Who or What is a god?

Written by Pastor Nuckols Monday, 12 April 2010 11:49

What is the meaning of the unceasing alternation between ascent and descent, rise and decline? Does all this have a purpose and a goal? What about justice in a world in which the strong always conquer and disregard all laws? Is it not perhaps, after all, a game in which God alone participates arbitrarily by loading His musket, aiming at the nations, and gloating as they topple? Is not this God a hardhearted, coldly planning, or perhaps plan-less fate? We often get this impression when probing into the meaning of occurrences in our own life as in that of nations. And how many have shouted their accusations against this unknown and unknowable Master of the universe and against this absurd and incongruous course of life!

It would be appalling if our knowledge of God were confined to the realization that He is the power of life in everything that lives. For everything, the sublime and the beautiful as well as the vile and the ugly, owes its existence to this power. God’s omnipotence preserves the good and the evil; by the mere bestowal of life it permits the one to grow better and purer, the other to become always viler. Both good and evil propagate themselves without end in this world. Even the ungodly owe their existence to God’s power. Why does He not withhold life from them? Why does He not put an end to suffering, war, and death, which could not endure without His omnipotent hand? Why does He not force all men on the right path if they themselves are unable to find it? Why does He permit them to stray hopelessly in gloom and despair? Questions and riddles without end!

Small wonder that Luther declared that this God, who dwells in everything that lives and whom he beheld there as clearly as ever poet and philosopher did, is a hidden God, a God to whom no path of our philosophical contemplation leads us. If we assume that we can comprehend Him in a discordant and contradictory life, in which He is indeed hidden, then our reflections must carry us into insoluble contradictions; to faith there is no alternative but imprecation and blasphemy. The human mind can snap because of this question and be driven into insanity. All profound thinkers who skirted the rim of this precipice have either known or experienced this (Goethe, Hölderlin, Nietzsche).

Only one, God Himself, can lead the way out of this maze of questions. It is futile for reason to remonstrate and rebel. But does this mean that we should lay our hands on our laps and patiently await enlightenment? By no means. We must learn to put the question concerning God correctly. This is imperative. Then the comprehension of the answer will be easier. The fact that our attempt to apprehend God in nature and in history as the totality of life leads us into a blind alley need not be fruitless. If this quest carried us adrift, then the mistake did not occur at the end but at the beginning. Then we must retrace our steps and seek a correct starting point. Did we actually look for God when we sought Him in the aggregate of life? Or were we not groping rather for a concept of the ultimate unity of the world? To find the coherent elements of the world is the never-ending task of the philosopher, but this is not the core of the question concerning God. To trace the living world to its ultimate cause and to deduce a philosophical system from this, and to believe in God, are two radically different matters. The former stems from our strong urge and thirst for knowledge and cognition. But the result of this philosophical investigation still has no bearing on my attitude and my conduct of life. One may have the most varying views on this Primary Unity in all life; one may speak about God or about a Primal Power, the Universe, Fate, Primal Substance, Primal Spirit — all this is immaterial to, and without any effect on, our heart, our conscience, and our conduct in daily life. On the other hand, everything in life does depend on the question whether I truly believe in God. A genuine faith in God must transform me into another man. The real question concerning God is not only a question asked by us but also one addressed to us. The one is a question of cognition; the other, a question of life. The two can become one only if I know both. Here true faith in God is greater than any power of human thinking. In faith an answer to the question about the ultimate cause and origin of the world is also included; but the philosophical concept of origin contains no answer for my conduct of life, no duties and obligations, no help, and no comfort. Therefore we must learn to formulate the question concerning God correctly.

Luther often put and answered this question in a wonderfully informal, human, and undogmatic manner, particularly in his well-known explanation of the First Commandment (Large Catechism). “What does it mean to have a God, or what is God?” Answer: “God is that to which I must look for all that is good and to whom I must flee in every need.” This simple sentence, from which one could evolve Luther’s whole theology and his view of the essence of all religions, is far different from most concepts of God. We would perhaps answer this question thus: God is the World Cause or Life Absolute, the Unfathomable Power which supports and directs life and the world, or the Demanding Will which I hear in my conscience. We find nothing of this in Luther’s biblical statement: “That to which I must look for all that is good and to which I must flee in every need.” Man places his trust in various things in life. The one believes that, after all, money rules the world and conducts himself accordingly. Whether or not he possesses, in addition, a dim and hazy perception of God is of little practical importance. The other probably relies, in the end, on the gifts of body or mind with which he is endowed and glories in his own powers, which will see him through every difficulty. Others find what they consider complete security in the position and reputation they have acquired. Many trust in their luck, in their good blood, in the high respect in which their family is held, in their education; and many gain strength and confidence in life from the fact that they are citizens of their country. If we sincerely searched our hearts and candidly confessed the real source of our confidence and trust, what amazingly heterogeneous things would come to light! How rarely will a person be able to say: I place my reliance solely on God!

“To whatever your heart cleaves and On whatever it relies, that is really your god.” Thus idols are not confined to heathendom. God and idol lie in such close proximity in our hearts that they are often hardly distinguishable. They are identifiable, however, by the true mainstay in our life.

Accordingly, having God means: “To possess something on which the heart places all its reliance.” How does this harmonize? We realize that it transcends the bounds of our imagination. No concept, no image, no metaphors of our fantasy are adequate for an undivided and coherent view of God. And yet the two views concerning God belong together. It is inconsequential whether I can make many profound statements about God. It is of the greatest importance, however, for me to know that He is my God, that He is at my side, a God on whom I can depend implicitly at all times. Whoever has failed to understand this difference can never have an inkling about a true belief in God. For to believe in God does not mean to believe that there is a God but to believe that He is my God. This is the very simple difference between semblance and truth. Even pious pagans perceived this. They were fully convinced of the power of their gods and commended themselves to their protection by prayer and by sacrifice. There is no religion in this world in which man does not seek protection and security from his god, no matter how much he fears this god.

In order to express the presence and the revelation of God in Christ, Luther was especially fond of calling Jesus the Word of God. That is a metaphor taken from the beginning of the Gospel According to St. John. That, too, we must seek to understand anew. And the more firmly we fix our gaze on Christ and the more candidly and freely we search for His footprints in the Bible, the better will we understand this Book.

Luther was so fond of calling Christ the Word of God because there is no more exact agency for self-communication than words. They reveal one’s spirit, one’s mind. Each of our words betrays us, intentionally or unintentionally; for it emanates from our innermost being. And even if we use words to conceal our thoughts, they reveal part of our character, namely, the ability to be untruthful. Word and character are inseparable; we even think in words. Our words are merely our character exposed to view. And Luther wanted to express this most intimate communion between the heart of God and the spirit of Jesus Christ when he adopted the term “Word of God.” At the same time he utilized the singular might of the unpretentious word as a metaphor for the wonderful might of Christ. A word is the weakest thing in the world, a mere breath of air — and yet it is the mightiest. Words can affect the whole human race, decide the fate of nations, introduce new eras. Similarly unprepossessing, insignificant, and seemingly defeated, Jesus stands among the rulers of the world, and yet, what power has issued from Him, visibly and invisibly! And as words not only reflect the mind, but contain it as their real substance, so Jesus’ words and His whole person are not only a doctrine concerning God; God’s grace is not merely proclaimed in them, but it is also imparted by them. In Him God is near us, clearly and definitely. He demands a decision, just as every word spoken by man demands a yes or a no; we must accept it or reject it, take it at its face value or call it into question. Thus Christ is not only the bearer of a message; He is also the personified question of God, the question which asks us whether we want to put our trust in Him and accept Him as our God. At the same time He is the personified pledge of God, the pledge which assures us that we may rely on Him for every good and flee to Him in every need.

To be sure, this requires courage. Death, sin, need, and pain are a Christian’s lot as well as that of any other person. Therefore even for the believing soul the profound mystery of God always arises anew from the depths. The enigma of the incomprehensible power of God that holds the life of nature and of history in its hand and keeps it in stormy motion again and again forces the question to our lips: Is the God who demands our trust and pledges His help, which we often fail to see amidst our sorrow and tribulation, not just a dream, a great self-delusion of man? Luther applied the old military term Anfechtung to this distress of the heart. For these are not merely questions of weary doubts and misgivings; they are attacks of an enemy skilled in fighting (Fechten). For our comfort Luther informed us that in this respect we are only sharing the experiences of Christ, who emptied this cup to the dregs, and that in this way God purifies and refines our faith and our trust in Him. “I did not learn my theology at one time, but I had to meditate deeper and deeper. Then my Anfechtungen carried me thither. For this cannot be acquired without experience.” This teaches us — especially young people — to exercise patience when the question concerning God staggers us and can silence our saucy accusations and hasty renunciation. Because Luther had experienced the blessing of doubts and Anfechtung, he called them “God’s embraces.” And faith must transform the terrifying aspects of these painful embraces of the hidden God into the gracious countenance of the revealed God.

Christian faith encompasses and overcomes the immense tension between the glowing life of God in all phenomena of nature and of history and the kindly disposed God, whose heart we may behold mirrored in Christ. The more thoroughly we understand that the question concerning God involves a dual view and not a shift from one point of view to another, the easier will it be to bear the intellectual contradictions which reason continues to present. For the more penetrating eye of faith these contradictions dissolve by themselves. For faith asks for no definite formula concerning God; it knows that it can reach into mystery and darkness and there find a hand which will hold and guide it.