606F Fall 2026 Old God—New Ideas: Rethinking the Divine Four sessions

Within the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures there is a clear development of thoughts concerning the Divine. God is spoken of, revealed, and understood very differently as the scriptures progress. The anthropomorphisms used for God in the Hebrew Scriptures oftentimes create problems in the current understanding of God. In medieval Christian theology, dogma and doctrine present ideas about God which the modern thinker knows simply cannot be known or understood and are not scriptural. Many of the ideas about God come from a philosophical absolutist view of what God must be like. This too is rejected today. In a more modern understanding, God is not a person.

God is the source of all being. God is ineffable, and this is readily acknowledged, but theologians continue to define God in terms which are simply unacceptable to modern thought. Let’s look at some of the new thought about the old God.

John Rybicki has been an OLLI contributor for over 20 years. He received a Master’s of Theology degree from St. John of Damascus Institute of Theology, Balamand University. He served as a pastoral associate at the Riderwood Retirement Community in Maryland where he was responsible for religious education and facilitating Jewish-Christian dialogue.