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The Personhood of God
- The Catholic University of America Press
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266 The Per sonho od of God Die christliche Lehre von der göttlichen Dreieinigkeit (1857 ed., 545–58) This selection comes from the second part of Kuhn’s dogmatics. It takes up the problem of analogy in speech about God. These problems are not new, but the context of Fichte’s critique of theological predication certainly gave more bite to the issue. His 1798 essay, “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World,” even called into question the predication that God exists . Fichte’s technical point about predication led to an accusation of atheism by the local government, which eventually resulted in his being stripped of his professorship in Jena, quickly filled by the twenty-three-year-old Wunderkind Friedrich Schelling. Kuhn revisits the issue by critiquing his earlier foil, David Friedrich Strauss, who had recycled Fichte’s argument in his 1840 glaubenslehre. Another relevant point here is Kuhn’s use of the “idea of God” [gottesidee ]. Although he expands on this notion more fully in other texts, Kuhn’s “idea of God” plays an important role in the structure of the argument below. For Kuhn, this idea functions similarly to Rahner’s supernatural existential ; it pre-shapes our mind so that when we experience God, we recognize the experience for what it is. It is like the light in the room that lets us see the shape of the room and its contents. Although brief, this selection addresses an area of Kuhn’s theology that has inspired significant scholarly attention: his explanation for how we know God. The Personhood of God C 267 C To k now the divine trinity means knowing god as personal being. Our task is to understand god thusly, and our exposition will proceed from this angle.1 howsoever one aims to understand or interpret the doctrine of the trinity more closely, it is indisputable that the personality of god is the hinge upon which everything depends. For the doctrine of the trinity defines god’s personality according to god’s absolute essence . reason knows god on the basis of the immediately present idea given by god. This knowledge of god (the content of the first part of the Dogmatics ) is the pretext and foundation that we are building on by introducing the positive, trinitarian content into the purely rational element of the natural idea of god. it is not as though, convinced of the futility and inadmissibility of the dogmatic content, we are attempting to build a “bridge” between the purely rational concept of god and the dogmatic.2 instead we aim to build on the idea of god expanded through the doctrine of the trinity. By doing so we will bring this complete and entire content to an understanding, and in this manner we will lead the rational understanding of god further and to its conclusion. human reason, which is supported by the idea of god that imbues reason, understands god as personal essence. But depending solely on itself , reason is not in the position to penetrate into the most inner essence of god and to ascertain the unique quality of god’s personality. reason neither proceeds forward to this darkness that conceals from reason the contours of the truth, nor drifts sideways, away from the truth known to reason (even if this truth is not transparent) toward the path of error. instead , reason awaits, with its gaze directed toward the Father of all lights (James 1:17), and waits for illumination from wherever. reason considers faith in a personal god, regardless of reason not knowing how to ascertain 1 This essay renders erkennen as “to know,” Erkenntnis as “knowledge,” and verstehen as “to understand.” (tr.) 2 Or to put it more precisely, to build a bridge between the self-consciousness and the god-consciousness and from the knowledge of oneself as personal spirit to the knowledge of god as the triune Spirit. [3.230.1.23] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:57 GMT) 268 C The Personhood of God faith with certainty, as absolutely final. it does so because the highest interest of reason (the religious interest) is connected with the interest of faith. human reason can cling to this interest because reason would like to overcome and regard as invalid the difficulties raised against this faith. reason has a natural starting point in this faith. in addition, in the knowledge previously alluded to, reason possesses the active [lebendige] receptivity for the acceptance of the...