God is what He is, not what I make Him to be

# on 19 Apr 2007
Apologetics & Suffering and Pain

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8 Responses to “God is what He is, not what I make Him to be”

1. danutz on 19 Apr 2007 at 10:41 am #

   Don’t you see the whole concept of theism IS “creating God in man’s image”. The idea that God has a personality, language, actions, etc. is doing exactly what you warn people about. Theism is the idea that God is somehow like humans or “personal”.

   I watched your video series on the trinity and you’ve missed the boat (in my opinion and the opinion of the majority of modern scholoars) on several things.

   1. You miss the point I stated above that theism IS giving God human qualities.

   2. The OT problematic view of God which the atheist above struggles with is an easy problem to solve once you realize that the OT (as well as the NT) is NOT God’s word(s) but it is the words of ancient people trying to explain the universe and attributing natural occurances and human qualities to God. The biblical God is a view of God that has him behave the way the authors image THEY would behave if they were God. People still do this today. The “supernatural being” presented in scripture is NOT God. Instead it is a view of God held by a narrow group of people (actually 2 narrow groups; ancient Jews and 1st/2nd century Christians). I agree that God is behind these “lenses” which we use view God, but we can’t confuse the lens with God.

   3. You misprepresent other brands of theism like panENtheism. I think your lecture would have been more credible if you had provided unbiased looks at each view rather than creating poor constructions of each then tearing them down. It is easy to tear down views when you’ve built them incorrectly. Your type of teaching here is what creates extreme polarization amoung religions rather than generous cooperation and healthy religious dialouge. I urge you to rethink your approach to this if you are really planning on making this information available on a large scale. It could do great harm and create further divisive polarization and ignorance.

   4. Your 7 worldviews are actually 7 ontological views (explanations of God) all interpreted through your one single worldview. Your one worldview is your “arch” or your concept that “creation” has a boundry in time and space and that “something” is beyond it which has created it. I’m not arguing against that, I’m just trying to get to the heart of your ONE worldview because it skews the ontological views you seek to describe. You never actually addressed any other worldviews. Then you tried to force-fit different views of God onto that one worldview.

   No ontological view is going to look correct when viewed through someone else’s world view. You need to attempt to frame an ontological view from within its own world/universe view. Of course the correct answer is Theism but ONLY when you use this worldview of an “arch” as the framework. It is the only ontological view that makes sense in that framework.

   The very nature of the orthodox view of the trinity is panENtheism. The idea that one aspect of God is beyond creation (father) and other aspects of God are in the world or “under your arch” (i.e. spirit and incarnation) is exactly what the orthodox trinitarian view is trying to explain. God is a “both and” because it(he) is beyond and in the world.

2. C Michael Patton on 19 Apr 2007 at 10:53 am #

   Well, thank you so much for your non-polarizing comments. ‘)

   dantuz

   I don’t think your critiques are valid for the subject of this post. Please try to stick to the issues of the blog, not using it to broadly critique the Trinitarianism course in short sound bites that contain no real substance other than your blanket disagreements and your claims that “modern scholarship” is in disagreement with me (of which you listed no example of these scholars or their particular disagreements). I am not saying you are wrong in your critiques, but they are not relevant to the issue at hand. Simply saying that the Bible is not God’s word is not the same is engaging honestly with the issues and the reason why people, like myself, believe that it is. I believe that your emotional critique could be valid as long as you truly engage the issues in a reasonable way.

   To the real issue: The Christian faith believes that God created us in our image, not vice-versa. But, either way, if God is transcendent, His characteristics are beyond our manipulation. Wouldn’t you agree?

   It sounds as if you do not believe in a transcendent God. This is a different issue, but the point of the post is that the Christian faith and the Scripture is not discredited due to the suffering and evil in the world, even if it does confuse us (which it does). We do not make God in our image.

   Please keep the issues to the point in the blog and try to be a little more irenic.

   Thanks for the post.

3. danutz on 19 Apr 2007 at 11:41 am #

   If your topic is about “not making God in your own image” then it seems very applicable to discuss a doctrine that is based on describing God as a person (actually 3 persons). How is that “off topic”?

   It seemed to me to be very applicable to bring this notion of world view into the discussion of what God is. Isn’t that why you cover world views in your trinity class? The trinity is probably the most documented attempt to define or describe God and that is the point of your post isn’t it? That is not a negative statement. I agree with your connection of the topics in the class and followed that connection to this topic.

   Wouldn’t you agree that what you mean when you say the word “God” is actually an image you’ve created in your mind? Isn’t that what EVERYONE means when we say the word “God”?

   The point is not if God created us in his image, but if we have desribed him in our image. How else could we describe him? It is natural and every society in the history of the world has done that in one way or another. Yes, God’s characteristics are beyond our manipulation, but we are not discussing the creation of God, we are discussion the description of God. That also may be beyond our ability but we are obviosly making an attempt otherwise we would call ourselves agnostic.

   Theology is the attempt to describe God and we shouldn’t confuse our descriptions with the real thing. Isn’t that the point you wish to make here? That we shouldn’t get our description confused with the real God? Descriptions are helpful but the desriptions are always limited and often flawed. Recognizing the limits of our descriptions is NOT the same as limiting God. If anything it helps to expand or raise the value of God when we humbly recognize the limits of our attempts to describe him.

   Thanks for your conversation. I didn’t mean to criticize you here, I think the only real critique that I meant to make was that I wished you would reconsider the idea of ONLY providing one particular ontological view as the “correct one”. You seemed to make light of the others as if one could be proved as correct.

4. C Michael Patton on 19 Apr 2007 at 12:41 pm #

   Thanks for the post once again. Here is the basis for my argument:

   The person above is using the Christian Scripture as a source of critique, believing it to be wrong because it does not fit with his concept of what God must be (i.e. not one who commands the slaughter of innocent people). I critiqued his source as being invalid, since it is solely based upon his assumptions of what God can and cannot be. The point is that he cannot invalidate the Scripture based upon the impalatability of the doctrine of God’s righteousness or self-motivation. God is transcendent, and our opinions do not change who He is. He could murder every child that is born and our distaste for this would not make Him cease to exist. As the old saying goes, we play the cards we are dealt.

   I agree that our language can limit God, but, just as well, our idea that our language necessarily is going to misrepresent him is much more problematic. Why? Because you are saying that God, even if He can do all things, could not create people in such a way to where their descriptions of Him are accurate. There is no reason for such a proposition. If the Bible was given to us by God, then obviously God thinks that human language can represent Him accurately, even if it is not fully.

   If our language, our ability to reason, and our emotional reflections are given to us by Him, then they are part of His image. To say that we are creating Him in our image necessarily, is to say that God did not create us with any likeness to Him or any ability to comprehend His. While this is possible, it is not possible for the Christian as the Scriptures clearly teach otherwise (Jam. 3:9) and the history of the church, both east and west, have concluded otherwise (even though the east would be much more apophadic than the west in this issue-they still concluded that we can make positive affirmations about God as evidenced in the first seven eccumenical councils).

   We must have balance in our view of what we can know about God, keeping in mind that the Scriptures say that we can know and understand Him.

   Jeremiah 9:23-24 23 Thus says the LORD, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; 24 but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises loving-kindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the LORD.

   If you don’t accept the Scripture as God’s word, I understand and disagree. All I have been saying is you cannot reject what the Scriptures say based upon the subjective palatability of a doctrine. This issue comes down to this: what is the primary source of your information?

   As to the issue of the worldviews I critiqued, I agree that one session was not long enough to give a full evaluation of the various worldviews. This would take a full course. But we had to give an overview of worldviews so that people would understand the issues and the contrast that the Christian worldview presents. The following sessions in the Trinitarianism course did defend the Christian concept of a personal, eternal, self-existent Creator. In this, if one were to accept the validity of these sessions, the other worldviews are shown to be false based upon the inherent self-contradiction that each of them contain (with the exception of deism).

   Thanks again and God (the self-existent, eternal, mysterious, and sovereign ruler of the universe) bless you

5. JoanieD on 19 Apr 2007 at 4:40 pm #

   When I read the Bible and I read something about God that doesn’t sit with other things I have read about God, how do I resolve it? I look at what the Bible says JESUS says about God. Yes, there are times when he talks about God being in a “wrathful” way, but the God that he calls “Daddy” does not appear to be a God who would want little children murdered. When his disciples tried to prevent the little children from “bothering” him, he said the children should come to him. They can’t come to him if they have been murdered. Whether we want to accept it or not, the books of the Bible were written by MEN. MUCH of it was inspired by the Spirit of God, but men being men, I do believe that men at times have “put words in to the mouth of God” to give credibility to what they did or what they are about to do.

   It may be “easier” to just say that every word in the Bible came from the mouth of God, so to speak, because then otherwise we can all start choosing to believe what is “God’s words” and what are not and then it can get “chaotic.” But I don’t think we can go wrong if we focus on Jesus and if we spend time in prayer that brings us in to the presence of God. That loving presence will tell us what is right and what is wrong every time, as long as we are tuned to it. The problem is, life is filled with so many difficulties for us that we “forget” that we live and move and have our being in God. Prayer reminds us. Let the Spirit of God pray in you with the great Amen, the “yes” to God, the “so-be-it” to God. Jesus was wise to say “Amen” so often and I have read that his often use of it was unusual. “Amen” is my prayer word and brings me back to the awareness of God when I go far astray. Read anything by Thomas Keating or Basil Pennington if you have been searching at all for a Christian-based way of helping you to stay in the awareness of God’s presence. It is not the ONLY way to pray and is not the only way I pray, but without it, I flounder.

   May the peace that Jesus brings be yours.

6. nathanimal on 20 Apr 2007 at 4:15 pm #

   I think the bibles’ incredible honesty is what gives it credence and truthfulness. If the authors of the bible were merely speaking for themselves they would have glorified events that took place and edited out all the bloody grit. Despite how I feel about the events that happened with Moses, I am compelled to remember 2 Peter 2:20-21:

   “Above all, you do well if you recognize this: No prophecy of scripture ever comes about by the prophet

7. JoanieD on 20 Apr 2007 at 6:19 pm #

   nathanimal, that is a good quote from Peter that you posted. Thank you. I note that Peter is talking about “prophecy” though. I don’t think we can call all the writings of the Old Testament “prophecies.” I may be wrong about that though, not really being a Biblical scholar. And I DO agree with “The palatability of a doctrine does not determine its veracity!” It may not be palatable that a dead body rose from the dead, changed in some amazing way and then ascended to heaven. But that is what the first Christians tell us happened and that is what many of us believe to be true. I have spent some time on the internet responding to people’s posts about the supposed possible found tomb of Jesus. Dr. James Tabor cannot believe that any thinking people can really believe that a physical body ascended in to heaven, clothes and all! It’s been interesting, but I think I have spent enough time on that now.

   Take care, everyone.

8. nathanimal on 20 Apr 2007 at 9:42 pm #

   JoanieD…..This appears to be an issue of semantics. Actually there are 2 kinds of prophecy. One is fore-telling and the other is forth-telling. In 2 Peter 1:20, Peter is not talking about prophecy in the fore-telling sense only. He is talking about ALL scripture!

   Fore-telling all forth-telling cover all of the Old Testament. Every single word. So, Peter is talking about the entire inspired words of God that they continually quote from the Old Testament from generation to generation.

   It’s easy to see why most “American” Christians interpret the word “prophecy” only one way. Because for us, the term “prophecy” can be misleading. But in Jewish culture there are 2 kinds depending on the context.

   Paul continually encouraged folks to prophecy, but mainly in the forth-telling sense (preaching).

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