Grammatical-Historical
Interpretation
Be as it may, the only thing we want
to underline here is this: The dogma of a transcendent god is in conflict with
the many descriptions of god we find in the Scriptures. Let’s go back to the
story of Adam and Eve in the Garden (examined in §2.2.1). If Adam and Eve did
not hear Yahve’s footsteps because he doesn’t have feet or legs; if they were
not able to hide because god knows everything; if the questions raised by the
god were only rhetorical because god is omniscient; if god really did not talk
to them because he doesn’t have a mouth, then what happened in the Garden?
Nothing! God’s transcendence leaves us without god, while mythology imagines a
story using concepts borrowed from human experience in order to invent a
narrative that is capable of describing something that happens in this world.
Platonic theology denies god any human
emotion, form, or representation. Therefore, in dealing with Genesis 6:6-7 (see
§2.2.3), Philo of Alexandria condemned those who concluded “that the Existent
is controlled y rage and wrath, when he’s not susceptible to any passion
whatsoever.” (Philo, Quod deus sit immutabilis i.52) According to Philo,
Moses used these words only to admonish people who would not be corrected
otherwise. If god is represented as a man it is only “for the instruction of
many” (Quod deus sit immutabilis i.54) But other people get attached to
bodily things, so he objects:
For what are we to say? If God employs
organic parts, then he has feet to walk? But whither will he walk since he
fills everything? To whom will he go, go, when no one is equal in honor to him?
And for what purpose is he to walk? It cannot be because he’s preoccupied for
his health as we do. We have hands to give and receive, but he receives nothing
from anyone. Since he owns everything, he has no needs. And when he gives, he
employs the logos as the minister of his fits, by whom he also made the cosmos.
(Quod deus sit immutabilis i.57)
Platonism was embraced by the
reformers, so when Calvin found that Genesis 6:6 declares that god repented, he
tried to convince us that the omniscient and omnipotent god is not capable of
such a thing. Calvin argues that this language is only an accommodation to our
limited capacities:
The repentance which is here ascribed
to God does not properly belong to him, but has reference to our understanding
of him. For since we cannot comprehend him as he is, it is necessary that, for
our sake, he should, in a certain sense, transform himself. This repentance
cannot take place in God, easily appears from this single consideration, that
nothing happens which is by him unexpected or unforeseen. (Calvin, Genesis,
248-49)
Calvin’s explanation is just more
anthropomorphism. For all we know, it is humans who adapt the way they
communicate to others may understand. Whether we imagine god as a nurse,
teacher or parent who needs to explain to children complex matters in uncomplicated
language, we are simply using one anthropomorphism (a parent) to explain
another anthropomorphism (god’s repentance). Instead, we should admit that in
antiquity people described their gods as having a real bodily and
psychologically human attributes. (Humberto Casanova, Imagining God: Myth
and Metaphor [Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2020], 108-110)
Calvin uses metaphors to explain
metaphors: “For who is so devoid of intellect as not to understand that God, in
so speaking, lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children? Such
modes of expression, therefore, do not so much express what kind of a being God
is, as accommodate the knowledge of him to our feebleness. In doing so, we
must, of course, stoop far below his proper height” (Institutes
i.xiii.1). (Ibid., 110 n. 242)
Further Reading:
Lynn Wilder vs. Latter-day Saint (and Biblical) Theology on Divine Embodiment