God and Godding.... nouns and verbs.

"God, it seems to me,  is a verb, not a noun proper or improper." [Buckminster Fuller].  Caught part of Stuart Kauffman on The Current - talking about our need to redefine the sacred, moving from Creator to Creativity - the total creative process of the universe.  The trouble we have in talking about God, I think, is that in English we really have only two categories Noun or Verb [adjectives and adverbs simply refine/describe the noun or verb].  Religion has talked about God as a noun, not because God is a noun, probably, but because we like nouns, we like to relate to other nouns - they're beings, like us, and we like to think of God as a person.  Science has focussed on verbs, the processes of the universe, the interactions. It's harder for us to feel close to a process, seems kind of impersonal.

But whatever God is, it seems to me, God is both noun and verb, God and Godding, both the creator and the process of creating, the destroyer and the process of destroying, the maintainer and the process of maintaining.  To say I believe in Creativity/Creating but not a Creator seems as silly as saying I believe in a Creator but not in Creativity/Creating.  

When Moses asked the Talking Burning Bush what is your name, the answer he received was either "I am what/who I am" or "I will be what/who I will be" - the verb tense includes both.  Being and becoming.  God is therefore changing, the process of change itself.  Robertson Davies once said something like "If people want to define a god, and then say this god that I have defines I do not believe in - well that's fine.  But that seems rather silly.  It is God who defines me, not the reverse.  God is not the object of any sentence.  God is the subject, and we are the objects."

Comments

[Saved]

Neither Jesus nor Father God are female.
The Bible is very, very clear.
Stop complicating it.

[the old bill]

hmmm, Saved, gotta disagree with you a bit - seems to me the Bible is pretty clear on this point: "Then God said'Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness...' So God created humans in God's image, in the image of God, God created them, male and female God created them." [Gen 1:26-27]. Moreover the Hebrew word for Spirit is feminine - in Greek it's neuter [so the Spirit is always 'She'or'It'if we are being biblical.]. Jesus, unquestionably, was male. God is both [or rather beyond both].