“The object of theology should, and must only be, ‘the philanthropic God’.”

“The object of theology.” Not “objective” of theology. But “object.” Could something have gotten lost in translation from German to English?

Theology is the Study of God; our Living, Creating, Sustaining, Holy, Righteous, Salvific, Judging, Loving, Merciful & yes, Philanthropic God. Using “object” as a noun modified by the prepositional phrase “of theology” chimes dissonant. The “study of God” modifies “object;” literally,

“The THING/MATTER or (less often) “Person” of the Study of God.”

But God IS the Person. God should not be the OBJECT but the SUBJECT of the study of Himself. We study God to learn about our very personal, powerful, and philanthropic God.

When we make a study of an object — if s/he was a person and not an inanimate thing to begin with — we depersonalize her (objectify her!) and don’t make an effort to know her as a participatory, us-informing subject through personal engagement as much as we endeavor to know ABOUT her in order to speak about her to others!, and then conclude on her behalf who she is (her identity), how she must be, and what we should expect from her; we move from ourselves to her; this is quintessentially anthropomorphic, my critique of so much that passes for theology on this blog.

Instead, God is the Holy SUBJECT of our investigation. We endeavor to Know Him, the only True God and Jesus Christ Whom He sent. By knowing God we get to know and understand how He sees us, His creation, ourselves; theocentrically – through His eyes. This reveals both 1) how philanthropic God is, and 2) how desperately needy we are of His philanthropy. But we arrive at this NOT by moving from ourselves as SUBJECT to God as OBJECT but by approaching God as the Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent Being He is in order to acquire the mind of Christ which He makes readily available to us in Christ, so we may know what He truly thinks about us and holds in reserve for the objects representing the zenith of His creation. This way God looks very, very beautiful but us, not so much. And the latter can be wholly explained by sin.

I suspect God would rather we objectify “sin” and say, “the object of harmatology should, and must only be, ‘the antithesis of God’,” which without the philanthropy of God no one will see God nor know Him fully even as we’re now fully known by Him.