There exists considerable ambiguity concerning the term 'God' in religious philosophy. While Spinoza and Hegel use it in the sense of an absolute principle which is all-inclusive, impersonal and non- relational, Sankara and Bradley regard it as only an appearance of the Abosulte. While a monotheist defines God as an infinite being, a pluralist considers him to be only one among many. While deism holds that God represents complete transcendence, panthism insists that he must be wholly immanent in the universe.

Philosophers thus give us multiple conceptions of God, but in my opinion, there is only one meaning of the term 'God' in religious context. It specifically means 'a supreme, eternal, omnipotent person who creates and sustains the world, and who is infinitely wise, good and kind'. I propose to show that this is the only religious idea of God, and that its application in any other sense is religiously invalid; but before going into that we must clearly understand what this meaning 'really means.'

The term 'God' implies a number of attributes. Just as the term 'triangle' carries with it the idea of three-sided-ness, so the term 'God' carries with it the idea of personality, creativity, infinitude, omnipotence and benevolence. A triangle is not a triangle if it is not a three-sided figure. Similarly God is not God if he is not a person, the creator of the world, and an infinite, omnipotent, benevolent being. He must have these attributes in order to be worshipful. Let us now consider the significance of these attributes in religious context.

God as creator

Of all feelings that make a man spontaneously religious, the feeling of being created is probably most dominating. Rudolph Otto describes it as the feeling of 'creatureliness'. Scientists may give various explanations for our existence, but a religious soul feels in the heart of his heart that he is created; and this 'emotion of a creature abased and overwhelmed by its own nothingness'[1] gives rise to the belief in the creator who is supreme, above all creatures. This creator is God. Thus to a believer God is primarily the creator of everything that exists.

The word creation should not, however, be taken here in its ordinary sense. Ordinarily creation means the process of bringing something into being, but God is not a creator in that sense. He does not create in the same way as a potter makes a pot or a carpenter makes a table.[2] A potter or a carpenter can create only out of materials (namely, clay and wood) supplied to them from outside, and they are limited by these materials. But God is infinitely powerful and truly independent. He cannot be dependent on and limited by materials supplied to him by some external agency. To believe in the reality of a stuff existing outside of God is to make him finite, and a finite God, as Paul Tillich rightly observes, is religiously offensive.'[3] So the notion that God creates out of some pre-existing material is wholly untenable.

The deistic dogma of creatio ex nihilo does not seem to be any better, because out of nothing, simply nothing can come. So when we say that the world is created by God, we mean that the world is dependent absolutely and entirely on God for its exsitence and sustenance. 'In calling God the creator', says James Ward, 'is simply the world's dependence on Him that we mean to express'.[4] God is the creator in the sense that the world lives, moves and has its being in God. He creates neither out of some pre-existing stuff nor out of nothing, but out of his own creative love. The process of creation is, however, a mystery to us. In the words of Mascall, 'we cannot see why he creates or how he creates; we can only see that unless he did create, the world would not be here'.[5] Thus we see that God is conceived to be the creator of the entire world of finite things and beings, and that the adoration of the creator is the first natural reaction of a religious man.

God as person

Since only a person, i.e., a conscious mind possessing will is capable of creation, God is conceived to be a person. There is a purpose in the universe and such a purpose would not be what it is, unless it were the expression of a conscious will. The experience of value too becomes meaningless except with reference to a personal God. An impersonal power cannot generate mental and moral values like kindness, understanding, forgiveness and justice. But the more important point is that we cannot enter into a personal relation with an impersonal power.

Religion is a personal commitment, a divine-human reciprocity, an interaction between the creator and the created; and this reciprocity is not adequately fulfilled without the belief in a personal God. Spinoza may be satisfied with the intellectual love of God which is unrequited and unreciprocated, but an ordinary worshipper prays to God with the hope that God will listen to his prayer and be responsive to it. Kierkegaard's view in this respect is convincing. According to Kierkegaard, man's most vital problem is posed by conflict in him between his temporal existence and his longing for 'eternal happiness'. This conflict causes a tension -- a despair which must be overcome.

But the individual cannot get rid of this despair by his own limited efforts and so he turns inwardly to a source of help, and the help in this situation can come only from God - the omnipotent, omniscient spirit capable of helping the believer. Thus Kierkegaard establishes that personality is inseparable from God, and religious relationship is essentially personal. God cannot be a mere It in relation to man, but is always the higher and transcendent Thou. And impersonal God is inconsistent with the logic of worship.

But like creativity, personality too, should not be referred to God in its ordinary sense. God is personal, but he is not a person in the same way as we are. The Biblical description of God as walking in the garden of Eden and addressing Adam and Eve as a landlord addresses his tenants should not be taken literally. Personality, with reference to man, means a psycho-physical disposition dependent on certain factors and limited by a number of conditions. It necessarily implies limitations.

God cannot have personality in this sense. In His case personality means the possession of infinite self-consciousness, eternal activity and absolute freedom of will. The human personality even at its best is feeble and fragmentary. Divine personality is perfect and complete. He is not 'merely personal' but personal in a superlative degree. This is the reason why some theists prefer to speak of him as supra-personal. By this they mean to say that God is not only personal but is more personal than any other being in the universe.[6] He is not a mere magnified human individual, but the possessor of infinite activity, infinite determination, infinite reality and infinite perfection.

God as Good and Love

Goodness is treated as a further attribute of God. God must be essentially good. He is the supremely powerful conscious agent, ruling over finite agents like us, but he never acts in an arbitrary way. All his activities express his intrinsic goodness. An evil God is a contradiction in terms. Divine goodness, however, is far beyond the goodness that we know in human beings. In human life, good always stands related to bad. Even the best human person is not completely and absolutely good. But God's goodness is untainted, pure and absolute. He is perfect and so his goodness is infinite.

The believer is confronted here with a question which is old but forceful. The question is, if God is all-good and at the same time omnipotent, why are there evils in his creation?[7] Why are there earthquake, hurricane, storm, famine and flood? Why is there hunger, thirst, disease and death? Why do innocent people suffer? Why does a mother lose her child and a wife her husband? These questions are definitely pertinent and they seem to contradict God's goodness. They can even create ground for disbelief in God. But a believer has such unshaken and implicit faith in the goodness of God that he is not unnerved by these questions. He has the conviction that the world is created by a good God for a good purpose and so there cannot be anything which is genuinely an evil. Whatever God does, he does for the good; and so, what appears to be an evil is actually a good in disguise. It is either prophylactic or punitive or purgatorial.[8]

Evil is also needed for the progress of moral character. To come out pure gold, character must pass through the furnace of affiictions. In short, the so-called evils are all productive of good, either directly or indirectly. The only thing is that we cannot always discover what good is served by them. Inscrutable are the ways of the Divine and our knowledge is miserably limited. We can never see all of the picture and we can never know what shall happen hereafter.[9] So a believer does not regard an evil to be an evil. He can declare even at the moment of greatest calamity:

'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord,19.

The question concerning moral evils or sins is more serious. Natural evils like pain and suffering may be explained as good in disguise, but sins are genuine evils. The question is, if God is all-good, why does he permit sins in his universe? Could he not make a sinless world befitting his character? But this problem also is not too difficult to be solved, and it is generally solved with the help of what is known as 'Free will Defence'.[11] God has created human beings out of love. He loves them and wants his love to be reciprocated. But love which is forced and not spontaneous is no love at all. So He has given them freedom of will which they can exercise in loving him or in withdrawing themselves from his love. He has created them as free agents responsible for their own decisions. They have the freedom to choose the right and be worthy of his fellowship as well as to choose the wrong and commit sins.

The possibility of sin is, therefore, involved in man's freedom and not in the nature of God. God has been very kind to grant them freedom of will, but if they have chosen to misuse their freedom by choosing to exploit the possibility of wrong-doing necessarily involved in the possibility of right-doing, it is not any of God's fault.[12] With his infinite power and wisdom he could certainly have made a sinless world, but in that case human beings would have been deprived of their freedom and the world would have been a system of blind automations. Then the goodness in man would have been mere animal goodness, and no true virtue. Virtue consists in choosing to do the right when there is ample opportunity to do what is wrong. The whole point has been characteristically expressed by MacGregor in the following statement:

'God, though He hates sin and could stop it by His fiat, permits it because of the good that is produced by the liberty that makes the evil also possible.'

Thus we see that God is not responsible for the presence of sins in the universe, and his goodness can in no way be diminished by the sins committed by men who are responsible for their own actions.

Closely allied with goodness is the attribute of love. As a matter of fact, goodness and love are almost synonymous with reference to God, and the attribute of love is specially important from the point of view of religious worship and adoration. Man loves God because he knows that God himself is the supremely loving individual. The immensity of his love is clearly indicated in his creation of the world. He is absolutely perfect and so the creation of the world is not at all necessary for him. It neither adds anything to nor subtracts anything from his perfection! It is only out of his superabundant love that he creates and sustains the world. His love, however, is different from ordinary human love, and in order to understand it we must first distinguish the two kinds of love signified by the Greek Words - Eros and Agape. Eros is the 'desiring love'-, love which is evoked by the lovable and desirable qualities of the object of love.

Man loves a woman because she is beautiful; woman loves a man because he is brave; the teacher loves his student because he is obedient; parents love their children because they are their offspring. God's love for man is different. It is agape, i.e., 'giving love' which is given to someone not because he has some quality but simply because he is. God loves men not because of their qualities but because it is his nature to love. He needs nothing and so his love is entirely free from self-interest, His love knows no discrimination. He loves even those who abuse his love, i.e., he loves unto forgiveness. Jesus prayed for forgiveness even for those who put him on the Cross, 'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do'. (Luke, 23-34).

God's love for man is so boundless that he takes the burden of their suffering on himself. He suffers to redeem man of their sins and he suffers again due to their ingratitude. He suffers with them even when they abuse his redeeming love, and this capacity to suffer for men is rooted in his power. Bertocci is right in saying that 'God the suffering Father is as powerful as God the creator and certainly he is more worthy of absolute devotion than God the impassive person whose eternal bliss is not to be marred by the plight of his creatures'.[15] His love for man is more than mere kindliness and sympathy. 'When you suffer, your sufferings are God's sufferings, not his external work, not his external penalty, not the fruit of his neglect, but identically his own personal woe. In you God himself suffers, precisely as you do, and has all your concern in overcoming this grief.'[16]

Incarnation is another expression of God's love. Why does God become man from time to time if not for love? A king who does not love his subjects at heart will not descend from his throne to make them happy and blessed by his personal presence. The sacrifice of Jesus upon the Cross speaks for the infinite wonder and mystery of this love. He makes himself human that he can make man divine.

God as Transcendent and Immanent.

God is both transcendent to and immanent in the universe. Pantheism regards Him to be wholly immanent while Deism describes him to be wholly transcendent. But both these views are one-sided. God must be external to the world and at the same time must be within. He is primarily the object of worship, and worship is possible only when there is a difference between the worshipper and the worshipped. The worshipper must have real existence apart from God; God too must have an independent existence apart from the worshipper. He must be external to men in order that He can enter into personal relationship with them. He is the object of their love and as Tagore says, 'love must by its very nature have duality for its realisation'.[17] . So God must be transcendent.

But this idea of transcendence should not be stretched so for as to create an ubridgeable gulf between God and his creation. He cannot be conceived as an 'absentee God sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath at the outside of his universe and seeing it go'. He must somehow be present in the world and be in communion with man. The relation between God and the world is thus neither one of pure identity (like clay and pot) nor one of pure externality (like a watchmaker and the watch). He is both transcendent and immanent. He is transcendent because the world is not God himself, but his manifestation, and he is immanent because it is he who sustains it. He is transcendent, for He has a 'Being for Himself'. He is immanent because of the 'dependence of the natural world upon him' and also because of his 'relationship to free persons'.[18]

Thus we see that 'God' is the name for that supreme infinite eternal person who creates and sustains the world, who is both within and outside of it, and who is infinitely loving, wise and good. Let us now consider some other important conceptions of God frequently used in religious philosophy.

God as Absolute

Spinoza, the God-intoxicated philosopher of the modern period, takes God to be in the sense of the Absolute. As is well-known, he begins with the Cartesian dualism of thought and extension, but arrives at the conclusion that there is only one self-subsistent being, and that being is God. According to him, God is not only real but is the only reality, and nothing else can exist apart from God. He is the Infinite Substance which is single, eternal, independent, indeterminate, self caused and immutable. He is the immanent principle indwelling in all things and there is nothing which he transcends. He is exclusively a principle of identity. Difference and diversity, time and change, freedom and development -- all are mere appearances or even illusions. There is nothing as real movement or freedom. Everything is necessary in its appointed place within the whole, because everything follows necessarily from the nature of God with the same accuracy as the truth that 'the three angles of a triangle, are together equal to two. right angles' follows from the definition of a triangle.

Spinoza expressly denies personality and consciousness to God. God has neither intelligence nor feeling nor will. He has no end to achieve and he does not act according to any purpose. His relation to man is not the warm relation of the devoted and the object of devotion. One who knows the true nature of things, will love God; but this intellectual love of God (omor intellectualis dei) is the love of God for himself, because man is merely a mode of God. Actually God cannot be related to anything for there is nothing outside of him with which he can be related. Spinoza's God is thus clearly the all-inclusive, impersonal; non-relational Absolute.

In Hegel's philosophy too, God and the Absolute are used as identical terms. The ultimate reality, according to Hegel, is the all-inclusive, universal, self-evolving idea which contains within itself the entire logico-dialectical process that unfolds in the actual world, and this Idea is God or the Absolute. Like Spinoza, Hegel holds that the Absolute is the only substantial reality and all existence has truth only in the Absolute. The finite world of particular things and beings is only a differentiation of the one all-inclusive whole. There is nothing outside of it and so, what we call the evolution of the world is actually the logical self-development of the Absolute itself. Hegel accepts the dependence of the world upon the Absolute, but this dependence is not causal, but a purely logical dependence. The world flows from the Absolute, not as an effect flows from its cause in time, but as a conclusion flows from its premises. And there is absolutely no doubt that Hegel identifies this Absolute of his philosophy with the God of religion.[19]

In recent times, we find a similar idea in Paul Tillich. Although Tillich criticises the theory that identifies God with the universe, and insists, that there must be an 'absolute break' between the finite and the infinite, yet his concept of God comes very close to that of Spinoza. He rejects all forms of theism which regard God as a person or Being, for he argues that a being, even if it is the first and the highest, is always subjected to the 'categories of finitude',[20] and since God is essentially infinite, he cannot be a being, either alongside or above other beings. He is rather the very source and ground of all being. He is being-itself.[21] He is the all-pervading, all-encompassing power of being, and all finitude participates in him by the very fact of existence. Tillich thus defines God as the 'ultimate power of being' which is actually another name for the Absolute.

But this equation of God and the Absolute is not proper. The Absolute is impersonal and non-relational, whereas God, as we have seen, must be a person and must be related to his creation. The Absolute which is not a being but being-itself, is a pure abstraction whereas God is worshipped as a concrete reality. The Absolute is an object of philosophical enquiry whereas God is essentially an object of love, devotion and worship. One can think of the Absolute in a calm, detached and dispassionate way, but one cannot think about his God without involving his entire personality.

A believer loves his God as a son loves his parent; he trusts him as a friend is trusted; he wants his company as a lover is wanted by his beloved. The relation between the worshipper and his God is warm, intimate, personal and reciprocal. But the Absolute makes no room for such reciprocity, because the Absolute is It and, not Thou, in relation to man. We can, therefore, conclude that the Absolute which is a mere apotheosis of an impersonal totality of things cannot be the same as what religion means by God.

God as an appearance of the Absolute

All absolutists, however, do not use God in the sense of the Absolute. There are thinkers who hold that, though supreme personality is admissible as an object of worship, one must distinguish between the supreme person and .the supreme reality. God is the supreme person but not the supreme reality. The Absolute alone is the supreme reality and God is only an appearance of the Absolute. Sankara and Bradley hold a similar view.

According to Sankara, Brahman (the Absolute) and Isvara (God) are positively distinct. Brahman is non-qualified, unconditioned and bereft of all upadhis, whereas Isvara is qualified, conditioned and limited by upadhis. Brahman is non-relational whereas God stands only in relation to the world. Brahman is eternal whereas God exists only so long as the world exists. But since Reality is one, the two (God and the Absolute) cannot be nwnerically or ontologically different. The Absolute which is the object of vidya (knowlealge) is Itself viewed as God from the standpoint of avidiya ignorance. As Sankara says, 'Brahman, limited by the name-form limiting adjunct created by vidya becomes God, just as the universal space is limited by the upadhi of pot etc.'[22] In other words, Isvara is Brahman in its conditioned aspect. But since 'condition' does not belong to the real nature of Brahman, Isvara has only a phenomenal status. He possesses existence only from the empirical point of view. In short, Isvara stands to Brahman as appearance to reality.

Bradley shows a stronger attitude than Sankara regarding God's phenomenality. Like Sankara, he too distinguishes God from the Absolute, but, while Sankara regards God to be an appearance of the Absolute, Bradley takes him (God) to be an appearance within the Absolute i.e., a mere finite element within the Whole. Religious consciousness, according to him, is bound to 'oscillate' between two irreconciliable positions. On the one hand, it seeks to worship God as the highest reality -- the supreme, infinite, all-in-all; but on the other, it ascribes personality to him and thereby makes him finite, for personality essentially implies finitude.

God is thus rendered, by the very nature of religious consciousness, to be a self-contradictory appearance. In the words of Bradley, "If you identify the Absolute with God, that is not the God of religion. If again you separate them, God becomes a finite factor in the Whole we may say that God is not God, till he has become all in all, and that a God which is all in all is not the God of religion. God is but an aspect, and that must mean but an appearance, of the Absolute'.[23]

We thus see that Sankara and Bradley reduce God to a mere theophany with an uncertain status which may at any moment be withdrawn into the Absolute. But the idea is simply blasphemous. To a believer in God, there cannot be anything more real or worthy of respect than his God. He can never be content with worshipping a Supreme Being who is discovered not to be supreme at all, but to be a mere appearance of a greater and more ultimate being. He has the absolute and ultimate faith that 'the Lord, our God, is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The religious concern is total, infinite and unconditional.

Radhakrishnan's interpretation is different. He agrees with Sankara and Bradely regarding the distinction between God and the Absolute, and also regarding the nature of Reality as Absolute, but he differs from them regarding the status of God. He holds that 'God with whom the worshipper stands in personal relation is ... not a mere appearance. of the Absolute',[24] but 'a real living one who inspires trust, love, reverence and self-surrender'.[25] His status is neither phenomenal nor uncertain. But this does not mean that God is the ultimate reality. The Absolute alone is the supreme reality and God is only a part of that. The Absolute is the store-house of infinite possibilities, and God is the ground of only one of those possibilities which is being actualised.[26] The Absolute is not related to the world, whereas God is essentially related to it. Consequently, the Absolute is unlimited whereas God is limited. He is limited by the environment on which his creative activity is directed[27] and also by the freedom of human individuals whose co-operation is needed by him for the realisation of the ideals which are potentially contained in the Absolute.[28] God is thus real but limited.

Radhakrishnan's theory fares no better than that of either Sankara or Bradley. The idea that God is only a part of something higher is inconsistent with the logic of worship. As we have already discussed, a God who is not infinite, ultimate, unlimited and independent is not the God who satisfies religious demands.

God as 'Primus inter pares'

The pluralistic position is still more unjustified because it necessarily leads to the idea of a finite God.

Howison, who believe in the doctrine of eternal finite selves, represents the universe as consisting of a definite number of self-subsistent individuals and regards God as only one among them. Rashdall defines Reality as 'a community of person' in which God is just 'one of the selves'. According to Wlliam James, 'God' is the name not of the whole of things, but only of the ideal tendency in things, believed in as a superhuman person who 'works in an external environment, has limits and has enemies.'[29] Pluralism thus views God not as the highest reality but as only one helper, primus inter pares, in the midst of all the shapers of the world's fate.

But the pluralistic conception of a finite God is absolutely irreconcilable with the deeper expressions of religious faith. We repeat that to treat God as finite is not to treat him as God at all.

We thus arrive at the conclusion that the term 'God' can be used not in the sense of the Absolute, nor in the sense of a part of the Absolute, nor as a finite power, but as a supreme, infinite, eternal, personal creator of the world. Jehovah in Judaism, God in Christianity, Isvara in Hinduism, Allah in Islam -- all are used more or less in this sense.

A point needs to be clarified here. I do not mean to say that a religion is not worth its name unless it believes in a personal God. One cannot disregard the profoundness of Buddha and Sankara. What I simply mean to say is that when a religious soul believes in God, he takes him (God) to be the personal God -- the God of theism -- neither more nor less. If we believe in God, we must believe in him as the cosmic knower, the loving agent, the creator of both man and the world. 'He is the lover-creator who expresses his love in the order of Nature without which man could not even exist.... He is also the Lover-Creator who leaves man free to be a creator He makes it clear in the foundations of Nature and Man that only in mutual love unto forgiveness is there self-fulfilment for God or Man'.[30] We may use the word in senses other than this, but then we are not talking in religious language.

REFERENCES

1. Rudolph .Otto, the Idea of the Holy, Translated by J. W. Harvey, (2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 1957), Chapter I.

2. Cf 'Creation', in New Essays in Philsophica/ 1heology, edited by A. Flew and A. Macintyre, (SCM Press, 1958), P. 172.

3. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. I (Nisbet & Co., 1953), P. 274.

4. James Ward, Realm of Ends. P. 233.

5. E.L. Mascall, Exister/ce and Analogy, (Longman, Green & Co. 1949), P. 125.

6. Geddes MacGregor, Introduction to Religious Philosophy, (Macmillan & Co., Lortdon, 1960), P.257.

7. 'Epicurus'. old questions are still unansewred. Is Deity willing to prevent the evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil? . - Quoted from Hume's Dialogues CQnCerning Natural Religion' by W.R. SQrley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (Cambridge University Press, 1918), P-453.

8. Y. Masih, Introduction to Religious Philosophy, (Motilal Banarsidas, 1971), p. 217.

9. J.M. Crombie, 'Theology and Falsification', In New Essays in Philosophical Theology, PP.124-125.

10. Job I: 21.

11. A. Flew, 'Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom', In New Essays in Philosophical Techology, P. 145.

12. Ibid, P. 146.

13. Gaddes MacGregor, Introduction to Religious Philosophy, P. 274.

14. ct. 'The first cause was under no moral necessity to create a world. Such a wPrld could add no perfection not already contained in the divii.e infinity'. John Wild, Introduction to Realistic Philosophy, (Harper and Bros, 1948), P. 348.

15. P.A. Bertocci, Introduction to Philosophy of Religion, (Prentice-Hall, 1963), P.461.

16. Josiah Royce, 'The Problem of Job', in Philosophy ojReligion, ed. by G.L. Abernethy and T.A. Langford (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1962), P.398.

17. R.N. TagQre,Sadhana (Macmillan. & Co., London, 1947), P.104.

18. P.A. Bertocci, 'The person God Is', in 7alkofGod, (Macmillan, 1969) PP. 204-205.

19. See W.T. Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel, Dover Publication,1955), P. 441.

20. Paul Tillich, Sy.l'tematic Theology, Vol. I, (University of Chicago Press, 1951), P.235.

21. Ibid, P.237.

22. Brabma Sutra Bhasya - 11-1-14.

23. F .H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, (Oxford University Press, 1969), PP. 395-397.

24. S. Radhakrishnan, 'The Spirit in Man', In Contemporary Indian Philosophy, ed. by Radhakrishnan and Muirhead, (George Allen and Unwain, 1966), P. 498.

25. S. Radhakrishnan, An Idealist Viwe of Life, (George Allen and Unwin, 1951), P.340.

26. Ibid P. 343.

27. S. Radhakrishnan, 'The Spirit in Man' in Contemporary Indian Philosophy, P. 499.

28. S. Radhakrishnan, An Idealist View ofLif!!, P. 336.

29. W. James, A Pluralistic Universe, P. 124.

30. P.A. Bertocci, 'The Person God Is', In Talk of God, PP.205-206.