If we don't accept Spirit as meaning immaterial, then we are not just wrong about a lot of things expressed both in the Bible and commonly held by Christians as truths about God (and other things), we become wrong about many things.
Spirit may be "immaterial" but then again what is material. Who said that matter is divided from spirit? When jesus said "my words is spirit", did he say the materila vibrations of his word in the air or even the mental interpretation of it is divided from spirit, but it only "contains" spirit? because he did say his word IS spirit. So i could say, if we dont accept that the created world and the underlying spirit of creation (because we must all admit, that somehow all creation must have come out of god in one way or another) is not divided but must have a union in some sense, then we are automatically wrong about may other things. If our understanding of the very foundation of all existance is wrong, so then all the rest must be too! Either they are divided or not. If god is a omnipersent spirit, then they cant be divided, because if creation had any part of it divided from him, then it would follow he would not be infinite...not omnipresent. If there is a division between god and the creation he made and formed, then there is a place, or a dimension, or a state of existance that god is "in way part of " (as you said, and therefore it would deny the bibilcal truth that he is infinte and omnipresent. This do not get less clear to me in this thread.
Those expressions like Mighty Arm become something they are not, a real appendage of God. The OT also compares Him to big chicken, like Big Bird - but that likewise though much more obviously is not meant to be understood as a literal truth about God in giving us that analogy.
Of course, we all understand how the god of the bible uses andromprophic imagery to explain himself, this is not a problem.
The idea of God being literally a physical part of everything does just that and even more - confounds what we absolutely know about the material world.
What we know about the phycial world, it not being what it seems to be (for instance, the visible world is purely atomic, but atmos is 99.99% empty space and even the protons and electrons and neutrons consist of what can hardly be defined as matter in our classical sense, it rather suggest that matter is a formation of what would seem to be more in line with what we call energy, or even spirit, but taking form because of how our senses interpret it. This way, matter IS made up of "the word" of god, meaning it is just a frequency of "energy" (not in a new age sense, but in a scientific sense...but paul still used the word energy 8 times in his letter to refer to the active manfiested power of god.) that our senses uses to prject a formation that we call the material world.
Of course the solid rock i see on the way side, is not solid matter at all, it is infact 99.99% non matter, and even the electron that skips around the tiny core is not even there half of the time, its more like a cloud or a smoke than matter. ThiBut we perceive it as solid rock becuase of how it is formed in relation to our perception. This way, spirit and matter is undividable. (wa can of course divide matter to the point so much energy is loosed that we can we create bombs where matter is shown to be a insane amount of energy, but this doesnt negate, rather it proves, that matter IS forever undivided from energy and can at any point turn back to its unformed state. The "formless" (or the mayim as the hebrew say) can turn back to formless as soon as the spirit that "hovers" upon the "formless" (which would be the function of the spoken creative word of god, that is spirit) would stop hovering! WHen god explained in these very first verses of the bible, we should take into account that NOTHING was created when he started. It was only the formless (no planets, who is a form) jsut the formless "eretz" as it is called there. And since nothing was created, this formless could be nothing else that god himself. Nothing could ever go out from god and create something outside him, either of spiritual nature, or of material nature, becuase if anything was ever outside him, it would mean god is not omnipresent! SO the bible msut therefore show us that everything was made out of god by his word, the logos, as it "hovered" (meaning shaking or vinrating) upon the waters. This makes up ALL of the visible and invisible world, but when the body of adam was "formed" it was formed with senses, and the consciousness of adam that come intop him when the spirit of god tiself entered, percieved the world and projected his intepretation of ti on it. THats when it became "material". But it is subjective to the obsverer. Animals dont see the same world as we do. Bees see ultraviolet colors! A spider have 8 eyes! They see a world we dont see! We only see the world we interpret and project out there. This projected world is not a reality, it is just a creation of ourselves. That which makes up that which we call matter, IS God.
it is said to be imagined in some way everything is a physically part of what is said to be something infinite. So what is left of us, if I am simply a piece of some larger Being, like a blood cell in my body, in what sense is that piece a distinguishable thing from that Person.
Well, we are definiftly still individual conscious beings, but i am not a spirit seperated from god. ONly in experience are human beings seperated, and this is the result of the fall, where the human mind became carnal and enemies of god and could not receive the thigns of god anymore (- contrary to a spirtual mind that can know all things. (these are paraphrases of a mulitude of verses in pauls letters, but i cant take the time to look up the reference of all, but they are in romans 8, ef 4, col 2 etc)
When jesus said "i and my father is one" he didnt mean ONLY he was one with god. He said the same thing would be for us when we took upon the renewed mind and faith. He would be one with us too, and we would be "one spirit with god". Of course this is a experiental mode, becuase paul says there is only one spirit, one father, that made all, is over all, in all, and trough all (ef 4) and for all people it is forever true that "im him we live", so just because we dont FEEL or perceive that we have bodies that are formed by the "eretz" of god and am conscious beings literally made up of the "breath of god" doesnt make these biblcai truths less true! in fact, to know this as true, jesus said to repent and believe. In other words, our carnal minds of knowledge and reason can not ever receive these as truth, and can only chose to deny or beleive it. But, since the spiritual minded, the spiritual person, can "know all things" then the answer is not to try to udnerstand, but to actually change the mind completely to a place where this becomes, at least in some measure, a experiental knowing, not just"knowledge". SO to argue agaisnt it using logic, is not ever going to work, because it is not received as fact by the carnal mind as the carnal mind can not receive anything from god.
Again if it does not make sense on the micro level, why would it on a bigger scale?
It doesnt make sense in the metaphores we may use, but at some point we must admit that certain things about god can not be explained by metaphores because no earthly simile can corrrectly reveal attributes taht only belongs to god. It can only POINT to it, but the problem is that we can use metaphores to point to both views as has been done in this thread. What finally determines if we go in one or the other direction is what the scripture actually says straight out, and i believe for me, there is so far nothing said here that remotely has rocked any of the many verses and passages i know and have used for this view. So for me i would violate my own conscience to take up another view at this point.
Ex: applying to what we know of the material world: Take just the concept of infinite. If a physical thing, material is said to be infinite, what else besides it could actually exists? There is no room for anything else if we say a physical thing is infinite.
exactly my point. Now creation exist of more than matter, it is both "the earth and the heavens" the "visible and the invisible" that god created. So even if the material world was only ONE thing, it still wouldnt expand the invisible world. So it could not be infinite in a total sense, because ti didnt expand into the invisible realms. IT is exaclty the same point about god, if he is not aprt of the material realm, but only here in a spiritual dimension (as if a fourth of fifth dimension of space would allow) then we could still not say he is infinite.
Further few claim anymore to hold a belief the universe is infinite. We don't know if there is anything material outside this universe or not. But if we say God is some limitless material of which this finite universe is said to be a just a part, what is the material boundary of the universe represent and are we not then saying we know material exists outside the universe?
This is again twisting the argument into making god part of the material. The real deal is that the material is of course in god (in god we ....have our being), it can not by definition of infinity and omnipresence be outside of god.
God is not material, the solution to the problem is that matter is just a extension of the spiritual. Or not even that, it is our perception interpreted and then projected as a material solid world. But you took up a scientific fact when you said that few claim creation to be infinite (infinty by the way can not be defined in terms of three dimensional space, because of course god existed and was infinte before three dimension space or even time was created.) But science reveals also that matter is not what we perceive it to be! The form of matter is more a manifestasion of our consciousness and totally subject to the observer, as easily proven by the nature of both sound and vision (who dont actually exist as a seperate entety from our own interepreation of it)
