FINDING BIBLE TRUTH - THE NATURE OF GOD

We are continuously being exhorted to 'Know God'. It consequently seems reasonable to expect that from the Bible we should get a clear and consistent picture of the nature of God, of his qualities, powers, and intentions.

Conventionally most Christians speak of God as pure Spirit, as an intelligent entity free of the constraints of space and time and without material substance. These are of course mere words and while they in some sense define what God is not, they do not sufficiently explain what God is, since we can have no real concept of such a disembodied entity.

In something of the same sense we may think of a human spirit, or soul, having a continuing identity, retaining individual thought, memory and senses, after the death of the physical body. But thought and the ability to recognise the input of our physical senses are attributes of the material brain, memory exists as a pattern of connections and chemical states within the material brain, and to translate these attributes to an entity without a material brain, in the total absence of any evidence, strains our understanding.

Various concepts of spirit entities - angels, demons, ghosts, evil spirits in an infinity of forms have always been with us, met variously with attitudes ranging from total acceptance to total disbelief. We are regularly assured that they can interact with matter - Poltergeists can throw things, Angels can become visible, speak and heal, and in Genesis may even father children, ghosts can rattle their chains. The readiness of people to believe in a spirit world (as distinct from the world of the spirit) is widely exploited for gain - libraries of books trade on the credulity of their readers and many men have grown rich. The resulting scepticism can be a serious barrier to an understanding of a spiritual God.

A purely Spirit God and a Spirit soul imply an order of non-physical existence for which we have no template, for which there is no direct evidence, in respect of which we are totally deficient in knowledge. Philosophers and theologians have discussed endlessly the metaphysical concepts without reaching any satisfactory conclusions or consensus. Unless the Bible can provide answers we should admit that the true nature of God (or of the soul) has not been disclosed to us and cannot be known.

Christian catechisms require belief in a Trinity - that there is ONE God who eternally exists in three persons, The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This doctrine was imposed by the Roman Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD in order to terminate a major schism between the followers of Arius, who declared the Son to have been the first creation of God, a second faction led by Athanasius which declared the three to be distinct but co-existent essences which together comprised the Deity, and Sabellianism which thought the three to be no more than different attributes or facets of the one God. In order to prevent the early Church from tearing itself apart Constantine made what appears as a political rather than a theological decision in favour of the largest faction, and the Trinitarian concept prevailed; initially only the Father and the Son were declared to be 'consubstantial', the Holy Spirit being formally added at a later date. The factions were left to interpret the word 'consubstantial' as they wished. The main direct Biblical support is at 1 John 5:7: "For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one". Only the very late Greek manuscripts contain this text, suggesting that it may be a late addition, deliberately inserted to support the Trinitarian decision. The penultimate line of Matthew: 19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, is so contrary to the apparent mindset of the Apostles in the early days that it may also be a later addition.

What else does the Bible say?

Gen 1:26 "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;" The meaning of this is debated endlessly - some say that the word 'likeness' has to mean physical appearance, others speak of 'likeness' between the human and divine intellect. Does 'likeness' mean that all the qualities of God are duplicated in Man? That like Man God feels anger, honour, pride, generosity, lust, self-sacrifice, jealousy, mercifulness, vengefulness - all that we judge to be virtues and all that we judge to be vices? One thing must be clear - if we are ever to understand God we must in some degree be capable of similar thought processes. Of practical importance is whether God and humanity are driven by similar emotions and wants.

There are a few direct claims, such as Exodus 20:5 "For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God". Other extracts can be found which attest to the great majority of the human qualities, both good and bad. If these are taken at face value the Bible suggests that the mind of God appears, to all intents and purposes, the same as the mind of Man. However anyone inclined to get carried away by the words of Genesis 3:22 "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, should consider the gulf between an all-powerful God and his own feebleness.

Those who would wish to consider God to be without flaw will find support in the claims of the Old Testament, but perhaps a better judgement can be derived from the actions that the Bible records - although the result may be a judgement on the nature of the Old Testament rather than on the nature of God. You may then find that the picture that emerges from the Old Testament is very different from that emerging from the New, which would imply either that the nature of God had changed, that God had decided to present a different facet of his nature, or that one of the two pictures is untrue.

JUSTICE.

Consider the last of the plagues of Egypt - the killing of the firstborn of Egypt:
What was their offence? Pharoah (not the first-born) refused to let the Israelites go.
Why did Pharoah refuse? Exodus 11.10: "and the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the children of Israel go out of his land".
The sentence? If the population of Egypt is reckoned at around five million, with an average family of five, approaching a million innocent human beings died.
Justice?

Or consider David's census in 2Samuel:24
The offence? David orders a census against the advice of priests and army.
Why? Apparently on God's instructions.
The sentence? God sends a plague on Israel - seventy thousand died.
Justice? Was David punished? Or the unoffending seventy thousand?

Or consider the destruction of Sodom:
The offence? The men were guilty of sodomy.
The sentence? Everyone died - men, women and children.
Justice?

Or consider the case of Noah's son - Ham:
The offence? Ham saw Noah when he was drunk and naked.
The sentence? For Ham - none, but his son Canaan was made a servant of servants.
Justice?

MERCY.

Consider the fate of any city that opposed the Israelites in their conquest of Canaan. Everyone was slaughtered - everyone. Today we would regard such action as a crime against humanity. About the only mercy recorded was to a woman who had sheltered Israel's spies in Jericho - if this can be regarded as a matter of mercy rather than reward.

VENGEFULNESS.

In the time of Samuel God ordered the Israelites to go back and wipe out the Amalekites. Some hundreds of years earlier the Amalekites had objected to a horde of nearly two million Israelites (supposedly) swarming like locusts over their barren country and tried unsuccessfully to resist them.

MORALITY.

Time and again God is reported as having taken or instigated actions that contradict common morality, such as deception (Jer 20:7, 2Chron 18:22), supporting slavery (Deut 15:17, Joel 3:8), adultery (2Sam 12:11-12, Hosea 1:2 and 3:1-2). The list is very long. Perhaps the genocide and ethnic cleansing carried out in Canaan should be included here.

WRATH.

Innumerable examples - try Deut 13:17, Judges 3:8, Ezek 5:13 as a start.

LOVE.

There is a great deal more fear than love in the Old Testament, although God is said to demand love as part of his covenant. The true nature of this type of contract requirement was understood – failure to return love would be punished..

CRUELTY

Using torture against captives as in 2 Samuel 12:26-31. Possibly David was not acting under orders here, but there is no sign of regret or condemnation in the Bible.

CONCLUSION

The depiction of God in the Old Testament caused the ancient Gnostic Christians to believe that Jehovah was a defective, inferior Creator- God. (The Gnostic Christians were one of the three main groups in the early Jewish Christian movement). They named the Creator-God the Demiurge, and viewed him as fundamentally evil, jealous, rigid, lacking in compassion, and prone to genocide. Gnostics worshiped a different deity, called the Supreme Father God or Supreme God of Truth who was remote from human affairs; he was seen as unknowable and undetectable by human senses.

It is I believe proper to ask whether the Old Testament picture of God - at least before the image is softened by the humanity of men like Isaiah - carries any reality. Perhaps it is just a picture of the sort of tribal deity that the priestly writers thought Israel needed. A case of a God being defined by man. It is said, very properly, that the Bible is a theological history, not a secular one, and that among other things it teaches how men should live and interact with each other and with God. In the area of morality three things that must be questioned are clearly taught by the Old Testament: that God believes that the end justifies the most atrocious of means, that individual human life is of no consequence, that the interests of his chosen people, Israel, are overwhelmingly more important than those of any others. Can you believe that such lessons were intended by God, or that the writers of the Bible were inspired to present such lessons? If you cannot you must consider whether the Old Testament is, at least in part, the work of Man rather than God.

The God of the New Testament comes out much more clearly and consistently in love and compassion, although the picture is tarnished by Revelation which reverts at times to the old brutalities.

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