spiritual.wiki

Concept

God

The word used across Western traditions for ultimate reality personally encountered — with profound variation in what is meant.

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What the word “God” names is deeply contested within and between traditions. In classical theism (shared in different forms by Christianity, Islam, Judaism), God is one, personal, creator, and radically other than creation. In Christian Mysticism‘s Apophatic stream, God exceeds every concept — even the concept “being.”

In Hinduism, the personal aspect (Ishvara) is a face of Brahman; the infinite both has and is beyond attributes. In Kabbalah, behind even the personal God stands Ein Sof, the Infinite without qualities. Sufism insists the God one prays to and the Reality one dissolves into are the same.

What every tradition resists is the shrinking of God into a being among beings — a large invisible person. The word, at its best, points beyond its grasp.

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