Howard C. Wilkinson - "Think of God as a Person" (June 4, 1972)

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-	To hear, to forgive and to restore.	0:06
	Therefore, let us offer unto God our prayer of confession.	0:12
	Let us pray.	0:16
	Almighty and most merciful God, our father,	0:19
	we thank thee	0:22
	for this opportunity of confession and renewal.	0:23
	We have carried about with us the burden of memory	0:28
	and regret of failure and remorse,	0:32
	and it has sated our vitality	0:37
	and made us languid in service	0:39
	and feeble in witness for love.	0:42
	Help us, now we ask, oh God,	0:46
	to be willing to acknowledge our transgressions,	0:48
	and to face with utter honesty, the evasions, compromises,	0:52
	and cowardice of which we have been guilty.	0:58
	We believe it is thy will for us to eyes, to better life,	1:02
	to learn from the mistakes of the past,	1:07
	and to live in firm dependence upon thy grace.	1:10
	To this end, oh father, we open our lives new,	1:15
	to the coming of thy searching light.	1:19
	God, our heavenly father, who shines upon the evil	1:23
	and the good and sends thy reign on the just and the unjust,	1:26
	forgive us our hasty discriminations.	1:32
	Forgive us if we label men,	1:36
	if we substitute slogans for thought,	1:39
	and estimate our fellows	1:43
	without firsthand knowledge of them as people.	1:45
	Forgive us when we fail to see persons,	1:49
	because we are preoccupied with abstractions	1:52
	like law or justice or freedom.	1:55
	Forgive us when we are more intent on being right	2:00
	than on being reconciled.	2:04
	Forgive us too	2:07
	when we refrain from judgment for the wrong reasons,	2:08
	through fear of recrimination or lack of sensitiveness.	2:12
	We confess, oh God, our father,	2:18
	that we have been arrogant in spirit,	2:20
	and that has caused thy kingdom to be closed to us.	2:23
	We have tried to bully life,	2:28
	to exploit it instead of loving and appreciating it,	2:30
	to own it rather than to enjoy it as a free gift from thee.	2:35
	We ask to be delivered from possessiveness	2:40
	that strives to create a private heaven,	2:44
	or to imprison people within our own small circle.	2:47
	Forgive us, our father, for not thinking deeply,	2:52
	for sometimes being too intense,	2:57
	for being inattentive to the word of God	3:00
	and the voice of God, for the lack of feeling	3:03
	and intercession for the needs of our families,	3:07
	for the oppress, the hungry,	3:11
	those in temptation, and those without hope.	3:14
	Forgive us for an uncritical attitude to our own membership	3:18
	in a society of affluence.	3:23
	Forgive us for ignoring other people,	3:26
	and for taking ourselves too seriously,	3:29
	for sins of exhibition and for sins of inhibition,	3:33
	for a failure to think and pray and act deeply	3:38
	for the mission and unity of thy church,	3:41
	for trying to imprison God in words and in institutions.	3:46
	Oh Lord, forgive what we have been,	3:52
	sanctify, we ask, what we are and order what we shall be	3:57
	through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	4:04
	Amen.	4:07
	Let us hear these assuring words from scripture.	4:11
	"Come now, let us reason together," says the Lord.	4:17
	"Though your sins are like Scarlet,	4:20
	they shall be as white as snow though.	4:23
	Though they are red like Crimson,	4:26
	they shall become like wool."	4:28
	Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the holy one of Israel.	4:32
	"I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,	4:37
	and I will not remember your sins against you."	4:44
	In thanksgiving for the promise, for the felt,	4:50
	acceptance of God's love and grace,	4:54
	let us offer unto him our unison prayer of Thanksgiving.	4:58
	Let us pray.	5:02
	Almighty God, our heavenly father,	5:05
	we bless and magnify thy holy name,	5:08
	for the gift of thy most dearly beloved son, Jesus Christ,	5:12
	our Redeemer, and for all his apostles, prophets, martyrs,	5:17
	evangelists, teachers, and pastors,	5:23
	he has sent abroad into the world,	5:27
	for thy holy church universal, the ministry of the laity,	5:30
	and the ministry of the ordained.	5:35
	We do give thee hearty thanks.	5:38
	For the privilege which each one of us has	5:40
	of bearing witness to the saving grace of our Lord,	5:43
	we express our gratitude.	5:48
	We thank thee for life, for a measure of help, for friends,	5:50
	for food, for clothing, for all the purposes of Christ,	5:56
	which give meaning to these earthly goods.	6:02
	We make our prayers of thanks, in Jesus name. Amen.	6:05
	(sacred choir music)	6:12
	(sacred choir music)	11:44
-	The scripture lesson for this day	12:23
	is taken from the gospel,	12:25
	According to Saint John chapter 17, verse one through 11.	12:26
	Let us here and receive the word of God.	12:34
	And when Jesus had spoken these words,	12:40
	he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said,	12:43
	"Father, the hour has come.	12:46
	Glorify thy son that the son may glorify thee,	12:50
	since thou has given him power over all flesh,	12:54
	to give eternal life to all whom thou has given him.	12:57
	And this is eternal life that they may know thee,	13:02
	the only true God, in Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent.	13:07
	I glorified thee on earth,	13:13
	having accomplished the work which thou gave us me to do.	13:16
	And now, Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence,	13:20
	with the glory which I had with thee	13:25
	before the world was made.	13:27
	I have manifested thy name to the men	13:30
	whom thou gavest me out of the world.	13:34
	Thyne they were, and though gavest them to me	13:37
	and they have kept thou word.	13:42
	Now they know that everything	13:45
	that though has given me is from thee,	13:46
	for I had given them the words which thou gavest me,	13:50
	and they have received them	13:54
	and know in truth that I came from thee,	13:56
	and they have believed that thou did send me.	14:00
	I am praying for them.	14:04
	I am not praying for the world,	14:06
	but for those whom thou has given me, for they're thyne.	14:09
	All mine are thyne, and thyne are mine,	14:14
	And I am glorified in them.	14:18
	And now I am no more in the world,	14:22
	but they are in the world and I am coming to thee.	14:26
	Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou has given me,	14:30
	that they may be one, even as we are one."	14:36
	Here ends the reading of the lesson.	14:41
	(instrumental music)	14:45
-	The Lord be with you. Let us pray.	15:31
	Let us offer unto God our prayers for others,	15:43
	and for ourselves.	15:47
	Almighty God who has committed to thy people	15:52
	the ministry of intercession, hear us now	15:56
	as we pray for others and grant that our hearts	16:00
	may be so filled with peace and charity,	16:04
	that we may be fit instruments of thy will	16:06
	for our neighbors need.	16:11
	Oh God of liberation and reconciliation,	16:16
	to whom all things are possible,	16:19
	we call on thy spirit and we ask thy presence and thy power	16:23
	for all poor and hungry, for the outcast and the unemployed,	16:29
	for the people of the streets and ghettos,	16:36
	for children unwanted in their homes, for the wounded,	16:40
	for prisoners and exiles,	16:46
	for all who in this world are persecuted for conscious sake,	16:49
	we call on thy spirit, we ask thy presence,	16:55
	may thy love penetrate their condition	17:00
	and quench their hunger, and bring eternal peace.	17:03
	God, our Father, we remember before thee,	17:13
	the sick and the suffering of our world in mind and in body,	17:16
	for those who have been made slaves by drugs or by fear	17:23
	or by material goods, for those who are dying and have died,	17:28
	whether in bitterness or in tranquility,	17:33
	may thy love penetrate their condition	17:38
	and quench their hunger, and bring peace.	17:41
	We call on thy spirit and we ask thy presence and thy power,	17:47
	oh God, our Father, for our family,	17:51
	for those whom we number as our friends,	17:56
	for those with whom we share our daily work each day,	18:00
	for all those whom we fear or we resent or cannot love,	18:05
	may thy love penetrate their condition,	18:13
	and bring them peace.	18:17
	God, we lift before thee, a prayer for peace on earth.	18:22
	We pray not because we have been men of goodwill,	18:28
	but because we have come at last in our bewilderment,	18:31
	to long for thee that we might become men of goodwill.	18:36
	We pray for children, for the hungry and helpless	18:42
	and longing for life, who have become victims of war.	18:46
	We pray for those in every land	18:52
	who hide in the ruins of their hopes,	18:54
	and suffer from the cruelties of war.	18:57
	We bow our heads, oh God, in shame,	19:01
	for any part that we have had	19:05
	in visiting upon the family of man,	19:07
	the ghastly terror of war and the tears of human pain.	19:10
	In this season of lengthen days, we offer a prayer	19:18
	for the redemption of the new hours of light,	19:23
	for the new hours of leisure and of rest that come to us.	19:27
	Oh Lord, in this time of leisure and holiday	19:36
	and rest and vacation,	19:39
	we ask that thou would fill leisure time with newness.	19:41
	Fill the long watches of days off and weekends	19:46
	with a new way of life for which there is no pain.	19:50
	Fill up the long weekends, we ask, with things	19:54
	that we have not yet thought,	19:57
	with new sites not yet seen,	20:01
	with new people not yet visited,	20:03
	and with new deeds not yet done.	20:06
	Fill the nights with a new style of living	20:10
	and a new style of caring, we ask.	20:12
	Fill emptiness, oh Lord, with new people,	20:15
	whom we have not yet touched or visited,	20:19
	hopes that we have not yet had,	20:23
	good news that we have not yet known,	20:26
	and help that we have not yet given.	20:29
	Make our hours full and our life long and whole, we ask.	20:33
	Oh eternal God, our father,	20:41
	who knowest our words before they are on our tongues,	20:43
	turn our gaze now, we ask, from the outer world	20:49
	to our own inner life and experience,	20:51
	and help us to act as we lift our supplications before thee	20:55
	with honest candor.	21:00
	If we are inwardly barren, let us not flourish our words	21:03
	as if we possess great riches.	21:08
	If we are spiritually discouraged, oh Lord, or in despair,	21:12
	let us not come before thee in the semblance of faith put on	21:17
	as if our pain or perplexity were not real.	21:22
	Oh thou from whom nothing is hid,	21:27
	and who aren't able to heal what is not well with us,	21:31
	if we but open our lives and humbly seek thy grace.	21:35
	Come to each of us as we need thee,	21:40
	that with thy help,	21:44
	we may possess our souls in fullness of peace,	21:45
	and the health of joy.	21:49
	Lord, we pray for sensitiveness and commitment,	21:55
	and for power to recognize what is life enriching	21:59
	and what is life diminishing in our own lives,	22:03
	what attitudes, thoughts, deeds bring us alive inside,	22:07
	and what attitudes, thoughts,	22:12
	and deeds create deadness within us.	22:14
	We pray for power to shun what is negative in judgment,	22:18
	what is debilitating in emotion,	22:23
	what is weakening in imagination,	22:26
	and what is deadly in personal relationships.	22:29
	Help us, oh God, to commit ourselves	22:33
	and new thy spirit that creates life,	22:35
	that recreates us inwardly,	22:39
	and that enhances the life of those we meet.	22:43
	To this end, oh Lord, we give ourselves, again,	22:48
	to the love of God, that you may give yourself,	22:52
	once again, to us.	22:58
	We make bold to live before thy presence,	23:02
	the prayer which thy son taught us to pray together	23:06
	as Christian saying, our father who art in heaven,	23:09
	hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come,	23:14
	thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.	23:19
	Give us this day our daily bread,	23:23
	and forgive us our trespasses,	23:26
	as we forgive those who trespass against us.	23:28
	Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.	23:33
	For thyne is the kingdom, and the power,	23:38
	and the glory forever.	23:41
	Amen.	23:45
-	This is a large building we are worshiping in today.	24:09
	It's a long ways from the back to the front,	24:13
	from the ceiling to the floor,	24:16
	calculated to make the individual worshiper feel small,	24:20
	insignificant, isolated, but actually,	24:25
	we are all together in the community of worship,	24:30
	in the community of faith.	24:33
	And God is very close to us,	24:35
	as we are close to one another as we worship him.	24:38
	Wherever you may be from, this is your church,	24:45
	and you are welcome.	24:49
	We are especially happy today to have in our congregation,	24:51
	a young lady who is a nurse in Pearl Lagoon, Nicaragua,	24:56
	where we have at sometimes in the past	25:01
	had a Duke summer project.	25:03
	She is here today because she has brought a patient	25:07
	from that community to the Duke Hospital,	25:10
	to receive the needed and specialized services	25:13
	of our sophisticated medical center.	25:18
	And she is with Dr. and Mrs. Richey,	25:22
	who recently visited in her hometown.	25:25
	We're also very happy to have a small group of people	25:30
	in the congregation who are here from Baltimore.	25:32
	Whoever you are and wherever you're from,	25:36
	and I say, especially to the nurse from Pearl Lagoon,	25:39
	(foreign language)	25:44
	and we hope you will stay with us as long as possible	25:47
	and come back whenever you can.	25:50
	We live in troubled days.	25:55
	American people today are more polarized	25:59
	than they have been in a long time.	26:02
	Mutual distrust and spiraling crime	26:07
	are eating at the vital organs of our nation today,	26:12
	like a cancer.	26:16
	Four of our public figures have been shot, in recent years,	26:18
	as they sought to lead the nation.	26:23
	An inflationary trend, which has not been stopped,	26:27
	is taking food out of the mouths of hungry children.	26:31
	Selfish indifference is continuing to pollute the air,	26:36
	the water, and the land, to such an extent	26:40
	that our land may finally become unfit for habitation.	26:46
	The Vietnam war grinds on and on.	26:52
	Many and many thousands of our young people	26:56
	are completely at loose ends today.	26:59
	And so, our nation needs a great and stirring faith	27:05
	to galvanize our efforts to solve these vexing problems.	27:09
	The unfortunate fact is that just at the moment	27:15
	when this great faith is needed, we find that faith is weak.	27:19
	Western man has become more confused	27:25
	in his thinking about God	27:28
	than at any previous time in history.	27:29
	I am not sure whether the chicken or the egg came first.	27:35
	Perhaps the loss of faith came first,	27:39
	and this contributed to our woes.	27:41
	I don't know.	27:44
	But this morning, let's sketch the dimensions	27:47
	of this faith confusion, and point to some ways of thinking,	27:50
	which can lead to a clear and meaningful belief in God.	27:56
	In the beginning, let us remind ourselves	28:03
	of what was that Western men believed about God,	28:05
	before the erosion began.	28:09
	There've always been of course,	28:12
	a minority of classical atheists,	28:14
	agnostics, theists, and pantheists,	28:17
	but the overwhelming majority of Christian men	28:21
	and women in Western culture	28:24
	have believed in a divine creator who is personal,	28:26
	who continues to be active in the universe	28:30
	which he has created, and whose character	28:33
	and purpose were revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.	28:37
	Now, without laboring the point,	28:42
	I shall simply mention that until this present generation,	28:44
	it was taken for granted that members	28:49
	and ministers of all churches	28:52
	held essentially to this belief.	28:56
	And even most people outside the church	29:00
	had such an intellectual belief as well,	29:03
	whether the belief was taken seriously	29:06
	in their lives or not.	29:08
	In the United States, Gallup polls have shown in the past	29:12
	that as high as 97% of the American population	29:15
	acknowledged such a God do exist.	29:21
	However, no analyst of the contemporary scene	29:26
	can say that this situation prevails today.	29:30
	In addition to the old line, atheists outside the church,	29:35
	we now have new line, atheists inside the church,	29:39
	who call themselves Christian atheists.	29:43
	Added to the familiar non-Christian agnostic,	29:47
	we have a whole variety of agnostics in the church,	29:50
	and some of them are among its leaders.	29:55
	It was reported at a recent meeting of	29:59
	the National Council of the Churches of Christ in America,	30:02
	an organization made up of representatives	30:06
	chosen by the various denominations,	30:08
	that a third of the delegates were unwilling to affirm	30:11
	unqualified belief in a personal God.	30:17
	A Bishop of the church of England, Bishop Robinson,	30:22
	has repeatedly said that,	30:25
	"It is time to uproot the notion of a personal God."	30:27
	Prominent theologians, such as Tillich van Buren, Altizer,	30:32
	and Bootman have dismissed	30:36
	the reality of a supernatural personal God.	30:38
	Now, it would be confusing enough to find church leaders	30:43
	and theologians denying the existence of such a God	30:48
	if this were the full extent of the confusion,	30:51
	but it is not.	30:54
	Many of those who reject the notion of God	30:56
	as a divine person, nevertheless, employ the term God,	30:58
	and even spell it with a capital G.	31:04
	What is God?	31:08
	For some of them, God is the ground of all being.	31:10
	God is the vital force that runs through everything.	31:13
	For others, God is the rioting masses,	31:17
	looting stores and stealing color TV sets.	31:20
	The September, 1967 edition of a publication	31:24
	distributed by the Ecumenical Institute of Chicago	31:28
	quoted with approval, a piece written in 1925 by a Marxist	31:31
	who defined God as being the savage, raging, stinking,	31:37
	rebelling, and burning mob.	31:44
	Now, he did not state that God was at work in that mob	31:49
	or that God loved that mob or that service to such a mob	31:53
	would be equivalent to service to God,	31:57
	rather, he wrote that God is that mob.	31:59
	No more, and no less.	32:05
	Professor Nels Ferré, who would have to be ranked	32:10
	among the 10 most important theologians of our generation,	32:13
	has described Professor Tillich	32:17
	as being the most dangerous theologian of our time,	32:19
	because, says Ferré,	32:23
	"He rejected the central of historic Christian faith,	32:24
	but used all of the traditional terminology	32:30
	of historic Christian faith, God, Christ, redemption,	32:33
	grace, judgment and all the rest	32:37
	so that millions thought of Tillich	32:40
	as a Christian theologian.	32:42
	But those who gave closer examination	32:44
	became confused by the meaning of these central words."	32:47
	Ferré wrote a book on Tillich's theology,	32:53
	in which he challenged Tillich to deny	32:55
	that he had essentially rejected the basic Christian faith.	32:58
	Ferré's chief point was that Tillich	33:03
	scorned the church's faith in a transcendent God,	33:05
	who in any sense was alive and personal,	33:09
	all the while making noises like a rural pastor.	33:13
	Some theologians and churchmen today,	33:18
	follow Tillich's footsteps,	33:21
	rejecting the concept of a personal God,	33:24
	but using all the Orthodox terminology	33:26
	of the historic church,	33:29
	jumping through all the religious hoops	33:31
	and talking in a bias tone of voice,	33:33
	staying active in ecclesiastic organizations,	33:35
	and keeping up their ministerial ordination	33:38
	in the whole religious bit.	33:40
	One might never know	33:44
	that they have no belief in a personal God,	33:45
	unless he questioned them very closely.	33:47
	Same thing has happened to our word for God,	33:53
	which has happened to the word barbecue, for instance.	33:56
	The word barbecue originally	34:00
	referred to the process of cooking meat,	34:02
	in which the entire animal was cooked at one time	34:06
	over an open fire.	34:09
	The word barbecue referred to that, and to that alone.	34:12
	However, Certain sauces and spices	34:18
	were sometimes applied to the meat	34:23
	while it was being barbecued.	34:25
	And because this meat has sometimes been served	34:29
	in drive-in restaurants,	34:32
	one may today find almost any meat called barbecue,	34:33
	provided it has been artificially flavored	34:40
	or it is served outdoors or in a drive-in restaurant,	34:43
	regardless of how the meat was cooked.	34:49
	So we often hear the word barbecue	34:54
	applied to the incidentals rather than to that	34:56
	which it originally described.	35:00
	Now the same is true of our name for a personal being,	35:03
	who created and who creates today,	35:07
	the father of our Lord Jesus Christ.	35:11
	The name of God is applied to everything,	35:15
	all the way from the creator of the universe,	35:17
	to the kitchen sink.	35:20
	Is it important that we seek clarify	35:23
	the meaning of the word?	35:26
	Is it necessary that we determine	35:30
	whether faith in a personal God is viable today?	35:32
	I think it is.	35:37
	And I believe we can see how it is	35:40
	by turning Tennyson's prayer lines around.	35:42
	You will recall that in Mor de Arthur, he wrote,	35:46
	"For what are men better than sheep or goats,	35:50
	that nourish a blind life within the brain,	35:55
	if knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer."	35:58
	If we turn Tennyson's thought around exactly,	36:05
	it could read this way.	36:08
	"For what our men better than sheep or goats	36:11
	that nourish a blind life within the brain,	36:13
	if lifting hands of prayer, they know not God."	36:16
	In other words, when non-theistic theologians	36:25
	and other churchmen conduct services of worship	36:28
	in the Christian Church,	36:31
	why do they call the congregation to prayer,	36:33
	if they believe there is know God in existence	36:38
	who is able to hear the prayer?	36:41
	Is not such a procedure in very truth,	36:46
	the nourishing of a blind life within the brain?	36:49
	Let us now move, therefore, to a consideration of the idea	36:54
	of the existence of a personal God who can hear	36:59
	and answer prayer.	37:02
	How do we know such a God to be a person?	37:05
	Well, perhaps in a certain sense, we do not know it.	37:11
	However, we can infer the personhood of God	37:17
	in the same way we infer the personhood of man.	37:19
	That is by what he does.	37:23
	If we were to find ourselves shipwrecked	37:27
	on an island in the south seas	37:29
	and if we set out to discover	37:31
	whether the island were inhabited by humans,	37:33
	we would look for telltale evidences of activities,	37:37
	which only man could enterprise.	37:41
	You see, if on the beach,	37:45
	we came upon the skeleton of a partially devoured fish,	37:46
	this could be the doing of either an animal or a man.	37:51
	But if we were to discover a thatched hut	37:56
	with a rack of fish meat drying in the sun	38:01
	with coal smoldering underneath an iron pot,	38:05
	most of us would conclude	38:09
	that human intelligence was at work on the island.	38:11
	While this would not constitute	38:15
	positive proof of man's inhabitants of the island,	38:17
	we could quite reasonably infer it.	38:21
	Now, the exact same situation prevails in the universe.	38:26
	While there will never be positive proof of God	38:31
	for a man who refuses to be convinced	38:34
	until he has seen a bearded Santa Claus	38:37
	type of fleshly figure resting one foot on Mars	38:40
	and the other on Jupiter,	38:45
	those who can appreciate the signs of intelligence at work	38:47
	in a vast universe out there	38:52
	and in a micro cosmic cell down here,	38:54
	will believe that there is sufficient evidence	38:58
	for faith to build its assurance of things hope for,	39:00
	and to proceed from a conviction of things not seen,	39:04
	as the writer of Hebrews puts it.	39:08
	Can an impersonal universe produce personal beings?	39:12
	Was anyone of you who thinks of himself as a person	39:21
	born of a machine?	39:26
	Does the existence of a watch presume a watch maker?	39:30
	Everyone of the theories of man's presence on earth,	39:39
	all the way from that of Archbishop James Usher	39:43
	to Charles Darwin to Teilhard de Chardin,	39:46
	requires an ultimate source for human personality,	39:50
	a prime mover, a first cause.	40:01
	Now, this would apply equally to intelligent life on earth	40:06
	and elsewhere in the universe.	40:09
	Day before yesterday, while I was preparing this sermon,	40:13
	I read an associated press release,	40:16
	as you probably did also,	40:18
	which quoted the astronomy survey	40:20
	committee of the National Academy of Sciences as follows,	40:23
	"Exciting astronomical discoveries of the past seven years	40:28
	add up to a high probability that intelligent life	40:33
	exists elsewhere in the universe."	40:38
	While we human beings here on earth	40:47
	are in some significant sense flesh,	40:51
	and we should never forget that,	40:54
	church has sometimes been inclined to forget that,	40:56
	we can believe that as persons,	41:01
	we also are demonstrably spiritual as well.	41:03
	Therefore it seems inescapable	41:11
	that the atheist who insists there cannot be a personal God	41:13
	because we have not caught his physical body	41:17
	in any of our telescopes	41:20
	is raising an unnecessary barrier in his logic,	41:23
	and he is reasoning in open contradiction	41:26
	to our own experience with the personal existence of man.	41:28
	Another matter is that it seems difficult	41:34
	for some people to understand how God can exist as a person	41:37
	without a physical body.	41:41
	They do not visualize what Jesus meant	41:45
	when he declared that God is spirit.	41:47
	Perhaps one way to conceptualize	41:52
	what admittedly is a mystery	41:54
	is to commence with the hypothesis that man too is a spirit.	41:56
	And indeed this is clearly the teaching of the New Testament	42:03
	and of all the central theological	42:06
	thought of the Christian Church from the New Testament times	42:08
	until our own times.	42:11
	And every advanced student	42:13
	of historical theology knows that.	42:14
	Assuming that man is in his deepest and most personal sense,	42:17
	a spirit, how can we conceptualize this?	42:22
	One way is to show that the personhood of man is something	42:28
	which transcends the physical body.	42:32
	Think of it this way for a moment.	42:36
	A former Duke student, Chet Mottershead,	42:38
	was a member of our chapel choir.	42:42
	After graduating from Duke, Chet was in the arm forces	42:46
	and met with a terrible accident,	42:50
	which resulted in the necessity of amputating both his legs	42:53
	below the hips.	42:58
	I'm able to report now, several years later,	43:01
	that with both legs gone,	43:05
	the personality and the personhood of Chet Mottershead	43:08
	is as fully intact as when he had both legs.	43:12
	And he is today, a very successful professor of history	43:17
	at North Carolina Wesleyan College.	43:21
	A few years ago in South Africa,	43:26
	Dr. Christian Barnard transplanted the blood pumping organ	43:28
	from the body of a dead man into the body of a dying man,	43:34
	and the dying man lived.	43:39
	Afterward, members of the family of the patient	43:42
	were unable to detect any change at all	43:45
	in the person of the man with a new heart.	43:49
	We understand that in the case of finite personhood,	43:56
	when we can see a physical body	44:01
	through which the spiritual person functions,	44:03
	it is possible to conceptualize a real person	44:06
	who is not dependent for his personhood	44:11
	upon this or that organ of the physical body.	44:13
	How much more pot is it therefore	44:17
	for a divine person of infinite spirit	44:20
	to exist without a physical body	44:23
	that can be seen in a telescope?	44:25
	When the Russian Cosmonaut got in his spaceship	44:30
	and circled the earth some years ago,	44:33
	he returned and announced that he found it	44:35
	just as he expected to find it in space,	44:37
	a universe empty of God.	44:42
	Now, the Christian could agree that the Cosmonaut	44:46
	found it just as he, the Christian,	44:51
	would have expected it also.	44:53
	For during the past 1900 years,	44:56
	Christians have understood that God is spirit.	44:58
	And theistic Christians would have been as shocked	45:03
	as the Russian Cosmonaut,	45:07
	had he found a visible God out there.	45:09
	Next, some people have argued	45:16
	that it is meaningless to talk about a personal God	45:18
	on account of the fact that we're not even sure	45:21
	what human personality is.	45:23
	Well, of course,	45:26
	to raise this objection from a parallel	45:27
	is to ignore the implications of the parallel itself.	45:29
	True. We are not certain exactly.	45:33
	No psychologist is certain exactly	45:36
	what human personality is.	45:39
	But does that keep us from talking meaningfully about it	45:42
	and affirming its existence relating to it?	45:45
	Not at all.	45:49
	Most of us simply take our cue from Descartes' assumption	45:51
	that cogito, ergo sum, I think therefore I am,	45:54
	and proceed to describe the ways	46:00
	in which human personality functions,	46:03
	whatever the thing itself may turn out to be.	46:05
	The man of Christian faith	46:10
	applies the Cartesian formula to God,	46:13
	and assumes that	46:17
	since God has revealed his thoughts to man, he exists.	46:18
	Moreover, even as psychology delineates and elaborates	46:23
	the ways by which human personality functions,	46:27
	so theology delineates and elaborates the ways	46:31
	in which men of faith	46:34
	have observe the divine person to function.	46:35
	Therefore, unless we are simply	46:40
	predetermined to be permanently uptight with epistemology	46:44
	and semantics in our thought about God	46:49
	when we are not this way with anything else,	46:53
	there absolutely remains no reason	46:57
	why an open-minded scientifically oriented individual	47:00
	may not legitimately and logically	47:05
	entertain the possibility of a personal relationship	47:07
	to a personal God.	47:11
	To say just a short word about out the use of the term,	47:19
	God, to apply to the foundation of life,	47:22
	the ground of being, et cetera,	47:26
	let me express the view that both clarity of thought	47:29
	and the interests of faith are better served	47:33
	when we use words in the sense	47:36
	they have always been understood,	47:39
	rather than pumping meanings into them	47:42
	in such a way as to spread confusion.	47:45
	I would rather converse with an honest atheist	47:49
	than with a man who uses the term God	47:52
	to mean only what he himself is willing for it to mean.	47:55
	Picture a house	48:02
	with two young sisters in bed at 11 o'clock at night.	48:03
	One of the asks the other	48:09
	if their father is in the master bedroom.	48:11
	She replies she doesn't know for certain.	48:15
	They discuss the pros and cons of the matter.	48:19
	And finally, they agree that since they didn't see him	48:21
	before they went to bed,	48:24
	they won't assume they have a father.	48:26
	"That's all right," one of them finally volunteers,	48:31
	"We do indeed have a father.	48:34
	The floor of this house, the foundation underneath it,	48:37
	the roof overhead, these are our father."	48:41
	Well, one might raise questions about the confusion	48:49
	which such talk creates in the realm of semantics.	48:53
	And one could even question the honesty Of the use of terms	48:58
	which have a clear meaning	49:03
	being applied to realities with a different meaning,	49:05
	But the point which would tower	49:09
	above every other consideration in that situation,	49:11
	would be that the very effort of those children	49:15
	to assign the term father to something in their universe,	49:19
	eloquently proclaims their empirical hunger	49:26
	for a personal father.	49:29
	The Psalm said, "As the dear pants for the water brook,	49:33
	so longs my soul for thee, oh God."	49:37
	The attempts which have been made in the current generation	49:42
	to assign the term God to everything,	49:45
	from the ring around Saturn to the basement furnace,	49:48
	do indeed reflect man's need for the living God.	49:52
	Augustin's famous words take on new significance	49:57
	in the latter half of our century,	50:01
	"Thou hast made us for thy self,	50:04
	and our hearts are restless	50:07
	until they find their rest in thee."	50:09
	Fritz Buri has recently written a monograph entitled,	50:14
	How Can We Still Speak Responsibly of God?,	50:18
	published in the Andover Newton quarterly.	50:21
	He concludes by saying that responsible discourse about God	50:24
	is a discourse about God which arises in,	50:29
	and gives evidence of a discourse with God.	50:33
	And this leads us, you see,	50:40
	to a fresh understanding	50:41
	of the high priestly prayer of our Lord,	50:43
	a portion of which was read by Elmer Hall	50:46
	as our scripture lesson this morning.	50:48
	Jesus Christ argued no doctrine of a personal God.	50:51
	Rather, he prayed a doctrine of a personal heavenly father.	50:57
	This afternoon, you might want to read again	51:03
	that 17th chapter of John, just from that standpoint.	51:06
	And you will be impressed	51:10
	with the intensely personal element	51:11
	in all of Christ's talk about God.	51:15
	Perhaps if we will think carefully and clearly about God,	51:20
	and if we will have discourse with God,	51:25
	we can recapture a firmness in our spiritual footing,	51:29
	which will enable us to make that great leap of faith,	51:34
	which our times demand of us today.	51:38
	Almighty God, we pause now to acknowledge you	51:43
	as our father through Jesus Christ, your son.	51:48
	Amen.	51:55
	(sacred choir music)	52:01
	(sacred choir music)	54:57
	(sacred choir music)	1:00:13
-	Almighty God, receive our lives,	1:01:39
	and these, the fruits of our labor.	1:01:43
	Teach us so to live and to work,	1:01:46
	that all our ways may be fruitful	1:01:49
	and of service to thy will.	1:01:52
	Help us, oh God, to use the talents thou has given us,	1:01:55
	that we may be entrusted with greater responsibilities	1:01:58
	and empowered with great your ability.	1:02:03
	Save us, our father, from hoarding life,	1:02:06
	and enable us to honor thee in all that we do,	1:02:09
	through Christ our Lord.	1:02:14
	Amen.	1:02:16
	Go forth now in peace to do God's work in the world.	1:02:21
	May the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ,	1:02:26
	the love of God, our father,	1:02:29
	and the communion of the holy spirit be with you all.	1:02:31
	(sacred choir music)	1:03:52

Item Info

Title:

Howard C. Wilkinson - "Think of God as a Person" (June 4, 1972)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r44q7vr2c

Date:

June 4, 1972

Speaker:

Wilkinson, Howard C.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0620
ref6443_57b
uachapelsermaud
duke:628148
dcrau002605
ark:/87924/r44q7vr2c
69ea5efb-823c-48d6-81c8-bbcc0a13d4eb

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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Educational Use Permitted

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Howard C. Wilkinson - "Think of God as a Person" (June 4, 1972)

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1. Howard C. Wilkinson - "Think of God as a Person" (June 4, 1972)

Duke University Archives

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Howard C. Wilkinson - "Think of God as a Person" (June 4, 1972)

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