3 points can be inferred from God's initial Self-disclosure to Moses at the Burning Bush:
"But Moses said to God: "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, "The God of your ancestors has sent me to you," and they ask me, "What is His name?" what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses: "God said to Moses: "I am who I am" (or better, "I will be whatever I will be--Exodus 3:13-14)."
(1) God is evasive about the request for His name. Earlier in Jacob's vision of wrestling with God, Jacob is renamed Israel. So he too, like Moses, asks God His name and God evasively replies, "Why do you want to know my name (Genesis 32:29)?" Similarly, God manifests as an angel to tell Manoah about Samson's forthcoming birth and Manoah asks for His name. The angel of the Lord replies evasively, "Why do you ask my name? It is beyond your comprehension (Judges 13:18)." The point is this: ancients believed a god's name revealed the god's essence and the real God cannot be put in a conceptual box in this way:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways, says 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 (Isaiah 55:7-8)."
(2) God's evasive answer to Moses, "I will be whatever I will be," also implies that God will manifest in whatever accommodated way He chooses to the Israelites, but He reserves the right to manifest differently to peoples from other cultures and religions. God later drives this point home to the Israelites when they take Him for granted and negect social justice for the poor. God shocks them by revealing that they are not unique in being brought by God from one land to another:
"Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel? says the Lord. Did I not bring the people of Israel up from the land of Egypt? Yes, but also the Philistines from Caphtor (Crete), and the Arameans from Kir (i.e. the Arabs from Iraq--Amos 9:7)?"
Paul starts his address to the Athenians with this observation about their objects of worship:
"I found among them an altar with an inscription, "To an unknown god." what therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you (Acts 17:23)."
So Paul concedes that the worship the true God, but without really knowing Him. So Romans 1:19-20 implies neither that there is a valid philosophical argument for God's existence from creation nor that the God perceived neatly corresponds with biblical revelation. Rather, God makes His existence known to human intuition through creation, though His nature and will may be unknown.
Just as God is evasive about offering a limited identity to OT saints, He often declines to reveal His identity in NDEs; and so, the NDErs often project an identity onto Him from their own religious background. But He often self-discloses as God or Jesus to Christians. By contrast, the being of light never, to my knowledge, Self-discloses as Muhammad to Muslims.
"But Moses said to God: "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, "The God of your ancestors has sent me to you," and they ask me, "What is His name?" what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses: "God said to Moses: "I am who I am" (or better, "I will be whatever I will be--Exodus 3:13-14)."
(1) God is evasive about the request for His name. Earlier in Jacob's vision of wrestling with God, Jacob is renamed Israel. So he too, like Moses, asks God His name and God evasively replies, "Why do you want to know my name (Genesis 32:29)?" Similarly, God manifests as an angel to tell Manoah about Samson's forthcoming birth and Manoah asks for His name. The angel of the Lord replies evasively, "Why do you ask my name? It is beyond your comprehension (Judges 13:18)." The point is this: ancients believed a god's name revealed the god's essence and the real God cannot be put in a conceptual box in this way:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways, says 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 (Isaiah 55:7-8)."
(2) God's evasive answer to Moses, "I will be whatever I will be," also implies that God will manifest in whatever accommodated way He chooses to the Israelites, but He reserves the right to manifest differently to peoples from other cultures and religions. God later drives this point home to the Israelites when they take Him for granted and negect social justice for the poor. God shocks them by revealing that they are not unique in being brought by God from one land to another:
"Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel? says the Lord. Did I not bring the people of Israel up from the land of Egypt? Yes, but also the Philistines from Caphtor (Crete), and the Arameans from Kir (i.e. the Arabs from Iraq--Amos 9:7)?"
Paul starts his address to the Athenians with this observation about their objects of worship:
"I found among them an altar with an inscription, "To an unknown god." what therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you (Acts 17:23)."
So Paul concedes that the worship the true God, but without really knowing Him. So Romans 1:19-20 implies neither that there is a valid philosophical argument for God's existence from creation nor that the God perceived neatly corresponds with biblical revelation. Rather, God makes His existence known to human intuition through creation, though His nature and will may be unknown.
Just as God is evasive about offering a limited identity to OT saints, He often declines to reveal His identity in NDEs; and so, the NDErs often project an identity onto Him from their own religious background. But He often self-discloses as God or Jesus to Christians. By contrast, the being of light never, to my knowledge, Self-discloses as Muhammad to Muslims.
