Awesome God

A God who fits between our ears is a small God indeed. In fact, he is us. If we can comprehend and capture the infinite nature of God in our minds then he can be no greater than a mental construct, a construct under our devious control. We moderns whittle God down to our own pet conception reducing God to an ideal or mental apparition. Such a God will always concur with our own fondly held beliefs. Ultimately, then God always believes the same things we do, because this God is only a mental construct. We tell Him what He ought to believe. Such a God is only a perverse form of self-affirmation and self-deification.

While God is willing to make Himself small enough for us to grasp and know in the incarnation of Jesus Christ of Mary, He will not be made small by us. For our reduction of God will always be along the lines of a theology of glory; a glory that is always our own, a glory stolen from the true God who reveals Himself to us precisely in the glory hidden under His humility in Christ. The God who is and who is greater than St. Hilary of Poitiers' (c. 300-367) own conception of Him, to whom He had been converted as an adult, overawed Hilary. He is an awesome God.

Hilary of Poitiers

"As an indication of God's infinity the words 'I Am that I Am' (Ex 3:14) were clearly adequate; but, in addition, we needed to apprehend the operation of His majesty and power. For while absolute existence is peculiar to Him who, abiding eternally, had no beginning in a past however remote, we hear again an utterance worthy of Himself issuing from the eternal and holy God, who says, He 'holds the heaven in His palm and the earth in His hand' (Is 40:12), and again, 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest' (Is 66:1)? The whole heaven is held in the palm of God, the whole earth grasped, in His hand.

"Now the Word of God, profitable as it is to the cursory thought of a pious mind, reveals a deeper meaning to the patient student than to the momentary hearer. For this heaven which is held in the palm of God is also His throne, and the earth which is grasped in His hand is also the footstool beneath His feet. This was not written that from throne and footstool, metaphors drawn from the posture of one sitting, we should conclude that He has extension in space, as of a body, for that which is His throne and footstool is also held in hand and palm by that infinite Omnipotence. It was written that in all born and created things God might be known within them and without, overshadowing and indwelling, surrounding all and interfused through all, since palm and hand, which hold, reveal the might of His external control, while throne and footstool, by their support of a sitter, display the subservience of outward things to One within who, Himself outside them, encloses all in His grasp, that dwells within the external world which is His own. In this way does God, from within and from without, control and correspond to the universe; being infinite He is present in all things, in Him who is infinite all are included.

"In devout thoughts such as these my soul, engrossed in the pursuit of truth, took its delight. For it seemed that the greatness of God so far surpassed the mental powers of His handiwork, that however far the limited mind of man might strain in the hazardous effort to define Him, the gap was not lessened between the finite nature which struggled and the boundless infinity that lay beyond its knowledge. I had come by reverent reflection on my own part to understand this, but I found it confirmed by the words of the prophet, 'Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall 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 morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me' (Ps 139:7-10).There is no space where God is not; space itself does not exist apart from Him. He is in heaven, in hell, beyond the seas; dwelling in all things and enveloping all. Thus He embraces, and is embraced by, the universe, confined to no part of it but pervading all."

Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity, 1.6