According to this metaphor, the very nature and essence of God is relational

• Such relationship is characterized by connection, partnership, mutuality, and dynamic energy. It is not simply that God is in relationship with us, whether as individuals, communities or even the world, but that the very nature of the divine is relationality. God is relational. All in the universe is in relationship, including God. The reality of God is as presence and power in and through relationship. We encounter the divine and learn about God in relation. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The image of the web evokes and suggests several important dimensions of the divine as relational that will be discussed below: immanence, panentheism, mutuality, and shared power. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Some theologians go further, or in a somewhat different direction, to suggest that relationality is the very nature of God. God in and of herself is relation or, as Carter Heyward puts it, “the power in relation.” In other words, God is not just present in relation but is relation itself or the ground and source of our relating. So as Heyward suggests, when any of us are in relationship with others we are “godding.” Our relationships reveal and express the divine. This approach privileges relationships and relationality as the essence of God. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Those who seek to preserve God’s absolute otherness and utter separation also assert that God is noncontingent. Noncontingent means, literally, “not touching.” Touch connotes connection and relation. Already in the metaphors for God discussed in the last chapters, we have come to know God as contingent, touched and changed by what happens to us and to creation. The metaphor of God as relational pushes God even further into contact, involvement, and contingency. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The energy and power of the relational God is manifest and strengthened through connection. This God is contingent. She is so involved with creation that we can say that God needs us, needs creation. What God does depends on creation. God does not act in isolation. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Not only is God defined as relational, but the divine energy is what makes relationships possible. Flora A. Keshgegian

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In God, all is connected and in relationship with the rest and the whole…

• The Universe is not a collection of objects, but is an inseparable web of vibrating energy patterns in which no one component has reality independently from the entirety. Included in the entirety is the observer. Paul Davies
• Relationality and interconnection are at the heart of reality. Everything is in relation to everything else. Such relationships do not exist in a hierarchy, characterized by dominance and subordination along a ladder of gradations, but they operate on the same plane or perhaps multiple planes, in horizontal or multidirectional patterns that allow for complex, intersecting connections. Dynamic and mutual interaction characterize these webs of relation. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The web’s deepest truth is that of relationship, that everything is in relationship with everything else. Flora A. Keshgegian

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…even at the quantum level

• Although there is a kind of order in the world of quantum physics, such ordering is also dynamic. We might imagine it as webs of connection tion and interdependence. Motion in any one place affects the whole. My vision of flashes of light, ever moving, indeterminate and dynamic, offers an image that might better approximate the nature of God in such a universe. Nothing, not even God, is static or fixed. Flora A. Keshgegian

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God is manifest in creation and in the connections that bind us

• The logic of the relational God moves in a different direction. It goes even further than ideas about God’s love we have already encountered thus far: that God empties himself to be one with us or that God is moved by what happens in creation. Those ideas bring God more into relationship, but God remains the other who chooses to love to the point of changing and even suffering for creation. The relational God, however, is by nature in relation. The divine is manifest in creation and in the connections that bind us. Without creation, without relation, God is not God. Flora A. Keshgegian

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God encompasses a dynamic network of interactions

• The worldview that sees change as a given and as a good thing often includes the notion that growth and development are nurtured in relationship. The relational web embraces the divine and all of creation, in a dynamic network of interaction. God is not to be viewed as atop this network, but as the grounding of it. Divine dynamism is present throughout the relational web. Flora A. Keshgegian

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God is a connecting God, luring us into relationship…

• The God of process theology is a connecting God, weaving bonds of sympathetic relation, as does any nurturing parent. God’s will is directed toward our good, luring us into relationship, persuading us to join in the ongoing creative process, and calling us toward maturity. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Because we human beings are born, and remain, fundamentally relational creatures, we always need relationships in our lives. When we try to go it alone, we come up against our limitations and our loneliness. We need one another for life, for living well and living whole. Flora A. Keshgegian
• A personal relationship with God enhances life. Harold S. Kushner
• The truth is God created us to have relationship with us. Joyce Meyer

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…as participants and co-creators…

• Man is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists would say. Nor is he the passive observer of all things, as the objective idealists would say. The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. The measure of all things. Robert M. Pirsig

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…as part of a web of interdependence and mutuality

• As adults, our relationships are defined less by dependence and subordination and more by interdependence and mutuality. Flora A. Keshgegian
• No one is saved alone, as an isolated individual, but God attracts us looking at the complex web of relationships that take place in the human community. God enters into this dynamic, this participation in the web of human relationships. Pope Francis

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God is the web of life and relationships that creates a single whole…

• A mystic sees beyond the illusion of separateness into the intricate web of life in which all things are expressions of a single Whole. You can call this web “God, the Tao, the Great Spirit, the Infinite Mystery, Mother or Father,” but it can be known only as love. Joan Z. Borysenko

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…an interconnected web that humans and all living things are part of

• The best relationships are partnerships of responsible and loving action for the good of the whole. They are characterized by mutuality and based on equality. Flora A. Keshgegian
• God wove a web of loveliness, Of clouds and stars and birds, But made not anything at all, So beautiful as words. Anna Hempstead Branch
• All paths lie together in the hand of god like a web endlessly woven, and yours and mine are no greater or less than the beetle’s or the squirrel’s or the sparrow’s. All are held together. Daniel Quinn
• Trust to God to weave your thread into the great web, though the pattern shows it not yet. George MacDonald
• Each element is part of the whole. The whole exists only in and through the parts. The parts fit together because of the whole. All reveal God. God is present in all: from the earthworm to the rain, from the words of a poet to expressions of physical love. God is the matrix in which everything exists and has being. Flora A. Keshgegian

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Our relationship with God becomes one of interdependence and mutuality

• For adults seeking to be in mutual relationships and responsible partnerships, the idea that God is in charge and that God’s will is determinative seems less and less fitting. If all is in God’s hands, then in what sense are we responsible adults in the world? Flora A. Keshgegian
• The God who takes care of his creation as a parent and meets the needs of children who cannot do things for themselves no longer seemed appropriate in this world come of age. Flora A. Keshgegian
• As indicated above relationships that reflect God’s power are ones of mutuality. Mutuality means the relationship goes both ways. We not only seek God, but God seeks us. We need God, but God needs creation as well. The nature of the need-God’s and ours-does not have to be and is not the same. Which is to say, we are not God, not the same as God. Flora A. Keshgegian

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We are adults, not children, in our relationship with God

• The twentieth-century theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrestled with such problems. He wrote about the world “coming of age” in modernity, which meant that human beings had entered into adulthood. The God who takes care of his creation as a parent and meets the needs of children who cannot do things for themselves no longer seemed appropriate in this world come of age. Bonhoeffer suggested that we needed to find new ways to imagine God’s relationship with the world. The “God of the gaps;’ as he referred to it, who filled in the holes in our knowledge, who provided explanations for what could not be explained and who took up the slack in our responsibility for the world, was destined to become obsolete, especially as human knowledge expanded and science provided more of the answers for what had once been perceived as “God’s will.” Flora A. Keshgegian
• Bonhoeffer was suggesting that God needed a new job description, so to speak. Just as parents’ roles change as their children grow up-just as baby sitting their children’s children-God’s roles in the life of the world needed redefinition. And just as parents who are unwilling to change and who continue to treat their adult children as if they are incapable of leading their own lives run the risk of alienating those children and even losing a relationship with them, so did Christianity risk irrelevance. Unless Christianity rethought its image of God and the ways in which God relates to the world, it was in danger of alienating the modern world. Flora A. Keshgegian
• We are expected to be adults in this world and relate to this God as adults. This, too, is a strength. Even though we human beings are not fully in charge of what happens in the world, we are responsible for our lives. When we behave as children, with the expectation that we will be taken care of or bailed out of whatever mess we find ourselves in, we leave it to others, often our children, to clean up after us. This is not fair.The relational God reminds us of our responsibilities for and to life. This God’s promise is not to take care of us, but to be there with and for us. Such companionship is an adult offer, in a relationship of mutuality. Flora A. Keshgegian

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God as a relational web does not privilege any particular individuals…

• The relationships in which we are truly “godding” are characterized by mutuality and reciprocity. The capacity for mutuality requires freedom: the freedom to fully become and be ourselves and to give ourselves to one another without compulsion or constraint. It also connotes equality. This means that in mutual relationships, there are no gradations of value or status or privilege or dependence that might order relationships in hierarchies. No one or no thing is deemed as better in any defining way. Flora A. Keshgegian

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…and does not privilege humans above other life forms

• God in relation, the metaphor for God we are exploring in this chapter, does better. It does not privilege the human person and human will so much as it emphasizes relationship. It does not focus on autonomous agency so much as interdependence and relationality. What is key to understanding God is being in relation. What is most true of God and God’s will is relationship. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Another possible limitation to note in Bonhoeffer’s perspective is how much it seems to privilege the role of human beings. In a move characteristic of modernity, Bonhoeffer put humans at the center of the world. He may have asserted that the world had come of age, but it was the human person who was front and center, in charge of that world. Such thinking comes too close to replacing God with the human person, God’s will with human will. It does not sufficiently account for the interdependence of all, including human beings with creation. Flora A. Keshgegian

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God as relational creates for the sake of relationship

• Such a notion of need in God would be considered blasphemous in some theological circles. The very definition of God’s transcendence is that God is beyond any need. There can be no necessity in God. God does not need anyone or anything. As we saw, given the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, God does not require anything in order to create everything. Nor does God even need to create. Creation is an expression of God’s power and freedom, not God’s desire for relationship. Flora A. Keshgegian

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Images of relationship that fit this idea of God are drawn from peer rather than parental or hierarchical relationships

• Images of relationship that fit this idea of God are drawn from peer rather than parental or hierarchical relationships. For example, God is imaged as friend or lover or companion. Early Christian spirituality and the language of the mystics contained numerous such references. The first Christians were sometimes referred to as friends of God, a term the Quakers took centuries later to refer to themselves as the Society of Friends. Mystical writings are shot through with language about being in love with God and with expressions of erotic, passionate love. How else might the mystics have approximated the intimacy they experienced, the union for which they yearned? Others have turned to the language of companionship to express the constancy and sustaining presence of God. All these images are trying to imagine God with us. The power of this God is shared power. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Other images of the relational God are as partner and cocreator. The emphasis is of God with us, God’s power to act and create is shared with us and expressed through us and all of creation. Some theologians turn to maternal images, not to return to a parental relationship, but to evoke the interrelationship of mother and fetus, mother and baby. The idea of God as womb, holding all of creation, is one such image. The presence of this God is through her body, the universe. Flora A. Keshgegian

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We are participating in God, we are “godding” when we are in right relationship with God

• The relationships that reveal this God are characterized not only by mutuality but also by love and justice. The relational God seeks right relationship. We are in relationship with God, we are participating in God, we are “godding” when we are in right relationship. Right relationships are ones of love and justice. Abusive relationships that practice greed or bigotry or hatred, unequal power arrangements and oppressive systems, and the exploitation of others, including creation, are not of God. God is not to be found in such relations. Indeed, God opposes them and passes judgment on them. The power of God is directed toward equality rather than domination, transformation in the face of exploitation andoppression, and sharing and mutuality instead of greed and prejudice. The goal of right relation is wholeness and abundance of life. Flora A. Keshgegian

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The relational God is in life with us…

• The promise of God is to be with us always. The relational God is in this life with us. And we are in it with God. God’s power as dynamic energy is present with us, ever available to us. Indeed, it lives within us and within all of creation. God’s heartbeat is that of the web of life. Flora A. Keshgegian

…and is not separate from us

• When we begin to embrace this metaphor of God as relational, many of our practiced modes of relating to God do not seem to fit. If God is relational in and through the web of life, God is not an other before whom we place ourselves. God is not the other to whom we direct our prayers. How do we relate to God the relation? Flora A. Keshgegian
• Praying and seeking the will of God take on a different character. If God is in our midst, if all is in God, if the universe is God’s body, we are always in the presence of God. The world becomes then an altar. Breath provides channels of divine communication. Prayer becomes more a matter of attention and intention, than address to an other. Flora A. Keshgegian

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God as relational wills harmony but does not intervene from on high

• If God is fully in relation, is truly the power in relation, then God’s willing remains open and life itself is open ended. There is much of chance in life and in creation and much that is not the outcome of anyone’s will, human or divine. No one or no thing is in charge in any determining way. Flora A. Keshgegian
• God’s will then is not in control or set. What God wants to see happen, what God hopes for, remains constant in the sense that God’s desire for life does not change. God wants goodness and right relationship and life abundant to be, always and everywhere. But whether, when, and how those things may come about or happen is not known, and cannot fully be known, even by God. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The relational God does not intervene from on high to save us or to condemn us. Nor does God act like the loving parent of little children to protect us or rescue us. As adults, we are responsible for, even as we are participants in, God’s body. Flora A. Keshgegian
• It is God’s most passionate desire and yearning that all of creation live in harmony and abundant life. The relational God, by its very character, wants all to be well. But God’s will, God’s willing, does not necessarily make it so, neither now nor in the end. Flora A. Keshgegian
• God wills goodness and life. The relational God is all goodness, which is to say, right relationship, love, and justice manifest the will of God. However, the will of the relational God is not controlling or determinative or even noncontingent. God’s will is relational as well. It works in relation. Flora A. Keshgegian

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We pray not for intervention but for connection, discernment and empowerment so we can take action

• We do not pray for answers but for connection. We do not ask God to intervene, but we call on God’s presence. We evoke God’s companionship. We desire to have our intentions and God’s be in harmony and work in concert. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The will of the relational God is very clear. We know what God wants, what God yearns for: mutual relationship, goodness, justice, love, and fullness of life. However, the specific application of God’s will in any given circumstance is not given nor clearly knowable. What does justice mean in a particular instance? How do we know what will best enhance life? Therefore, we pray for discernment: not to know God’s will so we can submit to it, but to perceive what shape the divine desire for life may take in the many complex and conflicted circumstances of life. Flora A. Keshgegian
• We can no longer use God’s will as an explanation for all that happens and that too is a strength, although it may not feel that way, especially for those accustomed to thinking of God’s will as an explanation for the events of life. The relational God empowers us to act in accord with God’s overall will for right relationship, justice, and well-being. We need to discern in any given set of circumstances how that will might be manifest and we need to act. God is present as companion and guide in the journey of faith. God’s will does not control but empowers. Flora A. Keshgegian

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We are the agents of God’s will, not the objects of it

• Since God’s power is with us, we are the agents of God’s will, not the objects of it. This does not mean we are in charge, able to control or determine the course of events. Nor do any of us operate autonomously. Rather, divine power is in all and all is in relation. In order to be trueagents of God’s will, we too must practice relationality and shared power in relation. We are to engage in mutually enhancing and interdependent relationships. Flora A. Keshgegian

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God as relational is not directing or controlling

• The up and down linearity of a hierarchical universe does not fit with these realities of life today, including their complexity. The metaphor of a relational God is more suitable for our current consciousness and experiences, as is the idea that God’s will is not directing and controlling. Flora A. Keshgegian

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We encounter God through nature (the web of life) and through social connections

• For some people these ideas find expression primarily in nature spirituality. These people seek to enter fully into connection with all of creation and thus to move more deeply into the web of life. For others, God is encountered in and through persons and social connections. They seek to live in loving and just relationships and to nurture community and sustaining societies. Whether the emphasis is on the natural world or on human society, faith is in relation. Flora A. Keshgegian
• I believe if there’s any kind of God it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there’s any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt. Julie Delpy
• By embracing connection and being part of the web, we trust that God’s will is being done, that the love and goodness of God are being made more manifest. Flora A. Keshgegian
• In this world in which we are more and more aware of our interdependence, the metaphor of God as relational seems to make better sense than traditional notions of hierarchy and domination. Flora A. Keshgegian

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God’s presence is in creation, including in us…

• Finally, what we see in this metaphor is a desire to make God human, fully human, by expanding the personal images of God to embrace both genders and a variety of roles, especially ones that emphasize mutuality and partnership. As noted, advocates for the relational God, also put more emphasis on God’s presence in, with, and through creation. Some see God as the power in relationship more than the person in relationship. Flora A. Keshgegian

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…which means we need to treat the world with respect

• Yet another strength of this metaphor is that it pays more attention to creation. If the universe is God’s body, then the created order manifests the divine and ought to be treated as such. When we abuse creation, we are harming God. Especially in today’s world in which the future of the planet’s ability to sustain life is increasingly threatened, care for the earth is an important value to emphasize. Flora A. Keshgegian

Seeing God as relationship therefore not only changes our relationship to God but our relationship with others and the whole

• When we understand our relationship to God, we also understand our relationship to one another. Dallin H. Oaks
• The relationship between individuals or communities and the environment ultimately stems from their relationship with God. Pope Benedict XVI
• Contemplative living is living in true relationship with oneself, God, others and nature, free of the illusions of separateness. Thomas Merton

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Some have issues with this metaphor

• Those who criticize this metaphor for God do so from different angles and perspectives. Some would suggest that this God is too much like us, that there is not enough distinction between what God is like and who we are. In more theological language they would argue that God is not transcendent enough or that God’s transcendence is diminished by bringing God too close. Flora A. Keshgegian
• It would seem then that such familiarity would also compromise the mystery of God. God’s mystery has most often been a function of God’s transcendence and otherness. We do not feel awe and wonder in relation to what we experience as familiar. The kind of feelings associated with companionship and friendship seem the opposite of those we attach to mystery, even though there is an awe and wonder to be known in and through intimacy. Nonetheless, there is a marked contrast between a church in the round and the vastness and soaring heights of a Gothic cathedral. It is the majestic dimension of God that is found lacking in this metaphor. Flora A. Keshgegian
• God’s will is also lacking in a kind of strength. If God is not directly in charge, if God’s will is not ultimately manifest, then there would seem to be little to comfort us, especially when we are experiencing violation or injustice. Is the relational God’s presence as companion enough in such times of extreme need? Even the most able and responsible adults yearn at times to be taken care of, to find solace in strength beyond their own. Flora A. Keshgegian
• This metaphor for God seems to be straining the limits of personal images of God but not breaking free of them. Flora A. Keshgegian