During lunchtime yesterday, I gave a white board talk to our kids about definitions and differences between theology and religion and worldview. And in the course of discussion, I wanted to emphasize to my sons that one of the very important differences between the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob compared with the deities of other religions is that our God in the Christian religion is infinite and incomprehensible.
But Zeus, Odin, and Osiris were not that way. None of them was either infinite or eternal, nor would there be much to recommend a kind of Theology centered around puzzling out their attributes.
In Greek mythology, Zeus has numerous children by affairs with gods and women alike. Meanwhile, he feuds and schemes and plots and maneuvers. He's even afraid sometimes of the other gods and goddesses. He is something like the projection of an insecure middle-aged macho man skirt-chaser, and not as hard to comprehend as we might wish if we've ever known someone like him.
Meanwhile, in Norse mythology, Odin sacrifices one of his eyes to be able to see all that happens in the world. That is to say, he can’t have it all, but has to make trades and sacrifices to gain things not otherwise in his possession. He is a kind of magician and sorcerer, though, and more dependent on magic than the source of all magic; more a wizard than the one to whom the wizard's incantations harken.
Osiris in Egyptian mythology has parents and siblings and a consort and children. Moreover, he is murdered by his jealous brother before becoming the god of the underworld and afterlife.
But the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the Creator. He is eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, and simple. That is, He is not made up of parts. And one of the ways in which Christianity is enigmatic is that the Messiah is this same God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that this God is said to be ‘Trinitarian’ – “God in three persons.” Yet He is not three Gods but one God, as the Athanasian Creed explains. And that is very mysterious and foreign to us in comparison with the gods of the nations who are familiar because they are very much like us, just stronger and with magical powers.
Another eccentric quality, if you will, to the Christian faith is that we believe that Jesus Christ was and is and forever will be fully God and fully man, no less one or the other, but wholly both at the same time in one person. And yet he is one Christ.
In truth the Psalmist sings,
"Yahweh is high above all nations,
and his glory above the heavens!
Who is like Yahweh our God,
who is seated on high,
who looks far down
on the heavens and the earth?"
It’s important to mark the difference between Religion and Theology in light of this passage. That is to say, you would be hard-pressed to find anything resembling the subject and approach to it we call Christian Theology in the ancient cults of the Greeks, Norse, and Egyptians, among others.
What you do find are temples and rituals and festivals and stories told around campfires.
A little at a certain point – especially in Greece – are philosophers skeptically questioning whether the gods ever lived, or whether they really were gods who should be worshiped.
But the way these gods of other nations are related to is markedly different because of the truth of what the Psalmist writes; that is, the question of “Who is like Yahweh our God” is a rhetorical one because the answer is “No one.”
