Personal & Geographical Gods: Intimacy

This is the first of a series on Joseph Ratzinger’s exploration of the implications of God as a Numen Personale, a personal God, as opposed to a Numen Locale, a geographical God.

During our classes in Fundamental Theology, the seminarians and I have been reading together passages from Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity. This week, we looked at the importance of God’s revelation as YHWH.

As a background to this, we look at how the Hebrew scriptures referred to Israel’s choice to refer to God using the term “El” (Elohim, El Shaddai etc). This was an important starting point for Israel, Ratzinger says, because the use of this term indicated a borrowing from what were known as the El-religions of the surrounding cultures.

This gives us an important first clue to God’s revelation, as understood by both the Jewish and Christian faith: that God’s revelation, in its sheer transcendence, also does not eradicate immanent things, including the immanent things of culture. If anything, as Thomas Aquinas keeps reminding us, God’s revelation, like all graces, build on immanent things.

The second clue from this borrowing, Ratzinger tells us, is that El-religions are “characterised chiefly by the social and personal character of the divinity” (82). This marked an important point of distinction between the God of Israel and the gods of the surrounding cultures. That point of distinction is the fact that God no longer became tied to a place - a numen locale. Instead, Ratzinger says, the God of Israel was a numen personale, a God tied to persons. The main point of connection was no longer a particular place. The reason for this, Ratzinger says, is that devotion to a numen personale comes with a distinct limitation:

First we should recall that the religious experience of the human race has continually been kindled at holy places, where for some reason or other the ‘quite other’, the divine becomes particularly palpable to man…but the danger immediately arises that in man’s eyes the spot where he experienced the divine and the divine itself merge into each other, so that he believes in a special presence of the divine at that particular spot and thinks he cannot find it in equal measure elsewhere.

By contrast, in distinguishing the God as a numen personale, Israel came to recognise the crucial link as what Ratzinger calls “the plane of the I and you”, in other words, a personal link (as opposed to a geographical one). God is now the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

The implications of this seemingly simple switch are huge.

In the first instance, a numen personale is a God whose presence is experienced so long as the personal relationship persists, and this is true regardless of where the believer is located. In Ratzinger’s words, God “is no longer bound to one spot, but present and powerful wherever man is” (83).

Put another way, in unhooking divine presence from a particular locale, a God who is numen personale is also a God who is more intimate with a person. Regardless of where that person is, or what the person is going through, the first fruit of Israel’s choice of a personal God is a God who is more personal.

This innovation in thinking about God, Ratzinger says, becomes “the one sustainting element not only of the religion of Israel, but also of the New Testament faith: the emanation of God’s personality.

Support Awkward Asian Theologian on Patreon, and help make a change to the theological web.