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Home Group – Our Undefinable God

by | Wed, Jan 21 2015

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Our Undefinable God

Psalm 145:3 ‘Great is the Lord and highly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable.’

We finished out last year by looking at the differing views and outlook of both the Jewish / Eastern mindset and the Greek / Western mindset and how the positional outcomes can and often are poles apart. In our modern setting we could change the ‘Greek’ view to the ‘intellectual view of reason’. The mindset hasn’t really changed, the god of science has replaced the ancient mythical gods of the ancient world but the viewpoint is basically still the same.

To the Greek mind, human reason was the final source and arbiter of truth and today’s reasoning intellectuals hold to the exact same position. Higher criticism gets so angry and frustrated with the Bible because it fails to answer the demand of the philosophical questions of the intelligentsia, questions like…why doesn’t the Bible provide proof that God really does exist? Since everything has an origin, what is the origin of God? Why doesn’t the Bible define God thoroughly?

Why does the Bible portray God with a million and one characteristics and then declare Him to be unsearchable? He’s presented through His actions but so much about Him that human beings want to know is left unsaid.

What the Bible does describe are the deep inner emotion feelings and turmoil of Israel’s day by day relationship with God, sometimes close and intimate, sometimes distant and fragmented, sometimes resembling that of a parent and child, sometimes resembling and husband and wife and sometimes resembling a tempestuous family feud or even that of enemies. Israel is seen going from one extreme to the other…experiencing peace and exaltation and then despair and oppression and back again repeatedly.

Karl Bath said this about God…

“No attempt is made in the Bible to define God—that is, to grasp God in our concepts…The Bible tells the story of God; it narrates His deeds and the history of this God as it takes place on earth in the human sphere…The Bible is not a philosophical book, but a history book, the book of God’s mighty acts, in which God becomes knowable to us.” (1)

Knowing and understanding God comes through how He has chosen to reveal Himself through His Word and by His interactions with His creation and what He does among them, not through intellectual reasoning. Israel has had interaction and relationship with God more than any other people group on the planet and all that He has done in, for and through them is unparalleled and honestly, is beyond any kind of human explanation. And this explains why the Jewish people really haven’t expended much energy of trying to philosophise and analyse God and then pigeon-hole Him into some kind of grid or or system.

Abraham Heschel wrote…

“Speculation starts with concepts, Biblical religion starts with events… To the Jewish mind, the understanding of God is not achieved by referring in a Greek way to timeless qualities of a supreme being, to ideas of goodness or perfection, but rather by sensing the living acts of His concern, to His dynamic attentiveness to man…God’s goodness is not a cosmic force but a specific act of compassion. We do not know it as it is but as it happens.” (2)

I Will Be Known By What I Do

The Jews have never tried to reduce God to a definition; once He’s defined He’s no longer limitless and unsearchable and becomes like all the other false man-made gods of the nations who were made to satisfy their own desires and aspirations. God, unlike the gods of the ancient world, revealed Himself to the Hebrews for relationship not merely for their personal benefit and unlike the gods of the ancient world, the God of the Bible is presented as a Father, a Husband, a Protector…a PERSON…not merely an entity.

Remember when Moses stood in God’s presence at the burning bush and he asked God His name? How did God respond?

Exodus 3:14, ‘God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM…”

In the Hebrew He said, “eyeh asher eyeh” and quite honestly, that’s undefinable! Moses must have been stopped short by God’s reply…what kind of a name is that! How is God supposed to be known and understood when His name was utterly incomprehensible and confusing

Names were very, very important in ancient cultures, they were given for reasons and in very large part defined the individual. This is another stark difference between the gods of the ancient world and that of our God. The gods of the ancient world had names that humanised them, names like Ares which means to make war. His personality, demeanor and character was thus defined…Ares was a god of war!

Pagan gods had names that likened them to human rulers, like Hera which means ‘queen’, or Molech which means ‘king’, Artemis which means a huntress, Athena which means intelligence and the list goes on. God’s name given to Him by Himself is unlike any other god and reveals to humanity that He is incomprehensible and completely indescribable. He is NOTHING like the gods of the nations, He is incomparable to anyone else and He has determined that He will not be know through philosophical reasoning, but rather through what He has done and will yet do.

God hasn’t proved Himself through scientific rationale and philosophical argument, rather God has revealed who He is be redeeming His people from slavery; by feeding them miraculously with manna from heaven; by protecting them from their enemies; by parting the waters; by driving out the enemies in the promised land; by judging and disciplining His people when they sinned and rebelled; by dispersing them among the nations and bringing them home again…against all odds; by taking on human form and living among His people and dying in their place for their sin; by rising from the dead and crushing sin and death once and for all; by ascending into heaven and sending His Spirit to reside in the hearts of all who put their faith and trust in Him; by leading, guiding and directing His children through the ages and sustaining and strengthening them in the face of persecution enabling them to be His witnesses throughout the entire world. By again bringing home His people Israel and re-establishing them in their own land that He gave them after 2000 years in exile and by slowly but surely removing the blindness from their eyes as more and more of them come to faith in their Messiah Yeshua.

God can’t be defined and understood by philosophical argument? Not a chance! There is no philosophy or argument grand enough to contain Him.  He is “I AM THAT I AM” The Apostle John described the worship of God by the four living creatures in heaven like this…

Revelation 4:8, ‘And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, IS THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME!”‘

There is no greater explanation (limited as it is) than this because our God is undefinable – He was and He is and He is to come!

Does God know His own power, majesty and hugeness? Of course He does.  Does God know that our finite minds could never imagine let alone comprehend or understand His power, majesty and hugeness? Again, of course He does.

Our finiteness is why God has chosen to reveal Himself through His actions and interactions with His creation so that in at least a limited fashion we can learn and know something about Him according to what He has revealed to us, without us reducing Him to a philosophy or rational scientific explanation to satisfy our own pseudo-intellectual view of ourselves, or into a human form of personage as the ancients did. Our God is a personal God, He interacts personally with His creation. God visited and covenanted with God, Moses was known as the friend of God, Jacob wrestled with God, Joshua bowed His face to the ground when confronted by God, the prophets were given direct messages from God, and then…wonder of wonders, our God left His glory and His limitless hugeness and became a baby to live among us. Yes, our God is personal…and yet He is so much more!

So what can we know about God through His actions?

His creation reveals that He is complex, creative, imaginative, harmonious, consistent, majestic, powerful, huge and detailed and He loves life and peace.

His judgments reveal that He is pure, perfect, holy, righteous, and also that He is just and therefore must judge sin. His judgment of sin reveals just how much He hates sin and the violence and wickedness of man. His constant warnings throughout history, sometimes providing hundreds of years for men to repent, reveal His patience and long-suffering and the fact that He has no desire or joy in bringing judgment.

Because He loves life we know He hates murder and violence; because He loves families and marriage we know He hates divorce and family breakdown; because He loves children we know He hates abortion and abuse; because He loves purity we know He hates infidelity and faithlessness and pornography; because He loves respect and honour we know He hates rebellion and anarchy.

We know that the love He bears for His human creation is matchless because He was willing to die for our sins, and by this we know that sin is destructive and deadly and He will not tolerate it and He knew that without His intervention all mankind would be lost.

While all these description are what some would term as a partial definition of God, it’s still entirely inadequate. Our God is undefinable and His undefinability is what actually proves that He truly is God. If we could define God and set Him squarely within the parameters of that definition, then we have set limits around Him and therefore, He’s really not God at all! no…our God is undefinable!

Revelation 4:9-11, ‘And when the living creatures give glory and honour and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne, saying, “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honour and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.”‘

Amen and Shalom

Mandy

Based in part on an article by Lois Tverberg

(1) Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (New York: Harper 1959), 31.

(2) Abraham Heschel, God in Search of Man (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1955), 16, 21.

For further reading, see this article, “Why Couldn’t The Jews and Greeks Just Get Along?” at Chabad.org. The God of Israel simply couldn’t be contained by Hellenism, despite its polytheism. Reason itself was what the Greeks worshiped, and Israel’s God simply refused to conform to their rational grid.