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Wednesday, March 26, 2014

The mind of God

"The Bible contains the mind of God" - The Gideons

What is God's mind? Can it be contained in a book? Is Scripture the only place to gain insight into the mind of God?

In thinking about the mind, several words come to mind:
memory, recollecting or remembering
intentions, wishes, purposes or desires
that which thinks, perceives and feels
the seat of cognition
consciousness
psyche
intellect or intelligence
judgement/judgment
reasoning
emotions
imagination and creativity
calculations
the place where language is formed, articulated and interpreted

Of course, all of these things are associated with the human mind; but can these words tell us anything about the mind of God?

If God is our Creator and we were created in "his" image(and I certainly believe that both of these things are true), then it follows that our own minds could be looked at as inferior models of the Divine mind (the Creator must be superior to the created). Hence, while we can understand that the mind of God thinks, remembers, forms intentions, perceives, feels, imagines, calculates and creates, we cannot begin to comprehend the scope of those activities on the Divine plain.
For instance: We have the ability to perceive and interpret a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (what we call visible light and the "colors of the rainbow"), but God must be able to perceive and interpret the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Think of God painting a picture and us being able to perceive, interpret and evaluate only a small portion of the portrait that is actually available.
Likewise, we can only perceive and process a small portion of the sound frequency that is actually extant in the world around us. Thus God could theoretically compose a symphony that was far beyond our powers of perception and interpretation.
These same priniciples could be applied to anything else we could think about or imagine. What about language? Think about the human limitations relative to light and sound referenced above - How could those two factors alone make God's linguistic ability almost infinitely superior to our own? What if we throw emotion and memory into the mix? We quickly begin to get a taste for the potentiality of God's linguistic abilities compared to our own.
So how can anyone have the chutzpah to say that a book written in the languages of men (Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek) could "contain the mind of God?" I would certainly be more comfortable with a statement along these lines: "The Bible is a collection of writings that provide some insights into the mind of God." What do you think?

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