Explainer

Belief

Creed

30 March 2023

9 min read

What does the word ‘God’ mean anyway?

After asking why belief matters, Barnabas Aspray turns to transcendence as a way of defining God. The second in a series exploring the Nicene Creed.

Barnabas Aspray

Barnabas Aspray is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at St Mary’s Seminary and University.

A cloud-dappled s blue sky is viewed through a large circular opening, from below.

The view from a modern cave.

Shelter on Unsplash.

God’ is one of those words we think we understand, but many of us really don’t. Both believers and unbelievers often fall prey to a misguided idea of what the writers of the Nicene Creed meant by the word ‘God’.

Consider this description of God as an example:

God is an immensely powerful spiritual being, more powerful than anyone else in the Universe. He is invisible; he lives in heaven, but he can also be everywhere at once. He created the world a long time ago, and sometimes intervenes in the world today to perform miracles or answer prayers. His arch-enemy is another powerful spirit called Satan, but God is more powerful than Satan and will one day defeat him.

Almost everything about the above paragraph is either misleading or false from a traditional Christian point of view, yet it is not far off from the way many people today think about God. If we want to come up with a better definition, we need to understand, first that there are different kinds of reality, and second, that God belongs to his own unique kind of reality. Let’s use analogies to make each of these points.

God is like the number 2

Let’s have a look and a laugh at this XKCD webcomic.

A cartoon strip of a maths teacher explaining a proof.

What makes this comic funny is that the maths teacher is confusing two types of reality:

Physical, contingent realities whose existence is contingent (might or might not have existed), that exist in a particular place and time, and that can be destroyed.

Non-physical, non-contingent realities whose existence is necessary (cannot not exist), that are not in space or time at all, and that cannot be destroyed.

The maths teacher is treating a number as if it had the first kind of reality when in fact it has the second. It doesn’t make sense to ‘find and destroy’ a number. If the number 2 ceased to exist, what would 1+1 then be equal to? What would it mean if you saw more than 1 but less than 3 objects together, or would that no longer happen? Numbers are not the kind of things that you can remove, leaving the rest of the Universe unchanged. They are part of the fabric of reality, and we can’t really conceive a Universe without them.

Now, when we’re talking about God, this is the crucial thing to understand: the kind of reality that God has is more like the reality of numbers than the reality of physical objects. Like numbers, God is intrinsic to the way reality works. Like numbers, God can’t be located anywhere, yet without his presence reality would not make any sense. Like numbers, God can’t be seen, only represented through signs and symbols.

Compared to God, we are like two-dimensional beings

Let me introduce you to Flatty.

A line drawing of a flat round bug with six legs and two eyes.

Flatty is an entirely two-dimensional creature, living in a two-dimensional world called Flatland. In this world, there is no up and down, only left, right, forward, and backward. There are no spheres, only circles. There are no cubes, only squares. If I draw a square around flatty, it imprisons him. He cannot go over it or under it, because there is no such thing as ‘over’ or ‘under’ in Flatland. If I draw an object in front of Flatty, it looks to him as if it appeared out of nowhere.

Now, imagine you could talk to Flatty. Your voice would seem to be coming from nowhere, since he can’t see anything in three dimensions. How could you persuade him that you exist and he’s not going crazy? Perhaps you could press your finger on the surface of flatland. The fingerprint would appear like a strange oval shape, but that would only be the tiniest hint of what you look like. You could try to explain that you’re above him, but the word ‘above’ is meaningless for him so he would not understand.

Suppose Flatty was persuaded that you existed. How could he prove to other flatties that you existed? He has no words to describe you with except the ones you’ve given him, which have no meaning in a two-dimensional Universe. He can’t point to you, and he can’t offer any evidence. All evidence he might have would be two-dimensional, which misses the kind of reality he wants to prove.

Now the point of this analogy is that we are like Flatty in relation to God. We lack the language to describe God because his reality is so much greater than ours that our minds are not equipped to conceive or describe it. God can speak to us – he can even make strange appearances in the physical world sometimes, but those appearances only convey the tiniest hint of who he is.

This is what the Christian tradition has always meant when it says that God is ‘transcendent’. The word ‘transcendence’ is an attempt to give a name to something we have no concept of and no ability to fully comprehend: the idea that there is a reality beyond the three-dimensional reality that we can see and experience, and that God inhabits that reality.

Let’s return to the misleading definition of God we quoted above and correct some of the points:

It is true to say that God is invisible, but this is not an accident, as if God could have been visible. It’s part of the very nature of God that he cannot be seen, because the only things that can be seen are things that belong to the three-dimensional world. (If you think about it, numbers can’t really be ‘seen’ either. The way we write the number 2 is just as symbol to represent something that has no visible form. Even if we see two objects together, we are not seeing the number 2 itself, merely an instance of its use in one particular place and time.)
God does not ‘live’ in heaven as if he were an object that could be located somewhere. ‘Heaven’ is itself a name for the transcendent reality that we cannot fully conceive (this is more obvious in the biblical languages, and in French, German, and Spanish, where the word for ‘heaven’ and the word for ‘sky’ are the same, yet nobody is confused and thinks you’re talking about the sky). When we say that God is in heaven, we mean that God’s reality is more tangible and present there than it is here on earth, although that will not always be the case.

The other misleading aspects of that initial quotation will be addressed in the next article on the doctrine of creation.

Why this is not apologetics

None of this counts as an argument for the existence of God, even if it makes a difference to how such arguments would go. The above should not be taken as evidence that God exists, but as providing a definition of God that we need before any productive argument can begin. The reason so many atheists and theists seem to be talking past each other is that they so often start with different definitions of God without realising it. David Bentley Hart puts it this way:

The most pervasive error one encounters in contemporary arguments about belief in God … is the habit of conceiving of God simply as some very large object or agency within the universe, or perhaps alongside the universe, a being among other beings, who differs from all other beings in magnitude, power, and duration, but not ontologically.

One example of this mistake is what Richard Dawkins says in the following:

I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further.

Dawkins has cleverly turned the tables, making it look as if all the religions disagreed with each other, when in fact most of them agree against atheism on the question of God, and only disagree much further down the line. It is as if someone were to count English accents as different languages, and then propose making Flemish the international language because more people speak it than any of the varieties of English.

More specifically, Dawkins’ mistake is to confuse capital ‘G’ God and lowercase ‘g’ gods which is not the plural of ‘God’ in any major religion. Lowercase ‘gods’, whether they exist or not, still live inside the Universe and are part of it like you and me. The Bible itself, even though it is a monotheistic book, uses the term ‘gods’ in this way (see e.g., Psalm 82, 86, 98).

FAQs

Is this really a biblical conception of God? Why are there so few Bible quotes in this article?

The point of this article is to explain what the writers of the Nicene Creed meant when they used the word ‘God’. They believed that their conception of God was derived from the Bible and accurately reflected the biblical view. Their conception of God has come to be called ‘Classical Theism’, which is the mainstream position taken by the majority of theologians and denominations throughout Christian history. In recent years, some academic theologians called ‘open theists’ have argued that Classical Theism did not come from the Bible but from ancient Greek philosophy, and is therefore not properly Christian. If they are correct, it means that they have understood the Bible better than almost every theologian in the first fifteen centuries of the Church, including the writers of the Nicene Creed. Their argument has not been accepted by most churches and denominations, and it depends on a not-universally agreed understanding of how Christians ought to interpret the Bible. To explain why I think the Bible supports Classical Theism would be to write a completely different, and much longer, article. There are many resources already out there that show how the classical conception of God is not only derived from the Bible, but rejects a lot of Greek philosophy in favour of the Bible. If you are interested in this debate, you might consider the following resources to start with: Paul Tyson, Returning to Reality: Christian Platonism for Our Times (Wipf & Stock, 2014); Andrew Davison, Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (CUP, 2019); Simon Oliver, Creation: A Guide for the Perplexed (Bloomsbury, 2017); Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God (OUP, 2004).

What about Jesus? Doesn’t this conception of God leave out the most central Christian tenet, that Jesus is God?

To say that ‘Jesus is God’ has no meaning unless you first have a definition of God that the word ‘Jesus’ can apply to. That is why the Bible starts by building up a conception of God in the Old Testament, before revealing in the New Testament that this same God came among us in the person of Jesus. That’s why it’s misleading to say (as some Christians do) ‘If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus’. It’s true at the level of God’s character, but not at the level of God’s nature. If you are interested in this question, I would suggest reading Rowan Williams, Christ the Heart of Creation (Bloomsbury, 2018).

This definition of God makes him seem impersonal. Doesn’t Christianity teach that God is personal?

It’s true that God has chosen to relate to us as one person relates to another, and in that sense we can call God ‘personal’. But we must be careful of letting that idea run away with itself, until we imagine God to be like a human being, only bigger and more powerful. This is called the mistake of anthropomorphising God. If you’re interested in avoiding anthropomorphic conceptions of God, I would suggest starting with David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (Yale University Press, 2014).

Essay

Church and state

Creed

Politics

20 February 2025

7 min read

How to test the religious claims made on Trump

An old Puritan offers a way to question the assertions.

Anthony Baker

Anthony is a theology professor at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas.

A montage shows a bishop, a preacher and a president being looked down upon by a puritan.

Jonathan Edwards considers.

Christian theological language is a fairly constant garnish to the dish that is American political theater. In recent weeks, however, with the rhetoric responding to the initiation of Donald Trump's second term, such language has arguably shifted into a substantial side dish, if not the main course.

At the Inauguration, Rev. Franklin Graham prayed, "Father, when Donald Trump’s enemies thought he was down and out, you and you alone saved his life and raised him up with strength and power by your mighty hand." He compared the new President to Moses and Samuel of the Hebrew Scriptures, and implied that the years of the Biden administration were akin to Israel's years of enslavement in Egypt.

The President himself made a bold claim of divine intervention in Inaugural address:

"I was saved by God to make America great again."

Christians, however, are far from united in this interpretation. Pope Francis suggested prior to the election that American voters were facing a choice between two evils. He has since called Trump's mass deportation plans "a disgrace." The Episcopal Bishop of Washington went viral just after the Inauguration when she called on the newly elected President to amend his rhetoric around sexuality and immigration in the name of mercy: "Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land."

The discipline of theology can seem like an exercise in evaluating faith language against the grid of personal conviction. Rev. Graham has his theology, Pope Francis his, Bishop Budde hers. But as any true student of theology knows, the tradition is rich with critical tools that go far beyond private taste or political orientation.

Good theology acts as a grammar for the language of Christians. Think of how German or French has rules that keep our subjects and objects aligned and that connect propositions and antecedents. Sentence-diagramming, that dreaded rite of passage for the language student, shows those connections visually on a chalkboard. Cumbersome as they are, such structures allow us to make the most sense possible when we go to put thoughts into words.

So too in the language of faith traditions: we can fail to make sense by ignoring the long evolution of "grammar" that is that tradition's critical reflection on its own faith.

What forms and structures might allow us to evaluate claims about whether or not God's hand is at work in the election and vision of a new U.S. President?

Divine intervention never shows up "full strength," given that it only ever arrives through the words and acts of human beings.

In the eighteenth century, American Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards weighed in on arguments about whether God was at work in the movement of revivals that we have since taken to calling the First Great Awakening. His careful evaluation of arguments and claims for and against the revivals could serve as a model for evaluating the political theology of our day.

Edwards is most famous for his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," a text that my high school English teacher justly called a stunning piece of rhetoric and an alarming bit of theology. Less famous, though, are the writings that explore the true center of his theological vision. For Edwards, the world was created out of the bounty of God's own character. Call it a theological aesthetic: God delights in the beauty of his own goodness and truth, and so makes a world whose character is, at its best, a reflection of of a good and beautiful God.

This aesthetic runs like a soft bass line through his short treatise The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God. This work opens with a passage from the first Epistle of John. The writer says that Christians should not believe every spirit, but rather "try the spirits whether they are of God." Edwards is surprised to find that this invitation is not one that his contemporary theological evaluators have taken up. There's his aesthetic running in the background: If God made us to be Godlike, then we ought to be vigilant in our attention to the energies sweeping through the world, and certainly "try them" before we decide to trust or mistrust them as the presence of God's own Spirit.

When he addresses those who deny that the hand of God is at work the Awakening, he takes seriously their criticism that some preachers are excessive, or harmful, or even riddled with errors in their sermons. Edwards doesn't disagree or defend such preachers, but rather reminds the reader that one must consider the distance between the eternally holy and righteous God and the temporally limited and fallible creature. God made us to be Godlike, but that likeness is a calling, not a presumption. For this reason, "If some fall away into gross errors or scandalous practices, it is no argument that the work in general is not the work of the Spirit of God." In fact, "if we look into church history, we shall find no instance of a great revival of religion but what has been attended with many such things." In effect, humans are imperfect receptors of divine transmission. Acknowledgement of our imperfection is not a denial of divine activity. This is, for Edwards, as for the whole of the theological tradition, a key principle of good theological grammar. Divine intervention never shows up "full strength," given that it only ever arrives through the words and acts of human beings.

The "proof" of God's hand, theologically speaking, is not in the strength of one's conviction or in the number of people who hold it.

When he turns from what might negate the claim of divine action to what might affirm it, Edwards says, first of all, that a growing affection for Christian teachings is an integral part of such evidence. "The devil has the most bitter and implacable enmity" against the whole story of the virgin birth and the redemption wrought by Jesus' death and resurrection. If people begin falling in love with the beauty of the story, he suggests, it is a pretty solid indicator that God is at work.

But this alone is not sufficient evidence, if for no other reason, Edwards says, than that there are false prophets who mislead even as they speak in ways that sound pious. For this reason, a love of truth-telling supplies a touchstone for our theological grammar. "If we see that a spirit operates as a spirit of truth, leadings persons to truth, convincing them of those things that are true, we may safely determine it is a right and true spirit." For Edwards, if I speak out loudly in favor of the divinity of Christ while lying about my own actions or intentions, you should not trust that I am a faithful witness to the work of the Holy Spirit.

But the most important of all marks of the work of the Spirit of God is neither of these; or perhaps, it is a mark that lies within and shapes all other evidences. Edwards says that "humble love" of God and fellow humans is the "highest evidence of a true and divine Spirit." The adjective here is important: a love that is self-aggrandizing is not the love that shares in God's own character.

Here again the aesthetic sounds the bass line: God's love changes us like a beautiful memory or a lovely person does. We want to belong there, we want to be like that. If the energy, the spirit, sweeping through a culture is not that sort of energy, then it's likely not the work of the lovingly humble God.

Edwards ends his own treatise by grading the revivals on his grammatical grid, and determining that it is, in fact, the work of God. For our current moment in U.S. society, the evidence is not yet in. Will the Trump administration cause an increase in affection for Christian teachings? Will it explode in an epidemic of truth-telling and a cultural outrage at falsehood? Will the policies and practices of the next four years demonstrate humble love? If so, Christians will have good reason to attest that the interpretations of leaders like Reverend Graham are accurate.

The "proof" of God's hand, theologically speaking, is not in the strength of one's conviction or in the number of people who hold it. It is rather in the humility, Christian devotion, and the divine and neighborly love that grows from the events in question.

On this note, Bishop Budde's admonition invites a reading that not far from the theological grammar that Edwards supplies. "You have felt the providential hand of a loving God," she reminded the President. "In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now." If it was in fact God's mercy that spared you, it was so that you could be merciful. The proof of providence will be in the pudding of practice, Mr. Trump.

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