Essays in Unitarian Theology by Kenneth Twinn Lindsey - General ...

ESSAYS IN UNITARIAN THEOLOGY
as the meta~hor for the various cc levels " of God's self-
A
revelation through his " creation ". My pronoun for
God, therefore, is " he ", not because of any implied
masculinity, but because of a lack of singular pronoun
of common gender in English: grammatically, this
would not arise in Hungarian and some other languages,
which do not differentiate in gender, but
metaphorically it is present in all monotheistic thought.
Short of a deliberate manufacture of a requisite pronoun,
the only solution is to submit to monotony and
treat " God " as both noun and pronoun.
While it is always dangerous to draw logical conclusions
from purely poetical expressions, it is, I feel,
legitimate to affirm that God's " possession of personality
" has a great significance for my relationship to
him; and this further invalidates the use of " universe
" or cc reality " in this connexion. There enters
here a profound distinction between my relationship
with God and that with the whole universe except
man, in which I can find no personality. Therefore
I cannot equate or identify God with the universe, but
c c
can regard the universe only as an expression " or
cc garment " of God. The further distinction between
my relationship with God and that with man lies in the
" creatureliness " (to use von Hugel's term) of man.
Otherwise, there is a close similarity, which allows a
wealth of imagery from human relationships to represent
the divine-human relationship. Jesus described
God as " Father ", and, understood figuratively and
poetically, without the limitations of gender (for
cc parent " lacks the same emotional associations), this
term has not been bettered,
A PERSONAL AFFIRMATION
Man
The implication follows, likewise, that man is
" child of God ". He is this by virtue of that part of
his nature which we designate as " spiritual ", i.e., by
which he is enabled to perceive truth, love and create
beauty, and seek and do good, or, in a word, to make
value-judgements and to act in their light. This it is,
like his capacity to record and communicate (speech,
writing, etc.), which is, however, a concomitant of the
former faculty, that differentiates him from all other
living beings so far known to him. The possibility
that he may share this capacity with beings on some
other planet in this or some other solar system, though
it may have other implications, does not invalidate the
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fact. Insofar as he can make such value-judgements,
man is free; his perception of truth, appreciation of
beauty and understanding of goodness may be rela-
tively undeveloped or clouded by his personal circum-
stances or impulses from his complex nature; and his
action may be likewise influenced But the act of will
arising out of his value-judgement is free. Therein lies
the possibility of sin, for to sin is to refuse to act in
accordance with the highest one has conceived, whether
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deliberately or by allowing such influences as I have
mentioned to sway one's choice. The sin is not the
act in itself but the disposition within that leads to the
act. Individual human beings are at different levels
of spirituality, from the seers and the saints to the
savages and the perverts; and all act at different
levels at different times. So that all men are sinners,
but many act on occasion like saints or " almost like "
saints. Every man is as complex spiritually as he is
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