A Brief Bio of God

our topic today tonight it's uh not a tiny topic it's a brief biography of god and it's gonna have to be uh considering the breadth of what that topic could be um it is going to be kind of a brief uh version but we've done one of these before we had a brief biography of the devil and that's been quite a popular uh lecture and so we thought well why don't we why don't we give god a chance see how popular god is compared to the devil so as i say this is a broad topic and so by necessity i'm going to limit it today and so i'm going to tell you that your expectation expectations here kind of going in about the things i'm actually going to talk about there's obviously a vast amount of other ways this could go and other things we could talk about this is what uh we're going to talk about today so first off i want to talk about the evolution of how god is depicted so the initial title card that we have is from the sistine chapel one of the paintings of god the creator by michelangelo and this is another uh painting on the sistine chapel uh this one's less famous one but it's uh uh god separating the light from the darkness in the genesis account as it's depicted again on the ceiling of that uh famous chapel in the vatican so anyway we're going to talk about where we got this picture of god and and what the history of that is we're going to then talk about the evolution of god in the hebrew bible and when we're talking about these things we're not really saying how god has changed but rather how the human understanding of or how humans have defined and understood god how that has changed and how we can see kind of even within the hebrew bible the christians the christian old testament the jewish bible we can see how um hints within the bible of the earlier perceptions and earlier conception of god and gods uh that the earliest uh israelites had even though the bible being compiled and edited at a later time attempts to kind of stamp those out but nevertheless there is a um there are many many footprints of the earlier conceptions that are in the hebrew bible and then finally we're going to talk about how god is defined in theology and we're really especially going to look at christian theology although you know the related religions abrahamic religions it's kind of a similar relevance and so forth so that's what we'll talk about obviously there is um way more traditions than just that but we can't cover everything in one kind of night so we can look at understanding or how we understand the divine in other systems uh other traditions and so on uh and that would be um a cause for another lecture that we can have as kind of a sequel to this one in the future we look forward to okay so that's going to be a little bit of our road map of what we're going to try to accomplish tonight okay so we'll start off here popular depictions of god so this is god the father as depicted by raphael so another famous renaissance painter in popular culture i'd say the devil tends to make more appearances than god as i said we um we did a lecture on the brief biography of the devil that was a very popular lecture um somehow i feel like i i will see but i i doubt this lecture is going to be as popular as the one about the devil the devil people are more interested in the devil's more seductive i guess a character and this is depicted more frequently so for example even like if you go to the great classics of literature so dante's inferno that book is a lot more popular than dante's paradiso so people are much more interested in dante's depiction of hell and uh and what's going on there than uh than what's going on in heaven actually it's much less literally interesting anyway at least in the conception as presented by dante lucifer too in the great english epic paradise loss by john milton lucifer's an extremely compelling character in that text you're really interested in what's going on with lucifer again dramatically it's a much more interesting role um as it's understood or depicted anyway in christian literature than the picture depiction that we have of god and and uh the side of good in that um in that epic there have been all kinds of depictions of god this is a famous one when i was growing up so george burns had a whole series of uh where he was playing god an old comedian who's anyway famous famously kind of a surly old god and so on smoking his cigar more recently um in the movie dogma atlantis morissette was cast and played god there's all kinds of examples of these so i'm just picking out a couple steve buscemi um in a new series miracle workers has now gone into a couple seasons um he plays god and is again kind of a uh well anyway it turns out that he's part of a whole kind of family of gods and he's kind of our god is kind of a a poor achiever and has made kind of a crappy planet relative to the other gods and so forth in that particular series we have the depiction of god in mighty python and the holy grail and of course my favorite the depiction of god in the simpsons and homer the heretic when homer has a vision of of god and decides that he doesn't need to go to church for all kinds of different reasons because uh god is everywhere and so on okay so if we look at the history of the image of god that we have there that image in the simpsons and monty python and so forth there's kind of an idea and image of god as we see god so this is this again the sistine chapel painting and so um this is a very famous one of the creation the creation of adam we're kind of just getting from all of these kind of white guy white beard often kind of white kind of robes uh sort of thing not always white in terms of the robes while the paintings of god in the sistine chapel are very famous today and they inform our popular image the tradition of depicting god god the father was relatively recent in michelangelo's day and it remained controversial among christians at the time certainly in the near term after this other christians including protestants became much more iconoclastic and they actually opposed the depiction of god the creator and actually tried to depose oppose a lot of religious let's say statues and and and excessive artwork and so forth and preferred instead to have very very plain churches um so anyway this though is not a protestant church a catholic church here in padua these are frescoes by giotto from the early 14th century and this is one of kind of the earliest depictions of god the father here um you say again kind of enthroned in robes white guy beard and so forth so this is when that kind of tradition of doing that got started so as i say um protestants are kind of opposed to you know this kind of thing and they took the in all of their churches which you know the church at all all the churches had been catholic protestants in their zones uh broke with the church their church now became protestant churches in a lot of cases they destroyed their own uh uh historical artwork and heritage artwork that had existed this is why a lot of times you go to places and the um the medieval churches and things like that have had the statues ripped off of them and so forth or the the frescoes were painted over and that kind of a thing at a certain point people thought that the depiction of these images um was a kind of way to kind of go back to paganism and idolatry and so forth and they needed to be purged so here's that argument images lead to idolatry the argument forwarded by iconoclasts iconoclasts means uh people who destroy images people who do not believe there should be images in worship that dates back all the way to first temple judaism so um the earliest uh time period of the bible in the earliest parts of the hebrew bible is being written before jerusalem was destroyed the very first time by the babylonians there there's an idea there that images lead to idol worship if common people have a statue or a picture of god the fear was they will mistake the image for god and they'll start worshiping the image and so very famously among the ten commandments given in exodus uh one of those is thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image and so first temple jews are therefore and actually especially more into the second temple period are kind of famously iconoclastic and and against the use of um using statues especially but any images in to depict god or the worship of god here's here's the more broad commandment here that's part of it in exodus you shall not make for yourself an idol whether it is in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is an earth beneath or that is in water under the earth you shall not bow down to them or worship them for i yahweh the lord your god am a jealous god so this is talking about things that are in heaven above so contemporaries here would understand that all the stars and so forth the planets are gods and so don't make don't make statues of mars and venus where you know the roman the roman names for those gods uh uh and you also anything that's in the water below or beneath the earth so uh hades and uh uh and and neptune and poseidon or whatever and those are the roman and greek versions but they're obviously also the local canaanite gods too at this time you should not bow down or worship them you worship only yahweh a god who is not to be depicted okay so in rabbinic judaism that iconoclasm goes even further so god in the hebrew bible is referred to the more generic word for god in hebrew elohim but is also by name using the first using four letters which we make in english as y-h-w-h and so this is not really known how it's to be pronounced because in jewish tradition you're not you don't pronounce it uh and so we call that the greek the tetragrammaton so there was the four letters and i usually pronounce it yahweh the traditional way that that's been said in english was jehovah and that's a definitely a mistranslation or mispronunciation but anyway that was the one that as it was understood when the king james translators got working beyond leaving god unpictured there we then became a prohibition on saying the name yahweh allowed in rabbinic judaism and so when you get to that point uh in the text and you're seeing it written you're supposed to say the word adonai which means lord when you're reading the written name and this is actually how the um the mispronunciation of jehovah of jehovah even comes about so we have those consonants and they're written out and then in the middle ages um an early modern period when when vowels are added to hebrew they are little dots that go up and down normally there's only the hebrews normally only written with the consonants but the there became in the middle ages they developed this dot system that you could put in and the rabbis would write not the not the dots for what however yahweh was to be pronounced but how adonai is to be pronounced and so we get the jehovah out of the adonai vowels and the yahweh consonants okay and there's also uh uh anarchism in uh antichonism in islam so in other words a total prohibition of depicting god and frankly strong depiction strong prohibition of depicting images so the acts of the prophet muhammad including destroying the idols that had been in the kaaba in mecca so if you've ever seen pictures of the hajj the pilgrimage there's the black temple there said to be been built by abraham according to faith tradition not history but anyway a faith tradition of in islam at the time of muhammad it was a pagan temple and there were all kinds of idols in it and muhammad destroyed those and the quran and includes the prohibition on picturing god and that actually then gets extended to picturing the prophet now so people get in a lot of trouble by you know making images of or cartoons of muhammad sometimes and then even in general and humans at all or animals generally and so at a certain point in islamic art you get instead of um like pictures of living things and humans and so forth you get instead these amazing uh elaborate patterns um where even built into this kind of geometric forums and so forth it's floral patterns and such but it's also even you can see in the bands here is actually the script i should be going this way since it's uh not right to left but left to right and those are in any way you can see this very elaborate calligraphy of the arabic and so it's an interesting what happens when you get some things prohibited there can be a flowering of what you're allowed to do and that certainly is taking place in islam because again of this very strong prohibition against uh idols on the one hand statues but even then images images of uh god but then images of everybody at a certain point just to be safe okay so we're going to talk then about how is god pictured in christianity so i was suggesting like i say that this uh this thing in the middle ages that giada portrait is one of the very earlier ones of god the father in a christian tradition or a christian context in a church um and that's true then going forward into the sistine chapel and so forth so how was god presented before that so here um is a sixth century vision of heaven from saint apanala apollinare's church in classis which is to say in ravenna italy so this was the late capital of the west roman empire and also of uh the gothic ostrogothic kingdom of italy and then also then of byzantine italy when the byzantines uh destroyed the ostrogothic kingdom so ravenna was a very important um let's say early medieval late antique early medieval roman city where they were actually building new stuff including just magnificent churches with magnificent uh mosaics so where's god in this vision god the father and the answer is right there you can kind of see that hand there reaching down we'll zoom in on that so the traditional christian depiction of god the creator god the father is the hand of god and that's the only component you see of god so drawing on that same tradition against depicting god that informed rabbinic judaism early christians avoided depicting any more of god than this heavenly hand kind of symbolic picture of depiction of god early christians regarded the creator as beyond the capacity for humans to see or sense directly so in the gospel of john 1 chapter 1 verse 18 it states no one has ever seen god and by which they mean that god the creator as opposed to the spirit or christ which is the other components or the other persons of god in christian tradition so what are we seeing then when we're seeing besides the hand how are we understanding this or how does this work fit together so paul the first christian who's writing survive and also just such an important early christian thinker who's so influential he has come up with himself with a solution to picturing the unpicturable so uh you know as again paul is raised uh jewish he's uh i'm trying to say it's a pharisee and he uh he's a pharisee and he would therefore know about the prohibitions against depicting god and even saying the name god and so he's saying god's name yahweh and so forth and so what is but how does he kind of feel like we can now uh have a new way of understanding god in through his testimony in christ so paul has an answer he thinks and so he his testimony is christ is lord so what does that mean i'm gonna explain that so we talked about when you go when you get to a certain place in the text and it says yahweh you say out loud adonai you say lord and paul's testimony here is christ is lord so you may be prohibited from picturing the creator but when you read the name yahweh in scripture and you substitute lord like i say paul saying christ is that lord so in other words instead of directly envisioning god the creator christians now are able to picture christ as a bridge between the human and divine realms so christ is understood to be a person of god a person of the trinity fully human fully divine christ had a fully human body you can depict him therefore all you want and by understanding that when we're getting to that place in the text where you can't say god's name but you can say lord christ is providing that image or visualization of god for christians it's a little bit complicated let's explain it a little bit more so how do we know god the creator through the logos god so if we go back to that passage and or we go back to the gospel of john uh in i'm not reading here this is john and i've made the citation wrong here but it's john 1 1 chapter 1 verse 1 through 3 8 and then 18. in the beginning was the word which is to say the logos and the word was with god and the word was god he was in the beginning with god all things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being no one has ever seen god it is only it is god the only son who is close to the father's heart who has made him known and so so here on the right i'm i'm showing here a um an illuminated manuscript from the central middle ages so a few hundred years before the sistine chapel depicting the same thing though so this is depiction of god creating the heavens and the earth you can see the moon and the stars and so forth god creating eve you can see being created out there out of adam's rib and then also creating all of the animals and so forth that are all around in the illumination this is the same kind of pictures that we have in the sistine chapel but instead of picturing god the creator this is picturing christ because we're allowed to picture christ and so this is actually you know christ the pre-existent christ as the logos through him the word through through which god the creator created everything according to the gospel of john so so the christian trick or substitution here the way that christians get around this prohibition of of making images or making pictures or depictions of god the creator is having a much more complicated understanding of god where you were able to picture and depict christ or the logos as god and that way we have a conception or a bridge between the unknowable and us and so that's why then christians as opposed to the other abrahamic religions have a way to depict uh god okay so picturing the logos the second picture person of the trinity the author of john's theology of the logos whoever wrote the gospel of john that theology of logos is strikingly similar to that of the hellenistic jewish philosopher philo of alexandria we've had a whole lecture um actually both on the the authorship of the gospel of john and also on philo of alexandria so unlike michelangelo's painting of god the creator of adam christian depictions of the creation in the early middle ages are always substituting images of the logos christ for the creator so it's not going to be you know a guy with white hair and so on it's you know guy who looks about the same but he's got you know you know brown beard and so forth because it's christ right okay so um one of the things here is that in in doing this in making this leap that paul had this is um in a way where we add belief to religion belief isn't always part of you know having belief in certain things isn't always part of religion so while belief in god or gods today is popularly seen as essential to religion the idea would have been pretty foreign to many adherents in antiquity so um regular people who worship the old gods uh which is to say what we now call pagans greek and romans and so forth um they were not going around saying it just worrying as much about whether they believed in god's or not that's now how we kind of frame it from our perspective in a lot of cases there are some cases where there where people were being accused of of atheism but usually it doesn't mean what we think of it it means now so christians were accused of atheism because they didn't recognize um the roman gods as as as having any real uh any reality christians tended to see them as demons and so forth and so that was you get accused of atheism for for denying um the belief in everybody's gods and so forth as opposed to um not believing in god in general right and so as far as the people in antiquity is concerned like i say the planets uh uh stars the uh the earth itself uh the winds death this is all these are all gods and you obviously believe in those because all those things exist so anyway paul though adds the idea of faith in belief into the equation not to tell people that they have to believe in god pretty much everybody did believe in god uh at least depending on what how we define it you know so so they in a lot of cases pagans even if um even if they technically believe in all kinds of different gods the philosophers underlying that usually depicted that understood or proposed that there is one underlying source of which the various gods are emanations and so forth and so anyway most people did have that sense in antiquity you weren't having to tell people to believe in god rather what what paul is saying you must believe is you must believe that christ is lord and so that gets injected into it and this becomes um just such a major component of religion that it's hard for us to even separate this out this idea that belief is essential to religion uh would not have been anywhere near as much so in the past and not the same for a lot of other religions either we've talked about this when we had our lecture what is religion why it's so impossible to define religion okay so i'm going to summarize this first part of the lecture this part about the depictions of god the creator so the abrahamic religions have always been deeply skeptical of depicting god jews and muslims forbid depiction of god because they argue that it leads to idolatry christians generally avoided picturing the creator anyway until the later middle ages and many have continued to be iconoclastic so there are a bunch of um you know protestants don't like for example often uh depictions of uh jesus on a crucifix as a you know as a as a statue bleeding and stuff like that that's thought to be you know too gaudy or too much like a pagan thing or whatever whatever it is that they don't like pot protestants tend to be more iconoclastic and have more barren um artwork in their in their churches than for example uh the orthodox orthodox people like statues and so they have instead beautifully painted icons or mosaics and so forth and catholics have both statues and and paintings and so forth so all right okay that's depictions i want to also now talk about the evolution of human understanding of god or the idea of god as it exists in the hebrew bible so we've shown this before this is kind of our chart of the context of a kind of a timeline of the of when the bible is essentially being composed at its earliest times down to uh when it's actually being compiled together in the 400s bc at the time of ezra and so forth once they have gone back to jerusalem and jerusalem is a province of the persian empire under persian influence at that point so this is a many hundred year period um some people think that among the first uh characters in the hebrew bible that are possibly historic is david so there's certainly a sense that from this time period anyway when the bible is being written down the ruling dynasty of jerusalem calls itself the house of david so the sense is that there was a figure who was their eponymous ancestor who they're saying was the founder of their house but that doesn't mean that any of the stories that we have about david are actually referring to anything that that has that potentially historical character may have done uh rather it's more in the time period a little after that when we get to let's say the middle of the or the early part of the 800s bc when characters like omri who's one of the kings of the much more important northern kingdom gets going and in that kind of time period is when this earliest time period of biblical writing starts to happen especially right in the time period before assyria destroys the northern kingdom in 7 20. so that 700 those earliest bible components are being written those are source things and some of those leave let's say we say fingerprints or footprints of how ancient israelites were understanding god at that time as opposed to the way they understood it when the bible's compiled by ezra and it gets edited so that it has a much different conception so there's an evolution of the conception of yahweh among the prophets and priests in ancient israel so it begins like everybody else when we call polytheism or paganism where yahweh is worshipped alongside many other gods it moves to a phase that is sometimes called monolatry or henotheism which we'll explain where they understood that among the various gods that exist yahweh is the only god that the people of israel are to worship but in other words not denying that there are other gods but simply that they are not to worship those other gods to then the development of monotheism the understanding that yahweh is the only god and other gods or speak when you speak of other gods you're really just referring to idols just statues that are powerless and are human created and so forth okay so here's one of the fingerprints or footprints from uh this kind of polytheist conception of uh of uh god so the idea that there are more than one god and there are national gods this is a section of deuteronomy that's called the song of moses when the most high it says gave the nations their inheritance when he divided the sons of man he set the boundaries of the people according to the numbers of the sons of but yahweh's portion is his people jacob israel his allotted inheritance and so l here the great sky father god he has different sons who are the various different gods among those sons is yahweh and his people are israel so in other words there are yahweh in this understanding is a national god he is literally the god of israel but there are other gods who are gods of other nations so monolatry in the ten commandments um we've been reading you know anyway from the ten commandments the same kind of conception so i am the lord your god who brought you out of the land of egypt out of the house of slavery you shall have no other gods before me you shall not make yourself an idol whether it is in the form of anything in heaven and earth we read that above you shall not bow down to them or worship them for i the lord your god am a jealous god so this is not you know we read it before but as we read it again here one of the points we should point out this is not saying there are no other gods except me it says you shall not have any other gods before me whether it's the gods that are in the heavens whether it's in the earth or or in the sea you are not going to make idols of those gods and worship them you're only to worship the lord your god yahweh so um when you're provincialist this is perfectly reasonable so so when you have uh you kind of believe like i say in monolatry or henotheism the soul god to be worshipped you can have that paired with a distinct chosen people chosen by a god so it's a nation with a national god and in the same way that israel had yahweh as their god the philistines have a god dagon the ammonites have a god malcolm the moabites have a god chamos and and actually we have from moabite records the moabite steely as essentially a a very similar understanding that the moabites have about god uh their god chamash that the israelites have about yahweh so essentially the moabites the reason why the moabites had been ravaged by the israelites and lost a war and so forth it's because chaimash was was was punishing them for not um not worshiping him properly right so it's the same thing that happens to the israelites when they don't worship yahweh or when they bring in foreign gods so moabites have the same understanding they just have their own different national god so monotheism then develops and so when we get to the later sections of the book of isaiah the parts that are not written by the ancient first temple isaiah but rather written by people post-exilic who are writing in the persian period writing in isaiah's name pretending to be isaiah they they have a they now have a fully developed sense of monotheism so it says in isaiah 44 thus says yahweh the king of israel and his redeemer the lord of hosts i am the first and i am the last besides me there is no god is there any god besides me there is no other rock i know not one so when you get to monotheism the only god in other words all the other gods are idols now your provincialism becomes problematic so if there is only one distinct people chosen by god then suddenly you're kind of saying well the philistines the ammonites the moabites everybody else they're all people that have been rejected by the only one god so we're the only people on earth with access to god that's one way you can kind of go with this kind of provincialism if you um anyway as you start to change your conception of how you understand god from his being a god of your national nation to the universal god who has chosen only your nation so i just want to kind of you know make a little uh chart here or whatever of how this kind of all kind of fits together um you know a god among gods or the one universal god uh whether that has a limited application or a universal application whether he's just one nation's god or whether he's the god of the whole universe or god is the god i shouldn't say he uh it's not a not a gendered here so that's the wrong pronoun to be using or i should use it okay so here we go um so if you have a limited application of a god among gods so in other words that a national god but there's other national gods that's like i say monolatry or henotheism if you have um you know like a god among gods but there is kind of uh universal application i'm calling that syncretic polytheism so that's a little complicated to say all these words are uh technical right but anyway so polytheism in other words you're believing that there's many gods you know henotheism and monality you also believe there are many gods but you only worship the one in syncretic polytheism you kind of say well as we're looking around at our pantheon we see that there's all these gods we kind of have one chief father god you know we call him ammon but you guys call him zeus and the romans call him jupiter but we really understand that all of those gods are really just the same god and we just know uh know him or know in that case of him uh you know we know um we know the god venus and you know her as aphrodite and so on athena and minerva and there and these are understood to then be um just different understandings of a same universal god so i'm calling that you know polytheism but it's syncretic in the same in the sense that there's syncretism going on between the different uh polytheistic traditions so that's a god among gods but the implica application is universal again if there's a universal god that is only choosing one people then you kind of have a chauvinistic monotheism and i'm not suggesting here um that even that this is what judaism has because actually uh i think that most most jews certainly reformed jews who all understand that god is the god of all peoples but they have their own particular unique tradition and so forth in terms of their relationship with god but not that god doesn't care about the other people or something like that in the in the earliest time period the first temple period um the second temple period when this starts to develop some of the writers are kind of have a kind of a chauvinistic monotheism but anyway not that doesn't always last sometimes people do think they're the only chosen people and they have they're the one and only true church that's been certainly part of our tradition before um we outgrew that in the as a church and then finally you have a universal god and it's got the god for everybody that's sort of a universal monotheism so that's kind of my matrix here of how you can understand god and understand god's relationship with people so at the universal conception of god you know you can still have a people with a distinct tradition but all the other people have their own divine paths so in other words the philistines the ammonites the moabites everyone else can also be god's people it's just you doesn't mean that you it doesn't mean that your tradition isn't important or valid it just means that other people also have their own valid past there are multiple paths to the divine if you in this conception okay so here's a judeo-christian interpretation of primitive scripture so all jew although jews and early christians in the first century of the common era had come to see their god as universal much of the scripture was written by authors with a much more primitive perspective so for example in genesis god walks around in eden and doesn't even know where adam and eve are hiding he blows with his nostrils he shuts noah's ark with his hands in other words uh this is a problem right so if god is wandering around saying where are you isn't god omniscient doesn't god already know answers why is god asking those kind of questions if god is non-corporeal god is is god is all spirit and no one's seen god how is god blowing with nostrils or or with hands it seems to be a much more kind of primitive uh mythological almost like stories about zeus kind of um uh depiction of god in some of these parts of the bible but philo of alexandria who we mentioned is very clear now how to read this so concerning this part of genesis philo cautions us quote now the expression breathed into is equivalent to inspired or gave life to things inanimate so he cautions let us take care that we are never filled with such absurdity as to think god employs the organs of the mouth or nostril for the purposes of breathing into anything for god is not only devoid of any qualities but he is likewise not in the form of a man and the use of these words shows some more secret mystery of nature so in other words you are not you should not be taking these kind of things literally and this is already as uh like i say jewish theologian making this very strong argument in the first century of the common era so this just a little bit uh later contemporary to jesus okay so early christian writers expressed similar caution so origin of alexandria in the second and third century and augustine in the third and fourth i'm sorry in the fourth and fifth century interpreted uh um scripture in a way that's similar to how philo was doing so augustine as we've talked about cautions against limited readings and he asserts that beyond literal which is the lowest way to read scripture scripture should be read allegorically topologically which is to say morally and anagogically and so forth we've talked about how um just this kind of when we've talked about kind of the history of scripture a couple times in our lectures how sort of this modern um you know reading it is like a history book or thing is just a completely new and alien um way to do this uh because in the past in the past people didn't have a developed sense of history the way we do now that academic history has developed all right so the modern focus on the bible and literal reading so protestant focus on the bible as the sole source of authority along with its translation into vernacular languages and its spread by the invention of the printing press took biblical interpretation out of the hands of experts and into the hands of uninformed lay people and it generated a new focus essentially on literalism so i just want to sum up then the second part of the lecture so understanding god from scripture you know while catholics were kind of creating modern depictions of god the father that have then subsequently inspired us protestants were kind of destroying artwork religious artwork to avoid astral idolatry nevertheless from my perspective protestants were creating a new literary idol of their own by reading the bible as if it were literal and historical which it's neither so um let's talk about the third thing how has god been defined theologically so i don't have a picture for this god is not to be pictured god is not picturable um and so let's keep this blank for that purpose so there's a modern dead end that i say that has been kind of fully explored this is the looking for god in the gaps so in ancient times people did not know the difference between how and causation so um we didn't have great explanations for why you know various natural processes happen and so forth and uh and there was no distinction made effectively between like i was saying uh death or rivers or or lightning or any kind of thing like that between that and the actions of the gods which is why like i say ancient people um it's absurd to not believe in the god since all of those things are interconnected both as natural and divine but as uh in the modern times more and more natural processes have been adequately explained people uh a possibility that people have is that god is still doing some kind some let's say supernatural thing that can't hasn't been explained yet and so um as more and more and more of the natural world is explained the receding part the part that isn't understandable is called the gaps and so people look for god in the gaps that's what this strategy is so when the natural philosopher benjamin franklin demonstrated the effectiveness of the lightning rod in 1749 before this lightning would strike buildings and burn them down very very frequently now suddenly with this invention that draws the lightning and takes the charge away from the building some contemporary christians complained that this thing was thwarting god's will so in other words god is wanting to smite your building and now you are stopping it with this invention so the complaint is the beginning of this long intellectual dead end in my opinion path of reserving god as an explanation for unexplained natural phenomena so this modern distinction of natural and supernatural when much less of the natural world like i say was understood modern people started to believe that some things happened supernaturally supernatural is a modern word actually it didn't exist in antiquity um people continue to love the supernatural they love magic this is why you know baby baby yoda people love that baby yoda can do magic right and marvel superheroes can do magic and everyone you know anyway magic is uh as very uh popular continues to be very popular however as more and more natural processes have become understood the modern proposition that certain things occur supernaturally seems to have less and less merit so god's supernatural intervention and the problem of evil the idea that a lightning rod could thwart the will of an omnipotent god you know kind of makes no sense theologically that's not uh when you thank god for sparing your home from a hurricane if you mean that god is directing the phenomenon what's the implication then for all the people whose homes were destroyed in that same hurricane or whose lives were lost so this is a question for theology this is a question for the problem of evil as opposed to one for uh natural science so historically um the the god as when you say there's a word has not been a fixed idea whose existence was in question rather the word god was kind of always a variable in need of definition that's only when you look at it and you look at all the different ways that people are understanding it each individual person probably doesn't think of god as a variable they think they have a definition and that that's the correct definition but if you take it as a composite you realize now they're using the same word but they're meaning different things so we've talked about several of these we had a whole lecture on anselm of canterbury one of the very important thinkers of the early middle ages over time many thinkers have proposed many definitions for god so boethius in augustine followed neoplatonous argue that god was transcendent goodness for goodness his own sake transcendent love for love's own sake we're going to talk about we'll have a whole lecture next week on plate plato and christianity and platonism anselm of canterbury uh define god as that then nothing greater can be conceived uh def we had a whole lecture on that too so um following aristotle thomas aquinas argued that god is the unmoved mover and the ultimate cause of existence descartes said that god isn't necessarily existing supreme perfection spinoza defined god as a singular self-subsistent substance which he ultimately took as to be synonymous with nature so in other words there's not one single idea here about what the word god means and how we understand what god is and just for everybody in terms of personal contemplation about this kind of thing i think in some ways even this whole kind of the modern idea of do you believe in god or not you don't believe in god i think is a it is it's a it's missing some of um it's it's it's pretending to be a more important question than i think it is because i think that um once we are taught when we're talking about that question we're missing um a bigger questions that are underlying that or and that are um that are more universal to us so everyone has beliefs our conscious beliefs may differ from our deep-seated beliefs so we may profess to believe in all kinds of different things do we really believe those things not always we're not always sure we may think very honestly we do so the thing about it though is that your professed beliefs are what a person says i think your deep-seated beliefs can sometimes be observed in terms of what a person actually does so a person may believe they're very very charitable person and and they may believe that of themselves and say that about themselves but they could actually be quite self-focused and their actions may actually illustrate that they are they're really quite self-focused and not particularly charitable a person may also believe that they're a nihilist they may profess that uh that nothing has any meaning uh that there is no no no inherent truth or anything like that everything is um it's all chance and so forth their actions however often show and some and some people who are professed nihilists they actually show that they act out of love let's say for their children or their friends or their family uh and so what that might imply is there's something inside uh a deep-seated belief maybe that deserves some introspection and so i think we can all do well to give ourselves permission to do some open exploration some introspection to undercover our actual deep-seated beliefs what do why do we do the things we do why do we unders what how do we understand meaning and so forth in our lives along with learning about and experiencing philosophical ideas and traditions and other spiritual practices and so forth so as opposed to just automatically just saying well the thing i've made this decision the thinking is done i don't believe in all that or whatever openness to thinking about things in different ways i think is always a helpful thing so in some i'm going to suggest anyway that the word god has historically been a variable it's ultimately not definable because god is going to be beyond human conception as part of the definition right or maybe part of one potential definition although we have modern images of god modern literalist literary depictions of god and modern ideas about the supernatural none of these encompass the idea of god over time has been held you know through just the time period that i've just dipped into here the extent to which we insist on any of these we're making ourselves the idols making for ourselves the idols that the iconoclasts have warned against for millennia the word god is a variable whose definition is approached by humans through ongoing open spirit theological exploration and all of my pictures here have only distracted us from that as we instead are envisioning either atlantis morissette or george burns or essentially zoo jupiter or zeus and a white guy with a white beard and so forth so that's going to end for us the formal presentation as i get myself a glass of water here as always leandro is going to start taking down your questions and sending to me and we also have some questions for discussion to have you maybe think of and i'll ask you these so the first one of these is what makes the devil a compelling character in literature and media did you did you like the bio of the devil lecture better than this bio of god lecture okay that's the first one two if the word god is a variable like i'm kind of saying that describes competing and evolving definitions how do you let's just say instead of um so instead of just inheriting a preconception let's say you were you have this image of god you got as in sunday school from uh reading the bible literally literally and you went to college and you thought i don't believe in that or whatever it is so instead of that um instead of that inherited conception if instead you pull back and just say okay let's take that word as a variable how would you uh define that term if you were open to all of these different things i listed a bunch of different from people from descartes to spinoza and anselm aquinas and so forth and then number three how do your professed beliefs about the meaning of life compared to your actions that other thing i was talking about he may not requires a little bit of introspection to to do that one so um i'll let you think on those and then we'll see ethel andrew gets some of the questions for me uh winston barkes asked if god exists is it reasonable for god to reel himself to real god god self um well maybe maybe not uh so the uh there would be different ways as as we um we'd understand that i can just say and let's say a traditional christian context is uh would be that god and we're talking about here then god the creator as opposed to god the spirit or god the logos christ god the creator is unknowable and unsealable but god is does reveal god's self in the christian understanding uh in through you know let's say sometimes through god's glory through god's logos which is to say through true god's spirit in other words god is revealed through the persons of uh the spirit and of christ in the christian con conception and so how is that revealed let's say um through creation right and so as we look in the around in the universe as we uh uh perceive the universe as we look at ourselves as we um reason as we uh as we think and experience as we have existence um those are in a traditional sense revelation of the of the creator um anyway in how christians understand god revealing god's self um it wouldn't be that god would go pop and appear like george burns or something because god is not like george burns in that in that conception um uh nadev nadev kravitz says um why is the pre-incarnate christ depicted in adult form yeah well people have a lot of trouble uh depicting um yeah pre-existence and and actually post-existent so the reality i mean the theological not reality the theological conception of of other life so like afterlife or pre-existence is a is meant to be a and totally uh alien and inconceivable from what this life would be like and so it isn't really isn't really picturable so why is it why is pre-incarnate christ depicted in adult form i mean inability of artists to and and us to be imaginative so it's hard to you know you want you know kind of what you want as an artist what you want christ to look like and so you make christ that way actually through about a lot of antiquity and into the middle ages they're actually really bad at depicting um at the victim kids and they just pick when they when they even have madonna and the baby christ he's often like just a little adult christ so so it's even like baby christ is like a little adult christ and so on um so i'd say that there's just a that's just a um inability of the artist to try to try to show something that would be kind of unpicturable so um and so and that's so therefore it's artistic tradition wanda mercer says in one of my graduate courses religion in the burned over region in response to the question of the gender of god i i opined that god was a pretender and that god the father was man's description and to me there is one who was before all created all and i chose to identify this supreme as god so yeah we have a tradition in english um in the past where the neutral pro noun and the masculine pronoun are both he and so it's a it's been a problem it's been a part of the reason why um um society has been so sexist throughout time uh but um christian theologians uh and actually also like again going back to philo of alexandria um and make it very very clear that god uh god is not is not limited to being male god uh transcends gender in the same exact way that god transcends all and so it's not that so even in the genesis account when uh uh it says in the image of god uh created he then male and female the idea of that uh in the in the traditional interpretation is um both male and female are are are in the image of god who is which is therefore inc inclusive of uh male and female and everything in between so in other words uh gender is uh god's gender it transcends uh you know as a binary and also let's say individual male gender for sure uh and so i try not to ever i mean i think i think we might as well if we're going to use um pronouns for god is such a short word we can just try to say the word god every single time and not use a pronoun but you might as well say they certainly even the word for god in hebrew elohim is is uh uh plural also you might as well say god they and there as they and they are becoming our regular neutral uh singular pronoun in english now uh and i try to avoid saying he if i can and it's better not better to it actually helps if you don't picture god as the father if you picture god as parent or even sometimes you picture god as heavenly mother which is totally within uh the christian conception um uh then then you are not gonna get fixated on the gender so mike says is the depiction of the heavenly hand related somewhat to the hand and the story of the writing on the wall from the book of daniel i think so um and so um i'm trying to think if uh you know there's also like i say the there's the um there's the the god using the hand to shut up the ark you know and so forth so there is a there's an expression you know by the hand of god you know and so um uh and so it was a it it's like a way to um envision you know the creator through the creation the god's handiwork and so um and so i think that that's where that that tradition comes from uh and like i say that had been kind of the you know it's in the same way that um initially in buddhism the idea of the buddha was that uh the buddha had transcended and was gone and so the original depictions of the buddha are not like the ones we see now where you got this very guy sitting in his lotus position where you know and or and so on um the initial depictions were just footprints because he's gone you know and so and there's only later um that they they started making kind of the the greek influenced statues and so forth that we know know and love today of the buddha so the same kind of evolution has happened um so dionysus infinitum says is belief in god theism deism born out of nurture or innately wired into our human nature and native kratovitz asks why have we found it so important to believe in god what has that meant over time so so i think that this focus on belief in god is actually kind of a modern thing as opposed to in the past we have uh you know an open kind of framework of how we're understanding the universe to work how we're understanding there to be purpose and order and meaning and how we have um a reason reason and so forth and theologically um people will make arguments like so when when aquinas is making his different we're going to talk about this um in a future lecture when aquinas is making his different kinds of proofs of god he'll say uh something like like the proofs from causation every single thing that happened happens um you know from a cause and then that something caused that cause and something caused that and so on and so forth and so that goes back at some point or rather he argues to something that must be the very first cause and then and then he just says after he gets to that very first cause and he says and everyone calls that god you know and so in other words but that like i say if so is that when if he's saying that the very first cause in all of causation is what everyone calls god is that's a different definition of god than a guy walking around in the garden of eden with hands and and so on which is the mythological um portrait that exists in in judeo-christian mythology you know the theology is very different uh when like the leading theologians like aquinas are defining it same thing um anselm's definition that than which nothing like greater can be conceived so so so i think that this modern idea that has happened when people made a very let's say a very they made the image of god it's painted in the sistine chapel and so forth they get this idea kind of a warmed over picture that had existed of zeus a white guy white beard now he's got more clothes on and so forth but anyway and then they make that picture that's when we get fixated on you have to believe in god as you've made this limited picture slash idol of what god is defined to mean so i don't necessarily think um it's has to be wired into everybody um or it or that the believing part is is so important over time um i think that we do uh as a um as a people want to have you know want to find meaning and we seek out meaning and we want to believe in meaning and i think our deep-seated views as i say kind of show uh that we have values and we do do act out of uh beliefs that we maybe aren't even conscious of that are not our professed beliefs and so on uh and so yes uh you know in terms of um uh in terms of psychology and so forth there's uh in evolutionary psychology you know particularly what sometimes called a religious brain um that may be a byproduct of evolution i don't know you know i'm not a um uh evolutionary psychologist but we can look into that for you know a future lecture and think about it a little bit more okay so mike says where does the image of the holy spirit as a dove come from have there been other versions so so yeah so we have it's pretty easy depictions of christ you know we um we've talked about that in the historical jesus lectures and so forth of where those pictures come from the picture of god you know kind of is more recent as we've seen god the father in terms of the holy spirit as a dove that comes from the the um the synoptic gospel so this comes from mark uh as the source of that story which is to say during the um baptism of jesus um this is like the for christians the one of the primary trinitarian uh moments because you have christ that's there being baptized you have um uh the creator the father uh in the heavens uh you know when you hear the voice from heaven saying this is uh um my beloved son uh uh in whom i'm well pleased and so then and then you have the uh spirit descending in the form of a dove and so because the holy spirit as a spirit is very hard to depict the fact that the fact that there's an image there in other words a form of a dove that's where the idea of the holy spirit as the dove comes from i'm not sure if there are other ways to depict the spirit other than a dove he really gets the dove gets pictured a lot so i'll have to look it up any other kinds of depictions okay so rona is answering wagner is answering some of our questions and so the first one was why is the devil so much more comparable in character and rome says the devil satan lucifer to me is god's nemesis or maybe christ's nemesis but i think he's given much more credit uh that things happen in life than he deserves well okay so that may be why so then the second question was if the word god is a variable that describes competing evolving definitions how would you define the term so roane says god to me is a spirit not of a human form but when it's said that we are made in the image of god he thinks that it's our spirit and not our body okay very good and then in the third question i asked was how do you profess beliefs about the meaning of life compared to your actions kind of an introspective questions the answer to that question escapes me he says i'm still trying to figure that out yeah that's a tough question because we really have to do some i think deep thinking and introspection um to really kind of start accessing that stephanie ceraci says oh she's answering the same questions so she says the devil is compelling because the devil is a good container for our fears and one that we can win against in literature and media so yeah so um yeah the the the idea is that they had on um on 30 rock uh characters like where god um it was a really bad it was a they were pretend as a pretend nbc television show that nbc was making as the network was failing where god becomes like the uh a partner to a cop and and every single thing that he does doesn't make any sense because doesn't god already know that how does he why isn't god learning so god you know as omnipotent and and already knows everything and and and so on uh it just doesn't make good literature it's impossible it's like trying to write um i don't know it's a very hard character to write whereas uh the devil is some is a fallen angel the devil um uh has motives that are understandable it seemingly and and then like you say um fear sells so as we're as we're um you know it makes for good literature to do that um so so in her definition of how is she defining the term god she says she tries not to define the term which that's always a uh uh that's always a good strategy and so a way to avoid idolatry but then she says i lean towards that first cause definition uh that we were talking about from aquinas and then three in terms of her um professed beliefs i'm sorry her deep-seated beliefs that maybe she can see uh based on actions she says i ask myself that constantly and sometimes the former and uh the former informs the latter and sometimes the latter informs the former so sometimes um you know this kind of understanding between like you say your your professed beliefs your deep-seated beliefs your actions and so forth and sometimes they inform each other thank you stephanie um brando says the devil has always been more intriguing since milton um i agree with you some in in milton the devil says uh you know it's better to uh it's better to reign and howl than serve in heaven and you know for a lot of people um you know that that's a compelling argument for freedom and so on if you're going to just be um you know what the the the conception of heaven in in milton isn't as exciting or great as as that and the devil again is a as a compelling character in that literature yeah uh nadev kravitz says why has atheism been so rare in the past and why is it more common now so i think it's more common now because uh like i say in modern times people christians especially atheism has atheism has evolved in the west out of protestantism it is functionally a um an elaboration of protestantism and indeed even even though atheists don't think so historically it's effectively a sect of protestantism protestants were already eliminating things atheism is just eliminating more things atheism begins as an anti-clerical movement and so people are upset because clerics in the early modern times have all kinds of control over ideas and so on they are making increasingly hardened and fixed images of god or definitions and understandings of god which are frankly false and then by so by making those images and making those claims and so on uh the clerics and and controlling universities and controlling um having control of it there's a bunch of just intellectuals who say look then we're not going to play that game i'm no longer going to i'm no longer going to be part of a conversation where we are every one of us redefining this term so that we understand it based on our new understanding you're insisting it's this dead uh definition that i see is wrong and doesn't exist and so and so we're now going to reject this open inquiry into redefining the term going forward so i think that it's a um it's a modern product of the west that is uh that is social in origin uh uh and in terms of being rare in the past i mean again it didn't have any meaning in the past so in the in the present there is a uh like like i say an increasingly fixed and um idolatrous idea of what the word god means uh which is false a false conception um and instead of rejecting that false conception um uh what's happened is people just said we're not even i'm we're rejecting the the concept so matt metcoff says um in answer to that that question about how your deep-seated beliefs and your actions he says my beliefs are not static and seem to evolving through time and this is also true for my understanding of the meaning for life therefore my motivations and actives actions seem to also be changing over time and i think that that's very that's a good insight and i think that that should be true for all of us i think that um you know when we think uh this is why i think that there is a big difference between let's say let's say a set of professed beliefs if that we might have if we're a member of a formal religion that has a creed and our actual real um understandings or are learning about and feelings about the meaning of life and your motivations and so on you're alive and things are changing because life is change and so in a lot of cases your real beliefs are maybe pulling further out of whack from whatever the the professed creed that you might have and you might or you might think that you have some um daryl scott says in my head i keep answering to the same question in my head i can't help but be something of a neolist so that nothing has any meaning but my heart doesn't let me live like that so i probably don't act in a particularly consistent way well so that's why we do introspection right and that's what and so um you know uh you i mean so consistency is also something that you have one has to value or not and so uh and so you have to kind of again is its consistency an important value to you uh you have to kind of do the introspection to decide that um ruth goldstrom says for her um the same question this is a popular question i'm glad i asked it she says i'm seeing people who profess to be christian and would have values uh to be considered and caring towards others but who refused to wear a mask and who would be considered the way to get through the pandemic yeah so um so yeah so in theory um christianity is a very outward turning thing where you're trying to do unto others i mean actually that's in a lot of all the religions is the golden rule um but there have been um a lot of people who are focusing on self in this uh as opposed to uh you know uh thinking about their the fellow beings you know and this pandemic which is sad because um is a time when you could grow together and you could and bond as a people and feel get stronger as a result of it or it's a time when you can fracture and divide and unfortunately um uh in a lot of for a lot of our our communities the the latter kind of seemed to have happened in this particular crisis um stephanie says stephanie serracy says one of my favorite sayings is an old franciscan saying your only impediment to god is your concept of god yeah very good i like that um that's i was thinking of another saying but anyway i like you're saying better so we'll leave it at that and that's the last word then huh all right well andrew thank you so very much and i want to thank everybody who joined us tonight as another great discussion um i really appreciate it we're going to talk um next week about uh plato in christianity and that'll be exciting we'll get back to it'll build on some of the things we've talked about tonight oh you have to switch you

Channel: Centre Place

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Keywords: community of christ, exmo, exmormon, ex-mormon, jesus myth, bible studies, christianity lecture, judaism lecture, christian education, biblicar scholar, Depictions of God, Canaanite religion, First Temple Judaism, Second Temple Judaism, El, Baal, Yahweh, Zeus, Marduk, Enlil, Enki, Iconoclasm

Id: Zx-_J1uzjYU

Length: 82min 19sec (4939 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 02 2022