Who invented what?
There is an old Talmudic saying that goes,
‘God created humans because God loves a good story’
Today my friend Pádraig informed me of a non-theistic rejoinder to this ancient wisdom,
‘Humans created God because humans love a good story’
Perhaps a Hegelian would want to reply to both by saying,
‘God and humans are the invention of the story itself’
Tags: Hegel, Peter Rollins, Talmud
April 3rd, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Perhaps an easier-to-understand synthesis would be “A good story loves to invent Gods and men.” Now we are talking sci-fi/fantasy-land geekdom. Cheers!
April 3rd, 2009 at 8:04 pm
BTW, I know you are a proper English speaker, but from an American mouth the word “an” will never find a comfortable place preceding “Hegelian.” Cheers!
April 4th, 2009 at 3:03 am
Hey Colin… Thanks. Yes, I can see how your synthesis might be better in some regards, especially as I capitalised the word ‘God’, and this could be misleading. Although I think a (you are right that ‘an’ is wrong – will change that) Hegelian would want to say that there is only the Story (read Spirit) and everything is the outworking of it. So the Story (capitalised now) is all there is and is thus the Absolute (God).
Now it ultimately is all a little metaphysical for my cup of tea!
On a different note some of the responses I got (that I deleted as they were very rude) have made me think that some people assume that just because I put something on my site I advocate its truth.
They must think that I am like the little Christian bookshop down the road from where I live, which only stocks books that the owner basically agrees with (honestly!!!). I, of course, put stuff up for a variety of reasons, one of which is if something strikes me as thought provoking. In fact I might actually say this as a main blog entry…
April 4th, 2009 at 9:07 am
[...] Peter Rollins, in brief: God, Man, & Story [...]
April 5th, 2009 at 5:18 am
Seems appropriate to chuck in the great line buried deep in ‘Stand-up Comedy’ on the U2 album….
‘God is love and love is evolution’s very best day’
following the line – while I am getting over certainty,
stop helping God across the road like a little old lady….
(and almost unreadable on the sleeve notes!)
its going in at a slightly different angle but in similar territory!
April 5th, 2009 at 5:26 am
but …. re-reading the original post my vote is definitely with the Hegelian one ….. until you replaced Story with Spirit!!!! and then with Absolute!!!!!!
April 6th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
god became human to tell a story.
April 19th, 2009 at 11:53 am
God created the story because he loves humans.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I don’t know who started the story, but most of time I’m glad to be part of it.