The Nature of God

Introduction

Orthodox Christianity teaches that God is a Trinity of three ‘persons’; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each of these three persons are distinct from each other and yet united in a single essence. This doctrine has perplexed Christians for as long as it has been formulated and no one has quite found a way of expressing it in a way that everyone else can understand let alone agree with.

This said, one particularly good explanation was formulated by a Greek monk called Gregory Palamas, who lived between 1296 and 1359. Gregory made a distinction between the ‘essence’ and the ‘energies’ of God, which he described as ‘eternal essence and uncreated energies’. ‘Palamism’, as this is known, forms the bedrock of Eastern Orthodox theology, but is not widely accepted by the Western Churches who consider it to be potentially polytheistic.

Palamism teaches that God’s eternal essence transcends the created cosmos and exists outside of time and space as we know it. It is infinite; without beginning or end, the source of all reality, truth, life and goodness; the ultimate origin of all things. Yet, it is in itself indescribable and unknowable and does not manifest itself directly to us. Instead, we know God through his energies and it is in his energies that he has been revealed to us. Gregory never formally identified these energies, but within the framework of orthodox Christian doctrine they certainly include the three ‘persons’ of the Holy Trinity.

The first person of this Trinity is the Father, the creator of heaven and earth and a father figure not just to the Son, but to humanity as a whole. He is equated by orthodox Christians with Yahweh, the God of Israel, and often depicted in Christian imagery as a kindly old man living in the sky.

This is a classic Sky Father who was already understood in various forms by our pre-Christian ancestors. The term ‘Sky Father’ derives from the Proto-Indo-European deity, ‘Dyeus Phter’ who is known in the Vedic tradition as ‘Dyaus Pita’, in the Greek tradition as ‘Zeus Pater’, in the Roman tradition as ‘Jupiter’ and in the Germanic tradition as Týr, Tir or Tiwaz.

Yahweh was not originally the supreme or even the only God of the Hebrews. Israel emerges into the historical record in the last decades of the 13^th century BC in the land of Canaan and the Israelite religion absorbed the main Gods and Goddesses of the Canaanite religion of that time. The chief Canaanite God was called El, ‘the kind, the compassionate’ and ‘the creator of creatures’. El was the Canaanite equivalent of the Greek God Cronus and the Roman God Saturn and associated with Saturday. As the Canaanite system was polytheistic, El had a female ‘consort’ called Asherah. El, Asherah and other Canaanite Gods, including Yahweh and Baal, were adopted by the Israelites. However, El was probably the chief God of Israel at the beginning. Indeed, in the very name ‘Israel’ (he who struggles with God), the name for God is El. Importantly, at this point in time, Yahweh was seen as quite separate to El.

As time went by, Yahweh worship became more prevalent amongst the Israelites and he came to be seen as their national God. Deuteronomy 32:8 - 9 describes El dividing the nations of the world among his sons, with Yahweh receiving Israel. In the oldest biblical literature, Yahweh is a storm-and warrior deity who leads the heavenly army against Israel's enemies. Over time, the properties of El were absorbed into those of Yahweh who came to be seen as the ‘one’ true God of Israel. Worship of the other Gods, including the Goddess Asherah, was eventually banned.

After the 9^th century BC, the tribes and chiefdoms of the Iron Age era were replaced by ethnic nation states; Israel, Moab, Ammon and others, each with its own national God who were all more or less equal. Chemosh was the God of the Moabites, Milcom the God of the Ammonites, Qaus the God of the Edomites, and Yahweh the God of Israel. In each kingdom, the king was also the head of the national religion and thus the viceroy on Earth of the national God. This was essentially a Pagan tradition and one that was not dissimilar to the pre-Christian religions of Europeans.

Over time, the Royal Court and Temple in Jerusalem promoted Yahweh as the God not just of Israel, but of the entire cosmos, possessing all the positive qualities previously attributed to the other various Gods and Goddesses. By the end of the Babylonian captivity in the 6^th century BC, the very existence of foreign Gods was denied and Yahweh was proclaimed as the creator of the cosmos and the one true God of all the world. We can only speculate as to the influence that Zoroastrianism, the world’s first monotheistic religion, had on this development, but it is likely to have been significant.

So we see Yahweh, the God of Israel, develop from being a minor tribal God into the national God of Israel and then to the only God of the entire cosmos. But this, of course, is only according to the mythology of the Hebrew people and the Christian Church which absorbed this mythology as its own. There is no reason why a European Folk Christian should associate the Father with Yahweh, even if the formal Church does. Indeed, the New Testament does not refer to God by the name of Yahweh, or any other name for that matter. Most Christians, even in our own times, just use the name ‘God’. Neither have all Christians down the ages made this association. Marcion of Sinope, who lived in the 1^st and 2^nd centuries AD in modern day Turkey, taught that the God of Jesus was unknown and that Yahweh was a lesser deity. Marcionism was not a small group, either, and rivalled what became the Orthodox Church for some time. The Goths, who were the first Germanic people to convert to Christianity, did not equate God with Yahweh either. Instead, they called their God by the Germanic name ‘Gaut’, just meaning God, who was a founder of their people and one of the names for Odin. In more modern times, the Yoruba people of Nigeria call the God of the Bible ‘Olodumare’ which is the same name as the God of traditional Yoruba religion.

For my own part, I see the Father as a deity that we do not have a name for, rather like Marcion did, but also as the embodiment of ‘fatherly’ properties, such as creator, protector and dispenser of justice (discipline). I also see this deity as embodying the properties of ‘mother’, life giving and nurturing. This deity is not Yahweh, El or any other tribal God, including the pre-Christian tribal deities of our own ancestors. However, I do believe that this deity has been revealed to people through these tribal Gods and so they came to associate the Father and the Mother with one or more of them.

The second person of the Trinity is the Son, also known as the Christ or Logos. Logos is a Pagan Greek term that refers to the divine reason that permeates the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning. This concept is also found in Indian, Egyptian and Persian philosophical and theological systems and can be seen as the divine law or principles which govern the way creation should operate. In Christianity, the Logos is the divine energies, the thoughts and voice of God that communicate this law and through which we can all be drawn towards God. A fundamental belief in Christianity is that the Logos dwelt amongst us as Jesus of Nazareth.

In the opening sentence of the Gospel of St John that we read the best known Christian use of the term ‘Logos’, translated as ‘Word’. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Logos is the ‘light that shone in the darkness’, the inner voice that whispered to our ancestors, the seers and prophets, and who continues to speak to us today. The Church Father Tertullian explained the Logos as follows:

“Observe, then, that when you are silently conversing with yourself, this very process is carried on within you by your reason, which meets you with a word at every movement of your thought. Whatever you think, there is a word. You must speak it in your mind. Thus, in a certain sense, the word is a second person within you, through which in thinking you utter speech. The word is itself a different thing from yourself. Now how much more fully is all this transacted in God, whose image and likeness you are.”

Another term for the Logos is what some theologians call the Eternal, or Cosmic Christ, who has presided over the entirety of the cosmos since the beginning of time. This is a Christ of mystery and mysticism, not of history or dogma. This is the Christ of experience rather than of a book. It is the Great Universal Force which has been revealing itself throughout Creation to all peoples in different ways since the Beginning.

The Cosmic Christ exists within all of us, quietly whispering to us if we are able to hear Him. He is the shining healer, ‘Christ, the Sun of Righteousness’.

Yes, that’s right, Christ, the ‘Sun’ of Righteousness! This may sound a little odd, a little ‘Pagan’, but it is a title given to him in the Bible (Malachi 4:2), has been a common artistic representation of Christ and is even referred to in the Anglican Book of Common Worship. Early Christian symbolism depicted Christ as the Spiritual Sun, the illuminating source of order, harmony, and light. The sun has for millennia been seen as the bestower of light and life to the cosmos. It is a guarantor of power, justice, enlightenment, illumination and is sometimes seen as the source of wisdom. Kings often claimed descent from various sun gods as this was thought to give them power and authority. This is how we see the Cosmic Christ; warm, golden, bright and beautiful, the divine source of all power, justice, wisdom and righteousness; the Lord of Hosts, Christ the King, the All Ruler or Pantokrator.

Orthodox Christianity has developed a very precise understanding of the relationship between Jesus and the Logos, known as Dyophysitism, which is sometimes called Chalcedonian after the Council which adopted it. This states that Christ has two natures; one divine and one human, which were united in a single person or substance in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. However, there were many other doctrinal formulations of just who Jesus was in the early days of Christianity which were declared heretical by the orthodox Churches. Some, such as the Ebionites, who were Jewish converts to Christianity considered Jesus to be a man, a very holy man and even the Messiah, but just a man all the same. The Nazarenes were another group of Jewish converts who also denied Jesus being the Son of God, which they deemed to be of Greek Pagan origin. This may scotch the idea that Jesus was himself a Nazarene.

Another view of Christ’s nature is known as Adoptionism which holds that Jesus was a man in the flesh, but that Christ was a separate entity, the Son of God, who entered his body in the form of a dove at his birth, baptism, resurrection or ascension depending on the variant. It is the divine Christ, who dwelt as a separate entity within the human Jesus, which enabled him to perform miracles. Arianism, also held that Jesus was mainly a human, but one who was somehow infused with God the Son. Arius taught a mixture of Adoptionism and Logos theology. In Jesus, who suffered pain and human emotions, the Logos became human. Arianism considered the Logos or Son to be a lesser deity than the Father and not con-substantial and co-eternal with him. This was partly to emphasise the Oneness of God, but also to take on board the theology of emanations which is so important to Indo-European concepts of divinity.

At the other end of the spectrum were the Docetists who believed that Jesus was entirely Spirit and only appeared to have a human body. A form of Docetism was taught by Marcion of Sinope, who argued that Christ was so divine that he could not have been human, since God lacks a material body.

There was even a significant variation between those formulas which taught that Christ had a single nature which was both divine and human. For instance, Monophysitism, meaning one nature, held that after the union of the divine and the human in the historical incarnation, Jesus Christ, as the incarnation of the eternal Son or Word (Logos) of God, had just one nature which was either divine or a synthesis of divine and human. Miaphysitism (or Henophysitism) is a variant on Monophysitism, developed by Cyril of Alexandria. This view argues that Jesus’ divine nature and his human nature are united as a compound nature, the two being united without separation, without mixture, without confusion and without alteration. This position is held by Oriental Orthodox Churches. The differences between some of these positions, particularly between Dyophysitism and Miaphysitism can amount to semantics and to human interpretations of things which we cannot fully comprehend.

So, whilst these formulations may be interesting, it is really not that helpful for Folk Christians to spend too much time and energy debating them. The main point is that in Jesus, God came to dwell amongst us.

The third person of the Trinity is the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit; the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of Christ, the Paraclete or Comforter, sometimes referred to as the ‘Holy Breath’ and the Spirit of Wisdom (Sophia in Greek). The ancient religion of Israel, at least initially, saw the divine presence that resided in the Temple as feminine; Ashera, the female consort of the male god El. When Ashera worship was banned, her presence evolved and she came to be known as the ‘presence of God’, or Shekinah, which literally means ‘God who dwells within’. Hebrew tradition holds that when the Israelites went into their various exiles, the Shekinah went with them as a comforter, something which has direct parallels with the Christian notion of the Spirit as Paraclete, or Comforter. Shekinah is seen as divine wisdom and it is she who is called Sophia which simply means ‘wisdom’ in Greek. She is the embodiment of wisdom, love and healing – often depicted as a dove. It is this feminine nature of the Spirit that has led some esoteric Christians to consider the Holy Spirit as feminine even though the formal Church uses masculine terminology.

The Hebrews also called the Spirit of God ‘Ruach’ or ‘Ruwach’, meaning wind, breath or inspiration. Interestingly, this idea of the Spirit as wind, breath or inspiration has parallels with our own pre-Christian mythology. Woden (Odin) is particularly associated with wind, breath, inspiration and wisdom. Indeed, the word Od or Wod is derived from the proto Indo-Germanic word ‘Wat’ and related to the Sanskrit word Vat, meaning ‘to blow’ which reminds us of biblical references to the Spirit blowing across the oceans. In our own mythology, we can see it as the breath of God that blew across the wide, empty void of the Ginnungagap and which was breathed into us by Woden, Will and Weoh. It is through the Holy Spirit that the Volvas of old made their prophesies. And it is the Spirit that lies within each of us and leads us to seek a return to God.

Brahman and the Vedic Religion

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, although taught by almost all of the denominational Churches, is only one way of explaining the nature of God. The ancient Vedic religion of India is believed to have influenced the development of pre-Christian European Pagan religions as well as modern day Hinduism and other easter religions such as Buddhism and Zoroastrianism.

The Palamist idea of a divine essence being revealed through its energies is similar to the concept of Brahman in the old Vedic religion and some forms of modern Hinduism. Brahman is the Ultimate Reality and Truth, the highest Universal Principle and the source of the Eternal or Natural Law known as Sanatana Dharma. Brahman is unknowable, but made known through a variety of spirits (or energies) known as ‘Devas’. The word ‘Devas’ literally means ‘heavenly’, ‘divine’, bright’, ‘shining’ or ‘good’ and is linked to our words ‘deity’ and ‘divine’. They are the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon, the powers which rule over creation and embody divine characteristics such as truth and justice.

In the Vedic religion, these countless ‘Devas’ emanate from Brahman, each with a certain quality and role. This is similar to the theology of many Greek Philosophers who were, of course, Pagan and who described the source of all things as the Monad and saw the gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon as emanations from this Source. Even into Christian times, neo-Platonists, such as the third Century Plotinus, taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent ‘One’ or Monad, containing no division, multiplicity, or distinction; beyond all categories of being and non-being. He identified this ‘One’ with the concept of 'Good' and the principle of 'Beauty', likening it to the Sun which emanates light indiscriminately without diminishing itself. From this perfect ‘One’, Plotinus argued that less perfect emanations were issued forth. Lamblichus, another third Century neo-Platonist, took this theory of emanations further and added hundreds of intermediate beings such as angels, demons and the gods and goddesses of classical Greek religion.

Even the Old Testament refers to a Divine Council ruled over by God and to which the lesser gods are appointed as Guardians over the different peoples of the world, Yahweh being appointed to Israel.

The late English Catholic mystic, Bede Griffiths, referred to something he called the ‘Cosmic Covenant’, by which he meant that there has been a universal revelation to all people. He believed that this universal revelation of God was made through nature and the soul. From the beginning, mankind recognized the hidden power of God behind nature and consciousness. Over time, he began to distinguish between the powers of nature, the powers of the ‘gods’, and his own powers of speech and action, thinking and feeling. Though man began to distinguish between the powers of nature and his own powers, the ‘gods’ occupied his mind and heart. Through myths, rituals, prayers and sacrifices he could experience his oneness through them with the whole of creation. Griffiths developed these ideas specifically with the Hindu religion in mind as he spent much of the latter part of his life in India contemplating the differences and similarities of the two faiths. He was seeing and experiencing Hinduism as the Indian folk expression of the universal, cosmic revelation and it only naturally follows that the old European Pagan traditions are similarly the folk expressions of this universal truth for European peoples.

With these thoughts in mind, Saxon Christianity should view the Germanic or Saxon pantheon of gods and goddesses as divine beings or Devas, emanating or manifesting from a divine essence referred to in the Vedic religion as Brahman. The divine essence is universal, but the gods and goddesses that flow from it are not. They are national or tribal deities. They may share similar characteristics with each other where they manifest similar spiritual energy and are Guardians of related peoples with similar characteristics and environments. But they are individual and unique in their own right. They are not evil spirits or fallen Angels.

Neither should Saxon Christians be constrained to view the Father as Yahweh, the tribal god of Israel. Within the Germanic tradition, the Father can be seen as one or more of our own tribal gods such as Odin (Woden), Tyr, Seaxnot or Ingeld (Yng Frey) and others. Equally, we should recognize our Mothers, such as Frig or Eartha. This gives us a basis for reconciling the Christian and pre-Christian understanding of the nature of God, reconnecting ourselves with our tribal deities, or Guardians, and better understanding how the divine energies interact within our world of form.

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