Since the 18th century, scholars have been searching for the historical Jesus, when they have yet to answer the most significant question of all, “Who is God?
As I mentioned in the previous article, the question, “Who is God?” might seem easy to answer, but it is not. Actually, it is a very complicated, “bigger than us” type of question. So, what we have learned in Sunday school is not sufficient. It's a good start, you have to start somewhere, right? The problem is most people stop there while their pastors and churches continue to nurse them with these same “naive” Sunday school ideas.
I should be clear to the reader that I'm using the words “Sunday School” in a metaphorical manner to communicate the idea of an elementary, or should we say, a simplistic understanding of God and the Bible which are in many ways, inaccurate. Even more so, these simplistic notions go beyond the doors of the church to their institutions of higher learning.
Thinking back to my Fundamentalist College days, we took all of these Sunday school ideas a step further to perfection by memorizing the attributes of God and more. God is Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Eternal, Immutable... “Ah! Now we know God. We have finally arrived.” However, all we learned were the technical words for the theories we learned in Sunday school.
So, where do we start? First, we need to acknowledge that there are a lot of different ideas about God and the Bible. In the United States alone, there are over 200 church denominations, and around the world, there are a whopping 45,000 denominations that believe in something different from all the other church denominations. This is also true of Bible scholars and theologians, and there are a lot of them, who all have different ideas and views of God. Is God all-powerful? Some would say “yes” while others would say “no”. Is God all-knowing? Again, some would say “yes” while others would say “no”. We could go on and on with these kinds of questions, and yes, there would be all sorts of answers. Let's face it, the question, “Who is God?” is big and complicated and there are no shortcuts.
We also find a wide range of answers to the question, “Who is God?” in the Bible. There is no one unified answer. Is God a God of love or revenge or maybe both? Is God spirit or does God have body parts, you know, arms, hands, legs, feet, and nose? Does God eat and drink? Even more revealing, does God, like humans, have regrets and repent for God's wrongdoings? Does God get angry, laugh, cry, get jealous, and become happy or sad? Does God feel pain like humans feel pain? Does God sin or is God perfect? Does God need our help? Or, is God beyond all of this? Sometimes the answer is “yes” while other times it is “no”. It all depends on your culture, religion, and which book of the Bible you are reading. There is no “one size fits all”.
For some, all of this might seem alarming. What does this mean for my faith and practice to begin delving into the unknown by asking, once again, “Who is God?” Will I lose my faith? Will God still love me? These are good, and yes, expected concerns, but keep in mind, questions are healthy and not damning. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, “We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answer.” Personally, I see the question, “Who is God?” as an invitation for growth as well as an invitation to see God “face to face” and to know God in truth. I see it as a time for renewal.
To set the stage for the following articles, I will argue that humans' understanding of God has been and will always be in constant fluctuation and development. Some of those changes are quite significant and for some, startling. From the beginning, humans have received little snapshots of God to help them refine and redefine their views of God. These snapshots continue to this day. As the Apostle Paul once said, “For now we see only a reflection...Now I only know in part...” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
It should be obvious to the reader that in these short articles, I will not be able to do justice to the topic at hand. Rather, this format is to help non-trained Bible scholars understand scholarly studies of the Bible. My goal is to make you think and ask questions.
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