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SOPHIA (2013) 52:205206
DOI 10.1007/s11841-012-0341-1
Published online: 21 November 2012# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
A useful way of approaching what Gods face is like is by beginning with the human face and the self that expresses itself in it, which is the starting point of Scrutons account.
Just what the self is or is not is one of the themes of the book. Most basically, it is not an object; it is a subject. (A Kantian metaphysic underlies the book.) Descartes was mistaken about the self. He thought it was a unitary substance revealed by introspective thoughts. On the contrary, While I can say of myself that I am this, here, now, those words contain no information about what I am in the world of space and time (33). Shades of Hume! Scruton is at pains to emphasize that the self is not a thing but a perspective (105).
He elaborates:
Subjects have no place in those laws (of physics) not because they are mysterious or supernatural, but because they exist only for each other, through the web of interpersonal accountability. Look for them in the world of objects and you will not find them. This is true of you and me; and it is true too of God. (166)
That makes it clear what God is not. He is not mysterious or supernatural. But it leaves it most unclear what God is.
And it should be pointed out that although Scruton explicitly rejects dualism in...