Why attribute personality to God?
One could say that if in human language God is "that which none greater can be conceived," then greatness would also be defined by the users of language. One could posit that God's greatness would be so unsurpassable, that in comparison with human "personality," God's personality would be such a super-personality that God could be an "impersonal" Being, meaning not personal like the limitation of human personality.
The reason God attains a personality for human beings is that we have language. Human beings have language and language is the essence of inter-connection and inter-relationship and this essence of inter-relationship comes to be defined as having personality. Einstein said the greatest question was to whether the universe was a "friendly" place. If what we call enjoyment is evidence of friendly regard, then the friendliness of the universe expresses something of the meaning of a Personality for human beings.
Any thing that comes to language is colored with personality since having language expresses the most personal aspect of anthropomorphizing projection. Perhaps the chief principle of the belief in the incarnation is that emptying of the divine into a divinely human person. This, in fact, expresses the human situation of being merely human, but with the freedom to anthropomorphize about what is not human, e.g., animal beings, plant beings, unseen beings and the Great Being of God. In actual practice, animals, plants, angels and the divine become the human versions of them, even while we in this mutually reflexive process of inter-relations, we confess it to be the participation with a Higher Personal Being.
Because we have language, we assume a Greater linguistic personal Being who is Word and the origin of being able to know ourselves as those who use language. We have happened onto believing some greater Language User made us personally in such a way because Communication conducted between beings is the chief attribute of being human. Word is Spirit and Spirit is Word. Word implies personality because Word implies the Connectedness which defines the meaning of personality.
One could say that if in human language God is "that which none greater can be conceived," then greatness would also be defined by the users of language. One could posit that God's greatness would be so unsurpassable, that in comparison with human "personality," God's personality would be such a super-personality that God could be an "impersonal" Being, meaning not personal like the limitation of human personality.
The reason God attains a personality for human beings is that we have language. Human beings have language and language is the essence of inter-connection and inter-relationship and this essence of inter-relationship comes to be defined as having personality. Einstein said the greatest question was to whether the universe was a "friendly" place. If what we call enjoyment is evidence of friendly regard, then the friendliness of the universe expresses something of the meaning of a Personality for human beings.
Any thing that comes to language is colored with personality since having language expresses the most personal aspect of anthropomorphizing projection. Perhaps the chief principle of the belief in the incarnation is that emptying of the divine into a divinely human person. This, in fact, expresses the human situation of being merely human, but with the freedom to anthropomorphize about what is not human, e.g., animal beings, plant beings, unseen beings and the Great Being of God. In actual practice, animals, plants, angels and the divine become the human versions of them, even while we in this mutually reflexive process of inter-relations, we confess it to be the participation with a Higher Personal Being.
Because we have language, we assume a Greater linguistic personal Being who is Word and the origin of being able to know ourselves as those who use language. We have happened onto believing some greater Language User made us personally in such a way because Communication conducted between beings is the chief attribute of being human. Word is Spirit and Spirit is Word. Word implies personality because Word implies the Connectedness which defines the meaning of personality.
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