Robyn Banks
August 3rd 2003, 01:18 AM
Ontology v Action
The question, “does scripture present what God does more than who God is?” is not asked in a vacuum. The dramatic influence of Greek philosophical thought on the concepts of Christian theology is, of course, now widely recognised. It is acknowledged that, in many aspects, the orthodox Christian formulation of God which governed Christian thought over the greater part of the last 2000 years is more a product of Plato than of Paul.
So, in interpreting the Bible, and in interpreting the Bible’s views of God, Western readers must either reject or accept Hellenization. In accepting Hellenization, the ontological implications concerning God – implied by scripture - will appear to stand out in bold relief. On the other hand, in examining Biblical God-talk in itself, an immediate danger is that the Bible’s own ontological presentation of God may be rejected with the Hellenistic ontological reformulation of it.
It must be recognised that philosophical concepts about God do not primarily assist the interpretation of scripture. God’s raison d’être, in philosophy, is to make it possible for humans to give ultimate explanations. The philosopher’s God stands aloof from the world, with an altogether different function than the economy of the Christian God. This difference is what Heidegger refers to when he says that “the deity can come into philosophy only insofar as philosophy, of its own accord and by its own nature, requires and determines that and how the deity enters into it.” God becomes the beck and call of human theory – in order to make reality understandable in accordance with human reason. Whereas, biblical faith in God “is the believing-understanding mode of existing in the history revealed”, “not speculative knowledge of God”.
The Bible contains both ontological and economic presentations of God. However, the God of the Old Testament (and New Testament), in Walter Brueggemann’s words, “cannot be comprehended in any preconceived categories. The God of the Old [and New] Testament does not easily confirm to the expectations of Christian dogmatic theology, nor to the categories of any Hellenistic perennial philosophy.” The God of Israel is characteristically “in the fray” – not defined in terms of the ultima ratio or causa sui of classical philosophy. In Van Rad’s terms, the person of God cannot be separated from the history of Israel.
Barth inaugurated a turning from traditional theological conceptions of God - by deriving the essence of God strictly from His revelation in Christ. Barth begins his doctrine of God with the paragraph The Being of God in Act, which includes the statement that “to its very depths God’s Godhead consists in the fact that it is an event – not any event, not events in general, but the event of His action, in which we have a share in God’s revelation.”
This move to deconstruct the ontological categories imposed on scripture uncovers scripture’s primary intent - of describing what God does (for Israel / for us), which secondarily, in both intent and effect, gives us a picture of who God is.
“In a peculiar manner, practically all of the OT is theology – ie thinking in relation to the God who has revealed himself in dramatic deeds of history and has entered into relationship with his people. It is only by abstraction that the subject of God can be singled out as one to be studied among many others."
- Interpreters’ Dictionary, p417
“The God of the OT is a God whom one experiences. One believes in God; one reflects on the present situation, on what led to it, on the distant past, and one knows that God is at work in this process. The OT writers do not prove the existence of God scientifically for the modern scientist, philosopher, or historian. They know from experience that God exists. They reflect and are convinced that God initiates, sustains, and governs the universe, and that he directs history. They do not know an inert God.”
- ABD, p1041-1042, Vol II
“The heart of the NT message is the proclamation of what God has accomplished through Jesus Christ... Although some passages in the Johannine corpus describe God in terms of abstractions, God is encountered in the NT primarily as a personal force.”
- ABD, p 1049, Vol II
“Almost always, impersonal terms are avoided in favour of personal - and an active, dynamic conception of God pervades the NT.”
- Interpreters’ Dictionary, p430
The Old Testament
The Old Testament does not, in the main, present God as having certain attributes which are essential to his nature. God’s being is revealed in his historical relations with his people, Israel. “He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not the God of speculative thought. He is known by what he has done, is doing, and will do – ie, in the events of history.”
“First and foremost, Israel’s God was the Lord of history – the God who rescued Israel from Egypt’s bondage, led his people through the wilderness and on to the Land of the Promise, raised up David as his King and the prophets as his spokesmen, and acted in the great international crises to accomplish his sovereign purpose.” (Interpreters’ Dictionary, p418) It is significant that the central motif of the OT is the covenant – a relational term derived from politics and history.
God is understood as being really present with his people: “Yahweh is with us”. Yahweh is not a mystical presence, but a real Leader who goes before his people, and instructs them. Yahweh is a man of war, who is consulted about war, declares war, walks in the camp, and alone wins the victory. Yahweh comes near to his people in a number of theophanies, including the giving of the law at Sinai, and also in storms.
“Just as the self, in its relations with other persons, discloses certain traits or characteristics, so God’s relations with his people provide the basis for theological understanding of who God is and of his character as known within the covenant.” (Interpreters’ Dictionary, p424) God, as presented in the OT, is not defined by abstractions but defined by his actions (from which abstractions may be made). “The OT, in its theological articulation is characteristically dialectical and dialogical, and not transcendentalist.” (Brueggemann, TOT, p83) Some of God’s traits/abstractions, and associated relationships/actions through which the traits/abstractions are articulated, are as follows:
Holiness
God’s sovereign will arouses fear and reverence. Acting in history, men think of him as the God who is terrible. Yahweh’s activities in history thus manifest his holiness. In delivering Israel, the writers are led to exclaim his holiness.
Jealousy
Divine jealousy is often associated with the first commandment of the Decalogue – Yahweh wants to be Lord alone. Where other gods are worshipped, Yahweh’s holiness is violated, and the offenders are punished. Yahweh’s jealousy is therefore demonstrated by his actions.
Lovingkindness
Yahweh continually helps the weak and helpless in the OT, the greatest example of which is his blessing of the insignificant and enslaved Israel, who he makes his people.
The only and unique Lord
Joshua asked Israel to choose which god they would serve and, later in the biblical narrative, Elijah asked whether it was to be Baal or Yahweh. Joshua’s and Elijah’s questions were not asked abstractly, but they asked the pragmatic question of which god had the sovereignty and power to act.
Walter Brueggemann speaks of the primacy of the verb in OT God-talk. The biblical conception of God is of a God always entangled in history, astonishingly transformative, and impinged upon by the voice of suffering. Biblical testimony yields a God who is ‘in the fray’ and at risk. “Israel rarely and only belatedly can speak about God per se, but regularly speaks about God engaged transformatively with and on behalf of the object [Israel].” (Brueggemann, p125-126) “Israel is characteristically concerned with the action of God – the concrete, specific action of God – and not God’s character, nature, being, or attributes, except as those are evidenced in concrete actions.” (Brueggemann, p145) "The characteristic claim of Israel’s testimony is that Yahweh is an active agent who is the subject of an active verb and so the testimony is that Yahweh, the God of Israel, has acted in decisive and transformative ways.” (Brueggemann, p123)
This biblical conception is a threat to classical theology: “in speaking about Yahweh, Israel regularly moves from the particular to the general, from the verb to the adjective to the noun... If nouns for Yahweh arise out of adjectives, which in turn arise out of verbs, then the noun characterisations of Yahweh are not as firm and stable as they first appear to be and as they are often taken to be in classical theological traditions that trade in ‘substances’ ”. (Brueggemann, p230)
God is declared, in mature Judaism, to be the one and only God. However, the monotheism which develops in the OT is qualitatively different from the monotheism of, for example, Akh-en-aton of Egypt. “The axis of Israel’s faith was the covenant assurance, ‘I am Yahweh, your God’, and the covenant claim, ‘You are my people.’ ” The emphasis falls not upon Yahweh’s existence, but upon his action in Israel’s history.
It is Deutero-Isaiah who expresses most clearly that Israel’s God is one and unique. In a passage which asserts the uniqueness of Israel’s God (45:14-25), there are 9 monotheistic assertions (eg “I, Yahweh, and there is no other”, “I, Yahweh, and there is no other God besides me”). The assertions are accompanied by the word “rescue” 6 times. Yahweh is the God who delivers and rescues his people. “Yahweh will vindicate his people in the eyes of their enemies, who will be brought to acknowledge that it is the God of Israel who acts.” In Deutero-Isaiah 44:24-28, this monotheism is declared by describing Yahweh with no less than 11 active participles – redeeming, fashioning, making, stretching out, spreading out, frustrating, turning back, confirming, saying (3 times).
God is the creator and redeemer. God is the one who calls the Fathers and, identified as God-who-called, rescues Israel from Egypt. He is “the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” God is the one who led his people back to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity, via his messiah, Cyrus.
The prophets do not discuss the subject of God, nor do they have something of their own to say about God. Rather, God through his chastisement proclaimed in the word of the prophet, brings knowledge of himself at work in history. For example, in Ezekiel 25-32 a set of “oracles against the nations” are set out. The oracles are introduced by the formulae, “the word of the Lord came to me” or “thus says the Lord God”, followed by details of the Lord’s punishment and purpose/result. Nineteen times in Ezekiel the purpose or result of the divine retribution is that “you(/they) will know I am the Lord”.
The “God of the psalms is the God who is ever at work. He is addressed as the one who has acted in the remote or immediate past, or is now acting. The psalmist calls on other worshippers, even on enemies and pagans, to acknowledge God’s action and to respond by making it known.” About one-fifth of the psalms are personal laments, in which the individual-in-distress calls upon God, God delivers him, and the psalmist calls for praise and acknowledgement of God’s action.
The God of the Hebrew Bible is the God who is ever active. There is a wide consensus that speculative or critical philosophy does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, beyond a few terms in the wisdom literature. But this does not mean that ontology is irrelevant in OT theology. Yahweh is fundamentally regarded as the creator, who continually sustains the fundamental conditions of human existence and redeems his people. However, the biblical ontology of God should be understood through the biblical perspective itself of God-at-work-in-history, rather than imposing a foreign (usu. Greek-philosophical) set of ideas on the text.
The New Testament
The fundamental understanding of God that emerges in the NT is in direct continuity with the theology of the OT. However, familiar OT concepts acquire a characteristically Christian focus. “God is one, and there is likewise one Lord, Jesus Christ; one church, his body; one Spirit; and, in later texts, one doctrine about Christ. God is the creator and giver of life, who has raised Jesus from the dead and who will give resurrection life to all who believe. God is the sovereign ruler, whose strength is paradoxically revealed in the weakness of the cross. God is the righteous judge, whose impartiality extends to both Jews and Gentiles and who will set things right for the faithful in the age to come. God is the loving father, who supremely demonstrated that love in the sending of Jesus Christ, his Son.” (ABD, p 1049, Vol II)
In the NT, God’s power, sovereignty and absolute transcendence are strongly affirmed – in contrast to the OT. “God is proclaimed as the One who is outside human history, who is above this history, and who stands in judgement over it.” (ABD, p 1049, Vol II) “But, almost always, impersonal terms are avoided in favour of personal, and an active, dynamic conception of God pervades the NT.” (Interpreters’ Dictionary, p430)
At the same time that the ‘distance’ of God has become heightened, the NT provides a unique knowledge of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, who “is the image of the invisible God”. The only Son, in the bosom of the Father, has made the Father known. “In fact, the NT makes little attempt to describe God except in terms of Christ.” (Interpreters’ Dictionary, p431) Jesus introduces God by the term “Father” (abba), which has peculiar familiarity and intimacy in Jesus’s usage. Jesus is intimate with God in a new way (“How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” ) – an intimacy to be shared by those in Jesus: (“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one.” )
There is a “one-sided emphasis on God’s transcendence in the traditional doctrine of God”, on “his infinity, incomprehensibility, immutability, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, simplicity, eternity, spirituality [and] holiness”. In the traditional creeds, “God’s essence was not derived from his condescension to Israel and in Christ.” (Berkhof, Christian Faith, p113) The formulations of God’s character, in Christian orthodoxy, was not governed by its essence as presented in the NT – that being the love of God to the world through his only Son. Instead, the largely ontological concepts which were able to be married with Greek philosophy became the concepts of Christian orthodoxy.
But it is the very suffering of God in the history of Christ’s passion that is the central presentation of God in the NT. God does not suffer out of deficiency of being, but from the love which is the superabundance and overflowing of his being – thus revealing his being through suffering. In the OT the divine pathos is shown by God having committed himself to the covenant. In the NT, the historical passion of Christ reveals the eternal passion of God. The revelation of God in his passion is outlined by Moltmann as follows: “God is love; love makes a person capable of suffering; and love’s capacity for suffering is fulfilled in the self-giving and the self-sacrifice of the lover. Self-sacrifice is God’s very nature and essence.” The tragic passion is present in the depths of the divine life itself. “The divine life itself in a deep and mysterious sense is history It is a historical drama, a historical mystery play.” This essence of God-for-self-sacrifice is realised most poignantly on the cross. “Perception of Christ’s cross makes the metaphysical historical and the historical metaphysical.”
Bonhoeffer wrote that “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us... The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help... The development towards the world’s coming of age... which has done away with a false conception of God, opens up a way of seeing the God of the Bible.” (Letters an Papers from Prison, ET 1971, pp 360ff, cited in Berkhof, p137-138) God retreats to give room to his rebellious son. Yet, his defencelessness is not powerlessness. “The opposite is the case. The defencelessness is the expression of his superiority. He can yield because he knows that he will win.” (Berkhof, p138)
“In his sovereign love God has made himself changeable. He has decided to be together with us involved in a process, a process which includes Gethsemene’s anguish and Calvary’s Godforsakenness. He allows himself to be made a victim. Note: he allows it to be done to him. He enters into it and at the same time stands above it; not half in it and half above it; but totally the one and totally the other. This is not self-contradictory. For the more one controls a situation, the more one can allow. For the sake of the unchangeableness of his eternal purpose God can participate in and suffer through the process which he has initiated himself.” (Berkhof, p146)
The NT presentation of God is overwhelmingly a presentation of the divine economy in the Christ-event, as a survey of the references to God in the NT shows. The presentation is of God unfurling his mysterious plan: which is his plan from the beginning that, through Christ, all may be reconciled to God. Christ is presented as the exact nature of God, and his perfect life presented in the gospels. Creation is said to be made through him, and Christ has made God known by being sent from heaven. Through Christ’s humility and poverty, Christ became exalted and believers become rich in receiving the blessings he received. He became the substitutionary sacrifice for sins, once for all , for those who come to God by believing in him.
As Christ belongs to God, believers belong to Christ, and become inheritors of the eternal life which Christ owned first. God raised Christ from the dead, so that all may be made alive in Christ. Believers were washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of God. For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him believers might become the righteousness of God.
Christ has now been exalted to the place of God, and been given the name of God, to the glory of God. In the same way that there is one God from whom believers receive existence, there is one Lord Jesus through whom believers receive existence. In the same way that Jesus died and rose again, God will also resurrect dead believers with Jesus.
In the NT, God’s holy spirit is poured out on all people. God called us to live a holy life, which the blood of Christ allows us to do, and God gives his holy spirit to enable it. Indwelt by his spirit , believers should therefore produce righteousness through Jesus Christ for the glory of God, and be filled with spiritual understanding of the will of God. God continues at work in believers for them to follow his purposes, and transforms them. Believers should become one spirit with God, children of God, able to call God “Father” as Jesus did, and therefore to call Jesus “brother”. God keeps believers blameless until the second coming, so they may be saved.
Believers now eagerly await the second coming of our saviour from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, in glory. They will be in the presence of their God & Father when the Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones. “We who know Christ are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved.” Jesus Christ has been given all things including being assigned the divine judgement, as have believers. Believers with pure hearts from God will be saved from the divine wrath. However the wicked will be punished. The Day of the Lord of OT passages has become the “day of Jesus Christ”. “Resurrection came with Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.” Together with Christ, believers may live in heaven in the glory of God.
The ‘seeds of the doctrine of the Trinity’ may well be claimed to be in the NT - in the economy of God anointing Jesus with the Spirit for his salvific purpose. However, it is not at all clear from the NT which form, of many possible forms, the full grown plant will take. The presentation of Paul preaching his message to the first Gentile Christians is typical of the scriptural economic emphasis: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Conclusion
Scripture does present what God does more than who God is. The presentation of God is primarily of God in action – God in the history of Israel, and in the sending of his Son.
However, this method of presentation does not mean that scripture ignores the ontological in favour of the economic. To the contrary, in presenting what God does, we are simultaneously being presented with who God is. “God’s revelation is revelation of his essence”. (Berkhof, p105) If scripture is self-revelation, then the revelation is of God’s essence.
It follows, therefore, that it would be a nonsense to maintain that God’s actions are being presented to the exclusion of God’s being. However, something integral to the biblical narrative would be lost if the bible had presented who God is, rather than what God does. The very Being-in-history nature of God could not be adequately presented, and the central message of salvation would be overcome by a lesson on metaphysics.
Although both ontology and a salvation-story may be legitimately drawn from scripture, there is another reason why metaphysics should not be used to organise scripture’s theological talk as an overriding metanarrative: the actual narratives should be allowed their full integrity and emphasis, on their own terms. We should not import essentialist or dogmatic claims into such a particular and peculiar rhetoric. The practical result of reading the Bible on its own terms may be (to reverse Harnack’s formulation) the transformation of Christianity from a rigid creed to be believed, into a living faith; Christology into devotion to Christ.
- Robyn Banks
The question, “does scripture present what God does more than who God is?” is not asked in a vacuum. The dramatic influence of Greek philosophical thought on the concepts of Christian theology is, of course, now widely recognised. It is acknowledged that, in many aspects, the orthodox Christian formulation of God which governed Christian thought over the greater part of the last 2000 years is more a product of Plato than of Paul.
So, in interpreting the Bible, and in interpreting the Bible’s views of God, Western readers must either reject or accept Hellenization. In accepting Hellenization, the ontological implications concerning God – implied by scripture - will appear to stand out in bold relief. On the other hand, in examining Biblical God-talk in itself, an immediate danger is that the Bible’s own ontological presentation of God may be rejected with the Hellenistic ontological reformulation of it.
It must be recognised that philosophical concepts about God do not primarily assist the interpretation of scripture. God’s raison d’être, in philosophy, is to make it possible for humans to give ultimate explanations. The philosopher’s God stands aloof from the world, with an altogether different function than the economy of the Christian God. This difference is what Heidegger refers to when he says that “the deity can come into philosophy only insofar as philosophy, of its own accord and by its own nature, requires and determines that and how the deity enters into it.” God becomes the beck and call of human theory – in order to make reality understandable in accordance with human reason. Whereas, biblical faith in God “is the believing-understanding mode of existing in the history revealed”, “not speculative knowledge of God”.
The Bible contains both ontological and economic presentations of God. However, the God of the Old Testament (and New Testament), in Walter Brueggemann’s words, “cannot be comprehended in any preconceived categories. The God of the Old [and New] Testament does not easily confirm to the expectations of Christian dogmatic theology, nor to the categories of any Hellenistic perennial philosophy.” The God of Israel is characteristically “in the fray” – not defined in terms of the ultima ratio or causa sui of classical philosophy. In Van Rad’s terms, the person of God cannot be separated from the history of Israel.
Barth inaugurated a turning from traditional theological conceptions of God - by deriving the essence of God strictly from His revelation in Christ. Barth begins his doctrine of God with the paragraph The Being of God in Act, which includes the statement that “to its very depths God’s Godhead consists in the fact that it is an event – not any event, not events in general, but the event of His action, in which we have a share in God’s revelation.”
This move to deconstruct the ontological categories imposed on scripture uncovers scripture’s primary intent - of describing what God does (for Israel / for us), which secondarily, in both intent and effect, gives us a picture of who God is.
“In a peculiar manner, practically all of the OT is theology – ie thinking in relation to the God who has revealed himself in dramatic deeds of history and has entered into relationship with his people. It is only by abstraction that the subject of God can be singled out as one to be studied among many others."
- Interpreters’ Dictionary, p417
“The God of the OT is a God whom one experiences. One believes in God; one reflects on the present situation, on what led to it, on the distant past, and one knows that God is at work in this process. The OT writers do not prove the existence of God scientifically for the modern scientist, philosopher, or historian. They know from experience that God exists. They reflect and are convinced that God initiates, sustains, and governs the universe, and that he directs history. They do not know an inert God.”
- ABD, p1041-1042, Vol II
“The heart of the NT message is the proclamation of what God has accomplished through Jesus Christ... Although some passages in the Johannine corpus describe God in terms of abstractions, God is encountered in the NT primarily as a personal force.”
- ABD, p 1049, Vol II
“Almost always, impersonal terms are avoided in favour of personal - and an active, dynamic conception of God pervades the NT.”
- Interpreters’ Dictionary, p430
The Old Testament
The Old Testament does not, in the main, present God as having certain attributes which are essential to his nature. God’s being is revealed in his historical relations with his people, Israel. “He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not the God of speculative thought. He is known by what he has done, is doing, and will do – ie, in the events of history.”
“First and foremost, Israel’s God was the Lord of history – the God who rescued Israel from Egypt’s bondage, led his people through the wilderness and on to the Land of the Promise, raised up David as his King and the prophets as his spokesmen, and acted in the great international crises to accomplish his sovereign purpose.” (Interpreters’ Dictionary, p418) It is significant that the central motif of the OT is the covenant – a relational term derived from politics and history.
God is understood as being really present with his people: “Yahweh is with us”. Yahweh is not a mystical presence, but a real Leader who goes before his people, and instructs them. Yahweh is a man of war, who is consulted about war, declares war, walks in the camp, and alone wins the victory. Yahweh comes near to his people in a number of theophanies, including the giving of the law at Sinai, and also in storms.
“Just as the self, in its relations with other persons, discloses certain traits or characteristics, so God’s relations with his people provide the basis for theological understanding of who God is and of his character as known within the covenant.” (Interpreters’ Dictionary, p424) God, as presented in the OT, is not defined by abstractions but defined by his actions (from which abstractions may be made). “The OT, in its theological articulation is characteristically dialectical and dialogical, and not transcendentalist.” (Brueggemann, TOT, p83) Some of God’s traits/abstractions, and associated relationships/actions through which the traits/abstractions are articulated, are as follows:
Holiness
God’s sovereign will arouses fear and reverence. Acting in history, men think of him as the God who is terrible. Yahweh’s activities in history thus manifest his holiness. In delivering Israel, the writers are led to exclaim his holiness.
Jealousy
Divine jealousy is often associated with the first commandment of the Decalogue – Yahweh wants to be Lord alone. Where other gods are worshipped, Yahweh’s holiness is violated, and the offenders are punished. Yahweh’s jealousy is therefore demonstrated by his actions.
Lovingkindness
Yahweh continually helps the weak and helpless in the OT, the greatest example of which is his blessing of the insignificant and enslaved Israel, who he makes his people.
The only and unique Lord
Joshua asked Israel to choose which god they would serve and, later in the biblical narrative, Elijah asked whether it was to be Baal or Yahweh. Joshua’s and Elijah’s questions were not asked abstractly, but they asked the pragmatic question of which god had the sovereignty and power to act.
Walter Brueggemann speaks of the primacy of the verb in OT God-talk. The biblical conception of God is of a God always entangled in history, astonishingly transformative, and impinged upon by the voice of suffering. Biblical testimony yields a God who is ‘in the fray’ and at risk. “Israel rarely and only belatedly can speak about God per se, but regularly speaks about God engaged transformatively with and on behalf of the object [Israel].” (Brueggemann, p125-126) “Israel is characteristically concerned with the action of God – the concrete, specific action of God – and not God’s character, nature, being, or attributes, except as those are evidenced in concrete actions.” (Brueggemann, p145) "The characteristic claim of Israel’s testimony is that Yahweh is an active agent who is the subject of an active verb and so the testimony is that Yahweh, the God of Israel, has acted in decisive and transformative ways.” (Brueggemann, p123)
This biblical conception is a threat to classical theology: “in speaking about Yahweh, Israel regularly moves from the particular to the general, from the verb to the adjective to the noun... If nouns for Yahweh arise out of adjectives, which in turn arise out of verbs, then the noun characterisations of Yahweh are not as firm and stable as they first appear to be and as they are often taken to be in classical theological traditions that trade in ‘substances’ ”. (Brueggemann, p230)
God is declared, in mature Judaism, to be the one and only God. However, the monotheism which develops in the OT is qualitatively different from the monotheism of, for example, Akh-en-aton of Egypt. “The axis of Israel’s faith was the covenant assurance, ‘I am Yahweh, your God’, and the covenant claim, ‘You are my people.’ ” The emphasis falls not upon Yahweh’s existence, but upon his action in Israel’s history.
It is Deutero-Isaiah who expresses most clearly that Israel’s God is one and unique. In a passage which asserts the uniqueness of Israel’s God (45:14-25), there are 9 monotheistic assertions (eg “I, Yahweh, and there is no other”, “I, Yahweh, and there is no other God besides me”). The assertions are accompanied by the word “rescue” 6 times. Yahweh is the God who delivers and rescues his people. “Yahweh will vindicate his people in the eyes of their enemies, who will be brought to acknowledge that it is the God of Israel who acts.” In Deutero-Isaiah 44:24-28, this monotheism is declared by describing Yahweh with no less than 11 active participles – redeeming, fashioning, making, stretching out, spreading out, frustrating, turning back, confirming, saying (3 times).
God is the creator and redeemer. God is the one who calls the Fathers and, identified as God-who-called, rescues Israel from Egypt. He is “the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” God is the one who led his people back to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity, via his messiah, Cyrus.
The prophets do not discuss the subject of God, nor do they have something of their own to say about God. Rather, God through his chastisement proclaimed in the word of the prophet, brings knowledge of himself at work in history. For example, in Ezekiel 25-32 a set of “oracles against the nations” are set out. The oracles are introduced by the formulae, “the word of the Lord came to me” or “thus says the Lord God”, followed by details of the Lord’s punishment and purpose/result. Nineteen times in Ezekiel the purpose or result of the divine retribution is that “you(/they) will know I am the Lord”.
The “God of the psalms is the God who is ever at work. He is addressed as the one who has acted in the remote or immediate past, or is now acting. The psalmist calls on other worshippers, even on enemies and pagans, to acknowledge God’s action and to respond by making it known.” About one-fifth of the psalms are personal laments, in which the individual-in-distress calls upon God, God delivers him, and the psalmist calls for praise and acknowledgement of God’s action.
The God of the Hebrew Bible is the God who is ever active. There is a wide consensus that speculative or critical philosophy does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, beyond a few terms in the wisdom literature. But this does not mean that ontology is irrelevant in OT theology. Yahweh is fundamentally regarded as the creator, who continually sustains the fundamental conditions of human existence and redeems his people. However, the biblical ontology of God should be understood through the biblical perspective itself of God-at-work-in-history, rather than imposing a foreign (usu. Greek-philosophical) set of ideas on the text.
The New Testament
The fundamental understanding of God that emerges in the NT is in direct continuity with the theology of the OT. However, familiar OT concepts acquire a characteristically Christian focus. “God is one, and there is likewise one Lord, Jesus Christ; one church, his body; one Spirit; and, in later texts, one doctrine about Christ. God is the creator and giver of life, who has raised Jesus from the dead and who will give resurrection life to all who believe. God is the sovereign ruler, whose strength is paradoxically revealed in the weakness of the cross. God is the righteous judge, whose impartiality extends to both Jews and Gentiles and who will set things right for the faithful in the age to come. God is the loving father, who supremely demonstrated that love in the sending of Jesus Christ, his Son.” (ABD, p 1049, Vol II)
In the NT, God’s power, sovereignty and absolute transcendence are strongly affirmed – in contrast to the OT. “God is proclaimed as the One who is outside human history, who is above this history, and who stands in judgement over it.” (ABD, p 1049, Vol II) “But, almost always, impersonal terms are avoided in favour of personal, and an active, dynamic conception of God pervades the NT.” (Interpreters’ Dictionary, p430)
At the same time that the ‘distance’ of God has become heightened, the NT provides a unique knowledge of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, who “is the image of the invisible God”. The only Son, in the bosom of the Father, has made the Father known. “In fact, the NT makes little attempt to describe God except in terms of Christ.” (Interpreters’ Dictionary, p431) Jesus introduces God by the term “Father” (abba), which has peculiar familiarity and intimacy in Jesus’s usage. Jesus is intimate with God in a new way (“How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” ) – an intimacy to be shared by those in Jesus: (“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one.” )
There is a “one-sided emphasis on God’s transcendence in the traditional doctrine of God”, on “his infinity, incomprehensibility, immutability, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, simplicity, eternity, spirituality [and] holiness”. In the traditional creeds, “God’s essence was not derived from his condescension to Israel and in Christ.” (Berkhof, Christian Faith, p113) The formulations of God’s character, in Christian orthodoxy, was not governed by its essence as presented in the NT – that being the love of God to the world through his only Son. Instead, the largely ontological concepts which were able to be married with Greek philosophy became the concepts of Christian orthodoxy.
But it is the very suffering of God in the history of Christ’s passion that is the central presentation of God in the NT. God does not suffer out of deficiency of being, but from the love which is the superabundance and overflowing of his being – thus revealing his being through suffering. In the OT the divine pathos is shown by God having committed himself to the covenant. In the NT, the historical passion of Christ reveals the eternal passion of God. The revelation of God in his passion is outlined by Moltmann as follows: “God is love; love makes a person capable of suffering; and love’s capacity for suffering is fulfilled in the self-giving and the self-sacrifice of the lover. Self-sacrifice is God’s very nature and essence.” The tragic passion is present in the depths of the divine life itself. “The divine life itself in a deep and mysterious sense is history It is a historical drama, a historical mystery play.” This essence of God-for-self-sacrifice is realised most poignantly on the cross. “Perception of Christ’s cross makes the metaphysical historical and the historical metaphysical.”
Bonhoeffer wrote that “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us... The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help... The development towards the world’s coming of age... which has done away with a false conception of God, opens up a way of seeing the God of the Bible.” (Letters an Papers from Prison, ET 1971, pp 360ff, cited in Berkhof, p137-138) God retreats to give room to his rebellious son. Yet, his defencelessness is not powerlessness. “The opposite is the case. The defencelessness is the expression of his superiority. He can yield because he knows that he will win.” (Berkhof, p138)
“In his sovereign love God has made himself changeable. He has decided to be together with us involved in a process, a process which includes Gethsemene’s anguish and Calvary’s Godforsakenness. He allows himself to be made a victim. Note: he allows it to be done to him. He enters into it and at the same time stands above it; not half in it and half above it; but totally the one and totally the other. This is not self-contradictory. For the more one controls a situation, the more one can allow. For the sake of the unchangeableness of his eternal purpose God can participate in and suffer through the process which he has initiated himself.” (Berkhof, p146)
The NT presentation of God is overwhelmingly a presentation of the divine economy in the Christ-event, as a survey of the references to God in the NT shows. The presentation is of God unfurling his mysterious plan: which is his plan from the beginning that, through Christ, all may be reconciled to God. Christ is presented as the exact nature of God, and his perfect life presented in the gospels. Creation is said to be made through him, and Christ has made God known by being sent from heaven. Through Christ’s humility and poverty, Christ became exalted and believers become rich in receiving the blessings he received. He became the substitutionary sacrifice for sins, once for all , for those who come to God by believing in him.
As Christ belongs to God, believers belong to Christ, and become inheritors of the eternal life which Christ owned first. God raised Christ from the dead, so that all may be made alive in Christ. Believers were washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of God. For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him believers might become the righteousness of God.
Christ has now been exalted to the place of God, and been given the name of God, to the glory of God. In the same way that there is one God from whom believers receive existence, there is one Lord Jesus through whom believers receive existence. In the same way that Jesus died and rose again, God will also resurrect dead believers with Jesus.
In the NT, God’s holy spirit is poured out on all people. God called us to live a holy life, which the blood of Christ allows us to do, and God gives his holy spirit to enable it. Indwelt by his spirit , believers should therefore produce righteousness through Jesus Christ for the glory of God, and be filled with spiritual understanding of the will of God. God continues at work in believers for them to follow his purposes, and transforms them. Believers should become one spirit with God, children of God, able to call God “Father” as Jesus did, and therefore to call Jesus “brother”. God keeps believers blameless until the second coming, so they may be saved.
Believers now eagerly await the second coming of our saviour from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, in glory. They will be in the presence of their God & Father when the Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones. “We who know Christ are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved.” Jesus Christ has been given all things including being assigned the divine judgement, as have believers. Believers with pure hearts from God will be saved from the divine wrath. However the wicked will be punished. The Day of the Lord of OT passages has become the “day of Jesus Christ”. “Resurrection came with Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.” Together with Christ, believers may live in heaven in the glory of God.
The ‘seeds of the doctrine of the Trinity’ may well be claimed to be in the NT - in the economy of God anointing Jesus with the Spirit for his salvific purpose. However, it is not at all clear from the NT which form, of many possible forms, the full grown plant will take. The presentation of Paul preaching his message to the first Gentile Christians is typical of the scriptural economic emphasis: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Conclusion
Scripture does present what God does more than who God is. The presentation of God is primarily of God in action – God in the history of Israel, and in the sending of his Son.
However, this method of presentation does not mean that scripture ignores the ontological in favour of the economic. To the contrary, in presenting what God does, we are simultaneously being presented with who God is. “God’s revelation is revelation of his essence”. (Berkhof, p105) If scripture is self-revelation, then the revelation is of God’s essence.
It follows, therefore, that it would be a nonsense to maintain that God’s actions are being presented to the exclusion of God’s being. However, something integral to the biblical narrative would be lost if the bible had presented who God is, rather than what God does. The very Being-in-history nature of God could not be adequately presented, and the central message of salvation would be overcome by a lesson on metaphysics.
Although both ontology and a salvation-story may be legitimately drawn from scripture, there is another reason why metaphysics should not be used to organise scripture’s theological talk as an overriding metanarrative: the actual narratives should be allowed their full integrity and emphasis, on their own terms. We should not import essentialist or dogmatic claims into such a particular and peculiar rhetoric. The practical result of reading the Bible on its own terms may be (to reverse Harnack’s formulation) the transformation of Christianity from a rigid creed to be believed, into a living faith; Christology into devotion to Christ.
- Robyn Banks