A God By Any Other Name…
It is undoubtedly a reflection on the age in which we live, though it still caught me by surprise, when I recently asked the internet to identify some differences between an “attribute” and an “image.” What I got in response had nothing to do with the meanings of the words themselves. Rather, I was informed as to how such words made reference to different applications in computer programming. The information I received - no doubt through the generation of “artificial intelligence” - was of absolutely no help to my query whatsoever. And it seemed such a simple question.
All that aside, an attribute is some quality, characteristic, or trait which is understood to inherently identify a person, object, or concept. An image, on the other hand, is a figurative, metaphorical, or pictorial means of representing something else which could never be identified as that something else. We could not, for instance, claim to possess or capture the inherent essence of somebody else simply because we possess a photograph of them. I believe this distinction should be kept perpetually in mind whenever we dare to contemplate the scriptural images of God and perhaps none more so than the one we will consider today - the Holy God.
Holy, as a word, appears in scripture more than 600 times and, in most cases, it is making reference to God. However, the evolution of its meaning, both biblically and post-biblically, can very quickly strip “holy” of its original meaning by heaping upon it all manner of extraneous apparel. We clothe it with a host of supposedly defining attributes like sacred, hallowed, sanctified, blessed, devout, pious, saintly, and pure - to name but a few. We will even strain the impious cannons of repetitive redundancies by insisting that God - being holy - is divine or godly for being “holy” - as if attributing divinity and godliness to God requires more than God being God.
The issue with all manner of things we consider holy, defined by that long list of associated attributes, is that we have a tendency to more and more set such things apart from anything else we might consider as merely common. The history of the Church provides many a sad example of such questionable attempts to control the “holy” experiences of God among us. It has, for instance, occasionally engaged in denying physical participation in our communion rites to the people lest the “sacred” elements of consecrated bread and wine be somehow defiled by the improprieties of the common folk. Like it or not, such attempts to control the activity and presence of the holy among us cannot but help to run up against the God who, in the primary biblical image of God we considered in the previous article, will be whatever and/or whoever that God will be among us. Our understandings of a “holy” God must hold in mind and heart this God who, despite our efforts or desires to fence in this God, will be and become whatever this God will be and become among us
In some sense, but insufficiently so, the holiness of God has conceptionally become associated with God’s transcendence over and beyond us. While God is beyond our human capacities to understand, comprehend, or control, it is not transcendence per se which puts God beyond us. Rather, it is our experience of this supposed “beyond-in-our-midst” which is beyond our comprehension and control. There is something transcendently immanent about these experiences of God which we may never be able to wrap our minds around. As such, the biblical image of God being “holy” might best be understood without reference to any sense of God’s obvious “transcendence”.
Transcendence, by its very nature, is a subject entirely confined to the philosophical inquiries and intellectual gymnastics which can only lead to theoretical abstractions. However, the biblically Hebraic origins of the word translated as “holy” are actually surprisingly common. It simply means “other”. Identifying God as somehow “other” - rather than relegating God to what we might identify as “other” worldly experiences - actually invites us to consider how the presence and activity of God may get experienced by us in the “other” we are confronted with in our lives in this world. This opens us to how God is made known to us in experiences with other people, other existent beings, other places, other opinions, other possibilities, et al. The question this perpetually presents to us is: When we are encountering and experiencing the “other” - in whatever form that may be - are we prepared to reverence the presence of God in this “other”?
Not long ago my wife and I spent some extended time in the country of India. It was, in many ways, the most exotic culture I have ever experienced in my life. So much of what I encountered in India was radically other than what I had become accustomed or anticipated among people that I could not imagine how I could ever “get into the flow” of what often seemed to me like pure chaos. However, there was one practice which, after my somewhat initial amusement, I found myself regularly engaging in. The Indian people have a habitual tendency to greet one another with a slight bow as they press their upraised hands together. It is an act, I was informed, by which each person is acknowledging in the other the presence of God. It is a mutual act of reverence for the presence of God in one another. This, I believe, is very much akin to what the biblical image of God’s holiness is driving us toward. We are to have the same divine reverence for the “other” as we have towards the God who is “other”, who is “holy”.
The myriad ways in which God can be experienced in the “other”, like God, are beyond calculating and without definition. Exercising a simple reverence for what we experience and encounter in the “other” may surprise us with who we are encountering in such experiences. It may even prompt us to become “other” than we ourselves had previously been.
“You shall be holy, for YHWH your God is holy.” - Leviticus
Obviously, we are not being asked to be transcendent here. So what might this mean for us?
