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Eugen
Drewermann is a renown German
Drewermann on God
I believe in God in two ways. First, I believe that science
is about to develop a new picture of theological thinking. It reveals
the necessity of respect for a self-organizing system. We can
no longer speak of spirit and matter in the way we are accustomed in the Christian
west. We acknowledge that spirit is a structural property of all complex systems.
Consciousness creates itself on the path of evolution. God in this sense is
something that unfolds itself in the world and with the world.
That is a concept that reminds one of pantheism, but it is a concept of high
poetry and creativity, of wisdom too, in which our communal life together with
the creatures at our side is understood anew. Following 8000 years of development
since the Neolithic age, which detached humans from nature and separated spirit
from body, a religion will only be believable if it undertakes to create religious
meaning for the human and the natural realms and which understands body
and soul as an inseparable unity. It will be a religion that doesn't
represent itself as aggressive and exclusive, but as integrative and dialogical.
The second point: The anxiety that broke out because humans became individuals
cannot be banished. It belongs to us, it is part of our personality and freedom,
our capacity for self-reflection. I regard faith in a personal God
as an essential postulate in answer to human anxiety. I believe that that was
what Jesus meant when he wanted to give us courage to walk on water and to feel
that the abyss supports us, if only we are able to trust.
These two pictures of God, the personal God and the self-unfolding Spirit
of system theory and evolution, are antithetical. But I regard it as
possible, that the old Christian doctrine of the trinity is able to connect
such polarities with one another.
From an Interview in the magazine of the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung 3/5/91
http://sof.wellington.net.nz/sofnnl49.htm