A young boy afraid of the dark called for his mother to
come upstairs to his bedroom to be with him. She came and
sought to comfort him by telling him God was there with
him, and so he didn't have to be afraid. He was all right for
a while, but then he called her again. When she came up he
offered this proposition: "Why don't you stay up here with
God while I go down stairs with daddy?" The child was
simply expressing the natural desire for a tangible
companion. The philosopher may feel at home with some
abstract concept, but most people are like the child, and
their desire is for something concrete.
Philosophy is concerned about God's nature and will,
but it has never had much appeal to the vast majority of
people. It is abstract and talks about God as the Ground of
being and the Fundamental Force of the Universe. Most
people need a concept of God that can be embodied in some
kind of a mental image. This is why the Bible is filled with
what is called anthropomorphism. That is a big word that
simply means the picturing of God in the form of a man, and
with characteristics of a man. God became a man in Christ,
and Jesus said that when we see him we see the Father, and
so our image of God is very manlike. Our highest revelation
of God is in the man Christ Jesus. In Jesus God is a man.
Even before man knew of God the Son the Father was
described in terms of human characteristics. The reason for
this is obvious, for there is no alternative if man is going to
have any intelligent concept of the nature of God. If
anthropomorphic terms were not used to describe God He
would be so abstract as to be almost meaningless, and He
would certainly not be thought of in a way that would be of
much comfort. God is infinite spirit, and all His attributes
are so infinitely superior to ours that we cannot conceive of
God at all in His essence. Our knowledge of God has to be
on the level of the finite. This means we must be aware that
even our highest concepts of God are fall short of what He
really is. God has had to descend to the level of our finite
minds in order to be known by us at all.
If you want to communicate with a dog you do so with
meat and bones and scratching behind the ears. These are
hardly the highest expressions of man's nature, or of his love,
but these kinds of things alone can be understood by the
dogs intelligence. You would get nowhere in communicating
with a dog by mathematics, art, or a lecture on biology.
These are above the dog's capacity, and so rather than get
no response at all you stoop to the dog's level and speak his
language. This is what God has done with man. He has
revealed himself in man-like ways, and with man-like
characteristics. The result is that many young people form
the concept in their minds of God as an old man of great
wisdom with a long white beard. Mature believer know this
is not so, but as C. S. Lewis has said, it is better that God be
seen this way than as a mere abstraction, which is even more
false to reality. He wrote, "What soul ever perished for
believing that God the Father really has a beard?"
It is essential to think of God in human terms, and it is
harmless as long as recognize them as necessary symbols to
represent God, but not necessarily what He actually is. The
Greeks fell into this danger and had their gods on the same
level with men, and this included all of their limitations and
immoralities as well. Most pagan peoples have done this,
and so they have a very poor concept of God. Any god who
is too man-like is a partaker in man's evils. God rebuked
this in Ps. 50:21, "You thought that I was one like yourself.
But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you." We
must use the benefits of anthropomorphism, for the Bible
uses them, but we must also avoid its dangers lest we make
God in man's image. God made man in His image, and so it
is reasonable to assume that God is man-like in many ways.
But we need to avoid any idea that God is like man in his
fallen nature.
God has always been in heaven speaking the words that
formed all or reality, but then we come to Gen. 3:8 and all of
a sudden we see God walking on earth in the garden. He is
now clearly in the image of man. Our very first concept of
God, which we can visualize is of a man walking in the
garden and talking with Adam and Eve. We cannot
conceive of what He was before creation, but here we see
Him as a man. What is of interest is that this is not just
anthropomorphic, but is a literal description of what God
actually did. He made himself in the form of a man and
dwelt with man. Only the literal interpretation fits the total
unity of the Bible. The ultimate goal is that God will again
dwell with man.
It is not stated as such but it could very well be that this
one walking in the garden could have been the second
person of the Godhead. Jesus became a literal man in the
incarnation, but here we see him taking on the form of a
man. In the ultimate paradise that we see in the book of
Revelation we know it will be Jesus who will walk with us in
white, and we shall be like Him when we see Him as He is.
Anthropomorphism is justified because God began his
relationship with man as a man. He chose to reveal himself
in the form of a man at the beginning, and actually became a
man in history.
It is implied that God had walked in the garden before this,
for how could they have known the sound of Him
walking if they had not heard it before? They did not see
Him but heard Him coming, and if they had never seen God
before in the form of a man walking, how could they ever
suspect it would be God making the sounds they heard? The
text implies that God actually dwelt on earth with Adam and
Eve. This means that earth was once the dwelling place of
God, and God had actually been on our world in the form of
man before Christ. It could have been the pre-incarnate
Christ who was here in the form of man. He did not come
into flesh through birth, but merely took on the form of a
man as we see He did on other occasions in the Old
Testament.
We see that the Old Testament works away from an
incarnation of God, which was lost toward and incarnation
of God, which gave hope. It is no wonder that the Old
Testament concept of the ultimate kingdom was earth
centered, for this was the setting of the ideal in the
beginning. Even in the New Testament where the eternal
kingdom is pictured as heavenly, there is still the new earth
as a part of it, and it appears that this small planet will be
forever a place where God will dwell with His people, and
walk in the beauty of paradise.
The picture of God walking in the garden was like Jesus
centuries later walking in Palestine, for He was the only man
on earth who was perfect. Adam and Eve had fallen and so
they felt naked before God and they hid themselves. We see
two frightened shameful people who do not want to be seen
in their nakedness. God's first question to fallen man was,
"Where are you?" God was the great seeker of man, and
Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost.
Everything about this first picture of God reminds us of
Jesus. God finds them, hears their confusion, judges them,
and then provides them with coverings and the hope of
redemption. This whole account pictures God as Christ-like.
We see God in man's image as the God-Man.
