(A theological reflection in 7 parts)
I have recently explored how faith in God might look if the term “God” was defined in very different ways from how he is traditionally understood to be. I now want to give an overview of what would be necessary if we were to continue to believe in God in the traditionally accepted way. I take this to be the God of classical theism – that is the “omni” God (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent) – combined with an understanding that God, because he is omnibenevolent, intervenes in the world to achieve his will. I will, in many cases, simply be identifying what would have to be the case, without necessarily being in a position to give an explanation of clear solutions to the issues being raised.
- The reality of the spiritual
There must be a reality to spiritual beings, who can exist apart from the material universe but interact with it.
This entails the ability of spiritual beings or persons to exist. There needs to be a way for a being to live without a physical body, to think without a brain, to “do things” without a body, to be aware of things without senses. Such a being needs to cohere together and have a consistent unity without having a physical body to delineate the boundary between where I stop and you start. (We could imagine that, perhaps, spiritual beings were like swirls of cloud or smoke, in which case, how could we prevent an intermingling that ends the distinctive separateness of the two persons? Though perhaps this image is inextricably linked with a physical analogy of what spiritual beings might be like, when actual spiritual beings – being truly spiritual – would have no problem in continuing to be themselves – even in a crowd of persons. This crowd aspect is important because, when considering spiritual beings, we are not only considering God, but also our own existence as spiritual beings).
IF spiritual beings were possible, then it would provide a relatively easy way to understand life after death and the ability to live for eternity, for, without a physical body to decay, what danger can be posed to the ongoing existence of beings who are pure spirit?
If God is a spiritual being, then it quite easily explains how God can exist without being seen, and how he can communicate with us, in that a spiritual being would have no difficulty in communicating directly with another spirit, and if we are also spiritual beings, with, for example, there being a connection between our minds and our souls or spirits, then God would simply express his thoughts and we would become aware of them in our own minds.
If God is spirit, then this might explain his ability to be everywhere at once. In our physical bodies, we can only be in one place at one time, but a spiritual being such as God might simply be intrinsically present, everywhere and always, as a latent possibility. Then, when he wishes, he makes himself known to any other spirit he wishes, wherever they happen to be.
God, as a spiritual being, would certainly be an amazing entity, but perhaps we are even more unusual, in that God is always and only a spiritual being, whereas we are either both: a spiritual and a physical being combined, or we start of as one (physical) and then when we die, God imparts a spiritual existence to us that is in some way, consistent and continuous with the physical existence that we previously lived.
Spiritual Devotion 