John Hick

Au first circle, we encounter a problem of terminology to which no satisfactory solution can be proposed. How do we have to name this transcendent reality to which we suppose that the religion constitutes the human answer? One can lean initially for the rejection of “God”, because too much theist - if it is retained that the range of the religions includes the greatest traditions not-theists like the theists - and to consider alternatives such as “Transcendent the”, “the Divine one”, “the Dharma”, “the Absolu”, “CAT”, “To be It in oneself”, “Brahman”, “ultimate divine reality”. The fact is that we do not have a term perfectly free with respect to an unspecified tradition or likely to transcend them. This is why one comes from there to use the term provided by one of these traditions, however using it (or being aware badly to use it) in a way which forces its borders. Like Christian, I would be enough of agreement to use “God” but I would not absolutely use it in his direction theist. It is thus a danger to the author as for the reader passing without it to have noticed and regressing in a strict sense and standard of this term; both must remain vigilant against that. I will thus speak about God in what follows, with this important restriction that it is an open-ended question knowing at this time of the matter, if God is personal. We will be led, I suppose it, to distinguish God from “God as it is conceived and perceived by the men”. God is neither a person nor an object but transcendent reality such as it is conceived and tested by various human mentalities, in particular either in a personal way, or in a not-personal way.
The general design of this distinction, on the one hand, Déité in all its infinite depth, beyond the conscience and of the human experiment and on the other hand, Déité like an experiment finished in the human experiment, is old and very widespread. Perhaps the most explicit form of this distinction is that between Nirguna Brahman, Brahman without attributes, beyond the field of human language and Saguna Brahman, with attributes, known in the human religious experiment like Ishvara, the personal creator and prince of the universe. In the Western mystic Maître Eckhart (Meister Eckhart) is distinguished the Déité (Deitas) and God (Deus); and Rudolf Otto, in its study “Eckhart and Shankara” known as: “Here even the most extraordinary analogy between Eckhart and Shankara meets: far with the top from God and the personal Lord Déité is, maintaining a relation identical to that which Brahman towards Ishvara holds”. The Writings Taoists, CAT You Ching, start by affirming that “the CAT which one can express is not the CAT eternal”. The mystics of the Jewish Kabbale distinguish between In Soph, absolute divine reality, beyond any human description and God of the Bible; at Soufis, Al Hacq, Reality seems to be a similar concept, like abyssal Déité supporting the personality of Allah. More recently, Paul Tillich spoke about “God beyond God of theism” and said that " God is the symbol of God”. Whitehead and the theologists of the Process which followed it distinguish between paramount nature and consequent nature from God, the first being the nature of God oneself, the other consisting of its inclusion in the world and the answer of the monde.