Re: How do you know God Exists? does Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji prove god exists?
Dear Tejwant :sippingcoffeemunda:
Excellent question! And thankfully this is an easier one for me to answer than the last one (which led me into the realms of philosophy, and lets just say I'm not a qualified philosopher lol).
The Early Church Fathers interpreted all passages in the Bible which attribute human emotions to God as metaphors for man's sake. It is like God stooping down to the level of the people. They are images, rather than literal descriptions. These Fathers are authoritative in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches but not in Protestant Christianity.
Because certain forms of Christianity reject the Church Fathers and believe in sola scriptura (bible alone) it has led to an abuse of the sacred text whereby images that describe God metaphorically in anthropomorphic terms are taken as literal - because there is nothing else to indicate otherwise.
Here are some quotations from the Fathers of the Catholic Church:
So Catholics do not take the language that you speak of literally (although sadly most Evangelical Christians do and this has filtered into the popular mind-set both in Christianity and outside it).
As you can see this is not a "new" thing. Its how Christian theologians traditionally understood their scriptures till the Protestant Reformation.
In Catholic mysticism heaven and hell are seen as states of mind or being that a person puts themselves in. It is not imposed on one by God.
This is not just taught by mystics and theologians now but is the official view of the Catholic Church:
Thus Angelus Silesius the mystic notes:
Just like Augustine said above the fault is in "our" eyes not in the "light" (God). God never changes, it is our own state of mind which conditions how we perceive God to be.
Now there is a point in the spiritual life where the idea of a punishing and rewarding God is abandoned altogether and the reality of God is known:
I hope that was useful Tejwant.
