God's Grandeur, By Gerard Manly Hopkins

Stephen Prothero’s “God Is Not One” is a survey of world religions, comprising vital information on a vast array of different sets of belief. As someone who has never studied religion before, nor belongs to a particular faith, the variability within these religions is staggering. One might be satisfied to define religion as “how a person goes about believing in God,” but soon finds that even that definition has its holes. Thankfully, “God Is Not One” does an amazing job of cluing its reader into the nuances that are sometimes forgotten about the religions it approaches.

Edward T. Welch hopes with his book, When People are Big and God is Small, to help his readers relinquish their fear of man, which simply put, is when people replace God with people (14). Suggesting people replace God with a fear of man, Welch would rather guide his readers to have a biblical guided fear of God instead of fearing people more. Welch hopes that the fear of man will be removed in the individual by following his three themes he proposes in his book. First, to really understand the fear of man, we must begin to ask the right questions

Edward T. Welch in his book, When People are Big and God is Small, hopes to help his readers relinquish their fear of man, which simply put, is when people replace God with people (14). Welch wants to lead his readers to have a biblical guided fear of God instead of fearing people more. Advocating the fear of man will be removed in the individual by following three themes he proposes in his book. First, to really understand the fear of man, we must begin to ask the right questions (19). By asking the right questions we begin to follow one of seven steps that Welch suggests throughout the book. The first step that Welch

Numerous people have a theory about how the world was created. Some say it was evolution, and others trust that it was the magnificent Lord that reigns above. In the poem, “Preface to God’s Determinations,” Edward Taylor exposes God’s handiwork through his countless use of metaphors. By comparing the immense land features to mediocre objects, he reveals the wonders God has shaped. Taylor uses the word infinity to start the poem, this states that God is everlasting and has been since the beginning of time.

(…) the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air—look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire (…). What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like

Disgusted, the speaker sees how society has morally degraded itself in exchange for wealth and greed. The frustrated tone of the poem becomes further elevated when the speaker exclaims, "We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!" (4). Blinded by the daily drudgeries of life, people have become impervious to nature, despite some of the grand displays that one can behold. The speaker describes beautiful images of nature such as the sea, howling winds, and flowers that no longer create an emotional response in people. Since the world has become so out of touch with nature, mankind is no longer able to appreciate the drama that takes place between the wind and the moon. Additionally, the speaker claims that society has become so indifferent to nature that, "Little we see in Nature that is ours;" (3).

In this poem nature is not defined as the physical entities of the world, rather Greville makes it more human-like by personifying it and capitalizing it. Greville capitalizes the word Nature as if it was someone's name, like Mother Nature. He also personifies nature by calling it “her” and giving it human characteristics such as the ability to “hate”(10). Greville personification of Nature illustrates human sin as a more ordinary and reasonable concept. After personifying nature, Greville asks “is it the mark or majesty of power” (7) and the footnotes define “mark” as to “target” or “aim”.

I. “When you see God in small things, you’ll see God in all things.” This quote said by Donald L. Hicks reveals the true meaning of discovering God in our lives. Many times we believe that finding God can only be done through prayer, spiritual groups, or in religious places such as a Church. This is a misconception, however, because God is present in each one of us all the time. God has been with us through each experience we have gone through, no matter how insignificant the incident may have seemed at the time. We learn that daily experience is the place we will find God in our lives.

It is in the enjoyment of the aesthetic beauty of nature that humanity glorifies God. John Locke identified that God teaches us about himself through our human capacities, primarily our sensory experiences. Jonathan Edwards takes this one step further in theorizing that it is through humanity’s enjoyment of the beauty of God’s creation, i.e. nature, that we capture the glory of God. Edwards is one of the few theologians that make beauty a central and prominent characteristic in Christianity and humanity’s relationship with God. He says that God reveals God’s self through the wonders and terrors of the natural world, appealing to humanity’s basic human capacities. In this manner, Edwards believes that humanity’s purpose is to glorify God and the way to do this is to delight in God’s creation. Humans have the capacity to delight and appreciate the beauty of God’s splendor, a faculty that not only provides us

a) Christians believe many different things about God’s nature; due to the huge spectrum of Christians that there are. However, as a general rule they perceive God as being one of the following four things:

What is my purpose in life? What does that have to do with God? These are questions I wished to answer when I first registered for the Intro to Christian Studies course, offered here at CalBaptist University. I soon realized that I would have a lot to learn in regard to God’s Gospel, and how that message related to the various nations of the world. When I began this class, my perception of “God’s Nations” was fairly vague and hardly represented any true significance for the concept. Yet, throughout a semester of studying God’s Word, being made aware of our earth’s current condition, and working with various classmates, I have come to know a much stronger grasp on the phrase. By working through five important concepts about understanding God’s world and His purpose for all who inhabit it, I have grown to be a more mature and educated follower of Christ.

Both poems evidently express the extent of the misfortunes that are associated with pollution and industrialization. In Hopkins’s poem, the wrongdoing of pollution and industrialization by others is deemed unacceptable through the usage of personification and imagery. Through the lines “Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; / And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil” (Hopkins), the slow, dragged expression of the generations passing is seen through the words “have trod, have trod, have trod” (Hopkins). The vivid image of the slow, painful drag of time conveys the persona’s disappointment in the lack of initiative in others to make a change in the world. The repetition of the words “have trod” paint a picture of a heavy step through generations with no positive change, and more damage to the earth. These damages are manmade, as Hopkins describes them as “seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil” (Hopkins). Hopkins strategically uses captivating rhyming words like “seared” and “bleared” to accentuate the extent of negative human impact on the earth. Also, by using words like “seared,” “bleared,” and “smeared,” a theme of translucency can be seen. The theme of translucency depicts the extent of the damage as something that seems negative, but does not solely define the earth. Hopkins also personifies the earth by saying that it “wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil/ Is bare now” (Hopkins), implying that the earth is starting to show the result of the impact that humans made

In Uys’ (1980) film, The God’s Must Be Crazy, a tribal community of South African Bushmen who live independently away from any contact with the outside world. When a Coke bottle is dropped from a plane, this “beautiful” and “useful” thing becomes a tool that is adopted into a variety of uses by the family (Uys, 1980). When the family begins to fight over the bottle, Xi, decides that although the bottle has been given to them by the gods, this now “evil thing” must be thrown off the edge of the world (Uys, 1980). The film then captures Xi’s experiences and interactions with other people and modern society as he sought to accomplish his task.

By portraying God as he does, Hardy seems to pose the question, "Why does God let us behave this way? Why, if he is indeed omnipotent, does he not put an end to this nonsense?" Hardy portrays God throughout the poem as cynical when He cracks His joke about scouring Hell's floor, as exasperated when He wonders aloud if He ever will blow the trumpet to call us to judgment day, and as bitter when He says that we do no honor unto Christ and that we need eternal rest. Never in the poem does Hardy portray God in the typical fashions used by his contemporaries: compassionate, regal, solemn, forgiving. By portraying God as he does, Hardy is questioning both a God so callous that he leaves us simply to play our games of warfare, exasperated with our

invites the reader to cross over from the ‘human to the divine, from time to