ELOHIM: GOD’S PLURAL NAME

GENESIS 1:1–5

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth

(Genesis 1:1).

Why is the first name of God that is recorded in the Bible a plural word? There have been several suggestions to account for this, but I think that the best is this: We know that the ancient Hebrew and Semitic peoples sometimes used a grammatical construction called the “abstract plural,” or as it is sometimes referred to, the “plural of intensity.”

God is not a composite

The abstract plural does not indicate any kind of polytheism. Nor does it imply any notion that God is a composite being. We are not to think of God as being made up of numerous parts assembled together to make a whole. He is not partly holy, partly immutable, or partly omniscient. Rather, God is altogether holy, altogether immutable, altogether omniscient—each of His attributes describes in one particular dimension the sum and totality of God.

Thus God is a unified being. God is not one-dimensional, but there is a multiplicity of facets to His innermost being. His unified inner self is expressed in each of His attributes: holiness, justice, immutability, infinity, and eternality.

Unity and diversity

God is not a one-sided being, but there is, as Scripture reveals, a fullness to God. This fact tickles my fancy, because I cannot get past the fact that the oldest philosophical problem of metaphysics, one that practically drove the ancient philosophers berserk, is this: What is the relationship of unity to diversity?

The ancient philosophers labored over this issue, looking for that transcendent point of unity that would draw all the strands of life together. What they were seeking was not just unity, but a universe. “Universe” comes from “unity” and “diversity.”

Here we find the Bible’s answer to this question of unity and diversity. The Hebrews understood very early that both the diversity of life and the unity of life find their ultimate resting point in God, who is Himself unity in diversity. He is the One who draws all the strands of life together.

CORAM DEO

The church is called to manifest God’s unity and diversity. We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, yet we also have a diversity of gifts and functions in the body. Consider today your place in that body. What are the gifts that you bring to the people of God?

thursday

february