Philosophical Journey Towards God’s Infinity
Written by: Bert Junrie B. Espina
The epoch of mankind has also been the epoch of God. It is indubitable that every man from whatever stage in history they belong to, regardless of their social upbringing and beliefs, atheist or theist, may have had philosophical encounters at some point in their lives about God. You can have all the liberty not to believe in God, or expressing your indignation against every religion and their gods, or dismiss the belief of your neighbor who is so convinced of his faith to God; and yet, ironically, no one is exempted from being completely bound that we do not have enough freedom to avoid having any thoughts of “God.” In 1990, there was an American physician pointed out that Michelangelo’s painting “The Creation of Adam” resembles the human brain, and inside it is “God.” God exists in the mind. It is so evident that what genuinely distinguishes humans from other animals is the ability to create abstract thinking and mental models, and it is where God resides, i.e. in our thoughts as a metaphysical entity. These abilities are so hardwired in the human brain, which also paved the way for the emergence of worldly religions (from our abstract thoughts, then emerges to a concrete reality that affects our experiences.)
God is man’s essence because God takes part in the history of mankind. The same thing that it is unimaginable to subtract God from all of the discourses in the history of man. However, it is also in return that God’s essence is man: any attempt to remove man, we are at the same time removing God. To remove God, implies we are removing the unique ability of a man as a thinking being; from the fact that human species are Homo Sapiens, an animal of the genus Homo who has the ability to think. If one ponders about God, one is greatly exercising our unique ability to think abstract thoughts. Whenever man marches in time, God marches since God already exists inside the thoughts of men throughout the ages. Our understanding of God is not at a deadlock, but in fact develops; just like when the moral consciousness of men transcends. Our understanding of God in the past three hundred (300) or three thousand (3000) years ago can never be the same. But still, we all attribute it with the same name — God. This mostly happens because, as one common reasons there can be, men are always seeking to fit their own discourses and prejudices by projecting that God will affirm to their wishes; that God is as Omnipotent as He is, He can bend the laws of nature to give favor with their wishes. In this sense, it can perfectly be said that: “God created man from His own image, and yet so is God. It is said that they have the resemblance of God, but it is theirs.” This can be understood that men, knowingly or unknowingly, have reduced God to their own anthropomorphic projections. But all of these are mere absurd conception of God.
I have already mentioned that God is an entity residing in our thoughts, and that we must make use therefore of our ability to think about God. Hence, the question:
Is it possible for the human mind to fathom God’s essence? Now we are starting to make an inquiry of what God is. If the question is rephrased like this: “Is it possible to understand what or who God is?” Then this question is faulty as it implies that God might be a ‘thing’ or a ‘person’. It is absurd because the question is supplanting us an idea that God is finite. Many times we have heard our friend, neighbor, or a preacher during Sunday service that “God is love,” “God is merciful,” or “God is omnipotent,” and so on. However, what does it really mean to say “God is love?” If God is love, can we also not say that Love is God? But if we treat it in that way, does this also mean that our understanding of God solely depend on the predicates we are attributing? If one says so, then the existence of something is limited by this predicate.
Is God a mere bearer of predicates? I suppose one will say that God exists regardless of whether or not we attribute predicates. But what if we also remove or never attempt to attach any predicate to God, would there be any possible knowledge at all? Would it be somehow intelligible? Yet, if God seems to be unknowable or separate to mere mortal/finite beings like us, then it is well-understood in this manner that God isn’t infinite because it gets limited in this distinction (between infinite-finite); that God’s infinity excludes finite, and therefore, due to the distinction, God is not truly infinite — which is again absurd if we must hold that God is truly infinite.
Yet, the story doesn’t end there: it reveals in the allegory of Orthodox Christianity or Christian Gnosticism the conception that God must be truly infinite, that God embraces the “finite” and this arrives that God became “man” in and through Jesus Christ (God became “fully finite,” that God can also die). His death shows that his finitude is only a transitional phase. Towards resurrection, Christ emerges into Spirit, not only the Spirit but also the body. Fully applies that God became man, and so finite/mortal beings like you and me can become one with God. In the past, even today, men have been seeking to find the stairway to heaven so that they may become one with God. But the emergence of Christ is so revolutionary that through him man may already become one with God without taking anymore the stairway to heaven. These respectable figures have mentioned the following:
Jesus to Mark: “The kingdom of God is within you.”
St. Augustine: “God is more within me than I am within myself.”
St. Athanasius: God became a man so that man may become God!”
What we can understand from them is that they believe God is more inward than what we project him as outside beyond us.
It is also important to note that this is not only for Christians. One may also take an example from Buddhism. Remember that after Buddha’s death, or that Buddha’s mortal remains had long disintegrated into dust, but his emergence in this world is never forgotten. The Spirit of Buddha’s teachings as well as that of Jesus prevailed for thousands of years. Their Spirit is still living today, and so for other prophets. Buddha came not to make Buddhists but to awaken the inner Buddhas of those who follow his teachings. Same with Christ, his emergence was not because he was really trying to make people Christians but to awaken the inner Christ to each of those who follow him.
Another important note, one thing in common with the objective of most religions have is to transcend man. Again, just as we are from a genus of “knowing.” We are to transcend ourselves through thinking and knowing more! In this way, we are directing our path towards the infinity of God.
