Before electricity, there was ḥashmal. An ancient prophet's untranslatable word, a Greek word for amber, and an old question: what does perfect power choose to do with the freedom of others?

I. Before Electricity, There Was Ḥashmal

The statement sounds almost absurd:

Not because God is a physical current moving through a wire. Not because Ezekiel somehow discovered modern electrical science thousands of years before physics. And certainly not because the Bible secretly contains a scientific explanation of electricity.

The claim is more philosophical than scientific. To understand it, we have to begin with Ezekiel.

Ezekiel's first great vision begins with a remarkable sentence:

“The heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.”Ezekiel 1:1

What follows is one of the most visually strange passages in the Hebrew Bible.

A storm comes from the north.
There is a great cloud.
There is fire flashing within it.
There is radiance.
There are living creatures.
There are wheels.
There is movement.
There is lightning.

Above the creatures is something like an expanse, and above that expanse is something resembling a throne. Upon the throne is something resembling a human figure.

And then Ezekiel reaches for a word that has puzzled interpreters for centuries:

He says he sees something “like the appearance of ḥashmal” within the fire.

Later, when describing the figure above the throne, he again uses ḥashmal. From the loins upward, he sees something resembling ḥashmal surrounded by fire; from the loins downward, he sees something resembling fire with radiance around it. The vision ends with a rainbow-like brightness, which Ezekiel identifies as the appearance of the likeness of the glory of YHWH.

Notice the language. Ezekiel does not say, “I saw God, and God was made of electricity.” He says “like.” “Appearance.” “Likeness.”

His language constantly reminds us that he is describing an encounter that exceeds ordinary description. And that matters, because the Hebrew word ḥashmal itself is uncertain.

It has traditionally been associated with amber, electrum, or a radiant metallic substance. The ancient Greek translation of Ezekiel rendered it with ēlektron, a Greek word associated with amber or electrum.

Thousands of years later, that Greek word would sit inside the history of another word: electricity.

The connection is not that Ezekiel knew electricity. The connection is linguistic.

Greek ēlektron meant amber. Amber possesses a remarkable property: when rubbed, it can acquire static charge and attract lightweight objects.

Centuries later, William Gilbert used the Latin term electricus, essentially “of amber” or “like amber,” in his 1600 work De Magnete. From this linguistic family came the modern vocabulary of electric phenomena.

So there is a strange historical journey:

We should not exaggerate this. The ancient Hebrew word ḥashmal does not literally mean electricity. Ezekiel was not describing electrons. The ancient Greeks were not translating the Hebrew word as “electric current.” And the deeper etymology of ēlektron itself remains uncertain.

But something fascinating remains.

An ancient prophet encounters an overwhelming divine vision and reaches for language involving fire, brightness, radiance and a mysterious substance. The Greek translator renders that mysterious substance using a word associated with amber. And centuries later, amber gives its name to our vocabulary of electricity.

But perhaps the philosophical connection is even more interesting.

What is electricity? We do not ordinarily encounter electricity as a visible object sitting before us. We encounter its effects.

Light. Heat. Movement. Sound. Power.

Something invisible becomes recognizable through what it does. And perhaps this gives us a metaphor for the way human beings have historically spoken about God.

We cannot simply place God on a laboratory table and examine the divine substance. Instead, religious language speaks about what is perceived:

Creation. Order. Life. Consciousness. Judgment. Love. Power. Revelation. Transformation.

Ezekiel's vision itself is almost entirely constructed from effects and appearances. He sees fire. He sees radiance. He sees movement. He hears sound. He sees a throne. He sees a human likeness.

And then he falls on his face.

The vision does not give Ezekiel a scientific definition of God. It gives him an encounter with something he experiences as the glory of YHWH.

So when I say God is electric, I am not speaking physics. I am speaking metaphor. I am asking what happens when we think of divine power as something that cannot be reduced to an object, yet becomes perceptible through its effects.

The metaphor breaks down if we take it literally.

God is not an electrical current.
God is not positive charge.
God is not negative charge.
Good is not positive electricity.
Evil is not negative electricity.

Those would be category errors. But electricity gives us another philosophical idea:

And that takes us somewhere deeper. Because if God possesses ultimate power, what does God do with opposition?

• If God can control every mind, why allow disagreement?
• If God can eliminate every opposing will, why permit freedom?
• If God can force every creature to obey, why allow rebellion?
• And if God possesses the capacity to destroy, does possessing that capacity make God evil?

Perhaps not. Because we have already discovered something about human morality:

A person can possess the capacity to kill without being a murderer. A person can kill in self-defense without the act necessarily having the same moral meaning as murder. The physical event alone does not settle the moral question.

Intention matters. Circumstance matters. Necessity matters. Choice matters.

And perhaps this is where the question of divine power becomes truly philosophical. Not “Can God destroy?” but:

Ezekiel gives us the imagery. Electricity gives us the metaphor. Philosophy gives us the question.

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II. The Morality of Power

If power is the ability to produce an effect, then possessing power is not yet a moral act. Power is a capacity. What matters morally is what is done with that capacity.

Consider two people.

A kills B because B believes something different.

B kills A because A is attacking B and B is trying to preserve his own life.

In both cases, someone dies. The physical result is the same: one human being has caused the death of another. But our moral intuition tells us that these situations are not necessarily equivalent.

Why? Because morality does not operate at the level of physical outcome alone. We ask questions.

• Why did A kill B?
• Why did B kill A?
• Was there a threat?
• Was the threat immediate?
• Was killing necessary?
• Was there another reasonable option?
• Was the intention to preserve life, or to destroy it?

The same physical capacity can therefore produce radically different moral meanings. This gives us an important distinction:

A human being may be capable of murder without being a murderer. A person may possess the physical power to destroy another person without having any moral justification for doing so. And a person may use lethal force without the act necessarily being equivalent to murder.

The distinction becomes even more interesting when we apply it to God.

If God is omnipotent, then God possesses power beyond anything available to a human being. God could theoretically prevent an opponent from acting. God could alter a person's thoughts. God could remove a person's desire to rebel. God could eliminate the possibility of opposition altogether.

And yet the biblical story repeatedly presents human beings as capable of resisting God.

Pharaoh resists.
Israel rebels.
Prophets are rejected.
People turn away.

Even the biblical language of judgment assumes that human beings can make meaningful choices.

So we encounter a strange philosophical possibility: perhaps God's power is not merely the power to make everything happen according to God's immediate will. Perhaps divine power also includes the ability to permit another will to exist.

That sounds paradoxical. But consider the alternative.

Imagine a God who instantly rewrites every mind whenever a creature thinks something contrary to divine intention. No rebellion could exist. No genuine rejection could exist. No meaningful disobedience could exist.

But neither could genuine freedom exist in the ordinary sense. Every creature would ultimately become an extension of divine control.

The question therefore changes. It is no longer “Why doesn't God force everyone to obey?” It becomes:

That question brings us directly into the problem of evil. Because if freedom is real, then the possibility of evil becomes real.

A free being can choose generosity. But a free being can also choose cruelty.
A free being can create. But a free being can destroy.
A free being can love. But a free being can hate.

Freedom creates possibility. And possibility creates risk.

This does not solve the problem of evil. It merely moves the question. We still have to ask why an omnipotent and supposedly good God would permit a world in which freedom can produce extraordinary suffering.

But now we can see why the question is more difficult than simply asking, “Why doesn't God stop evil?” Stopping every evil action may also mean eliminating the freedom that makes moral action meaningful.

If God prevents every murder before it happens, every betrayal before it occurs, every lie before it is spoken, every act of hatred before it is conceived, then the world becomes safer. But is it still a world of morally free beings?

And perhaps this is where the analogy with electricity becomes useful again. Electricity requires difference. Potential exists because there is a difference between states.

But we should be careful. Good and evil are not electrical poles. They are not two equal cosmic forces competing for territory. The philosophical analogy is not about moral equality. It is about possibility.

There is a difference between saying:

“Good and evil are equal opposing forces.”

and saying:

“Freedom creates the possibility of choosing between alternatives.”

The first is a theory of cosmic dualism. The second is a theory of moral agency. And the second is much closer to what I am trying to explore.

Perhaps the mystery of evil is partly the mystery of freedom itself. If God created beings capable of saying yes, then perhaps those beings must also be capable of saying no. And if they can say no to God, they can also say no to goodness.

The question then becomes almost unbearable:

There may be no simple answer. But there is another question waiting behind it.

If a being has the capacity to do evil but consistently chooses the good, is that being more morally meaningful than a being that is simply incapable of doing otherwise? And if that question applies to human beings, can we meaningfully apply it to God?

This brings us to one of the oldest and most difficult questions in theology:

And if God can do evil but chooses not to, what does that tell us about the relationship between power and goodness?

Perhaps the deepest problem is not that God has too much power. Perhaps it is that we have never adequately defined what perfect power actually means.

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III. The Power to Choose

We began with Ezekiel. A man standing before a vision he could barely describe.

Fire. Radiance. Movement. Wheels. A throne.
A figure surrounded by something he could only describe as ḥashmal.

Thousands of years later, that mysterious word would sit within a linguistic history that passes through ēlektron, amber and eventually the vocabulary of electricity.

But the interesting question was never really whether Ezekiel saw electricity. He did not. The interesting question is what electricity gives us as a metaphor for thinking about something invisible that becomes known through its effects.

And that brings us back to God.

We often imagine power as the ability to impose our will.

The powerful person is the person who can make others obey.
The powerful government controls its population.
The powerful individual controls the room.
The powerful being controls everything.

But perhaps that definition of power is incomplete. Because if the greatest possible power is simply the ability to control everything, then absolute power would eventually become indistinguishable from absolute domination.

And if God must control every thought, every decision and every movement in order to remain sovereign, then human freedom becomes little more than an illusion.

But perhaps there is another form of power.

A parent does not demonstrate strength by preventing a child from ever making a mistake. A teacher does not demonstrate mastery by forcing a student to think identically. And perhaps God does not demonstrate power merely by eliminating every possibility of resistance.

Perhaps God can allow resistance without becoming threatened by it.

That changes the meaning of rebellion. If God were genuinely threatened by every opposing will, then opposition would represent a limitation on God. But if God can permit opposition and remain God, then opposition does not necessarily diminish divine sovereignty.

The existence of a contrary will does not prove the absence of power. It may reveal the nature of the power being exercised.

And now we can return to the question of good and evil.

Perhaps we should not imagine evil as God's opposite. Good and evil are not two electrical currents fighting for control of the universe. There is no cosmic battery in which God occupies the positive terminal and evil occupies the negative one.

That would make evil too powerful a concept. It would give evil an independent status equal to God.

Instead, the more interesting philosophical question is whether evil emerges from the misuse of freedom. A being capable of choosing good must possess some meaningful capacity to choose otherwise. The possibility of freedom therefore carries with it the possibility of failure.

And perhaps this is why the question of divine goodness cannot be reduced to divine power.

That final question may be the most important one. Because a being that can do only one thing has no moral dilemma. There is no struggle. No alternative. No choice.

But a being that possesses enormous power and nevertheless chooses restraint presents us with a different conception of greatness.

Perhaps the highest expression of power is not destruction. Perhaps it is self-limitation. Not because the powerful being lacks ability, but because the powerful being possesses the ability and chooses not to exercise it.

This is where the metaphor of electricity finally reaches its limit, and becomes useful precisely because it reaches that limit.

Electricity can illuminate a room. It can power a machine. It can produce heat. It can move something. It can also destroy. The same physical phenomenon can participate in radically different outcomes depending upon how it is directed and controlled.

But God is not electricity.
God is not a current.
God is not a charge.
God is not a physical energy field.

The metaphor points somewhere else.

And perhaps that is why Ezekiel's vision matters. The prophet does not encounter God as a concept written on a page. He encounters something overwhelming. Something luminous. Something active. Something he cannot completely describe.

And after all the wheels, creatures, fire, radiance and strange appearances, Ezekiel does not conclude with a scientific formula.

He falls on his face.

Perhaps that is the appropriate ending to philosophical theology. Not certainty. Not the claim that we have finally captured God in a definition. But recognition.

• Recognition that power is bigger than control.
• That freedom is more dangerous than obedience.
• That morality is more complicated than outcome.
• That the capacity for evil is not identical to the choice of evil.

And that perhaps the greatest mystery of divine power is not that God can do everything we imagine. Perhaps it is that a God possessing ultimate power could allow a universe in which something outside that power can still say:

And yet the universe does not collapse.
God remains.
The opposition remains.
The choice remains.

And somewhere between power and restraint, freedom and consequence, good and evil, we encounter the question Ezekiel encountered long before electricity had a name:

Perhaps we will never completely answer that question. Perhaps that is the point. Because the moment we think we have reduced God to an object we can completely explain, we have probably stopped talking about God and started talking about our own definition.

So maybe “God is electric” was never really a statement about electricity. Maybe it is a statement about the strange human experience of encountering something invisible through its effects.

Something powerful enough to illuminate.
Something powerful enough to transform.
Something powerful enough to destroy.
And something powerful enough, perhaps, to choose restraint.

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References: Ezekiel 1:1–28 (see also 8:2), where ḥashmal appears; the Septuagint (Greek) translation of Ezekiel, which renders it ēlektron; William Gilbert, De Magnete (1600). Images: Wikimedia Commons (public domain); cover: Matthäus Merian, engraving of Ezekiel's chariot vision (before 1650).