The Living God. Unamuno, Life 8.9

Unamuno rejects the rationality of the consensus-argument for God, but he is nevertheless willing to use this argument to approach God from another angle, one that is not rational. He believes that God is fundamentally a being of vital will, irreducible to rational limits. Divine justice for him is ultimately willful, not mathematical: an expression of the universe that we cannot render or balance in soluble symbolic equations.

Ese famoso argumento del consentimiento supuesto unánime de los pueblos, que es el que con un seguro instinto más emplearon los antiguos, no es, en el fondo y trasladado de la colectividad del individuo, sino la llamada prueba moral, la que Kant, en su Crítica de la razón práctica, empleó, la que se saca de nuestra conciencia —o más bien de nuestro sentimiento de la divinidad—, y que no es una prueba estricta y específicamente racional, sino vital, y que no puede ser aplicada al Dios lógico, al ens summum, al Ser simplicísimo y abstractísimo, al primer motor inmóvil e impasible, al Dios Razón, en fin, que ni sufre ni anhela, sino al Dios biótico, al Ser complejísimo y concretísimo, al Dios paciente que sufre y anhela en nosotros y con nosotros, al Padre de Cristo, al que no se puede ir sino por el Hombre, por su Hijo (v. Juan, XIV, 6), y cuya revelación es histórica, o si se quiere anecdótica, pero no filosófica, no categórica.

El consentimiento unánime —¡supongámoslo así!— de los pueblos, o sea el universal anhelo de las almas todas humanas que llegaron a la conciencia de su humanidad que quiere ser fin y sentido del Universo, ese anhelo, que no es sino aquella esencia misma del alma, que consiste en su conato por persistir eternamente y porque no se rompa la continuidad de la conciencia, nos lleva al Dios humano, antropomórfico, proyección de nuestra conciencia a la Conciencia del Universo, al Dios que da finalidad y sentido humanos al Universo y que no es el ens summum, el primum movens, ni el creador del Universo, no es la Idea-Dios. Es un Dios vivo, subjetivo —pues que no es sino la subjetividad objetivada o la personalidad universalizada—, que es más que mera idea, y antes que razón es voluntad. Dios es Amor, esto es, Voluntad. La razón, el Verbo, deriva de Él; pero Él, el Padre, es, ante todo, Voluntad.

«No cabe duda alguna —escribe Ritschl (Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, III, cap. V)—, que la personalidad espiritual de Dios se estimaba muy imperfectamente en la antigua teología al limitarla a las funciones de conocer y querer. La concepción religiosa no puede menos de aplicar a Dios también el atributo del sentimiento espiritual. Pero la antigua teología ateníase a la impresión de que el sentimiento y el afecto son notas de una personalidad limitada y creada, y trasformaba la concepción religiosa de la felicidad de Dios, v. gr., en el eterno conocerse a sí mismo, y la del odio en el habitual propósito de castigar el pecado.» Sí, aquel Dios lógico, obtenido via negationis, era un Dios que, en rigor, ni amaba ni odiaba, porque ni gozaba ni sufría, un Dios sin pena ni gloria, inhumano, y su justicia una justicia racional o matemática, esto es, una injusticia.

This famous argument from the allegedly unanimous consent of the nations, an argument that the sure instinct of the ancients led them to prefer, is nothing substantially different from the moral proof that Kant offers in his Critique of Practical Reason, as appears clearly when we examine its foundation and translate it from the realm of the collective to that of the individual. It arises from human awareness, or rather from our apprehension and intimation of divinity, and is thus no kind of strictly or explicitly rational proof. Instead, it is a vital demonstration, inapplicable to the logical God, the ultimate Entity, the Being most simple and abstract of all, the First Mover who is unmoved and unfeeling, the divine Reason that neither suffers nor desires. Instead, it belongs to the living God, that most complicated and particular Being, the feeling God who suffers and desires in us and with us, the Father of Christ, the One whom none approacheth save it be by Man, by his Son (John 14.6). The revelation of this god is historical, or anecdotal if you prefer, but not philosophical or categorical.

The unanimous accord of the nations: let us grant that it exists, as a universal desire of all human souls who have attained an awareness of their humanity that longs to be the purpose and intention of the Universe. This desire is nothing but the very essence of soul, which exists as its attempt to persist eternally, so that the continuity of consciousness be not broken. It takes us, this desire, to the human God, a human shape projected from our awareness of the Consciousness of the Universe—a God that gives purpose and sense to the Universe in human terms, without being Ultimate Entity, Prime Mover, Creator of the Universe, or any kind of divine Idea. This God is alive and subjective, for he is subjectivity objectified, or personality universalized. He is more than a mere idea, and before becoming Reason he is Will. God is Love—in other words, Will. Reason, the Word, derives from him; but he himself, the Father, is Will before all else.

“There is no doubt at all,” Ritschl writes (Justification & Atonement 3.5), “that ancient theology judged the spiritual personality of God very imperfectly when it limited him strictly to knowing and willing. Religious imagination must also allow to God the attribute of spiritual feeling. But ancient theology clung to the impression that sentiment and affect are signs of a limited and created personality, and so it transformed the pious conception both of God's happiness, which it rendered as eternal self-knowledge, and of his hatred, which it rendered as an enduring commitment to punish sin.” Truly this logical God, acquired by way of negation, was a god that did not love or hate, rigorously speaking, for he experienced no joy or suffering. He was a god without pain or glory, an inhuman god, and so his justice was rational or mathematical—in other words, unjust.