God

To write about God is, of course, to write about what others have felt, thought, and said about God. In the end, God is a symbol pointing to that which cannot be contained in words. God is transcendence, power, and mystery that, from the beginning, humans have felt but never been able to define simply and for all time.

However, the history of how humans have struggled to define God has far more meaning than might be suggested when focusing only on the impossibility of defining God. This history has revealed that the struggle to define God has been nothing less than the struggle to define who we are as humans, both as individuals and as communities. In tracing the history of how God has been defined we are, then, tracing no less than our evolving identities.

There is in this history so much variation as to, at first, make the task of recounting the history impossibly complex. However, if we step back from the details, we start to see patterns that allow for basic distinctions, which, in turn, allow for an organization that helps to understand the nature of the struggle to define God. There are, it seems, three major distinctions to consider: that between gods and God, that between a personal and utterly transcendent God, and that between a transcendent and immanent God. We shall consider each of these distinctions in turn.

The idea of there being one God may well have been common from the beginning, but the more prevalent idea seems to have been that there are many gods. Indeed, even in early biblical times, many Jews understood their Yahweh to coexist with lesser gods.

The gods have usually been tied to functions and localities. In being tied to functions, humans must have felt more connected to the different powers that they depended upon: the god of the sky where rain comes from, the god of the earth out of which crops grow, and so forth. Gods with specific functions, then, provide a more manageable way to carry on transactions designed to influence—for example, sacrifices and petitionary prayers—than does one, single transcendent but distant and mysterious God.

The fact that gods were often tied to regions or specific localities also served a useful purpose. Having one's own, local gods provides added security and can ensure a tolerance for others' faith that is often undermined when there is faith in one, overarching, and jealous God. For example, the plurality of [Page 181]gods during the heyday of the Roman Empire is said to have been a mechanism by which Romans could hold together diverse groups under one political roof. A plurality of gods could, then, ensure a modicum of religious tolerance.

However, the plurality of gods left humans divided, not only divided in terms of there being communities and groups divided from one another, but also divided in terms of individuals having no single focus to provide a sense of personal integrity, identity, and purpose. The struggle to define and have faith in one God arose, then, as a struggle for integrity, identity, and ultimate moral or spiritual purpose.

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