GOD’S BEING IS IN BECOMING: AN ESSAY IN THEOLOGICAL IDEALISM
HARTMUT VON SASS University of Zurich
Abstract. God’s being is becoming – the title is the thesis. The first section of this paper will be dedicated to the problem of radical historicity in sketching three dogmatic approaches dealing with the relation between God and history. After critically introducing the concept of relational – in contrast to intrinsic – properties in the second section I will apply a revised version of this concept theologically in integrating it into the architecture of Trinitarian thinking. Accordingly, and on that basis, the last section can address the ambivalent as well as precarious question in which sense God’s ultimate being is in real (be) coming.
Theologians nowadays are ‘idiots concerned with salvation’. That’s at least what the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk holds – leaving the closely related question, unfortunately, open, as to what kind of ‘idiots’ philosophers currently are.1 Theological ‘idiots’ show their true character not only by being concerned with salvation, but rather in speaking of God, i.e. not only by being focused on the effects of religion, but mainly in being engaged in thinking about the ‘happiest and most lovely substance’, as Leibniz once called God as the ultimate.2 Now, it might turn out to be an unhappy starting point to distinguish sharply between God and what God does, between the divine reality and its bearing on its true believers. It is one of the most relevant issues 1 Peter Sloterdijk, Zeilen und Tage. Notizen 2008–2011 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2012), p. 103; trans. mine. 2 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ‘Vernunftprinzipien der Natur und der Gnade’, in idem, Vernunftprinzipien der Natur und der Gnade. Monadologie, ed. by Herbert Herring (Hamburg: Meiner, 1969), pp. 2–25 (p. 23). EUROPEAN JOURNAL FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 8/3 (AUTUMN 2016), PP. 145-157