Clustering the Images: Two Models of God

In the minds of those who created the biblical images of God, there was something about each image that they thought of as like God. Biblical metaphors for God are evocative, carrying many rich associations. Many of these metaphors are relational, imaging not only God but ourselves in relationship to God.

Anthropomorphic images portray God in human-like form, king, lord, judge, lawgiver, potter, shepherd. Non-Anthropomorphic as rock, fire, light, eagle, hen, cloud, wind.

Some are images of distance: king, lawgiver, even father. Images of closeness: friend, healer, shield, breath, mother, lover.

In the biblical and Christian traditions, these metaphors have commonly clustered around two primary “models” of God. A model is a gestalt that is a foundational or root image. As a gestalt or foundational image, each model constellates several metaphors into a coherent pattern that also images God’s relationship to us and to the world. Each model of God thus goes with a model of the Christian life.

The first model, which I will call “the monarchical model,” clusters together images of God as king, lord, and father; it leads to a “performance model” of the Christian life.

The second model clusters together images of God that point to intimate relationship and belonging. I will call it “the Spirit model”; it leads to a “relational model” of the Christian life.

Both models and visions of the Christian life are found throughout all periods of Christian history, though the first is more common. From roughly the fourth century—when Christianity became the dominant religion of Western culture—through the present, the monarchical model has dominated. But alongside it, as an alternative voice, the Spirit model has also persisted. Though features from each model are commonly combined into a synthesis, usually by incorporating the second into the first, it is illuminating to see them as contrasting models of God and contrasting visions of the Christian life. They reflect two different voices within the Christian tradition.

Borg’s The God We Never Knew