Love: God’s All-Pervasive Attribute
God is unlike the man who perceives Him. This difference is usually exaggerated by man’s inability to comprehend Him fully, causing estrangement and eventual denial of God’s existence (atheism) and/or His knowability (agnosticism). This article suggests otherwise: God may not be the same with man, but he is similar, indeed very similar, to man. The article investigates the attributes of God vis-à-vis the human properties from which the former had been derived. It suggests that certain theistic explanations may prove to be worthwhile postulates – in favor of the theists’ cause, of course – in the theist-non-theist debate(s) if grounded on what can be called “God’s ingredient”: love.
Introduction
Beyond the theist-non-theist debate is the stalemate. Little development has been made over the years in this important struggle of the philosophers of religion, who are divided into two major legions: the theists and the non-theists (also known as the anti-theists, although this term implies a more active opposition against theism, and may mean to exclude agnostics). The non-theists are further divided, and not superficially: the atheists, who argue for the jettisoning of the concept of God in human reality and affairs, and the agnostics, who are more passive in hunting out God –indeed, they may be rightly called the third, albeit boring, party in this intellectual struggle. These divisions have had their share in the discussion on the relevance of God in human life. And now, it seems that the fight is at its theoretical end with the stalemate, the end of potent arguments that spice up the raunchy debate – and the focus has shifted to the real battleground: culture.
Relativism has brokered an uneasy peace between the two ac ...