Metaphysics

Sapientiae Amator and I have been having a rambunctious discussion here and here about God's will and whether God is in any way the cause of sin. While these conversations are fruitful in one way, I often find them unfruitful in another. Of course, it is important to know that God is all powerful, all knowing, all loving, and so forth, and it is a great boon, it seems to me, to the spiritual life, to see clearly how much He does love you. But when I get into these conversations, I find that I become angry and anxious. I lie awake at night, thinking about the argument; I can't concentrate when others are talking to me about their day or the problems they are facing; I don't do my other work. Worst of all, I begin thinking about God as an object. God is not an object. God is not in a genus. God is not a substance. God is not a being amongst beings. God is beyond substance, beyond being: God lives in the cloud of unknowing. Who indeed can speak of God? I always feel in these discussions like I am being unjust to God, that I am acting in an extraordinarily presumptuous way, and that I in fact am drawing away from God rather than drawing towards Him. I know that many of the reasons for this are personal and bad -- I am selfish, I want to win the argument, etc. But I also think that these discussions lend themselves to the objectification of God. God is made immanent in speech. This has led me to realize the wisdom of God regarding the manner in which the Bible is written. The Bible is mostly composed of stories, and those parts which are didactic point back, as I see it, to the stories as the ground and source of their truth. This has the wonderful rhetorical effect of making God present, not as an object for us to master as well as we can, but as a person (or three -- I don't know how to talk about this) who is the most lovable of all things and who loves us, every one of us, more than we could possibly know. I therefore believe that for us fallen and short-sighted beings, the Bible is written in the best manner possible, not simply because those who have difficulty in understanding abstruse philosophy can see the divine truths in stories with greater ease, but also because it's mode of writing is most conducive to helping us thing about God as a person and not as an object. [I suppose the theological ground for this post is that for us in this life, loving God is the highest perfection we can achieve.]