The description of God as a Person is indispensable for everyone who like myself means by “God” not a principle (although mystics like Eckhart sometimes identify God with “Being”) and like myself means by “God” not an idea (although philosophers like Plato at times could hold that God was this): but who rather means by “God,” as I do, him who – whatever else he may be – enters into a direct relation with us men in creative, revealing and redeeming acts, and thus makes it possible for us to enter into a direct relation with him.
Martin Buber, I and Thou, translated by Ronald Gregor Smith, Scribner Classics, 2000 (1958), 124.
Image: Detail of an image of the stained glass work in Hadassah Hospital, Ein Kerem, Israel, “The Tribe of Levi,” Marc Chagall / CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
Matters of Interpretation 