"The Old Testament writings confine themselves to representing Jahweh's relationship to Israel and the world in one aspect only, namely as a continuing divine activity in history. This implies that in principle Israel's faith is grounded in a theology of history. It regards itself as based upon historical acts, and as shaped and re-shaped by factors in which it saw the hand of Jahweh at work... (106)
A world of religious concepts later systematically arranged is of course an abstraction, for such a thing never existed in Israel in so complete and universal a way... There were up and down the land many traditions which little by little combined into ever larger complexes of tradition. Theologically, these accumulations were in a state of constant flux. Religious thought cannot be seperated out from these traditions and represented thus in abstract. If we divorced Israel's confessional utterances from the divine acts in history which they so passionately embrace, what a bloodless ghost we would be left with! If, however, we put Israel's picture of her history in the forefront of our theological consideration, we encounter what appropriately is the most essential subject of a theology of the Old Testament, the living word of Jahweh coming on and on to Israel for ever, and this in the message uttered by his mighty acts. It was a message so living and actual for each moment that it accompanied her on her journey through time, interpreting itself afresh to every generation, and informing every generation what it had to do." (112)
These two quotes come from Volume 1 of Gerhard Von Rad's Old Testament Theology. Reading them reminded me that there is a reason the Bible does not include a systematic theology within it. We so strongly desire a god like the Greeks described that we forget the importance of the God of all gods, who walks among us and literally does life with us!
Currently I am reading Tom Sine's Mustard Seed vs. McWorld, in which he attacks current-day Christianity on the grounds of it being ruled by a dualistic version of discipleship (Plato; physical is bad, spiritual is good), modernity (Western progress, objective truth), and the American dream/nationalism (everything this blog stands against). So what does this have to do with Von Rad's quotes above? Everything.
I believe that the people who wrote the Bible were amazingly in touch with what was going on in the world around them. They saw God working through history right up to their current time in such a way that they could look around them and see what God was blessing, what God was allowing to thrive but would soon destroy, and what God was already dismantling in their world. These days we often assume God isn't extremely active in our world because he only cares about getting us into heaven (where we float on clouds and play harps). We don't really look for God working once we give up on any walk on water, part the seas, kinds of miracles happening around us. And of course, as rugged individualist Americans, we have taken it upon ourselves to push a "Christian" agenda on the world, tied closely with capitalism, materialism, and ignorance.
What Von Rad is challenging us to do is to get into the muck and mire of our world right here and now and see what God is doing. We are to look back on history, the past 1900 years included, and see how God has acted and continues to act. It's from this standpoint that we then describe God. Before we begin shouting his amazing attributes and systematically writing them down in 500-page treatises, we open our eyes and look around. We have our heads in the clouds too often, and really need to stop and look. I think every day we have to reinterpret who "God for us" really is today, and what it looks like to live in a relationship with him. God is active, and requires active participation to be with.
Jahweh is on the move. What is he doing in our time? What is he calling us to do?
Peace,
Matt
1 comment:
Great post. The Bible's view of God, specifically in the OT, always confronts my understanding of how to do theology. There is a kind of declarative theology (e.g., God says, "I am like this..."), but thankfully God is not one to rest on laurels. Yahweh always backs up the statements with actions. I agree with others who say that Israel would never have known Yahweh was a delivering God if Yahweh had never delivered Israel from Egypt. I enjoy systematic theology more now than I have in the past, but not as the pinnacle of the Christian life or the apex of Christian thought. I think the character of John Ames in Marilynne Robinson's excellent novel Gilead says it well: "Doctrine is not belief, it's only one way of talking about belief." Makes me wonder with excitement what are the other ways of talking about belief and how do we engage in them? (Have you read Gilead? Based on what you seem to enjoy reading, I think you would like it. It's the first novel to receive the Lousville Grawemeyer award in religion. The award's previous winners include Moltmann and Volf.)
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