I subscribe to the teachings of Christ and regularly attend the United
Methodist Church. However, my question is this: Is "God" or "Yahweh" really
a defined word? Here is my reason for suspecting that it is not. "One" is
a pronoun. The pronoun "one" in the dictionary definition of the nouns
"creator" and "ruler" (one that creates/rules) - which is contained in what
the lexicographers allege to be a definition of "God" and publish in their
dictionaries - has never been assigned an antecedent and no antecedent seems
possible. If this is the case, then the alleged definition of "God" is not
a definition at all. You can't define a noun only as a pronoun with no
possible antecedent. That seems to be a language trick used in alleged
definitions of "God." Oftentimes, the word "spirit" is given as the
antecedent of "one." However, a similar question can be asked about the
meaningfulness of the word "spirit." Can you expound on this?
Of course God is not a defined word though many people seem quite sure
they know exactly what it means. My sense is that we can experience God
inside the limits of our human frame of reference, but no person can tell
another person either who God is or what God is.
To make people conscious of that, I ask whether or not a moth or an
insect can tell you what it is like to be a bird. Can an insect escape the
frame of reference in which an insect lives in order to describe a whole new
level of reality? Can a horse tell another horse what it is like to be a
human being? Can a horse step outside the realm of a horse's consciousness
to describe a realm of being they have no way of understanding? Can a human
being escape the limits of our humanity to describe God? What makes us
think God can fit into a human consciousness? Is that not why all our
pictures of God wind up being an expanded human being? It was a Greek
philosopher named Xenophanes who said, "If horses had Gods, they would look
like horses!"
Your exercise from the world of grammar may be reflective of the fact
that defining God is not within the capacity of our human competence.
True religion is always religion beyond propositional creeds and defined
doctrines. Creeds and doctrines at best point us to God. They never
capture God. That is why I believe that religion must always fade into
mysticism. It must move beyond creeds, beyond certainty and finally beyond
words. That is not an easy realization for many who use religion as a
security system and who need certainty for security's sake and who always
turn religion into idolatry.
I hope this helps.
John Shelby Spong
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