Is God a self? Part 1 – Gillman

Gilman didn’t want to directly answer the question, instead making some related points.

• Gillman says, rather absolutely, that “the God of biblical religion is beyond human knowledge”.
• We can feel (and perhaps in some way see and hear) God, though, and he he holds that we can talk about God, but only non-literally, via “word pictures”, by which I think he means metaphor, e.g. “the LORD is my Shepherd”.
• It is “dangerous” to see any of these as literally true. It is “idolatry” to think that God can be truly, literally described. He criticizes the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation as tending to deprive God of transcendence, hinting, but not quite saying, that Christians are idolaters.

But the interviewer, rightly, pulls him back to the question: Is God a person?

• I think his answer is: No – although, it is natural and useful for us humans to think of God as a person, and to experience God as if he were one, which he God is not. It is metaphorical to say even that “God is a being”, and as a self is a kind of being, then “God” can’t refer to some self. But personal God-talk (and –think) is perfectly OK (as long as we don’t take it literally).
• Nonetheless he attributes to God a history of failure. Or maybe, his point is just that the God-character of the Bible is a failing one.
• When praying, he wants God to be a self (to listen, to be moved, to respond). When he’s doing philosophy, he doesn’t want God to be a self (he doesn’t quite say why). But I take it, what Gillman wants isn’t relevant. The truth, in his view, is that God is an incomprehensible Something.

To me, this is not theism, or monotheism. I say that not as a criticism, but by way of description. Nor is it naturalism. It may be misleading to call it atheistic, as that would suggest naturalism. It is certainly a strand of Jewish thinking about God, and it is much the same as some Christian intellectuals would say. I suspect that the root of it is Platonic philosophy, and not the Bible. But let’s see how his answer compares with the other interviewees.