FM> Somehow, Day, because of your familiarity with classical philosophy
 FM> (perhaps in many ways exceeding mine) I cannot think that you could
 FM> imagine the symbol "god" or "God" to be other than the tension in man's
 FM> consciousness from the time of its formation as "HUMAN" as opposed to
 FM> his mere humanity - in other words that you conceive the Divine as an
 FM> existent thing rather than as that in our consciousness that man has
 FM> always symbolized as "immortal" and which Aristotle called the intellect
 FM> as that aspect of consciousness in man which immortalizes.
 MB> Conversely, one of the principle logical "proofs" of God's existence
 MB> (qualified, here) is that anything which can be imagined in the
 MB> consciousness of Man alone cannot be God, and since there are many
 MB> things  which are not ONLY in the consciousness of Man, but have a
 MB> concrete reality,  then whatever is the greatest of these must be God.
 MB> Aside from this, however, how can any proof be brought to bear upon the
 MB> premise that God is _non-existent_?  Perhaps it is not God "Himself"
 MB> which  is non-existent, but rather our conscious conceptualization of
 MB> what God  really is, which is non-existent?
   As a matter of fact, Martin Buber, in one of his treatises on the subject,
advised those who complained that "God no longer speaks to man" to consider
that "perhaps we have plugged wax into our ears."  
   On the point of "God" being "existent" or "non-existent" it would be
difficult for me to imagine "God" as an "existing thing."  I know of no other
site where "man" might encounter "God" except in consciousness.  Even the
notion of an "ontological proof" for the "existence" of God appears VERY late
in modernity (17th century) and was not known to such principals as Aquineas,
Anselm, Descarte, etc, to whom it is frequently linked.  The primary 
tructure
of the divine-human encounter, says Voegelin, must be carefully distinguished
from the poles of the tension in the metaxy (in-between) in consiousness 
here
the divine meets the human in poles of an existential, tensional encounter.  
Faith is life in the tension between divine necessity and human contingency
but when we then attempt to SYMBOLIZE this structure we are in danger of
hypostasizing the poles of the tension into TRANSCENDENT and IMMANENT
*THINGS*.  This, I think, is a mistake.  
     Reality is experienced and symbolized in various modes depending on both
the epochs and the various parts of the world where ecumenic "death" has
squelched smaller tribes and societies.  In the Chinese ecumene of the 
ncient
world the emperor who held the "teh" (divine substance) had authority while
the Pharoah of Egypt held the position of a very "son of God" and thus
partaking of divine substance and mediating it to his people.  Plato could
develop in the _Laws_ his ultimate symbol of God as the player of the puppets
while the writer of the Gospel of John could begin his experience of the
Christ with the incarnation in man of the "light that shines in the darkness
and cannot be extinguished."  Although some use the terms, there is no such
thing as a "post-Christian" or a "new age" era for we are still struggling
with the problems of the "history" in man's consciousness of revelatory
theophanic events that were REALLY encountered and that REALLY constitutes 
ur
"problems of history."
Sincerely, 
                                     Frank
                                                                              
                                                       
--- PPoint 2.05
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