The Experience of God in the Old and New Testaments - Part 2

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 1 with:

 

(P.209) " Moses' experience of encounter with God deepens as he says to the Lord,

" Show me now thy ways, that I may know thee " . He wants to know God. The Lord

answers, " My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest. " (P.210) To

live in the presence of God was to know him, and at this time " the angel of the

presence " symbolised the presence of God. But Moses is still not satisfied and

he says, " I pray thee, show me thy glory. " The glory, the 'qabod', is really the

essence of God, or perhaps one should say, the manifestation of the essence of

God. The glory is like the radiance from the sun, the radiance of light. The

Lord says to Moses, " You cannot see my face. " The text has just used the

expression " face to face " but here this expression is qualified by saying, " man

shall not see me and live. " For the Hebrew it is a matter of the utter

transcendence of God. Whereas the Hindu is always concerned with the immanent

presence and with a growing awareness of it and experience of it, the Hebrew, by

contrast, is always aware of God's utter transcendence, totally beyond the self,

and, of course, it remains true that one cannot see God until one has died to

oneself. The text continues, " The Lord said, 'Behold, there is a place by me

where you shall stand upon the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you

in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed

by; then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back; but my face shall

not be seen.' " [11] These are anthropomorphic images, of course, but they can be

seen to symbolise a most profound experience. It is, in fact, very close to what

we normally hold, that in this life one never sees the face of God. One never

sees the divine being itself but rather one always sees it " under a cloud " ,

glimpsing only, as it were, the back or the shadow of it. One does not see the

reality in its fullness. "

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith)

Chapter 10, Pg.209-210

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0

 

Here now is Part 2.

 

Enjoy!

 

violet

 

 

The Experience of God in the Old and New Testaments - Part 2

 

(P.210) Coming to the book of Deuteronomy, we enter a further stage of

revelation, influenced by the later prophets, and we can see how the image of

God emerges as the supreme Creator. (P.211) So far it has been a matter of God

revealing himself in the history of a people and in the kind of personal

experience we have discussed, which was always related to the history of Israel.

But now it goes further. " Behold, to the Lord your God belong the heaven and the

heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it... The Lord your God is God

of Gods and Lord of Lords, the great, the mighty, the terrible God... " [12] Here

we have the supreme personal God manifesting himself as Creator and as Lord of

Lords. It may be recalled that in the 'Svetasvatara Upanishad' we saw the same

development. 'Purusha', the supreme Person, revealed himself as the Lord of

Lords, the God of Gods, the Ruler of Rulers. [13] Here Israel comes to the same

understanding, that the Supreme Reality is this personal God, the supreme Lord.

That is the great theme of Deuteronomy. We must worship that One alone. That is

the difference between the Hindu and the Hebrew, that the Hindu discovered the

personal God, the 'purushottaman', but for the Hindu the personal God could have

many forms. Shiva or Vishnu or Krishna or Rama were all forms of the personal

God, and they remain so today. The Hindu has his 'ishtadevata', the form of God

through which he chooses to worship the Supreme. It was altogether different in

Israel, and this remains true also for Christians and Muslims: God has only one

form. Yahweh (or Christ or Allah) is his form and one must worship God under

that form only. A large part of the battle of the prophets of Israel was to

prevent the worship of God in any other form. The danger of worshipping God,

that is, the sacred mystery, under different forms is that you can lose the

sense of the transcendence of God. Once one considers God as manifesting in

animals or in imperfect human beings one can very easily form a false image of

God, and so the prophets wanted to preserve the purity of their experience of

God and proclaimed Yahweh alone as the form of the divine mystery.

 

We come now to consider the experience of the prophets. The prophet ('nabi'),

was originally like the shaman, one who has an experience of God. (P.211) The

revelation to Samuel is an example of this. Samuel is a boy born out of a vow to

God and he is consecrated to God in the tabernacle at Shiloh. One night he hears

a voice calling him and, not yet having awakened to the presence of the divine

mystery, he goes to Eli, the priest, and says, " Here I am. " Eli says, " I did not

call; lie down again. " The Lord calls him twice more and each time he goes to

Eli until Eli understands and says, " Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you

shall say, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant hears.' " [14] This is an example of an

awakening to the divine mystery. The boy in the tabernacle had the experience of

the divine presence revealing itself to him. It is sad that what comes out of

this experience is that Eli and his sons are going to be killed and tragedy is

to strike the people of Israel. But again the relation of mystical experience to

an historic event is clearly shown.

 

When we come to David we enter into the sphere not only of history but also of

politics. David is called to be king over the people, and it is revealed to him

that God will give him a son who shall sit upon his throne and his kingdom shall

last for ever. Again the promise is in the context of Israel's history as a

nation, but at the same time it transcends history. The kingdom is to last " for

ever " . Solomon, his son, builds the Temple and again there is a mystical

experience. When Solomon builds the Temple and consecrates it, the cloud of

glory, which had rested on the tabernacle and had followed Israel through the

desert, descends upon the Temple. The whole Temple is filled with the cloud of

glory and nobody dares to enter it. [15] Again this is a psychic phenomenon

which symbolises the presence of the God of Israel and is a sign that he is

dwelling now in that Temple in Jerusalem at the very centre of their political

life.

 

Elijah and Elisha are both involved in the political affairs of their time, and

yet at the same time they are open to extraordinary mystical experiences,

particularly when Elijah is taken up to heaven. (P.213) Elisha, his disciple,

wants to be with him when he departs and Elijah says he may accompany him. So

they walked together and " as they still went on and talked, behold a chariot of

fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a

whirlwind into heaven. " [16] Again this is a subtle, psychic experience. In the

experience of Elijah it was not of course a physical chariot or a physical fire,

but rather a psychic chariot and a psychic fire. In Hindu tradition psychic

phenomena of this kind are generally accepted and in Yogananda's 'The

Autobiography of a Yogi', for instance, there are many examples of a similar

nature which are reported as having happened recently. So these experiences are

simply part of the universe in which we live, though people today have generally

lost contact with them.

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith)

Chapter 10, Pg.210-213

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0

 

Notes:

 

[12] Deuteronomy 10:14,17

 

[13] Svetasvatara Upanishad 6:7

 

[14] 1 Samuel 3:4-9

 

[15] 1 Kings 8:10-11

 

[16] 2 Kings 2:11