God has traditionally been seen as an unchanging and static entity, which denotes a kind of perfect “thing.”

• I am the LORD, I change not… (Malachi 3:6, KJV)
• Everything is subject to change except God Himself. Joyce Meyer
• Only God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Gene Robinson
• God in fact does not change. Pope Benedict XVI
• We can embrace change by knowing we serve an unchanging God. David Jeremiah
• There is unwavering peace today when an uncertain tomorrow is trusted to an unchanging God. Ann Voskamp
• Today, every academic, professional discipline—psychology, anthropology, history, the various sciences, social studies, art, and business—recognizes change, development, and some kind of evolving phenomenon. But in its search for the Real Absolute, much of Christian theology made one fatal mistake: It imagined that any notion of God had to be unchanging, an “unmoved mover,” as Aristotelian philosophy called it. There’s little evidence of a rigid God in the biblical tradition or the image of Trinity—where God is seen as an active verb more than a substantive noun. But many Christians seem to have preferred a stable notion of God as an old white man, sitting on a throne—much like the Greek god Zeus (whose name became the Latin word for God or “Deus”)—a critical and punitive spectator to a creation that was merely a mechanical clock of inevitable laws and punishments, ticking away until Doomsday. We need a new way of thinking about the universe and our place in it. Richard Rohr

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Others argue God cannot be a noun for a noun is limited

• I have difficulty using the word God as a noun, for a noun must point to something: person, place or thing. I was once taught. A noun must denote, define, delimit. It has a static quality, which does not fit my God-consciousness. To me, God is a verb. To use a metaphor of punctuation, God is not a period but a question mark or an exclamation point. God is not the answer to the mystery of life but the acknowledgement of the mystery. Ann Fields

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They see God more as a verb…

• God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper. Buckminster Fuller
• God is a verb, not a noun. Buckminster Fuller
• God is an action verb. God happens wherever there is compassion, wherever there is a struggle for justice, wherever those who are most often untouched are touched. For it to be God, I should be able to point at it and say, “Look at that. See what’s happening? That’s God.” David B Seaburn
• We natives do not understand the God of the white man. Their God is a noun. Our God is a verb! Moonhawk
• God couldn’t be anything else BUT a verb, a process, a relationship, with no form and no gender but animate (an attitude), experienced in both the manifest/-ing realms, and named in a non-arbitrary manner. Dan Moonhawk Alford
• The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God. Victor Hugo
• God is not a noun, God is a verb. God is not just one more being, God is what it means “to be.” Beth Neel
• At the Trinitarian level, God is a verb more than a noun, God is a flow more than a substance, God is an experience more than a deity sitting on a throne. And we live naturally inside that flow of love—if we do not resist it. Richard Rohr

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…a God that is active and dynamic…

• Why indeed must ‘God’ be a noun? Why not a verb – the most active and dynamic of all. Mary Daly
• God is a verb. A verb acts – it changes things, it is dynamic. John Atcheson
• The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God. Victor Hugo
• God is a verb. God is dynamic, moving, not static, not operating in a vacuum. Beth Neel
• Here is God’s purpose – For God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper; is the articulation not the art, objective or subjective; is loving, not the abstraction “love” commanded or entreated; is knowledge dynamic, not legislative code, not proclamation law, not academic dogma, nor ecclesiastic cannon. Yes, God is a verb, the most active, connoting the vast harmonic reordering of the universe from unleashed chaos of energy. And there is born unheralded a great natural peace, not out of exclusive pseudo-static security but out of including, redefining, dynamic balancing. Naught is lost. Only the false and non-existent are dispelled. Buckminster Fuller

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…a God that is pure energy at work…

• Science teaches that, on the atomic level, nothing is solid. The particles that make up the universe, the Earth, and all its creatures, are mostly empty space and energy. So, a rock and a human are both a configuration of energy. Rocks and people fall apart, but energy does not. Godsey chooses to think of this combination of energy as spiritual, and the connections between them as a constant state of God. This, Godsey asserts, is where concepts of religion and God can live with scientific reality. He takes an almost kabbalistic approach to the idea of God. We are all God. “God is a verb,” a constant result of the act of interconnectedness. Kirby Godsey

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…a God that is about action and relationship…

• Richard Rohr, and other more mystical theologians, have begun to understand and express the concept of God as more of a “verb” as opposed to a “noun”; more about action and relationship and experience, than objective understanding. Not just an objective being sitting up there somewhere on a throne; but rather God is love, compassion, peace-making, flowing into and through us. Rohr often says, “God is a flow.”  Robert Woody

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…a God that is a constant happening…

• It reminds me that although we often think of God as a noun, as Someone from Somewhere, in reality God is a verb. God happens. That is what I see in that sanctuary. Not that Someone from Somewhere is coming into the room and into the people from on high, but that what is occurring in the room is God; what is happening between these people constitutes God; what is emerging, what is unfolding, what is surfacing, materializing, springing, sometimes even gushing, is God. David B Seaburn

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…a God that, if it doesn’t change, certainly appears to…

• It is not necessary that God change in order to explain an evolving relationship with people as they evolve. As we drive down the highway, we may see what looks to us like a mountain that is changing. But the mountain is not changing, it is just that its position relative to us is changing, and therefore we are getting many different evolving perspectives on it. This especially makes sense if we grant that our conception of God is (probably/necessarily) limited in relationship to the totality of God’s actuality. Just as we see a mountain that changes, when it is really us changing, our perceptions and conceptions of God may change as we evolve, but that does not necessitate that God is actually changing. Chris Sunami

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…a God that is directly participatory…

• It’s only sensible to ask if such knowing of God (in a state of deep awareness), being impossible to talk about, is actually real. This has been a vexing dilemma that gave rise to two huge topics in philosophy: ontology (the study of being) and epistemology (the study of how we know things). Both topics are gnarly and entangled, and Indian philosophy isn’t immune from that. But we can cut the Gordian knot with another expression from the ancient seers: This isn’t knowledge you acquire. It is knowledge you become. God, like the universe and reality itself, is participatory. There is no other choice, since existence is always on the move, which is why I’m fond of saying that God is a verb, not a noun. Deepak Chopra

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…a God that can be actively experienced…

• How many of you out there have had an actual physical encounter with God? Where you literally saw God or Jesus or literally heard their voice? Where you experienced God or Jesus as a noun? There’s a few who have had that experience. Ok, how many of you have had an experience where suddenly you had a feeling that God or Jesus was very close to you? You felt this flow of love or comfort or peace? You experienced God as a verb? See, most of us have experienced God more as a verb, as an experience or feeling, than as a noun,
• a person we can literally see or talk to. Robert Woody
• Here’s one metaphor I’ve found helpful. God is a verb. With that metaphor, I spend less energy trying to define God and more trying to experience an action word. When loving is happening — god-ing is happening. When peace-ing is happening — god-ing. Kindness-ing — god-ing. Nobody told me that in Sunday School! But seeking Divine experience in that framework has been enlightening. It has opened a broad swath of spiritual experience I’d never had. Doug Hammack
• So is God more of a noun or a verb? Is God a being? A person? A creature? Or is God more about action or experience or a feeling? We tend to think of God as simply a person or being, a noun. But I think God is more about action or experience, more like a verb, than a noun. We connect with God, not when we see God, but when we feel God’s love or peace or comfort or connection flowing through us. Robert Woody

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…a God that is an active, ongoing process…

• The closest we can come to thinking about God is as a process rather than a being. We can think of it as ‘be-ing,’ as verb rather than noun. Rabbi David Cooper
• Perhaps God is a verb too, not simply a verb of asserted existence but a verb expressing a process fulfilling itself. Such a use of language revives an archaic mode of language, and yet is oddly contemporary with, for example, the language of nuclear physicists, who no longer think of their atoms and electrons as things but as something more like traces of processes.. Rye
• God is the process. The process is what I Am… You cannot not use Me… If you use Me with awareness and with intention, all things will change. Neale Donald Walsch
• God is not the name of a thing, but is an ongoing process. Rabbi David Cooper
• The Jewish mystics suggest that God is a verb. Instead of thinking of God as a being, we might think of it as Be-ing. Instead of using the word God, we might use the verb, God-ing. This process in the universe, this God-ing energy, is evolving, creating, transforming the universe, always changing, always leaning toward greater perfection. Or perhaps we should say it is leaning toward greater beauty, since perfection implies that there is something out there we are trying to copy. But God-ing, the activity of God the verb, includes the birth of newness and unpredictability within the wholeness. And all of us are a part of this God-ing. Myke Johnson
• God isn’t a noun but a process…a continual, infinitely creative outpouring of love and light onto all living things. Marianne Williamson
• This holiness that we’re trying to name isn’t a thing, isn’t a noun. And it isn’t namable, yet we have given it this meager, so easily misunderstood nickname, “God” – a name so abused it has caused many of us to discard not only the word but the whole idea. But what a timeless and keen source of insight and wisdom a newly-discerned and reclaimed God can be! It is a whispered ghost of an idea, the impression of eternity made on every soul that we’re born with and that remains our companion until we die. God, as Abraham Heschel said, is the question put to each of us at our birth to which we live our lives as an answer. It is a process making itself known through us in our acts of love, justice and compassion. Such a small word for such immensity. May we never forget the vast magnificence of what we mean to express when we use that one inadequate but still (I believe) redeemable name. Victoria Weinstein
• We must break with the idea that God is a thing. The word God implies that there is someone or something out there that has its own consciousness and that wants certain things and doesn’t want other things. We must break through that concept of an “us and God out there” because it represents an otherness from who we are. In Kabbalah the ultimate Source is called Ein Sof which means “without end” or “boundless.” The Boundless is not a thing. The Boundless is not some place. It is ongoing, unfolding, continuing process. I call it God-ing to give the sense that what we think of as a noun is really a verb. This verb is continuously unfolding and it is in a dynamic relationship with the continuously unfolding creation. We must shift our understanding and realize that God-ing is not something that happened way back when, and it didn’t start creation way back when. Creation-ing is happening right now and simultaneously  God-ing is happening now. One and the other work together and cannot be separated from one another. Rabbi David A. Cooper
• God, then, is not a force who acts on the world through coercion, violence or the suspension of physics and free will. Instead, God is something that we participate in. God is a verb, an action we bring to the world to make love, justice, mercy, joy and goodness known. Jason Derr

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…a God in a constant process of becoming…

• God is a verb. But humanity is becoming a noun. A thing – a miasma of
• stuff, a vortex of consumption. John Atcheson
• God is a verb or an unfolding process of becoming. Dr. Caryn Aviv
• In the bible God said “I am”. Not I am x, turning God into a static thing, a limited thing, but just “am”, being. When asked what he was after arising from under the bodhi tree, Buddha said “awake”, a verb. Sometimes it’s translated as “the awakened one”, but from the perspective of Buddha, it’s rather “the one, awake”, an activity.  When Krishna takes on his terrible form for Arjuna in the Gita, he describes himself as time. Time is no thing, but all things, in motion, in being. We too, upon becoming self aware, come also to realize the transparency of things and the primacy of motion. Under the covers and the symbolic conceptions, we are all the same one, all an I that am. Being, being aware of itself.  Pete Ashly
• When Moses first experiences God at the burning bush, he asks—What is Your name? The response is enigmatic: Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, most literally translated “I will be that I will be.” This name of the divine conjures up a sense of possibility, of becoming. It is the name associated with the liberation of the Israelites from slavery, and it is also related to the unpronounceable name, Yud-Hay-Vav-Hay, which Rabbi Art Green has called “an impossible construction of the verb ‘to be.’” Ehyeh encompasses a sense of God not as “thing” but as unfolding Process. Ehyeh is God as verb rather than noun—Becoming, Creating, Supporting, Teaching, Healing. Ehyeh connotes possibility and newness—the promise of the High Holydays that we too are in process, that each day we can be made anew, can be liberated from bad habits and old stories and ancient fears. Rabbi Toba Spitzer
• There’s Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh – which is what Moses hears at the Burning Bush – ‘I will be that I will be,’ suggesting that God is a verb or an unfolding process of becoming. Rosh Hashanah

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…a God that is on a journey through us…

• The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too. Saint Teresa of Avila
• God is a verb, living within you and me, fleshing our flesh, rejoicing our joy, crying our sorrow and empowering us to swim upstream. Kris Minister
• I have often a suspicion God is still trying to work things out and hasn’t finished. Rebecca West

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…and being changed by that experience…

• Let’s say you have simulated a world in the computer. If you are tracking what happens there it already is changing you. Because that generates new memories in you thus changing your mind. Chris Sunami

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…and thereby evolving……

• Although the dominant Western conception of God is as having a perfection that cannot admit change, there do exist philosophers, such as Hegel, who have an evolutionary view of God. Chris Sunami
• The concept of PERFECT does not coexist with the concept of evolving. If something is perfect, there is no need to change or upgrade. Chris Sunami
• If God is evolving along with us then God is no fixed entity. – Dheeraj Verma

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…a God that is in a constantly dynamic state…

• In this view of God, change is not only a part of God, but it is the very nature of the divine. What is most true of God is constant dynamism, as was the case in my vision of points of light, ever moving. Such motion does not pursue a set direction, a given path. It is indeterminate. Flora A. Keshgegian
• We know God by actions that we attribute to God, and by our interactions with God. Someone gets well, and we say, “Thank God,” implying that the healing was an act of God. We know God by what God does, and I would suggest today that we know God in particular in three verbs: God is “to love.” God is “to heal.” God is “to empower.” Beth Neel
• There were some great 13th century mystics and theologians who offered the idea. Thomas Aquinas said that God is “pure act.” St. Bonaventure said that God is “self-diffusive love” which a contemporary theologian paraphrased, saying God is “love hitting the cosmic fan.” The mystic Mechtild of Magdeburg described God as “an overflow which never stands still and always flows effortlessly and without ceasing.” Rev. Beth Neel
• God is not a static thing…but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance. S. Lewis

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…a dynamic state of loving…

• I did not originate the idea of God as a verb, so I’d like to give credit where credit is due. One could say the idea goes back to Exodus, when Moses encounters a bush that continually burns and discovers the presence of God. When Moses asks what this God’s name is, the answer is given: “I am who I am.” In the first letter of John, the writer declares that God is love, and as we all know, love is a verb. Beth Neel
• God is not a noun that demands to be defined, God is a verb that invites us to live, to love, and to be. Beth Neel
• I don’t follow any organized religion, but I do believe in the idea of god as a verb – being love and light. And that we are part of everything as everything is part of us. Sarah McLachlan
• Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a “standing in,” not a “falling for.” In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving. Erich Fromm
• If one wishes to know love, one must live love, in action. Leo Buscaglia
• Love – THE FEELING – is a fruit of love, the verb. Stephen Covey

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…a dynamic state of healing…

• I believe too that our best healing is of God, that God is “to heal.” You and I have known people who have made it through cancer, whose marriage didn’t tear into tiny shreds, who reached points of impasse only to have reconciliation and resolution. Here in church we offer those moments as our joys, and we say in one voice, “thanks be to you, O God.” I carry this image that God is constantly mending, mending the cells the break down and mending the rift between nations.   Beth Neel

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…a dynamic state of empowering…

• If God is a verb, that verb might be “to empower.” Beth Neel

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…a dynamic state of creating…

• God cannot be static or passive, but only and always in the act of creation, that is, a force, a set of indescribable action momenta that defies attribution of purpose, merely doing for purposes of joy and growth and self discovery, more like a process than an entity, something predicated on unconditional acceptance of Itself, found through discovery of that which it creates like itself, that approximates “thought in action.” Jeff Lee
• God is constantly creating anew. And God also, invites us to be re-created and join the work of God as co-(re)creators. . . . Imagine the Kingdom of God as the creative process of God reengaging in all that we know and experience. . . . When we employ creativity to make this world better, we participate with God in the recreation of the world. Doug Pagitt
• Unlike the deity of most traditions, my God is not eternal but emergent: that process of continuous creation, which is the cosmic drama. Each of us is a participant, playing a bit part, improvising, responding to others, inventing the action from moment to moment. God, in my metaphor, is neither the author nor the stage manager, but the energy of the actors in the dialogue. Ann Fields
• God is indeed a verb. He is not the creator. He is the ongoing unfoldment of creation itself. There is nothing that is not a part of this unfolding. Thus there can be nothing separate from God. God is infinite and infinity is One. . . . When we perceive God as a noun, we envision him as the creator, the architect of, and therefore separate from, his creation. Identifying ourselves as part of that creation, we see ourselves not only separate from our source but separate from each other and all other manifest things as well. . . . Once I viewed God as a verb instead of a noun, my perception of life shifted. Everything around me, manifest or no, became God. There was only God. When someone spoke to me, it was with God’s voice; when I listened, it was with God’s heart. As you begin to view God not as the creator but as the constantly changing dance of creation itself, you’ll discover God in everything you see – including yourself.” Jean-Claude Koven
• The meaning of the word “God” is not limited to the traditional theist conception. These theologians have developed a notion of God not as a noun – not as a person, place, or thing – at least not some specific object thing, some entity. They have made it possible to think of God as a verb – as the active, creative principle in the universe. Meredith Garmon

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God is dynamic creativity itself

• God is the very creative energy of existence – creativity rather than a creator. He is not the poet but the poetry, not the dancer but the dance, not the flower but the fragrance. Rajneesh
• God is nothing but creativity. So wherever there is a sign of creativity, God has a signature there. He has already been there. Maybe even the poet does not know, but he has been touched by something from the beyond. Rajneesh
• God is the creativity, so if you really want to enter into the world of God you will have to learn the ways of creativity – and that has disappeared. Instead of creativity we value productivity: we talk about how to produce more. Production can give you things but cannot give you values. Production can make you rich outwardly but it will impoverish you inwardly. Production is not creation. Production is very mediocre; any stupid person can do it, one simply needs to learn the knack of it. Rajneesh
• To me, creativity is God. But it will be better if you allow me to change the word god into godliness, because I don`t want to be misunderstood. There is no person like God, but there is tremendous energy – exploding, unending, expanding. This expanding, unending, exploding energy, this creativity, is divine. Rajneesh
• God is not the Creator, He is creativity. Creativity is His being. He has always been creating. Rajneesh
• God is not repetitive; His creativity is infinite. Rajneesh
• In the moment of deep creativity you disappear, God again starts functioning. Rajneesh
• God is the source of all creativity. You can be creative only when you are EN RAPPORT with God. Rajneesh
• CREATIVITY is when you are not, because creativity is the fragrance of the creator. It is the presence of God in you. Creativity belongs to the creator, not to you. No man can ever be creative. Yes, man can compose, construct, but can never be a creator. When man disappears, when man becomes utterly absent, a new kind of presence enters his being – the presence of God. Then there is creativity. When God is inside you His light that starts falling around you is creativity. The climate that arises around you because of the presence of God within you is creativity. Rajneesh
• Creativity has nothing to do with creating something, creativity is simply the presence of God. Rajneesh
• Be creative in that sense and your creativity will become an offering to God. God has given you so many gifts, Garima; something HAS to be done just in deep thankfulness. But remember: with no motive, not as a means but as an end unto itself. Art for art’s sake, and creation for creation’s sake, and love for love’s sake, and prayer for prayer’s sake. Rajneesh
• Hidden behind man is God. Just give him a little way, a little passage, to come through you. That is creativity.
• Allowing God to happen is creativity. Creativity is a religious state. Rajneesh
• There is no God, but there is certainly a quality I call godliness. It comprises compassion, love, friendship, joy, creativity. It brings you new songs, it brings you new dances. It brings you the truth, and the immersion of you into the truth. Rajneesh
• The really creative person is not interested in dominating anybody. He is so utterly rejoicing in life – he wants to create, he wants to participate with God. Creativity is prayer. And whenever you create something, in those moments you are with God, you walk with God, you live in God. The more creative you are the more divine you are. To me, creativity is religion. Art is just the entrance to the temple of religion. Rajneesh
• Man is certainly not creative, but his creativity should not be concerned with God. His creativity should be concerned with making a better world, a better society, better literature, better poetry, better paintings, better sculpture, better human beings. Rajneesh
• Because there is no ego, God can flow through you; great creativity becomes possible. Rajneesh
• Creativity means loving whatsoever you do – enjoying, celebrating it, as a gift of God! Rajneesh
• You become more divine as you become more creative. All the religions of the world have said God is the creator. I don’t know whether he is the creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So he must be the creator because people who have been creative have been closest to him. Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it – whatsoever it is Rajneesh
• if you want to be one with the creator, you will have to learn some ways of creativity. The only way to be one with the creator is to be in some moment of creativity, when you are lost. The potter is lost in making his pottery; the potter is lost while working on the wheel. The painter is lost while painting. The dancer is lost; there is no dancer, only the dance remains. Those are the peak moments, where you touch God, where God touches you. Rajneesh
• Creativity has nothing to do with creating something, creativity is simply the presence of God. Those who are fortunate enough to come in contact with a buddha`s silence will be transformed; they will know what creativity is. He has not done a thing and miracles have happened. He has not uttered a word and the message has been heard. He has not moved, but he has transformed you. He has not even touched you, and you are no longer the same. Rajneesh
• To be creative is to worship. To be creative is to participate in the great process of creation – and participating in creativity is participating in God. Rajneesh
• Love is power, the purest power and the greatest power: Love is God. Nothing can be higher than that. But this power is not a desire to enslave others, this power is not a destructive force. This power is the very source of creation. This power is creativity. And this power will transform you totally into a new being. It has no concern with anybody. Its whole concern is to bring your seeds to their ultimate flowering. Rajneesh

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To see God as a verb changes how we see ourselves…

• If we start thinking about God as a verb, maybe we’ll start thinking of ourselves that way, too. We are not photographs, one thing set in time. We are not that sweet toddler having a meltdown leaving the park. We are not that embarrassing photo from college. We are not our wedding picture. We are not our church directory photo. We aren’t static, and we are not known by an image others have of us. We are known by what we do. That fact that we breathe and drink water and birth babies makes us human. We read to children. We carry signs at a march. We treasure our family. We invest in making our country both strong and humane. We dance. We sing. We read and think. We advocate. We pray. We hope. We grieve. We love. We heal. We empower.  lBishop John Shelby Spong has lived longer with this idea of God than I, and his words serve as a good conclusion. “God is not a noun that demands to be defined, God is a verb that invites us to live, to love, and to be.”  Beth Nee

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…and encourages us to be dynamic like God

• God is not a noun, that demands to be defined. God is a verb that invites us to live, to love, and to be. John Shelby Spong
• I believe Buckminster Fuller had a very specific idea in mind – we are defined by what we do, not what we have; that we are most fulfilled by what we make, not what we take; that we are most Godlike when we produce, not when we consume.  God is a verb.  Meredith Garmon
• But how do we worship a God who is not a thing but an action and activity in the world? A verb! Remember we said that God is an activity; something that we make happen in the world, and as such is not contained to our religions but is present whenever a person enacts love, justice, mercy, joy and goodness? Jason Derr

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The Jewish faith often depicts God more as a verb than a noun…

• For Judaism, God is a verb and not a noun. The Torah wastes little time with static portraits of a deity who defies our imagination. There are no nouns used in reference to God other than king and father. The vast preponderance of descriptions such as in the amidah (the silent devotion), are cast in the language of action verbs: We praise God “who graciously grants intelligence,” “who welcomes repentance,” “who redeems the people of Israel,” and “who blesses the years.” Verbs depict the multiple ways that we sense God’s concern for us, for Israel, and for all humanity. Monotheism has largely spared our liturgy from an excess of male metaphors. Ismar Schorsch

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…while Christians depict The Holy Spirit as a verb

• Jesus is a noun, the Holy Sprit is a verb, God is an entire language.

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