The problem with theisms of whatever form, from atheism to monotheism to pantheism to polytheism to any of other forms of theism that have ever been named, is just that: They are all forms of theism. That is, they all without exception take as central to any concern with divinity the question of whether, and if so in what form and number, there is or exists some single divine being, or some multiplicity of such beings. That question itself, however, is rooted deeply in a miscasting of just what all talk of God or the gods, of the divine or divinity, says—once one finally begins to understand it.

Coming to understand it is no easy task. I took me into my forties before I was able to acquire any such understanding, and my understanding still continues to unfold today, another three decades and more after I finally had my first glimmerings.

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I have always understood the synonymy rules governing the use of such terms as God or gods. However, it was not until I had entered my forties that I was able to do any more than substitute synonymous expressions correctly. The problem there is that no matter how well one has mastered the synonymy rules at issue, such mastery alone never brings one understanding of what a word or expression means or says.

To show the deficiency of mere mastery of synonymy rules, in my classes during at least the last quarter century of my own university teaching career, I used to use this example:  

Suppose you know that a common synonym for tergiversator in one of its meanings is apostate. Then, you can correctly substitute the latter for the former in at least a large class of cases. But if you don’t already know what an apostate is, then knowing and correctly applying the synonymy rule in question does not yet give you any understanding of just what a tergiversator is.

I the same way, into my fourth decade of life I knew perfectly well all the basic synonymy rules governing the usage of the word God. In fact, because of my years of reading not only philosophy but also theology, I knew an uncommonly large variety of such synonymous expressions. Yet none of that helped me any more than knowing that a tergiversator is an apostate helps anyone who doesn’t already know what an apostate is. 

I always knew that supreme being, lord of creation, czar of the heavens, creator of heaven and earth, first uncaused cause of all else, necessary being, that being than which none greater can be conceived, and many more expressions have all often been used as synonyms for God. So what? 

That told me nothing at all about what the word God meant. What’s more, once I did begin to learn what that word truly meant, I came to understand that most of those expressions commonly taken to be synonymous with God were in fact not synonymous at all. They were, in fact, often in contradiction with the meaning of that three-letter G-word.

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God is no entity, no being. 

God is, rather, the power that circulates between beings when they are in community. Thus, for example, God is the power of healing that is at work in Twelve-Step Fellowships such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Smokers Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Emotions Anonymous, Co-Dependents Anonymous, Al-Anon, Gamblers Anonymous, Debtors Anonymous, and a host of other such groups. God is the healing power at work when members of such fellowships speak with one another, “sharing experience, strength, and hope.” God is not anything that has, possesses, or can lay any claim to ownership of that power. Rather, God is that power itself—which can well be called the power of the spirit, if we just remember the meaning of that latter term, which is breath. 

God is the power that breathes itself in and out between those who meet and speak openly and caringly in such gatherings as Twelve-Step groups, church communities, tribes, families, or other loving assemblies of people. 

Period.

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As Foucault knew and taught in his own way and to his own purposes, power as such is not something anyone has. It is no property, either in the sense of being some possession, as Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, or in the sense of being a characteristic that belongs to some things and not others, as whiteness is a property of white objects. Rather, for Foucault power is a matter of the interactions between the elements of a system, their deployment in active relation with one another. 

To use my own way of putting the point, to my own purpose here, power is the breath that all the members of a community exchange on an ongoing basis in their respiration all together with one another. God is that power itself, which we breath in and out when we are in community with one another—the power at play in the rhythm of inspiration and expiration that we sustain together, and that sustains us in turn. 

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Only breathe together, and God will be there.