Saying God exists can, if we are not careful, be a kind of blasphemy

Don’t run out on me with this post! Please, stick with it and ponder a little!

The Old Testament tells us in Exodus 3:14, that God refused to give the Jews a name which they could call him, instead preferring the title ‘Jehovah’ which – rather than a name as such – means simply ‘I am who I am’. Now, of course, on one level this is a claim for existence – God is God after all in this title. However, we need to be very, very careful with this assertion and not assume that the characteristics of what we ordinarily say exists straightforwardly apply to God, lest we end up bringing his ‘name’ down to our level and so, in effect, blaspheming him (in other words, showing him contempt in what we say).

So in the ‘Evangelical Dictionary of Theology’ (1997), a further definition of Jehovah is offered.

The meaning of the word appears from Exodus 3:14 to be “the unchanging, eternal, self-existent God”

The point here is that if we believe in a creator God, none of what we ordinarily say exists is self-existent, as all that exists is created by God. Therefore, any claims about the existence of God will be in a radically different category to existence as we usually experience it. In other words, look outwards when we believe in God beyond existence, as we know it, to ‘something’ else very different to the names we give to things which do exist.

Click on book cover image on this blog's home page for information on my book Nine Steps to Well-Being: A Spiritual Guide for Disconnected Christians and Other Questioning Journeyers - first three chapters are FREE!!