I started a thread in the forums that was quickly locked because I had unwittingly strayed into forbidden territory (the T Doctrine 
). The thread made a point that has become central to my Christianity, however, so I am reviving it here in a new, improved and entirely non-T form.
I've always had a vague, troubling sense that the God of many Christians is too small and anthropomorphic (i.e., too human-like). I'm not pointing fingers – this is true of me as well.
The God of Christianity is personal but not a person in any human sense.
God is spirit. God is eternal. God is transcendent. God is wholly other (and holy other, too).
The creation had a beginning. God did not. Eternity isn't a measurement of time, but suffice it to say that the Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness existed "before" the creation in some mysterious way that is incomprehensible to human minds.
We know God only as He has revealed Himself to our human minds. We don't know and can't comprehend the Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness.
God has revealed Himself in the Bible – but the Bible isn't God. It's what God communicated to human authors in human language. Even the Bible is an unfolding revelation in which God communicated through Moses to primitive Israelites what they were capable of grasping and through authors like Luke, John and Paul what the more sophisticated people of their time were capable of understanding.
God has likewise revealed Himself in the Incarnation and the work of the Holy Spirit in believers' lives.
I'm always struck by how much emphasis is placed on Jesus and the Bible at the expense of the Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness. This is understandable, not only because the Bible and Jesus are central to Christianity, but also because we find it easier to relate to them. We can get our minds around them in a way we can't get them around the Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness.
We even tend to think of the Father and the Holy Spirit in these terms. They tend to play second fiddle to Jesus in the thinking of many Christians because they are harder to get our minds around, but when we do think of them it's typically in highly anthropomorphic terms. The Father is the stern disciplinarian while the Holy Spirit is more the good guy or big brother who tries to nudge us along the path of righteousness.
We speak confidently of God's holiness, love, justice, wrath, anger, etc., as though we knew what this all meant. These are human terms. God's holiness, love, justice and wrath are the non-human attributes of an Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness. We can have no clear understanding of what holiness, love, justice and wrath mean in this context apart from God's revelation.
Seldom, it seems to me, do we think of God in His totality – the Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness. Why? Because God in His fullness is an almost complete mystery. (Even "He" and "Him" are anthropomorphisms.)
I find that my own Christianity has been enhanced greatly by trying to keep God in His mysterious fullness in the forefront of my thinking. When I pray or enter into silent communion, it's this God whom I have in mind.
I mentioned on several forum threads The Cloud of Unknowing, a 14th century Christian classic written by an anonymous monk for other monks. To commune with God, he wrote, one must abandon all human notions of God's attributes beneath a "cloud of forgetting" and enter into a "cloud of unknowing" where this Wholly Transcendent Other can speak, free of all the anthropomorphisms we attach to Him.
To step outside the Christian realm, I've always been struck by the opening sentences of the Tao Te Ching, the "bible" of Taoism: "The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao, the name that can be named is not the eternal name." In its non-Christian way, this expresses what I'm getting at: the eternal Ultimate Reality, which to Christians is God in all His fullness, is beyond human comprehension and is diminished as soon as we try to express it in human terms.
I'm not suggesting that it's in any way "wrong" to think of God in biblical terms since this is what God has revealed to us and knows we are capable of getting our minds around (not fully, of course, but at least enough to guide us in our Christian walks).
My point is only that I think we end up with notions of God that are too small if we forget that we're really talking about an Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness. It's very useful, I find, to acknowledge, pray to and commune with this Divine Mystery.
). The thread made a point that has become central to my Christianity, however, so I am reviving it here in a new, improved and entirely non-T form.I've always had a vague, troubling sense that the God of many Christians is too small and anthropomorphic (i.e., too human-like). I'm not pointing fingers – this is true of me as well.
The God of Christianity is personal but not a person in any human sense.
God is spirit. God is eternal. God is transcendent. God is wholly other (and holy other, too).
The creation had a beginning. God did not. Eternity isn't a measurement of time, but suffice it to say that the Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness existed "before" the creation in some mysterious way that is incomprehensible to human minds.
We know God only as He has revealed Himself to our human minds. We don't know and can't comprehend the Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness.
God has revealed Himself in the Bible – but the Bible isn't God. It's what God communicated to human authors in human language. Even the Bible is an unfolding revelation in which God communicated through Moses to primitive Israelites what they were capable of grasping and through authors like Luke, John and Paul what the more sophisticated people of their time were capable of understanding.
God has likewise revealed Himself in the Incarnation and the work of the Holy Spirit in believers' lives.
I'm always struck by how much emphasis is placed on Jesus and the Bible at the expense of the Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness. This is understandable, not only because the Bible and Jesus are central to Christianity, but also because we find it easier to relate to them. We can get our minds around them in a way we can't get them around the Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness.
We even tend to think of the Father and the Holy Spirit in these terms. They tend to play second fiddle to Jesus in the thinking of many Christians because they are harder to get our minds around, but when we do think of them it's typically in highly anthropomorphic terms. The Father is the stern disciplinarian while the Holy Spirit is more the good guy or big brother who tries to nudge us along the path of righteousness.
We speak confidently of God's holiness, love, justice, wrath, anger, etc., as though we knew what this all meant. These are human terms. God's holiness, love, justice and wrath are the non-human attributes of an Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness. We can have no clear understanding of what holiness, love, justice and wrath mean in this context apart from God's revelation.
Seldom, it seems to me, do we think of God in His totality – the Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness. Why? Because God in His fullness is an almost complete mystery. (Even "He" and "Him" are anthropomorphisms.)
I find that my own Christianity has been enhanced greatly by trying to keep God in His mysterious fullness in the forefront of my thinking. When I pray or enter into silent communion, it's this God whom I have in mind.
I mentioned on several forum threads The Cloud of Unknowing, a 14th century Christian classic written by an anonymous monk for other monks. To commune with God, he wrote, one must abandon all human notions of God's attributes beneath a "cloud of forgetting" and enter into a "cloud of unknowing" where this Wholly Transcendent Other can speak, free of all the anthropomorphisms we attach to Him.
To step outside the Christian realm, I've always been struck by the opening sentences of the Tao Te Ching, the "bible" of Taoism: "The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao, the name that can be named is not the eternal name." In its non-Christian way, this expresses what I'm getting at: the eternal Ultimate Reality, which to Christians is God in all His fullness, is beyond human comprehension and is diminished as soon as we try to express it in human terms.
I'm not suggesting that it's in any way "wrong" to think of God in biblical terms since this is what God has revealed to us and knows we are capable of getting our minds around (not fully, of course, but at least enough to guide us in our Christian walks).
My point is only that I think we end up with notions of God that are too small if we forget that we're really talking about an Eternal, Transcendent, Wholly Other Spirit who is God in His fullness. It's very useful, I find, to acknowledge, pray to and commune with this Divine Mystery.
