The Nature of God

God is One

The Abrahamic faith is strictly monotheistic. It believes in a singular “one unity” of God, that is indivisible, without parts or persons, without comparison, without equal or opposite forces, and is unique and self-existent. There are no other so-called gods, a god head, a pantheon of gods, or a division among God. Essentially, God’s oneness, his perfect self contained unity, makes him truly all that there really ever was, is, or is to be. Everything that is not God is merely transient and temporal to the degree that when compared to eternity, which exists in God alone, is as an illusion or a temporary flicker of energy that is here and then gone. As magnificent as our Sun is, as brightly as it burns, if it endures with all its energy bursting out for 100 billion years, it is still just essentially, in comparison to God, an illusion, a momentary flicker of energy that appeared and disappeared as something transient and temporal. God is all that really truly exists, and everything else is just a transient manifestation of his creative power and nothing exists without or apart from Him. The God of Abraham is God and besides him there is no other and nothing compares. 

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God; the Lord is One” Deuteronomy 6:4

The “oneness” of God or the unity of God is to be understood in both 1) there is no other God but the one God alone, and 2) God is himself one, in perfect unity with himself, as one in substance and essence and without parts or divisions. God therefore cannot be one thing and also another thing, or be this as well as that. He cannot be “God the Father” as well as a different person “God the Son” while also being a distinct and sent “God the Spirit”. There is no tri-unity of God or a separation of parts or persons. There is only the eternal God in all his fullness as one in complete personhood and unity within himself. 

By default God can also never be both God as well as a created thing, being, or person. That which is eternal cannot be transient. God has no parts or persons and cannot be a man or a force of nature or anything in creation (though he is the cause and originator of all things). It is completely contrary to the nature of the God revealed in the Hebrew scriptures (which some call the Old Testament) for God to come to earth as a man or any other creature. God cannot be both the eternally existent oneness of all that there is, was, or ever will be, while at the same time being a temporal transient man walking on earth.  

Not only is it unscriptural to imagine God as a creature or a man, it is completely illogical and unreasonable, and has no place within the laws of physics, science, theology, or philosophy, or any reasonable manifestation of the intellect. Such thinking really only falls within the realm of fantasy, mythology, and religious paganism. The pagan religious mind, which was wholly engrossed in all manner of the human imagination, mythology, and fantastical other worldly abstractions, is really the only realm in which the idea of god and man merging can be found. In the ancient Greco-Roman religious cults the idea of a god becoming a man, a man becoming a god, or god fathering a son (demi-god) by procreating with a human woman, is commonplace. But these ideas all fall in the realm of mythology and fantasy and not in the realm of reality, reason, philosophy, and intellectual theology.  

Even the Greeks themselves (famous for their mythology) did intellectually and logically evolve over time. The most reasonable and brightest thinkers of Greek philosophy did eventually rise above this fantastical and mythological way of thinking about the “Theos” (god) concept, and together they with the brightest minds in the East/Persia (from which originates Zoroastrian philosophy) concluded along with the Jews of course, that God is transcendent and outside of time and space, and as being such does not or cannot be a created being and definitely cannot be or become a man. And being transcendent and eternal in nature, cannot then exist in parts, but eternally exists in perfect unity of self outside of space and time. 

This oneness understanding of God as the sole eternal and transient creator, without parts or body, was the common view of the intellectual and educated civilizations in the ancient world across many cultures. There was however a revival of ancient pagan mythologies throughout the Roman empire at the beginning of the common era. It is here, in the Roman Empire in the first century, that we find the trend of what’s called “Mystery Religions”. In these mystery religions we get a revival of mythologies from ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Babylonian paganism, where the concept of the “God-Man” is a common theme. Departing from the rational realm of the established Monotheism of the day by the Jews, many Greco-Romans began diving into the mystery cults of ancient paganism, where the concept of a god becoming a man or the incarnation of a god into a man was imagined and integrated into their religious practices.

The rise of these mystery religions and the popularity of the “God-Man” concept of ancient paganism, though starting out as “secret cults”, became mainstream from the 1st-3rd century CE. This had a tremendous influence on Christianity which was beginning to form during this same time period. Because of this we see many schisms and divisions in the early Christian church. Some Christians were being heavily influenced by the “Mystery Religion” cults and their views on the nature of God and man, and other Christians were holding onto the traditional Monotheist view of the Jews. 

The very first Jewish Christians (called Ebionites or Natsarenes) held to the Monotheist view that God is One and there is no other (the view their own teacher Jesus had). And they believed that their teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, was the Jewish Messiah, thus a man and nothing more than fully human with no divine nature. And then 100s of miles away and nearly 100 years removed from the first Jewish Christians in Jerusalem (those who sat under Jesus’ teachings first hand) were the Greco-Roman Christians. These Christians were the ones that were getting heavily bombarded with pagan ideas, and the “Mystery Religion” philosophies. And so we find among the early Greek speaking, Greek thinking, and Greek writing churches, their various documents (written in Greek) propagating both Gnosticism and mystery religion philosophies. Where the God-Man concept is revived. The nature of God is distorted to include “persons” in a “godhead”, and we begin to see Jesus, the man, become fully god himself in human form.  

These two different schools of thought in Christianity left a huge mark upon the history of the Christian church, which then carried over into all of western society. At the time of the early Christian church, there was a great division. Those who held to the more Jewish monotheism that had been well established for milenia, and those who held to the new concept found in the mystery religions where God had multiple person hoods, and that he had a son, who is himself also fully god. 

Historically this comes down to the Arianism vs Trinitarian debate. At the end of the day, the schism needed to be crushed and ended, as it was disrupting the Roman Empire. So the Emperor Constantine got involved and ultimately the mystery religion concept was decided on, and strict monotheism was “outlawed” (in place of a trinity) and the eternal transcendent god had now become fully a human being (in the form of a jew from Nazareth named Iesous). This ruling by the Roman Empire affected man’s thinking about the nature of God for the rest of history.

This is the reason for the short history lesson here–showing how man’s theology has changed because of man’s own inventions, and not because God’s nature itself has changed, for he is immutable. When God spoke from heaven to the whole world at Sinai and the whole world was enlightened to the word of God saying “Hear of Israel, The LORD our God, the LORD is One”, He spoke an immutable fact that is never to cease to be true. No matter what the Roman Empire decides on, taking upon itself the power to decree a change to the nature of God, the fact of God’s spoken word cannot be undone and his nature cannot be changed or modified. If it could, then he is not God. The author is going to move forward in this work accepting only the traditional monotheistic view of the nature of God, and will reject the Roman Empire’s decision to make their god into a division in unity (ie, a Trinity) and make their god a human man referred to in Greek as “Christ”.