Considerations about God’s nature are frequently discussed by seeking to decipher God’s constitutional characteristics that define the very properties of His Being. Whereas a study of the scriptures allows people to come to terms with key elements that comprise God’s manifestations, consideration of God’s nature-properties become increasingly complex when thinking of how these can become organised. An interest in the constitution of God’s unity ‘with’ and ‘within’ His Son would not have advanced into heated debate between Christian communities without such interest in God’s nature. To explain the reasons behind God’s decision to ‘give over’ His Son for the purpose of atoning the sins of the world, people produce categories for explaining the mechanisms of God’s activities. Such endeavour increasingly calls attention for defining and re-defining the self-constitution of His very being. In thinking that God is ‘one God’ there is little room for considering about ‘what else’ can be added to ‘singleness’ from God being ONE.
The Majestic Plural
Communities that seek to defend a position of a perspective about singularity in God’s character and nature, correctly describe it in self-defined terms. Yet, they are missing out from how and why such considerations about God become used in the Old Testament. Here the presence of God happens to be in the plural. Yet, it does not negate the singular sense. The use of the plural tense is often referred to as the ‘majestic plural’. Readers who are not familiar with this type of language can experience confusion for how God (who is singular) can be also discussed in a plural tense. An application of God’s attributes in the plural, comprises of actions, roles, attitudes, manifestations, interests, etc. On the surface such attributes seem to self-contradict a God that can only be understood in the singular sense. In the Old Testament the majestic plural underpins whatever cannot be contained within a single numerical category as deployed in conventional human reasoning. In this sense, God is identified with a type of Being whose very nature sets in motions actions that surpasse numerical categories. Whereas the ‘majestic plural’ seems to be self-contradicting as a term on its own readers have difficulty understanding when and why such use becomes prominent in the scriptures.
The majestic plural accommodates the presence of a singular God that is not limited by the laws of physics and mathematics as we understand them in our contemporary thought. For example, in demonstrating different ways of manifesting His divine presence, God is demonstrated through material and non-material forms. For example, God is described as the ‘wind’. People cannot decipher where it came from and where it is going. The direction of the wind can become a topic of human enquiry because the word ‘direction’ carries specific connotations about order and direction. Such entities can only become understood through the application of logic and the varied layers of human experience. The spirit is described as the wind that can be understood so that its attributes can become sensible. However, an understanding of its direction or organising cannot be championed through any deployment of human effort. This is because the very substance of the spirit as the ‘wind’ comprises qualities that are not easily testable or predictable. Without an appreciation of the biblical context where descriptions about God develop in context, it is hard to produce a fair interpretation of the scriptures. By their very nature the scriptures demand an understanding of their historical, social, political, context so that people can produce interpretations. The majestic plural is a way of understanding God’s nature by considering those unidentified elements that surpass the boundaries of human understanding. We can think of a mundane example to describe such difficulty. We can imagine the development how a contemporary product and those it might have been understood by consumers that lives in previous centuries.
At a time where the presence of engines was not available in daily modes of transportation the possibility of making business scenarios about selling self-driving cars would be highly absurd. Such absurdness is likely to happen because the thinking-system that define what can be known within a particular context (i.e. mechanical terms) becomes limited by the very knowledge that comprises it. Hence, there is no point in talking about ‘engineers’ without understanding about the function of motors, engineering, clogs, material, connections, etc. Hence, any consideration of engine-development, as a technological subject of study and manufacturing, can applied in a car or in any other mode of transportation. However, this cannot happen without an appreciation of the mechanical infrastructure (i.e. the pretext) that gives way to primary information leads about energy sources and distribution. Any consideration of engine applications in cars, airplanes, trains, etc, are illogical without a pre-text. Such efforts miss the goal of human understanding because they are brought into an area of discussion. This is totally foreign entity that resists the habitat of information and knowledge. In a primitive context, the task of introducing ideas about engine would need to be conditioned against alternative ways of thinking about movement, force, connection, material, etc. In seeking to establish a position of knowledge about God’s nature, people are limited by their understanding for what can be known in isolation and also become understood in ‘definitive terms’.
The Baalim
The struggle of ‘faith’ between the Israelites as well as the surrounding nations is founded not only in the naming of God per se but in understanding the type of ‘this’ God who seeks peoples’ attention over ‘other gods’. Put differently, why does this God require commitment and a relationship with the people in a distinctively different fashion from other gods?
One’s exercise of faith is not based on name-descriptions but association-development. Hence, the experience of one’s faith cannot be materialized in recognizing God’s nature through calling attributions. God is not ‘offended’ because people have merely chosen to worship ‘Bal’ and the ‘Baalim’. The problem remains much greater than this. It is the consideration of who ‘this’ God is regarding His identity and association with the people that qualify with Him over other gods. The tension between the people who have happened to move away from the ‘true worship’ did not occur because they happened to subscribe to ‘different’ gods. It is the type of merit that happens to be present in the relationship with God that gains precedence. It is this very nature of peoples’ understanding over an identity and character that demands personal conditions of development. Peoples’ experience matter because they identify with life’s circumstances by producing interpretations of their own self. Such requirement of having a different relationship generates a contrasting interface between conventional religious gods interested in service and a sense of awareness of belonging to this ‘other’ God. An attribution in having a relationship with ‘this’ God cannot become self-contained by performing religious rituals. It is precisely for this reason that God does not take pleasure in ‘sacrifices’. In studying the life of the prophets we can see that God’s growing dissatisfaction with ritual practices generates an unpredictable yet parodical sense of dissatisfaction. In the longitudinal storylines between religious practices of ‘other’ gods animal offerings and rituals are both welcome and encouraged. However, the scriptures make abundantly clear that in ‘this’ God’s case, strong negative emotions emerge because people do not identify inwardly with those ‘other’ qualities that make ‘this’ God stand out from other gods. Such parallel contrasts repetitively the act of performing religious ritual and rites for appeasing God outwardly. This is a classic motif we find in most polytheistic traditions. This is one of few cases where a God is not only resisting religious practice but takes offence in the attitudes, aspirations, that comprise the person. The gap that widens between the two different models of religious service take precedence not because of what has happened in the past but what follows. There is an unquestionable development for how mandate religious practice have led to repetition, routines, leading to a demarcated absence of inner realisation about what is important whilst performing them. Hence, in establishing a relationship with ‘this’ God, people are encouraged to think differently of what they need to do and who they need to be becoming.
Themes of Liberation
A distinctive theme that sets out ‘this’ God from other gods against the Old Testament polytheistic traditions is an interest in the human experience. Instances of suffering and liberation are contingent in large scale accomplishments. For example, in building monuments, temples, etc, the people identify a religious relationship with the gods that reign over them. Understanding what the gods want from Man is not always clear. Messengers are needed to communicate a set of explicit desires that stem from gods’ desire. The recipients need to act them out as tools of service. Subsequently the religious experience develops into an ongoing struggle between understanding what the gods want and performing a set of rituals in order to satisfy their desires. The possibility of not generating some adequate level of satisfaction is viewed as a cause of destruction and punishment. On the contrary, understanding what the gods want sets a new paradigm because this is how people can fulfil their ultimate purpose in life. Fate is subjected to gods and their decision-making power.
In contrast to the gods we find among polytheistic traditions ‘this’ God calls a broken nation out of Egypt. Gives hope for a new place. Sets in motion a paradigm of calling for a people to find their own sense of destiny. In contrast to other gods, ‘this’ God becomes interested in their liberation. Submission to a higher ruler is not the ultimate cornerstone of a peoples’ civilised state of development. For some unaccountable reason ‘this’ God becomes stubbornly interested in liberating the people from external as well as internal ‘bondage’. The readers are introduced to a different narrative that contrasts the position of divine powers before the stakes of human experience. Hence, ritual offerings can gain or lose their significance considering how they become internalized. Such consideration places new attributes to a relationship with the divine. Stages of personal development of faith increasingly matter over how this relationship becomes regulated. A God who interested in the lives of daily people, remains a God who is not interested in their service-demands through ritual. Instead, this is a God who stands out from other gods because people need to consider what happens within their own selves rather than what is followed through a prescription of acts that come from a religious institution and authority. In this alternative paradigm of human understanding the individual’s experience of God is not generalized but self-customised. It is not an experience of the ‘people’ but of the ‘person’. Considerations of being loose their significance when they are only treated as abstracted entities that seek to affirm an institution or organized religion being the ultimate objective.
God can express love that can enter the calibre of human imagination as a Father who gives away his only Son to rescue a people that happen to be in trouble and need rescuing. Considerations of this God’s identity cannot attain any sense of merit when they are seated merely within boundaries of an overarching system that dictates what needs to happen. Instead, God sets in motion a set of various activities, events, developments, experiences, where considerations about human life achieve some alternative interpretation. In this sense, ‘this’ God differs significantly from the Baalim. This is precisely because the expectations for self-fulfilment are not based on religious attribution and blind commitment, rigid practices that do not echo inner dimensions of human experience. This is not a God that simply demands from others to bring their selves to achieve wealth, fame, and power and control over other people.
In the second volume of his work The Prophets Abraham Heschel (19070-1972) describes with vivid clarity the qualities that stand out about ‘this’ God. His in-depth study of the religious ideas during the many successive religious indicates that a consideration of God is more than a characterisation. It is a quality that demands a consideration of human existence for establishing a pathway of reflexivity that can lead to both realization and inner growth. In the following paragraph Heschel describes that the pathway to progress is not assigned to task-bearing-assignments. Whereas communities celebrated their access to godship such state of a relationship was firmly based on anticipations, ambiguity, and the frustration of having an association with such god.
“The Mesopotamians, while they knew themselves to be subject to the decrees of the gods, had no reason to believe that these decrees were necessarily just. Hence their penitential prayers abound in self-accusations of faults and misdeeds, but lack the awareness of disobedience to the divine will; they are vibrant with despair but not with contrition, with regret but not with return…The divine pathos is like a bridge over the abyss that separates man from God. It implies that the relationship between God and man is not dialectic, characterized by opposition and tension. Man in his essence is not the antithesis of the divine, although in his actual existenc1e he may be rebellious and defiant. The fact that the attitudes of man may affect the life of God, that God stands in an intimate relationship to the world, implies a certain analogy between Creator and creature. The prophets stress not only the discrepancy of God and man, but also the relationship of reciprocity, consisting of God’s engagement to man, not only of man’s commitment to God. The disparity between God and the world is overcome in God, not in man.” (Heschel, A. J. (2001). The Prophets. HarperCollins page 295)
The Why Question
Our explanatory remarks of God’s triune character follow very different lines of meaning when we seek to understand God’s ‘origins’ as well as ‘functions’. People that seek to argue for the existence of a clear separation between God (as the Father) and Jesus Christ (as the Son) are establishing such distinction based on scriptures that indeed describes a clear line of separation between the two entities. People who seek to defend God’s triune nature will never produce adequate explanatory arguments for persuasively demonstrating how this constitution might happen. This is because the boundaries that restrict God’s properties, role, and function cannot be contained within the boundaries of human logic. People who support a triune understanding of God will always be limited for explaining how this relationship can be understood in its entirety. However, attention in explaining God’s origins should not be associated with what purpose this God serves. Accepting God’s triune nature is guided by an appreciation of the different outlets of demonstration. God is demonstrating His properties by manifesting behaviours of consideration, interest, care, and concern. In seeking to establish God’s nature our understanding is guided by the meaning of what is to be accomplished. Discussions about liberation should not exist as topics of debate that only satisfy the powers of human curiosity.
There needs to be an additional arena where considerations about God are powerful enough to stimulate reactions in the other party. In this sense, interpretations that seek to build from a point of a clear separation between God and the Son, as being two entities, might succeed in affirming in logical terms the consistency of what is proposed. However, this line of reasoning cannot disentangle itself from similar considerations that seek to present the same God as an entity that cannot be limited within the terrain of symbols and words produced through human language. In coming to terms with the limits of the human efforts to describe and define God, there is a significant movement of emphasis on considerations of God’s functions, ministry, forms of operating into the world. Communities that ascribe to a triune understanding of God’s nature do not disregard the operational difficulties in coming to terms with the limits of explanation. The goal is not producing adequate accounts of explanation. Rather, to understand the constellation of attributes that set apart a prototype of religious experience that can competitively qualify before alternative paradigms of participating and living in this religious journey.
- Heschel, A. J. (2001). The Prophets. HarperCollins. ↩︎