Non-Theism: An Outmoded Concept?

By Walt Marston

(Arising from conversations within our Quaker community)

I always find it interesting how people use labels to describe themselves and then how others react to these labels. The trouble with labels is that they mean different things to different people. I believe this is the case with the terms theist and non-theist.

I suppose there may be those who do not believe in any kind of God and find non-theist a less harsh label to apply to themselves than atheist. But I suspect that many who call themselves non-theists believe in God, just not the kind of God they were taught to believe in growing up.

This even applies to many who call themselves atheists. They believe in a “higher” power or source of life, but they don’t want to call it God because that name connotes images of a jealous and vengeful male personage “out there” somewhere who is all about rewards and punishments. I don’t believe in that kind of God, either, but I am not an atheist or a non-theist. I do believe in God, but the word God is a label for the transcendent unknowable force – the source of life that brings forth the physical universe and continuously sustains it. I think of this as more of a Presence or Spirit than a person. In fact the Judaic-Christian Scriptures say God is Spirit and is to be worshipped in Spirit and in Truth.

My old Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, 1998, defines theism as: “belief in the existence of one God viewed as a creative source of man and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world.” One could say this posits a God who is a person (or being). Yet even those who believe this would realize that for God to be greater than its creation and to be omnipresent within its creation, it would have to be more of a pervasive presence or spirit than a being. However, this is where the concept of God “the son” comes in, as God manifested in a human form like ours.

God is both transcendent and immanent – beyond its creation and also completely within and throughout it. There is nowhere God is not.

I recently saw a brochure for a church named Extended Grace, in Grand Haven, Michigan. Inside it describes the “3-2-1 of God” as follows:

“We celebrate God in the third person, second person and first person.
· The third person of God is that which transcends anything we can grasp or imagine. God as Creator, Trinity, Ruach, Mystery.
· The second person of God is relational and personal. Our Mother/Father God, Personal Savior, Beloved Bridegroom, the God who meets us when we are in the depths of despair.
· The first person of God is the face of our own True Self. We know we are only fully who we are meant to be when we are finally fully infused with Spirit, the Kingdom Within, Christ Consciousness, home of God’s indwelling Spirit.”

While my choice of words might be somewhat different, I think this does a wonderful job of depicting the levels or aspects of God. People who need to think of God in just one way, particularly as a person “out there,” often have problems relating to God in a personal way because this is a Power that must be pleased and a relationship that must be somehow evoked. The reality is more seamless and natural than that. I believe God is never separate from us, except in our consciousness, but this is difficult to realize.

It’s been said that the only “body” God has is ours. We are his body, his hands and feet. To the extent that we realize and employ the power of God which is everywhere around us and within us – that created and sustains us – we manifest our true nature as children of God.

So, while Quakers are usually theists and Christian, one does not have to subscribe to an old orthodox belief system in order to be either. To call oneself “non-theist” I believe is usually just a way of distinguishing oneself from those who’s concept of God is too narrow (that is, the old man – the patriarch—in the sky, and therefore a patriarchal view of God and our relationship to God).

I certainly hope that most of us have transcended that outmoded notion (of the patriarch) and traded it for one that is unlimited in scope and an unconditional source of power and love in our lives.