Sample Essay 2

Joseph Carroll

Latino Theology

April 23, 2007

The Definition of God

            Justo L. González begins his chapter “Let the Dead Gods Bury Their Dead” with what at first appears to be an attack on God and the Christian faith. In reality, he is setting up a premise which he will later contradict to show that biblical believers do indeed have reason to hold the beliefs that they do. In the section entitled “The Limits of God-Talk” he explains that even if philosophical postulations such as the cosmological, ontological, and other similar arguments can prove there is a god (people argue/debate whether or not they do), in no way do they prove the God with which we are familiar, the God of Jesus Christ. From this González comes to a conclusion: any proven god is an idol. Anything which humans create and raise to the level of the divine is an idol. This fits with the main point of his argument: the god that many have worked so hard to either prove or disprove is not the God of the Bible, but instead an image of god invented by the privileged class (whether consciously or not) to maintain the status quo and prevent change in society.

            González talks much about the anthropomorphic language used in the Bible. He says that it is not a sign of idolatry, or of a more “primitive” understanding of God. He says that it doesn’t show that God is too similar too humans, but rather that we are created in the image and likeness of God. Throughout the Bible God is referred to as an active participant in human history. God is seen as punishing his people when they deserve it, and as there for his people when they need him. Nowhere does it claim that God is omnipotent in the sense that many think of the word today when the questions we have all heard are posed such as “can God make a rock so heavy he cannot lift it?” González says that the God who is the “unmoved mover” and the “omnipotent and infinite” being is no more alive than the idols of years gone by. In fact, this god itself is an idol. He then states that the “death” of this god should not cause Christians any anguish, In fact, the opposite should occur. The god that is dead is not the God that is described in the biblical writings in which we ground our faith.

            How did the God of the Christian Bible get transformed into the “omnipotent and infinite” god that Western society has only recently deemed dead? González postulates that in the early Roman Empire when Christians were under pressure to provide reasons and explanations for their religious beliefs they appealed to the logic and philosophy of the Greeks. They felt that aligning their beliefs with Plato and Socrates would put them in some pretty good company. Over the centuries, González says that Christians continued to “build bridges” between the Supreme Being of the philosophers and the God of their faith.

            These philosophies were developed during the Golden Age of Greece when the wealthy had idle time to sit around and think about such matters. Therefore, it was not so much a belief system in the way the world works, but a belief in the way the world should work, in a way that would keep things how they were and discourge change. Things were good for these philosophers who came up with these philosophies, but much less so for the thousands of slaves that made their society function. When the Christians began interpreting their God in these Platonic and Aristotelian terms, they no longer thought of him as the Yahweh who helped the poor and rejected of the world, but instead as the Supreme Being who was much more reserved and removed from the affairs of the world.

In relevance to today, the god to whom many want to pray in schools is not the God that helps the poor and alien, but rather a pagan “god” similar to many other idols throughout history. It is the god of the privileged class who wants to maintain the status quo and do away with bilingualism in schools. It is the god used to protect North American interests. It is the god used to support the survival of Western civilization. It is the god that has made many of the disenfranchised of the country, including Latino immigrants, unable to rise from their low positions in society and challenge the way things are.

For the reasons listed above, this view of god that developed from early Christians’ appeal to the Greeks is not a view that is favorable for Latinos in modern society. It is not a God who helps his people in their times of need. It is a “god” created by the privileged to protect their own interests. But according to González, there is no need to fear, because this is the wrong view of God to take. He says that Christians, including the Latinos of today, should believe in the God of the Bible, the God that played a hand in the history of their trials and tribulations. That is the God to whom they should direct their praises, hopes, and fears.

However, it is this God, the God of Scripture, the Israelite’s Yahweh, whom I find more troubling. Born in modern times and raised Roman Catholic, I have always had major misgivings between the seeming contradictions of the Old and New Testaments. The New Testament, which shows the love of Jesus Christ, his Resurrection (on which our Catholic faith is based), and a promise of a better world ahead stands in stark contrast to the seemingly misguided personal history of the Israelites in the Old Testament.

González mentions many times that the God of the Scripture is an active participant in human history. God walks in the garden. God wrestles with Jacob and haggles with Abraham. God frees Israel from their slavery in Egypt. These are all seemingly neutral or good things for humanity. But what about the other things the God of the Scriptures is purported to have done? God reportedly smote tens of thousands of Israel’s enemies. God punished the nation. God allegedly took human flesh. What type of God are we talking about here? Earlier in his essay González writes, “The death of many gods has meant life for countless human beings.” To me it almost seems as if “the god of the Israelites has meant death for countless human beings.”

Many times throughout their history the Israelites were victorious in battle: 28,000 warriors were slain in one fight, or they laid to rest 33,000 in another. It is interesting to note that, according to the sacred authors, each of these outcomes occurred because of the power or at the command of their Lord, Yahweh. The same was true when they utterly destroyed every man, woman, and child in conquered towns, or when they bashed the heads of babies against rocks. This is barbarism, a far cry from the preaching of Jesus in the New Testament. To me it almost seems as if the Old Testament is a battle of “our god” vs. “your god” and “our god,” the god of the Israelites, won. Could it be that the reason this god won is because the Israelites had success in battle? After all, the winners of the wars are the ones who write history.

So although González recommends that people not follow the created “god” of the modern world that he deems an idol, I don’t see how he can recommend that people instead turn to the God of the Scriptures that goes around smiting the opposition by the thousands. I am not sure that the Christians “invented” this new definition of God to maintain the status quo, as much as they did to move away from the apparent contradictions and atrocities of the Old Testament while still maintaining their Christian faith. González tries to create a connection between the modern struggles of Latinos in the Western world with the god that is the creation of this same western society, where I am not sure such a concrete connection is apparent.