Is God Completely Other?

God, Christ, & The Holy Spirit
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Paidion
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Is God Completely Other?

Post by Paidion » Sun Jan 17, 2016 10:51 pm

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8,9 ESV)
Many quote this passage in an attempt to show that God is inscrutable—that He is so different from us that He is impassive, that He shares no mental characteristics whatever with humanity.

But if that were the case, then what does it mean to have been created in His image? (Gen 1:27)
Certainly, we are not created in God's physical image, since He is not physical but is totally spirit. (John 4:24)
There seems to be only one way that remains—that we are mentally and emotionally similar, and that we must understand Isaiah 55:8,9 in a different way. I think I know that different way in the light of the preceding verse, Isaiah 55:7.

Any thoughts on this matter?
Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

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jaydam
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Re: Is God Completely Other?

Post by jaydam » Sun Jan 17, 2016 11:22 pm

I was just having this conversation with a Calvinist friend of mine who resorted to this verse when I tried to nail him down on how inconsistent he is on God's character. They try to say that even we (as believers) cannot understand the ways of God because his ways are so much higher than our own.

However, verse 2 tells us that the people in context are those who are laboring for the wrong thing, verse 3 indicates it is people who are currently not inclined to listen to God, verse 6 suggests it is people not currently seeking God.

Verse 7 is telling in that it shows the audience to be the wicked and unrighteous, who need to return to God and will receive a pardon.

Thus, the ways of God are not higher than those who know him, but those who do not know him. Those who don't think like him in the first place - the wicked and unrighteous needing pardons.

At least, that's my take...

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Homer
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Re: Is God Completely Other?

Post by Homer » Sun Jan 17, 2016 11:40 pm

But then this was written to believers:

Romans 11:33-35

33. Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! 34. For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? 35. Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again? 36. For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.


I share many characteristics of Einstein yet he was far above me in knowledge but not infinitely so. We may share many of the characteristics of God while at the same time He is infinitely above us. And this does not even consider that we do not have all His characteristics. We are fallible, He is not, we are mortal, he is not. Our knowledge is very limited, His is unlimited.
Last edited by Homer on Mon Jan 18, 2016 12:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Paidion
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Re: Is God Completely Other?

Post by Paidion » Mon Jan 18, 2016 12:00 am

Thank you for your thoughts on the matter, Jaydam and Homer.

I wish to withhold my own understanding until a few more members express theirs.
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Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

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Re: Is God Completely Other?

Post by Homer » Mon Jan 18, 2016 12:07 am

Hi Paidion,

I edited and added a comment, apparently as you wrote.

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mattrose
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Re: Is God Completely Other?

Post by mattrose » Mon Jan 18, 2016 12:08 am

"Is God other?" seems like an easy question to answer. Yes. God is the Creator and we are the created.

"Is God completely other?" also seems easy to answer. No. God made us in God's image (somewhat like God in some ways or ways)

It seems baffling to me that some would argue that God is so "completely other" as to render it useless to even attempt to do theology. If that were the case, why would God have bothered with revelation at all? Why inspire Scripture? Why send Jesus? Why speak at all unless it's possible to communicate?

I think of the verses in question as calls to humility (a recognition that our language falls short of absolute comprehension), but in light of the rest of revelation, some degree of comprehrension is clearly possible.

I am still thinking through the many options for what exactly constitutes 'the image of God' in humanity, but I think Scripture is entirely clear that there is some correspondence between our ability to think and feel and that of our God.

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Re: Is God Completely Other?

Post by dizerner » Mon Jan 18, 2016 12:45 am

I'd say part of God is "completely other" and part of him isn't. There's a danger in thinking he's "just some other mixed in." We won't have the proper reverence. Obviously he's revealed himself as a God we can understand and contact, and that is loving and empathetic. It also presents him as terrifyingly holy and powerful. Scripture presents us both sides of God. In one sense it says to seek him, in other it says no man can see him and live. I don't think that is just another "Bible contradiction" for skeptics, but rather a deep and profound truth.

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Re: Is God Completely Other?

Post by morbo3000 » Mon Jan 18, 2016 2:03 am

[wearing philosopher's and theologian's hat, not bible scholar]

Thomas Berry said: "The universe is, ‘the only self-referential reality in the phenomenal world. It is the only text without context. Everything else has to be seen in the context of the universe’.

It is impossible to conceptualize a "wholly other" because the idea of what "wholly other," might be, is contextualized by the universe itself. The language is conceptualized. The construct of "wholly other" is conceptualized.

The universe came first, before the written word. The written word that describes G-d is using terrestrial words to describe that G-d, and can only describe what is known from inside that universe. There is no other way. And even if we accept that the written word is "revealed," it still is not capable of speaking outside of its context.

The only part of G-d, then, that can be wholly other, is what lies on the other side of the singularity. We are incapable of conceptualizing an uncreated creation. So it deserves the title.
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dizerner

Re: Is God Completely Other?

Post by dizerner » Mon Jan 18, 2016 2:15 am

What's up with the G-d thing, you Jewish? You also kind of sound like a secular materialist a bit there?

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morbo3000
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Re: Is God Completely Other?

Post by morbo3000 » Mon Jan 18, 2016 2:28 am

Panentheist. And I think post-modernist at the linguist level.

There are times when I'm typing along and for whatever reason "God" doesn't feel right in print. That hit me at the end of that, and I went back in and edited the sentences before. If we are talking about the Hebrew God, it should really be Yahweh, anyway. But that's clumsy.
When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.
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