as near as possible, the two faces of Your creative action,
and I encounter, and kiss, Your two marvellous hands
– the one which holds us so firmly that it is merged, in
us, with the sources of life, and the other whose embrace
is so wide that, at its slightest pressure, all the springs
of the universe respond harmoniously together.