The transendent, Living God

[Elijah John]

Most believers agree that God cannot be depicted with images. That would be a violation of the 2nd Commandment.

Questions for debate, can the Living God be contained in one collection of books known as the Bible? Or is He bigger than the Bible?

If He transcends, then can the Qur'an also teach us about God? Or nature itself? Do we have anything to learn from other religions?

And finally, if one believes the Bible is all we can know about God, is that limiting the Living, transcendent God?

Can God be contained in any theology, tradition, Church, or holy book? Or does He transcend them all?

[Divine Insight]

And finally, if one believes the Bible is all we can know about God, is that limiting the Living, transcendent God?

I agree that the Bible limits God dramatically and also confines "HIM" to a very small box not the least of which is depicting "HIM" as being an anthropomorphic male patriarchal entity.

The thing I would suggest is that either the Bible is "TRUE", in which case our Creator God truly is an anthropomorphic male patriarchal entity who does indeed demand that we obey all of the directives and commandments proclaimed by the Bible in "HIS NAME" lest he will do horribly mean and cruel things to us as the Bible describes.

Or the Bible is simply "FALSE". And if a "God" exists it's necessarily quite different from how the Bible describes God.

I don't see how we can say that God is merely "Bigger than the Bible". If he is as the Bible describes, then he can hardly be anything else. And if he is anything else, then he's not merely "Bigger" than the Bible, but he (or rather it) is necessarily also quite different from the Bible's extremely limiting picture of God.

I don't see how we could claim that the Bible is a "TRUE" description of God, whilst simultaneously proclaiming that God is far greater than the Bible describes.

How could that be possible? The Bible demands that God is a very self-centered jealous anthropomorphic male patriarchal entity who becomes extremely angry and wrathful, and will be exceedingly mean and cruel to anyone who provokes his anger or refuses to do precisely as he says.

That pretty much seals God in a very small finite box that God cannot escape from without breaking that tiny box into unrecognizable confetti.

If you want to imagine a God that is something greater than the Bible portrays God to be, it seems to me that you have no real choice left but to dismiss the Bible as simply having it all wrong.

God can't remain "TRUE" ,as described by the Bible, whilst God simultaneously breaks out of that mold and becomes something entirely different.

How can you have an anthropomorphic male patriarchal entity who threatens to harm people who refuse to obey him, suddenly become something ELSE and still claim that this original portrait is still "TRUE"?

It seems to me that if you want to accept that the Bible describes God, then you're pretty much stuck with having to go with what that book has to say.

If you want a "Greater God", I would say that you're going to necessarily need to toss the Bible aside as being inapplicable and basically look for a better picture of God elsewhere.

That's what I did.

[tam]

God cannot be depicted with images because those images would be false; those images would be made of dead things. (dead trees - carving or paper; non-living material)

But He is a living God, and He has a living Image.

Christ is the living image of God.


The bible is not the image of God. Man is not the image of God. Religion is not the image of God. Just Christ, as the Truth and Word of His Father. That does not make Christ, God Himself. He is the Son of God, and a perfect reflection of His Father. And He said:


"If you really know me, you will know my Father as well."


Peace to you,
your servant and a slave of Christ,
tammy

[Elijah John]

And finally, if one believes the Bible is all we can know about God, is that limiting the Living, transcendent God?

I agree that the Bible limits God dramatically and also confines "HIM" to a very small box not the least of which is depicting "HIM" as being an anthropomorphic male patriarchal entity.

That antropromorphic, patriarchal part part is a reflection of the times and the culture, the human element in the Divine-human partnership. But such does not preclude the Divine elements from shining through and reflecting His actual glory, albeit imperfectly, as through a "glass darkened." The Bible does partially reflect the glory of God, but does not completely "contain" it.

The thing I would suggest is that either the Bible is "TRUE", in which case our Creator God truly is an anthropomorphic male patriarchal entity who does indeed demand that we obey all of the directives and commandments proclaimed by the Bible in "HIS NAME" lest he will do horribly mean and cruel things to us as the Bible describes.

Or the Bible is simply "FALSE". And if a "God" exists it's necessarily quite different from how the Bible describes God.

True or false in it's entirety? Is the Bible really that simple? Is life as simple as t that true/false dichomy? Seems simplistic to me.

I don't see how we can say that God is merely "Bigger than the Bible". If he is as the Bible describes, then he can hardly be anything else. And if he is anything else, then he's not merely "Bigger" than the Bible, but he (or rather it) is necessarily also quite different from the Bible's extremely limiting picture of God.

We both agree that the Bible contains some absurdities and atrocities attributed to God. But the Bible is so much more than those attributions. The poetic devotion of he Psalms, the altruism taught by Jesus, the forgiveness proclaimed, etc, etc. Pretty good, considering the barbaric times from which the Bible emerged, wouldn't you say?

I don't see how we could claim that the Bible is a "TRUE" description of God, whilst simultaneously proclaiming that God is far greater than the Bible describes.

A true description, at least partially, but hardly complete.

How could that be possible? The Bible demands that God is a very self-centered jealous anthropomorphic male patriarchal entity who becomes extremely angry and wrathful, and will be exceedingly mean and cruel to anyone who provokes his anger or refuses to do precisely as he says.

That pretty much seals God in a very small finite box that God cannot escape from without breaking that tiny box into unrecognizable confetti.

The Bible is a good starting point, but it is not the end all, and be all.

If you want to imagine a God that is something greater than the Bible portrays God to be, it seems to me that you have no real choice left but to dismiss the Bible as simply having it all wrong.

All wrong?, I don't think you can support that assertion. On the contrary, there is another choice, that of doing the hard work of attempting to discern the good from the bad, the true from the false in the Bible.

God can't remain "TRUE" ,as described by the Bible, whilst God simultaneously breaks out of that mold and becomes something entirely different.

How can you have an anthropomorphic male patriarchal entity who threatens to harm people who refuse to obey him, suddenly become something ELSE and still claim that this original portrait is still "TRUE"?

Because he is not "entirely" portrayed that way. He is also portrayed as loving, forgiving, and patient. Granted, it is a mixed portrait.

It seems to me that if you want to accept that the Bible describes God, then you're pretty much stuck with having to go with what that book has to say.

But the negatives in the Bible is not all the Bible has to say about God.

If you want a "Greater God", I would say that you're going to necessarily need to toss the Bible aside as being inapplicable and basically look for a better picture of God elsewhere.

That's what I did.

And I don't presume to invalidate your experience. You may well have found God in other traditions, and that is part of the point of the OP. God can be found in other religious traditons.

But I still find Him in my culturally inherited Judaic-Christian heritage, believe it or not!

Most Jews, and many Christians are not bigoted, egocentric or chauvinistic...and they reflect their vision of God as found in the Bible.

They (we) are seeing something in our Abrahamic traditions that you may be missing.

[Divine Insight]

True or false in it's entirety? Is the Bible really that simple?

Yes, it is. In fact it is so simple that the only real miracle associated with it is the miracle that anyone could believe that it actually describes an infinitely intelligent God.

Is life as simple as t that true/false dichomy? Seems simplistic to me.

There is nothing innate to life itself that demands that some jealous creator who is supposed to represent divine benevolence will unless his immature wrath upon anyone who refuses to believe in him on no good evidence and do unimaginably evil things to them.

I don't see how you can compare life with something as simplistic and barbaric as Hebrew mythology.

We both agree that the Bible contains some absurdities and atrocities attributed to God. But the Bible is so much more than those attributions. The poetic devotion of he Psalms, the altruism taught by Jesus, the forgiveness proclaimed, etc, etc. Pretty good, considering the barbaric times from which the Bible emerged, wouldn't you say?

I see this as nothing more than a collection of diverse and often highly contradictory expressions of a belief in a supernatural entity by humans.

In fact, we keep referring to "The Bible" as though it represents some sort of single book, but it clearly doesn't it's really nothing more than a collection of myths from a single culture that merely appear to reflect various elements of other myths within the culture. Thus all of these stories (and poetic musings) have been collected together and canonized into a single "Holy Book" which actually ends up being extremely self-contradictory.

Why we should view this canon as having anything to do with any God is beyond me. It's clearly just the musings of men.

I don't see how we could claim that the Bible is a "TRUE" description of God, whilst simultaneously proclaiming that God is far greater than the Bible describes.

A true description, at least partially, but hardly complete.

It doesn't matter if it's incomplete, you can hardly demand that God is a bully who will be exceedingly mean and cruel to people for merely not even believing in him, and then claim that he could ALSO be totally different from this.

The Biblical God is a God who attempts to solve ALL his problems using crude violent, and barbaric methods. None of which ever have any positive outcome.

1. He curses a serpent to crawl on its belly and eat dirt the rest of the days of its life.
2. He curses Eve with greatly multiplied pain and sorrow in childbirth.,
3. He commands and supports male-chauvinism and that the husband shall rule over the wife.
4. He drowns out humans and animals in a Great Flood.
5. He turns Lot's wife into a pillar of salt.
6. Gives people a "Promised Land" that is inhabited by evil sinful heathens and commands that the people need to kill all this nasty people in order to obtain the "Promised Land" these heathens are currently living on.

Have you ever wondered why an OMNIPOTENT God couldn't even provide a pristine piece of real estate as a "Promised Land" that has no evil sinning culture living on it?

7. In Christianity this God even has his only begotten Son brutally beaten and crucified being nailed to a pole all as part of HIS PLAN.

Does this God even have a clue how to ever solve a problem intelligently?

I just don't see why a person who would like to imagine a "BETTER GOD" would even bother dragging the Bible along on the endeavor.

The mere fact that you are looking for a "Greater God" than the Bible portrays is already a statement that you are not pleased with the Biblical description of God. For if you were pleased with it why would you be searching for something "BETTER"?

The Bible is a good starting point, but it is not the end all, and be all.

Why would you even call it a good starting point?

I totally disagree. IMHO, it's an absolutely horrible starting point.

If I were going to recommend a good starting point for considering a possible God I would highly recommend Buddhism. It's a far more respectable picture of God than the Hebrew Bible.

If you want to imagine a God that is something greater than the Bible portrays God to be, it seems to me that you have no real choice left but to dismiss the Bible as simply having it all wrong.

All wrong?, I don't think you can support that assertion. On the contrary, there is another choice, that of doing the hard work of attempting to discern the good from the bad, the true from the false in the Bible.

When I say, that the Bible is "All Wrong", I mean "AS WRITTEN".

I don't mean to imply that you can't find anything good anywhere within the Biblical stories.

In other words, using Nazi Germany as an example I would say that Hitler's agenda was "All Wrong". Does this mean that you can't find examples where some Germans were doing GOOD THINGS within that culture? Of course not. I'm quite sure there were indeed Germans who were doing good things within that culture, but that doesn't change the fact that Hitler's agenda was "All Wrong".

God can't remain "TRUE" ,as described by the Bible, whilst God simultaneously breaks out of that mold and becomes something entirely different.

How can you have an anthropomorphic male patriarchal entity who threatens to harm people who refuse to obey him, suddenly become something ELSE and still claim that this original portrait is still "TRUE"?

Because he is not "entirely" portrayed that way. He is also portrayed as loving, forgiving, and patient. Granted, it is a mixed portrait.

That doesn't matter. I think Adolf Hitler was portrayed as loving babies, and wanting the best for the German people too. Does this negate what he was?

No it doesn't.

And the same thing is true of the Biblical God. Just because you have an unruly monster being nice on occasion doesn't make up for the fact that he's still an unruly monster.

It seems to me that if you want to accept that the Bible describes God, then you're pretty much stuck with having to go with what that book has to say.

But the negatives in the Bible is not all the Bible has to say about God.

Totally irrelevant for the reasons I just gave above.

Besides, why bother with a religion that has anything negative to say about God at all?

Why not start with Buddhism and then you won't have any negative baggage about God to carry around with you and constantly have to make excuses for?

If you want a GOOD religion why not just start out with a GOOD religion to begin with?

Why even bother starting with a dogma that even you confess contains a lot of horrible things about God?

How does that make any sense?

If you want a "Greater God", I would say that you're going to necessarily need to toss the Bible aside as being inapplicable and basically look for a better picture of God elsewhere.

That's what I did.

And I don't presume to invalidate your experience. You may well have found God in other traditions, and that is part of the point of the OP. God can be found in other religious traditons.

I'm not saying that I "found God". What I'm saying is that I found religions that have a far better description of "God".

Whether or not their actually exists a God is not something I can know. And I personally believe that this is true of all humans. I don't believe that there exists a human who knows whether any God exists or not. All they can do is imagine and hope that one does.

But I still find Him in my culturally inherited Judaic-Christian heritage, believe it or not!

It's not the least bit surprising that you would feel a connection to a culturally inherited heritage.

But that hardly excuses the horrible things in the Bible that even you concede exist.

Most Jews, and many Christians are not bigoted, egocentric or chauvinistic...and they reflect their vision of God as found in the Bible.

They (we) are seeing something in our Abrahamic traditions that you may be missing.

I disagree entirely.

You are not "seeing" something in the Abrahamic traditions that I am missing.

You, (by your very own admission), are simply ignoring the horrible things and sweeping them under the carpet, even all the while you are acknowledging that they are there!

The Jews and Christians simply ignore all the ignorant nasty stuff and just picking and choose the moral values that they personally approve of and condone.

I could do that too, but to be perfectly honest with you I don't see that as being a supportable position. All you are basically doing is saying, "I wish the Bible were like I would like for it to be and that it didn't contain all that troublesome immoral stuff."

That's really all you're saying.

But the fact of the matter is that it DOES contain all that troublesome immoral stuff.

So basically all you are saying is that you wish the Bible had described a better God so you ultimately wouldn't need to reach out toward other religions in an effort to make God "Greater" than the authors of the Bible were able to create.

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 5 by Divine Insight]

For me it's as simple as this, DI...God as portayed by primitive Hebews does not live up to his own standards, as in the Ten Commandments.

I chose to embrace the Ten, and ignore the distortions. Millions of Jews and Christians do the same.

They seem to understand that the real YHVH isn't as brutal as he is portrayed to be. And they embrace YHVH's high standards, as taught in the Ten Commandments.

YHVH inspired those high standards, if not actually wrote them in stone.

Only a minority of literalist Christians try to make excuses for the distortions, ie the absurdities and atrocities in the narratives about YHVH.

I think the vast majority of Jews and Christians either intuitively, or consciously realize that context demands we ignore the bad stuff, and embrace the good.

Do you know of any Christians that call for the stoning of sinners nowadays? Or for genocide?

How do you figure they are able to sift the wheat from the chaff in formulating their values?

Millions of Christians and Jews have found deep wells of inspiration and Spiritual nourishment in their own Biblical traditions.

And that does not in and of itself discredit "competing" world religions, except in the minds of literalits, Evangelicals and Fundamentalists.

But they don't speak for any but a small and loud minority of Christians.

[JehovahsWitness]

For me it's as simple as this, DI...God as portayed by primitive Hebews does not live up to his own standards, as in the Ten Commandments.

Indeed your accusation echos that of Satan in the garden of Eden that accused the Creator of being a liar that misused his power. However, that and your own accusation is false, the God the bible does not vary in his fidelity to his own righteous standards.

All who accuse Jehovah of injustice will one day answer for their blasphemy, until then Jehovah(s Faithful Witnesses will stand up and publically defend him as long as we have breath in our bodies!


JEHOVAHS WITNESS

[Elijah John]

For me it's as simple as this, DI...God as portayed by primitive Hebews does not live up to his own standards, as in the Ten Commandments.

Indeed your accusation echos that of Satan in the garden of Eden that accused the Creator of being a liar that misused his power. However, that and your own accusation is false, the God the bible does not vary in his fidelity to his own righteous standards.

All who accuse Jehovah of injustice will one day answer for their blasphemy, until then Jehovah(s Faithful Witnesses will stand up and publically defend him as long as we have breath in our bodies!


JEHOVAHS WITNESS

Defend this:

Exodus 21.20 If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. 21 if, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property.

Is that God's order? Or is it God who says "Thou shalt not kill"? Are you going to try to defend the indefensible here?

Note carefully my use of the phase God as portayed...Not accusing YHVH Himself of injustice, but I am suggesting the Bible writers occasionally( if not often), misrepresent the benign character OF YHVH, projecting their own cultural bias and barbarism on Him.

Please be more careful with your accusations of blasphemy and your comparison to Satan. That's worse than calling someone"Hitler".

[JehovahsWitness]

Exodus 21.20 If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. 21 if, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property.

Is that God's order? Or is it God who says "Thou shalt not kill"? Are you going to try to defend the indefensible here?

# WHY DOES THE MOSAIC LAW NOT CONDEMN BEATING SLAVES (Ex 21:20)?

It is false to say that the law does not condemn beating slaves. The Mosaic law specifically instructs the Hebrews to treat others as they would themselves want to be treated - thus brutality and beatings were ILLEGAL under the Mosaic law (see Leviticus 19:18 ) It is false to say the law had nothing to say about beating slaves or that it encouraged mistreatment of anyone (foreigner or native, slave or freeman/woman)since the offer of protection against mistreatement and brutality was one of the legal systme's underlying principles. .

Punishment however was legislated in a way that reflected what was practical, provable and enforcible. Basing a complaint on eyewitness testimony would only result in those bent on abuse doing so in private, so, the law then, as is the case today in most societies, required that physical proof of abuse be produced - - a broken tooth, bone, loss of an eye etc - before matters could be taken to the authorities; a broken tooth, bone, loss of an eye etc - before matters could be taken to the authorities; Any such injuries would result in the the AUTOMATIC LIBERATION of the slave (This brings to mind the fictional American TV drama "Roots" where an African slave has his foot cut off to stop him running away, such brutality would never have been permitted under Mosaic law.)

The above law would also have served as a strong deterrent against abuse since it is didfficult to severely beat somone and not damage their bodies in some way. Furthermore beating your slave could lead to a substantial financial sanction for the master since the usual value for a slave was 30 shekels (compare Ex 21:32) and his liberation would therefore have represented considerable financial loss. In short, the clear message being sent by such a law was "If you beat your slave, you run a strong risk of losing your slave. He walks home a free man and you lose 30 shekels!"



# Why would a Master not be punished if his slave died a few days after a beating?

Premeditated murder of a slave (or free man) automatically carried the death penelty. However, unintentional manslaughter (of slave or freeman) did not. If a slave owner wanted to kill his slave (which is unlikely because slaves represented significant financial benefits) it is unlikely he would chose a method that meant the slave died several days after the attack. The slaves lingering for some time indicates that the beating was not intended to kill him and the master would not be executed.

. If of course the slave lingered and eventually pulled through, he would be freed and would escape such a tyrant, but if unfortuately the slave died, it would as stated be judged as unintentional manslaughter and the death penalty not demanded.

[JehovahsWitness]

Not accusing YHVH of injustice, but I am suggesting the Bible writers occasionally( if not often), misrepresent the benign character OF YHVH, projecting their own cultural bias and barbarism on Him.

No, you are accusing God of incompetence and or indifference. Any God that claims to be almighty that allows his word to either be corrupted or for himself to be misrepresented therein is incompetent. He either lacks the desire or the power to produce a single book and ensure it only contains that which is accurate. Therefore the claim to be ALMIGHTY (El Shaddai) is a lie.

Or His claim to be loving and want a Relationship with his creation based on truth (not inaccuracies) is a lie. A God that cannot assure the production and protection of His word but fails to do so and then claims he loves us enough to call us to know him through that same (inaccurate word that misrepresents him and his standards) is a liar.

Which of the above of you accuse God of being? Incompetent or indifferent? For He cannot be neither from the position you hold

JW