Top 13 How Does God Describe Himself 12858 Votes This Answer

Exodus 34:6-7 God’s Description Of Himself – Insights From Tom

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• Summary of article content: Articles about Exodus 34:6-7 God’s Description Of Himself – Insights From Tom He is compassionate and gracious. God feels for all of your pain and struggles. He is patient and gentle with His people. God works with those … …
• Most searched keywords: Whether you are looking for Exodus 34:6-7 God’s Description Of Himself – Insights From Tom He is compassionate and gracious. God feels for all of your pain and struggles. He is patient and gentle with His people. God works with those … “And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, The LORD, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the…
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A few insights into God’s Word

4 thoughts on “Exodus 346-7 God’s Description Of Himself”

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What God says about Himself – No Fuss Natural

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What God Says About Himself – Study Driven Faith

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• Summary of article content: Articles about What God Says About Himself – Study Driven Faith We thought it would be a fun and illuminating exercise to list many of the verses in the Bible that God says something about Who and What He … …
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How is God Described in the Bible? | 7 Qualities of God

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• Summary of article content: Articles about How is God Described in the Bible? | 7 Qualities of God Throughout Scripture, God is described as Spirit, a person, life, self-existent, unchanging, unlimited by time and space, and a unity. …
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The 7 Special Qualities of God

God is a Spirit

God is a Person

God is Life

God is Self-Existent

God is Unchanging

God is Unlimited By Time and Space

God is a Unity

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Ten Ways God Describes Himself To Us – Resources/Articles ‹ Bulverde Church of Christ

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• Summary of article content: Articles about Ten Ways God Describes Himself To Us – Resources/Articles ‹ Bulverde Church of Christ In His written word, God uses relationships that we DO understand to describe His nature to us. The attentive reader may count 11 examples … …
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Here’s How God Describes Himself – Guidelines Devotional

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• Summary of article content: Articles about Here’s How God Describes Himself – Guidelines Devotional Before He gave his laws, He described himself, not as a giver of laws but as, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to … …
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Six Ways God Describes Himself That May Surprise You

Six Ways God Describes Himself That May Surprise You

Exodus 34: 6-7a says “And He (The Lord), passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.’”

This description may come to mind when we think of Jesus in the New Testament, but these are the words God chooses to describe Himself in the Old Testament. They are even more precious and impacting when we put them in context.

God reveals Himself to Moses in this way, the second time he went up to meet with God in order to receive the 10 commandments. That means the newly formed children of Israel had already seen God’s mighty works and fallen away worshipping a golden calf of all things. They worshipped a statue instead of the living God! They had indulged and over indulged in revelry, just two chapters before.

Yet this is how God described Himself to them: a compassionate, gracious, forgiving God.

Does anyone else breathe a big sigh of relief when you read this passage? These verses have been life changing for me. This declaration from God Himself means I can run to Him, rather than away from Him in fear.

Despite their sinful choices, Moses begs God to go with them and show them His Glory.

At this point, God had already enforced the 10 plagues on Egypt while not allowing them to touch His own people. Was this not God’s glory? They had already passed through the parted waters of the Red Sea safely while the waters washed away the enemy pursuing them. Wasn’t that pretty glorious? They had been directed by the cloud that covered them by day, and then they were protected by the fire that surrounded them by night. Is there more glory to be seen? They had been given water from the rock, manna and quail from heaven and their shoes still hadn’t worn out in all their years of traveling. Really, had they not seen God’s glory yet?

Sadly, even after experiencing all of these miracles, they turned away from God and worshipped a man made image.

Yet, in the midst of their brokenness, God comes down and stands with Moses to show him His glory.

God declares, “This is who I Am”…

I am compassionate,

I am gracious,

I am slow to anger,

I am abounding in love,

I am faithful,

I am forgiving…

They didn’t deserve His glory. They didn’t earn His glory. He could be none other. This is who God is!

On one of our recent trips to India a group of prostitutes approached one of our pastors for help. Several had AIDS, most were abused, hopeless, broken and poor. Our Indian friend explained even though he didn’t have money to fix their problems, he did know the Answer to their deepest needs. They were stunned and overwhelmed to hear there was a God who loved them and would forgive them of their sins, even their sins. In the face of such compassion and grace they surrendered and encountered a forgiving God. We watched them as they joined us at church in the front row, kneeling with hands raised, worshipping God, with tears streaming down their faces washing their hearts and lives.

This is God’s glory!

This is who God is, He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, forgiving and abounding in love and faithfulness. Our God is glorious!

IN RESPONSE

Have you misunderstood who God is? In the midst of your brokenness let God come stand with you and show you who He is. God’s love is bigger than your sin. Today is the day to stop running from God, confess your sin and run into His compassion, grace and forgiveness.

By Julie Steadman, Church Planting School Staff Member

God Character Analysis in Bible: The Old Testament

In the Old Testament, God is unique, sovereign, and unchanging. He differs from Greek gods, whose faults and quarrels cause events. His unchanging nature is hinted at by his names. In biblical Hebrew, God is called “YAHWEH,” meaning “to be.” This title is similar to the title God uses with Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” However, the God presented in Old Testament does contradict himself at times. In the course of two chapters in Exodus, God threatens to destroy the Israelites, relents, and then pronounces himself loving, forgiving, and slow to anger. God grants himself the power of self-description; he is whoever he says he is.

Each biblical writer gives God human characteristics. For example, God speaks. We do not know how his listeners recognize that it is he who is speaking or what he sounds like, but God certainly embraces the ability to articulate his intentions through the human convention of language. Also, God assumes human form. He appears as an angel, as a group of three men, and as a mysterious army commander. In a sense, God takes on human qualities like a costume that can also be taken off, since his specific appearances do not offer a complete picture of him. Still, these manifestations suggest that there is a fundamental humanity to the personality of the Hebrew God. God casually walks in the garden with Adam and Eve. He even physically wrestles Jacob and allows Jacob to beat him. These humble and endearing qualities of God contrast his later appearances as a pillar of fire and a thunderous mountain. The more extreme manifestations are, like the human manifestations, only a part of God’s character rather than his sole mode of existence.

God’s initial interaction with humankind is unsolicited. Noah, Abraham, and Moses do not ask God to form a relationship with them. Even when God is unseen, his immense power over human fate lurks beneath the events of the Old Testament narrative. On the surface, the characters’ experiences are filled with suspense. The characters submit to chance and have a desperate, irrational faith in God. When God speaks or appears, we realize he has been in control all along, and the fear or suspense seems unfounded, trite, or comical. Amidst the gravity of human events, God’s willingness to cause momentous events in order to teach a lesson shows him to be a strangely playful character.

Wikipedia

This article is about the belief of a supreme being in monotheistic thought. For the general faith in a supreme being, see Deity . For God in specific religions, see Conceptions of God . For other uses, see God (disambiguation)

Principal object of faith in monotheism

In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith.[1] God is usually conceived of as being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent as well as having an eternal and necessary existence. God is most often held to be incorporeal, with said characteristic being related to conceptions of transcendence or immanence.[1][2][3]

Some religions describe God without reference to gender, while others use terminology that is gender-specific and gender-biased. God has been conceived as either personal or impersonal. In theism, God is the creator and sustainer of the universe, while in deism, God is the creator, but not the sustainer, of the universe. In pantheism, God is the universe itself. Atheism is an absence of belief in any God or deity, while agnosticism deems the existence of God unknown or unknowable. God has also been conceived as the source of all moral obligation, and the “greatest conceivable existent”.[1] Many notable philosophers have developed arguments for and against the existence of God.[4] God is referred to by different names depending on the language and cultural tradition with titles sometimes used referring to God’s attributes.

Etymology and usage

The Mesha Stele bears the earliest known reference (840 BCE) to the Israelite God Yahweh.

The earliest written form of the Germanic word God comes from the 6th-century Christian Codex Argenteus. The English word itself is derived from the Proto-Germanic * ǥuđan. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European form * ǵhu-tó-m was likely based on the root * ǵhau(ə)-, which meant either “to call” or “to invoke”.[5] The Germanic words for God were originally neuter—applying to both genders—but during the process of the Christianization of the Germanic peoples from their indigenous Germanic paganism, the words became a masculine syntactic form.[6] In the English language, capitalization is used when the word is used as a proper noun, as well as for other names by which a god is known.[7] Consequently, the capitalized form of god is not used for multiple gods or when used to refer to the generic idea of a deity.[8][9] The English word God and its counterparts in other languages are normally used for any and all conceptions and, in spite of significant differences between religions, the term remains an English translation common to all.

El is God in Hebrew, but in Judaism, God is also given a proper name, the tetragrammaton YHWH, in origin possibly the name of an Edomite or Midianite deity, Yahweh. In many English translations of the Bible, when the word LORD is in all capitals, it signifies that the word represents the tetragrammaton.[10] In Judaism some of the Hebrew titles of God are considered holy names.

Allāh (Arabic: الله) is the Arabic term with no plural used by Muslims and Arabic speaking Christians and Jews meaning “The God”, while ʾilāh (Arabic: إِلَٰه plural `āliha آلِهَة) is the term used for a deity or a god in general.[11][12][13] Muslims also use a multitude of other titles for God.

In Hinduism, Brahman is often considered a monistic concept of God.[14] God may also be given a proper name in monotheistic currents of Hinduism which emphasize the personal nature of God, with early references to his name as Krishna-Vasudeva in Bhagavata or later Vishnu and Hari.[15] Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa is the term used in Balinese Hinduism.[16]

In Chinese religion, Shangdi is conceived as the progenitor (first ancestor) of the universe, intrinsic to it and constantly bringing order to it.

Ahura Mazda is the name for God used in Zoroastrianism. “Mazda”, or rather the Avestan stem-form Mazdā-, nominative Mazdå, reflects Proto-Iranian *Mazdāh (female). It is generally taken to be the proper name of the spirit, and like its Sanskrit cognate medhā, means “intelligence” or “wisdom”. Both the Avestan and Sanskrit words reflect Proto-Indo-Iranian *mazdhā-, from Proto-Indo-European mn̩sdʰeh 1 , literally meaning “placing (dʰeh 1 ) one’s mind (*mn̩-s)”, hence “wise”. Meanwhile 101 other names are also in use.[18]

Waheguru (Punjabi: vāhigurū) is a term most often used in Sikhism to refer to God.[19] It means “Wonderful Teacher” in the Punjabi language. Vāhi (a Middle Persian borrowing) means “wonderful” and guru (Sanskrit: guru) is a term denoting “teacher”. Waheguru is also described by some as an experience of ecstasy which is beyond all descriptions. The most common usage of the word “Waheguru” is in the greeting Sikhs use with each other – Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh “Wonderful Lord’s Khalsa, Victory is to the Wonderful Lord.”

Baha, the “greatest” name for God in the Baháʼí Faith, is Arabic for “All-Glorious”.[20]

Other names for God include Aten[21] in ancient Egyptian Atenism where Aten was proclaimed to be the one “true” Supreme Being and creator of the universe,[22] Chukwu in Igbo,[23] and Hayyi Rabbi in Mandaeism.[24][25]

General conceptions

The philosophy of religion recognizes the following as essential attributes of God:

Omnipotence (limitless power)

Omniscience (limitless knowledge)

Eternity (God is not bound by time)

Goodness (God is wholly benevolent)

Unity (God cannot be divided)

Simplicity (God is not composite)

Incorporeality (God is not material)

Immutability (God is not subject to change)

Impassability (God is not affected)

There is no clear consensus on the nature or the existence of God.[27] The Abrahamic conceptions of God include the monotheistic definition of God in Judaism, the trinitarian view of Christians, and the Islamic concept of God.

There were also various conceptions of God in the ancient Greco-Roman world, such as Aristotle’s view of an unmoved mover, the Neoplatonic concept of the One and the pantheistic God of Stoic Physics.

The dharmic religions differ in their view of the divine: views of God in Hinduism vary by region, sect, and caste, ranging from monotheistic to polytheistic. Many polytheistic religions share the idea of a creator deity, although having a name other than “God” and without all of the other roles attributed to a singular God by monotheistic religions. Sikhism is sometimes seen as being pantheistic about God.

Śramaṇa religions are generally non-creationist, while also holding that there are divine beings (called Devas in Buddhism and Jainism) of limited power and lifespan. Jainism has generally rejected creationism, holding that soul substances (Jīva) are uncreated and that time is beginningless.[28] Depending on one’s interpretation and tradition, Buddhism can be conceived as being either non-theistic, trans-theistic, pantheistic, or polytheistic. However, Buddhism has generally rejected the specific monotheistic view of a Creator God. The Buddha criticizes the theory of creationism in the early Buddhist texts.[29][30] Also, major Indian Buddhist philosophers, such as Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Dharmakirti and Buddhaghosa, consistently critiqued Creator God views put forth by Hindu thinkers.[31][32][33]

Oneness

Trinitarians believe that God is composed of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Monotheists believe that there is only one god, and may also believe this god is worshipped in different religions under different names. The view that all theists actually worship the same god, whether they know it or not, is especially emphasized in the Baháʼí Faith, Hinduism[34] and Sikhism.[35] Idolatry, equating others to God in some way, is often strongly condemned in monotheistic traditions.

In Christianity, the doctrine of the Trinity describes God as one God in three divine Persons (each of the three Persons is God himself). The Most Holy Trinity comprises[36] God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit. In the past centuries, this fundamental mystery of the Christian faith was also summarized by the Latin formula Sancta Trinitas, Unus Deus (Holy Trinity, Unique God), reported in the Litanias Lauretanas.

Islam’s most fundamental concept is tawhid meaning “oneness” or “uniqueness”.[37] The first pillar of Islam is an oath that forms the basis of the religion and which non-Muslims wishing to convert must recite, declares that “I testify that there is no deity except God and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.”[38] Muslims repudiate the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, comparing it to polytheism. In Islam, God is transcendent and does not resemble any of his creations in any way. Thus, Muslims are not iconodules, and are not expected to visualize God.[39]

Henotheism is the belief and worship of a single god while accepting the existence or possible existence of other deities.[40]

Theism, deism, and pantheism

Theism generally holds that God exists realistically, objectively, and independently of human thought; that God created and sustains everything; that God is omnipotent and eternal; and that God is personal and interacting with the universe through, for example, religious experience and the prayers of humans.[41] Theism holds that God is both transcendent and immanent; thus, God is simultaneously infinite and, in some way, present in the affairs of the world.[42] Not all theists subscribe to all of these propositions, but each usually subscribes to some of them (see, by way of comparison, family resemblance).[41] Catholic theology holds that God is infinitely simple and is not involuntarily subject to time. Most theists hold that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, although this belief raises questions about God’s responsibility for evil and suffering in the world. Some theists ascribe to God a self-conscious or purposeful limiting of omnipotence, omniscience, or benevolence. Open Theism, by contrast, contends that, due to the nature of time, God’s omniscience does not mean the deity can predict the future. Theism is sometimes used to refer in general to any belief in a god or gods, i.e., monotheism or polytheism.[43][44]

God Blessing the Seventh Day, 1805 watercolor painting by , 1805 watercolor painting by William Blake

Deism holds that God is wholly transcendent: God exists, but does not intervene in the world beyond what was necessary to create it.[42] In this view, God is not anthropomorphic, and neither answers prayers nor produces miracles. Common in Deism is a belief that God has no interest in humanity and may not even be aware of humanity. Pandeism combines Deism with Pantheistic beliefs.[45][46][47] Pandeism is proposed to explain as to Deism why God would create a universe and then abandon it,[48] and as to Pantheism, the origin and purpose of the universe.[48][49]

Pantheism holds that God is the universe and the universe is God, whereas Panentheism holds that God contains, but is not identical to, the Universe.[50] It is also the view of the Liberal Catholic Church; Theosophy; some views of Hinduism except Vaishnavism, which believes in panentheism; Sikhism; some divisions of Neopaganism and Taoism, along with many varying denominations and individuals within denominations. Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, paints a pantheistic/panentheistic view of God—which has wide acceptance in Hasidic Judaism, particularly from their founder The Baal Shem Tov—but only as an addition to the Jewish view of a personal god, not in the original pantheistic sense that denies or limits persona to God.[citation needed]

Other concepts

Dystheism, which is related to theodicy, is a form of theism which holds that God is either not wholly good or is fully malevolent as a consequence of the problem of evil. One such example comes from Dostoevsky’s 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov, in which Ivan Karamazov rejects God on the grounds that he allows children to suffer.[51][non-primary source needed]

In modern times, some more abstract concepts have been developed, such as process theology and open theism. The contemporaneous French philosopher Michel Henry has however proposed a phenomenological approach and definition of God as phenomenological essence of Life.[52]

God has also been conceived as being incorporeal (immaterial), a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the “greatest conceivable existent”.[1] These attributes were all supported to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologian philosophers, including Maimonides,[53] Augustine of Hippo,[53] and Al-Ghazali,[4] respectively.

Non-theistic views

Non-theist views about God also vary. Some non-theists avoid the concept of God, whilst accepting that it is significant to many; other non-theists understand God as a symbol of human values and aspirations. The nineteenth-century English atheist Charles Bradlaugh declared that he refused to say “There is no God”, because “the word ‘God’ is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation”;[54] he said more specifically that he disbelieved in the Christian god. Stephen Jay Gould proposed an approach dividing the world of philosophy into what he called “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA). In this view, questions of the supernatural, such as those relating to the existence and nature of God, are non-empirical and are the proper domain of theology. The methods of science should then be used to answer any empirical question about the natural world, and theology should be used to answer questions about ultimate meaning and moral value. In this view, the perceived lack of any empirical footprint from the magisterium of the supernatural onto natural events makes science the sole player in the natural world.[55]

Another view, advanced by Richard Dawkins, is that the existence of God is an empirical question, on the grounds that “a universe with a god would be a completely different kind of universe from one without, and it would be a scientific difference.”[56] Carl Sagan argued that the doctrine of a Creator of the Universe was difficult to prove or disprove and that the only conceivable scientific discovery that could disprove the existence of a Creator (not necessarily a God) would be the discovery that the universe is infinitely old.[57]

Stephen Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow state in their 2010 book, The Grand Design, that it is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. Both authors claim however, that it is possible to answer these questions purely within the realm of science, and without invoking any divine beings.[58]

Agnosticism and atheism

Agnosticism is the view that the truth values of certain claims—especially metaphysical and religious claims such as whether God, the divine or the supernatural exist—are unknown and perhaps unknowable.[59][60][61]

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.[62][63] In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities, although it can be defined as a lack of belief in the existence of any deities, rather than a positive belief in the nonexistence of any deities.[64]

Anthropomorphism

Pascal Boyer argues that while there is a wide array of supernatural concepts found around the world, in general, supernatural beings tend to behave much like people. The construction of gods and spirits like persons is one of the best known traits of religion. He cites examples from Greek mythology, which is, in his opinion, more like a modern soap opera than other religious systems.[65] Bertrand du Castel and Timothy Jurgensen demonstrate through formalization that Boyer’s explanatory model matches physics’ epistemology in positing not directly observable entities as intermediaries.[66] Anthropologist Stewart Guthrie contends that people project human features onto non-human aspects of the world because it makes those aspects more familiar. Sigmund Freud also suggested that god concepts are projections of one’s father.[67]

Likewise, Émile Durkheim was one of the earliest to suggest that gods represent an extension of human social life to include supernatural beings. In line with this reasoning, psychologist Matt Rossano contends that when humans began living in larger groups, they may have created gods as a means of enforcing morality. In small groups, morality can be enforced by social forces such as gossip or reputation. However, it is much harder to enforce morality using social forces in much larger groups. Rossano indicates that by including ever-watchful gods and spirits, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups.[68]

Existence

Arguments about the existence of God typically include empirical, deductive, and inductive types. Different views include that: “God does not exist” (strong atheism); “God almost certainly does not exist” (de facto atheism); “no one knows whether God exists” (agnosticism);[69] “God exists, but this cannot be proven or disproven” (de facto theism); and that “God exists and this can be proven” (strong theism).[55]

Countless arguments have been proposed to prove the existence of God.[70] Some of the most notable arguments are the Five Ways of Aquinas, the Argument from desire proposed by C.S. Lewis, and the Ontological Argument formulated both by Anselm and René Descartes.[71]

Anselm’s approach was to define God as, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”. Famed pantheist philosopher Baruch Spinoza would later carry this idea to its extreme: “By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of infinite attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence.” For Spinoza, the whole of the natural universe is made of one substance, God, or its equivalent, Nature.[72] His proof for the existence of God was a variation of the Ontological argument.[73]

Scientist Isaac Newton saw the nontrinitarian God[74] as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation.[75] Nevertheless, he rejected polymath Leibniz’ thesis that God would necessarily make a perfect world which requires no intervention from the creator. In Query 31 of the Opticks, Newton simultaneously made an argument from design and for the necessity of intervention:

For while comets move in very eccentric orbs in all manner of positions, blind fate could never make all the planets move one and the same way in orbs concentric, some inconsiderable irregularities excepted which may have arisen from the mutual actions of comets and planets on one another, and which will be apt to increase, till this system wants a reformation.[76]

Thomas Aquinas asserted that the existence of God is self-evident in itself, but not to us: “Therefore I say that this proposition, “God exists”, of itself is self-evident, for the predicate is the same as the subject…. Now because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self-evident to us; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in their nature—namely, by effects.”[77] Thomas believed that the existence of God can be demonstrated. Briefly in the Summa theologiae and more extensively in the Summa contra Gentiles, he considered in great detail five arguments for the existence of God, widely known as the quinque viae (Five Ways).

For the original text of the five proofs, see quinque viae

Motion: Some things undoubtedly move, though cannot cause their own motion. Since there can be no infinite chain of causes of motion, there must be a First Mover not moved by anything else, and this is what everyone understands by God. Causation: As in the case of motion, nothing can cause itself, and an infinite chain of causation is impossible, so there must be a First Cause, called God. Existence of necessary and the unnecessary: Our experience includes things certainly existing but apparently unnecessary. Not everything can be unnecessary, for then once there was nothing and there would still be nothing. Therefore, we are compelled to suppose something that exists necessarily, having this necessity only from itself; in fact itself the cause for other things to exist. Gradation: If we can notice a gradation in things in the sense that some things are more hot, good, etc., there must be a superlative that is the truest and noblest thing, and so most fully existing. This then, we call God (Note: Thomas does not ascribe actual qualities to God Himself). Ordered tendencies of nature: A direction of actions to an end is noticed in all bodies following natural laws. Anything without awareness tends to a goal under the guidance of one who is aware. This we call God (Note that even when we guide objects, in Thomas’s view, the source of all our knowledge comes from God as well).[78]

Some theologians, such as the scientist and theologian Alister McGrath, argue that the existence of God is not a question that can be answered using the scientific method.[79][80] Agnostic Stephen Jay Gould argues that science and religion are not in conflict and do not overlap.[81]

Some findings in the fields of cosmology, evolutionary biology and neuroscience are interpreted by some atheists (including Lawrence M. Krauss and Sam Harris) as evidence that God is an imaginary entity only, with no basis in reality.[82][83] These atheists argue that a single, omniscient God who is imagined to have created the universe and is particularly attentive to the lives of humans has been imagined, embellished and promulgated in a trans-generational manner.[84] Richard Dawkins interprets such findings not only as a lack of evidence for the material existence of such a God, but as extensive evidence to the contrary.[55]

Specific characteristics

The characteristics attributed often differ according to the conceptions of God in the tradition from which they arise. Many traditions see God as eternal and incorporeal and is seen as the perfect and constant embodiment of all virtues, powers and values.[85] Many characteristics are described in human terms and Christian theologian Alister McGrath writes that one has to understand a “personal god” as an analogy. “To say that God is like a person is to affirm the divine ability and willingness to relate to others. This does not imply that God is human, or located at a specific point in the universe.”[86]

Titles

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, “the Bible has been the principal source of the conceptions of God”. That the Bible “includes many different images, concepts, and ways of thinking about” God has resulted in perpetual “disagreements about how God is to be conceived and understood”.[87] Throughout the Hebrew and Christian Bibles there are many names for God. One of them is Elohim. Another one is El Shaddai, translated “God Almighty”.[88] A third notable name is El Elyon, which means “The High God”.[89] Also noted in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles is the name “I Am that I Am”.[90]

God is described and referred in the Quran and hadith by certain names or attributes, the most common being Al-Rahman, meaning “Most Compassionate” and Al-Rahim, meaning “Most Merciful”.[91] Many of these names are also used in the scriptures of the Baháʼí Faith.

Vaishnavism, a tradition in Hinduism, has a list of titles and names of Krishna.

Gender

The gender of God may be viewed as either a literal or an allegorical aspect of a deity who, in classical western philosophy, transcends bodily form.[92][93] Polytheistic religions commonly attribute to each of the gods a gender, allowing each to interact with any of the others, and perhaps with humans, sexually. In most monotheistic religions, God has no counterpart with which to relate sexually. Thus, in classical western philosophy the gender of this one-and-only deity is most likely to be an analogical statement of how humans and God address, and relate to, each other. Namely, God is seen as begetter of the world and revelation which corresponds to the active (as opposed to the receptive) role in sexual intercourse.[94]

Biblical sources usually refer to God using male or paternal words and symbolism, except Genesis 1:26–27,[95][96] Psalm 123:2–3, and Luke 15:8–10 (female); Hosea 11:3–4, Deuteronomy 32:18, Isaiah 66:13, Isaiah 49:15, Isaiah 42:14, Psalm 131:2 (a mother); Deuteronomy 32:11–12 (a mother eagle); and Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34 (a mother hen).

Relationship with creation

Worship

Theistic religious traditions often require worship of God. Muslims believe that the purpose of existence is to worship God.[97][98] To address the issue of an all-powerful being demanding to be worshipped, it is held that God does not need or benefit from worship but that worship is for the benefit of the worshipper.[99] Gandhi expressed the view that God does not need his supplication and that “Prayer is not an asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is a daily admission of one’s weakness”.[100] Invoking God in prayer plays a significant role among many believers. Depending on the tradition, God can be viewed as a personal God who is only to be invoked directly while other traditions allow praying to intermediaries, such as saints, to intercede on their behalf. Prayer often also includes supplication such as asking forgiveness. God is often believed to be forgiving. For example, a hadith states God would replace a sinless people with one who sinned but still asked repentance.[101] Sacrifice for the sake of God is another act of devotion that includes fasting and almsgiving. Remembrance of God in daily life include mentioning interjections thanking God when feeling gratitude or phrases of adoration such as repeating chants while performing other activities.

Revelation

Adherents of different religions generally disagree as to how to best worship God and what is God’s plan for mankind, if there is one. There are different approaches to reconciling the contradictory claims of monotheistic religions. One view is taken by exclusivists, who believe they are the chosen people or have exclusive access to absolute truth, generally through revelation or encounter with the Divine, which adherents of other religions do not. Another view is religious pluralism. A pluralist typically believes that his religion is the right one, but does not deny the partial truth of other religions. An example of a pluralist view in Christianity is supersessionism, i.e., the belief that one’s religion is the fulfillment of previous religions. A third approach is relativistic inclusivism, where everybody is seen as equally right; an example being universalism: the doctrine that salvation is eventually available for everyone. A fourth approach is syncretism, mixing different elements from different religions. An example of syncretism is the New Age movement.

Depiction

Zoroastrianism

During the early Parthian Empire, Ahura Mazda was visually represented for worship. This practice ended during the beginning of the Sasanian Empire. Zoroastrian iconoclasm, which can be traced to the end of the Parthian period and the beginning of the Sassanid, eventually put an end to the use of all images of Ahura Mazda in worship. However, Ahura Mazda continued to be symbolized by a dignified male figure, standing or on horseback, which is found in Sassanian investiture.

Judaism

The Torah often ascribes human features to God, however, many other passages describe God as formless and otherworldly. Judaism is aniconic, meaning it overly lacks material, physical representations of both the natural and supernatural worlds. Furthermore, the worship of idols is strictly forbidden. The traditional view, elaborated by figures such as Maimonides, reckons that God is wholly incomprehensible and therefore impossible to envision, resulting in a historical tradition of “divine incorporeality”. As such, attempting to describe God’s “appearance” in practical terms is considered disrespectful to the deity and thus is deeply taboo, and arguably heretical.[citation needed]

Christianity

Early Christians believed that the words of the Gospel of John 1:18: “No man has seen God at any time” and numerous other statements were meant to apply not only to God, but to all attempts at the depiction of God.[103] However, later depictions of God are found. Some, like the Hand of God, are depiction borrowed from Jewish art.

Prior to the 10th century no attempt was made to use a human to symbolize God the Father in Western art.[103] Yet, Western art eventually required some way to illustrate the presence of the Father, so through successive representations a set of artistic styles for symbolizing the Father using a man gradually emerged around the 10th century AD. A rationale for the use of a human is the belief that God created the soul of man in the image of his own (thus allowing human to transcend the other animals). It appears that when early artists designed to represent God the Father, fear and awe restrained them from a usage of the whole human figure. Typically only a small part would be used as the image, usually the hand, or sometimes the face, but rarely a whole human. In many images, the figure of the Son supplants the Father, so a smaller portion of the person of the Father is depicted.[104]

By the 12th century depictions of God the Father had started to appear in French illuminated manuscripts, which as a less public form could often be more adventurous in their iconography, and in stained glass church windows in England. Initially the head or bust was usually shown in some form of frame of clouds in the top of the picture space, where the Hand of God had formerly appeared; the Baptism of Christ on the famous baptismal font in Liège of Rainer of Huy is an example from 1118 (a Hand of God is used in another scene). Gradually the amount of the human symbol shown can increase to a half-length figure, then a full-length, usually enthroned, as in Giotto’s fresco of c. 1305 in Padua.[105] In the 14th century the Naples Bible carried a depiction of God the Father in the Burning bush. By the early 15th century, the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry has a considerable number of symbols, including an elderly but tall and elegant full-length figure walking in the Garden of Eden, which show a considerable diversity of apparent ages and dress. The “Gates of Paradise” of the Florence Baptistry by Lorenzo Ghiberti, begun in 1425 use a similar tall full-length symbol for the Father. The Rohan Book of Hours of about 1430 also included depictions of God the Father in half-length human form, which were now becoming standard, and the Hand of God becoming rarer. At the same period other works, like the large Genesis altarpiece by the Hamburg painter Meister Bertram, continued to use the old depiction of Christ as Logos in Genesis scenes. In the 15th century there was a brief fashion for depicting all three persons of the Trinity as similar or identical figures with the usual appearance of Christ. In a Trinitarian Pietà, God the Father is often symbolized using a man wearing a papal dress and a papal crown, supporting the dead Christ in his arms. They are depicted as floating in heaven with angels who carry the instruments of the Passion.[106]

In 1667 the 43rd chapter of the Great Moscow Council specifically included a ban on a number of symbolic depictions of God the Father and the Holy Spirit, which then also resulted in a whole range of other icons being placed on the forbidden list,[107][108] mostly affecting Western-style depictions which had been gaining ground in Orthodox icons. The Council also declared that the person of the Trinity who was the “Ancient of Days” was Christ, as Logos, not God the Father. However some icons continued to be produced in Russia, as well as Greece, Romania, and other Orthodox countries.

Mandaeism

In Mandaeism, Hayyi Rabbi (lit=The Great Life), or “The Great Living God”,[25] is the supreme God from which all things emanate. He is also known as “The First Life”, since during the creation of the material world, Yushamin emanated from Hayyi Rabbi as the “Second Life.”[24] “The principles of the Mandaean doctrine: the belief of the only one great God, Hayyi Rabbi, to whom all absolute properties belong; He created all the worlds, formed the soul through his power, and placed it by means of angels into the human body. So He created Adam and Eve, the first man and woman.”[109] Mandaeans recognize God to be the eternal, creator of all, the one and only in domination who has no partner.[110]

Gnosticism

Gnostic cosmogony often depicts the creator god of the Old Testament as an evil lesser deity or Demiurge, while the higher benevolent god or Monad is thought of as something beyond comprehension having immeasurable light and not in time or among things that exist, but rather is greater than them in a sense. All people are said to have a piece of God or divine spark within them which has fallen from the immaterial world into the corrupt material world and is trapped unless gnosis is attained.[111][112][113]

Islam

Muslims believe that God (Allah) is beyond all comprehension and equal, and does not resemble any of his creations in any way. Thus, Muslims are not iconodules, are not expected to visualize God, and instead of having pictures of Allah in their mosques, typically have religious calligraphy written on the wall.[39]

Baháʼí Faith

In the Kitáb-i-Íqán, the primary theological work of the Baháʼí Faith, God is described as “Him Who is the central Orb of the universe, its Essence and ultimate Purpose.” Bahá’u’lláh taught that God is directly unknowable to common mortals, but that his attributes and qualities can be indirectly known by learning from and imitating his divine Manifestations, which in Baháʼí theology are somewhat comparable to Hindu avatars or Abrahamic prophets. These Manifestations are the great prophets and teachers of many of the major religious traditions. These include Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Zoroaster, Muhammad, Bahá’ú’lláh, and others. Although the faith is strictly monotheistic, it also preaches the unity of all religions and focuses on these multiple epiphanies as necessary for meeting the needs of humanity at different points in history and for different cultures, and as part of a scheme of progressive revelation and education of humanity.

Theological approaches

Classical theists (such as ancient Greco-Medieval philosophers, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, many Jews and Muslims, and some Protestants)[a] speak of God as a divinely simple ‘nothing’ that is completely transcendent (totally independent of all else), and having attributes such as immutability, impassibility, and timelessness.[115] Theologians of theistic personalism (the view held by Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig, and most modern evangelicals) argue that God is most generally the ground of all being, immanent in and transcendent over the whole world of reality, with immanence and transcendence being the contrapletes of personality.[116] Carl Jung equated religious ideas of God with transcendental metaphors of higher consciousness, in which God can be just as easily be imagined “as an eternally flowing current of vital energy that endlessly changes shape … as an eternally unmoved, unchangeable essence.”[117]

Many philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God,[4] while attempting to comprehend the precise implications of God’s attributes. Reconciling some of those attributes—particularly the attributes of the God of theistic personalism—generated important philosophical problems and debates. For example, God’s omniscience may seem to imply that God knows how free agents will choose to act. If God does know this, their ostensible free will might be illusory, or foreknowledge does not imply predestination, and if God does not know it, God may not be omniscient.[118]

The last centuries of philosophy have seen vigorous questions regarding the arguments for God’s existence raised by such philosophers as Immanuel Kant, David Hume and Antony Flew, although Kant held that the argument from morality was valid. The theist response has been either to contend, as does Alvin Plantinga, that faith is “properly basic”, or to take, as does Richard Swinburne, the evidentialist position.[119] Some theists agree that only some of the arguments for God’s existence are compelling, but argue that faith is not a product of reason, but requires risk. There would be no risk, they say, if the arguments for God’s existence were as solid as the laws of logic, a position summed up by Pascal as “the heart has reasons of which reason does not know.”[120]

Many religious believers allow for the existence of other, less powerful spiritual beings such as angels, saints, jinn, demons, and devas.[121][122][123][124][125]

See also

References

Footnotes

^ [ clarification needed ] were all claimed to varying degrees by early Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars, including [53] St Augustine,[53] and [114] The attributes of the God of classical theismwere all claimed to varying degrees by early Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars, including Maimonides and Al-Ghazali

Citations

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