IMAGES OF GOD
Autor: GERALDO N OLIVEIRA | Publicado: 2014-01-18T18:35:00-08:00


When you say “God”,
what do you have in your mind?



This &nbsp;question commonly isn’t done.

It seems to cause
embarrassment.

Perhaps this is the
reason why I have never heard anyone do it.



Anyway , I decided to
do it to myself . Here is a synthesis of the result.



It seems to me&nbsp; that there were two ways to try to achieve an
answer.

The first&nbsp; one is the path of reason , the&nbsp; philosophical way. 



And, in this question
it is impossible to forget Aristote. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He,
indeed, in his long reflection &nbsp;on the
nature of changes (book 8 of his "Physics"), arrived to one
unexpected being : a transcendent being. &nbsp;His philosophical reflection&nbsp;&nbsp; forced him to postulate a being outside the
physical order , ie , a being&nbsp; transcendent
to the physical order. So, from the Aristotelian point of&nbsp; view , the best image of God is the abstract,
not sensible but&nbsp; real and necessary ,
First Cause of all &nbsp;secondary causes .



The second&nbsp; way&nbsp; depends
on the accumulated human experience, since prehistoric times .

This experience of
God&nbsp; is a feeling that is expressed
initially with signs of respect for the dead , permeates the worship of idols ,
evolves in the experiments &nbsp;systematically recorded in the sacred books of
various peoples , and described&nbsp; ,
analytically , in classic works of R . Otto ( "The Holy" ) , Roger
Bastide ( "The Wild Holy " ) , Mircea Eliade ( " The Holy and the
Profane " ) and others. In short, the experience of humankind &nbsp;speaks about a mystery and Aristotelian
metaphysics speaks about a being that transcends &nbsp;the physical order and&nbsp; that is its last cause. The transcendent&nbsp; being of Aristote and&nbsp; the universal and constant&nbsp; experience of the&nbsp; holy ( see R. Otto) were seen by Saint Thomas
Aquinas&nbsp;&nbsp; as converging to a point that
he called&nbsp; God ( in “Summa contra
Gentiles” e na “Summa Theologiae, prima pars quaestio II” ). 

But can we&nbsp; known better this mystery , this transcendent
being ?



Could we conceive an
image of him? 



Yes, because,
although this question create discomfort &nbsp;to many people , the fact is that there is no
possibility to think of something without any image (in a broad sense of the
word).&nbsp; For instance,&nbsp; even when , we try to glimpse the
transcendent&nbsp; being &nbsp;undressing him of immanent attributes ( such
as dimensions , weight , physical or moral qualities ) we end up with&nbsp; an mental&nbsp;
image (!) that is paradoxical : an empty, living&nbsp; and active being. It's&nbsp; what&nbsp;
we see in '' Divine Names " ,&nbsp;
of the Pseudo –Dionysius, about God&nbsp;
or, as in the poems of Chuang Tzu , about the Tao.



Both reason and faith
tells us that such a being is here, but is also&nbsp;
in the last&nbsp;( ? ) galaxy and
even in the most hidden phenomena of our own body , as in cycles of Krebs. It means
that we can’t&nbsp; imagine Him in terms of
space , unless saying : '' he’s very , very big “.Moreover , both reason and
faith tell us that&nbsp; we find&nbsp; Him now, but He&nbsp; was also&nbsp;
in the Big Bang ,in&nbsp; the building
of the egyptian pyramids , in the Peloponnesian War , and that will also be at
any future time in history. This means that we can’t&nbsp; imagine Him in&nbsp; terms of time .It seems to be better to say
that He is out of&nbsp; the time.



The Scripture does
not ignore or belittle such facts . So we find in Ecclesiasticus the question
so characteristically human "Who saw Him, so that one can describe Him? ''
(Sir 43 , 35 ) . There were no positive response. The prophets &nbsp;created&nbsp;
a lot of different images of God: lover , mother , father, shepherd ,
the goldsmith , the fire , the guardian , the warrior , the judge and many
others. The answer &nbsp;to the question (Sir
43,35), appeared in Scripture itself , something of 300 years later. At the
beginning of the Gospel of John, however , the answer appears crystal clear : ''
No one has ever seen God , &nbsp;only &nbsp;the Son , who is in &nbsp;the&nbsp; Father
's bosom, revealed Him '' ( Jn 1:18 ) .

The description given
by Jesus Christ fell directly on the personality and power of God , and only
indirectly on his essence , which remains, for us, &nbsp;steeped in sound mystery. According to Jesus, the personality of God is of &nbsp;a loving Father , full of desire to accept , forgive
and love (Jesus speaking directly from the Father 187 times in the Gospels ) .
The power of God , Jesus demonstrate it curing diseases , calming storms ,
walking on water , and especially raising up from the deads.

Therefore , the image
of God is&nbsp;the image of the best &nbsp;and more
powerful father, but &nbsp;larger than the
universe , closer to my &nbsp;more deep
intimacy , more remote than the most distant past and more advanced than the
more advanced future .



&nbsp;There is still
something to say about : &nbsp;the &nbsp;Sacred Scriptures &nbsp;itself, and not only the Philosophy,&nbsp; clearty express a similar concept of God: &nbsp;in his public discourse in Athens ( as an
effort to make himself understood by &nbsp;greek thinkers) , &nbsp;Saint Paul says about God : " in Him&nbsp; we live &nbsp;and move and have our being'' (Acts 17,28). So, &nbsp;we can have&nbsp;an image of God&nbsp; consistent with philosophy and faith :&nbsp; even knowing that this is only an image , we
can think of God as a kind of environment. We can not say : He IS an
environment , but &nbsp;is SOMETHING LIKE an
environment .

Therefore, if we &nbsp;think so , in short we think too &nbsp;that God
is &nbsp;like a loving and &nbsp;powerfull. environment ( considering what Jesus
Christ taught ).



Now, excuse me&nbsp; for this simplistic analogy : we are in God
more or less like the fish is in the water : the fish is not water , but it &nbsp;live and move and have its &nbsp;being &nbsp;in the water, as &nbsp;“we live and move and have our being '' in God
( Acts 17 , 28). This seems to me a beautiful image of God (and of our
dependence of Him).



But we must go
further . We, Christian,&nbsp; have &nbsp;in mind&nbsp;
a human ideal : the gold standard of human being &nbsp;is Jesus Christ .In the Gospels we learn that
Jesus Christ&nbsp; lived aware that he was
immersed in His Father (God), so immersed to the point of to express God&nbsp;

(
transcendent ) in human words and behaviors ( immanent ).




In short, when we speak
of God , our mind can "see " the "divine environment " in
which we are immersed , and our eyes and ears can see and hear &nbsp;the historical figure of Jesus , the
personality of the sacred &nbsp;"environment ", because, &nbsp;as St. Paul said, &nbsp;"He is the image of the invisible God
" ( Col 1:15 ).