[I’m not a theologian, but I’m minded that way. I try to let that speak in everyday language—already full of mystery and paradox. When I first arrived in town, a child trying to place me asked, “Are you a reverend—or just a regular person?” I said I hoped I was both. He didn’t look convinced.]
Speaking of God in human terms, what we call personification often satisfies resistance. Many people worry that it will bring God back to something too familiar. To say that God is sad or remembered may sound like an attempt to tame God. God is made too closely in our image, becoming an object of respect and reflecting himself.
This tension brings back a long way. The Greek philosopher Xenophanes (6th century BC) observed that people model their own gods.
But the Bible depicts God walking through the garden, showing pity, joy, and even changing courses. These are not definitions, they are languages of relations.
Nietzsche is often accused of proclaiming God’s death. In fact, he reported the losses modern life had already inflicted. Death is not merely a belief in God, but a living relationship with higher truths and moral order. The tie was cut off long before Nietzsches made the alarm sound. Knowing that his thoughts were obviously too destructive to articulate the state clearly, he put it in the mouth of a madman. Nietzsche knew we were continuing half-heartedly pretending that the questions were no longer important.
so what?
“So what?” That’s true. Other things feel more pressing: money and work. Family and friends. Political promises, political turmoil, Trump or democratic revival. Everything is explained. Mastery plays a mystery. We don’t understand what we’ve lost, so we blame capitalism, elites, godless liberals, Maga Republicans, enlightenment, something other than kitchen sinks where everything is often not clogged.
To many unfamiliar with the Bible, it may seem that Jesus lived in a simpler time. beatitudes are read like the Boy Scout’s Oath: faithful, clean, ver-respectful.
“So what?” That was how Pilate washed his hands. When emotions are dominant and truth is optional, fact alone does not change your mind. Jesus did not argue the questions or answer any doubts. He told the story. It’s like a realistic, personified story coming. About whimsical sons, lost coins, farming, drought, unfair managers, cheap labor, unexpected generosity, destructive dignity.
“The last will be the first.” Jesus did not just turn the dynamic of power. He revealed another kind of strength. “Go for an extra distance”, “turn the other cheeks” – not surrender, but a sacred act of rebellion based on trust. It is a spiritual equivalent that is equivalent to martial arts. It redirects the force rather than resisting it head-on. Like water – it wears, penetrates and re-changes as it stretches the yield. Patients are not passive. Move with quiet forces disarm what you cannot push away.
St. Gregory of Nazianzu, the father of the 4th century church, grasped the depths behind such expressions. Languages like Jesus, and many others in the Bible, “we responded to our language and feelings because we cannot borrow from our nature and can rise to the height of God’s nature,” he said. This is condescending in theological sense. God carefully adapts to our limits. Why does Jesus speak in parables? Even his disciples had to ask.
These expressions do not confine God. They reach the mystery using the only language we have. Poet TS Elliot called his words “an obscure raid.” The same can be said about all of our words about God.
Reject personification language to protect God’s Mystery Backfire. We risk becoming more spiritual than God. If we are made of God’s image, form, flesh, and language, it is restricted, but not secondary. They express something fundamental about who God is and how He is known.
The language of God is ultimately a love language that can survive beyond words. Discussing it risks you sound stupid – kneel in the street, perhaps like a Nietzsche’s madman.
Be like water. You will break through.
Notes and reading
“Nietzsche knew we were going to continue…” – Like guests in the parable who refused the wedding east feast and would not have enjoyed it with priorities elsewhere. (Matthew 22:1-14)
xenophanes- See Jonathan Burns, Early Greek Philosophy (1987), 92–93.
Gregory of Nazianzus – As quoted in the Jaroslav Pelican, Christian tradition: History of the development of doctrine (1971). Vol. 1, 220.
TS Elliott – From Section 5 of “East Coker”, “Raid on the articulate”, from one of the poems Four Quartets. Elliott considered his work as a poet, saying something true and definitive, transcendental, but always failing. It is impossible to know the task. “My only business is to try.” – In a lecture recorded several years ago, I borrowed this insight from William Hackett, a philosopher at St. Mainrad Theological Seminary and Theological School (available on YouTube).
Abraham Joshua Heschel – “Anthropomorphism of the Bible is disclosure, not definition.” Instead of trapping God in the concept, they leaned towards God through the paraphor. – Prophet (1962), Vol. 1, 20. Heschel was one of the leading Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th century.
Frederic Ferret – “Appreciation of personification” – in International Journal for Religious Philosophy– January 1984, Vol. 16, 203-212. The anthropomorphic language, though limited, allows for “understanding of the true relationship between man and God.” Ferre was a former president of the American Society of Metaphysics and was concerned about how metaphysics could affect practical problems in everyday life.
Edmund Sherbonnier – “The logic of personification of the Bible” – Harvard Theology Review (July 1962). Modern religions send a sensitization of abstraction and make God a good idea. Theologians often default to God’s philosophical or “absolute” concepts and downplay biblical personalism. -Cherbonnier established the Ministry of Religion at Trinity College, Connecticut.
Where is Jesus? In the middle of everything. I’ll be taken to an extension of H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture (1951): Christ in a culture that changes culture. Theologian TEX Sample first proposed this American Lifestyle and Mainline Church (1990). It reflects a more contextual, relational, and symbiotic vision. This explains how the true transformation occurs. From within living experience. Culture also mediates God’s grace, although it may be possible. – Sample ends the book with a quiet and extraordinary story about the death of his son in a motorcycle accident. God’s grace occurs without a signature.
It’s not just a theologically heart: There are few resources to surpass David Bentley Hart’s Christian tales (2007) – A rich, accessible history of 2,000 years of faith. It was once called the “Coffee Table Book” for the art of almost every page (and cover), but it also belongs to the heart of the bookshelves. Currently at Notre Dame, Hart is today the most respected theologian and author of works spanning theology, philosophy, fiction and literary criticism, and includes children’s books, fairy tales and ghost stories.
Tip #221 – Dirty hands, clear eyes
Tip #220 – Horseshoe Nails: AI and creativity
Approx. 2 + 2 = 4
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
