Does God Have a Personality?

The gods of polytheistic religions have definite personalities—Zeus is quite different from Athena, Hades, etc. But does the traditional God of monotheism have a personality?

A great deal of literature talks about various divine attributes, such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, self-existence, and moral perfection. But these are generally not personality traits (though moral perfection comes closest). What is God like as a person? What would it be like to hang out with Him? What kind of music does He enjoy? What kind of art? What would He like to do on the weekends if He weren’t busy running the universe and such? Who is His best friend?

Why do these come off as strange questions? And why don’t theists who like talking about God talk about these questions?

1. Unknowability

Maybe theists don’t talk about these things because we have no way of knowing the answers. No one has gotten a chance to ask God what his favorite flavor of ice cream is yet, so theists wisely abstain from speculating about it until we get more empirical evidence. Maybe we’ll find out in the afterlife. (I bet it’s cinnamon.)

But this doesn’t seem to be the explanation. Theists have speculated about God all over the place. The traditional divine attributes are pretty much speculations without empirical evidence. (They have a priori arguments, but come on, it’s speculation; they’re not like the a priori proofs in mathematics.) They also speculate about things like why God might have allowed cancer to exist, or natural disasters, or what happens to you after you die, or the structure of heaven and hell, or how many and which people are going to heaven. So it doesn’t seem as though theists are generally averse to talking about things when there is a shortage of empirical evidence.

2. Invidiousness

Perhaps theists don’t like talking about God’s personality because this would alienate some people. If it turns out that God likes rap music, a whole bunch of theists are going to feel alienated. If he doesn’t like it, a different group of people will be alienated. God needs to be everyone’s god.

On the other hand, traditional religions rarely have a problem with invidiousness. They might say, e.g., that a particular race is God’s chosen people; that a particular religion should conquer the world; that people from other religions deserve, and will receive, infinite torture.

Maybe the people