Genesis 1:27: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."
Theologians divide the term, God into two parts: Immanent and Transcendent (and also lots of other divisions, such as monotheist and polytheists, etc.). Here we'll stick to the I/T polarity:
Immanent: "There is that of God in everyone" (Every One)(George Fox)
Transcendent:
Isaiah 55:9 "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
The Bible seems to be read by most people in terms of God's Transcendence. God is high up in Heaven and we are down here in Earth.
Now the meaning of Heaven hinges on its place: is it material (in space) or ethereal (in Eternity)? A material Heaven is high up, remote! An ethereal Heaven is as close as your breathing.
Blake saw Heaven, not in terms of space and time, but in terms of Eternity.
The Eternal is right there as close as your breathing, and available whenever you can see beyond time and space. Time and space are creatures, like you and I, but Heaven is not a creature: it was from Heaven that Creation happened. You and I are creatures, made from the Dust, but we are more than creatures; we are in the image of God.
There's no such thing as 'heavenly creatures' (although it's frequently employed metaphorically). There's only Heaven, where that of God abides, and Earth, where most of us unfortunately spend most of our time.
What does all this have to do with the Bible? Readers are divided between those whose minds are strictly materialistic and those with a spiritual consciousness. If there's no spirit in your mind, then the Bible is seen simply as factual. All these things occurred in time, purely factual (and often inerrant factually!)
But love is not factual! it's spirit: no where; no time, although it joyfully occurs here and there, now and then; but love is heavenly, and when we love, we're experiencing Heaven!
May 17, 2011
May 16, 2011
Still Wrestling With This
God creates a world that has creatures embodying God's own life. Unlike the angels, these creatures are created incomplete, designed to start out under extreme limitations and develop in an open-ended, variable way, into greater stature. I can't imagine how many times God may have done this...
Somewhere in that process there needed to be a "disobedience", some chance for these creatures to test their power and learn the word "trouble." The necessary tree was provided, and since the humans weren't taking the hint, the Serpent was sent in to talk them into it (and to take the blame, blame being an unfortunate side effect of said tree & its fruit.) Exit humans, weeping & kvetching, into great adventure and ample opportunity for learning (including the aversive sort.)
If God didn't give humans enough scope to bruise themselves against the world, how would they develop interesting scars and personality traits? So God leaves them largely to themselves, just observes, and soon they invent murder, agriculture, and civilization.
God feels for these creatures, much as we feel for a baby undergoing some unavoidable inconvenience. And like an inconvenienced baby, humans feel their suffering to be intolerable, unfair, and endless.
Humans develop 1) an insufferable amount of personality 2) great fear of God, the world, and themselves-- understanding none of these but inclined to suspect the worst.
They aren't prepared "to walk humbly with their God". They've tied knots in their minds that make them tie knots in their minds... I don't need to describe typical human behavior; we've all done it.
One way God acts to deal with this is by choosing a People, offering them a great destiny and a list of responsibilities that would require them being "Good". They fail, like any People, but they make and keep an account of their efforts, of what they thought God was asking, what they thought God was offering, how it felt trying to do right, hoping for God's triumph and blessing, frequently suffering instead.
That account constitutes the Hebrew Scriptures, which the Christians rearranged slightly and reinterpreted to support their own claims: That one Jew named Jesus had fulfilled God's purpose for his People, that you didn't need to become Jewish to benefit, that Jesus would soon take charge of the world on God's behalf, and people needed to know! Great blessings if they believed, Wrath if they didn't.
While all this was going on, while God (presumably) didn't change, our understanding of God varied wildly, changed quite drastically depending on who interpreted His purposes and how they lived:
1) Early pastoral nomads: God behaving much like the gods of neighboring Peoples, no known criteria re who could sacrifice to him or where it could be done.
2) Levites & whoever came out of Egypt with them: God favoring the Jews, hating slavery, giving them much but demanding much in return. Violently dangerous if approached too closely by unauthorized persons.
3) Early Hebrew farmers in Canaan: God evidently accepting sacrifices by local worthies, not necessarily priests, on any properly made altar, any suitable place. He doesn't call for human sacrifice, but at least one follower vows and carries one out. God as a military god, inspirer and guide of local war leaders against pagan raiders & invaders. Wants people to put trust in His power, not in centralized human leadership-- but when people lack confidence, call for a king, God has got one in mind.
4) Retainers of the monarchies: God now likes kings! Wants to keep David's descendants ruling forever. The kings behave badly; half the nation revolts when Solomon's son is unwilling to drop the forced labor his father had imposed. God suddenly wants a centralized Temple to be the one and only authorized site for sacrifices-- although a lot of residents of the northern kingdom of Israel don't see it that way.
5) Priests: God wants only priests of the right lineage performing sacrifices. God is very particular about having religious ceremonies properly carried out and priests well supported.
6) Prophets: God wants the kings of Israel & Judea to trust Him for protection-- much as God previously had wanted the Israelite tribes to trust Him (rather than a king.) God watches kings & people behaving unjustly, depending on seemingly practical stratagems which will only fail them. If this goes on
7) Prophets after foreign conquests: Widespread misconduct had roused God's indignation, but God still loved a few (worthy) Israelites and intended to return them to a new, repentant Israel..
8) Prophets after the return: God wants worshipers married to foreign wives to send them away, doesn't want Samaritans helping rebuild his Temple. God loves Cyrus of Persia and the religious leaders he's authorized to govern Israel.
Most of the time, the powers that be... see God as favoring the powers that be.
Not only that, but the way people understand God as acting-- seems to depend on the form of government they live under. Monarchies put God on a throne... and in modern democracies... it almost seems like God gets reduced to "just another opinion."
But all the forms of government we know seem to be based on violence and coercion. The Jews of 1st Century Judea were expecting another king ("A good one, this time, okay?!") And they were given a nonviolent king. One who washes people's feet, not as a pious gesture, but as a sign of the proper relation of rulers to their people.
That's pretty radical, as a form of earthly government.
But this happens in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus is often portrayed acting and speaking as a stand-in for God! Not only does he wash Peter's feet; he won't let Peter stay his disciple unless he lets Jesus wash his feet.
"Get out of the way and let God help us? Let God do the things we thought we could accomplish ourselves?"
Somewhere in that process there needed to be a "disobedience", some chance for these creatures to test their power and learn the word "trouble." The necessary tree was provided, and since the humans weren't taking the hint, the Serpent was sent in to talk them into it (and to take the blame, blame being an unfortunate side effect of said tree & its fruit.) Exit humans, weeping & kvetching, into great adventure and ample opportunity for learning (including the aversive sort.)
If God didn't give humans enough scope to bruise themselves against the world, how would they develop interesting scars and personality traits? So God leaves them largely to themselves, just observes, and soon they invent murder, agriculture, and civilization.
God feels for these creatures, much as we feel for a baby undergoing some unavoidable inconvenience. And like an inconvenienced baby, humans feel their suffering to be intolerable, unfair, and endless.
Humans develop 1) an insufferable amount of personality 2) great fear of God, the world, and themselves-- understanding none of these but inclined to suspect the worst.
They aren't prepared "to walk humbly with their God". They've tied knots in their minds that make them tie knots in their minds... I don't need to describe typical human behavior; we've all done it.
One way God acts to deal with this is by choosing a People, offering them a great destiny and a list of responsibilities that would require them being "Good". They fail, like any People, but they make and keep an account of their efforts, of what they thought God was asking, what they thought God was offering, how it felt trying to do right, hoping for God's triumph and blessing, frequently suffering instead.
That account constitutes the Hebrew Scriptures, which the Christians rearranged slightly and reinterpreted to support their own claims: That one Jew named Jesus had fulfilled God's purpose for his People, that you didn't need to become Jewish to benefit, that Jesus would soon take charge of the world on God's behalf, and people needed to know! Great blessings if they believed, Wrath if they didn't.
While all this was going on, while God (presumably) didn't change, our understanding of God varied wildly, changed quite drastically depending on who interpreted His purposes and how they lived:
1) Early pastoral nomads: God behaving much like the gods of neighboring Peoples, no known criteria re who could sacrifice to him or where it could be done.
2) Levites & whoever came out of Egypt with them: God favoring the Jews, hating slavery, giving them much but demanding much in return. Violently dangerous if approached too closely by unauthorized persons.
3) Early Hebrew farmers in Canaan: God evidently accepting sacrifices by local worthies, not necessarily priests, on any properly made altar, any suitable place. He doesn't call for human sacrifice, but at least one follower vows and carries one out. God as a military god, inspirer and guide of local war leaders against pagan raiders & invaders. Wants people to put trust in His power, not in centralized human leadership-- but when people lack confidence, call for a king, God has got one in mind.
4) Retainers of the monarchies: God now likes kings! Wants to keep David's descendants ruling forever. The kings behave badly; half the nation revolts when Solomon's son is unwilling to drop the forced labor his father had imposed. God suddenly wants a centralized Temple to be the one and only authorized site for sacrifices-- although a lot of residents of the northern kingdom of Israel don't see it that way.
5) Priests: God wants only priests of the right lineage performing sacrifices. God is very particular about having religious ceremonies properly carried out and priests well supported.
6) Prophets: God wants the kings of Israel & Judea to trust Him for protection-- much as God previously had wanted the Israelite tribes to trust Him (rather than a king.) God watches kings & people behaving unjustly, depending on seemingly practical stratagems which will only fail them. If this goes on
7) Prophets after foreign conquests: Widespread misconduct had roused God's indignation, but God still loved a few (worthy) Israelites and intended to return them to a new, repentant Israel..
8) Prophets after the return: God wants worshipers married to foreign wives to send them away, doesn't want Samaritans helping rebuild his Temple. God loves Cyrus of Persia and the religious leaders he's authorized to govern Israel.
Most of the time, the powers that be... see God as favoring the powers that be.
Not only that, but the way people understand God as acting-- seems to depend on the form of government they live under. Monarchies put God on a throne... and in modern democracies... it almost seems like God gets reduced to "just another opinion."
But all the forms of government we know seem to be based on violence and coercion. The Jews of 1st Century Judea were expecting another king ("A good one, this time, okay?!") And they were given a nonviolent king. One who washes people's feet, not as a pious gesture, but as a sign of the proper relation of rulers to their people.
That's pretty radical, as a form of earthly government.
But this happens in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus is often portrayed acting and speaking as a stand-in for God! Not only does he wash Peter's feet; he won't let Peter stay his disciple unless he lets Jesus wash his feet.
"Get out of the way and let God help us? Let God do the things we thought we could accomplish ourselves?"
May 15, 2011
All Right, Where's This Going?
The Bible provides a true story about God's ongoing effort to establish communication/communion/interaction with all human beings.
Many of the purportedly "factual" elements incorporated in the story are mistaken; so are many of the human ideas quoted about God.
Many ancient Jews thought this story was about God's preference for Jews; and many did not.
But they agreed they'd made a deal with God. A very advantageous deal, but one which their ancestors had broken, one which only remained in effect through God's mercy and patience. His continuing intention-- was to let them live in a perfect land set aside for them, under His rule and care. If they followed His commands... that land would provide everything they needed for a free, generous, happy way of life.
What they saw happening instead was too much like the bad parts of Deuteronomy 28:15-- "But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and statutes which I command you this day, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you...."
They'd been conquered, their Temple destroyed, their rulers taken off to Assyria & Babylon. Allowed to return and rebuild under the Persians, they remained under the Persian Empire until Alexander the Great conquered that.
Judea rebelled successfully against Alexander's heirs, with heroic efforts-- and then the Maccabee leaders of that revolt established a new regime, equally cruel, oppressive & corrupt.
The Romans... invited in to settle the dispute between rival claimants to the Maccabees' throne-- were as pagan as the Greeks, even more cruel in enforcing their "order", tolerant but often contemptuous toward Jewish religious practice. The weight of Roman tribute, taxes of local rulers like Herod, plus the claims of their religious leaders... could not be borne by the Jewish peasantry, who were losing their land to larger landowners, often having to survive through harsh temporary, seasonal labor-- and through begging, when agricultural workers weren't wanted.
Every year, pilgrims from all over the country, as well as foreign countries where Jews had settled, came to the Temple in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover-- that is, the time when God had liberated their ancestors from slavery in a foreign, pagan land, and guided them to Israel to live happily under God's rule. For this the Romans would bring the High Priest's ceremonial robes out of storage, let him officiate, demand the robes back again.
This was not an idyllic country, not the place described by "If you do all these things, you shall have no poor among you."
"The Kingdom of God"-- was to have been the establishment of God's rule as promised: peace, a prosperity that nourished even the poorest, the ejection of pagan overlords (& in some interpretations, their subsequent conquest.)
If this was "God's Plan", it was a confusing one. But there's a difference between a plan and an intention. The intention remained in effect, and Jesus said he was carrying out that intention.
Which intention?-- a paradisical Jewish state? Or mankind's reconciliation with God? It's that reconciliation theme that's been most popular, that seems to be the point of the whole sad story. A time "when no one will say to his neighbor, 'Know the Lord', for the Earth shall be full of the knowledge of God."
I don't see us ready for that soon, but if we are, it can be a surprise!
Many of the purportedly "factual" elements incorporated in the story are mistaken; so are many of the human ideas quoted about God.
Many ancient Jews thought this story was about God's preference for Jews; and many did not.
But they agreed they'd made a deal with God. A very advantageous deal, but one which their ancestors had broken, one which only remained in effect through God's mercy and patience. His continuing intention-- was to let them live in a perfect land set aside for them, under His rule and care. If they followed His commands... that land would provide everything they needed for a free, generous, happy way of life.
What they saw happening instead was too much like the bad parts of Deuteronomy 28:15-- "But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and statutes which I command you this day, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you...."
They'd been conquered, their Temple destroyed, their rulers taken off to Assyria & Babylon. Allowed to return and rebuild under the Persians, they remained under the Persian Empire until Alexander the Great conquered that.
Judea rebelled successfully against Alexander's heirs, with heroic efforts-- and then the Maccabee leaders of that revolt established a new regime, equally cruel, oppressive & corrupt.
The Romans... invited in to settle the dispute between rival claimants to the Maccabees' throne-- were as pagan as the Greeks, even more cruel in enforcing their "order", tolerant but often contemptuous toward Jewish religious practice. The weight of Roman tribute, taxes of local rulers like Herod, plus the claims of their religious leaders... could not be borne by the Jewish peasantry, who were losing their land to larger landowners, often having to survive through harsh temporary, seasonal labor-- and through begging, when agricultural workers weren't wanted.
Every year, pilgrims from all over the country, as well as foreign countries where Jews had settled, came to the Temple in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover-- that is, the time when God had liberated their ancestors from slavery in a foreign, pagan land, and guided them to Israel to live happily under God's rule. For this the Romans would bring the High Priest's ceremonial robes out of storage, let him officiate, demand the robes back again.
This was not an idyllic country, not the place described by "If you do all these things, you shall have no poor among you."
"The Kingdom of God"-- was to have been the establishment of God's rule as promised: peace, a prosperity that nourished even the poorest, the ejection of pagan overlords (& in some interpretations, their subsequent conquest.)
If this was "God's Plan", it was a confusing one. But there's a difference between a plan and an intention. The intention remained in effect, and Jesus said he was carrying out that intention.
Which intention?-- a paradisical Jewish state? Or mankind's reconciliation with God? It's that reconciliation theme that's been most popular, that seems to be the point of the whole sad story. A time "when no one will say to his neighbor, 'Know the Lord', for the Earth shall be full of the knowledge of God."
I don't see us ready for that soon, but if we are, it can be a surprise!
May 13, 2011
That Implied Biblical Meta-story, Part II: Chosen Peoples
You may well enjoy Chuck Fager's excellent piece on this subject, as it applies specifically to Quakers and a self-definition once influential among us. Among other things, Fager considers that God might, and probably has, chosen various 'Peoples' for various Inscrutable Purposes.
And of course there are Ogden Nash's deathless lines:
“How odd
Of God
To choose
The Jews”
although it isn't odd at all, given the need to start somewhere-- and also considering the unique style they've acquired among God's remarkable human creations. The Dalai Lama, according to Rodger Kamenetz, once invited a delegation of rabbis, led by Rabbi Zalman, to visit him in India and advise him on Survival as a Sacred People in Exile-- having concluded there was much of value the Jews might teach his own People.
But God's purpose, in choosing Abraham's descendants, may not be as inscrutable as it seems. In the Biblical context, Abraham comes after a series of legends illustrating what Christians generally call “The Fall”-- the alienation of God's creatures from God. The logic of the story points to one specific and highly scrutable purpose: God chooses Abraham as a means of overcoming that alienation.
Initially, starting with Abraham, we find the Jews as merely one People among many similar tribes, all loosely held together by relationship to certain (possibly mythical) ancestors and the services of their various patron gods.
We don't have much hint, at that point, that there is anything unusual about Abraham's god, that this is actually God at work incognito, intending to make use of Abraham, not merely to form “a great nation” but to make that nation a blessing “to all the families of the Earth.”
We can't conclude much at all about Abraham's theology, as we find it filtered through a long series of commentators, each busy sharpening his own ax. It seems plausible that the first people intuited a kind of tacit monotheism, an implicit understanding that we live within a spiritual and unified creation-- but that they lacked the complex social structures that give our own religions such a wealth of fruitful (and misleading) metaphors.
And then... populations grew, and encountered one another, and various limited resources became objects of contention... Cain founded a city. And the leaders of that city pillaged & oppressed everyone willing to scratch a living from the Earth which they themselves had no love for. And populations grew, sought divine help against enemies and the sheer difficulties of life in an alienated universe.
Peoples had gods, when we reach Abraham's day. These gods were political, national gods, devoted exclusively to the fortunes of their particular followers. Many of the voices of the Bible seem to envision their deity as a god of that sort, only (of course) stronger.
Before the monarchy, we find Hebrews living in the Canaanite hills, living much like their neighbors (except for no pork bones in their trash.) It looks like they worshiped more gods than one, and generally ignored any tradition that might have forbidden that.
After their nation was first conquered... it was an elite group in exile who compiled, assembled, edited the bulk of the Bible. It was their view of Hebrew history that prevailed-- and yet even in the writings they approved we find hints that the unified worship they favored had been the religion of a select few, never the norm for the people as a whole. The people hadn't so much "fallen into idolatry"; they hadn't entirely given it up in the first place.
Once this collection of books was finished, circulated... once it became the official liturgy, lawbook, and literature of a national Temple state under Persian rule... they developed a national religion based on those books, became a People defined by their devotion to God as described in those books. The People those books described... had been created!
May 11, 2011
God and Father
- "The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not." (II Corinthians 11:31)
- "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:" (Ephesians 1:3)
- "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead," (I Peter 1:3)
There it is, three times in the New Testament: in two (?) of Paul's epistles and once in an epistle ascribed to Peter. In the first chapter of Romans he addressed the believers in Rome: "Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." It appears to me that he considered God our Father and "the Lord Jesus Christ" as two separate entities.
Finally he directed us to pray to our Father; I wonder how it happened that some Christians seem to pray exclusively to Jesus.
Finally he directed us to pray to our Father; I wonder how it happened that some Christians seem to pray exclusively to Jesus.
I've meditated often on that phrase, especially how it impacts the Trinity.
The Trinity, as you may know, was promulgated at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. The Council was made up of the 'orthodox' bishops through the Roman Empire and under the heavy handed direction of a tyrant named Constantine. He had become a Christian (of sorts) and decided that Christianity would be the favored relgion in his Empire. He was adamant that every Christian must believe the same thing.
A large portion of the 'Christian' bishops was made up of people who did not perceive Christ as God; they were called Arians (today they might be called Unitarians). The 'orthodox' bishops, actually servants of the state religion (you might say civil servants), proceeded to harry and persecute the Arians and drive them into Europe where they proceeded to make Christian 'barbarians'. That's a fascinating story, but we're interested in "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ".
In those days the term 'Lord' did not necessarily imply diety. It was a mark of respect, such as what is owed to one's employer, one's superior of any sort, particularly to one's religious authority.
God likewise had a far different meaning than it does in current thought. The Caesors beginning with Julius Caesar (in 44 B.C.) were successively deified until the advent of Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century: "At this point the growth of the Imperial cult ceased as the state religion slowly shifted to monotheism (Mithraism, Sol Invictus and Christian)". (UNRV: Imperial Cult) But 'Peter' and Paul lived in the polytheistic culture of the Roman Empire.
God likewise had a far different meaning than it does in current thought. The Caesors beginning with Julius Caesar (in 44 B.C.) were successively deified until the advent of Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century: "At this point the growth of the Imperial cult ceased as the state religion slowly shifted to monotheism (Mithraism, Sol Invictus and Christian)". (UNRV: Imperial Cult) But 'Peter' and Paul lived in the polytheistic culture of the Roman Empire.
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