Reading this post, from Inspirations and Creative Thoughts, about Islamic reaction to the doctrine of the Trinity got me thinking. What are the downsides of thinking about God in anthropomorphic ways?
Along the lines of this post from Exploring Our Matrix, I was also thinking about how the OT God is most often conceptualized as having a location. He was with the Israelites either as the pillar of fire or in the Ark or he was located on Mount Sinai. In all these cases, you could point to one spot be say, “God is there.” At times, God is seen as locating himself, temporarily, in one spot — as with Moses and the burning bush — which de-emphasises his human characterization. The implicit idea is that God was there to communicate with Moses whereas in the previous examples he was more firmly implanted for a longer time frame.
From the NT, we think of Jesus mostly in his incarnated form and as the son of god. We think of him as an historical person (indeed, some Christians fight tooth and nail for an historical Jesus and claim that Christianity is nothing without it) located in a particular place at a particular time. Even now, after his ascension, he is sitting sitting at the right hand of God — an image which restricts both God and Jesus to a particular space.
There is very little in Christianity that focuses our attention away from the human characteristics attributed to God. Sure we talk about his omnipresence but right behind the words is the image of a father. Even in the end, our souls - the numinous part of ourselves - end up located in space, in heaven, where we will be with God and Jesus. You know, I’ve never thought about seeing the Holy Spirit in heaven. Nor have I heard a sermon preached on what role the Holy Spirit will play in heaven. The one part of the Godhead which retains some non-human characteristic is blatantly missing!
The Trinity could be a medium for concentrating on the non-human characteristics of God yet even here we’ve named them God the father and God the son. We force the divine into a human-shaped mold.
Perhaps it’s not all that surprising given the strong anthropomorphic nature of the OT which is Christianity’s heritage. But I think that it is also one reason we react so negatively to other religions. We call the atheistic because they do not have a God that is a father figure. We call them nihilistic because they do not end up in a specific place when they die.
God is more than our anthropomorphic conceptions of him. We can’t even refer to god without assigning a human gender to … him. I think most Christians would be offended if we called God “It.” God is more than our human conceptions otherwise he would not be God; he’d be understood by us. So why do we insist that everyone hold the same limited conceptions as we? Can’t the ineffable be reduced to more than one subset of ideas and still be the same?
Hi Ken,
Greetings. Thanks for continuing and adding your conscious thought. I appreciate it.
How the concept of God was given according to the time and its stage of evolution of humanity is interesting to note as you pointed out from OT to NT. You might notice if we further go back into the history of world religions, we will see based on the time and the stage of human conscious evolution, the very concept of the Divine also was very much according to that evolution.
For the older generations, God needed a form, needed a place. That explains the idols, Mount Sinai. There is no problem with that, but understanding it deeply helps understanding the wholeness.
if we go back further even more ancient tradition, God Spirit is worshiped in nature, in huge mountains in australia and tall trees of africa. see how the stage of mind affects the perception?
now along that line if we progress and go forward we will see that the higher mode of evolution let go of forms and reaches to what is beyond our ideas of Beyond.
Abrahams rejection of idols and turning his face to One Transcending God was an example of “Punctum Saliens”, a leaping point at the history of conscious evolution toward understanding of God. All gnostics and mystics also easily grasp the idea of God Who is beyond our ideas of Beyond. It is so Transcendental that they begin to see His Presence is every form and shapes.
Thats what Buddha declared, everyone is Buddha, everything intrinsically have Buddha Nature in it.
peace be to you and to all.
Mystic– Agreed. But I see much of Christianity as being stuck in the “forms” and not going beyond. If the early church, as some suggest, did not focus on the man, Jesus, then there was a progression from the OT to the NT. But, in that case, Christianity has done an about-face and has gone back to the forms instead of continuing to evolve. Furthermore, this insistence on thinking of God as Father and Jesus as God incarnate is actually mutually exclusive with going beyond the forms.
God is more than our human conceptions otherwise he would not be God; he’d be understood by us. So why do we insist that everyone hold the same limited conceptions as we? Can’t the ineffable be reduced to more than one subset of ideas and still be the same?
I couldn’t have said it better myself!
I think that it is hard for people not to anthropomorphize. I think one often tries to relate to the ineffable in someway through our human constructs–otherwise, we would have a hard time talking about the subject at all. We construct models in our heads for that which cannot be modelled. And in the West, that usually means giving God human characteristics. Not just a personality, but also very human personality characteristics, including anger or authoritarianism or changing “his” mind. Oh yeah, there’s the little matter of gender.
Looking at the Bible, I am reminded of the story in the Garden of Eden, where God was said to be physically walking in the garden and didn’t even know where Adam was. Talk about anthropomorphizing! I think that over time, there was an increasing development of an idea of God’s universality.
“I think one often tries to relate to the ineffable in someway through our human constructs–otherwise, we would have a hard time talking about the subject at all. We construct models in our heads for that which cannot be modelled.”
Yes, we do. And, yes, it’s necessary. The problem arises when we start being fooled by our models into thinking that the model is the thing. And we do the same for many other things besides God. Nature, for instance, is often anthropomorphized(?). We talk about the wind blowing, the sky looking angry, mountains standing, etc. Yet, most people can realize the difference between the model and the thing. Perhaps it’s because science understands (or thinks it does) the thing whereas God is not understood and so it’s easier to get caught up in the model as the thing?