Thinking Through Religions 5 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Thinking Through Religions 5 - Essay Example This creates a rift between the root and ground of being; hence, people should not be in awe of an image of God such as God the father since the projected image may be faulty and not representative of God (Watts 55). The root of the difficulty lies within the nature of God and the projections made by the image of God. The images of God can be perceived to generate compensating protestations of absolute certainty regarding matters that are inherently unknowable. As such, the images of God can be considered as representing competing models that are not helpful (amounts to promoting exclusive access) and consistent with the human understanding of God. Consequently, the images of God can be regarded as projecting a God who can be described as severely handicapped, which, in reality, is not the case (Columbus and Donadrian 46). Attempting to learn from the images of God is misleading as the images projected and that people follow may be flawed as the images of God may be deficient. Moreover, no two people can ever draw the same thing, which makes a picture a no substitute and accurate presentation of God. Moreover, how the god is visualized hinges on the cultural context. ... f opposites is commonplace and represents a perfect way of the way of approaching an understanding of God, given that the more that one ponders about God, the more it becomes strikingly peculiar. The notion of unity of opposites presents interesting moral reasoning as it implies that the dark and the light (negative and positive) are all necessary parts of the overall whole (Eversole 55). In the notion of unity of opposites, Alan Watt furthers the idea that two contradictory truths are possible simultaneously. The notion of unity of opposites represents a perfect way of approaching an understanding of God whose ways may not be logically consistent, but profoundly paradoxical. The fundamental nature of God is not something that one can get too precise about as the basis of both life and death remains inherently undefined. # 3 Sir Kenneth Clark writes about Abbot Suger, who can be considered to be the father of the gothic architecture. Suger asserted that individuals only come to under stand absolute beauty-that is God, through the impact of precious and beautiful things that appeal to individuals’ senses. Abbot Suger used beautiful objects to furnish the church symbolizing God, in which the radiant beauty draws an individual’s attention up and beyond earthly matters to elevated heavenly things (Gardner and Fred 341). Suger’s assertion represented a more rational view of God in which he saw God as encompassing numerous things such as reason, light, and proportion, all of which make up beauty. The Gothic church embodied a visual attempt to generate a setting drawn towards purity and light that could embody an image of heaven (Sullivan 304). The Celestial Hierarchy is transmitters of Providential Life to all below and comprises, for the aspiring soul that joins itself