"DEAR GOD, YOU SURE DON'T ACT LIKE YOU'RE ALIVE - Afterword (Part 1): Why God's nature is hard to describe

AFTERWORD

When the subject is the nature of God, an attempt is being made to describe something beyond description. The assignment is to help another see the Unseen, to convey a mental image of the One who transcends all thought. This is a formidable task, to say the least. In some respects, it is impossible. And, from Day 1, this has been the difficulty I have faced. Trying to show you what God is like by asking you to look at His universe is like asking you to discern what a screenwriter is like by observing his movie. Some things can be gleaned, but a lot remains a mystery.

Even when the subject is something other than God, it is hard to communicate to others what they have yet to see. A visitor to the Grand Canyon finds it very difficult to relate its topography to someone who has never been there. Likewise, astronauts have a challenge revealing to us exactly what it is like in space. In the same way, the hearing-impaired are unlikely to fully understand the beauty of a symphony or the blind the splendor of the sunset. We thus find ourselves at a distinct disadvantage whenever we seek to put into words an experience unique to us. And if this be the case, how much harder would it be to describe something—like God—that neither party has seen?

This is the daunting task of any theologian, pastor, or lay teacher. Like those blind men in the poem (Day 25), each of them is trying to describe something not one of them can see. In such cases, their only recourse is to rely on analogy, metaphor, and simile.  Simply put, the unknown must be compared and contrasted with what is known. The elephant, the blind man tells us, is like a broad wall or a sharp spear. God, the theologian tells us, is like a powerful king or a loving father. Each is resorting to analogy, simply because there is no other alternative when describing what is yet unseen. 

But this leads us straight into a common and grievous error of theology: excessive anthropomorphism. We begin to think of God too much in human terms. Please do not misunderstand me. To speak of seeking God's “face” or being safe in His “arms” is not in and of itself wrong. Nor is it off-limits to say that God “walks” and “talks” with us or that He “sees” every tear and “hears” every cry. Such analogical references, for the reasons just given, are to be expected. Indeed, they seem to be our only recourse. The problem comes when we begin to equate the analogy with who God actually is and what He actually does. If metaphor is taken literally, God can become to us merely a super-human, not a transcendent Being. Belief in God, and the practical application thereof, can become much too narrow and limited. 

This is a real and subtle danger, one that awaits us whenever we forget that we are speaking analogically about God. Mortimer J. Adler, in How to Think about God, agrees:

When anything positive is said about God, it must be said analogically. It cannot be said univocally or literally. When, for example, we say that God lives, that God knows, and that God wills, we must never forget that we cannot use the words “lives,” “knows,” and “wills” in the same sense we apply these words to human beings or anything else... We are forever limited to making positive statements that are at once negatively qualified: “God really exists, but not in the way that anything else really exists.” That constraint must be observed in every positive remark we make about God: “God knows, but not in the way human beings know”—not by observation, reflection, or thought, not by perception or by reasoning, and so on. “God wills, but not in the way human beings will”; “God acts voluntarily, but not in the way human beings act voluntarily”; “God lives, but not in the way that human beings live”—not by interaction with the environment, not by the ingestion of nutriment, not by growing and declining, not as subject to health and disease, not as a result of being born, not as doomed to die. Only by adding all the “nots” we can possibly think of every time we say something positive about God can we avoid the anthropomorphism that is both unphilosophical and irreligious.¹

C. S. Lewis, the theologian and Christian, agrees with Adler, the philosopher and theist, that all talk of God is metaphorical:

What did the early Christians believe? Did they believe that God really has a material palace in the sky and that He received His Son in a decorated state chair placed a little to the right of His own?—or did they not? The answer is that the alternative we are offering was probably never present to their minds at all. As soon as it was present, we know quite well which side of the fence they came down. As soon as the issue of Anthropomorphism was explicitly before the Church in, I think, the second century, Anthropomorphism was condemned. The Church knew the answer (that God has no body and therefore couldn’t sit in a chair) as soon as it knew the question... It is very probable that most...of the first generation Christians never thought of their faith without anthropomorphic imagery. But this does not in the least mean that the essence of their belief was concerned with details about a celestial throne room. That was not what they valued, or what they were prepared to die for. Any one of them who went to Alexandria and got a philosophical education would have recognized the imagery at once for what it was, and would not have felt that his belief had been altered in any way that mattered...

We are invited to restate our belief in a form free from metaphor and symbol. The reason we don’t is that we can’t. We can, if you like, say “God entered history” instead of saying “God came down to earth.” But, of course, “entered” is just as metaphorical as “came down.” You have only substituted horizontal or undefined movement for vertical movement. We can make our language duller; we cannot make it less metaphorical...²

This, then, is the twofold dilemma we face when our subject is the nature of the Unseen God. To speak metaphorically is all that we can do, but this is the very thing that can get us into trouble. In short, it is quite permissible to compare God, but a grave mistake to equate Him, with something else. God, we must never forget, has no equal.

If this caveat is heeded, however, much about God can be grasped through such analogy. Jesus uses this approach when he compares the potential of the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed and its value to a pearl of great price. In other parables he compares God’s nature to that of a loving father awaiting his lost son and to that of a gracious householder forgiving an enormous debt. There is never the slightest hint that Jesus here is speaking literally. Parabolic analogy and metaphor are at work. Yet, by using (but never straining) such comparisons, Jesus is able to impart to his listeners a more accurate belief in God. What’s more, the way he lives and dies helps them better understand who God is. Jesus, therefore, is able to reveal God’s nature as never before through analogous stories and a representative life. In like manner, it is possible for us to learn about God via comparison and contrast, as long as we remember that God always transcends such comparisons. We must forever hear the prophetic voice rhetorically chiding us as he did his contemporaries: “To whom will you liken God?”³

^{(next week: Part 2)}

¹Mortimer J. Adler, How to Think About God (New York: Collier, 1980), 162-163.

²C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” in The Weight of Glory (San Francisco: Harper, 2001), 131-133. 

³Isaiah 40:18, 44:7