God, The Absolute
By Skepsou
God is absolute. And the problem with trying to describe the absoluteness of God is that all of the vocabulary we might use is human and limited. We try to dress this human language up in an attempt to express the state of being absolute but the result is just awkward. Let me give you an example. We can take a limited human concept like being “potent” and dress it up with the prefix “omni-“ to create a word that might be descriptive of God. We try to manufacture the infinite from the finite. So we say that God is omnipotent. But this is just an extension of the base word potent. Omnipotent now means something like “all-potent.” It is similar to taking the word human and transforming it into the word superhuman. The problem is that it merely stretches a human-bound attribute.
But God is absolute. He is not limited to potency at all. God is not like a strong man only much more so. God does not exist on the same scale as human beings. We can’t say at the lower end of the human potency scale there is the weak man and at the upper end there is the strong man and then beyond the strong man, yet on this same scale, there is God. To say that God is omnipotent is a category error. Omnipotence is just an exaggeration of a human condition. God owns the Cosmos completely and perfectly. He created it. He did not fabricate it - he called it into existence by fiat. At one time the Cosmos existed only in his mind. And he can make it go out of existence in the twinkling of an eye without using any kind of force or potency inherent in the Cosmos itself. God may work with physical agencies – like sending a plague against the Assyrians – but he does not need to. That is just done in our realm for our instruction and in terms we can understand.
God is absolute. This is going to sound very odd but it is an index of how constrained our thinking is by our human vocabulary. Here goes. God is not alive or dead. Humans can be alive and humans can be dead but God is pure and absolute existence. Human life is an analogical derivative of that divine existence. Humans are a triune combination of sarx, pneuma and psuche – Koine Greek for flesh, spirit and animating principle, respectively. If the synergy between these three components works, we are alive. If the synergy is disrupted, we die. God is not bound by such contingencies. God is self-existent (see how awkward is the vocabulary) and we are contingently existent. The Hebrew word “chay” is used in the Old Testament to provide the expression “living God.” But chay seems to be used of creatures. Its application to God seems inelegant – like many of the anthropomorphisms in the Old Testament. We can be alive and conscious but God transcends that category. We are in the category of imparted, conditional existence. He is in the category of absolute existence. Our being alive is an analogy of God’s absolute existence.
Words like “omnipotent” are really just analogies. We know God only through analogy. To describe God in human vocabulary is to analogize. Take out your tablet and write a one paragraph description of God. The wording will all be analogy – human terms applied to a being that transcends all that your words can convey. You might point out that the Bible uses such language. But the Bible, too, speaks in analogies. One of the Bible’s chief literary forms is anthropomorphism – talking about God as if he were human. I used to take great exception to the fact that Rupertism-Armstrongism believed that the anthropomorphic language of the Bible described God in his essence. I felt like terms such as “omnipotent” were really the solution. Now I believe that both Old Testament anthropomorphic language and brewed up words like omnipotent or omniscient or omnipresent are all human-based and analogical. The latter is only a little better than the former. But we must use these words. We have nothing else. And above all we must remember that this analogical language does not define God as he really is: absolute.
But an important question is why should we be able to make sense of the analogies that tell us about God? An analogy about something that is unintelligible is still unintelligible. It is because we are created in God’s image. What is meaningful to him can be in some way meaningful to us if he wants it to be. We only know about him what he wants us to know. That we know anything about him at all is because of our analogical similarity. We are limited, fleshly analogs of God. He created all of us so that his salvation means something to us. We are all salvable because he has created us all to be salvable. Since God is ultimate reality and we live in an analogical cosmos then we are God’s walking, breathing poetry, we are God’s literature written in flesh.
Note: Some may label what I have written as “liberal.” The term “liberal” is often used inappropriately to castigate others with a different view. But what I have presented is quite conservative. It recognizes the surpassing glory of God. To the contrary, to believe that humans are capable of becoming “God as God is God” is radically liberal.
48 comments:
Pack is LOONEY and thats ABSOLUTE!
Excellent. God transcends our very limited human ability to describe Him. I believe that is one (if not THE) purpose of the book of Job. We humans have a long history of making God in our image and putting Him in this or that box.
God is not absolute.
I agree with Brian. I like the train of thought expressed here. I have been talking about the God who cannot be contained or quantified by us for several years now.
This is not a criticism, but rather an observation of something of something written above that slots in nicely with what I have been contemplating for some time now - God existing outside of time. Above, you state that "At one time the Cosmos existed only in his mind."
A creation that has no beginning in its own internal timeline would still be contingently existent and still be a creation of God. If God can create an infinitely long piece of string, he can create an infinitely long entity in any other dimension, such as time. If God could not create a universe without a beginning in its own timeline, then he could not create a piece of string with no beginning in its own single dimension. The worst, but common, argument I've heard is that if God created a universe that had no beginning in time, we would never reach "now" and would never exist. Also, a universe without beginning (in its own timeline) would be co-eternal with God. The same argument works with the string, though - if it was progressively created from an infinitely distant end at a particular moment in time, it would never reach "here", or never reach the point of being infinitely long.
Also, God is supposed to be simple and unchanging, in the sense that he is not a complexity made up of multiple parts that are sub-God entities that form a whole God when combined, and also that he does not change and experience a series of consecutive thoughts one after the other, or performing a series of actions one after the other.
To me, that means God doesn't exist subject to some form of time, and didn't spend an eternity first with creation only in his mind, then actually creating, then viewing his creation. (Does God have a part/subsection of him that is his mind?) Surely creation just emanates forth from God as an act of his will, like music from a flute (or like poetry, as you write above). Unlike God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit in Trinitarian theology, this creation would not be God, not be self-existent, not simple, but rather complex, contingently existent, non-God. (But this borders on a lot of other weird ideas about the eternal universe being our Mother God that I am far from comfortable with.) Perhaps the Incarnation could be viewed as God sticking his finger into the creation laid out before him and becoming part of it in a way.
Creation could, perhaps, consist of multiple universes, even an infinite number of universes, at least some of which might have eternally long internal timelines, without conflicting with God's eternalness.
(I'm not promoting the idea that we live in an eternal universe without beginning, I'm just using it as a tool to try to understand what is possible with God.)
To some people, God (who existed for eternity before he began to create, and has literal body parts like fingers and lungs) spent eternity doing nothing, and eventually reached a point in his timeline 6000 earth years ago, and began creating a single universe, spent 6 earth days doing so, and then took a rest day off, and then had to make further plans when Adam and Eve sinned.
I don't know if the above makes sense, or if I'm just rambling my thoughts away here, but I wanted to write this and see if anyone agreed or disagreed. I fully understand that the closest we can get to understanding God is by analogy.
Reads as if written by a religious person steeped in religion but who doesn't know God at all.
Can happen.
Excellent indeed. 20 years or so ago, Brian gave a Big Sandy FOT sermon in Destin "How Big Is Your Booth". Also excellent. After he finished, my wife commented 'If we hear nothing else this year ---- this was worth the whole trip down here'! Along those lines, Sid Hegvold used to say that the cogs were incorrectly looking at the millennium as being the KOG. Not understanding the greatness of God and being stuck seeing only through physical eyes.
I appreciate the points raised above. I may disagree with you on one of them, unless I am misunderstanding you.
1. Humans can be alive and humans can be dead. I agree with that, if you mean at the same time. We are all alive, yet born dead in spirit due to Adam's fall. Ephesians 2:1. By nature, children of wrath Ephesians 2:3. Until our spirits are made alive, at the moment of salvation, though we breath and exist, we are still dead. Our triune condition is dead until given life by the Triune God, upon receiving Jesus as our Savior and the instantaneous sealing, indwelling Holy Spirit makes our spirit alive. Ephesians 1:13-14. "In Him you were chosen; when you heard the glad tidings of salvation, the word of truth, and believed in it, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit who had been promised. At this point, we have passed from death to life, and are a new creation. Colossians 1:13 He rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son. Now, we are truly alive, only our physical body will die. If this is what you meant by "we are contingently existent", I totally agree! We are not self existent, as He is, but kept alive by Him, through His common Grace to mankind, but dead nonetheless, until born again.
The outrageous proposition of most of the COGs, that you can become god as god is god, is one of the more egregious heresies of HWA. Ironically, he did point out the truth that God does not change, but it flew over his dumb head, that if many more gods were possible, that would, by necessity, change Who God is! Not to mention the dozens and dozens of times throughout the book of Isaiah, where we are told "I am God. There is no other. Before me was no god formed, after Me shall be no god be formed". If you have to be made/formed into a god, than you are not eternal! Damn YOU HWA! Filthy, dumbass liar.
Stephen Korsman 12:12
David Bentley Hart points out that the understanding that God is the First Cause does not mean that everything he makes must have a beginning point - must be finite. God can be the First Cause of something that is infinite. I admit that this is beyond my grasp, really. In language I must talk about the infinite as if it were a finite object. Language does not suffice.
God created time. Nobody really knows what time is. We do know that it is a part of the physical Cosmos. Time responds to gravity. At the Schwarzschild radius of a black hole, gravity is so great that the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. At this point, time essentially stops. So there are places in the Cosmos where the flow of time has ceased. And, or course, motion ceases also. Herman Hoeh thought, I am told, that time is motion. Many physicists believe that also. I tend to think motion is constrained by time but is not the same as time. I think the jury is out until we can ask the Creator.
If God created time, he is not subject to time as we are. He is timeless. He may not experience chronological sequence but he could experience logical sequence. For us, a syllogism is arrayed in time - premises followed by a conclusion. God may conceive of a syllogism all at once, we might say, with no sequence in time involved, but there may still be a logical sequence in his pattern of thought. (A priori, "If A, then B" is not the same as "IF B, then A" (Unless A and B are equivalent. Sorry) So the sequential assembly of logical statements must be. But logical sequence may have no correlate in time.) See how inadequate our language is to describe anything like this.
If you think of God as constrained by time as a sequence of moments like we hominids, you run into many paradoxes. Such as the paradox that God is trapped in the eternal past and will never ever reach the present moment. Just doesn't work.
If you use a search engine on Rupertist-Armstrongist literature, you will not find a discussion of time - except maybe the implicit idea that God experiences time like us and does not really know the future. This is based on the error of believing that the anthropomorphisms of the Old Testament define God in his essence. This diminishment and containment of God makes it mistakenly plausible to those who have not yet contemplated the issues that we too might become God one day.
Skepsou
DW 6:55
You are taking the more complicated theological view. I was only considering biological life. Either an organism is functioning or it is not. When I said that we can be dead, I meant that our biological lives can terminate and we can become non-functional. Of course, you and I know that the pneuma may continute to exist and function, if God so will, but that is a Christian insight.
I meant the term "alive" in the same biological sense. God has, in creation, donated to us existence and animated our functionality. But what we call "life" is an analog of God's absolute existence. But our life is not the same as God's absolute existence. For instance, we apparently require a body, mortal or immortal, for sustained life. 1 Corinthians 15 seems to nowhere accommodate a bodiless state. There may be other constraints on what is life for us that we do not yet know about.
This is why the only way you can make the idea of our being "God as God is God" requires that the concept of God be diminished to a human level in quality.
Skepsou
I guess this is why we are told that His, (God), thoughts and ways are not ours. The simplicity in God can be understood at our level regarding life, death, a way of life and the reason for the crucifixion but even that we truly do not understand how the shed blood can cleanse us from sin. We believe it does but how does that work? When one is on the spiritual level this will all make sense for now, we see through a dimmed glass. How Great Is Our God!!!
God does not use magic. Rather He uses advanced technology. God the Father and Christ might have spent hundreds of billions of years defining reality, and designing the creatures and plants for the prehistoric era. After Lucifer rebelled, God has been working hard for the last 14 billion years designing the new creatures and vegetation for the present human era.
There's a reason why the angels before God's throne keep praising him. They know that they are the recipients of His hard work.
A few more thoughts:
https://godcannotbecontained.blogspot.com/2022/12/to-whom-will-you-compare-me.html
Skepsou / Anon 7:55
Thanks - I will look up Hart. And I agree re the logical sequence - I've read that before, but it didn't really appeal to me as that important, but I suppose it is important if one is contrasting it to a chronological sequence. Logical sequences seemed logically obvious, but chronological sequences were problematic and I focussed on that problem.
For me, picturing an infinite but caused universe works if I imagine God looking down at his creation, and the universe is a long tube (and there can be many such tubes) in front of him. I don't picture them as infinitely extending in both directions; I just picture them as containing that infinity. This image satisfies me. I agree, though - language, and imagery, is terribly inadequate.
Anonymous 3:45 has an interesting view.
Anon 3:45, do you believe that God has been actively creating in this way for all eternity? Or is there only one creation? If only one, what did he do prior to beginning those billions of years worth of work?
"Sid Hegvold used to say that the cogs were incorrectly looking at the millennium as being the KOG."
And most, if not all, still do.
The Millennium is the physical kingdom, much like ancient Israel was to be (they failed miserably, however). That physical kingdom will happen, with Jesus overseeing it in person.
There is no holy spirit available in the millennium, no salvation, no Satan. Life will be like it was in OT times. Those that live and die during that time will come up in the second resurrection and have their opportunity.
It all fits so nicely, yet the COGs still teach salvation during the millennium. Go figure.
Just remember that God exists apart from time & space. He did create it, after all.
Anon @ 3:45 is the perfect example of a limited, creaturely god of fiction. God is not a being (or worse, two beings), as long held by Armstrongism. Rather, God is the very ground of being itself and the wellspring of all reality.
So, someone finally got to ask the Divine a couple questions.
Ok, Father, what is a million years to you?
Oh, it’s just a second to Me.
Well, what is a million dollars to you?
Oh, it’s just a penny to Me.
Well, Father, would you give me a million dollars?
Sure, no problem, be glad to. Gimme a second.
——————
By the way, where in scripture does it say to ignore all the descriptions concerning the Creator? Sounds like a whole lotta “WOKE” people spouting their own philosophy to me.
Abraham thinks like God because both, rather than sacrificing themselves, offered up their kids. And even then , they didn't actually die, or didn't stay dead long. Would have been more impressive if they had killed themselves in sacrifice for all? And stayed dead of course. Maybe it's just me.
Carved into a wall at Auschwitz. "God, YOU will have to beg for my forgiveness"
5.29 AM
My belief is that God has always been working hard. For example, there's no waste in nature. Leaves become compost. He used His time to define and upgrade Himself, and develop the technology to define and create the universe we are familiar with. Where He and His basic abilities came from is a mystery.
Anonymous 3:45
I appreciate your respect for God's hard work but I think your understanding of his nature is off. God created time and is not constrained by it. He is timeless. He therefore would not spend 14 billion years doing a design. 14 billion years is irrelevant to him.
Herman Hoeh presented material at a WCG ministerial conference in which he claimed that God had to figure out how to make man. He compared God to an engineer that had to test various designs in order to finally arrive at the model for Adam. And that is where the various fossil men in the caves and rock layers came from. Hoeh asserted that God has to follow the same modeling process that human engineers must follow. This human-like god may be comforting to people who do not want to think of a transcendent God, who instead want a tractable God.
The idea of God as demiurge is nonsense. God does what he conceives. He is a Creator (ex nihilo) and not a fabricator. He makes creation happen under the conditions that please him. But there is a religion that asserts that God is a fabricator. That is Gnosticism. Gnostics believed that the Cosmos was not created by the true God who is hidden but by a demiurge called Yahweh. And a demiurge is a created being who fabricates and maintains fabricated things. A demiurge does not create ex nihilo.
Hoeh cast God as a demiurge because he apparently could not think beyond the anthropomorphic language of the Old Testament. People who believe this Gnostic view read in the Bible that God rested on the Sabbath and believe that God actually ran out of energy and needed to rest up. It is as if they never considered the fact that God maintains the Cosmos without interruption and never runs out of energy.
Like Hoeh, you may have stumbled smack into Gnosticism. The God you describe is a demiurge. Don't be embarrassed. Lots of smart people who follow Rupertism-Armstrongism hold this same ancient heretical view. You should disabuse yourself of this notion as soon as you can.
Skepsou
The "I am" or the "I am that I am" says it all to me.
God IS.
In my limitation, I sometimes just picture God taking "time" off a shelf and "space" off a shelf. In other words, they are "items" used by Him and He is outside of them.
He simply IS and past and present and future may well all blend into simply being. So, He knows the end from the beginning. And as He is Love it is a pleasant BEING (noun and gerund).
Anonymous 18:19
"By the way, where in scripture does it say to ignore all the descriptions concerning the Creator? Sounds like a whole lotta “WOKE” people spouting their own philosophy to me."
You should not ignore the descriptions. They are given for a purpose. They communicate to us at a level we can understand.
Neither should you ignore all of the data and focus just on the OT anthropomorphisms. God is not just a big, powerful human being. Jesus said, "God is a Spirit" and he told Nicodemus that our senses were not set up for detecting Spirits. Paul said that God is invisible. Of course, God can reveal himself anyway he wants. He can be a pillar of fire or a pillar of smoke or a whirlwind, for instance. But these are theophanies. These presentations are not what he is in his essence but are meant for us.
Do you get the impression that maybe the anthropomorphism of the OT are useful but inadequate overall?
Skepsou
But the very hairs of your head are all numbered – Mat 10:30
He tells the number of the stars; He calls them all by their names – Ps 147:4
at Skepsou-
I remember that lecture by Dr Hoeh. Seemed a bit strange at the time. If the Creator needs to experiment, then being God as God is God may not be out of the picture? Anyway, the best part of the lecture when I was there was that it was interrupted by an assembly in the Auditorium that we all had to watch as it was broadcast to the lecture hall. Dr Hoeh knew this ahead of time and stopped in mid-sentence when he got the signal from the techs. After the assembly, he got back up and began at the same mid-sentence point. Of course we all laughed, but he acted as if he did not understand why. :)
2.54 pm
"Don't be embarrassed."
I am not embarrassed but rather proud of my beliefs. Critics of your point of view say that the only place where your reality can exist is in death. It's a child's view of reality, and smells of 1960s hippy talk.
When humans create a computer language, they must religiously obeying the coding rules. With God it's no different. He has to obey the DNA programming rules and the three dimensional programing in seeds. There's no one who has been more obedient in this sense than God. The reality you claim God's exists in is a A!ice in Wonderland mush. This is an example of where those who studied science in school have a natural advantage over those who didn't.
Academia was filled with nutty professorial types that made the learning experience memorable and enjoyable. Dr. Hoeh was kind of our version of that, and I enjoyed his sermons and lectures. Unfortunately, back then, I did not have the knowledge or experience to understand that he used his bookishness to "prove" Armstrong's points, theories, and beliefs through dubious proof-texting, as opposed to using the scientific method and following an evidentiary trail and testing and retesting to final conclusion.
Brian Drawbaugh 8:03
I spoke with Hoeh back in the Seventies. He was definitely a person with a different approach to conversation. I did not hear the lecture you refer to but I had notes from the lecture that were on file at the Library at AC Big Sandy. I spoke with Joe Tkach, Jr. some years later about this view of God and human history and he stated unequivocally that this was the wrong conception of God. I fully agree with him now but at the time I was a card-carrying Rupertist-Armstrongist and found Tkach's response to be suprising.
Skepsou
Reply to: Do you get the impression that maybe the anthropomorphism of the OT are useful but inadequate overall?
Skepsou
Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 3:52:00 PM PST
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Not at all.
To start with the Greek text, for example, does NOT say “God is A spirit.” What it says is that He “IS Spirit.”
The NT Greek does not have an indefinite article. Read Kenneth S. Wuest’s NT commentary on this.
For instance, he says Paul is NOT AN Apostle. He IS Apostle. That is his very being is such, his quality, his essence. Please check this out for it is very enlightening.
“That which is flesh IS flesh, that which is spirit IS spirit.”
So, then, would you say about yourself “I am A flesh, or, I AM flesh?”
Flesh can take form just as spirit can take form. We live in flesh in form. The Father lives in spirit, in and with form. That is why and how He created mankind in His form. Because He has form/shape. We are one day to be made in His spirit form. Therefore we will be like Him and His Son.
Thus, the Bible describes Him as He IS, form, walking, talking, sitting on a throne, etc. etc. Physical life is a shadow of the spiritual realm, the only difference, one is eternal and made of spirit, the other is physical and temporary.
Could say and quote lots more, but this should be enough for the moment to create a few ah-ha moments.
The Bible describes Him in His spirit realm just as it does us in our physical realm. The only difference, one is composed of spirit “material “ and the other physical “material.” One day we will be transformed into spirit, and drop the physical part.
Seems simple enough to me. A good conversation.
Anonymous 12:46 "With God it's no different."
I am a technical professional and I don't feel that you need to worry about my being daunted by your scientific background. That is why when I tell you that the statement above is naive you should not feel some academic protocol has been violated. With God it is very different. He is not the obedient servant of the system as you suggest but the creator of the system. He can violate it whenever he wants. When he does that is what we know as a miracle. Once again you are espousing a Gnostic viewpoint. A demiurge must be obedient to the system. He is only a fabricator not a creator. I don't think resort to physical science is really going to help in this debate. It is a matter of logic and theology.
Skepsou
Anonymous 8:27 "To start with the Greek text, for example, does NOT say “God is A spirit.” What it says is that He “IS Spirit.”
What you have written is pretty much standard WCG exposition. It brings back the days of Armstrong, Blackwell and Hoeh. I have not heard this in years. You must be an old-timer.
So let me ask you a couple of questions:
1. If a person approached you and said "I am human" or "I am a human," would you be able to understand either of these statements? Do they seem vastly separted in meaning?
2. If God is Spirit and Spirit is like a substance (as you call it "spirit material') that can be shaped and formed - a substance that can be used to fabricate objects - then who made God?
Skepsou
To: Skepsou
Friday, December 30, 2022 at 5:45:00 PM PST
———————-
I beg your pardon, that info is not sourced in the Worldwide, my friend.
Perhaps you might want to brush up on your Greek grammar. Kenneth S. wuest is not, and never was associated with the Worldwide.
Also, I would suggest you get beyond the typical atheist question when they run low on material: “Who created God?”
According to His Name, which most Christians neglect, He Is, Was, and Will Be. No need to be “created.”
Try reading your Bible in English and ignore the a, and the an. You might find a wonderful new experience in understanding the Scriptures.
When you read the, a and an, you are turning Greek into an English meaning, not that of the scribe. In essence, adding to Scripture.
As to Hoeh, Armstrong and others, they were very close to the correct understanding, just needed a little more input.
By the way, don’t you know Herbert Armstrong was not for the teaching of Greek at Ambassador at first?
Try reading Wuest first to get a feel for what a Protestant understood about the indefinite article in Greek. Quite informative.
Another good conversation.
Anonymous 7:48 "I beg your pardon, that info is not sourced in the Worldwide, my friend."
I first heard the ideas you espouse back in the Seventies in the WCG. They persisted thereafter. But I have no doubt that error can be independently "re-discovered." HWA believed that God was composed of spirit. Or as he used to say, "of spirit composition." Others of his minions asserted the idea that the earthly temple reflected the heavenly temple but the artifacts in the heavenly temple were made of spirit and were eternal. Spirit came to be thought of as something malleable that could be used to make eternal objects. God as carpenter. (Compare with the Demiurge of Gnosticism.) And when we are resurrected, we will have new bodies made out of spirit. And this all fits nicely into the anthropomorphic, analogical language of the Old Testament.
If you were to see a wooden statue, I think it is natural to ask the question, "Who made it?" This is not an atheistic question; this is a question that rationally flows from circumstance. If God is composed of some spirit material, who assembled him from this substance? Who created the spirit material and endowed it with its properties such as malleability and the capacity to retain shape? Does this mean that God has internal organs, that he is not really self-existent but dependent on organ systems to be sustained? And who engineered the organ systems?
The idea that God is "composed" or "made out of" something is at best sophomoric. We do not know the spirit realm. What is actual and what is allegory? What is objective and what is subjective? And to simply overlay it with what we know of our own realm is naive presumption. We do know with certainty that the idea of fabricating something out of some raw material has nothing to do with explaining the nature of God.
Skepsou
Anonymous 7:48 Addendum
Since I can anticipate your response and am not likely to come back to this page, let mem state one more thing and then I'm done.
If you take your views on this and package them as new truth that illuminates scripture and you present this package to people who are well-read in theology, you will be a laughingstock.
You need to get an education in the doctrine of God from legitimate Christian sources rather than innovating new concepts that are really old concepts. You can start by considering the question of how God who is unlimited and absolute in his presence, whose presence is both immanent and transcendent, can be confined by the locality that is implicit in having a body that is made out of something.
Skepsou
I have to say that this is one of the best threads I have read in a long long time! There was no bashing or belittling. An honest give-and-take of ideas, no superiority. Plus, the subject matter is infinitely stimulating! I think this is why so many of us are huge, sci-fi fans, It is also outside the box and we can't wrap our minds around it completely. But we will always wonder, and the only way we will know is when we come out the other side. Thanks!
Skepsou said:
You need to get an education in the doctrine of God from legitimate Christian sources rather than innovating new concepts that are really old concepts. You can start by considering the question of how God who is unlimited and absolute in his presence, whose presence is both immanent and transcendent, can be confined by the locality that is implicit in having a body that is made out of something
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I would rather get it straight from the Bible, versus the “vain philosophies of men.”
Who said Elohim was limited or confined to a locality? I certainly didn’t. Oh, it was you in trying to negate my presentation. Please explain, with verses from Scripture, not statements from men with no source but themselves, your understanding of a formless, energy(???), that you call “God.”
I can see why you might want to stop our good conversation and leave.
Iron sharpens Iron, you know. Thanks for the sharpening. I enjoyed it. “It was a good conversation.” Quoted from the movie The Last Samurai.”
Anonymous 12:18
1. You wrote, “Who said Elohim was limited or confined to a locality?” Let me show you where you said that. You stated, “The Father lives in spirit, in and with form.” Form is a property of matter. Matter has extension in three dimensions. It retains its boundaries in three dimensions and its boundaries can be specified with coordinates on the x, y, z axes. This is the same as location. You would have to postulate some kind of “spiritual matter” to make this valid and you did. Your statement overall asserts that God in his essence exists in this substantive state. This also means that you believe that God has locality and is not absolute in regard to presence as the scripture asserts. I was not trying to negate your presentation; I was repeating what you said.
2. You wrote, “Physical life is a shadow of the spiritual realm, the only difference, one is eternal and made of spirit, the other is physical and temporary.” I agree with part of this. The physical Cosmos may well be an analog of a divine Cosmos but I doubt it. Why would God then create a New Heavens and New Earth and dwell there? Why not just have us go to his Spirit realm, full of spirit objects, and live with him. The part I certainly do not agree with is that these objects are made of spirit. Spirit is more like an attitude or way of being than material. While there may be objects in heaven, I see nothing in scripture that would make me think that they are made of attitude or inspiration or a way of being. Shadowing implies some correspondence between objects but it cannot he stretched without justification to support the compositional idea of “spirit material” when that is nowhere presented in the Bible.
3. If God has a form, what is his form? The Old Testament anthropomorphism would assert that his form is human. But why, in his essence before anything was created or even conceived, would he have fingernails? In that pre-creation period, there would be nothing to scratch. The idea of scratching would not have even been originated. The human form is clearly biased towards life on earth. There is no reason for God to have that form in his essence or, for that matter, any form.
4. You stated that I characterized God as “a formless, energy.” I did not. And I would not presume to characterize the essential and absolute God using words that describe the created phenomena of physics. These words are of the same genre as your words. They are inapplicable to God.
Overall, your ideas are a repetition of 1970s Armstrongism which is based on the simplistic notion that the anthropomorphic language of the OT describes God in his essence. It is possible that Armstrongist denominations still believe this diminished version of God. I am not current on what they believe.
3:34 wrote:
1. You wrote, “Who said Elohim was limited or confined to a locality?” Let me show you where you said that. You stated, “The Father lives in spirit, in and with form.” Form is a property of matter. Matter has extension in three dimensions. It retains its boundaries in three dimensions and its boundaries can be specified with coordinates on the x, y, z axes. This is the same as location. You would have to postulate some kind of “spiritual matter” to make this valid and you did. Your statement overall asserts that God in his essence exists in this substantive state. This also means that you believe that God has locality and is not absolute in regard to presence as the scripture asserts. I was not trying to negate your presentation; I was repeating what you said.
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First, let me say I’m glad you didn’t leave our good conversation.
Second, you have posted not one supporting Scripture to uphold your stance on what Elohim and/or spirit is according to your view. You seem to be espousing only what men have reasoned out based on how they want “God” to be. I understand that. Paul calls it “vain philosophies.
Third: You’re claiming my point that Elohim has form, and concluding that thusly I believe He is confined, etc. is in total error. Please don’t read into my statements what is not there.
Fourth: The Bible through its writers claims to be valid for doctrines, etc. If that is true, to claim anthropomorphisms are, in essence, are not to be believed, says the Bible doesn’t know what it’s talking about, and is misleading us.
Fifth: Most critics I have dealt with seem to take the attitude “well men try to make Elohim into an imitation of man, an thus limit His power, essence, omnipresence, etc. etc. What they never mention is this fact: man was made in the image of Elohim, He made us to be an imitation of Him. Nowhere in Scripture that I know of does the Bible say He didn’t make us in His image. So, did He lie to us and not tell us that in reality it is man that made Him in our image.
Sixth: Therefore, it would seem it is your human reasoning about what spirit is, and how it functions, not Bible verses, that tells us how men want Him to be. Therefore in a sense that is making Elohim function as a man thinks He should. Whereas, the Bible tells us how he actually functions.
Side thot: The FBI can now listen to, and record, every phone call in the world. So, because Elohim has a shape, described by His Book, means that He cannot do the same throughout the whole universe?
It is not that He is in the form of man, we are in the shape of Him. And, in the future we will “be like Him.” Remember that verse?
We, must be “born of spirit.” And put off this body of flesh.
It’s so simple when we stick to Scripture. Men meditating in a corner deciding who and what Elohim is supposed to be doesn’t hack it.
Maybe I will respond on your other points, but maybe that isn’t necessary for the sake of the others on the site.
Wow, this has been a good long conversation, started in 2022, and here we are in 2023!
To 3:34
Your use of Armstrongism rebuttal is not a valid rebuttal. Most people who argue with that do not in the first place know, or understand what that means. It is an easy way, they think, to defend a stance that is not scripturally defensible. When confronted on this by asking for an example, most give an answer that was never taught in so-called “armstrongism.”
2023 begins, how ya gonna use it friends?
Anonymous 10:48
I'll give you some short responses following your order:
Second: I gave you a scripture and you went off on some idiosyncratic observation about Greek Grammar that led to "For instance, he says Paul is NOT AN Apostle. He IS Apostle. That is his very being is such, his quality, his essence.' Paul is in his essence a human being consisting of pneuma, sarx and psuche like everybody else. Being an Apostle is his calling - his spiritual avocation. Get a clue.
Third: How can God be located in a body yet have absolute and unlimited presence? Later you postulate how intelligence agencies can listen in. That is remote access and is not the same as absolute presence. "For in him we live, and move, and have our being." If we are located here and God is located there, how does this statement from Acts 17 make sense?
Fourth: The Bible is for doctrine. That does not make it a thorough-going scientific document. It uses figure of speech. Jesus talks about dividing the sheep and the goats. Are we to assume that this refers to an agricultural operation?
Fifth: Imago Dei has been much debated. But one view that was discarded by the church is the idea that God has a body and man has a body like God's body. Ask yourself: Why would God have a nose as a part of his essence from all eternity? Did he have to breathe air to live? If he is dependent on an air supply, is he really God?
Sixth: I do not know how spirit functions. And there are no Bible verses that describe it except what Jesus said. He used an Aramaic term translated into Greek as Pneuma. That means Wind. That doesn't sound like any of the anthropomorphisms of the OT. We have Pneuma also, but it is flesh that gives us our form. Jesus says that God is pure Pneuma.
You are caught in the sticky web of Biblical literalism and I have extended as much help to you as I can. I think you are probably a pretty decent person. You just have had your mind corrupted by Armstrongism. See if you can get Kyriacios Stavrinides tapes from long ago on the Doctrine of God. Otherwise, I will not be responding further.
Skepsou
Skepsou:
It is too late to write up a proper response to your post at 4:15.
However, just a small point. Just think, according to your philosophy Elohim is not very powerful at all. Why, seemingly you are saying all we have to do is have Him take on form, or shape, and voila, He is powerless.
And, not having lived at the spirit level realm, there is no way you can say there is no need for a nose or fingernails as a spirit being.
Sorry, but the weak excuse that someone was tainted by a critic created nonsense term called Armstrongism is why they don’t understand your human philosophy, is at best absurd. You don’t know me and have no basis for such delusions except pure human assumption.
And, further you haven’t even come close to answering the Greek grammar which cannot be so ignored so easily as too many Christians do. Just google does New Testament have an indefinite article. Then try to explain it away.
Will reply more fully later.
Am enjoying our good conversation immensely.
Skepsou responded:
You are caught in the sticky web of Biblical literalism and I have extended as much help to you as I can. I think you are probably a pretty decent person. You just have had your mind corrupted by Armstrongism. See if you can get Kyriacios Stavrinides tapes from long ago on the Doctrine of God. Otherwise, I will not be responding further.
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That is very kind of you to extend as much help to me as you can. It is not strong enough to change solid Biblical teaching.
Why wouldn’t I be a decent person? Another little debate strategy to denigrate the other person when losing the discussion.
You are totally not qualified to tell me my mind has been corrupted. And Stavrinides is not the only person on earth who knows everything.
So, seeing you have reached your limit of knowledge on the subject, and probably have no experience with AC before the late 50’s, I think it good not to respond further with more “vain philosophies.”
Oh, also google does God have a form. Both sides are covered.
Our good conversation reminds me of the Friday night Bible sessions at Manor Del Mar. Wonderful memories.
Till then…..
Skepsou writes:
“Paul is in his essence a human being consisting of pneuma, sarx and psuche like everybody else.”
I presume, therefore, that you have a trichotomist view of man.
I tend to the dichotomist view, coupled with the Hebraic that the spirit is not separable from the physical body.
Some observations:
"The Gospels echo with the OT theme that all life begins with God, the source and creator of this life. All life is the creation of the living God, who alone is life (Deut 5:26; Isa 40:18-26). The view is synthetic: life does not consist of entities such as body, soul and spirit; rather it is holistic and to be viewed as God's gift set in opposition to death..." (G.R. Osborne, "Life, Eternal Life," Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, pp.521-22).
“In the New Testament as a whole psuche occurs 100 times, pneuma more than 370 times. It is entirely impossible to draw a sharp distinction - as is often done - between these two words, as if in the New Testament psuche always has one meaning, pneuma another. It is true that when the apostle Paul was thinking of man’s invisible being in its relation to God, he generally used the word pneuma. However, in the New Testament as whole there is considerable overlapping of meanings. One should never say, “In the New Testament psuche is man’s invisible part considered as that which animates his body; pneuma is that same immaterial entity viewed in relation to God.” The subject is far more complicated than this generalization indicates...
Ac 20:10 And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; for his life [psuche] is in him.
2Th 2:8a And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit [“breath”, ESV, pneuma] of his mouth,
“For example, the Greek equivalent for breath can be either psuche (Acts 20:10) or pneuma (2 Thess 2:8).
Lk 8:55 And her spirit [pneuma] came again, and she arose straightway: and he commanded to give her meat.
Lk 8:55a And at that moment her life returned, and she immediately stood up! (NLT).
Mt 2:20 for they are dead which sought the young child's life [psuche].
“Similarly, the concept life, with emphasis on the physical, can be expressed either by pneuma (Luke 8:55) or by psuche (Matt 2:20).
Ac 17:16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit [pneuma] was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.
Ac 14:2 But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles, and made their minds evil affected [psuche] against the brethren.
“Not only is it possible for the pneuma to be provoked (Ac 17:16), the psuche, too, can be stirred up (Acts 14:2).
Lk 1:46 And Mary said, My soul [pneuma] doth magnify the Lord,
Lk 1:47 And my spirit [psuche] hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
“The pneuma rejoices in God, to be sure (Luke 1:47), but the psuche, too, is said to magnify the Lord (Luke 1:46).
Heb 12:23 To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits [pneuma] of just men made perfect,
Rev 6:9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls [psuche] of them that were slain for the word of God...
“An incorporeal being may be a pneuma (Heb 12:23), but also be a psuche (Rev 6:9)...
"Also psuche is often broader in scope, indicating the sum-total of life that rises above the physical; while pneuma is more restricted. Often, but by no means always, pneuma indicates the human spirit in relation to God, man's self-consciousness or personality viewed as the subject in acts of worship or in acts related to worship, such as praying, bearing witness, etc. But again, no hard and fast rule can be laid down. Every occurrence of either word will have to be interpreted in the light of the origin of the particular passage in which it occurs, and in light of its specific context and of parallel passages” (William Hendriksen, Mark, NTC, pp.315-16).
To: Skepsou
Since you have said you are leaving this conversation I would like to present a final point.
Much has crept into the teachings of Christianity over the centuries and decades. So, if one would like to see for themselves one of the sources for the philosophy you defend, try this, and then make up your mind which teaching you wish to pursue and practice.
Go to Amazon.com and search for this in the book section:
Who Is God?: Does God Have Shape or Form? Paperback – March 1, 2009
by Sudhir K. Anand (Author)
Once you’ve found it look in the sample inside the book at top left of page. Read the almost full chapter. If you happen to be a strong Bible believer you might be surprised at what you are reading. If not it won’t make any difference to you.
Have fun, and enjoy your excursion into source discovery. Wonder if others besides Skepsou know what they have been teaching? And, its source. Know what the Vedas are? Now you will.
Bible research is extremely interesting and enjoyable. Hope all do it.
Final post on a big topic. Now, back to the books.
Glad it's over. Seemed pretty danged pretentious for the most part. But, hey. We get those once in a while.
11:56 pm
Would you mind explaining what you mean by “dang pretentious?”
I thought they both tried their best not to be rude, etc. as so often happens. They both showed they had put in time studying the subject. Whether we agree with either one is not important. But, the sort of review of the topic might have helped those not familiar with it to become more informed on items not normally discussed in any depth.
To me this showed a potential for Gary here. That is to create a section strictly for Scripture topics to be discussed by all, versus just a negative bash all the ministers he doesn’t like. And, I suggest ministers that the majority here would never follow anyway. Sort of like beating up on a thrice dead horse. Just a thought.
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