At night, when I get down on my knees beside my bed and lean my head on my folded hands in the posture of prayer I was taught as a child, there's always a moment's hesitation while I fumble for the first word to launch into the cosmos, a name that will find the infinite mystery I want my words to reach.

Doubtless my attention to the question of what to call God has been heightened by the violent clash between partisans from the world's three major monotheistic religions. Muslims call upon Allah, ideally, five times a day. The Qur'an lists the ninety-nine names of God, e. g., "He is Allah, the Creator, the Originator, the Fashioner, the Exalted in Might, the Wise." The name Allah itself is the Arabic transliteration of the Hebrew Eloah (cf. Elohim, one of God's names in the Hebrew scriptures) or Aramaic Elah , meaning "Mighty One" or "One Worthy of Praise." But the Qur'an also says that Allah has names that he keeps to himself, an option I find strangely appealing.

Jewish prayers most often address God as "King of the Universe." Rabbi Yochanan, who salvaged the Torah when Jerusalem was destroyed in ad 70, instructed his fellow exiles, "Any blessing which does not include mention of [God's] sovereignty is not a blessing." During my nightly hesitation over what to call God, I often envy Jews that substantial prescription. On the other hand, while it seems appropriate for an acclamation, it lacks the kind of intimacy my Christian ears seek in prayer.

So what are my choices? Do I address myself to Father? If so, should it be preceded with Our or My? Should I say Lord, perhaps with a prefatory Dear, like the greeting of a letter? What about Jesus, Holy Spirit, or just plain God? If I say Father, is it because I am a child, seeking comfort and certain assurance? Do I say Lord because I feel strong enough to approach as an adult, yet humble enough to acknowledge servanthood? Can I, this night, transcend the barriers of time to experience the personal presence of the resurrected Jesus, the one who has "borne our griefs and carried our sorrows"? Should I appeal to the Holy Spirit, feeling the need for firing up by that life-giving but elusive essence? Or do I take the easy way out and just say God, the generic term for whatever is infinitely bigger and better than I am?

Then there's Yahweh, that most open-ended of all divine names, written in Hebrew today using only the windy consonants Y or H. Perhaps the name that God revealed to Moses was chosen especially for its exhalation. It is the very breath of God breathed into our ears. By omitting the open vowels in the written name, the Jewish scribes signaled their readers that the name of God is too holy to have on their unclean lips. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the unspeakable name revealed to Moses is variously translated as "I am who I am" or "I will be who I will be" or even "I am becoming who I will become."

It has been left to the foolhardy Christians to stick in the vowels and dare to pronounce aloud, albeit with a certain awkwardness, the name Yahweh. Even so, we speak this name most often when reading aloud certain contemporary translations of Scripture or in a few praise songs.

But unless I want to spend all night dithering, eventually I have to get on with my prayer, hoping the Great Unpronounceable will understand my struggle. So I plunge in to address him.

The name I often plunge in with these days is Father. Father is what Jesus called God. In fact, the Aramaic word he actually used, "Abba," is more akin to our homely English equivalents—Daddy or Papa, simple two-syllable names ending in open vowels easy for toddlers to pronounce.

But why would someone such as myself, a 64-year-old grandmother, suddenly want a father? Maybe because a child is what I often feel like these days. Fearful and impotent, and in need of comfort. I'm not ashamed of slipping into the persona of child when I kneel there at my bedside. I want a Parent. I need a Parent. Someone who cares for me as unfailingly as the mother I lost two years ago.

As for my father, World War II kept me from meeting him until I was four years old. Unfortunately, this meant we never formed a close natural bond. Moreover, at 88, my father has become the child while I have taken on the role of parent in caring for him.

In some ways this blank spot in my psyche has been beneficial. Many women have trouble with God because they identify him with an oppressive earthly father. For them, patriarchal oppression is a problem. But calling God Father at this point in my life doesn't put my ideological nose out of joint. I don't spurn or suspect any fatherly consolation he's likely to offer. In fact, crawling into God's lap and going to sleep in his arms seems about the best ending to a day—or a life—I can imagine.

Still, to be honest, Father has to be a conscious choice. "Lord" is the mode of address that automatically springs unbidden to my lips. In my experience, it is also the name most often used among Christians to speak about the lump-sum Trinity.

Why is Lord so routinely spoken? After all, it is an archaic word, one we never use outside of a religious context unless we're British. Such a word doesn't fit in our contemporary culture, except in certain kinds of science fiction and fantasy (The Lord of the Rings, for example). Like Father, Lord puts us in a position of dependence. But Lord implies even more. Not only do I depend on this Great Unknowable for my very breath, but with that word I acknowledge a kind of feudal relationship in which I play peasant to his patron.

Yet I've never been in such a relationship. Our word "boss" is about as close as we commonly come to Lord, but the ties between employer and employee in our capitalist democracy are not nearly so close or strong as those between Lord and liegeman. So should I call God Boss? It would be our own Americanized way of acknowledging God's sovereignty, or at least his right to be in control.

But Boss carries its own baggage, not all of it good. There's a whiff of irony, even sarcasm about the name. Boss means, "Okay, you're in charge here. Do it your way. Just don't blame me when it doesn't work out." Calling God Boss shuffles all the responsibility for my flaws to him. Which I'm already all too tempted to do.

So I'm back to Lord. Even though it isn't native to our times or tongues, it leaps unbidden to our praying lips. It's the name which most of us have heard most frequently, both in and out of prayer, whether talking to or about God. Because Lord, either in lower- or all uppercase letters, stands in for several Hebrew divine monikers, it appears more often in Scripture than any other name. We often use Lord in offhand colloquial expressions such as, "The good Lord willing and the creek don't rise." We take our troubles "to the Lord in prayer." And I use such exclamatory phrases as "Good Lord" with no hesitation whereas I would shrink from using God in the same mode.

One synonym for Lord is Master. This hits me on a deeper level. Slaves have masters. Trained animals have masters. Disciples of whatever craft or discipline have masters. Much more than Lord, calling on my Master puts me in a place I know instantly and instinctively. My personal history connects with that name as it must for anyone who grew up in the segregated South. The history of the slave-master relationship sets up internal seismic shock waves.

I recognize instantly the tone of the Syro-Phoenician woman's retort to Jesus when he turns aside her request to heal her child: "even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." She is abasing herself by acknowledging, bitterly perhaps, her despised position while also acknowledging his power. Jesus himself often names the most powerful character in his parables "the master." Sometimes this is a kindly figure; at other times the master in the parable can seem arbitrary and capricious. In other places in the New Testament, master refers to a slaveowner, and not just metaphorically. Several of the pastoral letters admonish both slaves and masters to treat one another well. Master is also what his disciples often called Jesus.

Yet Master is not a name one hears addressed to anyone often these days. Nor, despite its emotional freight, do I call upon it often. Its demands scare me. Whether we're talking about slaves or wild animals or students or disciples, obeying seems to be the operative ingredient in the relationship.

But when his disciples call Jesus Master, they are not groveling before him. They use the Greek word for teacher (didaskalos) to address him. They are showing him the respect due a teacher by recognizing his superiority of knowledge or skill. Those fascinated with God, whatever manifestation of faith they find themselves in, have historically called their spiritual teacher Master. Who better to call Master than Jesus?

I have an elderly cousin who sometimes addresses her prayers directly to Jesus, adding the shockingly familiar accolade, "You're just so precious!" This woman has been throughout her long life a better Christian than I'll ever be, yet I cringe when she says it, picturing her tweaking Jesus' cheek.

On the other end of the spectrum, I once heard a radio preacher claim that we are not to pray to Jesus but rather, following his divine example, we should address our prayers to his father in heaven. I wonder what that preacher has to say about the Kyrie, one of the church's oldest prayers. Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.

Which brings me to the way the names Jesus and Christ are frequently linked. Christ, of course, is the translated equivalent of Messiah. Or at least it started out that way. Children, however, often take it for his last name. And scholars debate the nuances, some suggesting that Jesus was only his earthly name and Christ his heavenly designation.

I rarely open up my heart with Jesus' name—no doubt a sad loss to my spiritual life. Of such seemingly minor distractions are stumbling blocks compounded, a fact that should make us all wary of our words. There is more than one way to take the Lord's name in vain.

As for the generic term, god, talk about God can get by with that designation, but addressing God directly seems to require something more. Prayer bonds us to God with a peculiar intimacy. It is what brings us to the point of actually needing to name this Person in whose image we are made.

If God is no more than concept or, as some theologians like to say, construct, then there is little point in naming him. One does not cry out to a concept or a construct. One may respect or admire it, even preach about it or advertise it, trying to attract converts to its cause. But one does not expect an answer if one were to address it or try to communicate with it. Only a person can do that. Calling God's name in the expectation or maybe just the hope that he hears, the supplicant recognizes God, if only fleetingly or even unwittingly, as a person, a person who can respond.

Getting that initial address right seems important to me, not because I imagine I can really capture this source of all being in a verbal container. But the name I call to God with determines the guise in which I come to this task, duty, privilege of prayer. In naming God, I am in some way—far beyond my incomplete understanding—determining my own identity. Naming God ends up defining not him, but me.

Virginia Stem Owens lives and writes in Texas. Her book And the Trees Clap Their Hands: Faith, Perception, and the New Physics was recently reissued by Wipf & Stock.

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Yahweh and the God of Christian Theology

Published in
On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays 1967-1998, Volume 2
(JSOTSup, 292; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 498-507

open footnotes

http://www.shef.ac.uk/bibs/DJACcurrres/Postmodern2/Yahweh.html

Old Testament theologians often Þnd themselves in a defensive or apologetic position when speaking of the God of the Old Testament. Is its image of God not naïve, and unsophisticated, even crude and degrading?
No doubt, the God of the Old Testament can be a somewhat uncomfortable deity, but I would rather go on to the offensive, and argue that it is precisely where Christian theology believes it has progressed beyond Yahweh that it has obscured the reality of the biblical God. This is, therefore, a good-natured polemic against some aspects of the God of Christian theology in favour of the confessional assertion by which Israel lived: Yahweh, he is the God!

1. The Name of God

Somewhere between the Þfth and the second centuries bce a tragic accident befell God: he lost his name. More exactly, Jews gave up using God's personal name Yahweh, and began to refer to Yahweh by various periphrases: God, the Lord, the Name, the Holy One, the Presence, even the Place. Even where Yahweh was written in the biblical text, readers pronounced the name as Adonai. With the Þnal fall of the temple, even the rare liturgical occasions when the name was used ceased, and even the knowledge of the pronunciation of the name was forgotten.
Did the abandonment of the name Yahweh have any signiÞcance? G.F. Moore rightly argued that it did not affect the essential characteristics of the Jewish religion, which at all time recognized God as personal. Yet the name by which the deity is known is bound to inþuence to some degree the impression worshippers have of their God. The French Protestant, in whose Bible the divine name is consistently rendered as 'l'Eternel', must develop a rather different image of God from that of the English reader familiar with 'the Lord'. Any epithet by which God is habitually known draws attention to one particular aspect of the divine character.
A personal name is different. A personal name does not have any meaning in itself, and even if its etymology is patent, nothing can be known about the person from the name itself. The character of Frank or Felicity cannot be discerned from the name, but is entirely to be inferred from what those persons are and do. A personal name is thus at the same time a marker of personal identity and a concealment of the true reality of the person. It presents us with an individual, but does not 'give away' that person
It is the same with the personal name Yahweh. Indeed, it sounds as though it may have some connection with the verb håyâ, 'to be', and could perhaps be the causative of that verb, meaning 'he brings into being, creates'. Yet Israel itself did not recognize such a signiÞcance; there are, for example, no word-plays on such a meaning of the name. Bernhard Anderson correctly observed: 'The important feature of the name is not its linguistic value, but its historical associations. Whatever it meant once, it acquired concrete content through the historical experiences of Israel.'
But is that then not the case also with the word 'God' now? Does not the capitalization of 'God' turn it into a personal name? Not really. 'God' can be a dictionary entry, but 'Yahweh' must be an encyclopaedia entry. 'God' can be deÞned, more or less, as 'the highest being', 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived', and so on. 'Yahweh', on the other hand, does not mean anything to us but what Yahweh is and does in the Old Testament. The name is nothing more than a referent to the person. While 'God' with its capitalization respectfully acknowledges that there is only one true 'god', it does not name him with his proper name, Yahweh.
The personal name of God is Yahweh. It is a foreign name, quite un-English, and so unlike the good Anglo-Saxon word 'God'. For that reason, if perhaps for no other, the name Yahweh must be preserved-lest it should ever be imagined that God is an Englishman. He is a foreigner now to every race on earth. The very awkwardness of addressing a God whose name is not native to one's language in itself alerts us to the alienness of Yahweh to every god created in our own image.
What use is to be made of the name Yahweh, then? I do not suggest that God should be known by no other term than his personal name; the Old Testament itself is rich in titles and epithets for Yahweh, all of which have their value. At least in our translations of the Bible it should be made plain (as the Jerusalem Bible does) when the personal name of God is being used, rather than having it hidden by such an epithet as 'the Lord'. And the introduction of God's personal name into Christian worship and theology could have surprising and creative results.
But does not the absence of 'Yahweh' from the New Testament suggest that in Christianity the name has been superseded? That would be so only if the New Testament as a whole may be said to have superseded the Old Testament, rendering it passé, obsolete and superþuous. Such a claim must be resisted, and with it any argument that the New Testament's usage of the divine names is regulative for Christianity. In fact, it would have been strange if the New Testament had persisted in the use of 'Yahweh' when in contemporary Judaism the common use of that name was regarded as blasphemous. Now that we live in an environment when Jews themselves would, in the main, not be offended by the Christian use of the name, the situation is altogether different.
My point is this: in popular Christian theology the personhood of God is less prominent that it ought to be because God is not referred to by his personal name. The Old Testament's reiterated use of the personal name Yahweh is some safeguard against the transformation of God into a philosophical abstraction.

2. Anthropomorphism

One striking feature of Old Testament speech about Yahweh is the frequent use made of anthropomorphic language. To him are attributed bodily parts, human-like actions, and even human emotions: he rejoices, loves, hates, feels jealousy and anger, and experiences change of heart (repentance).
Such anthropomorphisms have long been an embarrassment to Jews and Christians alike. Already in the second century bce the Septuagint translators removed many of the anthropomorphisms of the Hebrew Bible. Philo too was affronted by them, writing in his On the Unchangeableness of God that, although the Bible says both that 'God is not like a man' (Num. 23.19) and-by its anthropomorphisms-that he is like a man, 'the former statement is warranted by Þrmest truth, but the latter is introduced for the instruction of the many (hoi polloi)', those 'whose natural wit is dense or dull, whose childhood training has been mismanaged, and are incapable of seeing clearly'. To suppose, for example, that God really had second thoughts about the creation of humanity (Gen. 6.6) would be blasphemy: 'what great impiety could there be than to suppose that the unchangeable changes?'
While Christianity has produced some extremists who have believed, like the Audiani, that the biblical anthropomorphisms were to be taken literally and that God must therefore have a body, the bulk of Christian thinkers have tended in the opposite direction.
One method of explaining away anthropomorphisms has been to say that they belong to a primitive stage of revelation and are replaced later by more 'spiritual' and 'reÞned conceptions of God. A second method is to regard them as mere metaphors. Both these methods are employed in the short entry in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church under 'Anthropomorphism': 'Scripture, especially in the earlier books of the OT . . . in order to be intelligible to less developed minds, frequently uses anthropomorphic language, which is in most cases clearly metaphorical'. But the objections to both these methods are overwhelming.
To the Þrst method we can object that anthropomorphic language is not conÞned to, or even most concentrated in, the earliest parts of the Bible; it is in the prophets that we Þnd some of the most striking anthropomorphisms, Yahweh being depicted as a women screaming in childbirth (Isa. 42.14) or as a warrior red with the blood of his slain enemies (Isa. 63.1-2). Nor is anthropomorphism left behind when we reach the New Testament: 'God loved the world', 'God sent his Son', are equally anthropomorphic; it is just that the antrhopomorphism is not so vivid.
To the second method the objection is that while anthropomorphisms referring to the 'bodily parts' (such as hand or eye) of God can be understood as metaphors for his activity, for what is the speech or love of God a metaphor?
Anthropomorphic language is not some element in the biblical texts for which excuses have to be made, or a network of metaphors that must be reduced to plain language, but part of the biblical apprehension of God. It is to be evaluated, not negatively as accommodation to human language or divine condescension to human understanding, but positively, as a vital element of our knowledge of God.
A positive evaluation of anthropomorphism demands re-examination of some deeply ingrained elements in our notion of God. There is, for example, the matter of the inÞniteness of God. In an article in Theology a few years ago, Donald Mackinnon wanted to afÞrm yet again God's 'total freedom from limitation'. Anthropomorphic language, on the other hand, wants to speak of a God who expresses himself precisely through his self-limitations. When poets determine to express themselves in sonnet form or composers in sonata form, they take upon themselves a host of limitations that do not diminish but only make possible their artistic self-expression. Yahweh's self-expression in anthropomorphic form can be regarded as having the same character, quite differently from a mode of thought that argues that to predicate anything of God is thereby to limit him. Always in metaphysical theology, as Mackinnon says, agnosticism has been judged less perilous than anthropomorphism, but my contention is precisely the opposite. It is better, my argument would run, if crudely stated, to have a God who is imagined as an old man with a long white beard sitting on a cloud than to end up with a God about whom nothing can truly be known or said.
To take a further example: it is characteristic of Christian theology, academic and popular, to afÞrm the timelessness of God. 'For him', says Mackinnon, 'the distinction between past, present and future has no signiÞcance of any sort whatever'. Though a handful of biblical texts may point in that direction ('A thousand years with the Lord are as one day', 2 Pet. 3.8), we may ask more seriously whether it can truly be said of Yahweh, involved as he is in the moto perpetuo of Israel's history, that he is beyond time. The Yahweh of the Old Testament is not a static, timeless being: he is in constant interaction with his people and with world events; he has a history, a biography, a futurity, a past. His eternity is inÞnite duration, not a quality of existence; his changelessness so-called is simply his faithfulness to his promises, for he does change in response to the conversion of the Ninevites or the repentances of Israel. He is acted upon and reacts. He promises, threatens, reminds Israel of the past. He is the Þrst and will be the last. He will be whatever he will be. Of whom could it be said with less truth that 'the distinction between past, present and future has no signiÞcance whatever'?
Anthropomorphic language about God, rightly appreciated, is no distortion, but a perception of his reality that challenges many of the categories of traditional Christian theology.
For many Christians God is essentially loving, supportive, safe. Yet, if Yahweh is God, the Old Testament makes sure that such a simple picture of the personality of God is called in question. In the Old Testament neither the loving nor the abrasive aspect of Yahweh's personality is so underplayed that the one is swallowed up in the other. It is the experience of Israel that Yahweh is a multi-faceted personality, complex and not entirely predictable.
Yahweh is experienced by Jeremiah, for instance, as both supportive and oppressive. While he is digniÞed as a transmitter of the word of Yahweh, he also knows that word as a Þre in his bones. He knows himself to be Yahweh's prophet, but equally he knows that it is only by dint of greater strength that Yahweh has forced him into that role: 'Yahweh, you have persuaded me [to be a prophet] and I was persuaded. You are stronger than I, and you have prevailed' (20.7). Yet that oppressive strength that dominates him is at the same time the source of his conÞdence in the face of persecution (20.11).
To the psalmist of Psalms 42­43, Yahweh is known under the Þgure of water. At one time it is life-giving water, which the soul desperately thirsts for: 'As a hart longs for þowing streams, so long I for you, O God' (42.2). But at another time God is experienced as destructive water: 'Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have overwhelmed me' (42.7). Or for the servant of Yahweh in Isaiah 53, Yahweh is known not only as the one who elevates him to a position of pre-eminence so that he is 'exalted and extolled and very high' (52.13), but also as the one responsible for his humiliation and suffering: 'It was the purpose of Yahweh to bruise him; he has put him to grief' (53.10)
These have been some illustrations of aspects of Yahweh's personality that could be called loving and abrasive. There are many other ways in which his personality could be described: he is forever creative, dynamic; he is tender and terrible, patient and impetuous, self-determining but open to scorn, rejection and contempt, withdrawn and engaged, fresh with initiatives but taken aback by human perversity. He can be laughed at by a Sarah, blasphemed by a Job, abused petulantly by a Jonah, and yet not Þnd it necessary to bluster or use force majeure. He is domineering and þexible; but above all he is passionate. Nothing could be further from the truth about Yahweh than Clement of Alexandria's afÞrmation that God is impassible, without anger and without desire.
A Christian theology-perhaps any theology-does not care for these fragmented glimpses of the divine reality. Nothing must be discrepant, no act of God may sound wilful, everything must be shown to be purposive. All of the abrasive aspects of the divine personality must in the end be subsumed under the rubric 'love'. But the more that note is insisted upon, the more the reality of such negative encounters with God that the Old Testament witnesses to is set aside. And the more it is insisted that God is ever-loving, ever-patient, ever 'positive' in his relationships with humans, the more religion becomes a cradle or a cocoon, and the less true it is to the reality of human experience of God.
By all means let it be afÞrmed that 'judgments are his strange work, but mercy is his darling attribute', but let it be afÞrmed that both alike are his work. The Old Testament does not present us with a God whose personality is essentially simple, and whose every action may be readily integrated with the basic tenor of his personality, but with one whose judgments are unsearchable and his ways ultimately inscrutable.

3. Christomonism

One result of the absence of Yahweh from Christian consciousness has been the tendency to focus on the person of Christ as the exclusive manifestation of deity. Jesus has become, both in many circles of Christian piety, and in some academic theology, virtually the whole horizon of the divine. G. E. Wright devoted a chapter of his book The Old Testament and Theology to this interesting deviation from biblical and confessional theology. Taking as his Þrst set of examples the chorales and arias of Bach's St Matthew Passion, Wright commented: 'Jesus is here the sole and sufÞcient object of piety and devotion. Other dimensions of divine reality play no part. Jesus is divine reality-and the theology can be called a devotional unitarianism.'
A second sphere where the same Christomonistic piety can be observed is that of a certain type of pietistic and devotional hymnology of the last hundred years, still the staple diet of very much 'informal' religion. In hymns like 'Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine', and 'What a friend we have in Jesus', or in 'choruses' like 'Jesus loves me, this I know', we Þnd in practice what would be hotly denied in theory, a unitarianism of the second person of the Trinity.
For a third illustration we may take an academic example, that of the later Barth. Here the principle of Christocentricity becomes so developed to dominate the theologian's whole perspective. So, 'Everything which comes from God takes place "in Jesus Christ", i.e. in the establishment of the Covenant which, in the union of his son with Jesus of Nazareth, God has instituted and maintains and directs'. For Barth, the doctrine of humanity is really an aspect of Christology.
It can be embarrassing to protest against excessive Christocentricity, because Christian piety naturally demands ascription of the highest possible signiÞcance to Jesus. And although traditional confessional theology has had no hesitation in recognizing that Christ is not the totality of what is meant by God, what has tended to happen in practice is that trinitarian theology has given a central place to the person and work of Christ. The roles of Father and Spirit, whether in theology or in liturgy, have regularly been subordinated to that of the Son.
What 'Yahwistic' theology offers, by way of contrast, is a belief in God that is non-trinitarian, or a least pre-trinitarian. May the unity of God (frequently afÞrmed by Old Testament and New Testament alike) be a matter not only of the oneness of God as contrasted with polytheism, but also of his oneness as contrasted with his 'three-ness'? Even in Christian theology God, as well as being Father, Son, and Spirit, ought also to be recognized as Yahweh, neither Farther, Son, nor Spirit.

4. The Real versus the Available God

Throughout this discussion, the question that has been lurking in the background is whether the Old Testament's picture of Yahweh is an authentic picture of the true God or whether it needs correction from some other source.
But is it not asking too much to demand a picture of the 'true God'? For, we may argue, we do not have access to the 'true God', to God as he is in himself, but only to some mental construct of him, whether that construct be identiÞed with what God has 'revealed' of himself, or whether it is an amalgam of reason, experience, and tradition. The distinction of Gordon D. Kaufman between the 'real' and the 'available' God is of value here. He uses the analogy of an historical personage, of whom what was 'real' is by no means what is 'available'. 'The real referent for "God" ', Kaufman writes, 'is never accessible to us . . .  It is the "available God" we have in mind when we worship or pray.' The concept of the 'real' God only serves to relativize our claims to theological knowledge.
Then what is the relation between the 'real' God and the 'available' God? Tillich's aphorism may point the way to an answer: 'God is a symbol for God'. The symbol, unlike the mere sign, 'participates in the reality of that for which it stands', so that the available God, of whom we may speak, is symbolic for the real God. Tillich himself stressed that 'Anthropomorphic symbols are adequate for speaking of God religiously . . .  Nothing is more inadequate and disgusting than the attempt to translate the concrete symbols of the Bible into less concrete and less powerful symbols.'
In a word, if Yahweh is not himself the 'real' God, the God beyond God, the ineffable God, the God as unknown or unknowable, or God insofar as he is unknown or unknowable, he is the nearest we can ever get to that God. He is, if one prefers to put it this way, what God has chosen to reveal of himself. It is the anthropomorphic Yahweh who has to be God for us.

Addendum
See also the responses by Irene Mary, 'Yahweh and the God of Christian Theology', Theology 84 (1981), pp. 42-43, and by Francis Landy, 'The Name of God and the Image of God and Man: A Response to David Clines', Theology 84 (1981), pp. 164-70.

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Undisciplined rant about "Yahweh/LORD"

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By Lauren Heist
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Tuesday, September 27, 2005

If salvation were a product, megachurches would be the hottest stock on the market. 

Some say megachurches — so called because they attract at least 2,000 people on an average Sunday — are seeing phenomenal growth because of divine intervention. Others say it’s simply because megachurches are using tactics from the business world to save souls rather than drive profits.  

“They’re incredibly cost effective,??? said Jim Twitchell, author of “Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc. and Museumworld.???

“They’ve taken the principles of Wal-Mart and applied it to the principles of salvation,??? he said.

According to a 2000 study by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research,  attendance at megachurches has increased 90 percent since 1980, and today, megachurches bring in an average of $4.8 million a year.

Scott Sanders/Daily Herald Nancy Singer, right, a former bank president, works at College Church in Wheaton. She said her church runs like a business, except employees pray at the beginning of staff meetings.

Twitchell said these churches are successful because, like Wal-Mart and other chains, they understand the importance of economy of scale.

Take Harvest Bible Church, which preaches to about 8,000 people every Sunday.

A pastor usually gives a live sermon at the main center in Rolling Meadows, while thousands more watch on a large video screen at satellite locations in Elgin and Niles.

The median church in the United States only has 75 people per service, according to the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, but by embracing technology,  one pastor at a megachurch can speak to many more people at once, and the entire operation can be more efficient.

“We’re trying to be as innovative as the Lord gifts us to be,??? said Daryl Rice, business pastor at Harvest Bible.

Megachurches are also cost effective because they have lean staffs and rely heavily on volunteers.

Christ Community Church in St. Charles has an annual budget of about $5 million  and employs less than 80 full- and part-time staff members. Still, the church is able to offer sports teams, children’s activities and about 700 groups a week for women, men, young adults and more largely because of the help of droves of volunteers.

The larger the church, the more volunteers it has to offer more niche services, which in turn attract more members.

Of course, being cost-effective isn’t the only thing that has made megachurches successful, or the only similarity they have to corporate businesses.

Megachurches also know how to attract “customers.???

Like many successful businesses, megachurch leaders try to appeal to an untapped audience by offering something new: in this case, a modern brand of worship.

Bill Hybels, founder of Willow Creek in South Barrington, is considered one of the pioneers of the consumer-driven approach to church.

The 17,500 people who flock to Willow Creek’s weekly services in  South Barrington, Wheaton and Northfield sit on comfy, stadium-like seating instead of hard wooden benches and  sing along to upbeat, contemporary music with lyrics projected on a screen overhead.

And it’s not just the audiovisuals bringing in the crowds.

College Church in Wheaton, which typically draws about 2,150 on a Sunday, has marketed to an outside audience by holding rock concerts.

Nancy Singer, the church’s director of administration, said there’s nothing wrong with trying new ways to attract more members.

“If you can’t get them into your building in one way or another, they’re not going to hear your message,??? she said.

Singer, who spent 20 years as president of First of America Bank, which used to have branches in Cook and Lake counties before it was bought by National City Bank, defended the business-like tactics megachurches are using. 

“We’re not looking to increase our profits,??? she said. “We’re looking to use the money the people entrust us with to serve God and expand his message.???

Expansion is a big part of megachurches’ mission.

“What these churches sell is what any successful retailer wants, namely the sense that what they’re selling is hot,??? said Twitchell. “These churches sell growth.???

Investing in new church buildings is common.

Harvest Bible, which has an annual budget of $9 million, is currently planning to raise $21 million for a new worship center in Elgin.

Some megachurches are mimicking franchisers by aggressively setting up spinoffs.

College Church in Wheaton “planted??? a daughter church in Batavia; Harvest Bible has “planted??? eight churches in Illinois and more in Canada.

The similarities to business don’t end there.

Larry Breeden, a pastor at Christ Community Church, said, ultimately, megachurches have come to understand that they must offer  good customer service and provide churchgoers with what they want.

“The things we have learned from the business world are to look around and say, ‘If I am new and coming to the church, how can I make it as easy as possible?’??? he said. “We try to be as easy and as friendly as possible.??? 

Twitchell said the rise of the megachurch is due to the fact that Americans have freedom of religion.

“America is a free market in religion, and boy, you see what happens. Everybody has to compete,??? he said.  “We’ve had this food fight in religion … and the megachurch is the most recent of the food fights.???

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WOW! What about looking at this from a 'different' angle? What about those folks who find 'traditional hymns' so boring and out of touch that their minds wonder during the hymn service contemplating how 'the recipient' could be so starchy stiff that HE wouldn't also be bored out of His creativity as well...

Now worship is a matter of the heart, I get that. I'm just addressing this argument with coffeeswirls same logic, which really is not that cool. God, loves worship, old and new, traditional, new fangled, contemporary, spirit filled, the point is who are these traditionalists, (mere men) trying to slow down a system/society that was designed by GOD to constantly progress, heal itself, learn-fail-learn from failure; it's called progress and it's necessary for the creativity of life and the worship of GOD.

I honestly respect and love both these guys for sharing their opinions and hope my post is an iron sharpening iron challenge towards progress and building up.

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Reality Church?

The First Stage: We begin going to a church, exciting, thrilling, love Jesus, the church is exciting, all things new.

Second Stage: We begin getting involved, learn behind the scenes things, feel privileged to know the church staff and leaders more personally, we are totally excited.

Third Stage: We see things you start to question, the thrill of the big church meetings wanes, as it seems more and more predictable, the leaders seem more human now and not as special as first.

To read the entire blog to Stage 10 go to Don Kimball's Vintage Faith:

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Guess Where The Evangelicals Live

I was catching up on some reading over the weekend and I noticed this new Barna Group report: Godless Hollywood? Bible Belt? New Research Exploring Faith in America’s Largest Markets Produces Surprises.

If I’m honest, I was a bit surprised. Check this out:

“When determining which metropolitan area has the greatest number of evangelical adults, the outcome will shock many people: Los Angeles. The city that produces the media often criticized or boycotted by evangelicals is also home to nearly one million of those deeply devout Christians. In fact, there are more evangelical adults in the Los Angeles market than there are in the New York, Chicago and Boston metropolitan areas – combined! The Barna Group’s analysis showed that although the evangelicals living in the ten most populous markets account for only 6% of the adults in those markets, that group represents one out of every four evangelicals (24%) in the United States.???

Now I’m a firm believer in “lies, damn lies and statistics,??? but the report did made me reconsider my thinking about Christianity in Red/Blue States. (Although I saw this breakdown last year and therefore never bought into the red/blue hype that much to begin with).

See Here are some other interesting stats:

• Sunday school attendance among adults is most common in Salt Lake City, and least common in Portland, Maine.


• The highest percentage of adults who believe that Jesus Christ sinned during his life on earth is in Des Moines, Iowa.


• The state with the highest percentage of its residents attending large churches is Arizona.


• The largest percentage of adults who are “notional Christians??? – that is, those who consider themselves to be Christian but are not born again – are found in Massachusetts and Wisconsin.

What do you think? Does this change your perception of American Christianity at all? I’m especially curious what our Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Boston readers think… if there are any New York, Chicago or Boston readers out there.

Tip hat: Web Evangelism Bulletin

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How can we seek first if our attention is being held by entertainment?

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Street Address:

4903 Fountain Ave.

Los Angeles, CA 90029

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It is "Faith Night" at the ballpark. The Class A Hagerstown Suns are among the minor league teams, mostly in the South, that will bring in Christian entertainers, have players give their testimonies, conduct faith trivia quizzes for prizes and have giveaways that could include biblical bobble-head dolls.

The dozens of Faith Nights at ballparks this summer are the latest manifestation of Christianity's increasing involvement in sports. Players pray in the locker room and on the field. They praise God in interviews. And they organize groups including Athletes In Action and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

Churches, like thousands of other organizations, had outings to ballparks before with discounts on group tickets. But Faith Nights go further: They have become a marketing tool, targeting churches with promotional campaigns. And they provide entertainment and specific activities geared to those fans.

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The vice chairman of Universal Pictures, Marc Shmuger, said, "It's a well-formed community, it's identifiable, it has very specific tastes and preferences and is therefore a group that can be located and can be directly marketed to."

Paul Lauer, who on his Web site calls himself an expert in the "faith and family" market, has been hired (by Disney) to work on "The Chronicles of Narnia," based on the C.S. Lewis literary fantasies, which Christian groups regard as an explicit allegory of Christ's Resurrection.

Jonathan Bock, a former sitcom writer who founded Grace Hill Media to specialize in Christian marketing, was hired to help sell Universal's "Cinderella Man," Fox's "Kingdom of Heaven" and Sony's "Christmas With the Kranks." And he is currently advising Sony on what is likely to be one of the most problematic movies of the coming year for Christian moviegoers, "The Da Vinci Code," based on the best-selling novel that challenges basic Christian dogma.

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Source: BoingBoing

Davis Rowan, who writes for the London Times, says "Rav Berg's people have been worrying the Brits too -- here's my investigation for the London Times (I've been trailing them since 2002)."

[Rabbi] Berg's teachings, too, have angered more traditional Kabbalah scholars, particularly his claim that anyone can "read" these ancient Aramaic or Hebrew texts simply by scanning their eyes or fingers over the pages. Still, the promised benefits are an impressive selling point (with courses starting at £151): Kabbalah can make you rich, cure illness and help you find true love. "You'll learn how to harness the Light of the Creator to get what money can't buy - including more money," its literature claims. "You'll learn how to... find the perfect mate, how to remove illness from your life, and even before illness strikes, prevent it. You'll also learn about a precise technique that can methodically reverse the ageing process and prolong life."

LINK: This is one very long article but an interesting read.

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Fresh Ministry:
Make no mistake, these 21st Century churches aren't trying to be hip or culturally relevant, they are trying to change the culture. "Our goal at Mosaic is not to be relevant ultimately," said McManus. "but to cause culture to cause artistic people to say wait a minute, 'where is this new way of expressing artistic creativity coming from?'"

While Pastor Erwin McManus preaches, artists are working on sculptures and paintings in the audience. McManus doesn't refer to the artists during his sermon; they aren't props or visual illustrations. In a way, their activity is incongruent with the sermon. They are not there to illustrate or inform, their function is simply to inspire. Witnessing the creative process helps put the audience in the frame of mind to hear the message. The artists don't distract people from worshiping, they help the worshiper connect with God.

And when they come to see the art, they encounter God. Whether it is watching a full dramatic performance, participating in a creative worship service or enjoying a sculpture or painting, something happens when people's creative juices are primed by the arts-their heart opens up to their Creator.

As Nicolosi put it, "A beautiful piece of art can stir people inside for something they don't even know. It can make them lonely for heaven."

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