2b. Does God Think?
Did you ever wonder about the mystery of the Trinity? As Christians we are taught to believe that there is only one God, yet we are also taught that there is the Father, Creator God; that He has a Son, Christ, who was once a human being; and that he has a Holy Spirit. Each of these is called a “person” in that one God, yet they are depicted in the Bible as talking to each other or about each other, as though they were distinct beings. This sounds like we believe in three Gods, not one. The answer given is always a disappointing one, “This is a mystery that we just cannot understand, but we need to believe in one true God anyway.”
We base our faith on the Bible, right? Well here are a few examples right out of the Bible that seem to contradict themselves. Some texts indicate that no one can, ever has, or ever will see God face-to-face, such as John 1:18, 6:46; 1Tim 6:16-18; 1John 4:12. Yet elsewhere in the Bible it says that Moses saw the back of God (Ex 33:23); The apostles saw Christ and He was God (John 14:9); and blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God (Matt 5:8). How can all of these be right?
Well suppose I told you that as a rocket scientist I can explain this so called mystery of the Trinity and the apparent contradiction about seeing God face-to-face so that both will make perfect sense. After all, if the Bible is the truth, and if we are held accountable for believing it, then it ought to make sense in terms we humans can understand.
The answer is inherent in the fact that God can think at least as well as any of us can. Do you believe God can think? Can you accept as you indicated previously that you are literally in the mind of a thinking God? Ask yourself if you could exist at all, if God were to stop thinking of you. If not, then you know you must be literally in the mind of that thinking God. Granted God’s thoughts are “higher than our thoughts” (Isa 55:9), but surely He can do anything we can do, right? Let’s consider some things any human can do when they think and see if indeed God can do as well.
In our minds we can create a room with people in it. The room is not infinitely large, but it is as big as we want it to be and it can always be bigger. We can put people in this room who think and communicate with us through their thoughts. They cannot see us face-to-face can they? How can we reveal ourselves to them? We cannot pull them out of our thoughts and into our living room, but there is another way they can see us face-to-face. We must think of ourselves in our thoughts with them. When they see this image of ourselves they will be seeing us, because we created this image to be us. So already we have identified two “persons”, ourselves and this image of ourselves in our thoughts. This is true for any thinking being.
When we realize that our thoughts define us, then we have identified the third person in every thinking being. The sum total of our thoughts at any one moment is what we would call our spirit. These thoughts change from moment to moment just as we change and as any image we have of ourselves will change. Nevertheless, each person is indeed us – equal yet distinct. The bottom line is that any thinking, personal being must have exactly three persons: themselves (their form), their image of themselves in their thoughts, and their thoughts. What the Bible is telling us is that this works for God, too. The Bible does not mention the word, “Trinity”. Instead, it demonstrates that the First Cause is personal, rather than say Energy or the inanimate Universe itself. Again, only a personal, thinking being can have those three totally distinct “persons” in one being.
Now let’s return to the apparent contradiction presented above. God creates humans by thinking of them in His mind. He wants to be with His created beings, so He thinks Himself into their world as one of them. The Creator, Father God is still in a greater, different universe unto Himself, but now His Image is a human – totally human and totally divine. If Peter sees Christ, then he has seen God (John 14:7). It all fits perfectly, as long as God can think at least as well as we can. Look at it this way: God is creating many humans in His mind, but this Jesus the Christ is the one Human, Who was like God. It was the same back when God thought of Himself as an angelic being. He/Michael, was the one angel, Who was like God – which is exactly what the name, Michael, means.
With this model we can verify that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts, since He is creating us by thinking of us and not vice versa. When God stops thinking of us, we cease to exist, but of course God’s existence does not hang on our thoughts. Then too, if God wants to give us everlasting life (Rom 6:23), He just continues to think of us. Only God can offer that gift, since He is the One thinking of us (John 3:16; 6:40,47).
But why stop here. Since everything created is in the mind of God, we can understand the following tenants of our faith more clearly as well:
a. God is all-powerful, because He can do anything in His thought worlds as easily as thinking about it.
b. God is everywhere and He knows everything about His thought worlds, because nothing and no place exists there until He thinks of it.
c. God is outside the Time of His thoughts, but He has a time of His own. Time is merely the “separation of events”. Since God separates events, He must be moving through time. However, He is outside the time of His thoughts in the same way any thinking being is outside of their own thoughts.
d. The Image of God in His thoughts has taken many forms according to the Bible:
- Archangel Michael was God in angelic form, ie “the One Who is like God”.
- Jesus of
- The Body in the Tomb was the Second Person of God, inactive.
- The Risen glorified Christ is God, again in angelic form with holes in His hands.
The above rationale is all based on the presumption that God can indeed think, at least as well as we His creatures can. If this is a reasonable premise, then we have a logical explanation for a number of the so-called mysteries of our faith. We can and should now apply this model to other biblical information and see if it will offer logical explanations.
Postscript:
To believe the Bible is to admit that the God of the Bible is definitely thinking in terms we humans can relate to. It is also observable that we human thinkers can create worlds in our own minds, even though our visualization of our thoughts are not solid objects. If they are not three dimensional, then what are they? I suggest that we visualize our thoughts in two dimensions as they would appear on a movie screen. We can visualize a truck driving down the road and yet it’s not coming out of our heads. We see the appearance of three dimensions, but on a flat screen. Our thoughts then are visualized in only two dimensions, length and width, but no depth. Yet we exist in three dimensions as solid objects.
What if God has more than the three dimensions we have. Would He then be able to visualize His thoughts as the physically real 3D objects we see around us? Perhaps this explains how God can actually create a 3D world in His mind. His mind must have more than those three dimensions. Again the Bible does tell us that God’s thoughts are “higher” than our thoughts. Perhaps this is also referring to His additional supernatural characteristics, which enable His thoughts to be 3D and still be thoughts - not unlike the thoughts we have, but solid. I would now suggest that any thinker can only think in dimensions lower than they exist in themselves. This could be a mind-bending exercise, but it certainly fits the observable evidence, because it applies to every thinking being we know. In fact, it’s proof by observation.
Finally, to expand on this concept that God has more than three dimensions, let me say that these dimensions are merely what have been called, “supernatural characteristics”. What are some of these characteristics anyway?
Well, if God exists, then He has a form – not necessarily a body like ours of course, but He must have a shape and substance, ie God has length, width, and height.
By definition, God is the First Cause, Who has no cause. This means that God has another characteristic, which is supernatural. He is eternal. He alone is eternal, existing from everlasting to everlasting (Ps 90:2; Neh 9:5;...).
Some folks can more easily accept a belief that the universe itself is the first cause, because they feel it should be impersonal. Okay, given that belief, we can see that the universe must be all that there is, so that there is nothing outside of it. More than that, even “nothing” is “something”, ie a placeholder. Therefore the first cause, whatever it is, must have no outside. This is another supernatural characteristic. The First Cause must be a universe unto Itself.
We have already identified five “dimensions” that God must have just to be the First Cause. If He has five dimensions, then He can certainly have three-dimensional thoughts and our model works. A homework question for you would be this, “What do you get when God thinks in 4D?”
24 December 2001
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