The Burning Bush: God is not a list of attributes but the basis of reality

In the discussion on my argument I in the "debate" with Bowen Eric Sotnak raised an argument in order to preempt a possible answer from me, the possibility that I could argue that the Vacuum flux or whatever physical situation science finds caused the big bang expansion,is God. Of course I don't argue That but in preempting it he asserted that the real Christian concept of God is standardized consisting of "traditional theistic attributes. " One can't help but think of the big man in the sky,

Eric Sotnak said...

It seems to me that for something to be deserving of the name "God" some substantive set of traditional theistic attributes must be predicated of it. Thus far in the presentation of your argument, I think little has been done to fill in the missing details. Presumably those details will center on the sense of the numinous you invoked in the original argument. Am I correct in assuming that such details are planned for future stages of the argument?

my reply:

No I think this is a case where Christian apologetic has done a disservice because it;s lent itself to setting this easy little list of omni's as a quick shorthand to God's description and identity,it's really missing the point about the nature of God and what it means to attack that word to some set of characteristics.That gives me a great theme for Wedneday's blog. I will save the brunt of my comet for then, but I'll says this:first SON is about love, love is personal so the personal dimension is implied in my argument. I think TS would imply the omni's but we really have to re think the omni's.

I see this conflict shaping up between a big man on a throne with  a white beard, vs, some empty nothing vacuum of nature. Both are stereo types. The Bible certainly feeds us the former, and the lack of a mythological image in Tillich's ideas gives us the latter. Most people have learned to think of the old man in the sky as the:true Biblical image: they never get that they are merely literalizing a metaphor. and the text essentially indicates it is a metaphor.

One way does this is to break up gender identification God in the OT says some amazing things in this regard that should lead us to think of God as a mother if we want to liberalize the metaphor:

Old Testament:

Job 38:29 "From whose womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the hoarfrost of heaven."

Isa 45 9-10 Woe to you who strive with your Maker, earthen vessels with the potter. Does the clay say to the one who fashions it: What are you making, or Your work has no handles? Woe to anyone who says to a father: What are you begetting? or to a woman: With what are you in labour?

New Testament: 

Mat 23:37 and Luk 13:34 Jerusalem, "Jerusalem, the city that kills its prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing."

The identification of the writer with female body in childbirth is intense, there are many more such statements in the OT.[1]

Even understanding God as a mother is literalizimg the metaphor. In the OT God makes many statements to the effect that "you can't understand me, I am beyond your comprehension," clearly establishing the idea that the big man is a place holder. My favorite old Testament passage: 

Isaiah 55:8–9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (see whole passage).

New Testament:

Romans' 11:33

Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways! For who can know the Lord’s thoughts? Who knows enough to give him advice? And who has given him so much that he needs to pay it back? For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen.” 

see more [2] The important point here is that there's more to understanding the Christian concept of God than just reading off a lit of attributes, That list of omnis does not spell out a God concept.

The Bible does imply that God is being itself. Before getting to that, however, we have to deal with the omnis as the primary list of understanding God's characteristics.

In terms of the omnis, they must be re-thought because they mislead, They give the impression that God is the big man on the throne who happens to possess qualities x,y,z. That's largely a result of the way they are used. But there is an inherent contradiction between the omni's and the big man. If God is omni-present, present in all places then he can't be limited  to the localization of a big man  on a throne, unless that form is metaphorical. Not even an "all powerful man" could be both present everywhere and localized to a throne. That also fools us another way, it leads some to think that God's presence in all things is pantheism, that;s because they think only in terms of the list of abilities rather than the organic connection  to being.

That brings up the tension with the concept of omnipotence. The term is taken from the Greek word Pantocrator.(Παντοκράτωρ) Meaning: "ruler of all." It is only used one time by Paul (2 Cor. 6:18), and nine times in Revelation, used iwth the name of Christ (Χριστός Παντοκράτωρ) [3] It is used in the LXX in relation to the name of God. The problem here is we learn to treat it like an attribute, like a quality God posses; such as I am short, my friend  Barry is tall, God is all powerful, Zeus is not. That is not the meaning of the term. The clue is in it's use with names, Christ,ruler of all does not refer to the exact extent of his strength ability. Of course he has that he created  the universe. But what's being said here is that he has all authority,he rules over all things. Power is implied of course but it;snot a quality on  list but a more organic connection. That's the why omnis are not the hall mark of the Christian God concept. Rather the relationship between God and Being itself is what is at issue.  

 I've pointed out many times that religious traditions are constructed by filtering experience of God through cloistral constructs. So that view of God is there in the OT, it's there becuase those are cultural constructs that they had to work with. The ancients, however, were not stupid. They knew there was more to God than that because they experienced the divine. That view point is the surface level, lurking ninetieth the surface is a much deeper concept: the depth of being. That concept is echoed in all my myriad different views of God that atheist ignore and don't see.

....Most people tend to think of God as a big man in the sky. Feminism tries to counter by thinking of God/ess as a big woman in the sky, but it’s the same principle. God is seen as a thing, a human, a big person who is only the most powerful but still part of creation.  Even those of us trained in a more liberal kind of theology still have a hard time shaking the childhood notion. In trying to discuss Tillich’s ideas with both Christians and atheists I find atheists are as committed to “the big guy in the sky” as are fundamentalist Christians. Both can be very strong about insisting that Tillich’s idea is not the Christian concept of God. Of course Tillich was convinced that he had hold of a deep forgotten truth buried beneath the tradition that one can see hinted at by all the major theologians. I will discuss in this chapter some of the theologians whom Tillich uses as such examples, but I will not critique his understanding of them extensively. I assume Tillich was reading into the theologians he liked ideas that may not be there originally. On the other hand some of the ideas are obvious. I will get that toward the end of this chapter. In this chapter I want to explore the notion that while Tillich’s idea is controversial and in some quarters much objected to, in a general sense its concerns if not its assertions are generally favorable to Catholics, Protestants and Eastern Orthodox, and that one can find in all of these traditions major thinkers who are in a general sense in agreement with either Tillich’s idea or his concerns. I think at least we can say these views are not anti-Christian, not heretical.

Two Major Passages

            We start with the Bible since that for so many forms the basis of Christian theological tradition. There are no passages that blatantly say God is being itself. Of course we are not going to find one that says “verily Verily, I say unto you, Tillich is right.” The main aspect of Biblical theology in which we can expect to find support is not the overt quotation of passages but the imagery and other theological devices used to communicate truth about the nature of God and God’s relation to reality. Also the relation of the concept of being to the concept of God as we see it used in the Bible is a major aspect of this evidence. Moreover, the endorsement of the idea outright by other theologians both living and ancient is a major part of the proof. Nevertheless, there is one passage that may be taken as embodying a concept the consequence of which would entail that God is being itself, or the ground of being. Thais passage is actually a translation; it’s the Septuagint (LXX) version, the Greek translation of the OT produced in the Intertestamental period. This passage is found in Exodus 3: 14 where God speaks to Moses out of the burning bush and tells him to go demand of Pharos “let my people God.” Moses says “whom shall I say is calling?”  God tells him, as translated from Hebrew to English from the Masoretic text, “I am that I am.” In the LXX however, he says ego eimi ‘O on, which literally means “I am he who is.” The meaning implied is that of eternal necessary being. Why say “I am he who is” when anyone who exists can say that? He’s not talking bout the mere fact of existence but the implication of being the basis of all existence. “He who is” implies an eternal and necessary nature.

            The famous passage of God appearing out of the burning bush and giving Moses his name as “I am” is an important passage, not only is it important for movie goers and Charlton Hesston fans but also in the history of philosophy. It was upon the basis of this passage that Etinene Gilson says Thomas Aquinas based the notion he had of God as the primary act of existence, and the basis of the argument about existential energy.

Quote the passage in Gilson

Why, St. Tomas asks, do we say that Qui est  is the most proper name among all those that can be given to God? And his answer is because it signifies ‘to be.’ : ipsum esse.And what is it to be? In answering this most difficult of all metaphysical questions, we must carefully distinguish between the meaning of two words which are both different and yet immediately realted, ens, or being and esse or ‘to be.’ To the question “what is being” the correct answer is, “being is that which is, or exits” If for instance we ask the same question with regard for God the correct answer would be “the being of God is an infinite and boundless ocean of substance.” But esse or to be is something else and much harder to grasp because it lies more deeply hidden in the metaphysical structure of reality. The word being as a noun designates some substance;the word “to be”—or esse—is a verb, because it designates an act. To understand this is also to reach beyond the level of essence, the deeper level of existence…we first conceive certain beings, then we define their essences, and last we confirm their existences by means of a judgment. But the metaphysical order of reality is just the reverse of the order of human knowledge. What first comes into it is a certain act of existing, which. Because it is this particular act of existing, circumscribes at once a certain essence and causes a certain substance to come into being. In this deeper sense “to be” is the deeper and fundamental act by virtue of which a certain being actually is, or exists…to be is the very act whereby an essence is.[4]

Of course for those not enamored of Thomistic philosophy this may seem a bit questionable but the point in bringing it up is to show the profound power and importance of the passage, which served as a spring board for a major movement in the history of philosophy and of faith. The meaning is obviously bound up in questions of the metaphysical nature of being and what it means to be. The Scholastics derived from this idea of essence and existence the notion that God alone is unique because the divine essence (what God is) is the same as the divine existence (the fact that God is), or to put it another way God’s essence is the same as his existence. For everything else existence is a function of essence. The up shot of all of this is that the thing God is is an eternally existing act.  The job description of God so to speak is to always be because what God is eternal necessary being. We can see that in the passage just by translating in the stadanrd way form Hebrew as “I am that I am.”

            Aquinas’ view of God is counter to that of Tillich even though they are both termed “existential.” Wolfhart Pannenberg used Aquinas to actually counter Tilich (one can see the contradiction between Aquinas’ use of the term “existence of God” and Tillich’s abhorrence f the term). [5] Even so I would argue that weather one works from the Hebrew derived translation “I am that I am” or the Greek “I am being” it’s hinting at the same thing. He doesn’t say “I am the most powerful being” or even “I am the creator” but either way it definitely rests the relationship between God and the world upon the notion of God as the basis of reality. “I am that I am” implies a self sustaining uncaused or eternal state, aka aseity, and that implies that the one who has aseity would have to be the foundation of all reality and the creator of all things. The interview between God and Moses is so crucial to the Christian concept of God, it is the unveiling of God’s identity to the great Patriarch of Israel, their leader out of slavery and to the promised land. This is a very key verse. This is where we are given the basic revelation of who God is. What does it tell us but that God is fundamentally connected to being at the most foundational level? The Hebrew word most used for God derives from this passage and it basically means “being.” “The name of god, which in Hebrew is spelled YHWH, is difficult to explain. Scholars generally believe that it derives from the Semitic word, "to be," and so means something like, "he causes to be."[6]

The other archetypical passage that literally connects God to being itself proceeds from the other end of the equation, from the standpoint of the being and their connection to God. That passage is found in Acts 17: 28 “In him we live and move and have our being. Paul is telling the Greek philosophers and worshippers on Mars Hill that their alter to “the unknown God” hints at the reality of the true God. These were pagan followers of another religion. Paul stood up and said to them, "Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious for as I walked around and observed your objects of worship I even found an alter with this inscription 'TO AN UNKOWN GOD' Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you." He basically says that they are worshiping God, they just don't know who he is. That's why he says "I will make it known to you." He doesn't say "you have the wrong idea completely." Most Evangelicals dismiss this as a neat rhetorical trick. But if we assume that Paul would not lie or distort his beliefs for the sake of cheap tricks, we must consider that he did not say "you are all a bunch of pagans and you are going to hell!" He essentially told them, "God is working in your culture, you do know God, but you don't know who God is. You seek him, without knowing the one you seek. He goes on,(v27)"God did this [created humanity and scattered them into different cultures] so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out and find him though he is not far form each one of us." This implies that God not only wants to work in other cultures, but that it is actually his plan to do things in this way. Perhaps through a diversity of insights we might come to know God better. Perhaps it means that through spreading the Gospel people would come to contemplate better the meaning of God's love. The significance is that the Hebrew passage is God’s revelation to his chosen people, to the Israelites, the Greek passage of the NT is the revelation of the Christian God reaching out to other people. In both cases God is revealing himself or being revealed. In both cases God’s basic identity is related to God’s relation to being.  The passage in v28 says “In him we live and move and have our being.” Literally it says “in him we live and move and are.” The tense is present. The translation in English is usually slanted to the poetic. The notion of our being is not only derived from God but is played out “in” God suggests the concept of Being and the beings. The beings are produced and sustained as part of being. Since God is the producer and sustainer of our being, of all being it stands to reason that God is the foundation of all that is, and that God is therefore, fundamentally related to Being itself. This is also a picture of the depth of being. God’s estrangement from other cultures and revelation to those cultures demonstrates a fundamental relation to being, he is not an idol made with hands, (as Paul says in the passage) he is not served by men with their hands, yet he is “not far from any one of us.” In fact Paul quotes the Greek poet “we are all his offspring.” One is reminded of the notion “being is present and manifest in the beings.”

The omnis are reflected in the Bible but they add to the nature of God as the basis of all reality not a big man with qualities. For much more omn this seem y article on Religious a priori "The Bible God and Depth of Being."

What we see happening in the passage in Exodus, where God calls Moses,  a sort of formal introduction to God, Which God is it we worship? Who is sending Moses? It is here the scholars of the intestinal period inserted the Greek translation  that spells out the relationship of God to being itself. This  is what really marks there understanding of who God is, the relationship between being and God not a list of things God can do. Moreover, the omnis are hiding in that concept.

…  For Tillich, the identification of God as being-itself, or the unconditioned, is essential for a reflective grasp of God in both philosophy and theology, but it does not fully describe the immediate religious experience of God.  Analysis of religious experience shows that the idea of God as unconditioned is most generally fused with some concrete representation of God, which functions as a symbol.[x]  As Tillich says in a rather obscure quote, “God is unconditioned, that makes him God; but the ‘unconditional’ is not God.”[xi]  In other words, in the inner meaning of God is the idea of the unconditioned, but contained within the totality of the notion of God is more than that bare idea.  He continues, “the word ‘God’ is filled with the concrete symbols in which mankind (sic) has expressed its ultimate concern – its being grasped by something unconditional.”[xii]  To experience God, for example, as father, king, or lord, is to experience the fusion of a finite reality with the unconditioned experienced in and through this reality.  In this fusion, some concrete object functions as a symbol of God.  I will not attempt to justify Tillich’s theory of symbols here, but only point out that the religious idea of God, or God as experienced in some concrete religion, is more complex than this abstract analysis of God as unconditioned shows.[7] 

Perhaps this is why God warned against making any image of him. There is no one image with Which we can limit God. But it seems the burning bush is more appropriate  than the big man on throne.

Sources and notes

[1] Deu 32:11 "As an eagle stirs up her nest, and hovers over her young, and spreads her wings, takes them up, and bears them on her wings.

Deu 32 :18 "Of the Rock that bore you, you were unmindful, and have forgotten God that formed you." (that one may be hard to get, baring children--female image).

Job 38:8 "Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb."

Isa 49:15 "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. (comparing God's attitude toward Israel with a woman's attitude toward her children).

Isa 66:13 As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

Hosea 13:8 "I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs, and will tear open the covering of their heart";

[2] OT passages that God is beyond our understanding

Isaiah 40:28

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. (see whole passage).

Job 26:14 

Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand? (see whole passage).

Psalm 147:5 

Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. (see whole passage).

[3] Book of Revelation: 1:8, 4:8, 11:17, 15:3, 16:7, 16:14, 19:6, 19:15, and 21:22. 

[4] Etienne Gilson, God and Philosophy. New Haven and London: Yale University press, Powell lectures on Philosophy Indiana University, 1941, 63-64.

[5] Find--Gilson

[6] Jewish Virtual Library, “Egypt and the Wanderings:Moses and the Cult of Yahweh ” visited 4/23/10, URL: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/hebegypt.html  “the Hebrews a Learning Module Washington  State Universality, copyright Richard Hooker 2010.

[7] Duane Olson, “Paul Tillich and the Ontological Argument.” Quodlibet Journal: Volume 6 Number 3, July - September 2004

http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/olson-tillich.shtml#_edn10

Olson has three foot notes: X: “I say in religious experience the unconditioned is “most generally” fused with a concrete representation, because Tillich does allow for mystical experiences that are devoid of concrete symbols.” Xi Theology of Culture, 24 Xii Ibid