God Unhoused: From God in One Place to God in Every Place
Deconstructing Christianity: Part 2 in a 3-part series on how God’s location changes over time as theology changes in the Jewish and Christian scriptures
What people think about God has never remained static. See my post, How People Understand God Has Changed Again and Again. Part of this change involves where people have understood God to be.
A continuum in how worshipers locate gods and God is embedded in both the Hebrew and the Greek Christian scriptures. That continuum of location might be constructed as follows:
Local bamot where people sacrifice to gods (including YHVH) assisted by local priests
Central temple where priests worship various gods including YHVH
Central temple where YHVH only dwells and is worshiped
Tabernacle where YHVH dwelt and was worshiped as a type for the future temple
Heaven and earth filled by the presence of YHVH Elohim, who is everywhere
Physically un-manifest spirit God worshiped in spirit, not in any particular location
God / Christ pervading all and in all
This three-part series on God's changing location is not predicated on the notion that God or ultimate reality changes; rather, it is based on the idea that we have changed and continue to change over time in our concepts of who or what God is as our understanding evolves. This post (Part 2) covers the fifth point along the continuum above—an omnipresent God. For Part 1, see my post From Many Gods in High Places to One God on One Mountain.
God the Unhoused
After Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians, it was plundered, and then burned, with the city wall, the temple, and houses of elites all razed to the ground. Psalm 137 is in the voice of court or temple musicians on their way to, or already in exile in Babylon. It not only tells a poignant story of grief and loss but also represents the beginning of a profound theological shift, with the recognition that an established way of understanding God no longer made any sense:
By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows [or poplars] there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How could we sing YHVH’s song
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.
“‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing YHVH’s song in a foreign land?” If God’s very dwelling has been swept from the earth, and God’s people with whom God dwelt have been scattered, where is God? How could songs about YHVH dwelling in his holy house, on his holy mountain of Zion make any sense when that house and the city in which it stood no longer exist? Of what use is the hard-earned skill of the lyrist’s hand or the singer’s voice, when the place of God’s dwelling they once recounted is remembered no more?
Check out the ARCHIVE of Faith Shifter posts.
Omnipresence
With any specific location for God obliterated, the theology of a God who is everywhere became important. Besides indicating specific locations as mentioned above for the dwelling of God, scripture also contains indications of a more expansive idea suggesting the attribute of omnipresence for God. Psalm 139 is often quoted in this regard:
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me,
And your right hand will lay hold of me.
This passage suggests two things:
God is present at or located at particular remote places.
There is no place where God is not present, that is, that God is present everywhere.
This attribute of omnipresence is vastly more important for a God that is considered powerful but lacks any defined location.
Some parts of the Deuteronomist source developed during or after the Babylonian exile approach the notion of omnipresence. In First Kings 8, there is a depiction of Solomon addressing the people at the dedication of the temple. Somewhat ironically, a prayer attributed to the one credited with constructing a dwelling for God on earth contains the following: “‘But will Elohim indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!’”
The same Deuteronomist body includes the book of Jeremiah. Chapter 23 contains this: “Am I Elohim nearby, says YHVH, and not Elohim far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says YHVH. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says YHVH.” Those who handled portions of scripture compiled and edited after the destruction of the temple during and after the Babylonian exile had good reason to include passages that speak of God being everywhere.
For the Iron-Age YHVHists in the kingdom of Judah, YHVH had historically been a material presence manifested as cloud, fire, smoke, or some combination of these. This God is seen in the Torah at particular locations, manifested in the places designated by YHVH for his dwelling, whether mountain, trackless wilderness, temple, or tabernacle. The theological shift from God in a specific location to God being everywhere at once would suggest a shift away from God as materially manifest in time and space to God as an unmanifest spirit. In Part 3 of this series, we can see how Jesus articulates this new theology.