Deeper Dive
God is Relational
“The Bible begins with God as Relational — “In the beginning, God…”. While in English we may not see the key part, the word “God” is plural in Hebrew. God didn’t grow into multiple gods but at the beginning of this creation, He was already Them, the identities we think of as Father, Son and Spirit.
When They make mankind, it is in His image so it follows that They noticed it was not good for man to be singular.
And, even after there was two humans, God interacted with them, walking in their domain in the cool of the day. Togetherness though distinctly different. He is the Creator, we are the Created. He is relational, we are in that image and ‘it was not good for man to be alone’.”
When I consider the possibilities of “God,” I want to go right back to the first thing He says about Himself. I like how He says, “In the beginning, God…” Really does simplify several sticking points for me. I began my higher levels of education with a bent toward science, wrote my first two formal papers on the subject of “In the beginning” although both of those efforts sought to explore the recent (recent then 60 years ago) theory of what became known as the Big Bang Theory. The actual scientific theory, not the entertainment series. The original theory was first proposed in 1927 by Georges Lemaitre based on Edwin Hubble’s observation of an expanding universe. This conflicted with the Steady State model of physics and it wasn’t until the early 1960’s more answers than questions seemed to solidify. Albeit, sixty years later, with more science has come even more profound questions. Science is like that – the more we actually know as fact, the more gaps we find in our theories.
After I lowered my level of being impressed with Science, I began to consider more than “what” but was there a “who” involved. “God” as represented in the Bible isn’t inert or what we see in many religious systems as dysfunctional. The “in the beginning God” has pre-existence, already is before He talks about what He was doing in the beginning. We soon realize His “in the beginning” isn’t His beginning but the beginning He is revealing about what He has done relative to us. While not quantum physics, it is a quantum jump in understanding which becomes foundational to understanding what He is saying. In the next several chapters of the first book of the Hebrew Talmud, He reveals more about Himself than about His science. The Bible does not present itself as a scientific explanation but rather a history of the involvement of the Author.1
The first subject that God really deals with is who He is. While we read “In the beginning God” and have the uncertainty of who god is because the translators didn’t transliterate god into our language, “god” is not a generic that fits any definition we give it especially in our Western mindset.. It is not a singular noun like Zeus of the Greeks or Baal of the Middle East. It is not a pantheon like the Greek or Roman myriads of gods with multiple individuals vying for position, power and supremacy over their fellow gods. The “In the beginning God” is ĕlōhīm [English spelling of Hebrew אֱלֹהִים ] which is plural yet with one identity. The beginning of His revealing about Himself is that He is in relationship with Himself, multiple yet acting with singularity, purpose, identity, in full agreement with Himself. As the account unfolds, He reveals how He through His personages works in agreement to create everything He creates. When He gets to the making of mankind He says of Himself, “Let us make him in our image…” Us, Our, Image.
If the first thing He tells us about Himself is that He is in perfect relationship with Himself, the second thing of importance is that He makes us for relationship with Him and, by extension, each other. Yes, He is both singular in identity and yet plural in personage. The foundational position is that He is three persons who are uniquely singular in identity, fully and always in complete agreement as the singular Elohim. I know – impossible to quantify, draw an example of, describe, confine to definition – so far beyond our senses or experience as to be non-sense. That’s the dilemma of being of being finite trying to understand infinite, created trying to understand Creator, of being those who were being given revelation and decided to get it on our own because we wanted it now. That opens up the “need to know” subject but more on that later.
God of We – The Revealer of what we need to know to agree with Him and relate to Him.
FOOTNOTES:
1 I believe in the Bible’s inspiration, that it is God-breathed and recorded by humans who recorded what He “inspired” them to write, not are fiction writer are inspired but rather as those who received the text under His direction through His presence within their spirit. Yes, another matter of faith.