This issue (and not crunching Muslims) is what Benedict XVI's Regensburg address was about. There's some good stuff in Fides et Ratio which I ought to re-read.
This again is where I get my concern about the problem of theological language from. To say that God "wants", is, at least in the history of the word 'want', to say nothing other than that God lacks something. Can we say that? I would offer instead to say "God wills".
But then I read Hosea ...
Or Jeremiah who says that God does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men. Is there a suggestion, at least in the plain meaning of the words, that God does stuff unwillingly? We can explain this away but it seems to me to power of the line is precisely in the inner conflict it expresses, so explaining it away just guts the verse and what Jeremiah is saying.
Theologically it seems right to say that God is or at least lives in uncreated bliss. But in His ultimate and perfect self-revelation He appears (at least for a while) as a man being tortured to death. A trivial, but no less valid for that, response to this might be to say that sometimes to say the truth about God we have to say the opposite of the truth!
Now, at the risk of being sexist, I'd like to suggest that while this is hard to accept at first, any guy who has tried to understand a woman has found himself tied up in similar knots.
I hasten to add that this is a reflection about language and human reason, not about God (or women).
I think.
I'd like to suggest that while this is hard to accept at first, any guy who has tried to understand a woman has found himself tied up in similar [GORDIAN] knots.
Sure, "God wills" is perfectly good as well. I don't have any issue with "God wants" because I always include "God always gets what He wants". It's good to be omnipotent. :)
But then I read Hosea ... Or Jeremiah who says that God does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men. Is there a suggestion, at least in the plain meaning of the words, that God does stuff unwillingly? We can explain this away but it seems to me to power of the line is precisely in the inner conflict it expresses, so explaining it away just guts the verse and what Jeremiah is saying.
I "think" I understand what you are saying. :) I suppose I am not bothered by this phenomenon so much because I think that God "willed" :) that we understand Him in terms that we can actually understand. I sort of see it as God reaching down to us and sacrificing a small bit of precision (across the different translations He knew were coming) in order for us to get the main point.
Now, at the risk of being sexist, I'd like to suggest that while this is hard to accept at first, any guy who has tried to understand a woman has found himself tied up in similar knots.
Yes, willingly or unwillingly, and for reasons we don't need to explore at this juncture. :)