The God of Religion and the God of Philosophy

Abstract

Ever since the time of Pascal men have feared that the ‘God’ worshipped by believers and the ‘God’ contemplated by philosophers were somehow different. The former was personal, historically active, slow to anger and plentiful in mercy: the latter was dubiously able to be described in personal terms at all, and infinite in such a way as to baffle the imagination. The ‘God’ of the former at least had the advantage of complying with what was alleged to be religious experience: and so it was not surprising that religious men feared that the ‘God’ of philosophy threatened that experience itself; whereas at times philosophers have fed such suspicions by denying to God various properties not on logical grounds but because close involvement with man seemed to them not to comport with the divine dignity.