a greek view of god

God is omnipotent (all powerful). God is omniscient (all knowing). God is omnipresent (all present). God is omnibenevolent (all loving). 

These are the attributes of God that most of learned in Sunday school and church. They were drilled into our heads in order to insure that we were aware that God was not like us but was completely different. God was other. In his Creeds of the Church(Richmond: John Knox Press, 1973) John Leith (one of my former professors) quotes the 1646 Westminster Confession. "There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory." This God is certainly "other" but is this really the God we encounter in the scriptures.

I ask that question because the God we encounter in the scriptures hardly looks like the God of the Westminster Confession. The God we find in scripture barters with Abraham (Genesis 18:16-33), argues with Moses (Exodus 4), gets really angry (Exodus 32:7-10), changes "his" mind (Exodus 32:14), forgives (II Samuel 12:13-14), calls prophets (Isaiah 6:1-13), loves the world (John 3:16) and comes enfleshed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (John 1). The God of the scriptures appears to be a very different kind of God; a God who is willing to get down in the muck and mire of creation, to listen to and be impacted by human prayers and even to suffer and die for creation itself.

This being the case, how then did we move from a God who was intimately involved in human relationships to a God who is seen as completely other and who moves human beings like pieces on a chess board according to "his own immutable counsel"? 
The simple answer…the Greeks. The more complex answer…that as Christianity moved from a Hebraic centered world into a Greek centered world, the God views of the church changed. The very "earthy" God of the Jews had to give way to a very "transcendent" God because an earthy God was a scandal to the Greeks. Greek gods were "timeless, immutable, impassible, incapable of being affected…in all, (and) not merely in some respects." (Williamson, Way of Blessing, Way of Life, St. Louis: Chalice Press, 104) 

This view of God was an outcome of Plato's philosophical views which argued (and this is a very simplistic rendering of his philosophy) that the physical world was an imperfect copy of the perfect transcendent world (in a sense the spiritual is perfect, the physical is imperfect). Thus for the Greeks it was necessary to remove God from the daily grind of human existence and elevate God into the philosophical stratosphere. Only by so doing would God be worth worshipping. This Greek view of God then became the norm for the church early on and continues to dominate our thinking even today.

Unfortunately this reworking of God gutted any thought or discussion of God as relational. God became distant and remote, unable to feel or experience anything. Thus even Jesus' death on the cross became a mere transaction on God's behalf rather than an experience of God's own suffering for humanity. One of my goals then as I said last week is to return us to understanding God as the one who is creative, interactive, personal, loving, purposeful, judging, and forgiving; in other words the God of the scriptures. By so doing I believe we will not only return to our Biblical roots but we will enrich our own relationship with God.

a creating god

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." With those words the entire Biblical epic opens up before us. Unfortunately most of us have become so accustomed to this opening line that we give it little attention, even though it is an extraordinarily remarkable statement. 

It is a remarkable statement first because it implies that what exits does not exist as an accident of physics and chemistry. In other words the creation of the universe (including the "Big Bang" for which there is great evidence and for the moment is still the most plausible explanation for the origin and character of the universe) was not simply a random act of a spectacular nature. It was instead, somehow, an intentional act which offered the possibilities and potentials for life. Many of the "new atheists" have argued that if one were to replay the Big Bang any number of times the odds are against life emerging at all. Other evolutionary theists take exception to that view and argue that if one could replicate the Big Bang that things would turn out very much like they are today. The nature of our understanding and experience of God would have us agree with the latter group…God was intentional in the shaping of the origins and structure of the universe.

It is a remarkable statement second because it reminds us that God acts in creative ways. God it would appear is never quite satisfied with the status quo. The intentionality of the act of creation says that there is something about God that is always looking to new possibilities. We might assume that God could have been satisfied to simply be God in the vastness of nothingness (Sorry but I don't have the grammar to describe an "environment" in which there is no time, space or matter), yet for whatever reason, about 13 billion years ago God set out to be creative. God decided to create the universe in which we live. 
Now we need to be clear that unlike the Genesis account in which everything was neatly created exactly as humanity currently encounters it (in a mere seven days to boot), God's creative energies were not exhausted in one moment. They have been at work ever since the first energy was released by the Big Bang billions of years ago and are continuing even today as the universe continues to change.

It is a remarkable statement third because it implies God's playfulness. I realize that playfulness if not often a notion that comes to mind when we think of God. Our traditions (that of Calvin who argued that God had planned what would happen in every moment in time before time began…and that of Newton for whom every action there had an equal and opposite reaction…meaning little or no randomness) have given little room for God to be playful. Yet how else can we describe a God who was willing to allow species to come and go (experts estimate that 99% of all species that have lived on earth are now extinct yet there may still be 30 million species left on earth), species to transform (there are nearly 300,000 kinds of beetles) and species to become self-aware enough for relationship with God (you and me)? These facts, among many others, seem to imply that God's creativity is open to the playful and the novel. 

So what is the bottom line for us? First I hope the bottom line is that this view of God as creator allows us to see God as one who is continuing to create ever new possibilities for the universe and for us even as we read this. Second I hope it gives us permission to be creative and playful in what we do for God since we are those created in God's own image. 

an interactive god

So which God do we want? I realize that may seem like a very strange question, as if we were at the god cafeteria and could select which ever flavor of God we wanted. But in essence, as we have discussed in earlier articles, this is what we do. We read the scriptures, test our own experience, listen to a variety of traditions and then we make our choice. This exploration and choosing has essentially led to three very distinct images of God in terms of how God relates to the world.

The first is what I will refer to as the Deist God. This is the God who made everything, established a set of immutable laws, set the world in motion and then sat back and watched what took place. Some people have referred to this as the watch-maker God who created a self-sufficient world and simply let it run. 

The second is what I will refer to as the hyper-Calvinist God. This is a God who acts upon the world. This God is all powerful, remote and immutable. This God causes all things but is unaffected by what takes place in the world. Everything (and I mean everything) is planned before the beginning of time. History is merely a God-authored script being played out.

Finally there is the God I will call the calling God. This is a God who interacts with all of creation. This is the God who "walks in the cool of the morning" in the Garden of Eden. This is the God who speaks to Abraham and Sarah. This is the God who calls Moses, the judges, the Prophets and Paul. This is the God who becomes flesh in Jesus of Nazareth and is tempted like all of us.

So which God do we want? While I can't answer for ay of you I will choose God number three (so to speak). I will choose the calling God. I will choose this God because, as you will read in a moment, I believe this is the God whom scripture describes, whom Jesus incarnates and who interacts with us today.
This is the God of scripture. God interacts with God's creation. From the very opening lines of scripture in Genesis (God being active in creation) to the closing verses in Revelation (God being in the midst of God's people) God is involved with creation. God is neither remote nor merely acting upon. God is calling, speaking, arguing and acting with and for humanity. God has relationships with human beings in such a way as to impact the choices and decisions that they and we make. This is a God who cares enough to be involved with a world that has the freedom to make choices.

This is the God who is incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. It is remarkable to me that people can see God as either remote or merely acting upon the world, when God loved the world enough to be enfleshed and live in the midst of the trials and tribulations of a human life. This is an incarnate God who took the time to tell stories and parables, heal the sick and give sight to the blind, and then give his life to defeat the powers and principalities of this world. Jesus was not an avatar of God, moving through life unmoved by the pain of the creation. Jesus was one who prayed, wept and loved.

This is a God who is with us today. The book of Acts, the history of the church and much of our experience tells us that God not only cares, but that God listens and acts in the time and space which we occupy. We have encountered a God who cares deeply for us, causing (as even Calvin would argue) our hearts to burn within us. This is a God, who trough the Holy Spirit, guides our lives when we are willing to listen. We experience ourselves not as puppets, but as human beings in relationship with a living God. 

So which God do you want? The choice is yours but I hope you will consider God number three.

a personal god

My sister in law (now former sister-in-law) was livid. How could Cindy and I allow our children to read story books in which animals talked. We were all in Colorado for vacation with my parents and our children were reading some of their favorite stories (which had talking animals). My sister-in-law said that since animals could not talk it was inappropriate for us to allow our children to even, for a moment, think that animals had such human characteristics. It was anthropomorphizing at its worst.

Now for those of you who are unaware of the term, anthropomorphizing means giving human traits (speech, emotions etc.) to non-human parts of creation. The most obvious example would be Disney films in which tea-pots can talk and trash compacting robots can fall in love. However much we may enjoy such stories we know the difference between make-believe (talking fish) and reality (stuffed trout for dinner). We know that non-human creatures and inanimate objects, while having many endearing characteristics are not in the end human.

I raise the issue of anthropomorphizing because it is at the heart of our discussion of God as personal. As I wrote in a previous article, when the church moved from a Judaic to a Greek view of God, the universe and everything, it became an unwritten rule that Christians were to avoid any attempt at anthropomorphizing God. We were not, in other words to attribute to God any characteristics which might remotely be associated with human beings. God was not to be seen as jealous, angry, loving, or even, in fact, caring. God was the unmoved mover. God was the first cause. To attribute any sort of human attribute to God was to return to some ancient past in which people were superstitious and used inappropriate language about God. We were to react to such usage with the vehemence my former sister-in-law used when confronted with our children's books about talking animals.
This concern with anthropomorphizing God continues to this day. I still hear people in and out of the church castigating others for speaking of God in terms that might also be used to speak of human beings. The problem with such antipathy toward using human language to refer to God is that it ignores virtually the entire Biblical tradition…which regularly uses such language to describe God. Granted, while the use of human characteristics might be metaphor it is intended to remind us that God is not merely a force (ala Star Wars), a spirit that inhabits everything (ala pantheism), an ideal thought (ala much Greek thought) but instead a personal being who is interested in all of creation including all humans.

When we say that God is personal then, we are indeed saying that God while being other than us (creator not creature) is also in and of God's self a "Thou". Martin Buber in his wonderful book I and Thou (Simon and Shuster, 1996) writes about the relational character of God. That when encounter God we are encountering a "Thou" and not an "it". That when we encounter God, or God encounters us, we are engaging in a relationship in which we experience "another". This sense of encountering the personal is what I believe the Biblical writers were trying to get at when they used anthropomorphic terms to describe God. The encounters of human beings with the one, true living God, were encounters of very personal nature in which God was experienced as loving, caring, judging, calling, jealous and concerned (to name a few human traits). This sense of encountering the personal becomes even more 

a purposeful god

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. Those were the words one of my former church members used one day to describe the Bible. We were in a Wednesday morning men's Bible study and the discussion had wandered away from the text and on to a more general discussion of why we ought to study the scriptures. It was in that context that the person at the table said we study the scriptures because they are God's Basic Instructions BeforeLeaving Earth (BIBLE…if you had not connected the letters). I asked him what he meant. He replied that his understanding of the Bible was that it was a compendium of ethical instructions (some straight forwardly delivered (the Ten Commandments), some we had to figure out (Jesus' parables), and some that were theologically driven (Paul's letters)). The scriptures were offered to us as a way to help us live rightly and well before we are taken into heaven to live there eternally. 

The bottom line for my friend and many in our society (and perhaps many of you) is that all 66 books the scripture can be reduced to an efficient and useful set of rules and regulations. In other words scripture is a practical self-help book intended to teach us morality, which would then imply that God's ultimate purpose is simply making us more moral people.

    As you can probably tell by the tone of my writing I do not agree with that analysis of scripture or God's purpose. So you might ask, if this is not what scripture and God's purpose is about how would I describe them? I would describe scripture as the story of God, humanity and creation and God's purpose as working to restore the right relationship between each. I realize that this is not nearly as catchy as "basic instructions before leaving earth", but I believe it is far more accurate. Let's begin by unpacking my definition.
The Bible is the story of God, humanity and creation. The Bible is a story. It is a seamless story that has a beginning (creation), a middle (the life, death and resurrection of Jesus) and an end (the renewal of creation as described in Revelation). Everything in between "In the beginning" of Genesis and "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all, Amen" at the end of Revelation is part of this ongoing saga of God's interaction with the world. While there are some "instructions" contained within the story, they are not the purpose of the story or the story itself.

God's purpose as expressed in the scriptures is to restore the right relationship between God, humanity and creation. The scriptures are the story of God renewing creation in such a way as to make this world a place where people find joy, justice and peace. From the giving of the Law in Exodus, to the sending of the Prophets, to the coming of Jesus, to the creation of the church the scriptures tell the story of God working in a purposeful way to renew and recreate the world. 

This is a reminder to us that God is purposeful. God is not merely a remote spirit who desires that we be nice. God is on a mission. God is on a mission to change who we are, how we live, how we relate to God's self, one another and the world. God is on a universal mission to reshape all of us. This is more than basic instructions before leaving earth. This is a plan for a seismic shift in human nature that would allow this creation to be "be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea." Habakkuk 2:14. In other words the purpose of God is a complete transformation in the here (this world) and now (in real time). 

a judging god

Once upon a time the Bible and all that is in it was considered to be absolutely true in every respect (as history, geology and biology). Then Western Europe moved into the Enlightenment. The world moved into an era of reason and science. As scientific discovery accelerated people began to question many of the most reverently held beliefs of the scriptures. Could there really have been miracles that violated the rules of Newtonian physics? Could Mary really have been a virgin after conception and after giving birth? Could the world really have been created in six days (and be only 10,000 years old) when we can see layers and layers of fossils stretching back over millions of years? Christians had their faith in and understanding of scripture put to the test, as many of us still do as we struggle with some of these same questions.

Along this enlightenment path we have also struggled with our image of God. We have moved away from a God who is very "Old Testament", meaning angry and vindictive and have moved to a kinder, gentler God. We have imaged a God who is completely tolerant, who loves the sinner, but not the sin, and who opens God's arms to all regardless of who they are and what they have believed or done. This image of God then has put into question one of the most widely used (in both the Old and New Testaments) images of God; that of judge.

God as judge is part of the language of the prophets, the psalms, the teachings of Jesus, the letters of Paul and the Book of Revelation. It has a long history of usage within the Christian tradition in which God is portrayed as the wise old man, sitting on a throne, who judges each person either according to their deeds (Old Testament) or their faith in Jesus (New Testament) and then makes a decision about their ultimate destiny. If you are faithful the judge sends you to heaven. If you are not faithful God sends you to hell. We can see this image in Jesus' language about separating the sheep and the goats (one of 
my son's once favorite songs had a line, "Sheep go to heaven and goats go to hell."). This image makes us nervous because God is supposed to be nice and kind. God is supposed to look at all of our sins and the world's ills and like a loving aunt say, "It's OK, you really didn't mean it. Here, have a cookie." God is not supposed to hold us accountable for our actions.

While we may wish God were so, there is a significant problem with casting aside the image of God as judge; and that is how then will God be able to recreate the world as a place where justice is done? As we consider the image of judge let us remember what God's saving plan is all about. God's saving plan is not simply getting people into heaven; it is about redeeming this world and everything in it. God is about recreating this world as a place where we love God, one another and care appropriately for creation. This being the case then, God must make first make some decisions about what conduct brings this about (life giving ways of being) and what conduct does not bring this about (death dealing ways of being). This is the first part of God as judge. God judges which ways are proper for restoration.

God then must also decide if our actions (both as individuals and as societies) help to establish this new creation or diminish its restoration. God must judge whether we are being partners with God or standing in opposition to God and God's work. God must make a judgment. If there is no judgment, if God merely allows everything regardless of whether it enhances God's rule and reign or restricts it, then injustice, pain, death and destruction will be the final outcome of this world. There will be no new creation and new world in which there is neither, death, mourning or crying. God must ultimately hold us accountable for our choices and beliefs or we will never become the people God wants us to be. God will judge because God desires us to become fully human and fully alive and not crippled by the evil we have created. God as judge leads to life and hope.

a forgiving god

"I don't get mad. I get even." I don't remember the first time that I heard someone utter those words, but unfortunately it was not the last time...or even close to the last time. Over my years of ministry I have watched some of the most loving, considerate, self-sacrificing people be eaten up by anger over some past injustice. They have never been able to let go of some hurt that has been done to them. This causes them to obsess over ways to get even...to make the other person hurt as much as they have been hurt.

This sense of getting revenge, of getting even, is a particularly human trait. Animals don't get even. A lion comes and eats a young gazelle...the other gazelles don't come together, form a lynch mob and go after the lion. That kind of life and death is simply part of the way the lion-gazelle world works. Humans on the other hand have this amazing ability to take everything personally, hold grudges and desire revenge. There are places in the world (Balkans, Middle East, and Northern Ireland for example) where grudges have been maintained for hundreds of years and are ready to explode into ethnic violence at a moment's notice. What people seem to have failed to notice however is that the revenge of one person or one ethnic group upon another never accomplishes anything. It only engenders more anger and hate. It destroys rather than heals.

As we consider God as forgiving this may be a good place to begin. It is a good place to begin because it will allow us to see the purposes behind God's forgiveness. One of the concepts that I have been presenting from the outset of these articles is that God has a plan for the world. The plan is that human beings will become capable of loving God, loving one another and caring for creation. Sin (meaning choices and actions which lead away from loving) tears at the heart of God's plan. Sin breaks relationships and distorts them in ways that do not allow for loving relationships between persons and between persons and God. Sin runs counter to God's plan. Somehow then sin needs to be dealt with. 

 Many of us assume that the way God dealt with sin varied between the Old Testament and the New Testament (sort of pre and post Jesus). In the Old Testament God dealt with sin through punishment (fire and brimstone kind of stuff). 
In the New Testament God dealt with sin by sending Jesus who offered us forgiveness. While that is the assumption of many, even a cursory glance at the Old Testament will show that forgiveness has always been God's modus operandi. We can see this clearly even in Genesis. Adam and Eve disobey God. They sin. So how does God deal with this sin? God makes them suffer the consequences of their actions, but then God forgives them. We see this in the fact that even after expulsion from the garden God makes them clothes and cares for them. The same is true of Cain and Able. Cain slays Able and lies to God. God does not zap Cain with a bolt of lightning or turn him into a newt. God forgives Cain and protects him. While I can only speculate as to why God would do this (other than it is the very nature of God to forgive) I will do so anyway.

First God's forgiveness allows for restored relationships. As I mentioned above, God desires to be in right relationship with us. If God cannot forgive then our relationship with God will always be broken. We, as sinful human beings, do not have the capacity to be "good enough" to maintain our relationship with God (or with anyone else for that matter). God's forgiveness allows our relationship with God to be renewed and restored. Second God's forgiveness allows us to make new beginnings. Consider for a moment what it would be like to be in a relationship with God (or again with anyone else) where there was no forgiveness; where God always brought up the things we had done wrong. The only way in which we would see ourselves then would be as losers; as those who could do no right. Thus we would be trapped in our old sinful way of living life. Forgiveness, however allows us to leave behind our past and start over. Forgiveness gives us the chance to love God and others more fully this time than last. Thus we become more like the people God wants us to become.

We are fortunate that the God of this universe is one who forgives. We are fortunate that God forgives not only one time, but an inexhaustible number of times. We are fortunate that forgiveness is at the very heart of God. The challenge for us then is to believe that this forgiveness is real and allow it to set us free to daily live new and loving lives.

a god who has a bias for the weak

Only the strong survive. This appears to be one of the givens of life. From the daily competition of species for territory and food, to the power play of nations for economic and military dominance, to the competitive nature of the business world (just ask K-Mart and American Motors) there is a struggle for survival…and the strong always seem to come out on top. This understanding is part of the ebb and flow of the Biblical story. As we read the Bible there is the constant turnover of kingdoms (Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans) each overcoming and annihilating their predecessor. Even the kingdoms of Judah and Israel (the two kingdoms which came into being with the division of the kingdom founded by David) were constantly striving to dominate the other as well as the minor kingdoms around them.

We might assume then that this is how God works. God favors the strong. If we made this assumption we would not be the first to do so. There has been a strong bias within Judaism, Christianity and Islam that has equated victory (military and economic) with God's favor and blessing. We can see this in the Islamic conquests, the Christian Crusades and the belief of kings like David and Solomon that their success was purely God's doing. This tradition continues in prayers of believers for God to grant them victory in everything from sports to war. Jesus was constantly coming up against this in his ministry where people were looking for a messiah who would defeat the Romans through military power.

What is interesting about this view of God and power is that it actually runs counter to scriptural teachings. How so? To begin with God's plan for the world was a creation in which each portion of that creation worked cooperatively with all other parts of creation in order to maximize the enjoyment of life. In other words all human beings, having been created in the image of God, were to share their God given gifts and talents in such a way that each maximized their human potential for the benefit of not only self but community. 
This kind of cooperation was to be made possible by the realization that God was in charge…not kings, princes or presidents. Human life was to be organized around God's plan and not the dominance of one group over another (Jesus makes this clear when he tells his disciples that they are not to "lord" it one over the other). Cooperation and not competition was to be the order of God's world.

This view of maximizing the gifts of all for the benefit of all is made clear throughout the Bible as God commands God's people to make sure and care for the powerless and vulnerable. This orientation first appears in Genesis where God places a mark on Cain in order that no one should kill him. This orientation continues as God commands God's people to care for the widow, the orphan and the sojourner (meaning immigrants who have no kin to protect them). God's people were to do this because there was a time when they were vulnerable (in Egypt) and God protected them. The Bible is replete with examples of how this concern for the most vulnerable was to be carried out. Farmers were to leave grain at the edge of their fields for the poor to gather. Those with olive groves were not to gather all of the olives from the trees but leave some for the neediest. Jesus commands his followers to give to all who beg. 

I realize that this kind of language (insuring the needs of all are met) makes some of us nervous. After all it might allow some people to not do their fair share and live off of the beneficence of others. Let me be clear that this attitude of just taking is not Biblical either. Scripture sees work as good and necessary. God's bias for the weak is based on God's desire that all have an opportunity to participate in the bounty of creation knowing that the economic and power structures of the real world seldom if ever make such participation possible. So as we go about our life together let's look for those ways in which we might assist the weak that they might enjoy the benefits of creation even as have we.