"Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you.' " (John 20:21)

[hermionesviolin]

Today is Mother's Day [Note to self: the_red_shoes' post.] and Pentecost.

The former got basically ignored at my churches -- which I'm okay with, as I'm not into the fetishization of motherhood.

CHPC had lots of hymns using Spirit, and the sermon was a bit about "What Is The Holy Spirit?"  I wore red and did the Scripture readings (Acts 2:1-21, and John 20:19-23).

CWM had A Service in Remembrance and Celebration of General Conference (though, as last year, it also had a blessing of the mothers, with a typically inclusive interpretation of "mothers" :) ).

One of the readings was Jeremiah 29:1-11 (the source of GC's theme this year: "A Future With Hope").  Tiffany changed some of the language (e.g. using "partners" and "children") but I'm just c&p-ing from oremus.

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the LORD.

For thus says the LORD: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

-Jeremiah 29:4-14 (NRSV)

***

When I was looking at Christianity Today online the other day, one of the links on the front page was: "Blessed Be the NAME of the Lord: Why 'Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier' is somewhere between heresy and idolatry" (A Christianity Today editorial - May 8, 2008). 

In the Gospels, Jesus refers to the Father and to himself as the Son. Yes, he also employs other metaphors for the Godhead, but never so consistently and starkly.

But Jesus is speaking out of his own relationship to God, right?  Yes he gives his disciples the "Our Father" as a template for how they should pray, but there is an entire Old Testament tradition of lots of metaphors for God.  There's a poster I left at my parents' house that I got when Ruthie was doing young adult Christian Ed at UCN that has lots of different names/metaphors/titles for God (or possibly Christ, or both, I honestly don't remember) found throughout Scripture, and I feel like we probably picked that up at some evangelical Christian store, not some crazy queer liberal place.  And honestly, the Good Shepherd is the idea of Jesus that immediately comes to my mind if I were to think of the primary image of Jesus in the Gospels -- for whatever that's worth.

Whenever God reveals his name, he reveals his character. We see in God's name his communal nature and desire for a personal relationship to his people. "I Am who I Am," he told Moses. "The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob … This is my name forever."

Leaving aside the fact that I'm weirded out by not capitalizing God's pronoun, doesn't this statement to Moses say that God's true revealed name is I AM?  Or LORD?  Or GOD?  Honestly, I read that Bible excerpt as saying, "I am the Lord the God of your ancestors, that is enough, you don't need a specific name to pin on me."  (I'm totally good with the "God's desire for a personal relationship with God's people," and I respect the communal thing, even as it's still not my default approach to Christianity.)

Almost all the recent alternatives to the Trinitarian formula undercut the personal significance of God's name by replacing it with words of function. As many have noted, "Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier" encourages modalism, the heretical teaching that God's threeness is more about his modes of operation, or our perception of him, rather than something intrinsic to the divine essence. Biblical Christianity teaches that all three persons of the Trinity are involved in creation, redemption, and sanctification.

I appreciate the reminder that all three persons of the Trinity are involved in all that God does, but is associating the distinct persons of the Trinity with different actions of God necessarily a bad thing?  I mean, if they were interchangeable then wouldn't we just talk about different aspects of a single God?

I think modalism has been largely how I understand the Trinity, and while I'm not terribly concerned about being a heretic, I'm also not sure how else I'm supposed to understand the Trinity.  If you wanna argue to me that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are three distinct entities ... I would totally be willing to listen, because that seems like it would be much more sense-making, but I don't see that as being the traditional orthodox understanding of the Trinity at all.

God is serious about his name—which is why he took the trouble to reveal it to us in Christ. To create an alternative according to our cultural sensibilities is at best parody and at worst idolatry, even if it is constructed from the good metaphors God has given us. Most idols, after all, are created from God's good gifts.

Okay, I think the reminder that we humans can create bad things from God's good gifts is neatly crafted here, but, um, didn't we already establish that the one time God specifically revealed God's name, God said, "I AM who I AM" (I have also heard it suggested that a more accurate translation is "I will be who I will be")?  Yes Jesus refers to God as "Father," but I AM is the actual answer to God being asked "What shall I tell the Israelites your name is?"  And okay, at this point I'm actually pulling out the exact citation.

Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"

God said to Moses, "I am who I am. ^{[Or I will be what I will be]} This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' "

-Exodus 3:13-14 (NIV)

In Judaism, the name of God is super sacred and holy and not to be used lightly, so people mostly talk around it, using titles and metaphors and suchlike.  Do we need a personal name for God in order to have a personal relationship with God?  The article insists on "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," but I would argue that Father (and Son) isn't really a name, it's a mode.

Comments

[mjules.livejournal.com]

I've developed quite an odd view on it, myself. I think God reveals God's name to people according to what they need and how they best interact. I explained this to Dad the other day when he was getting irritated with my insistence that I didn't have to abide by Christian terminology in order to interact with God.

I told him my view that God has revealed divinity to many different cultures, and the difference in mythologies is merely a difference in cultural understanding, because everyone seems to have the same basic stories. The only difference is whether the Godly nature is understood as pantheistic or monotheistic-with-many-facets. When he expressed doubt, I said, "Well, how many names and titles does God have in the Hebrew tradition alone? Why couldn't God have more names and titles than that in various cultural traditions?"

With that sort of a liberal take on things, I'm hardly in a position to argue whether it's heretical to call God by a trait-defined title. I mean, hello. *grin* One of my titles for God is "Sun King." Another is "Mother." It depends on the capacity in which we're interacting.

And for the record, I don't know if I've mentioned to you before (it seems like I have, but I don't want to assume that) that I recently discovered the word in Aramaic that Jesus used for "Father" is more accurately translated "Mother-Father-All-in-All." *grin*

*frowns, thinking very hard*

[theatre-pixie.livejournal.com]

As to the names for God--particularly in the Old Testament--I cannot recall... something about how the Jews considered absolutely everything about God to be so holy and so far above them that every time they wrote His name (did the scribes actually deign to write His name at all? I don't remember), they had to get a new quill and... *sigh* blast. I used to know this.

As to the poster you're speaking of, I believe I know which it is. It is a poster covered with the names of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. That is, it is covered with names specifically plucked from the bible. "Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God with Us..." and so on. The difference being that your poster is a quotation directly from the book that we as Christians consider to be God-breathed.
Christianity Today seemed to be taking issue with people focusing upon the traits and characteristics of God instead of upon the whole of Him (which is entirely too much for us to fathom).

There is a joke about the trinity that a Christian comedian named Mike Warnke used to tell that went along these lines:
Theologians say that the trinity is a mystery. It isn't a mystery at all. Just look at a piece of cherry pie.
Now a good cherry pie is runny in the middle. I'm not talking about the truck-stop stuff that looks like two slabs of cardboard with Jello packed in-between. That ain't cherry pie. That's toxic waste. You don't eat that. You take paint off your bumper with that.
If you take one of those nice, fresh, home-made cherry pies and cut it into three equal pieces, someone could look at it and say "well, that's three pieces of pie" because they could see the lines of demarcation in the crust, but on the inside the filling has all run back together to make one pie just like God's all one God even though we divide Him up into Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 'cause we couldn't take Him all in one bite if we had to.
God's the one who made it as easy as cherry pie.*


I found other interesting analogies online as well, like an egg or St. Patrick's three-leaf clover. There were a couple having to do with water. There was even one where you cut open a Milky Way bar and saw the three separate layers that made up the bar as a whole. I think my favorite, aside from the cherry pie one which has stayed with me for years, is the one where a person stands up. The pastor/youth leader/whoever says "this is So-and-so. So-and-so is a child, a parent, and a doctor/nurse/pastor/whatever." The point being that although there are three (or more) facets to this person, they are still the one person. And I chose doctor/nurse/pastor as examples because these are jobs that are technically always on-duty (yes, pastors are in that group).




*I searched and searched for a direct quote or for an mp3 I could listen to and transcribe myself and found nothing. Thus the paraphrase.

Re: *frowns, thinking very hard*

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

As to the poster you're speaking of, I believe I know which it is. It is a poster covered with the names of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. That is, it is covered with names specifically plucked from the bible. "Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God with Us..." and so on. The difference being that your poster is a quotation directly from the book that we as Christians consider to be God-breathed.
Christianity Today seemed to be taking issue with people focusing upon the traits and characteristics of God instead of upon the whole of Him (which is entirely too much for us to fathom).

Yup, that's the poster.

I guess I feel like using terms/ideas that seem natural extrapolations from what's revealed in Scripture isn't a bad thing. Like, Luke has Jesus saying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!" so using imagery of Mother as well as of Father seems Biblically grounded. For example.

I agree that we cannot understand God wholly, and I do think that's important to keep in mind (I know I tend to create God in my preferred image), but I think that focusing on traits and characteristics can be helpful in coming to know God. And I think that the more ideas and images we have for God, the better an understanding we have -- I think sticking rigidly to one set of images really limits our understanding of God.

I think my favorite, aside from the cherry pie one which has stayed with me for years, is the one where a person stands up. The pastor/youth leader/whoever says "this is So-and-so. So-and-so is a child, a parent, and a doctor/nurse/pastor/whatever." The point being that although there are three (or more) facets to this person, they are still the one person. And I chose doctor/nurse/pastor as examples because these are jobs that are technically always on-duty (yes, pastors are in that group).

I remember coming up with an analogy (parent, child, some third occupation) like that when I was an adolescent trying to make the Trinity make sense.