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PaperclipPerfector  20d ago (text post)   1651 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 30, 2024

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Even if we ignore the poetry of the cosmos, poetry and metaphor are the primary (if not exclusive?) way of talking about God in ancient Judaism and Christianity. God is shield, sun, hiding place, shepherd — yet also the Ancient of Days whose word causes his servants to tremble… usually these poetic instantiations don’t intermingle. The psalm that hypes up God as shepherd isn’t the psalm that hypes up God as vanquisher of foes, which isn’t the psalm that begs God with a broken spirit / heart… what unites every poetic block is that in a given context and with a given focus, God is the potent and compelling thing considered. For fear of sins, his punishment is described potently; for love of living, his mercy and created beauty; etc.

That’s probably a good theory of origin for monotheism

Even if we ignore the poetry of the cosmos, poetry and metaphor are the primary (if not exclusive?) way of talking about God in ancient Judaism and Christianity

Sure. I guess I'm just asking to what degree sometimes "poetry and metaphor" are just what a God does. If you start from the idea of an omnipotent god then it has to be metaphor, just chosen to convince. If you start from a polytheistic world that collapsed into monotheism gods really did do the things they were said to do . Baal really did ride clouds.

I guess to me it's more of a two-stage process. This:

they understand death, so God keeps one from the grave; or maybe they understand a certain social archetype, and so God “awoke as from sleep, like a strong man shouting because of wine”.

Happens first to the polytheistic gods. Each of these things gets a god. Baal is potent because rain is important and he's rain. So worship Baal (he really will make it rain). This gets absorbed by Yahweh, then it collapses from both metaphor and fact into purely metaphor. Because once Yahweh is omniscient and omnipotent he can make it rain, but doesn't really ride clouds or stride across the floor of heaven with his feet.

The psalm that hypes up God as shepherd isn’t the psalm that hypes up God as vanquisher of foes

We should expect this if God is gradually eating porfolios. El is the old benevolent "Father of Years", Baal is the vigorous god, the "rider of clouds" who trampled the Yam the sea. They weren't assimilated simultaneously or uniformly.

Being a potent and compelling thing worthy of worship is what it means to be a god. You dump all those stories into one pot cause you don't want to deal with anyone else's god, you get a mess with the only common element being potency.

I agree mostly but “poetry and metaphor are just what a God does” stands in stark contrast to the modern understanding of the divine, which is philosophizing for the theologian and assertions (with maybe some music) for the congregant. We attempt to philosophize something that is inherently poetic-potent, like trying to bottle lightning, which creates a vastly different feeling of the divine phenomenologically. Today there is very little hyping up of God for the purpose of hyping and basking in that potency, which from the ancient texts is just kind of how they did worship. That the earlier gods were potent in a given capacity (of the sea, of war) makes me think that this is the root kernel of religious language, rather than a way that humans merely expressed the root kernel (the expression is the substance, not just a consequence of their root religiosity). It goes beyond mere assimilation of rival stories.

And from the perspective of identity and behavior transmission (you should be this and do this), this is important to dwell on. Saying “God is omnipotent” or “God loves you” does not change a human’s identity or behavior, because it lacks potency and signifies nothing real. Poetry and stories are potent, as are art and architecture, and this is where divinity lies, not in assertive or philosophical language. If religion is truly about inculcating behavioral and value changes, then theology matters zero, potency matters 100%.

in stark contrast to the modern understanding of the divine, which is philosophizing for the theologian and assertions (with maybe some music) for the congregant

Because all other gods are dead. Yahweh's deeds were his resume in a competitive market. But the market has shifted.

The choice now is one God of varying flavors or the No-God. Everyone arguing for the former takes divine potency as fact so the debate is on other lines (whether God is moral, which God is coherent). The No-God simply puts forward a rival theory to divine potency. You have to start with philosophical argument and assertions to even make room for God.

I suppose the more naive and unpoisoned by modernity a religious community is , the more we should expect unabashed glorying in God's potency. Some people do still think hurricanes are just a form of divine moralizing so...

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