musings

Since YHWH chose, out of all the things on earth, to manifest Himself as fire and cloud (to Israel), do we say that fire and cloud are absolutely true? It sounds wierd, doesn't it?

In the same way, perhaps, we should keep our distance from the absoluteness of any words used to describe God. Devices such as words, fire and cloud can point away from themselves and tell us something about YHWH, but it is He that is absolutely true, not them. They are trustworthy insofar as they communicate something about God.

So, all such devices are analogies, a grasping at something beyond themselves, an attempt to arrange recognised meanings in a way that speaks, at that moment of hearing, about their object. Such things are tools.

Hmmm. As humans, we are appointed by YHWH to speak of Him; we are His images. And therefore we are the closest thing to absolute truth that it's possible to get. Quite challenging, that. And who is the foremost human, the one who faithfully, trustworthily, communicated the fullness of God to Israel? Jesus Christ.

What dignity humanity bears, when it lives in faith!

I am reminded strongly of Psalm 8. And I suspect that assigning an absolute to anything other than God is both dehumanising and idolatrous: it sets up another image of God in our place.