What if God Was One of Us? A philosophy essay by Joan Osborne

What if God Was One of Us?

Final Essay, PHIL590

Submitted by Joan Osborne

March 21, 1995

Dear Ms. Osborne,

I have finished grading your essay and unfortunately it does not fulfill the assignment guidelines, nor does it meet the broader standards of graduate-level philosophy.  My in-text comments are denoted by a dash (-) and written in italics.  You will find a more sustained critique of your work at the end.  

My first comment, regarding your title page, is that the assignment did not require a visual aide.  While you display a great deal of singing and filmmaking talent, your time would have been much better spent formulating a sound philosophical argument.

If God had a name, what would it be?

-"God" is already a proper name.  If you would would like to undertake a philological study of the various words for God appearing throughout scripture, I suggest doing that in a Biblical Studies course

And would you call it to his face,

If you were faced with him in all his glory?

-Now I am unclear which question you are addressing.  What is your central thesis?

What would you ask if you had just one question?

-I do hope you would be more concise than you have been in the writing of this essay.

And yeah, yeah,

-Here you come off as bored with the question.  Are you slipping into satire?  If so, I missed the joke.

God is great.

Yeah, yeah,

God is good.

-So far you've told me God is "great," "good," and "glorious," when the word "God" already entails omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence.  Your added description is unnecessary.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

-PLEASE PROOFREAD

What if God was one of us?

-Finally, you have arrived at the question proposed in your essay's title, and it is buried too far in your text.

Just a slob like one of us?

-Be careful when using the universal "us."  You may be a slob, but that does not mean all of us are (or that I am).

Just a stranger on the bus,

Trying to make his way home?

-What is the purpose of this image?  It does not address the question at all.

If God had a face, what would it look like?

-Isn't your essay trying to prove God would have a human face?  

And would you want to see it,

If seeing meant that you would have to believe,

-You need to prove that seeing necessarily entails believing.  Warning - this will be EXTREMELY difficult.

In things like heaven and and in Jesus and the saints and all the prophets?

-The Christian religion is MUCH more complex than this.

And yeah, yeah,

God is great.

Yeah, yeah,

God is good.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

-Here you are repeating your second paragraph.  Did you just copy and paste it?

What if God was one of us?

Just a slob like one of us?

Just a stranger on the bus,

Trying to make his way home?

-I take it this essay comes in fugues?  

Back up to heaven all alone,

Just trying to make his way home.

Nobody would call him on the phone,

Except for the Pope maybe in Rome.

-This is waffle.  You should not introduce new information in your concluding paragraph, especially when it does not support your thesis in any way.

While you are clearly a talented verse writer, there are numerous problems with your essay.   Most importantly, you do not provide an argument or even address a central question.  Instead you ask a total of eight (8) questions and do not provide any answers for any of them.  More generally, I am unsure how you could even answer the question, "What if God was one of us?" since it is predicated on a problematic definition of the word "us."  You are essentially asking, "What if God were a human?" and comparing God with a human fundamentally undermines the definition of "God."  Either you need to propose a new definition of "God," or a new definition of "human."  The question could just as easily be, "What if a human were god?" This question could be more fun - I would refer you to the first Ghostbusters film for research.  Next time please pay closer attention to the assignment guidelines.

Final Mark: D-