The Mystery and Agency of God: Divine Being and Action in the World

7 Coda on the Mystery of God as Agent

7 Coda on the Mystery of God as Agent Thomas Torrance has said that the field of space-time is to be referred to as “the dynamism and constancy of a living Creator.” As such, it is “linked with an inexhaustible source of possibility, because of which created and historical existence is so full of endless spontaneity and surprise that there are no rules for the discovery of its secrets.”1 If we are truly looking for mystery in our understanding of God, how can there be anything more mysterious than an inexhaustible source of possibility, endless spontaneity, and surprise? A God beyond the reach of all human cognition, swamped in the mystical darkness of unknowing, falls into the irrelevance of intellectual abstraction when compared to a profoundly personal God who always outruns us, surprises us through acts of amazing grace, and opens up new and hitherto unexplored possibilities for new depths of relationship. An acting God is an efficacious God, one who can get things done where and when it matters. How could an utterly “other” and totally unintelligible God have any role to play in the world unless the divine agent has the capacity to act? But an acting God is no longer absolutely, qualitatively, or ontologically “other” than a primordial agent. Perhaps the mute, ineffable gesture toward a totally mysterious and unintelligible God can provide psychological satisfaction for those who need God to be beyond the reach of contaminating human contact and comprehension. This kind of mysterious God, however, could have no efficacy in the world in which we live and act. The God of absolute mystery is the God of mystification, not the God of robust mystery. If God’s otherness is so great that our finite reality sinks into nothingness by comparison, or if God absorbs it into an undifferentiated oneness, then the whole notion of God’s efficaciousness and relationality are thereby destroyed as well. It is only in a relational world in which distinct, but not absolutely ontologically different, beings interact with and make a difference to each other that one can even think meaningfully about what God intends and does in relation to us. 1. Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 73. 151 In the world of agency, meaningfulness emerges from the relationships between persons, through which they enhance and fulfill each other. Mutuality and interpersonal love require a giving and a taking, reciprocity on the part of all the interrelated partners or participants in that mutuality. Of course, one could argue that the psychological (or spiritual) power of believing oneself to be in some ontological relationship with sheer unqualified mystery or in having oneself confronted by that which is absolutely “other” is very strong and even compelling. Mystery always beckons us both to go beyond ourselves and to remind us of our limitations. The inherently impossible attempt to think and then articulate the unthinkable and the ineffable can be psychologically bracing and make one feel that one is in touch with something that utterly transcends the quotidian everydayness that threatens to diminish the fullness of our being if we succumb to it without reaching out for some transcendent “otherness.” Nevertheless, in the details and nuances of everyday living, the literal and figurative touch of another person, the communication and sharing of deep emotions, and the mutuality of love and compassion between persons constitute the fullness of human being. What would be missing from the fullness of life if one were able to experience a robust, inclusive, intimate, mutual, loving relationship with other persons, including the divine Person whose actions and power of being make such relationships possible? What does the evocation of a mystery that is not contained within the fullness of relationality add to that fullness? The answer to these questions is best left to the psychologist, not the philosopher of religion or the theologian. No matter how intense and stimulating the appeal of unmitigated mystery, in the end most of us want our flourishing and fulfillment to come in and through our relationships with other persons. And if this is true, then God, if God is to be efficacious, must meet us, embrace us, and relate to us as one person to another person. So the challenge is to find enough mystery for the fullness of life in the relationship between persons (one of whom is God), a mystery that will satisfy our craving for the undefinable, the unsayable, the unthinkable, and...