God is idea in mind that creates reality
There is an ancient story, perhaps legend, that always interested me as I began to study and teach religion. According to this story related by the philosopher Hegel, Pompey (106-48 B.C.), the great Roman general, conquered Jerusalem in Rome's struggles against a Jewish uprising. Taking Jerusalem, he desecrated the Jewish Temple by entering the Holy of Holies. When he entered the Holy of Holies, Pompey expected to find an image of God, but, to his astonishment, he found only an empty room with Torah scrolls and other ritual items. He thought that if he destroyed the image of God, he would destroy the faith. However, he could not destroy a God with no form. In ancient religion, to conquer the enemy's god was to show not only military, but spiritual superiority.
The temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, leaving only the Western Wall, which has become a sacred shrine to this day. Hegel's story actually may have referred to Titus, who lived from A.D. 39 to 81.
The 19th-century German philosopher employed the story negatively to describe the death of Judaism as a religion, holding that, just as there was nothing in the Holy of Holies in the Temple, there was no content to Judaism in comparison with Christianity. Hegel's view fed into the anti-Semitism in Europe that led eventually to Hitler's attempt to bring about the demise and extinction of the Jewish people.
However, there is another reading of the story that demonstrates the power of a faith, the power of an idea and ideal that can shape reality. When Pompey or Titus entered the temple and found nothing, he was unaware of the presence of the One God who resists and rejects representation in form.
God is an idea in our minds, not an ordinary idea as we might generally think, but an idea that creates reality. It is reality. It is the idea-ideal of justice, of freedom, of openness and creativity. It has been said that tyrants can kill the bodies of people who have ideas, but they cannot destroy ideas. Also, there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Ideas have consequences.
That the Divine has no form to be captured within wood or stone means that reality cannot be captured within the limitations of our human thought and conceptions. The God of no-form stands in judgment on all our ideas that we presume to be real and true.
There is a similar principle at work in Buddhism in the principle of emptiness, which many take as "nothing at all." When Buddhism declares that we must void the Void, empty emptiness, it means that truth, reality, lies beyond the limits of our human minds. It is a higher truth that judges our perceptions, our egoistic biases and prejudices, our world-bound ideas. We cannot identify our particular concepts of reality with reality itself. Like the formless God in the Holy of Holies, inconceivable reality lies beyond our petty minds and limited thoughts.
Our religious faiths and traditions are to be revered for the intimations of truth and reality that they offer us. We must remember, however, that the ultimate truth shines on all people, transcending our formulations, forms and institutions. The power of faith resides not in our formulations, but in the truth beyond those formulations. The Holy of Holies remains empty, and therein lies true spirituality.
Alfred Bloom is an emeritus professor of religion at the University of Hawaii.