Please allow me to begin this writing by saying, “this may well be the most important document you will ever read in your life” — your attitude and attention count. I am allowed to say that for the following reason. The philosophical meaning of the word ‘essence’ is ‘a property or group of properties of something without which it has no meaning and does not exist’. In other words, something’s essence is that which gives it existence. Accidents, on the other hand, are the qualities something has which make it the specific ‘one of an essential kind’. Accidents do not affect the essence of anything. For instance, a table has the essence of ‘tableness’. Each table, however, has accidents which make it the specific ‘one of-a-kind’ which it is. So, you may ask what that has to do with the essence of God, and I will explain and elaborate post haste.
Before we explore God’s essence, we must consider God’s history. We know from earliest recorded human history that mankind, worldwide, has recognized a higher power or powers than themselves. They have ascribed all sorts of names and attributes to those powers in an attempt to understand the creation in which they lived. Some of those powers were male and some were female, and each had a specific name as well as specific powers and/or duties. Collectively, they were known as gods and goddesses.
Eventually, the Israelites came to know and understand ‘a one true God’ who was responsible for all creation and its activities. They surmised that they could talk to and bargain with their God. In addition, they wrote a history of the universe’s creation by their God including the creation of the first humans, Adam and Eve, their disobedience of God’s mandates resulting in their expulsions from Paradise, and their interaction with that God, whom they called Yahweh, up until the time of Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years ago. That history describes in detail their activities, trials, and tribulations and became known as The Old Testament of the Bible.
Simultaneously, in the Far East, the Hindus recognized their God and called him Brahma. Other Far-Easterners recognized Buddha as their Higher Power. Worldwide, every society ascribed different names, qualities, and attributes to their ‘Higher Powers’. Many of those societies, including the Israelites, concluded that their god had been offended by their actives and needed appeasement in the form of sacrifices. Most of those sacrifices involved animal and produce offerings but a few saw the need for the sacrificial offering of live human beings — such was their imagination. In the New World, native tribes recognized a god in almost everything and had a specific name for each. Some South American tribes constructed magnificent edifices in honor of their gods.
Jesus came along and ridiculed the Jews for such ideation and activities. He tried desperately to get the Jewish people to understand that the ‘real God’ was Pure Love. The Jews had him crucified as a traitor for that teaching — he knew they would, but he was determined to liberate the world from ‘the blanket of guilt’ imposed by Judaism and the Mosaic Law. After his death, all sorts of stories arose concerning what happened next. Multiple accounts tell different stories but the original account by John Mark, a companion of Paul, who wrote the first Gospel, says the Mary Magdalene came to Jesus’ tomb early the next morning, saw it was empty, and told no one. At least two ‘longer endings’ to Mark’s gospel were added by someone later. It seems to me that those later additions were made by people who were determined to have the Jewish concept of a Messiah who would ‘restore the kingdom’ just for them come to fruition. — since he definitely had been killed, he had to resurrect, ascend into heaven, and come back to finish the job. I will justify and defend that position later in this paper. Paul thought that process was imminent – two thousand years and still waiting.
So, what happened next? We know that the Jewish concept of their God was dualist; that is, God was sitting in the clouds somewhere overlording and apart from his creation, but ready and willing to wreak havoc on anyone who offended him. Moses, in his determination to control his flock, had established a set of rules which constituted good civil law, but to give him more authority and assisted in his control over the people, he designated them as ‘offenses against God’. Jesus knew that God was perfect and could not be offended (hurt). He also knew and preached that God was not a ‘dualist’ God but, rather, God existed in all his creation. To my knowledge, Jesus was the first to profess such philosophy —Francis of Assisi was the next most notable to recognize and preach the same. Francis (please read his life’s history) had a great following and for that reason he was grudgingly ‘tolerated by the Church — The Catholic Church feared ‘mass exodus” if they excommunicated him, so they allowed him to form the Order of Friars Minor. Eventually he became the Abbot of that community and was canonized a saint after his death.
Several centuries after Jesus’ death Mohammed recognized Allah, and Islam was formed.
Throughout post-Jesus’ time many great thinkers, philosophers, and theologians, recognizing the miniscule understanding of God’s essence, spent their entire lifetimes attempting to understand and define God’s essence. They recognized that without an essential understanding of God’s nature, God was meaningless — an undefined myth. One of the most notable of those was a German Dominican monk and philosopher, Meister Eckert. He was a great teacher and thinker. He readily recognized that the miniscule, human-like concept of God held by the Catholic Church was terribly deficient. So, he spent his entire adult life attempting to define God’s essence. He expounded his philosophy along many avenues. Volumes of his works and conclusions were considered by the Church to be heretical, and as a result, the Inquisition was closing in on him — thankfully, he died a natural death before they could ‘burn him’.
Despite all of Meister Eckert’s brilliance and determination, for one simple but overwhelming reason, he was never able to define God’s essence — he knew no science. He had no clue about the basic perfect makeup of the universe and the perfect nature of its creator. It would be nearly another three hundred years before Galileo would invent his telescope and proved the sun to be the center of our solar system, and not the earth as was taught by The Church to the point of being burned at the stake for non-believers. He, himself, was forced by the Inquisition to recant his findings in order to save his life – despite that recantation, he spent the last nine years of his life under ‘house arrest’. During that time, he established the groundwork for the physics of falling objects which was later defined conclusively by Sir Isaac Newton.
I am no great thinker, but I am a determined thinker. That determination reached a fever pitch at age twelve or so when I observed that absolutely nothing which I, my family, or our entire collective Catholic community, prayed for, ever came to fruition. In my day, questions about religion were scorned and not welcomed by church authorities — just shut up and do as you’re told. However, I had an ‘ace in the hole’. I was an altar boy and very close to our parish priest. Ten years earlier he had prevailed upon my mother to write the history of Fancy Farm, Kentucky, my hometown and Saint Jerome Church which was the central attraction there. In addition, I had a great rabbit and quail dog and would take Father Russell hunting often — we were buddies. Consequently, I had no qualms about questioning him about why God never answered our prayers.
His reply, “It’s God’s will”, hit me in the head like a lead ball. Even at that young age, I determined right then and there that if it was God’s will, all the praying we were doing was a total waste of time and energy — we were like dogs ‘barking up the wrong tree’. I had no clue as to why that was true — I just knew it was by observation. But at that very moment, I determined that I would find out. All throughout my years of education, I kept my ‘philosophical ear to the ground’ listening for clues — then the big break came.
The week before graduating from the Jesuit owned and operated Saint Louis University School of Medicine in May 1958, I attended a mandatory retreat for all graduates at the White House, a Jesuit retreat venue situated on a beautiful bluff overlooking the Mississippi river about thirty miles of Saint Louis. The Retreat Master was a young, highly educated Jesuit priest. He covered many concepts of Catholicism specifically and religion in general. During the course of events, he was discussing the Trinity, and some of what he said caught the attention of me and two of my classmates. Accordingly, at intermission we asked him to expound on his philosophy. After vigorously cautioning us to tell no one where we heard it, he explained to us his concept of how the Trinity works. He reasoned that God the Father reflects inward upon himself and sees a mirror image of himself. That image, being in the supernatural is a living being, the Son or second person of the Trinity. The perpetual love relationship of acceptance between the two carries the image of both and is the Holy Spirit, the Will of God.
That definition stuck to me like a postage stamp, but it still did not define for me the essence of God. It would be fifty years later that my endeavor for knowledge caused me to ‘cross paths’ with Quantum Mechanics or Particle Physics. I might diverge to explain that Classical Physics deals with objects and energies in the tangible physical world, whereas Particle Physics (Quantum Mechanics) deals with the intangible world of quanta. A quantum is the smallest particle of energy which cannot be further divided, and furthermore does not follow the laws of tangible physical objects. Collectively, those perfect particles of energy constitute the substrate for all physical objects. Each Quantum is perfect in form and function, is indistinguishable from its counterparts, is unchanging and unchangeably, and not one more or less is in existence than at the moment of their release 13.7-8 billion years ago. There I learned they were regulated by a ‘perfect rationality’, which is instilled into everything in this universe. All knowledge, which is truth, is contained in that perfect truth system of Perfect Particles. More importantly, that perfect truth system is made up of all the perfect particles of energy of which everything in this universe is made. That singular knowledge combined with the Jesuit priest’s description of the Trinity some fifty years earlier not only allowed but rather mandated my understanding of the essence of God and the Trinity.
Bingo! For the first time ever in the recorded history of mankind, our God’s essence could be defined in both philosophic and scientific terms: God is A Perfect Rational Being. That definition explains everything. Not only does it explain everything, but more importantly, it delegitimizes all, known religion. There is not a single religion of which I am aware that professes a God of Perfect Rationality.
So, once again let’s examine that concept. We must begin by examining ‘rationality’ — what is it? Simply stated, rationality implies an intellect which perceives and a will which achieves. So, our Perfect Rational God with his Perfect Intellect perceived all the perfect particles of energy which constitute everything in this universe. With his Perfect Will, the Holy Spirit, he said, “I Love that, I chose that, I will that, My Spirit drives that, I put my brand of approval on that”. At that instant all those perfect particles came into being and began doing perfectly what they were designed to do. At that moment time began. Protons and neutrons which make up the nuclei of all atoms were immediately formed from some of those particles known as quarks, and hydrogen atoms were formed — the perfect ‘wheels of motion’ of our universe were put into motion and change, which we measure in units of time, was instituted. Scientists call that instant the Big Bang. Collectively, all those Perfect particles of energy represent a mirror reflection of the Perfect Intellect of God, and represent the Son, the second person of the Trinity.
The basic characteristics of those quanta of energy must be recognized: they are perfect in both form and function; they are indistinguishable one from another; not one more or less exists now than at the moment of the Big Bang; none is changing or changeable. Therefore, they exist in eternity, a state of no change, hence no time. In fact, they are God. The irony is that everything they constitute exists in a state of never-ending ongoing change. It seems obvious that God designed the universe with a perfect imbalance of energy called entropy. That imbalance ensures perpetual change in the gross universe so that everything in existence is here for a specific period of time. When that time (period of change) expires, the perfect particles which made it will be incorporated into something else ad infinitum until the universe balances itself and time expires — the physical world ends, but the Perfect Particle world of God persist in a singularity.
That ongoing change began 13.7-8 billion years ago and is predicted to last an additional 75 billion years. So, what conclusions can we draw? — an endless number. I will enumerate some here.
1-God’s Spirit (Love), The Holy Spirit is imprinted onto each particle to maintain its perfection.
2-God’s perfect nature is exhibited by each particle.
3-Asking God to change his nature (Will) just for us is tantamount to blasphemy. God cannot possibly change his Perfect Nature.
4-God’s Perfect Nature demands Perfect Love. Therefore, God cannot possibly reject anything
he has created.
5-Concepts of pleasing God, hurting God, appeasing God, changing God’s mind are pure human
speculation based on ignorance.
6-Since Gods Will; (Spirit) is imprinted onto each particle, it goes without saying that God resides
In everything just, as Jesus, Francis of Assisi and others recognized.
7-Physical miracles such as virgin births, physical resurrections, physical ascensions and
unnatural changes of any kind cannot possibly happen — God cannot possibly
change his Perfect Rational Nature.
8-Everything we have been taught about God and religion of any kind is a bogus myth.
9-All the above is the sad, sad truth, but conversely, it is the liberating truth which Jesus taught.
10-At his last supper, Jesus explained one final time to his apostles that he, they, the
food they ate and everything in existence were one in God.
10-Irrational, organized religion is responsible for most of the strife, turmoil, and discord
the world has ever known.
11- In my humble opinion, our absolute only justifiable prayer is a great big, ‘Thank you God for my existence, for my sustenance, and for my eternal existence in you”.
Sad to say, but so true; it is the truth that hurts. The entire world has been so duped by irrational religion.
All my books delineating my philosophy are available Amazon-Kindle and from me handg@comcast.net
Buddhaism Christianity Eternity Faith Future of Christianity God God's Will gods Hilary L Hunt MD Hinduism HolyGhost Holy Spirit Islam Islam Christianity Jesus Judaism Judaism Buddhism Money Philosophy Power Religion religions salvation Science The Trinity
WILDERNESS CRY by Hilary L Hunt MD 