Why God Is a Person and Not an Idea | Jonathan Pageau & Fr. Stephen Freeman 

"We have to generalize people before we kill them" That sentence stood out

This reminds me of a line from Brothers Karamazov "The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together."

Three distinct layers of interacting with God 1. God as Idea: True, but if this is the extent of "God" then the soul/identity/self is trapped in the mind which holds the ideas. The mind is the Ontological ground. 2. God as Person: True, but if we stop here we get locked into the individual experience of other people as Other, and thus relate to God as if we had equal ontological reality to Him 3. God as Person and Ground of Being: Here God is viewed as Person, the highest level of consciousness we can imagine, but also as so far beyond what we can imagine as Person. Thus only can God be understood as "farther beyond us than the furthest star, but closer to our soul than our own awareness."

The highest thing we encounter is always other people, the thing that can transform us the most is people

4:38 "You have to generalize anybody in order to kill them. We find it very difficult to kill particular people, because particular people are always not quite what you imagine." POW

This is so logical, good job my friends. ;-)

Love this. Thank you.

You can derive that God is a person through logical reasoning. First you derive that a prime mover must exist due to the impossibility of infinite regress, then you consider the properties of the prime mover. By it's very nature the prime mover is not moved by anything, and thus is indeterministic. If the prime mover is indeterministic, then by what means did any action arose? Well if it wasn't determined then it was chosen, and to chose you need free will, and there is nothing that defines a person better than the choices that they make. TLDR: The prime mover is indeterministic --> If actions don't arise deterministically they they must arise by choice --> choice requires free will --> free will is a characteristic of a person --> God is a person

Thank you for having this conversation and sharing this clip.

“The highest thing we encounter is always other people..the richest thing…the one that can transform us the most are always other people.” This is quite an assertion stated as fact.

The definition of "person" is one with intellect, power, and will. God is a person by the same definition we are defined as persons.

I think God is Life itself. Only a person in the way Hope is God's smile. Lords, and such history is another story altogether

This IS a revelation.

Swedenborg taught well on this. The Divine Human was his favored terminology.

I think the "personhood" of God is grounded in him as the ground of being, thus Infinitely Personal in his ineffable essence.

Picasso’s an interesting case, he never entirely went into pure abstract art. He always maintained human form to an extent, just pushed to the extreme.

Wow, that's exactly what Tarkofsky says in his book, sculpting in time, the image is a finite thing that stretches to infinity.

One may encounter people who have names, age and very precise description of the people they either killed, or precise circumstance in which they would kill. At the extremes, some people will express people they will kill, given opportunity, said killers will be either from criminal background, or paranoid/mentally disturbed.

I've never heard it put more plainly than "you can paint a picture of 'man', you can paint a picture of 'a man'".

GOD is above us, lives in us and works through us. HIS Spirit of life is in us and HE experiences HIS creation through our consciousness. ALL of GOD'S creation is HIS consciousness. Though we are many members, we are one body. That being said, its the very reason that the cancer must be removed. It continues to destroy the body. GENESIS 2:7 and breathed into his nostrils the spirit of life and man became a living being.

Do we have a category higher than a person? How is a god that is an idea or a concept essentially different from a lifeless rock that can't do anything? I'm not sure if it was Cherbonnier's Hardness of the Heart or one of Abraham Joshua Heschel's texts but the text argued that we don't have a category higher than a person. Anything with less agency and without a self is no different from a false idol.

So it seems to me that this idea of the general verses the particular explains why the word 'sibling' has taken root in our culture. Sibling takes away our identity as an individual sister or brother and turns the relationship into something general that has diminished meaning and value.

Some comments: We cannot encounter god directly. But we encounter him as a man. Humans are the highest form of experience. Every human has infinite value. We encounter the infinite in the particular.

Good

Fundamentally Transcendental

For someone who interprets symbols and patterns, it's remarkable that he doesn't notice because it seems natural to him to assume that god is a person. Where does that pattern come from and why is it assigned to God and why is God assigned to reality.

I can't imagine the most powerful Intelligence, Energy, the creative force etc. that designs and is behind all things in the universe being "less" than us: We have a conscience ( a particular point of view), we are able to be aware of our own existence, think and desire individually but this "supra-brain", "God", the "source" would be deprived from these attributes? So basically the creatures would be superior than their creator? That doesn't make any sense at all! She He is necessarly like us but much more!

God is the impersonal impersonality The personal impersonality The personal personality The impersonality personality Aka Father Son Mother Holy Spirit (energy)

Why thumbs down? Somebody tell me I don’t get it.

4:08 I love humanity it is people I can't stand 😅

we naturally anthropomorphize, so anthropomorphism must be right. lightning/thunder can't be impersonal forces, they have to be thor, zeus etc

1:13 this hmm... idk man. I'd say while I think that's true of pagan gods, the semitic/abrahamic(whatever is socially acceptable to call it) has been clear that he's pretty incomprehensible and abstract. In both testaments too...

Its an idea...what better way to control the masses?

How can you be a person if you have no limitations ?, unless God has limitations. Perhaps i dont understand what a person is?

Just a friendly reminder that logos predates christ

Person is 'persona' (mask) in Latin. I don't think it is metaphysically sophisticated to posit divinity fundamentally as a mask. One realizes that the patristic fathers (wrongly) assumed it was revolutionary and ingenious to use the Incarnation as a symbolic framework to posit that the personalities of humans could be "saved." Already, long before Christianity, Hinduism (as an umbrella term for decentralized ritual) propagated the doctrine of Atman - a view which posited incarnational deity within each person here and now, i.e, each person is a mask of Reality peering back onto its Self. It's redundant for any kind of high god, such as the biblical Yahweh, to incarnate to "save" anyone. You're just playing a word game - word salad - when you posit a distinction between 'person' and 'idea.' "Idea" is from the Greek, 'notion,' or 'pattern.' Masks (personas) are also patterns, as they change form constantly. Patterns in reality are constituted by forms, and it is all impermanence as the Buddha states.

As much as I appreciate these men, I'm glad Jesus didn't speak like them. I'd be lost

nah, i think our experience, or our human perception of how we view the universe and categorize the "things" in it, is prolly "the abstract". it doesn't matter whether its thick condensed clumps of cosmic background radiation we refer to as galaxies, stars and planets etc (objects we classify by MASS), or "things" we classify by their level of complexity like organic life, human consciousness, or human interaction between individuals, its all just our own observer bias that makes us classify the mathematical relations between these things the way we do. and since complexity seems to be increasing exponentially within society and technology, we are now at a place where we can look at the social layers of past generations and see how world views, culture and how humans view "things" differently between generations. what hasn't changed tho, is the math. so imo i think we need forget look past the cultural and world views of ancient times instead of interpreting the ancient context literally. personally i would sum up jesus, or "the word of god" as an oath to disrupt the "nash equilibrium". thats what i believe jesus was saying, and how we can apply it to society and current knowledge of today.

Trinitarians would argue he is not a person, that he is 3 persons and one being, but that God himself is not A person.

"The highest thing we ever meet is other people." Which means exactly that. No other entities need apply--unless aliens show up one day.

I disagree. God is not flesh.

But aren't we to identify with the spirit which is formless and not our material form(body)?

It becomes pretty clear that God is not a person if you interrogate the etymology of "person" a little.

Summary: "We relate to people and it is most transformative, so God must be a person" (Jonathan). "The particular is more important than general or abstract, so God must be a person" (Steven). Neither statement answered the title question. Interesting conversation, but not even close to a decent argument to support their case that God is a person. Disappointing.

Whilst I agree with yr argument to some extent being relational, and I am embedded in Christianity ,you are reducing the experience (not an idea!) of the transcendent of many eastern traditions and those in the west that have ‘mystical experiences that are experienced as more real. So I think care, discernment and humility are required .

Not sure your explanation - vaguely incel - flies. Back to the source material - there are several versions, and it started off as part of the oral tradition. The Green Knight was created from a mortal by... a woman, Morgan le Fay. So, the ending of the movie is not surrendering to the feminine, the Green Knight was created by it. These legends are metaphors and multi-layered. As green was seen as devilish back in the day maybe the film is about evil being overcome by the potential for good, and a girl is just a metaphor for a better future. If I were telling the tale now, I would be thinking of Trump's evil being overturned by the young child of hope represented by the glorious victory of the Democrats.

God may not be a person in islam like he is in christianity but he is still more then an abstract force . same as in native american and other shamnic religions too.

Creationists lol

We're *shown* God as/in person/persona. Just as in the visions/revelations/apocolypses we were shown the "particulars" because God *is* an abstract. The "general" isn't see-able. I can't see you, I can see your image, your persona, but not your nature, being, totality, just certain sensible, available aspects. You are not your persona (mask), you are so much more. You are Christ. One with, of, in, through. No?

The greatest trick that god ever pulled was getting into the minds of man, the only problem being after many millennia he still hasnt figured a way out.

God is not a man. The opinion of a man is less important than the word of God. Here is the word of God, not the opinion of a man: "God is not a man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind" (Numbers 23:19). So don't make a god in the image of man, just because it makes sense to you. It's the other way around. There is nobody between you and God: Isaia 43:11 "I, I am the Lord, and besides Me there is no Savior." God doesn't change His mind, nor His covenant (Deuteronomy 7:9) There is no new covenant. You need no savior, God forgives you even if you're not perfect: Isaia 55:6 Seek the Lord when He is found, call Him when He is near. The wicked shall give up his way, and the man of iniquity his thoughts, and he shall return to the Lord, Who shall have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will *freely* pardon.

An interesting idea that hate doesn’t stick to particular; it sticks better to the generalized. Likewise, love doesn’t stick to the generalized, only the particular.

The very concept of individuality, of human being as an individual and sovereign "person" is actually product of Christian theology. Before that people had kind of collective personality (family, tribe, city (Greek "polis"), kingdom, etc.). There weren't even words to describe personality as we understand this word now. "Persona" literally meant a "mask" and it took centuries of Christian theology to form new meaning of this word. With the decline of Christianity we can witness that collective identification is regaining it grounds again - political, ethnical, sexual, racial and so on. It's modern tribalism. This makes sense - the more we forgetting about Ultimate Person (i.e. God) the more we became depersonalized ourselves. The thing is - it is not us who tend to "humanize" God by seeing Him as a Person, vice verse - it is God who created us in His image and only through communion with Him we can became ourselves, became sovereign persons rather then accumulation of social interactions and biological features.

The "Transcendent Particular". I love that! 💚 "When God becomes man, the infinite enters the particular and the particular is revealed to have infinite value." 10:08

*"My friends, the Truth is a Person."* - _Constantine Zalalas_

Starving... dying of thirst...Homeless in Winter without a warm coat, shoes, gloves, and a warm hat....Stranded in a foreign land , not knowing the native tongue...Gravely ill, unable to afford a doctor or medicine...Trapped in a nightmare prison full of evil, dangerous men. In all of these the risen Christ is not merely with or in you. He is and was and will be you, from before time began until the end of this age... until all is fulfilled. "It is finished!" It was a prophecy... Amen? Glory to God in all things!

One of my favorite authors, Ernest Holmes, in writing about how we’re made is God’s image puts it this way: The personal cannot emerge from a principle which does not contain the inherent possibility of the personal. And you could go down the list of all human attributes; personality, etc. Of course, God is even more.

I remember listening to this when it first aired. Two years later the words spoken and shared are even more profound.

Wow You actually communicate that the only way we can experience reality is through our most probably very limited human senses, I don't know how many times I tried to express and explain that to people in my surroundings. They never seems to understand what I am talking about although it is very simple to understand. Or they look at me like I said something totally insane and unscientific. Maybe they just don't know how to respond to that,bif I am actually honest. But it is very refreshing to hear someone express that opinion except myself. Also very beautiful, to hear about this personal concern of the Divine. The name, the person as a unique individual. It is so obvious when I hear it. The common opinion today is so, despite of the perverted narcissistic individualism, when it comes to the spiritual realm and even in a global matter it is always about that we are all a small part of humanity, almost as if humanity is an organism that we all collectively must work in accordance to sustain. I understand in a way were it come from. We are of course a collective as well, that's just a fact. But it touched me to be remembered about our individual uniqueness to God. I had almost forgot about it.

But an immaterial person right? The forces on God not being "discovered via scientific inquiry" makes it difficult for people to put faith into the intangible. God is a person but that doesn't help the modern mind comes to terms with that I don't think. It started for me when I started to think of God as a character from a book. Then I started to communicate with that character based on what I knew of him from the literature. Quickly God became personal and palpable to my life

wow what a conversation, I realized abstraction is for the stupid. I and most humans are too stupid to understand the complexity that is the truest possible representation of what is. We rely on successive abstractions to understand complexities. But pure abstraction leads to nothingness. Gratetful for this dialogue on why the individual person nature of God makes sense and why God furthered that personhood in Christ.

I think this ties in closely with discussions regarding the vast insufficiency of post-Aquinas 'natural theology', which happens to be all the rage with protestants at the moment. Eventually arriving at the notion of the 'uncreated general diety' and then attempting to later meld that notion with the extremely particular reality of the Holy Trinity at some later point when a person is 'ready for it' seems tenuous. One cannot love (or arguably more importantly) 'be loved' by an idea. Faith premised on philosophical notions will eventually fail to sustain the alleged object of that faith, it must be sustained by the Person directly.

An interesting note on songwriting/poetry is that the more particular the characters and events in the work are the wider the span of people, who are not even familiar with those particulars, can relate.

I think Hyper-person, or the notion of God as Super-personal is most apt. The basis for our best understanding of God is an analogical extrapolation of our own actuality, which is as Jonathan says "personal". The highest order unity we know of is that of the person.

I love the idea of the "transcendend particular". The best way I ever had to describe was the "universal-particular" which constitutes actul individuality.

Woah! @9:59 .... blew me away. Like a nuclear explosion. Jonathan says "it used to mean 'mask'" ... I had to look that up. Indeed. That's how it started, and the concept was further developed over time to where we've lost the seed of the concept - the meaning today is practically unrecognizable from its origin. Practically. But not completely. At first I thought he said "it means to act" ... but I misheard him. But even in my mishearing him, it ended up being on point. Originally, it meant a mask worn by stage actors. What is a mask? A mask is a "face". A face is what we primarily use to ... interface (between faces, right?) with each other. Now I can better wrap my head around the whole idea of the Trinity. God is three persons. But also one. Always a headscratcher to me, and I went to Catholic school from K-8th grade and Church every Sunday, acolyte most Sundays as a teenager. I got more of it than a lot of people and this concept was still hidden in fog. But ... if you say God has three faces ... three ways he manifests, three ways he interfaces with, well, us, I suppose -- well that I can wrap my head around. "Light" has two faces (that we know of). It can be seen as particles ("photons") or waves. It behaves like both. Yet it's still "light". It's not one or the other. It's both. At the same time.

This is why God is known as Father. Even that is a generalization. We must make sure God knows us and our name.

I'm reading a book about Buddhism and Christianity (Without Buddha I would Not Be a Christian by Paul Knitter) and this very topic has come up and this video immediately came to mind. The author takes issue with the concept of, what he says "God-as-other." He condenses this perspective to one in which he is frustrated with the idea of God as a person, or as he also says "super-person." I was confused especially when remembering this video because it does really seem that if God is not a person, that is, there is no space for an "I-Thou" reality to manifest then we cannot enter into relationship or worship this God. Funnily enough, this is precisely what Christine Mangala Summer (a Hindu convert to Orthodoxy) mentions in her book "The Human Icon" as being a critical flaw in Sankara's Advaitic philosophy. If the "I-Thou" relationship does not exist then proper Bhakti cannot exist either. My take-away from that idea was that essentially if one engages in worship of a deity then it's ultimately farcical since what you worship is merely another crystallization of the Atman. Hence why she believes Vishishtadvaita (qualified-Advaita) as proposed by Ramanuja is far more harmonious with our Orthodox heritage. That said, and back to Knitter, I think when the idea of God not being a Person is invoked, especially by the spiritually mature and wise, the emphasis (at least my own charitable take on the matter) is that God is not _a being_ which we enter into relationship with. That is to say, God is not a Person who "has" being, but is rather Being itself (as Paul Tillich puts it) as well as "InterBeing" and connection (a la 1 John 4.7). God is, like many others have put it, and as Fr. Stephen says "TransPersonal" or "Transparticular." The very categories of personhood are too narrow to contain the reality of God. God isn't a person like you or I are persons, but God most certainly is personal, and this is brought to bear through experience. Those sweet moments of divine connection and unitive consciousness are not, and if I may be so bold, _cannot_ be due to an impersonal force or idea. Nothing impersonal in my experience affects me that way. The deepest realities I encounter are always within the personal/relational context. All that to say, is that if someone says "I believe God is an 'idea' or 'force'" I will press them for what they mean by that since, for many, "Personal" seems related to, if not be wholly synonymous to: A Being.

I think Jesus spoke about groups quite often. For just one instance, Matthew 23: The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law are experts in the Law of Moses. 3 So obey everything they teach you, but don’t do as they do. After all, they say one thing and do something else." Is the proper reply to Jesus, "Which Pharisees are you talking about, Jesus? We're individuals, not a group!"?

I had a unique healing experience that led me out of depression. Without knowing why and what I was looking at my own photography daily for 2 years, not thinking of anything, just feeling very much loved. It was miraculous and it restored my self value, my faith in Lord Jesus Christ and love for everyone else. Later, after studying Catholicism for 2 years, I am willing to say - I am (we are) the image of God.

Thanks for this. For Someone who has seen it all, heard it all, is really old ? God sure seems to take things personally sometimes.

Interesting also that that "person" comes from the Latin "Persona" ("for sound to go through" -- referring to theatrical masks which had amplifying aspects). There's this connotation of a character, but also of performance. Does anyone happen to know what the biblical Greek word was? πρόσωπο prósopo? Did it appear in scripture or perhaps first in the writing of the Church fathers?

Beautiful discussion!👏🏾⭐️⭐️⭐️

Islam is abstract and Christianity is personal. God has become Man.

"We find love in the particular......." is a very profound statement that has massive implications not only for the afterlife but also questions this vague abstraction we're taught about "oneness in the body of Christ."

Is it possible that there’s an infinite amount of particular experiences of God, but the one He designed us for is the “human particular”?

This video is so beautiful

This is why when Pontius Pilatus asked Jesus “What is truth?”, the Lord never answered. The right question would have been “Who is the truth?” Then Jesus would have answered “I am the Truth”, the way He did earlier during the Last Supper. The absolute truth can never be a theoretical type or an abstract idea, but the Self-life; the “I am”. Excerpts from the book of St. Sophrony of Essex, St. Silouan the Athonite. (Free translation from Greek) Pages 135-137

This is an eye-opener for me.

There is nothing better in the world than meeting with an old friend to share sorrows and laughter with. Human emotion and interaction is a way we can experience ‘God’.

Hi Jonathan, do you have the reference to that quote from St. Maximus you referred too?

Damn this was impressive & wise. Thank you

Image of the infinite IS abstract. We have no direct way of experiencing infinity given the fact we’re finite creatures. I’ve tried to give this argument/perspective an honest chance but it’s actually just mumbo jumbo. There’s nothing real to grasp onto.

Oohh this is good. Ken Wilber added a 4th component - the plural of True which is Systems. So, the Personal (Beautiful or Values); Interpersonal (Good or Ethics); Objective (True); and Inter-objective (Systems of objects).

What if God created our world by being our minds or by just being mind. He is both mind in general as we know it, but also at the omega and alpha levels, as well. We are a point in that spectrum.

1 minute ten why does the infinite have to reflect the human? it makes no sense!

person literal means mask in form of theather, means a role, a play but not the real "thing", so god as a person is really stupid, i mean iam not a person either, it only works on base of language but reality is far away, therefore lot of people have inner puking when they hear god is three persons....

God may well be a PERSON. But I think it would be human folly and even human pride to assume that we've got God all figured out. I think at the rate that Christians go, there would never be a need for God to speak, because they seem to already "know" what He would say and they are content with that. To put this another way: Do you really believe that God thinks and reasons just like we do? Nothing in nature or life experience has really shown me this. And I say this as a former diehard believer who was even involved in ministry.

Just because my personal experience is that people are the most interesting things in my life that I can interact with does not mean that is how the ultimate nature of reality actually is. I have studied physics at university. I am not accustomed to thinking of things like F = ma as personal. The idea that the whole of mathematics can be an aspect of the being of an individual person is astounding. I cannot comprehend it. If God really is a person, and he wants to know me personally, why does he not appear to me personally? I find claims by Christians to have a personal relationship with Jesus to be quite ridiculous. He left us some testimony (which his believers have many disagreements about) about what he wants us to do. But I don't see how that's different than a ruler handing down a law. You can respect and love the ruler who makes the law, but that is very far from having a personal relationship with him. The rest of what you are talking about how our ethics are based on Christian ideas seems to me to likely be true.

Its gnosticism , hes not christian i think he's lost in his symbolic world if i keep watching these videos ill be lost with him

Would a stick figure be a general human?

Is Fr. Freeman advocating nominalism?

0:25 if it is not our experience of reality, then how come so many people describe God in such a way? Aren't you rather talking about "us" being right and "them" being wrong just because? 0:46 Just not true, not for me at least. The encounter with trans-personal God was much more life-changing to me than when I got married. 1:00 why? 1:25 Sir, so far in my life, christianity was the thing that made the LEAST sense to me 1:43 platonists would disagree with you. 2:40 that's actually a valid point about modern art. But isn't it better to actually not draw the image of the general at all? Like in islam. 4:48 also a good point 8:09 well, no, abstraction is also a sort of knowledge. That's all what Plato and Aristotle were on about. Depends on what you mean by "communion" 9:15 so our experience of the world determines the nature of God? Oh my... talk about god being a made up thing... 10:30 infinite value for the infinite... but isn't that... you know.. better? Isn't that what it should be? Shouldn't you value the infinite more than the particular? Isn't the whole more than its parts? 13:30 so in christianity there is no such thing as virtues gone mad? Read the Apofthegmata of the desert fathers and talk to me about virtues gone mad and unnatural. Give me a break.. This whole thing hinges upon a simple theological argument for me. God is the absolute highest reality. And as such He should transcend every category we apply to Him. Therefore, God is even beyond personhood. It's that simple.

"we can never know anything in general, only in particular. God is the Transcendent Particular." y e s wow i came to the same realisation the other day! i feel our abstract generalisations correspond to the garments of skin, for our minds.. intermediate, provisional, but in the end illusory ways of groping from particular to Universal. we need them for now to navigate the world, but as we grow into Christ, the cosmos becomes more immediate, more particular and simultaneously more universal. but generalities are like.. veils, lukewarmness, to be transcended/transfigured more and more. (also John Vervaeke: God doesn't know anything abstractly; everything is immediate and participatory for Him.) (also Pierre Teilhard de Chardin expands on these ideas) And I love George Macdonald's perspective on the new name - a person's identity is in their kenosis, their self-giving to the other; the heart of each of our unique identity is the incommunicable kind of sanctuary of our apprehension of God (Cloud of Unknowing type stuff), which is the fount of our eternally expressing Him, in ourselves, to each other, in the communion of persons.

amazing talk

What vanity to make your God in your own image! Blech!

God is a Spirit & no respector of persons or personhood...only the Spirit can lead you God who is worshipped in Spirit & Truth.

lol

God is not a person and neither is God an abstract idea. Those are not the only two options. This person needs a good dose of classical theism.

I'm frustrated because I really really want to understand what Pageau is getting at. I get that Christ is a being that exists in the world. Pageau's Santa Claus video helped me see that. Christ's body in the world seems to exist by "colonizing" individual humans who are participating in the pattern of Christ. I'm hesitant to call this kind of being a person. Part of my problem is that I really don't know how Pageau (and the people who influence Pageau) define "person." Pageau seems to ascribe personhood to trees in his conversation with John Vervaeke, saying that a person (or a hypostasis) is an instantiation of a nature. So Santa Claus, the oak tree in my yard, and Jesus all have a nature. All of their natures are instantiated and so Santa Clause, the oak tree in my back yard, and Jesus are all people? My understanding is further inhibited because I don't really know what a "nature" is in this context either. In this video Pageau seems to say that God necessarily being a person starts to make sense when you understand that Christ is the best representation of God. I'm already confused about precisely how Christ is a person so that isn't very helpful to me.