It is always a compliment when someone has a positive take on what one has said. I just read Claire
Broome’s lament, if I may call it that constructively. She makes a nice
reflection on the challenges of getting to a faithful reading the Bible. In her
reflection she mentioned a post by Patheos (link)
that discussed last week’s lectionary readings. I subscribe to the Patheos
notifications of posts and periodically read them for ideas.
This particular Patheos post begins
with good advice, “Christian leaders and
churches need to admit that we have done a poor job in teaching parishioners
how to read biblical texts critically. Perhaps Christians wouldn’t believe and
do such silly things if they had been
taught to read the Bible critically before trying to appropriate it
spiritually.”
Before I go on with my comments, I refer you to one of my posts about the only theology worth practicing being the one a person forges for oneself using discernment and prayer. These comments are offered with the thought of this earlier post in mind.
With that admonition by Patheos and my post on theology in mind, the subsequent comments in the Patheos post might
be worth a little more thought. The Patheos article talked about the Revised Common Lectionary
passages for last Sunday, Exodus
32:1-14, and Luke 15:1-10.
In my last
blog post and sermon I talked about the passage in Luke. Patheos concludes
that these two parables are about “seeking God and not giving up the search,” and the Exodus passage is about either the wrath of God or some new interpretation that we have to invent to rationalize it with our preconceived idea about God.
Is this the best way to read
the parables or the Exodus passage? The two parables imply to me that the owner (God) is the one doing the searching and
expressing joy over finding what has been lost that cannot find itself. This may be just a dogmatic quibble
between a Baptist and a Presbyterian over "free will," but we can agree the parable is about
being lost and then found.
The Patheos post goes further and maintains that the Exodus passage presents a different
image of God and the two passages cannot have “equal authority.” Do they
present a different image of God?
The passage in Exodus describes the anger of God when the People of
Israel made and worshiped an idol while Moses was on the mountain top. That anger
was so great God decided to obliterate the Hebrews but Moses interceded and
convinced God to change his mind. Most
people who claim to be orthodox (following “the right way”) probably cringe at
this passage because it clearly says God changed his mind only due to the persuasive effort of Moses (the Hebrew in the Masoretic text is “relented from what he spoke”).
God either changed his mind about his promise (reneged) and decided to
destroy the Hebrews or God changed his mind again (reneged) and relented.
This seems to fly in the face of those who
maintain God is immutable, or unchanging. They must create an argument that rationalizes this passage to preserve immutability. Orthodoxy clings to this immutability because
what on earth would we do if we could not trust God to be unchanging and loyal
to his word? In our particular case we would be hopeless if God had not
relented that day on the mountain top. Without a change of mind, it is hard to figure out how we could be here today since
neither Jew or Christian would seem to be present (except perhaps we could all be descendants of
Moses).
The Patheos article is not the first to write about the markedly differing
image of God presented in the Torah and in the Gospels. Jack Miles wrote two books seeking to capture
the essence of God, one is called God,
a biography, (the one that merited the Pulitzer Prize), and the other written several years later called Christ,
a crisis in the life of God. The two books deal directly with this
point that Patheos is making, there is a difference in how God moves in the
world in the pre- and post-Christ era. Miles set about capturing the
image of God using the Hebrew Bible intending to carry it on
through the Gospels. Unfortunately, as he delved into the Hebrew Bible he
realized it reached a point irreconcilable with the grace in the gospels. Neither
book is easy reading, but if you invest the time you’ll probably find it
rewarding as a different view of scripture.
And so, I suggest to you that the struggle of orthodoxy with immutability
(see a classic argument by made in 1855 by C.H. Spurgeon, I call Spurgeon’s Big Argument) is
an artificial argument derived from philosophical rationalism. This claim of immutability is what makes these two passages so hard
to reconcile. (Read the story of Jephthah for an example of what being unwilling to change your mind gets you.)
It may not be necessary to give less authority to Exodus or Luke but to accept
that scripture is an inspired literary device that reveals what we can know humanly
about the face of God. Given the textual readings and a Reformed perspective, I
do not see why Christian orthodoxy has such a problem with God changing his
mind as a consequence of compassion ruling anger. A God motivated by divine love seems
far more constant, reliable and preferable than one who never relents from anger. Throughout the OT and gospels the one constant thing is divine compassion, not immutability.
I wonder whether the Lectionary committee paired these two texts because they realized that God’s act of relenting on the mountain top was a selfless act of grace
towards a “stiff-necked people” (that we all are)? An act of grace in the
desert at the foot of a mountain foreshadowed the ultimate reliability of the compassion of God in the act of joy of a Creator
whose compassion for his children overrides his anger - the act of finding the
lost souls and bringing them home.
Now, can someone give me an AMEN?
No comments:
Post a Comment