The fullness of God
In Exodus 3:14, God says Himself that His name is simply “I am,” neither more nor less. According to the tradition often called classical theism, God is the only one who exists in Himself. God is existence, being, in its fullness, we have existence, being, in an analogous manner, because we are created and totally dependent on God. We only have existence because we participate in God, in a kind of ‘improper’ manner. We only have existence because God shares His with us.
When Scripture, for example, says that God is Father, this is not an analogy where we extrapolate from earthly fathers onto God and therefore call Him ‘Father.’ No, it’s the other way around. God the Father is the reality and earthly fathers are only so because they relate to God and show us an image of his fatherhood. As St. Paul states, in Ephesians 3:14-15: “For this reason I kneel before the Father (Gk. patḗr), from whom every family (Gk. patriá) in heaven and on earth is named.”
This, however, does not mean that there are no spiritual beings which could, by some, be given the name of ‘gods.’ In 1 Corinthians 8:5-6, St. Paul admits that there probably exist what people call ‘gods’ or ‘lords.’ But there is only One true God, the Triune God. We do not believe that God is like these spirits or that He is a very great and powerful man. I have met many atheists who say that they do not believe in a ‘magical sky daddy,’ and I always reply: I don’t either.
Because we do not believe that God is like us – only much larger and much more powerful. No, as it has been said by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, God is beyond being as we understand it, He is utterly beyond our categories. But at the same time, He is near because He, as completely other, can be as close as he wants. Yes, He is close to His entire creation. We all participate in God, depending on who we are and what we are. God is not closer to you than He is to your dog. And He is not closer to the Angels than He is to us. But He is close to all of us where we are, according to our capacity. God is the Other but not in a univocal manner. There is a difference, however, that is absolutely central: in Jesus we find something new. There God appeared to us, revealed himself to us, in a very special way. God became a human being. As St. John the Apostle says, in John 1:16-18:
From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
Here we find the essence of the gospel; that Jesus came to give us abundance, to give us grace and truth, and to show us who God is. No one has ever seen God but in Jesus we find out who God is. We do not find out what God is, because God is in his essence completely beyond the categories we have. He is simply unknowable. But we can find out who He is, especially as we relate to Him and from what He has done for us. We receive the God in His fullness or totality, neither more nor less. God is indivisible, unchangeable. He cannot be ‘divided.’ And that means that when we share God with others, we do not get less God. No, God gives his whole being, his whole fullness, to everyone he comes to. The Greek word translated ‘fullness,’ plḗrōma, is in some Norwegian translations translated ‘abundance’ (No. overflod). In itself, ‘abundance’ is a good word and it creates an image of God who abundantly pours out His gifts. It shows us that we are rich in God. But abundance is still not the best word, because it does not quite make clear what this word means in this context. Yes, there is a connection here to emanation from God but the word itself means ‘fullness,’ not ‘abundance,’ at least in this context. I think that using ‘abundance’ is problematic because it can create the idea that what we receive in Christ is a kind of ‘bonus,’ rather than Christ, and His divinity, in His fullness, which cannot be diminished. And, as noted, this, we believe, comes to us first and foremost in Jesus. For in him the divine and the human are fully united, in one as the same person. In Col 2:9-10, St. Paul writes: “For in him [in Jesus] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.” But how did we get to share that? Well, that he tells us in the next two verses: “In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.” By grace, by faith, we share in God, fully and completely, but not because we must strive for him or be as spiritual as possible. We partake of the fullness because God came to us, because “the Word became flesh and lived among us,” as it says in John 1:14, which we read on Christmas day.
Jesus meets us precisely in the concrete and tangible. We believe that God can come to us in many ways, but that He has given us very specific places where He has promised to be for us. He comes to us in his Word, in the Eucharist, and not least in Baptism. In something concrete, we receive the Holy Spirit who creates faith in us, so that we can be saved. There, in ordinary water, we received and receive a share in the divine fullness.
But it does not happen in a way where we are lifted away from the concrete and physical. No, God meets us precisely through the concrete and physical. For we cannot comprehend God, who is immutable. He is beyond every thought we can think of. And the only way we can partake of Him is precisely through concrete things we can see, hear, taste, feel and smell. When God became flesh, creation became part of God in a very special way. And through the means of grace, especially the word, baptism and the Eucharist, we meet him where we are. Through these very everyday things – written words, water, bread and wine – we receive what God wants to give us, here and now, through what we can grasp, not intellectually, but physically and spiritually. For God is not comprehensible, but he is graspable. We get Christ Himself, the fullness of God, “grace upon grace.” And when we get this, we can break out in thanks and praise.
Notice the order. We do not praise God to ‘achieve’ anything, but because He has let us take part of His fullness, so that we can live in love and trust. We do not have to strive, but when we receive grace and the Holy Spirit, we can thank and praise God, because he is working in us. We thank, praise and glorify God for who He is and for what He has given us and done for us. And the season of Epiphany, in which we find ourselves now, is precisely about celebrating what God has done for us, especially what he has given us in Jesus.
Imagine that: the eternal, unchanging, and truly incomprehensible God became a human being for you, for me, for us all. God the Father gave us His Son as a newborn child. And through his means of grace he gives us a share in the divine fullness, grace upon grace.
Then we can hymn God, to use the both biblical and Neoplatonic language of Pseudo-Dionysius.1 For him, this was the centre aspect to Christian life. As Kevin Corrigan and L. Michael Harrington writes, “Dionysius’ writing is a response, a preparing of the organs of reception for the love of God in praise and worship. In theology, we are learning how to praise, to hymn—not to catalogue—God.”2 We cannot understand what God is, but we can marvel at His work and cry out in thanksgiving and praise. In one of the more unknown creeds of the Church, the Athanasian Creed, it says: “Whoever wants to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith.”3 But what is this catholic faith? It is “that we worship one God in trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance.” In other words, our faith is first and foremost praise, worship of God.
This does not mean that we understand God, but that we can thank Him for His work. Yes, worship is simply an expression of the faith, the trust, we have in God, the One who created us, saved us, and lifted us up. We acknowledge that he is God, that we are his fallen creatures, and that we need his help. That is simply the essence of the gospel. God is God, we are His creatures, and He calls us into a fellowship with Him and with others where we are called to live in trust and faithfulness. As the apostle John puts it, in 1 John 4:7-12, with reference to John 1:16-18, that we have not seen God, but can still live in his love:
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
And that is what we are called to participate in, not principally by our own powers but through the grace. And this grace is God Himself. It is the fulness of God.
See Thomas Plant, The Lost Way to the Good: Dionysian Platonism, Shin Buddhism, and the Shared Quest to Reconnect a Divided World (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2021), 271-286, cf. R. M. van den Berg, Proclus’ Hymns: Essays, Translations, Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2001).
Kevin Corrigan and L. Michael Harrington, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), ed., Edward N. Zalta.
For the English translation of the creed, see The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, eds., Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2000). For Latin and German, see Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, vollständige neuedition, ed., Irene Dingel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014).