The major topic of Professor Weiss's present work is the experience of and concern with God in privacy and in community. His purpose is to reveal the primary nuances and distinctions essential to an adequate grasp of the nature of religion, and he seeks to isolate the pure, undistorted relation men have to God. The God we seek is thus, in Mr. Weiss's viewpoint, no distillate, no abstract desiccated element but something at least as rich and as concrete as the specialized forms of experience and concerns exhibited in ...
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The major topic of Professor Weiss's present work is the experience of and concern with God in privacy and in community. His purpose is to reveal the primary nuances and distinctions essential to an adequate grasp of the nature of religion, and he seeks to isolate the pure, undistorted relation men have to God. The God we seek is thus, in Mr. Weiss's viewpoint, no distillate, no abstract desiccated element but something at least as rich and as concrete as the specialized forms of experience and concerns exhibited in particular religions--but without their bias. Presupposing only those rudimentary experiences which are shared by everyone, Mr. Weiss focuses on that pure, rich, concrete relation which connects men and God, "a relation which is diversely ritualized and specialized by the various religions." Mr. Weiss makes evident that there are many ways in which men make contact with God, "apart from special revelations, messages, or miracles." God, he shows, is enjoyed in dedicated communities, is reached through the fissures of experience, and is present in sacred objects and in service. Written in Professor Weiss's usual incisive, clear style and addressed to the general reader as well as to the theologian, minister, and philosopher, the work as a whole is challenging and highly quotable in its observations. The virtues and limitations of the different religions, the nature of faith, prayer and worship, mysticism and religious language are some of the topics dealt with in a fresh and illuminating spirit. Mr. Weiss's discussion of religious history is particularly noteworthy for sharply marking out an area that is neglected in most modern religious and historical studies. An independent work, The God We Seek serves also as the capstone of Paul Weiss's entire philosophic system: a philosophic system dealing with the whole of being and knowledge, both in a highly abstract form ( The Modes of Being ), and in concrete, specialized guises ( The World of Art , Nine Basic Arts , History: Written and Lived ). His intellectual diary, Philosophy in Process , is now appearing in a series of twelve fascicles, published at intervals of three months.
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The American philosopher Paul Weiss (1901 - 2002) practiced a large, synoptic, and speculative philosophy based on metaphysics, the study of the nature of reality. He wrote prolifically over a long life but is little read today. I have been reading and learning from some of Weiss' work.
"The God We Seek" (1964) is one of several books Weiss wrote to explore what he found to be basic realities rather than abstract questions of metaphysics. "The God We Seek" is, in the author's words, "tortuous and troubled". But the book also is eloquent and accessible and does not require background in Weiss' broader metaphysics. It may be studied with benefit by any reader with patience.
The book explores why and where people search for God. It discusses how and what may be known of God separate from particular religions or theologies. It is written in a way that emphasizes basic human experiences rather than argument. The work has a highly personal, immediate tone.
For Weiss, the search for God takes places both privately, in the interior life of individuals, and communally, often through organized religions. Weiss sets out his themes in his Introduction which I will discuss in a bit of detail in what follows. He writes, "The plurality of religions testifies not only to distinctive estimates of God but to a plurality of ways of acting and believing, and to various relations supposed to connect man and man, man and God, man and the world, and God and the world. The members of the different religions, because they usually make little effort to understand what God is like, differ not only in practice, but in their values and their justification, and ultimately in what they say and do about their God."
Weiss' daunting goal is to learn something of the God that is worshipped and understood in different ways by different religions.
Weiss finds "a great number of ways in which contact can be made with God. We can find Him everywhere." In the successive chapters of his book he discusses many ways of search and making contact with God from reflection on daily experience at its most basic through the systematic thinking of philosophy. With the many ways to seek God, Weiss finds that "God in and of Himself is the objective unity of the termini of our approaches to Him and of what we obtain through a contact with Him. But since no one of us has both followed and united all these approaches, no one of us can be said to have an adequate grasp of what God is in and of Himself." Weiss focuses on "the experience and concern with God in privacy and in a community". He endeavors to "isolate the pure, undistorted relation men have with God; a relation which is diversely ritualized and specialized by the various religions."
As Weiss recognizes, there is a sense in which God is an ultimate and beyond human comprehension. There is also a sense, which is more germane to the book, in which humans seek to understand and be involved with God. At the end of his Introduction, Weiss summarizes the conclusions he reaches in the book.
"God is at once outside all of us, singly and together, enobling all there is, and immanent, qualifying whatever there be. Here and now he provides evidences of His existence and agencies by which we can come closer to Him. But it is no easy thing to attend to these evidences, and no easy thing to make use of the agencies he has made possible."
The body of "The God We Seek" is divided into three sections titled "Experience", "The Sacred" and "The Quest". The heart of the book, for me is in the discussion of the "Dedicated Community" in part 2 which has some similarities to the "Beloved Community" of Josiah Royce and in the discussion in the same part of the "Competing Claims of the Various Religions." Weiss offers an extended treatment of Judaism in this section among much else. In "Turning Toward God"in part 3, Weiss movingly explores the private character of religion and the nature of faith.
The God-centered character of much of American philosophy, including works by James, Royce, Dewey, and Whitehead has often been overlooked. Weiss' "The God we Seek" is a book within this category and this search. I learned from this book, even though it is largely forgotten.
