God and Reality Arman Hovhannisyan Metaphysics has done everything to involve God in the world of being. However, in case of considering Reality as being and nothingness, naturally, the metaphysical approach toward the idea of God is losing its grounds. If Reality is being and nothingness, so the idea of God, too, should concern nothingness as well as being. I It is impossible to find in the world of being the answer to the question on God, although just such attempts have taken place, in general. Conceiving itself as being limited in space and time, this-being is searching in the idea of God for something the lack of which is being experienced by it, limitlessness. In the idea of God, this-being is seeking for some explanation and sense of both its own being and that of the surrounding world. Let's leave aside all the metaphysical definitions of God, arguments for or against the being of God, "proofs" of God's existence or non-existence, put forward by metaphysics during its history, and try to understand that idea in its purely philosophical, hermeneutical sense. If this-being is not given any experience of God's existence, so where is it getting the idea of God from, and where and how is this-being representing God in its prescientific, hermeneutical thinking? Indeed, this-being is not given any experience of God's existence, it is given only the experience of its own existence and its surroundings. Encountering the limitedness and temporality of itself, as well as those of concrete things in its surroundings, thisbeing, at the same time, is not finding that limitedness in the surrounding world as such, which is presenting itself to this-being as a limitless and endless one and which cannot present itself otherwise, as we have already shown. This provides this-being with grounds to suppose absolute being, unlike its own limited and temporal one, which is not prevented by anything from comprehending the world, being as such, and therefore to be aware of this-being's role and place in that being, and consequently to run both the world as such and this-being's destiny. Such an idea is inherent in this-being and is a rightful one in its initial, pure form. 2 Arman Hovhannisyan. God and Reality However, metaphysics has done everything to rationalize the initial naïve rightfulness of that idea and to bring it into the world of being. All doctrines asserting God's being as well as those denying it are at one in a point: for these doctrines, God is in the world of being or has no place in the world of being, because this-being attributes to God absolute, real, eternal being, and metaphysics imagines no being out of the world of being. Involving God in the world of being, metaphysics is doing so also in case of the correlation between God and that world first of all, attributing to it the nature of causation connection: according to this, God is or is not the cause of the world and all phenomena taking place in it, and the world and phenomena taking place in it are or are not effects of God's activity. However, in case of considering Reality as being and nothingness, naturally, the metaphysical approach toward the idea of God is losing its grounds. If Reality is being and nothingness, then the idea of God, too, should concern nothingness as well as being. As we have already shown, in Reality, passages from being to nothingness and vice versa are always taking place. Therefore, such correlation should have its place in the idea of God. This-being is supposing God as absolute being, therefore, anything as well as nothingness should not be left out of that being which should involve everything and also nothingness, as much as the latter has to do with being. So, one must search for God not only in the world of being, but also in nothingness, and eventually in Reality. II Nevertheless, this-being's hermeneutical idea of God is attributing to God absolute being, and therefore, how can one, so as to say, combine being with nothingness as the former's absolute negation, and finally, is God being or nothingness? Such an approach, however, is proper just to the metaphysical thinking, and the contradiction here, per se, is a metaphysical and somewhat artificial one. That contradiction is stressed just on the metaphysical level of this-being's thinking and, in any event, is not so much actual when the religious approach is concerned, and when God is accepted as an object of belief. 3 Arman Hovhannisyan. God and Reality Any religion is accepting God as God should be in this-being's imagination, and metaphysical contradictions never trouble the religious thinking. To be more exact, God, as an object of belief, is supposed by this-being in very Reality, as absolute being standing above being as well as nothingness. Religion is accepting that truth a priori, unconditionally, and if there have ever been any religious philosophical or rather metaphysical doctrines which have tried to prove one religious truth or another, their real goal has been rather to fight against atheism defending itself with the help of theoretical systems. It may be asserted that the religious idea of God, a pre-scientific and pre-logical one, has hermeneutical roots. As that idea is a pre-scientific one, any attempt to rationalize, define it has always disintegrated it, because defining the idea of God is already an attempt to limit God's limitlessness. Being a hermeneutical one, the idea of God should have its reflection and explanation in any philosophy pretending to be a real, non-metaphysical one. III The idea of God is inseparable from the idea of God's eternity. Eternity, according to this-being, is the primary and most important attribute of absolute being. As such, God is eternal, and unlike this-being limited by time, God is unlimited from the point of view of time. Limitlessness, however, as we have shown above, can be manifested also as endlessness, so what is forcing this-being to imagine God's temporal limitlessness just as eternity? Endlessness, as we have already said, is typical to the world surrounding thisbeing, in other words to the world of being which is presenting itself to this-being as an endless flow of finite things. The hermeneutical idea of God, however, supposes God's stay above all finite and temporal things, and thus God's eternity. This-being is imagining God to be out of time, where the past, the present and the future coincide, and such being out of time is nothing else but eternity in a sense of which we have already spoken. We have already said that eternity is the ideal, perfect attribute of time, ascribed to it by this-being, looking for its bases in itself and in its surroundings. Eternity, as 4 Arman Hovhannisyan. God and Reality imagined by this-being, is the stopped time which is supposed to be the pure, absolute time. We have already said also that eternity and the instant, as imagined by this-being, coincide, and that eternity is as much non-being as the instant is. Therefore, one cannot and must not search for God in the world of being. As absolute being, God is above the world of being understood by this-being and time experienced by this-being. Simultaneously, there is some correlation between God and the world of being, a link connecting God to this-being and through it to the world of being, and the temporal modus of that link is the instant. This-being has an understanding of the instant, although has not the full experience of it, the instant seems to pass, slip permanently through this-being, without stopping. As a matter of fact, the instant is non-being for this-being and nothingness in itself, however, this-being has an idea of it, a hermeneutical conception proceeding from its own being, moreover, this-being is supposing it as the real, ideal time. The instant in this-being is the very nothingness in this-being, in the aspect of time. This-being's mind itself, when separated from its content, is turning into the instant opened between the past and the future, which at the same time is and is not, which is a fact coming from non-being and going toward non-being, a rather understood, supposed, than experienced fact. It is the instant which is connecting God and this-being in time, and the presence of the instant in time can be compared, perhaps, to the presence of God in the world of being, a presence that might be described as being in the world of being forever and at the same time never being in it. From this, all the contradictions connected to the idea of God in the traditional Philosophy and especially metaphysics are coming. The way of overcoming those contradictions is one, and it is, as we have said, searching for God in Reality, rather than involving God in the world of being. IV The next most important attribute ascribed by this-being to God is infinity. This-being knows nothing or almost nothing about infinity, except that it never presents itself in the world of being and comes forward rather as negation of this-being's 5 Arman Hovhannisyan. God and Reality own limitedness. As such, limitlessness is an abstraction which helps to impart to God's absolute being an attribute the lack of which this-being is experiencing primordially, as limited and finite being. Unlike itself as limited and finite being, this-being is supposing God to be unlimited being, and therefore out of any kind of temporal and spatial limitations. Spatial limitlessness must be imagined as eternity is supposed in case of time, i.e. a stay out and above space. Actually, this-being's idea of limitlessness ends here. However, such an idea never helps this-being to understand what kind of connection can be between God vested with such limitlessness and the world of being which is presenting itself to this-being as a spatial one. As we have already said earlier, while this-being does not have and cannot have any experience of limitlessness of space, infinity is somewhat given to this-being in its experience as the point, which, although an abstraction designating the inseparable "unit" of space, nevertheless has in its basis this-being's experience, where space is presenting itself as infinite set of points. However, the point is as elusive for this-being in that aspect as the instant is in case of time. Therefore, infinity of the point is a unique connecting link between limitlessness attributed by this-being to God and limitedness and finiteness of the world of being. God's limitlessness, inaccessible for this-being's experience, is presenting itself to that experience as infinity. So, infinity is coming forward as the modus of limitlessness in the world of being, in the spatial world. Such an understanding of the correlation between limitlessness and infinity gives this-being the opportunity both to "remove" God from the world of being, imagining God as unlimited being staying out of space, and to reveal a certain connection between God and the world of being. Hence, we can assert that according to this-being's idea, unlimited God is out of space, and God's limitlessness is manifested in space as infinity. This, in its turn, provides us with grounds to describe God's relation to space with the help of the following formula: to be everywhere in space and at the same time not to be anywhere, as the point is. 6 Arman Hovhannisyan. God and Reality For metaphysics, such a relation between God and space is an incomprehensible and contradictory one. Like in case of the idea of God's eternity, the only way to escape such contradictions is searching for God rather in Reality than in the world of being. V So, this-being has an idea of God, as absolute being which is, first of all, eternal in temporal, and infinite in spatial aspects. God's absolute being supposes that God is in Reality and, as such, must relate to being as well as nothingness, staying above both being and nothingness. "Must relate to the world of being" means that God must be present in this world, there must be, so as to say, "signs" of God's presence in this world. As we have said, the instant and the point can be considered such signs. This-being is not able to answer the question about the kind of God's relation to nothingness. The only fact that this-being can assert in this aspect is that while its own communication with nothingness is ruled out, so in case of God such communication is not only possible but is just determined by God's absolute being.