{"id":2270,"date":"2010-07-27T02:11:18","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T06:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=2270"},"modified":"2015-01-01T12:17:12","modified_gmt":"2015-01-01T17:17:12","slug":"is-god-a-self-part-1-gillman-dale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/is-god-a-self-part-1-gillman-dale\/","title":{"rendered":"Is God a self? Part 1 &#8211; Gillman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-2271\" title=\"shepherd\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/shepherd-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/shepherd-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/shepherd-420x280.jpg 420w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/shepherd-460x307.jpg 460w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/shepherd-90x60.jpg 90w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/shepherd.jpg 528w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>First up to bat, Jewish theologian and philosopher Neil Gillman.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Gillman interview\" href=\"http:\/\/www.closertotruth.com\/video-profile\/Is-God-a-Person-Neil-Gillman-\/1605\" target=\"_blank\">Watch the interview here<\/a>, then read\u00a0below for my take.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">Gilman <strong>didn&#8217;t want to directly answer the question<\/strong>, instead making some related points.<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Gillman says, rather absolutely, that &#8220;the God of biblical religion is beyond human knowledge&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>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 &#8220;word pictures&#8221;, by which I think he means metaphor, e.g. &#8220;the LORD is my Shepherd&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>It is &#8220;dangerous&#8221; to see any of these as literally true. It is &#8220;idolatry&#8221; to think that God can be truly, literally described. He criticizes the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation as tending to deprive God of\u00a0transcendence, <em>hinting<\/em>, but not quite saying, that Christians are idolaters.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">But the interviewer, rightly, pulls him back to the question: I<strong>s God a person?<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>I think his answer is: <strong>No <\/strong>&#8211; 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 &#8220;God is a being&#8221;, and as a self is a kind of being, then &#8220;God&#8221; can&#8217;t refer to some self. But personal God-<em>talk<\/em> (and &#8211;<em>think<\/em>) is perfectly OK (as long as we don&#8217;t take it literally).<\/li>\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<li>When praying, he wants God to be a self (to listen, to be moved, to respond). When he&#8217;s doing philosophy, he doesn&#8217;t want God to be a self (he doesn&#8217;t quite say why). But I take it, what Gillman wants isn&#8217;t relevant. The truth, in his view, is that God is an <strong>incomprehensible Something<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div>To me, this is <strong>not theism<\/strong>, 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&#8217;s see how his answer compares with <a title=\"Is God a Person? interviews\" href=\"http:\/\/www.closertotruth.com\/topic\/Is-God-a-Person\/219\" target=\"_blank\">the other interviewees<\/a>.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><a title=\"Tom Flint interview post\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/2280\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Next up: Catholic philosophy Tom Flint.<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First up to bat, Jewish theologian and philosopher Neil Gillman. Watch the interview here, then read\u00a0below for my take.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-linkage","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7039,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2270\/revisions\/7039"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}