Who I Will Be

Book excerpt: As a result of the author’s own spiritual and intellectual journey he came to believe that there was something missing in our traditional understanding of the nature of God. In the Scriptures God is presented as clothed with real emotions and feelings such as anger, jealousy, love, compassion, and even a change of purpose and heart. In short, God is presented there as really being influenced and affected by our actions and by the events of history. This book traces this teaching on the feelings of God from the Scriptures to the third century. It tries to show that the gradual loss of these feelings of God in Christian teaching was due to an overemphasis on rational, philosophical knowledge. Certain trends in psychology, the study of language, and philosophy call for a reexamination of this question. The author believes that a clarification of this aspect of God is extremely important and significant for our spiritual life.