What is” God”?

Once upon a time, this question did not a problem, but for our time it has become problematic. What do we can the word “God” tell us? What reality does it express, and how can this reality affect man? If we want to get to the root of this question, let us first try a religious-philosophical analysis. We will uncover the source of religious experience and reflect on why the subject “God” defines human history. Although today it is heard everywhere “God is dead!”, we see that the question of God in our midst is all the more pressing. Where does the idea of “God” come from, and from what roots does it grow from? Why is this seemingly useless and, for our country, as if the unhelpful topic for our country, yet it remains the most pressing theme of history? Why does it appear in so many forms?
According to the outward signs, we can say that in principle there are
only three forms, which circulate in various variations as monotheism, polytheism, and atheism. The history of mankind toward God has followed these three paths. Even atheism, which has seemingly done away with God, constantly returns to the question of God and passionately engages with it. If we want to pursue the basic preliminary questions, we would have to introduce two roots of religious experience to which many other forms of experience. Their tension is expressed by van der Leeuw, the famous Dutch religious phenomenologist, in a paradoxical sentence that in the history of religion there is a God present – the Son before God the Father.  It would be more correct to say that God the Savior, the Redeemer, is before God the Creator. But even with this clarification, we must be careful to note that this formula cannot be understood in the sense of a temporal sequence, for which there is no evidence. If we can trace the history of religion, the theme of God always appears in both forms. The word “before” can therefore only mean that the real for real religiosity, for a living existential interest, the Savior stands before the Creator. It is in this double form that mankind has seen its God, which is the double starting point of religious experience, as we have already spoken of. The first starting point is the experience of one’s  existence that transcends itself and brings us in some way, however cryptic, to the “wholly other.” This is again a very multi-layered process – as complicated as human existence itself. The theologian Bonhoeffer said: “It is time to put an end to the kind of God who i ..a substitute for us, a patch on the edge of our incapacity, and whom we invoke when we are at our wits’ end.  We should find God not only in need, in failure, but amid the fullness of earthly life. Thus, it will be found that God is not a way out of distress that loses its function when our abilities are perfected.

In the history of human struggles for God are both ways, and both, it seems to me, are equally legitimate. Both humans in capacities can lead us to God, and the fullness of life. Whenever humans have known the fullness, richness, beauty, the greatness of their being, they must surely have realized that it is a gift. And I, as a human being, am indebted to this richness to give meaning to that wealth and to accept that meaning. Also, the inadequacy shows man the way to something else.  “I would like to speak of God, not at the boundaries but in the middle, not in weakness but in strength, not in death and guilt but in life and the good of man*. to himself by the question, his indeterminacy, the limits he encounters in his own heart, and the longing for something infinite (perhaps in the sense of Nietzsche’s words that every joy desires for eternity, and yet we experience it only at the moment) this limitation and desire for the infinite and unlimited does not give the man never peace, makes him feel that he is not enough for himself, that he can only reach himself if he comes out of himself and focuses towards something else, something infinitely great. We come to the same conclusion if we notice human loneliness and certainty. Loneliness is certainly one way, in which man meets God. If a man feels lonely, he understands that his existence is a great cry for “You”. And that he is unable to be alone with his “I”. Loneliness can be experienced in different degrees. It can be to a certain extent when one finds replenishment in a friendly You. But there is a certain paradox in this. According to Claude, every You one finds will eventually reveal itself as an unfulfilled and unfulfillable promise.
Every human Thou is fundamentally disappointing because there is a point at which no encounter can overcome the ultimate loneliness. Thus, even when a man finds the human You, and when he is found, he changes into loneliness and a great cry for the absolute You’re reaching to the depths of the soul! And it is not only the misery of loneliness and the experience that no fellowship will fulfill our longing completely that leads to the experience of God. The path to God can, of course, lead from joyful security. It is the fullness of love and self-discovery that can make a person feel what he cannot call forth and create on his own, and can bring him to the realization that he is receiving more than love and self-finding can give. In the light and joy of self-discovery, the nearness of absolute joy and complete finding of the self that is behind all human seeking.