Can’t God be Both? - Rev. Jarrod Cochran

 

One argument that gets a lot of play in theological circles is that of God’s nature. Many Bible literalists firmly believe that God is exclusively an entity who lives in a heavenly realm, tinkering with nature and intervening in human affairs from time to time. On the other side are those who view God only as a non-material, all-encompassing spirit that surrounds and is in everything. Often, the more boisterous in the two camps will argue with the other, claiming that their belief of God’s nature is the only correct way to view God.

My question is simple: Can’t God be both?

Cannot God be both a supernatural being (anthropomorphic or supernatural theism) and a spirit that encompasses the cosmos (panentheism)? After all, God is God.

The Bible describes God as both a being; using metaphors like a king, a mother, a father, a shepherd, a judge, a defender, (even as a hen!), as well as a spirit who dwells and envelopes all the universe (see Psalm 139 and Acts 17:28).

Those who ascribe to God being solely a supernatural, anthropomorphic entity; out of fear of “straying” towards a polytheistic view of God as a spiritual entity that creates everything, is in everything, and is everything I believe miss out on the vastness of God, just as I feel those who adhere to a strict panentheistic (that’s Greek; literally meaning: pan (everything) en (in) theos (God)) view of God do.

God is so much bigger than the “either/or” categories that we attempt to shove God into (like, giving God a gender, forcing God into one religion or theology, claiming God is for or against certain groups of people, etc.). I believe we need to being moving away from the either/or-type theologies that never fail to pit us against another individual or group (“us/them”). As we have seen revealed in Jesus, God desires for us all to be one (Gal. 3:28). I believe we do further damage when we confine God into our categories – we become guilty of spiritual idolatry.

This is both my wife’s and my own issue with the Bible and taking everything in it literally. We both believe that the Bible is the story of God. However, we do not believe that the heavens parted and this protestant canon, complete with its 66 books, descended into the hands of our Jewish and Christian ancestors. The Bible, we affirm, is the story of God, written by men and women, in an attempt to describe their interactions with God and how day-to-day events might relate to God.

When we start believing that the Bible is inerrant, infallible, and the direct Word of God – that God was somehow whispering into the ears of the biblical authors while they wrote; we overlook or “gloss over” many obvious contradictions and errors in Scripture (for instance, how does one honestly reconcile the God in the Hebrew Bible – the Christian “Old Testament” – that commanded the Israelites to conquer the land of Canaan and not spare man, woman, or child with the God-made-flesh Jesus Christ of the Christian New Testament who commands his followers to love one another, not to repay evil with evil, and claims that the peacemakers will be known as God’s children?). I believe that when we start claiming the Bible is certain things, (things that it never, in its pages, claims itself to be), like infallible, we begin devoting our worship and allegiance to a book; worship and allegiance that should be devoted to God.

God is so much bigger than a book – even if that book is the Bible. God is so much bigger than how we imagine God’s physical or spiritual being (God might be 1,000,000-D compared to our 3-D universe). God is so much bigger than one religion (can we really claim, without blaspheming, that God is a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Hindu, or a Janist, etc.?). The fact is that God is God. Let’s not make God something that God is not. Let’s not make God less of what God is. By all means, we should attempt to understand God; but let us not close our minds to the conviction that only our understanding or our theological interpretation of God is the correct one.

No matter what religion you follow. No matter what theological convictions you may have. No matter how you define God’s nature; I believe we can sum it up into three easy sentences that my friend, Bart Campolo created:

“Love God. Love people. Nothing else matters.”