danutz - I didn’t quite mean the bible was given in the sense of a package preconceived in heaven - but as a set of documents describing a unique history.

However, I do think, probably like you, that there are many ways in which we can see God. He is not confined to the bible. The bible does however describe a unique interaction of God with mankind in human history. He did it that way and not any other way. Isn’t it called somewhere the scandal of particularity? It would be much more in keeping with a democratic, consensual age if God had allowed for many different ways of knowing him in different religious systems.

Right at the centre of this history is Christ. It’s not just that he provided a way of ‘seeing’ God or ‘knowing’ him (or even reflecting God to the world by obeying his teaching), but he fulfilled God’s historical purposes. It was he who did that, and not anybody else!

Nevertheless, I’m attracted in your posts to the refreshing emphasis on ethics put into practice. It’s not just a question of talking about who God is, but how He can be mediated. But I’m interested to know how far you can get doing the ethics without personally incorporating the supernatural realities to which they testify. I’d think there was something incomplete about that.