nature of God

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nebula

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Contemplating the basic nature of God (or gods/goddesses, spirit, tao, Reality, whatever else you can insert here) is the groundwork to any religious system thought. It is not until a basic notion of God is established that the practitioner of a particular tradition knows how to even view reality, because God in this sense is Ultimate Concern or ultimate orientation to reality. For instance, if you happen to be a polytheistic pagan with many mythologies of gods and goddesses waring and carousing with one another, but with great power and personal interest in humanity, trying to placate the gods and get them to do what you want with your offerings makes sense. If you happen to believe that reality is actually Nothingness, and that change is illusion, you may spend your time meditating to tap into that Nothingness. In short, the conception that a practitioner has about deity frames his or her entire religious experience, and theoretically, his or her entire view of reality, period. So what can be known about the God presented in the Bible?

It’s true that God visits Abraham, wrestles with Jacob and speaks face to face with Moses. This, on the face of it, sounds like the gods surrounding the Israelites, gods who have bodies to go around and alternately bless and curse mere mortals. Yet, from the get go, the authors of the Bible seem to want to differentiate their God, YHWH, from the rest with the creation story. Normally ancient creation stories talk about gods getting in fights with each other, or mythical beasts, having sex, and the like, but the Bible seems to go out of its way to give its creation story the basic form of these other creation stories, so that ancient readers will expect to hear the norm, and then with the content defies those norms. God does not fight with other gods to create the world, He merely speaks, things exist. It’s exceedingly orderly, and emphasizes His divine power-- and emphasizes how different He is from those other gods. There is also a hint that He is beyond sexuality as He creates male and female in His likeness.

Though the biblical authors show their familiarity with surrounding mythologies, they set YHWH apart, as a God who isn’t the storm god, or the goddess of fertility, but the God of everything. He doesn’t compete with other gods for dominance, He simply is the greatest.

You probably know by now why I’ve posted this. Trying to use hints of monolatry in the Hebrew Bible to bolster modern day polytheism misses the point of biblical rhetoric. Only by placing it in context does it become clear that YHWH was compared to these other gods to show how different He is while at the same time demonstrating familiarity with predominate ancient mythologies. This kind of rhetoric is all over the Hebrew Bible, look at the episode with Elijah and the priests of Baal for a great example. Or, look at Elijah in the cave… our God isn’t tied up as the storm god, or the god in charge of earthquakes, or anything else, He is above and beyond all those things. He is truly different.
 
Tsuzuki said:
“Consider the world of apparent dualisms we inhabit. The mind views a picture of this world in which everything is double. A thing is said to exist and exert certain properties. Being and Doing. This calls for the concepts of cause and effect or causality. Every phenomenon is seen to be caused by some previous thing. However this description cannot explain how everything exists in the first place or even how one thing finally causes another. Obviously things have originated and do continue to make each other happen. The ‘thing’ responsible for the origin and continued action of events is called Chaos by magicians. It could as well be called God or Tao, but the name Chaos is virtually meaningless, and free from the childish, anthropomorphic ideas of religion. Chaos is also the force which adds increasing complexity to the universe by spawning structures which were not inherent in its component parts. It is the force which has caused life to evolve itself out of dust, and is currently most concentratedly manifest in the human life force, or Kia, where it is the source of consciousness.”

- Peter J. Carroll, Liber Nul​
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So is that agreeing with my statement above or just supplying us with your personal view of what ultimate reality is?

Also, it’s a mistake to assume that because God is a person it’s ‘childish anthromophism’. That He is a person simply means that He has the ability to will and make things happen. An impersonal force is a lesser entity.
 
nebula said:
Contemplating the basic nature of God (or gods/goddesses, spirit, tao, Reality, whatever else you can insert here) is the groundwork to any religious system thought. It is not until a basic notion of God is established that the practitioner of a particular tradition knows how to even view reality, because God in this sense is Ultimate Concern or ultimate orientation to reality. For instance, if you happen to be a polytheistic pagan with many mythologies of gods and goddesses waring and carousing with one another, but with great power and personal interest in humanity, trying to placate the gods and get them to do what you want with your offerings makes sense. If you happen to believe that reality is actually Nothingness, and that change is illusion, you may spend your time meditating to tap into that Nothingness. In short, the conception that a practitioner has about deity frames his or her entire religious experience, and theoretically, his or her entire view of reality, period. So what can be known about the God presented in the Bible?

It’s true that God visits Abraham, wrestles with Jacob and speaks face to face with Moses. This, on the face of it, sounds like the gods surrounding the Israelites, gods who have bodies to go around and alternately bless and curse mere mortals. Yet, from the get go, the authors of the Bible seem to want to differentiate their God, YHWH, from the rest with the creation story. Normally ancient creation stories talk about gods getting in fights with each other, or mythical beasts, having sex, and the like, but the Bible seems to go out of its way to give its creation story the basic form of these other creation stories, so that ancient readers will expect to hear the norm, and then with the content defies those norms. God does not fight with other gods to create the world, He merely speaks, things exist. It’s exceedingly orderly, and emphasizes His divine power-- and emphasizes how different He is from those other gods. There is also a hint that He is beyond sexuality as He creates male and female in His likeness.

Though the biblical authors show their familiarity with surrounding mythologies, they set YHWH apart, as a God who isn’t the storm god, or the goddess of fertility, but the God of everything. He doesn’t compete with other gods for dominance, He simply is the greatest.

You probably know by now why I’ve posted this. Trying to use hints of monolatry in the Hebrew Bible to bolster modern day polytheism misses the point of biblical rhetoric. Only by placing it in context does it become clear that YHWH was compared to these other gods to show how different He is while at the same time demonstrating familiarity with predominate ancient mythologies. This kind of rhetoric is all over the Hebrew Bible, look at the episode with Elijah and the priests of Baal for a great example. Or, look at Elijah in the cave… our God isn’t tied up has the storm god, or the god in charge of earthquakes, or anything else, He is above and beyond all those things. He is truly different.
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The problem I have with your theory is that it assumes the Bible to be true and goes from there - accepting the Judeo/Christian view of “god”. I, as an ex Cath and ex Prot who is now a ex Christian, disagree then with your entire premise. Study and reason, and personal experience, have led me to conclude that the Bible is not the word of God (I don’t accept any of the so called ‘revealed’ religions for much the same reason). I do accept the existance of the paranormal/suppernatural, BTW, but don’t see how this supports the dogma put forth by any revealed religion.
 
Swan said:
The problem I have with your theory is that it assumes the Bible to be true and goes from there - accepting the Judeo/Christian view of “god”. I, as an ex Cath and ex Prot who is now a ex Christian, disagree then with your entire premise. Study and reason, and personal experience, have led me to conclude that the Bible is not the word of God (I don’t accept any of the so called ‘revealed’ religions for much the same reason). I do accept the existance of the paranormal/suppernatural, BTW, but don’t see how this supports the dogma put forth by any revealed religion.
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Swan

The post was written with the assumption that there is value in the Bible and that it does teach some kind of spiritual truth. What you want to argue is outside of the OP.
 
Sorry,

Your opening paragraph discusses non-Christians and polytheism, then jumps to the Bible in the final sentence as the “cure all” for non-Chrisian thinking - or at least I thought that was where you were headed. Thus my response that simply using the Bible as an answer to these other spiritualities was not a good plan. Sorry I misunderstood - but I see that type of thinking a lot. 🤷
 
Swan said:
Sorry,

Your opening paragraph discusses non-Christians and polytheism, then jumps to the Bible in the final sentence as the “cure all” for non-Chrisian thinking - or at least I thought that was where you were headed. Thus my response that simply using the Bible as an answer to these other spiritualities was not a good plan. Sorry I misunderstood - but I see that type of thinking a lot. 🤷
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I see your mistake. I had a certain audience in mind when I wrote this post that I had been debating with for the past week or so, and expected that the context would be obvious… but I should’ve been clearer for those not following those discussions.

In the first paragraph the transition goes:
" In short, the conception that a practitioner has about deity frames his or her entire religious experience, and theoretically, his or her entire view of reality, period. So what can be known about the God presented in the Bible?"

My introduction was meant to use other religious practices as a framework for understanding the nature of God as presented in the Bible, already assuming that the reader was interested in figuring out how to understand God from the Bible, but I see that I hardly made that explicit.

I hope that clears things up.
 
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