If we look to the three principles of the Greek philosophical exploration of the nature of the divine, that is to say God as origin, the unity of god and the notion of ‘otherness’ of God, the latter two which follow as corollary to the first then it is quite clear that religion and god are not two interdependent concepts, one can conceive of an ultimate reality without religion being a necessity and in fact the masses can worship through their popular polytheistic cults without destroying the monolatry as posited by philosophy. This is

To return again to Küng’s understanding of god. This view he claims must be based in the modern understanding of the world, that is to say that god is not simply a natural and historical process, equally that modern notions of authority should be understood, and by that we mean those things which can be understood and conceptualised rationally in a reasoned manner. Ideological criticism should not be shied away from and effectively god must be removed from his old arena of socio-political power and modern conceptual shift should be understood and taken on board, in particular that man no longer looks upwards for his future, but forwards, and hence secularisation should not be understood as or allowed to become secularism. Ultimately belief in god does not require religion in any form but simply a fundamental trust and basic confidence in the human condition.

In an increasingly chaotic, rootless and interconnected world it would indeed seem apt for the church to abandon any concept of god, it would indeed suit the mode of the times, for the last remaining fetter of a musty and irrelevant past to be thrown away and humanity to move forward, and further that theology should be alienated in the name of enlightenment, actuality, interdisciplinarity of the human and mental sciences, that the church should be liquidated in the name of adaptation, modernity, dialogue, communication and pluralism, and that Christianity and all religion should be abandoned in the name of worldliness, maturity, secularity, solidarity and humanity, almost as though we are finally coming forward to fulfil our true place in the world away from historically materialist structures. Through a particular line of reasoning which I shall later explore Küng argues for the rational belief in god though not as constructed though natural theology, but like Freud suggests that rather than being the reactionary institution it has tended towards, retreating back into the safe realm of history where religion was a force to shape the world, and not an institution swept along with the mercurial tides of modernity, the church needs to step with purpose into the age we inhabit, with a consistent and rational view of its god.

This would then lead to the conclusion that religion and god are in fact completely intertwined concepts, philosophy can never get away from the problem of the transcendence of god, as with Plato ideas must belong to the ultimately Good mind or with the Stoic understanding of the essence of the Logos, both can be seen to tie god to the world for there is ultimately the concept of known and knower, a link to the material. That the biblical notions of creation ex nihilo are not presupposed from the beginning but are a historically produced reality is also not in denial, for the gradual shift of Judaism from monolatry to monotheism is quite evident in the biblical texts, but that it did not survive into modernity would suggest it is inappropriate to the message of ‘Western religion’.

Some topics in this essay:
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