{"id":38025,"date":"2016-10-15T07:31:01","date_gmt":"2016-10-15T11:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=38025"},"modified":"2017-03-09T21:03:27","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T02:03:27","slug":"divine-fluidity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/divine-fluidity\/","title":{"rendered":"Divine fluidity"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been telling the Maverick Philosopher here<\/a> about Benjamin Sommer\u2019s theory of divine fluidity, which is one solution to the problem of anthropomorphic language in the Hebrew Bible. The problem is not just Genesis 1:26 (\u2018Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness\u2019) but also Genesis 3:8 \u2018They heard the sound<\/i> of the Lord God walking<\/i> in the garden at the time of the evening breeze\u2019. Can God be a man with feet who walks around the garden leaving footprints? As opposed to being a pure spirit? The anthropomorphic conception is, in Maverick\u2019s opinion \u2018a hopeless reading of Genesis\u2019, and makes it out to be garbage. \u2018You can\u2019t possibly believe that God has feet\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Yet Benjamin Sommer<\/a>, Professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages at the Jewish Theological Seminary, proposes such a literal and anthropomorphic interpretation. As he argues (The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel<\/i>), if the authors of the Hebrew Bible had intended their anthropomorphic language to be understood figuratively, why did they not say so<\/i>? The Bible contains a wide variety of texts in different genres, but there is no hint of this, the closest being the statement of Deuteronomy 4.15 that the people did not see any form when the Ten Commandments were revealed at Sinai. \u2018Until Saadiah [the 10th century father of Jewish philosophy], all Jewish thinkers, biblical and post-biblical, agreed that God, like anything real in the universe, has a body\u2019<\/span><\/span>.\u00a0A proper understanding of the Hebrew Bible requires not only that God has a body, but that God has many bodies \u2018located in sundry places in the world that God created\u2019. These bodies are not angels or messengers. He says in this this interview<\/a> that an angel in one sense is not sent by God but actually is God, just not all of God<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[It] is a smaller, more approachable, more user-friendly aspect of the cosmic deity who is Hashem. That idea is very similar to what the term avatara conveys in Sanskrit. So in this respect, we can see a significant overlap between Hindu theology and one biblical theology.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Do hard-assed logicians such as ourselves balk at such partial identity? Not necessarily. I point to a shadow at the bottom of the door, saying \u2018that<\/i> is the Fuller Brush man\u2019. Am I saying that the Fuller Brush man is a shadow? Certainly not! Nor, when I point to a beach on the island, saying \u2018that island is uninhabited\u2019, am I implying that the whole island is a beach. By the same token, when I point to the avatar, and truly say \u2018that is God\u2019, am I implying that God is identical with the avatar? Not at all. Nor am I saying that God has feet, even though the avatar<\/em> has feet. The point is that the reference of \u2018that\u2019 is not the physical manifestation before me, but God himself. Scholastic objections that we cannot think of God as \u2018this essence\u2019 (ut haec essentia<\/i>) notwithstanding.<\/p>\n

A somewhat similar approach was suggested by Richard Cartwright in his famous essay \u2018On the Logical Problems of the Trinity<\/a>\u2019. We can say \u2018that is Descartes\u2019 (pointing to a picture), \u2018that is the Sonesta Hotel\u2019 (pointing to a reflection in the water), or \u2018that is the Fuller Brush man\u2019 (pointing to a foot in the doorway).<\/p>\n

Each of these suggests a possible construal of our Trinitarian sentences, and a full treatment would take account of them all. But perhaps I have said enough to convince you of the difficulty of the subject; and, if I have not exhibited the rewards of truth, I hope I have demonstrated the dangers of error.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sommer\u2019s approach is perfectly consistent<\/a> with this.<\/p>\n

Sommer insists that core Christian assertions\u2014the trinity and incarnation\u2014are not theologically impermissible within the world of Judaism, but rather are faithful to the fluidity model of divinity found in ancient Israel. For modern Jews, Sommer demonstrates how biblical notions of fluidity and antifluidity pose challenges for both liberal and conservative Jews, though not in the same way. He concludes by insisting that, contrary to customary positions, it is the fluidity model that offers the strongest statement of monotheism consistent with the personhood of God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sommer\u2019s theory of divine fluidity: a solution to the problem of anthropomorphic language in the Hebrew Bible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":38024,"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":[21,16,75,38,9,13,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-books","category-divine-attributes","category-monotheism","category-philosophy","category-theologians","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38025","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38025"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38637,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38025\/revisions\/38637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}