God. This term is used in so many different senses in the history of religion that it must be said to take its meaning from the context. The Greek word theos ("god"), from which we get words such as "theism" and "theology" could be applied to any wonderful or unusual phenomenon as well as to forces such as love and war. These were all theoi, gods. Some were more lasting than others. Love and war, for example, seem to be always there among us, while other gods are ephemeral. In this sense "god" means something radically different from what Jews and Christians mean by the term, and from what Muslims mean by Allah. When we say that the ancient Greeks, like many other peoples, were polytheists, we do not mean merely that they believed in a large variety of gods while we believe (or disbelieve) in only one; we recognize, rather, that they meant something different when they used the term. If America were an exclusively polytheistic society such as was ancient Greece, we would call the latest rage among pop singers a god and current movie stars goddesses. We might also, on opening the garage door on a frosty morning, utter a prayer such as "O blessed goddess Chevrolet, let me hear the purr of thy pleasure and not the noise of thy wrath." In the ancient world generally the symbols or totems of the various states and nations were important gods, each obviously powerful and therefore to be feared. Nature gods likewise were to be feared when, being angry, they brought storms and earthquakes, yet loved when they brought just the right amount of sun and rain for a good harvest. To say, in such contexts, that "the world is full of gods" (a saying attributed to Thales, one of the earliest of the Greek thinkers) is to say that everything is wonderful.
Very different is the assertion that God is One, the source and at the same time the ground of all existence. The polytheistic outlook, as described in the previous paragraph, tends historically to develop into the monotheistic one that we associate with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Yet when it does so, it does not necessarily take exactly the same form. God as understood in Catholic Christianity, for instance, is fundamentally akin to the concept of Allah in Islam, yet there are notable differences. Again, when in Hinduism the focus turns away from the popular polytheism of antiquity to an outlook that uses the term "God" as a unifying symbol in some ways analogous to the way in which it is used in the monotheistic religions, it does not mean precisely what it would mean to a Catholic or a Jew. The Indian concept of Brahma, for example, is similar to the Christian concept of God, yet they cannot be simply identified.
In the Old Testament, Moses received a revelation ( Exodus 3.2-15 and 6.2-8) from God as "He Who Is", unique and without any possible rival. This God is just and merciful. He demands absolute fidelity and total devotion and will not brook any philandering with other so-called gods. Because he is not merely the god of the Hebrew people, although they be his chosen people, they must not expect him to be always on their side. Being the righteous God that he is, he will indeed be faithful to his own people, but he will also be just and righteous to all and will therefore chastise his own people when they deserve chastisement and bless other peoples when they merit blessing. All this is brought out especially by the great early Hebrew prophets such as Hosea and Amos.
Christianity inherited to the full that understanding of the nature of God, as did also to a considerable extent later Judaism. It mixed with it the insights of the ancient wisdom, the teachings of the thinkers of antiquity, notably of the Greek philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, and of the Greek philosophical schools, such as the Stoics. The Christian doctrine of God was profoundly influenced and illumined by belief in the unique relationship that was seen to exist between God and him who came to be called the "only son" (filius unicus) of God, Jesus Christ, a relationship expressed in the doctrine of the Incarnation. As developed by the classic Christian Fathers of the Church over the first few centuries, this relationship came to be expressed in the doctrine of the Trinity. (See Trinity.) Nevertheless, the ancient Hebrew insight that God is One (the Unity of God) is the foundation of the trinitarian view that the Christian Church developed to express, in the intellectual terms of the fourth century CE, the distinctively Christian concept of God. So although the trinitarian formula remains the classic expression of the Christian understanding of the nature of God, it is meaningless apart from the unitary concept of God in which it is grounded.
Both oriental and occidental thinkers outside the mainstream of religious thought have postulated a vast variety of ways in which God may be understood. Both within and outside the great religions of the world the question of God's existence has often been a central one. If, however, God is understood in biblical terms at all, the question whether he exists or not is ill put. For the biblical God, as the source of all that is, is beyond existence, so that existence is by any reckoning too low a category for him. Traditionally, the medieval schoolmen, notably Thomas Aquinas, taught that we can know by reason that God is, but only by revelation can we know what he is. Such "knowledge", however, even if we grant it, is so abstract that it does not in the least answer the question that people have in mind when they ask "Does God exist?" At best it can yield only a philosophical principle of one sort or another: knowledge of a characterless and featureless entity, an entity bereft of any attributes. In modern theology the tendency is to prefer to say that God can come to be known by us only through the life of faith in which the loving and merciful nature of God is gradually revealed to those of his creatures who live in loyalty to his teaching and according to his will as revealed through the living of such a life. The individual, through a lifetime of loving and serving God, gradually attains a direct knowledge of him such as no verbal formulation concerning him could ever provide and no logical argument ever demonstrate.
God
Buddhism is atheistic and does not believe in the existence of a Supreme Being or Creator God. However, it acknowledges the existence of a wide range of supernatural beings known as devas, many of whom were incorporated into Buddhist mythology from Hinduism.
god : (m.) deva; sura; amara; tidasa. (f.) devatā || City of the gods: (nt.) tidasapura; lord of the gods: (m.) devarāja; tidasinda.
lde
[tenses]
- lde'u
[translation-eng] {Hopkins} god; deity
example
- [bod] /sprul pa'i rgyud ma chad pa'i nang na lde/
- [eng] is a god within an uninterrupted continuum of emanations {GZ 69a.2}
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