Conceptions of God and the Self

Abstract

In occidental religious traditions, the idea of the unity of the self and the idea of monotheism have been closely related, though their relation has not often been explicitly considered. In this paper a typology is proposed of several ways in which conceptions of God correlate with particular views of the self. Implications of the several types are explored, and each type is evaluated with respect to its adequacy as an expression of certain aspects of religious experience and with respect to its promise for an adequate understanding of the concept of the self and for the illumination it might provide for a concept of God. The following construction of three types may be viewed as a schematization of different ways of resolving the classical problem of the one and the many. In the first type, the fact of plurality is questioned. The second describes a plural world with many substances. In the third, the real is conceived on a social or developmental model in which the one and the many can be distinguished but cannot be separated. In the course of the examination of each of these types, some of the implications for ontology, epistemology, and ethics will be noted.