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Bible Dictionaries
Union with God
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or The idea of union with God, as conceived of by the apostolic writers, always implies an element of plurality and difference or distinctness as characterizing the being of which such union is affirmed (e.g. John 1:1). It is thus incompatible with the pantheistic conception of God as embracing all reality within an un-differentiated unity of being. Further, according to the apostolic conception, union with God, while it is not equivalent to simple identity with God, admits also of varying degrees of intimacy or perfection.
1. Union of Christ with God.-The apostolic idea of union with God, in the highest degree of intimacy and perfection, is most clearly illustrated and exemplified in the case of the historic personality of Jesus Christ, whose union with God is so intimate and complete that He can say with truth, ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10:30).
Yet this oneness is not that of simple identity, so that Jesus could say, ‘I am the Father,’ but rather a oneness which is compatible with plurality and distinctness such as makes it possible for Him to say, ‘My Father is greater than I’ (John 14:28). This oneness of the historic Christ with God is explained by the apostolic writers in two ways, or as due to two sources or conditioning causes, one of which may be described as metaphysical and the other as moral or spiritual.
(a) From the metaphysical point of view, the oneness is explained as being due to the fact that the historic personality of Jesus Christ is the incarnation of a pre-existent Divine principle, or power of Deity, termed in the Fourth Gospel the Word or Logos, which belongs to the Divine essence, or eternally co-exists with God, and in the fullness of time becomes man (John 1:1-2, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God’; John 1:14, ‘And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us’).
By St. Paul this pre-existent Divine principle or power of Deity, termed in the Fourth Gospel ‘the Word,’ is represented as already personal, and as becoming man by an act of voluntary condescension or ‘self-emptying’ motived by love (2 Corinthians 8:9, ‘Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich’; cf. Philippians 2:5-7, ‘Christ Jesus who, being in the form of God, counted it not a thing to be grasped to be on an equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men’). This conception of the nature and origin of the human personality of Jesus Christ, supplemented by the definite personification of a third principle or power of Deity, viz. the Holy Spirit, which, while one in essence, is yet also regarded as in some way distinct in function and activity alike from the Father and from the Son (John 14:16-17; John 16:7, etc.), gave rise to the Catholic Christian doctrine of the Trinity or Triunity of God which was explicitly set forth by the Council of Nicaea in a.d. 325. Union with God, metaphysically conceived of as predicated of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit, was thus regarded not as equivalent to simple identity, but as admitting of plurality and distinctness within the fullness of the one God.
(b) From the moral and spiritual point of view, again, the oneness of Christ with God is explained by the apostolic writers as due to the perfect harmony of thought and feeling, desire and volition, subsisting between the historic Christ and God the Father Almighty. This point of view is seen in such sayings as Luke 2:49, ‘Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?’; Matthew 11:27, ‘All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him’; John 4:34, ‘My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work’; John 5:17, ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work’; John 8:28, ‘I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak’; John 14:10, ‘The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.’
From this point of view, while the metaphysical background of the historic personality of Christ in the pre-existing Logos is not denied, it is not emphasized or made prominent as that which constitutes the oneness; the emphasis is on the rational, emotional, and volitional activities of the historic human personality, which are so intimately in harmony with the mind and will of God the Father that Christ is described as ‘the effulgence of his glory, and the very image of his person’ (Hebrews 1:3). Christ Jesus, by the free exercise of those faculties of knowledge, feeling, desire, and will which are the characteristic elements of human personality, so lifted human nature into union with the Divine that in His historic personality the invisible God is expressed or manifested in human form (John 1:18, ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him’; John 14:9, ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father’). From this ethical and spiritual point of view, the oneness of Jesus Christ with God is not conceived of as a oneness completed from the first, apart from historical and ethical process, but as a oneness progressively realized or exhibited in a truly human life lived under human conditions. And, inasmuch as this oneness with God does not de-personalize or de-humanize Christ Jesus, but is compatible with His being truly man-the Son of man par excellence (Matthew 12:8)-it becomes the incentive and inspiring motive-power whereby Christian believers, through faith-union with Christ and participation in His Spirit, may hope to reach an ethical and spiritual union with God similar to, if less complete and perfect than, that of Christ (John 17:21, 1 Corinthians 6:17). Neither in Christ’s case nor in the case of Christian believers does union with God involve the de-personalizing, in any pantheistic way, of those persons who attain to such union. Whether metaphysically or spiritually regarded, union with God, according to the apostolic teaching, admits of plurality and distinctness of personality, which are yet not a barrier to a true oneness with God.
2. Union of the material world with God.-The apostolic writers are far from thinking of a union of the material world with God in any pantheistic sense, such as would tend to eliminate the personal existence of God, or do away with the distinction between the world and God. According to them, the material world owes its existence to a creative act of the will of the personal God (Hebrews 11:3, Romans 1:20). It has a real existence for God, distinct from His own personal existence, though intimately related thereto. It is the expression of His thought, the product of His creative word, the instrument of His supreme all-controlling will.
Equally removed is their conception from a philosophic dualism like that of Plato, which would erect matter into a principle of being co-eternal with God the supreme Spirit, and serving, as the source of evil, to oppose an insurmountable limit to His omnipotence and infinitude.
Yet in the apostolic doctrine of the eternal Word, or the pre-existent Christ, and the way in which this is thought of in relation to God on the one hand, and to the material created world on the other, there are elements of affinity both with the dualistic and with the pantheistic view. Thus, in relation to God, the eternal Word is one with Him, yet there is plurality or distinctness (John 1:1). There is therefore an element of plurality or ‘dualism’ which is eternal, though not such as to be incompatible with the Divine oneness, or to thwart eternally the Divine sovereignty, for Son and Father are one.
Again, the eternal Word or pre-existent Christ is at once the active agent in creation, the underlying ground and teleological goal of the created universe, and the principle of coherence which gives meaning and system to the whole (John 1:3, ‘All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men’; Colossians 1:16-17, ‘All things have been created through him, and unto him; and he is before all things, and in him all things consist’ [i.e. ‘hold together’]).
Thus the created world is not something entirely external to or apart from God, but is in intimate union with God, through the Logos, in whom it has its source, and ground, and principle of subsistence or coherence.
Yet this union of the material world with God, through the Logos, is not incompatible with its having a distinct existence for God as the product of His creative will and the instrument of His all-controlling power (Hebrews 11:3). The union of the material world with God through the Logos, as thus presented, is metaphysical rather than moral or spiritual, and cannot be realized except through ethical and spiritual process. Yet the further thought seems to be expressed in the Pauline writings that, through the influx of sin, the created world as a whole has in some way become alienated from God, and ‘made subject to vanity’ (Romans 8:20), and that the issue of Christ’s redemptive mission to the world is to be the reconciliation, not of humanity only, but of the whole created world, to God, in a moral and spiritual union which is at present lacking. The completed redemption of mankind will be accompanied by a renewed world fitted to be the home of the redeemed sons of God (Romans 8:22-23, ‘We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body’; Colossians 1:19-20, ‘It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven’; Revelation 21:1, ‘And I saw a new heaven and a new earth’).
3. Union of man with God.-The apostolic conception of the Logos as an essential principle in the nature of God, and also the underlying principle and teleological goal of creation, which conditions the apostolic conception of the material world and its relation to God, conditions also in a special way the apostolic conception of man and his relation to God.
As the highest of the creatures, the crown of creation, man stands in a relation of special nearness to the Divine Logos, who, while immanent in all created existence, is immanent with special fullness in man. Thus man is described as ‘the image and glory of God’ (1 Corinthians 11:7) and as ‘living and moving and having his being’ in God (Acts 17:28). This furnishes the basis for affirming a certain metaphysical union between man and God, in virtue of creation, which is yet not incompatible with plurality and personal distinctness. Further, the union between man and God which is due to creation, or to the fact that man’s being is rooted and grounded in the Divine Logos, is not yet a complete ethical and spiritual union, but only furnishes the potential basis for such union, which awaits realization through ethical and spiritual process. Man as man is ‘made in the image of God’ (Genesis 1:26) and predestined ‘to be conformed to the image of his Son’ (Romans 8:29) and to participate in the Divine eternal life. But this can be realized only through ethical process, involving the exercise of freedom of will by man as a moral personality distinct from, though intimately related to and grounded in, God. The influx of sin, through man’s perverse misuse of his free will, is represented as hindering and preventing this intended spiritual union between man and God, which is the true goal of creation.
Sin is represented, in apostolic thought, as causing alienation and separation of man from God, with all the bitter consequences flowing therefrom (Romans 5:12, 1 John 3:8, James 1:15). Though man’s being, as man, is rooted and grounded in the Divine Logos (Acts 17:28), yet sinful men are not in spiritual union with the holy God as sons in whom He is well pleased, but are alienated from Him and under His wrath and curse (Romans 1:18; Romans 2:8; Romans 8:7-8, Ephesians 2:3, Galatians 3:10, etc.). That perfect spiritual union of man with God which the natural head of our human race, the first Adam, failed to attain to, through sin, has, however, been attained to and realized in the Person of Jesus Christ the second Adam, who is the perfect ‘son of man’ and also ‘son of God’ (1 Corinthians 15:22; 1 Corinthians 15:45-49). As made in the image of God, the form of man furnished a form of being capable of expressing the Divine Logos in fullness of measure. And, in the fullness of time, there appeared on earth a man in whom the Divine Logos was incarnate and dwelt in perfect fullness-the man Christ Jesus (John 1:14, Philippians 2:6-8). In Him the in-carnation of the Divine Logos receives supreme and perfect individual expression, and union of man with God is perfectly realized. And the aim and purpose of this incarnation of the Logos in the individual historic personality of the man Christ Jesus is said to be ‘the bringing of many soils unto glory’ (Hebrews 2:10)-the bringing into being of a kingdom of redeemed humanity under Christ as King, in which love, the principle of the Divine nature, reigns supreme (Colossians 1:13).
The fall of mankind under the power of sin, with all its bitter consequences, conditioned the task which the perfect Son of man and Son of God, when He appeared on earth, had to undertake and accomplish, in order to bring about reconciliation and effect the redemption and restoration of sinful men, and establish the Kingdom of God.
As the representative and head of our sinful race vicariously bearing our sins in His body (1 Peter 2:24) and on His Spirit (Matthew 8:17), He had to suffer and die, ‘the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God’ ‘(1 Peter 3:18). And it is through union with Him by faith that sinful men, alienated from God through sin, become reconciled to God and enter progressively upon that ethical and spiritual union with God which is man’s true goal (1 Corinthians 6:17, 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, etc.). Thus, according to the apostolic conception, union of man with God, in the ethical and spiritual sense, implied in the relation of sonship to God, is not something already belonging to man in virtue of creation, and persisting in spite of sin, but something to be attained to and realized through ethical and spiritual process. And for sinful men the only way of attainment is through union by faith with Jesus Christ the ‘one mediator between God and men’ (1 Timothy 2:5). This union with Christ, and thereby with God, realized in the life of Christian faith, is brought about by the gracious influence of the Holy Spirit in the minds and hearts of individuals, working through the means of grace, viz. the Word, the sacraments, and prayer.
But, while the agency of the Holy Spirit in bringing about this union is emphasized and made prominent by the apostolic writers, the individual human personality is regarded, not as purely passive in the process, but as co-operating through free will, at least to the extent of yielding freely to the Spirit’s gracious influences and allowing the life to be moulded thereby (Romans 8:14, Philippians 2:12-13, 2 Corinthians 3:18). Union with God, mediated through the gracious influences of the Spirit, is thus set forth by the apostolic writers as essentially of an ethical or spiritual rather than of a mystical kind. It is not an ecstatic rapture of a Neo-Platonic kind, tending to dissolve the individual personality in a wider whole, though traces of such a conception are not altogether wanting in the apostolic records (e.g. 2 Corinthians 12:2; 2 Corinthians 12:4). Rather is it an experience of an ethical and spiritual order, the goal of which is not the absorption of the individual in God, in a kind of Nirvana, but the completion and perfecting of all that is of worth and value in individual personality in loving communion with God through Christ (John 17:23, Revelation 21:2). The literature of the 1st cent., outside the canon of Scripture, including the epistles of Clement and Barnabas and perhaps the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, fragments of Papias, and the Shepherd of Hermas, so popular in the Church during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, contains nothing new or distinctive bearing on the subject of union with God as compared with the apostolic writings.
Clement has some fine passages about creation (Ep. ad Cor. xx., lix., lx.) in which a clear distinction is drawn between Creator and creature. God’s name, he says, is ‘the primal cause of every creature’ (ch. lix.); and God’s immanence in man is recognized (‘His breath is in us’ [ch. xxi.]). He recognizes also, in a clear way, the mediatorship of Christ, through faith in whom we rise into union with God, ‘looking up to the heights of heaven’ and ‘tasting of immortal knowledge’ (ch. xxxvi.). He is eloquent, too, in praise of love as that which ‘unites men to God’ (ch. xliv.).
Barnabas dwells on the idea of believers being the spiritual temple of God through the indwelling presence of His Spirit in them (Ep. of Barn. xvi.).
In the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles the union of the world with God through His creative activity and sovereign controlling power is recognized (‘The workings that befall thee receive as good, knowing that apart from God nothing cometh to pass’ [ch. iii.]; ‘Thou Master Almighty didst create all things for thy name’s sake [ch. x.]). The words ‘Let grace come and let this world pass away’ (ch. x.) seem to point, like Romans 8:22-23 and Revelation 21:1, to the coining of ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ as the result of the final triumph of Divine grace. Christ is recognized as the Mediator of spiritual union between man and God, through whom life and knowledge have been made known to men, and the Church of the redeemed is to be ‘gathered from the ends of the earth’ and ‘sanctified for the kingdom prepared for it’ (chs. ix., x.).
Papias says of believers that ‘they ascend through the Spirit to the Son and through the Son to the Father,’ and that in due time ‘the Son will yield up his work to the Father’ (frag. v.; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:25-28).
Hermas says of God, ‘who created and finished all things and made all things out of nothing,’ ‘He alone is able to contain the whole, but himself cannot be contained’ (Mand. 1). Again, ‘They only who fear the Lord and keep his commandments have life with God; but as to those who keep not his commandments, there is no life in them’ (Mand. 7), and ‘The Lord dwells in men that love peace, because he loved peace; but from the contentious and the wicked he is far distant’ (Sim. IX. xxxii. 2).
Literature.-J. Rendel Harris, Union with God, London, 1895; articles on ‘Union,’ ‘Oneness,’ ‘Unity,’ in Dict. of Christ and the Gospels ; The Apostolic Fathers, translation A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (Ante-Nicene Christian Library, i.), Edinburgh, 1867; J. R. Illingworth, Divine Immanence, London, 1898.
D. S. Adam.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Union with God'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/u/union-with-god.html. 1906-1918.
