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The purpose of this lecture is to inform
Christians and non-Christians alike of the latest studies about God, the
development of the idea of God in the Bible, and the points that we can
conclude based on them. Of particular importance is bringing this knowledge to
parents, educators, and pastors who in turn can help Children learn the great
themes of the Bible as the Knights of Columbus started a few weeks ago a
bi-weekly Bible competition among teenagers at Jesus the King parish in
Toronto.
Summary for Christian parishioners
The idea of God is found in all ancient
civilizations and still alive today in different forms of spirituality.
The Biblical literature reflects the development
of the idea of God in the Hebrew tradition which is transformed in the New
Testament by Christ and his followers to reach out to all nations since the
first century AD. With Abraham a tribal local God is worshiped. Moses finds
that God is in more than one territory. Hosea speaks of God in terms of love.
In Jesus Christ, God becomes human so as to restore fallen humanity to his eternal
love (Trinity in One God). Central to Christian thought is the idea that “God
is Love” (1 John 4: 8).
The Appearance of the Idea of God:
How has the idea of God come into human
consciousness? Research in anthropology since the 19th century
brought to light a number of discoveries in ancient Greek, Egyptian, Mesopotamian,
Babylonian, Persian, Roman, Indian and Chinese cultures. Among the well known
are James Fraser, Franz Boas, Mircea Eliade, and René Girard. In those authors
and others we recognize the interaction and development of history, religion,
psychology, and culture. Probably the most influential introduction of religion
in the 21st century is Joseph Ratzinger’s “Truth and Tolerance”
published in 2004. For thousands of years, in every region and country a
polytheist, or pantheist plethora of gods were worshiped. There were gods for every material or
spiritual need; a god for rain to bring rain to farmers; a god for fertility to
bring offspring to mothers; a goddess of love that inspired reflections and
poetry, and the Sun as the source of fire and food as well as many other gods
and goddesses. The need of humans for worship has never lacked. In an interview in 2006, the Atheist
biologist Richard Dawkins admitted that religion will remain an important human
phenomenon. Since in this lecture we
wish to explore the development of the idea of God in the Bible, we will limit
the discussion to the Biblical Revelation. The encyclopedic New Jerome Biblical
Commentary edited by Raymond Brown, S.S., Joseph Fitzmyer, S.J. and Roland
Murphy, O. Carm., was republished in 1990 with contributions by 74 Biblical
scholars. In an article on the “Early
Church”, 3 of those scholars assert the idea that while Jesus preached his
kingdom in Judea, the Apostles after his Resurrection took it to the entire
known world. Their recent research shows that only after the Resurrection could
the early Christians relate Jesus’ vision for the Gentiles to a structure of
faithful under the leadership of the Apostles and their disciples who succeeded
them as bishops and priests. Hence, guided by the Spirit, there is a gradual
opening from a strictly Jewish community to an inclusive Church extending
from Jerusalem to Antioch to Rome and Alexandria as well as Greece and Asia
Minor in the first century AD.
A scientist’s perspective:
In 2000, "The God Experiment - Can Science
Prove the Existence of God?" authored by Russell Stannard was published.
The author was a professor of high-energy nuclear physics at the Open
University in London. In the book, which discusses many scientific discoveries
in relation to Christianity such as evolution and quantum physics, he delves
into the development of the idea of God starting with the question "What
is God like?" Given the assumption that God has some kind of personal
nature, an important source of information in the Judaeo/Christian tradition is
the Bible. We are assuming there to be just the one God. The Bible affirms God
as the creator and ruler of the whole world. But elsewhere, in the Old
Testament, it refers to other gods (for example the Canaanite baals). "The
God of the Israelites was jealous when his people worshiped these other gods.
God is supposed to be a God of love and mercy, but there is much in the Old
Testament about a God of wrath and vengeance. His anger could be so great as to
bring him to the verge of destroying his people. Then again, God is supposed to
be the god of all peoples - loving them equally. In that case, how are we to
account for what happened to the Egyptians? We can understand God wanting the
Israelites to be freed from slavery, but killing off the Egyptians' first-born
children and drowning their army seems somewhat extreme." This shows,
Stannard explains, why we cannot interpret the Biblical literature in a static
way, or - in most cases - literally. The Bible is not a precise scientific
account of natural phenomena. In order to transmit God's revelation the authors
of books in the Old Testament used figurative language as a literary device in
such stories as the creation story of the world and the Garden of Eden. The
use of narrative language for history in the Bible makes it possible to
transmit God’s message to nomads and settlers such as the ancient Israelites.
I should add here the question on the Biblical
story of creation as some scholars think it has elements used from ancient
Babylonian myths such as the myth known as Enuma Elish dated around the 7th
century BC where Tiamat, a demiurge of ocean water, and Abzu, a god of fresh
water, mingle together as the water on whose surface the Spirit of Yahweh
hovers. Chaos too could refer to the formless state preceding the creation of
the cosmos in ancient Greek mythology (See Genesis 1:1-3). However, the
Biblical author inspired by God seems to have included such myths to trumpet
the God of Israel over other gods. Yahweh (God) alone created the entire cosmos
from nothing (ex-nihilo) and not from pre-existing matter (Cf. Terence Nichols,
2009, The Sacred Cosmos, Wipf & Stock Publishing – Reprint Edition).
The creation story illuminates us in the importance of knowledge of
ancient cultures that Biblical scholars study along with the Biblical literary
forms such as poetry, narrative history, wisdom literature, and figurative
language as well as historical development of such cultures.
The Biblical witness can be divided into two
phases:
Phase 1: From many gods to One God
By the 19th century B.C. Abram of Ur
is transformed to Abraham (Giving him a new name indicated a mission). When
Abraham followed God out of Ur in Chaldean territories, he was told to go and
settle in the land of the Canaanites. Although TNK (pronounced Tanak short for
Torah, Nebeim, Ketubim) was not written until 1000-800 B.C. it reflects earlier
traditions: Yahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and Priestly.
From the many gods Abraham and his
tribe follow the One God revealed to him. This is further illuminated in God's
call to Moses to liberate the Israelites from the slavery of the Egyptians and
their gods and to follow him in Sinai before settling in Palestine. Here God is seen not only as a tribal God limited to a certain territory
but as a God who transcends many territories, defeats other deities with power. The same is found in Elijah's call to Israelis to stop
worshiping Baal who allegedly among many gods competed with God in Northern Israel.
Elijah miraculously brings down rain after he had stopped it, and brings down
fire when he challenges priests of Baal to a competition between his God and
theirs. When the truth is revealed in the burning offering, God is again
victorious. Many other events also show the unfaithfulness of the Jews to their
covenant with God e.g. Solomon's decision to build altars for gods of the other
nations which brings captivity to Persia and Babylonia in wars of defeat and
the destruction of the Temple. This still does not exhaust God's attempts to
bring back people to worship him in truth. Prophets such as Daniel and Ezekiel
show that in the absence of the Temple, God can still be reached in the hearts.
However the power of God as the liberator of his people from slavery to other
gods gradually turns to the compassion and love of God towards Israel who in
Hosea shows that He is faithful to his people even though they have been unfaithful.
Phase 2: From One God to the Trinity in One God
According to Georges Farah “The
Trinity was revealed in the Old Testament.” Based on ancient languages of the
Hebrews, Elohim is a plural name of God. Mystical Jewish tradition known as Kabbalah
professes the Trinity. Some other scholars refer to the Genesis account where God
says “Let us make Man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1: 26) which
would imply the Trinity. The visit of the Lord God to Abraham as three men
(Trinity?) is shown in Genesis 18.
The Trinity is explicitly mentioned
in Christ’s words to the Apostles “Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit.” (Matt 28: 19), but it is also found in the Pauline Epistles mostly
written in the 50s of the first century and the Johannine literature written in
near the end of the first century. The early Fathers of the Church understood
fire with which Christ would baptize as the Spirit of God. This is also the
form in which the Spirit descended on the early disciples (tongues of fire Cf.
Acts) The incarnation of the Son of God, his teachings, his outreach to the
enemies of his people in Samaria and in Canaanite land, his authority with
which he spoke and forgave sins, his passion, his forgiveness of those who
crucified him, his acceptance of death, his death and then his Resurrection
reveal the power of God's love that the apostles understood only after the
Resurrection. Following the powerful descent of the Holy Spirit, the apostles
and their companions preached the risen Christ and the good news first to the
Jews in Jerusalem then to the rest of the cities going to Antioch,
Minor Asia, Greece, Rome, and Alexandria and the rest of the world. Here
we see how the God of Israel has extended his power rooted in love over the
entire known world. The eternal self-giving love of God the Father to his
Son is returned by the Son to his Father in the binding love of their Spirit.
This eternal love is reflected in the act of creation which God continues to do
every second and in the act of redemption in which God restores creation to him
through his Son and his Holy Spirit (See Theosis, June 2013 by Henri Boulad, S.J. here). The Son reveals the Father, the Holy Spirit reveals the Son and this
same Spirit guides the Church and works in all humans to help them come back to
their Father.
Again there is a development of
understanding doctrines by the Catholic Church in history as St. Paul refers to
(2 Thess. 2:15 and 1 Cor 11: 12), St.
Athanasius of Alexandria contributed to (See Athanasius here), Blessed John
Henry Newman thought in the 19th century and the Second Vatican
Council confirmed (Dei verbum, 8) (Cf. here).
Such a uniqueness of the God of
Christianity has impressed and empowered many scientists and scholars over
centuries. In his book, the Mystery of Being, Henri Boulad, S.J. says “God does
not love us. He loves me. He loves me from conception as the only person who
exists.” Why would Augustine shout “Late
have I found you O Most beautiful…”? Teresa of Avila in the 16th
century, a great mystic and saint in the Church once fell off her ladder so she
dared to tell God “You know why you do not have many lovers? It is because you
let them suffer!” In spite of her great suffering, or probably through it, she
loved God more. The mystical experience of this God is found in many religions.
Rabia al-Adawiyya, a Muslim Sufi mystic in 8th century Iraq prayed “O
God! If I worship You for fear of hell, burn me in hell, and if I worship You in
hope of paradise, exclude me from paradise. But if I worship You for your own
sake, grudge me not your everlasting beauty” (Cf. Margaret Smith, 1928, “Rabia
The Mystic and Her Fellow Muslim Saints”, Cambridge Library Collection). Suffering
seems to be the external condition of humans who truly love. A man who truly loves a woman will suffer
greatly and must die to himself as Christ loved and died for the Church, the
bride he loves (Cf. The Epistle to Ephesians Chapter 5).
Additional Readings:
If God risks so much that He becomes man to
restore man, then He is not a calculating vengeful God. Game Theory which
economists and strategists play to achieve their goals contains the elements of
risk necessary for achievement and most of the time requires cooperation of
those in the game. Vulnerability, the
study of which brought Professor Brown in sociology a transformative experience as a mother and wife, is also a theme of the vulnerable
love that God initiated (See here). Being is opening oneself to the other. Relationality
is at the root of everything in the cosmos (Quantum physics; See here). Civilizations
could not expand without trade between nations which spells benefits if they
cooperate. Neurologists and psychologists
too have come to the conclusion that the body is well off when the mind is not stressed
and thus is able to reshape itself and accommodate the others (Cf. Norman
Doidge, 2007, “The Brain that Changes Itself…”, Penguin Books; Redford Williams,
1998, “Anger Kills – Seventeen strategies for controlling the hostility that
can harm your health, Harper.)
Let me close with my own experience of
God’s love. Why I am still alive in spite of many illnesses that should have caused
my death can be read here.
More online resources:
Catholic Resources by Felix Just, S.J. http://catholic-resources.org/St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology: http://www.salvationhistory.com/
R. Girard in First Things: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/10/002-are-the-gospels-mythical-11
U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops Biblical Resources: http://www.usccb.org/bible/books-of-the-bible/
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