Opus 2025-669: To be, or not…

I have heard God described as the great I Am.  This, of course, goes back originally to the conversation that God had with Moses,

(Exo 3:14 KJV)  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

This was a great declaration by God differentiating Him from all the other gods. It was Him stating that He existed.

Then we have the I Am statements of Jesus.  These occur in the gospels where He is asked a question and in the translations that we see it usually comes across as, “I am he”.  The first of these in John is,

(Joh 8:24 KJV)  I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.

If you have the right translation, you’ll notice that the “he” is not in the Greek text.  He simply repeating the statement from Exodus, “I am”.

So one of the great truths that I have embraced and I hope you have too is that God exists and that He is alive.  The question comes what does it mean to be alive?

That gets me looking around my yard and trying to come up with a definition.  The sidewalk is not alive.  The oak tree is.  What are some differences?  One can grow, one can’t.  One can die, one can’t.  One can change on its own, the other can only change from outside influence.  I originally started looking at this comparing, say, your dog with a rock.  One of the differences I came up with is the dog can move, and the rock can’t, but neither can the oak tree and it’s alive.  I thought of the fact that living things could reproduce and rocks can’t, but our definition of God would say that He does not reproduce.

It gets complicated.  It gets extra complicated as science advances and we come across things like the virus, and I think there are other forms of things in existence, which don’t fit the characteristics of life as we know it.

So when we say that God is alive, it’s hard to define.  I think one of the things that that means is that God is self-aware.  There’s also a term in theology, which I can never remember, which means that His existence is not dependent on anything outside of Himself.  I looked it up, aseity.  In other words He’s not created or supported by other forces.  I also think that it means that, although He does not change in character or basic essence, He is capable of the changes that involve thought and interaction with other lifeforms.  Thus we have God changing His mind based on what people do, but that does not change who He is or what His truth is.

This is an open ended thought process.  I expect to continue questioning myself on this for quite a while.  I expect God to reveal new thoughts to me and take me down rabbit trails that I didn’t know existed.  I’m looking forward to the journey.

homo unius libri