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The conceptuality/ terminology of theistic religion includes distinctive conceptsI concepts/terms of two Inain main types: one type for the strictly ultimate reality that "God" is not the only, but only one "optional" way of re-presenting; and the other type for the realities -- persons or things -- that, in turn, re-present God (as strictly ultimate reality). Meister Eckhart's "deitas" is an example of the first type of concepti concept/term, the New Testament, '\no;; "CO'U Beau,"υιος του θεου" of the second.

Significantly, "deitas" is as "'God'-dependent" as '\no;; "CO'U B£ou"υιος του θεου." And the
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same is true, mutatis mutandis, of the l\1fayana Mahayana Buddhist distinction between "dharmakaya-as-suchness" and "dharmakaya-as-compassion."

The task of the philosopher of religion, presumably, is to introduce a "novel verbal characterizatioI\ characterization, rationally coordinated," that is, as one could say in Hick's terms, "less upayic." I submit that "the whole," in the sense of "the one that is all," or "the one frOlnfrom, through, and to (or for) which are all things" is just the concepti concept/term that is called for.

24 May 2009