Conceptions of God

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Abrahamic conceptions

Main article: Abrahamic conceptions of God

Biblical definition of God

God according to the Bible is characterized not just as Creator, but also as the "Heavenly Father". God "defines" himself several times in the Bible.

The Torah (which would later be incorporated into the Christian or Protestant Old Testament) characterizes God by these attributes: "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation." (Exodus 34:6-7)

Even earlier in that same book, God reveals what is to become his people's intimate name for him, Yahweh, YHWH or Jehovah, meaning "I am who I am", "I will be what I will be". Moses asks God in Exodus 3:13 who he should say has sent him, if the Egyptians ask for God's name. This self-definition expresses God's dependable nature, faithfulness and worthiness of trust of his people. It is shortened to "I Am"; this name is probably the derivative for the name Lord Almighty (often written LORD), the Hebrew sounding similar. Jesus was nearly stoned for blasphemy in John 8:58-59, for applying this phrase to himself, and therefore claiming to be God.

The Torah contains no systematic theology: No attempt is made to give a philosophical or rigorous definition of God, nor of how God acts in the world. It does not explicitly describe God's nature, exemplified by God's assertion in Exodus that "you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live". Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible are the words omnipotent, omniscient, or omnibenevolent used to define God in a systematic sense.

Although Scripture does not describe God systematically, it does provide a poetic depiction of God and His relationship with people. According to the Biblical historian Yehezkal Kaufmann, the essential innovation of Biblical theology was to posit a God that cares about people, and that cares about whether people care about Him. Some people believe that the Bible should be viewed as humanity's view of God, but theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel described the Biblical God as "anthropopathic", which means that one should read the Bible as God's view of humanity, and not as humanity's view of God.

Similarly, the New Testament contains little systematic theology: little or no philosophical or rigorous definition of God is given, nor of how God acts in the world; however John's gospel states: "God is light" (John 1:5), before he states: "God is love" (John 4:8) and: "God is a Spirit" (John 4:24). The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews presents a more grim side of the deity when he states: "For our God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:29).

The New Testament provides an implicit theology as it teaches that God interacted directly with people, in the person of Jesus, and that he subsequently sent the Holy Spirit. In this view, God becomes someone that can be seen and touched, and may speak and act in a manner easily perceived by humans, while also remaining transcendent and invisible. This may appear to be a radical departure from the concepts of God found in Hebrew Bible. Most Christians believe the New Testament's statements regarding the nature of God can be directly codified into the doctrine of the Trinity.

Kabbalistic definition of God

Main article: Kabbalistic definition of God

Islamic concept of God

Main article: Islamic concept of God

Allah (Arabic allāhu الله) is the Arabic word for "God", and is used by Arabic-speaking Muslims, Chistians and Jews and Mizrahi Jews alike.

Negative theology

Main article: Negative theology.

Some Jewish, Christian and Muslim Medieval philosophers, including Moses Maimonides and Pseudo-Dionysius, as well as many sages of other religions, developed what is termed as Apophatic Theology or the Via Negativa, the idea that one cannot posit attributes to God and can only be discussed by what God is not. For example, we cannot say that God "exists" in the usual sense of the term, because that term is human defined and God's qualities such as existence may not be accurately characterized by it. What we can safely say is that it cannot be proven empirically or otherwise that God is existent, therefore God is not non-existent. Likewise God's "wisdom" is of a fundamentally different kind from limited human perception. So we cannot use the word "wise" to describe God, because this implies he is wise in the way we usually describe humans being wise. However we can safely say that God is not ignorant. We should not say that God is One, because we may not truly understand his nature, but we can state that there is no multiplicity in God's being.

The reason that this theology was developed was because it was felt that ascribing positive characteristics to God would imply that God could be accurately described with terms that were used to describe human qualities and perceptions. As humans cannot truly comprehend what kind of wisdom an eternal transcendent being might have, or what infinity might be like, we cannot in fact know or characterize His true nature. It is beyond human ability and would only mislead people.

The same path is known in Hindu tradition as Neti neti, literally "not this nor that".

The proponents of this theory often experienced meditation which they viewed as the only effective way of having a personal relationship with God. It involved trying to reach beyond the words commonly used to describe Him and His more ineffable characteristics, and to comprehend in a mystical manner the truths about Him which could not be achieved through religious language. Thus many sages and saints of both monotheistic and other traditions experienced mystical trances, or raptures and stated they were unable to describe God or their visions fully.

God as unity or Trinity

Main article: God as unity or trinity

Binitarianism

Binitarianism: A view within Christianity that there were originally two beings in the Godhead, the Father and the Word that became the Son (Jesus the Christ). Binitarians normally believe that God is a family, currently consisting of the Father and the Son. Some binitarians believe that others will ultimately be born into that divine family. Hence, binitarians are nontrinitarian, but they are also not unitarian. Binitarians, like most unitarians and trinitarians, claim their views were held by the original New Testament Church. Unlike most unitarians and trinitarians who tend to identify themselves by those terms, binitarians normally do not refer to their belief in the duality of the Godhead, with the Son subordinate to the Father; they simply teach the Godhead in a manner that has been termed as binitarianism.

"The word “binitarian” is typically used by scholars and theologians as a contrast to a trinitarian theology: a theology of “two” in God rather than a theology of “three”... it is accurate to offer the judgment that most commonly when someone speaks of a Christian “binitarian” theology the “two” in God are the Father and the Son...A substantial amount of recent scholarship has been devoted to exploring the implications of the fact that Jesus was worshipped by those first Jewish Christians, since in Judaism "worship" was limited to the worship of God" (Barnes M. Early Christian Binitarianism: the Father and the Holy Spirit. Early Christian Binitarianism—as read at NAPS 2001). Much of this recent scholarship has been the result of the translations of the Nag Hammadi and other ancient manuscripts which were not available when older scholarly texts (such as W. Bousset's Kyrios Christos, 1913) were written.

Although some critics prefer to use the term ditheist or dualist instead of binitarian, those terms suggests that God is not one, yet binitarians believe that God is one family.

God in Sikhism

The Sikhs believe in one God who is the God of all the peoples of the World; the Creator; has existed from the beginning of time; never dies and will survive forever. He/She is genderless; without form; fearless; without enemies; self sufficient; not subject of the cycle of birth and death; All Powerful; etc - Gods qualities are too many for people to narrate.

Many names are used for God:- Waheguru - The Wonderful Lord; Satnam - Thy True Name is TRUTH . Malik - Master; Karta Purakh - The Creator, etc

Below are the main qualities that Sikhism attributes to God:

Only God is worthy of worship and meditation at all times
He is the Creator but also the Destroyer
God is Compassionate and Kind
With His Grace, He comes to dwell within the mind and body

Blessing us with His Grace, the Kind and Compassionate All-powerful Lord comes to dwell within the mind and body. (SGGS Page 49)

He is merciful and wise

The Cherisher Lord is so very merciful and wise; He is compassionate to all. (SGGS Page 249)

He is the ultimate Protector of all beings

The Lord is kind and compassionate to all beings and creatures; His Protecting Hand is over all. (SGGS Page 300)

Only with His Will can pain, poverty, disease and hardships be removed from ones life.

O Nanak, God has been kind and compassionate; He has blessed me. Removing pain and poverty, He has blended me with Himself. ||8||5|| (SGGS Page 1311)

God is everywhere

Nanak is attuned to the Love of the Lord, whose Light pervades the entire Universe. (SGGS Page 49)

Conceptions of God in Hinduism

Main article: Conceptions of God in Hinduism.

Christian Monism

Main article: Christian Monism

The Ultimate

Arguably, Eastern conceptions of The Ultimate (this, too, has many different names), except for Shaivism and Vaishnavism, which do focus on a personal God, are not conceptions of a personal divinity, though certain Western conceptions of what is at least called "God" (e.g., Spinoza's pantheistic conception and various kinds of mysticism) resemble Eastern conceptions of The Ultimate. Christian theologian Paul Tillich, in the first volume of his Systematic Theology defines God as being that factor about which we have, in his language, ultimate concern. In this view, true self, zero, God, or the Absolute all have legitimate grounds to be called the Ultimate.

Aristotelian definition of God

Main article: Aristotelian view of God.

In his Metaphysics, Aristotle discusses meaning of "being as being". Aristotle holds that "being" primarily refers to the Unmoved Movers, and assigned one of these to each movement in the heavens. Each Unmoved Mover continuously contemplates its own contemplation, and everything that fits the second meaning of "being" by having its source of motion in itself, moves because the knowledge of its Mover causes it to emulate this Mover (or should).

Aristotle's "unmoved mover" is very unlike the conception of God which one sees in most religions. It has been likened to a person who is playing dominos and pushes one of them over, so that every other domino in the set is pushed over as well, without the being having to do anything about it. This differs to the interpretation of God in most religions, where he is seen to be personally involved in his creation.

Aristotle's definition of God attributes perfection to this being, and as a perfect being can only contemplate upon perfection and not on imperfection, otherwise perfection would not be one of his attributes. God, according to Aristotle, is in a state of "stasis" untouched by change and imperfection.

In the 18th century, the French educator Allan Kardec brought a very similar conception of God during his work of codifying Spiritism.

Modern views

Process philosophy and Open Theism

Process theology is a school of thought influenced by the metaphysical process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947).
Open theism, a theological movement that began in the 1990s, is similar, but not identical, to Process theology.

In both views, God is not omnipotent in the classical sense of a coercive being. Reality is not made up of material substances that endure through time, but serially-ordered events, which are experiential in nature. The universe is characterized by process and change carried out by the agents of free will. Self-determination characterizes everything in the universe, not just human beings. God and creatures co-create. God cannot force anything to happen, but rather only influence the exercise of this universal free will by offering possibilities. Process theology is compatible with panentheism, the concept that God contains the universe (pantheism) but also transcends it.

God as the ultimate logician - God may be defined as the only entity, by definition, possessing the ability to reduce an infinite number of logical equations having an infinite number of variables and an infinite number of states to minimum form instantaneously.

Posthuman God

Main article: Posthuman God

According to Max Heindel's The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, and in Esoteric Christianity, in the beginning of a Day of Manifestation a certain collective Great Being, God, limits Himself to a certain portion of space, in which He elects to create a Solar System for the evolution of added self-consciousness.

Heindel states that in the Solar system, God's Habitation, there are seven Worlds differentiated by God, within Himself, one after another. Rosicrucians teach that the, above referred, seven Worlds belong to the lowest of the seven "Cosmic Planes". The Worlds and Cosmic Planes are not one above another in space, but the seven Cosmic Planes inter-penetrate each other and all the seven Worlds. They are states of spirit-matter, permeating one another, so that God and the other great Beings pervade every part of their own realms and realms of greater density than their own, including our world. All matter in our world is complex.