The Incomprehensibility of God and the Image of God Male

1327 Words3 Pages

When the fictional character Loonquawl was told that the answer to “Life, the Universe and Everything” was a very simple “forty-two,” he was, to put it mildly, upset, especially seeing as the computer, Deep Thought, had taken seven and a half million years to compute it. When asked if forty-two was definitely the answer, Deep Thought replies, “I checked it very thoroughly, and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is” (Adams 1997, 162). This situation in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy throws a humorous light on humanity’s tendency to just want answers without perhaps fully understanding the scope of the question. Everyone, at some point in their life, might consider “What is the answer to Life?” And if Life is what we experience as humans, then we can also pose, “What does it mean to be human?” Teenagers in existential crisis, ancient Greek philosophers and middle-aged grocery baggers can all identify with the desire for an answer to that question. People come up with various ways and means to find this elusive answer. Some might look to the human experience and try to use philosophy (and perhaps thus end up as grocery baggers). On the other hand, some may instead turn to the exact opposite of “human”: the divine. Many religions propose to have found the answer of what it means to be human through knowledge and experience of the divine. Christianity, in particular, has been grappling with this question ever since the birth and death of a man named Jesus, who was reported to be, in various ways, the very presence of divinity on Earth. Unfortunately, the majority of any “official grappling” in Christianity has ...

... middle of paper ...

...hurch.

Works Cited

Abraham, Susan, and Elena Procario-Foley. "Redeeming Christ: Imitation or (Re)citation?." In Frontiers in Catholic feminist theology: shoulder to shoulder. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009. 119-140.

Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . New York: Harmony Books, 1997.

Clifford, Anne M. Introducing Feminist Theology. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2001.

Mitchem, Stephanie Y.. Introducing Womanist Theology . Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2002.

Russell, Letty M., and J. Shannon Clarkson. Dictionary of Feminist Theologies. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.

Wilmore, Gayraud S., and James H. Cone. "Womanist Theology: Black Women's Experience as a Source for doing Theology, with Special Reference to Christology." In Black Theology: A Documentary History. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993. 273-289.

Open Document