Acts 17:29 Meaning Being Then the Offspring of God

Tanzīh: Declaring God beyond all likeness Tanzīh names the refusal to compare God with anything at all. The mind reaches for a picture whenever it turns toward God, and every picture it makes comes from things already seen. Someone who keeps that in view never settles into their best idea of God and treats it as the finished article.

Declaring God one means separating the everlasting from what began: nothing made can be God Junayd, one of the earliest Sufi teachers, put it in exactly those words. Everything with a beginning has a cause behind it, and the mind can trace that trail back. God stands outside the chain, which keeps a person from handing their heart to something they themselves brought about.

Ilāh al-muʿtaqad: The god of a person's own belief Ibn Arabi's name for the God each person has assembled inwardly, out of upbringing, reading and temperament. The result feels like the plain facts about God, which is why people defend it so fiercely. Seeing it as one's own handiwork does not mean dropping it, only holding it loosely. The limit of a person's understanding then stops passing for the limit of God.

God shaped Adam in His own form: the likeness shows up in a living person A saying of the Prophet that Sufi teachers come back to constantly. Of everything a person meets, the closest trace of God is in the one doing the looking: alive, aware, able to love. Kinship like that rules out a God smaller than oneself, since anything a person produces is less alive than the person who made it.

My heaven and My earth cannot hold Me, but the heart of My servant holds Me: where God is met A saying of God's, reported by the Prophet and repeated all through the tradition. Nothing a person builds is roomy enough to hold God, while a heart cleared of its clutter turns out to be. People find this out from the inside, in moments of grief or gratitude when they knew they were not alone.