Character of God
Dr. Marcus J. Borg
Hundere Professor of Religion and Culture
Oregon State University
Corvallis, Oregon

Oh, God, from whom to be turned is to fall,
to whom to be turned is to rise,
and in whom to stand is to abide forever,
grant us in all our duties thy help;
in all our perplexities, thy guidance;
in all our dangers, thy protection;
and in all our sorrows, thy peace,
through Jesus Christ our Lord, our body and our blood, our life and our nourishment. Amen.

My topic tonight is the reality and character of God. My talk has three main parts in it, to give you a roadmap up front. In part one, I will speak about the reality of God; in part two, I will address the question: Is God personal? What does it mean to speak of God as personal? And in part three, the character of God.

So I begin with part one, the reality of God. It seems to me that the central religious question in modern Western culture is the reality of God. To use William James' most generic term for God or the sacred: "Is there a more?" It's that very simple English word "more." Is there a more? Is God real? I'm going to develop this point with four major points. The first is the importance for this question of thinking about our worldview. Now, "worldview" is a semi-technical term, but it names something that we all have. So to define the term first, very simply, your worldview is your image of reality, your image or picture or understanding of what is real and of what is possible. Other terms for worldview would include, colloquially, your big picture of how things are; or philosophically, your worldview is your metaphysics or your ontology.

Now, very importantly, we all have a worldview, whether we've ever heard of that term or not or thought consciously about it. We all acquire a worldview simply from the process of growing up in a culture. We internalize our community's understanding of the way things are. If you don't internalize your community's understanding of what is real very well, then you're either going to be eccentric, or on the other end of the spectrum, insane or perhaps a psychopath. We just get this taken for granted understanding of what is real and what is possible.

At a very foundational level, there are two kinds of worldviews. Of course, there are many more worldviews than that. Every culture, in a sense, has its worldview. But my claim is that the multiplicity of worldviews basically falls into two primary categories. The first of these is a religious worldview. And for a religious worldview, there is a “More;” that is, in addition to the visible world of our ordinary experience and as disclosed by science, there is a More, a non-material layer or level or dimension of reality, and this notion is shared by all of the enduring religious traditions of the world.

To echo language from the contemporary scholar, Houston Smith, this was, until recently, the virtual human unanimity. It is only modern Western culture that really diverges from this conviction shared by all of the enduring religious traditions of the world. This More is named in various ways by the traditions as God or spirit or the sacred or the Tao or Allah or Atmen and so forth.

The other kind of worldview is, of course, a non-religious worldview. Other phrases for this would be a secular worldview or a material worldview or a naturalistic worldview. For the non-religious worldview, there is no More. There is only this; namely, the space-time world of matter and energy; the visible world of our ordinary experience. This is the modern Western worldview -- the image of reality born in the enlightenment of the Seventeenth Century -- the enlightenment, of course, being the birth of modern science and scientific ways of knowing. Thus, this is the worldview of modernity, modernity simply being a word we use for the kind of culture we live in as modern Western people. This worldview of modernity is not only held by let's say atheists and agnostics, but it's actually held by many religious people in our time, including many Christians. They simply add God onto this image of reality as the one who created the space-time world of matter and energy, all of which operates in accord with natural laws and so forth.

In the last three centuries these two worldviews have collided in Western culture. That's why the central religious issue of our time is the reality of God. The modern worldview radically calls into question the notion that there is a More. In the United States we might not think that the reality of God is a major question. The Gallup poll, ever since it began to be taken about 50 years ago, has consistently disclosed that approximately 95 percent of the American public says that they believe in God. By the way, it's never been completely clear to me what that might mean. It's clear to me that God is not the central passion of 95 percent of our population. How you could believe in God without God being your central passion just sort of boggles the mind in a way.

Another reason for not being sure what these polls mean – comes from the results of a national poll taken shortly before Christmas about five years ago. In this poll, 64 percent of Americans said they are absolutely sure that Jesus was born of a virgin. Now, that's more people than there are Christians in this country. Not only that -- and it will sound like I'm getting it wrong, but I'm not -- seventy-five percent of that poll were absolutely sure that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Seventy-three percent were absolutely sure that he ever existed. More people are absolutely sure he was born in Bethlehem than are sure that he ever existed. So it's always hard to know what to make of those polls.

But by way of contrast, the percentage of people in England saying that they believe in God is much, much lower. It's 35 percent, according to the British scholar, Karen Armstrong. In some of the countries of northern Europe that figure is even lower. The reason for that diminishment in a sense of the reality of God is, to a large extent, the culture of modernity.

My second main point in this section is that a religious worldview affirms that there is more than this space-time world of matter and energy. The name God is the most common word we use in Western culture to refer to this More. So the question, "Is God real?" is really the question, "Is there a More?" My own answer to that question is an emphatic yes. Of course I cannot demonstrate or prove the reality of God, but let me briefly list the kinds of data to which I would appeal. (I use the word data rather than evidence simply because evidence may suggest proof.) The First is the collective witness, wisdom and experience of the world's religions, which I mentioned very briefly at the beginning of this section -- the virtual human unanimity, until recently.

Secondly, there is the data of religious experience, especially in its more dramatic forms -- mystical experiences, shamanic experiences and visionary experiences. People throughout history and across cultures have had experiences that seem overwhelmingly to them to be experiences of the sacred. Of course there are less dramatic forms of religious experience as well -- that sense of the presence of God that we might occasionally have in the midst of the dailyness of our lives. The experiential basis of religion, it seems to me, is very strong and is ultimately the most persuasive ground of religion.

The third kind of data to which I would appeal is the suggestive and provocative affirmations of post-Modern science, especially post-Modern physics. Here I simply and briefly mention a passage from Houston Smith's newest book, Why Religion Matters. In that book, Houston Smith refers to two physicists from the University of California in Berkeley who have said, that: "The most fundamental processes of the universe occur outside of space and time." Now, these physicists aren’t Christians trying to make a defense of Christianity, they're simply speaking as physicists. That's a statement that stretches, indeed shatters the modern worldview, which affirms only the space-time world of matter and energy. That doesn't prove the reality of God, of course, but it does radically call into question the modern worldview which leaves no room for God.

My third major point in this section concerns the meaning of the word "God." I move into this point with a comment that Paul Tillich, one of the two most important Protestant theologians of the Twentieth Century, made half a century ago. [This is not a direct quote, it's paraphrased.] If, when you think of the word God, you are thinking of a reality that may or may not exist, then you are not thinking of God. Tillich's point is that the word "God" does not refer to a particular existing being; rather, the word "God" is the most common Western name for ultimate reality, for "is-ness," if you will.

Importantly, God is not simply a name for what “is” as defined by the modern Western worldview, not simply a poetic way of referring to this space-time universe of matter and energy; rather, God is the name we use for the “more.” The contemporary Benedictine teacher of Centering Prayer, Thomas Keating, when he's speaking abstractly about God, refers to God as "is-ness without limitation." The word "God" is the word we use to name "is-ness" uncategorized, "is-ness" unlimited. So the question of God is, how are you going to see "is-ness"?

My last point in my first section concerns language about God. God or the Sacred is beyond all words, beyond all language. Our language can but point to God. The semi-technical term for this is that God or the Sacred is ineffable. Our words cannot capture this reality, and this is a very ancient conviction. The opening line of the Tao Te Ching, written by the Sixth Century B.C., Chinese religious figure Lao Tsu, with whom some of you may be familiar, goes like this: "The Tao [Lao Tsu’s word for The Sacred] that can be named is not the eternal Tao.”

Once you have named God, set God off from the rest of reality by categorizing God with a name, you are no longer talking about God. A contemporary thinker named Beldon Lane, in his book about spiritual theology called The Solace of Fierce Landscapes says this about the language about God:

" We must speak, yet we cannot speak without stammering. Language about God stalks the borderland of the limits of language, using speech to confound speech, speaking in riddles, calling us to humble silence in the presence of mystery."

So God is the name we use for the non-material, stupendous, wondrous More that includes the material universe within it, even as it transcends the universe.

This is God as the encompassing Spirit, the One who is all around us, as well as within us, who pervades the whole universe. The universe is shot through with this non-material More. Or to use language from the New Testament, "God is the One in whom we live and move and have our being." Listen to how the language works. Where are we in relationship to God? We are in God. We live within God. We move within God. We have our being within God. So God is the One who is all around us and within us, the One in whom the universe is, even as God is more than the universe, the mystery with a capital M who is beyond all names, even as we name this sacred Mystery in our various ways. That's the end of part one.

So I turn to part two. Is God personal? In the Christian tradition, as in most religions, God is often spoken of as personal, as if God were a person-like being. But is God personal? What might it mean to speak of God as personal? I move into part two by using some more language from William James in his wonderful book, The Varieties of Religious Experience. In his rich concluding chapter, James makes passing reference to a God who does "wholesale business" and a God who does "retail business." He doesn't develop it, he just makes it in passing. I'm going to refer to the God who does wholesale business as the "wholesale God," and the God who does retail business as the "retail God." I want to acknowledge that I'm developing these notions in a way that James does not, but which I think he might have approved of. So I begin with the wholesale God.

The wholesale God is God abstracted from the language of any particular religious tradition. The wholesale God is the God of philosophical theology, if you will, and to explain what I mean by that, to use language from Tillich, this is "God as ultimate reality or being itself;" or, once again, from Thomas Keating, "This is God as is-ness without limitation;" or from Rudolf Otto, "This is God as the numinous and the Mysterium Tremendum" And if that language means nothing to you, let it fall into the sea of forgetfulness. Or from James himself, "The wholesale God is God as the More." The wholesale God, in short, is what we talk about when we talk about what the word means, what it points to.

The retail God, on the other hand, is the God of the religious traditions -- to extend the metaphor, the God of the local distributors; the God of the retail outlets, if you will. This is God named in the various ways that the religions name God. This is God as the central character in the sacred stories of the world's religions. Typically, the retail God is personified. God is spoken of with personal characteristics as if God were a person-like being. You know, "Our Father, who art in heaven . . ." -- classic example. Such personification is the natural language of retail religion. It is the natural language of devotion and worship.

I, myself, have no problem with the retail God, that is, with the use of personal language for God. I use such language all the time. I use it when I join in the worship practices of my home congregation. I use it in my private devotional life, in my prayers. I have no problem addressing God as if God were a person. Problems arise only when we literalize or semi-literalize these personifications. The literalization of our personifications happens in both harder and softer ways. Hard literalization is when we take our personifications of God quite literally; for example, the phrase "the right hand of God" means that God really has hands. Now, few Christians are literalists to that extent, though this kind of thing does happen; for example, in the summer of 2001, I read a news story in the Christian Century about a group of 60,000 Baptists in Texas who had separated themselves from the Southern Baptist Convention on the grounds that they believed "that God is a gendered being," and, more specifically, that they believe "God is a male being." No surprise there.

But what would it mean to say that God is literally male? That he has a winkie? That God has to shave? I mean, what could it possibly mean to say that God is literally male? Well, of course, that's silly. But there is a softer literalization of personal language for God that is much more common -- not that God has feet or hands or arms and so forth, but that God is a person-like being -- not just that God is personal, but that God is a personal being, separate from the universe and from other beings, personal in the sense of being somewhat like us, even though to a superlative degree.

The literalization of our personifications of God, whether in harder or softer forms, typically leads to what is called supernatural theism. That's a shorthand phrase for naming a particular way of thinking about God. Supernatural theism thinks of God as a person-like being out there, but supernatural theism has a lot of problems associated with it. It makes God very distant, especially if one thinks of the universe as huge, as we do, maybe even infinite. To say that God is somewhere out there beyond the universe makes God very, very far away, and it also makes the very notion of God problematic. What are the chances that there is a person-like being out there? Fairly marginal. Indeed, I think much of modern atheism is really a rejection of the God of supernatural theism. It just doesn't make much sense to people.

I run into this with my undergraduates very frequently. It happens at least once a term that a student will come up to me after class and say, "You know, this is all very interesting, but every time you use the word God, I have a problem, because you see, I really don't believe in God." And I will always say to them, "Tell me about the God you don't believe in." And invariably, it's the God of supernatural theism. Then I will say, "I don't believe in that God, either," and the student will be somewhat shocked, because they know that I affirm the reality of God. Then I'm able to explain that I think of God very differently; namely, as the encompassing Spirit in which we live and move and have our being, this non-material More that is all around us. The semi-technical name for that way of thinking about God is panentheism.

But back to the retail and the wholesale God, James himself does not make a value judgment between the wholesale God and the retail God. He doesn't suggest that one is better than the other or a more appropriate way of speaking than the other, and I think that's right. I would add that there are many people in our time who need to hear about the wholesale God in order to be able to take the retail God seriously.

But, now, to return to the question, is God personal? I, myself, don't think of God as personal in the sense of being a person-like being even though, as I've already said, I am very comfortable using personal language to refer to God. So what meaning or content do I give to personal language for God? Three comments here. The first is very brief. Our relationship to God is personal. By that, I mean that relationship engages us as persons at our deepest and most passionate level.

Secondly, I am persuaded that God has more the quality of a presence than of a non-personal energy or force. To use language from Martin Buber, "I am persuaded that God has more the quality of a You than the quality of an It, more the quality of a person than the quality of a non-animate energy field." I see this sense of God as a presence, as a You, as grounded in experience. I also see it reflected in the centrality of the notion of covenant in the Jewish and Christian traditions. We are in a covenantal relationship with what is, and covenant is an intrinsically relational model of reality.

My third comment in this section, I think God speaks to us. Now, I'm not thinking of oral revelation here or aural revelation, for that matter, or divine dictation. But I think God speaks to us sometimes dramatically in visions, less dramatically in some of our dreams or in internal proddings or leading -- what our Quaker friends call nudges and clobbers -- and if you don't get the nudge, you might get a clobber -- and I think God speaks to us through the devotional practices and scriptures of our traditions. I sometimes have a sense of being addressed.

The contemporary Christian writer Frederick Bueckner, has a marvelous way of putting this. Bueckner writes,

" Listen to your life. Listen to what happens to you, because it is through what happens to you that God speaks."

Now, don't get weird with this. It doesn't mean that everything that happens to you is the direct will of God. It doesn't mean that at all. And Bueckner continues,

" It's in language that's not always easy to decipher, but it's there, powerfully, memorably, unforgettably."

So is God personal? At the ontological level, I don't know, even as I am convinced that God is not a person-like being. Some theologians speak of God as transpersonal, that is as more than personal, and I rather like that way of speaking. We sometimes think that the opposite of personal can only be impersonal, but there's another option: transpersonal -- not less than personal, but more than personal. But I don't know if transpersonal is still personal in some relatively normal sense of the word. But I do think that personal language for God is appropriate. Indeed, I think it is more appropriate than impersonal language, for I am persuaded that God is not less than personal.

I turn now to part three, the character of God. We turn from how we think about the being of God to how we think about the character of God. Let me explain briefly what I mean by God's character. I begin by relating the notion of character to the notion of will. I see the character of God as something deeper than what we sometimes refer to as "the will of God," just as in us, as individuals. Our will is really the product of our character. By that I mean how we decide and so forth. All of that is our character, what we are like at a deep level of our being. So when I ask about the character of God, I basically mean, what is your God most basically like? And let me leave it in that question form. What is the character of your God?

I'm going to illustrate the importance of this question with a series of questions. They are questions addressed to you. They are also very helpful questions in diagnosing how a person thinks of God. So a series of rhetorical questions: Is your God primarily concerned about personal virtue? The God of my adolescence was, I'll tell you that. Is your God primarily a law giver and judge, somebody you need to measure up to? Is your God a God of requirements and rewards? Is your God primarily a God of heaven and hell? Is your God mostly nice? Is your God mostly indifferent? Is your God a God of compassion? Is your God a God of social justice?

The point being, that it makes a difference how you see the character of God, for how you see the character of God will very much shape what you think the religious life, the Christian life, is about. These various ways of thinking about the character of God crystallize, it seems to me, into two primary ways. Whether the two ways that I'm going to speak about are absolute opposites, complete contrasts, or whether they can be combined, I leave unaddressed for now. But I know the contrast is pedagogically useful, useful for our own thinking, clarity, teaching and living. Both of these ways of thinking about the character of God are found in the Bible. It's not that one is Biblical and the other one isn't. They're both there. Both are found in the continuing Christian tradition throughout the post-Biblical period into the present day. And both, I think, are found in most and perhaps all religious traditions.

The first way of thinking about the character of God -- in shorthand, I call this the God of requirements and rewards. This is God as the lawgiver and judge who has requirements for salvation. This is what I and a number of other scholars call the monarchial model of God; God as an ancient king who has established laws or requirements, and they are to be obeyed, and if they are not obeyed, then proper compensation has to be made through sacrifice and repentance and so forth. Basically, the Christian life is about living up to God's requirements or pleading alternative service; namely, the blood of Jesus. But it's the God of requirements and rewards. This has been the most common and widespread way of imaging God's character throughout Christian history.

The other one that I'll speak about very soon has always been there as well, but this has been the most common one. It's probably what most of us who grew up in the church grew up with. It is still the most common way of thinking of God's character for our conservative and fundamentalist Christian brothers and sisters. The language of grace and love and forgiveness is used, but anytime it is said, "You have to believe in Jesus in order to be saved," you have the God of requirements and rewards. And then the Christian life becomes doing what you need to do or believing what you need to be in order to be saved. In extreme form, this is the apocalyptic God, the God of the Rapture and the Second Coming, now popularized in the best selling, Left Behind novels. Ten of those have been on the New York Times' bestseller list. I think of them as sort of Christian gothic science fiction. But the God of the Left Behind novels, the God of the Rapture and the Second Coming is the God who will rescue and save some, but destroy most of humankind. That's simply an extreme form of that much more common Christian form of the God of requirements and rewards. The second way you can think of the character of God I describe in shorthand as the God of love and justice. This way of seeing God's character also appears very frequently in the Bible. We see it in the prophets of Old Testament; Hosea, for example, speaking in the name of God, uses the language of love and seduction and marriage. Hosea, in the name of God, says to Israel,

" I will allure you and bring you into the wilderness and speak tenderly to you. I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice and in steadfast love. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness."

Or Isaiah 43 contains these wonderful words in which the prophet, again speaking this time to the Jewish people in exile, says in the name of God, "You are precious in my eyes and honored, and I love you."

In the Songs of Songs, sometimes called the Song of Solomon or Canticles, the image of God as lover is the central image in that book. That book is a collection of erotic love poetry, very erotic in English, but if we could read it in Hebrew, there might not be a one of us who wouldn't occasionally blush. But from ancient times that book has been understood as a parable or an allegory of God's love for Israel or of God's love for the individual soul or of Christ's love for the church. Who are we in relation to God in terms of the Song of Songs or Hosea or Isaiah? Well, if God is the lover, we are the beloved of God. And, of course, we find this not only in the Hebrew Bible but in the New Testament, most famously, perhaps, in that verse that virtually everybody knows. "For God so loved the world . . ."

Now, the God of love is not just the God of love, but also the God of justice. The God of love and justice, therefore, has an edge, a passion for justice. For God loves everybody and everything, including the non-human world. It's not just that God loves me or you or us, but everybody, and the non-human world as well. To take this God seriously means to take justice seriously and to be aware that prolonged injustice has consequences. Societies collapse when they are marked by prolonged injustice. I don't think God reaches down to do it, but I think that's built into the very fabric of things.

What image of the Christian life goes with this way of seeing God's character? Well, if you take the God of love and justice seriously, then the Christian life is about a relationship with God, about a relationship with the one who has loved us from the beginning, and that relationship transforms us into more compassionate beings and ideally into people filled with a passion for justice. In many ways, responding to God means participating in the passion of God, and the passion of God is justice.

Let me put this contrast between these two ways of thinking of God's character in yet one more way. The God of law versus the God of grace. I use this contrast because it's very familiar to Protestants. It's a classic Lutheran contrast, of course, but also widespread in the rest of the Protestant tradition. Very importantly, this contrast between the God of law and the God of grace does not correspond to the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, despite a common Christian stereotype that that's the case. We sometimes say, "Well, the God of the Old Testament is a God of law and judgment and wrath, and the God of the New Testament is a God of love and so forth." It doesn't work. Both understandings of God are found in both Testaments, okay?

God as the lawgiver and judge is the God of works that both Paul and Luther and then the Protestant Reformation in general rejected, and affirmed instead, the notion of radical grace, unconditional grace. Radical grace or unconditional grace means "You are accepted just as you are, full stop." And that's been true from the beginning of your life, whether you know that or not or believe that or not. The Christian life then becomes realizing that and beginning to live out of that awareness. Radical grace means God loves us already, full stop. You put any conditions on that: God loves you if you believe in Jesus. God loves you if you're a Christian. But that can't be enough, so maybe God loves you if you are a good Christian. Nope. You start putting conditions on that, and you're back to works and law. The God of radical grace has most often been too radical for most Protestants. We have tended again and again and again to put conditions on the grace of God.

Moving to my conclusions, what are the implications of these two different ways of seeing the character of God for the Christian message? If you take the God of love and justice seriously, the God of grace seriously, then it means, as I've already suggested, that God loves us already and has from the very beginning. The Christian life is not about believing or doing what we need to believe or do so that we can be saved; rather, it is about seeing what is already true, that God loves us already, and then beginning to live within that relationship. Of course if we don't see that, and if we don't begin to live within that relationship, then nothing very important in our life changes. Sometimes we have messed this up so much to think it's all about going to heaven. If you think Christianity is about going to heaven, then the notion of unconditional grace makes no sense, because if it's about going to heaven, and everybody gets to go regardless, what kind of sense does that make? And, hence, people invariably say, "There's got to be something that differentiates those who get to go to heaven from those who don't get to go to heaven, right?" But it's not about going to heaven. There's no denial of an afterlife in what I'm saying. I'm simply saying, being saved isn't about going to heaven. Being saved is about entering into that relationship with God that makes us whole in the midst of this life, that transforms us in the midst of this life. And if we don't enter into that relationship, we simply remain where we are: fragmented, hungry. I don't need to fill out a list of adjectives here.

So the implications are that for the Christian message is an invitation to enter into an intentional and deepening relationship with God. What's at stake in the whole question of God's character is your image of the Christian life. Is Christianity about requirements? Here is what you must do to be saved. Or is it about relationship and transformation? Here's the path. Follow it. Both of these involved imperatives. But one is a threat, and the other is an invitation.

Thank you very much.

Copyright 2003 Dr. Marcus J. Borg

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