Christian Understanding of Trinity3

TRINITY : M. M. NINAN
4. Jewish Mystical Understanding
I form the light and create darkness,
I make peace and create evil.
I am the L-rd, that does all these things." .
God is Incorporeal
Tanach and Talmud speak of God and in his actions in
anthropomorphic form. The parts of God's body such as the
Hand of God, God's wings, God walking in the garden of Eden,
God laying tefillin, etc., they are only attempts to express how
God interacts with people in the real world Since God is not
material nor a physical being, he has no body and all such
references must be understood only as figure of speech so that it
may convey sensible meaning to the hearer. Rabbis have taken
lot of pain to show that all such references in the Bible – for there
are very many –are all only allegorical.
Since God does not have a body, it is forbidden to represent God
in any form. God is a person but God is neither male or female.
That would be ascribing a property to a God who is beyond
properties. The use of God in masculine gender is considered
only as a convenience, especially because Hebrew Language
does not have a neutral gender. So they are forced to use either
a male or female gender. As a result God when used as a
person uses the masculine gender while his presence as in
Shekina (Glory of God) and his wisdom as in Sophia are usually
in feminine gender.
God is Omnipresent , Omnipotent and Omniscient, but he has
in his omnipotence permitted human freewill.
God is Eternal because he is beyond time and space. The
expression Eternal does not make sense to something which is
not in time and do not exist in the sense we understand
existence in space. When Moses asked for God's name, He
replied, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh." That phrase is generally translated
as, "I am that I am," but the word "ehyeh" can be present or
future tense, meaning "I am what I will be" or "I will be what I will
be." The ambiguity of the phrase is often interpreted as a
reference to God's eternal nature.
42