The Myth of Divine Intervention (and other things Genesis may teach us about God)

I feel like I jumped around a bit in that last post. If I did, I'm sorry about that. I'm struggling to summarize Walton's ideas because it's difficult to know what I need to capture now and to predict what I'll be able to come back to later. As he finishes his Introduction to Genesis with a look at what the book reveals about God, he mentions often that most of this will come up again, so I don't feel quite as anxious about accidentally leaving out something important.

Something he brought out in the previous section that I didn't mention was our tendency to make Genesis about the human characters in it. This is related to our wanting to turn it into a book about moral instruction. We want to look at Abraham and the others and - based on their actions - figure out how to please God. But that's not what it's about. Genesis isn't about the human characters at all. It's a book about God and its primary purpose is to show us what God is like.

Take the story of Creation. Whatever else it is - and Walton promises to get more into that later - its primary objective is to show that God is sovereign. Sovereign in the sense that he's in charge and in the sense that only he is in charge. The idea that God doesn't share power with other deities isn't big news to us, but it would've been to ancient Near Easterners or anyone else from a pagan, polytheistic culture.

Another difference between now and then - and a more important one for modern thinkers - is that ancient people saw a direct relationship between deity and nature. We look at pagan sacrifices and know that's how they thought, but we mostly dismiss that relationship if we even think about it at all. We talk about and pray for "divine intervention" because we believe God and nature to be separated. As Walton puts it, "To intervene in something it must be to some extent independent of the one intervening. One cannot speak of a teacher's intervention into a course that he is teaching." Genesis' original audience would have thought it ridiculous if not outright heretical to imagine that God needed to be asked to influence nature. What makes this so vital to our consideration is Walton's assertion that this ancient view of God is exactly what Genesis is trying to reveal. In other words, if we see God as separated from his Creation, we've got a very, fundamentally flawed view of who he is.

I've got to admit that this is a little uncomfortable for me, because I have that flawed view. I do presently, anyway. I'm eager to dig more into this and see how it works. Well, first to verify if it works, but I like Walton's thinking enough so far that I'm inclined to trust him. At least enough to follow him for a while and see where he's going. If Genesis does in fact bear out what he's saying about God's connectedness with his Creation, then I'm eager to see how that plays out in the modern world.

Walton also covers a bit about covenants in this last part of the Intro. We often see covenants in terms of salvation, but really they go back to the idea of God's revealing himself to humanity. Walton doesn't think in terms of multiple covenants (one for Abraham, one for Moses, one for David, and one for Christendom); he thinks in terms of phases of a single covenant between God and his people. In each phase, God reveals something new about himself - starting with his relationship with Abraham and culminating in the ultimate revelation: his coming to Earth in human form. Walton promises to trace this in detail as he goes through Genesis, so I'm looking forward to that as well.

The Face of God at Face Value

As I'm digging deeper into John H Walton's commentary on Genesis, I'm pleased to find that he agrees with his editor about the focus on revelation. Not because I think authors and editors should always necessarily agree, but God's revealing himself through the book of Genesis was what I'd sort of latched onto myself as a major theme, so I'm glad I don't have to rethink that. I foresee a lot of thinking in this project, but it's nice not to have to begin by learning that my primary assumption was wrong.

In the comments to an earlier post, Kurt encouraged me to "look for the Covenants," and that's exactly the approach that Walton takes as well. But before he gets there, he first looks at and dismisses a couple of other possible purposes for the book.

What's most exciting to me about Walton's approach is the honesty with which he approaches the text. I have an uncle who once described himself as a Seeker After Truth. It's a label that's stuck with me and that I've tried to live up to myself. I want to pursue truth no matter where the search takes me, and Walton apparently feels the same way.

For that reason, he's adamant about taking Genesis at "face value." He doesn't mean by that a literal interpretation of the book. What he means is that he wants as fully as possible to understand what Genesis meant to its original audience and take that meaning at face value. If that flies in the face of current science, then he's willing - because of his faith in the book's inspiration - to disregard science. But if - on the other hand - it contradicts some things that religious people have thought and taught for more than two thousand years... he's willing to follow it there, too. In other words, he wants to find out what the book is really trying to say and then believe it, whatever the consequences. That's bold and honest. I love it.

Whatever the purpose of Genesis then, it's got to take into account the entire book. For that reason Walton disregards biography and history as possible purposes. There's just too much information that the book leaves out. It doesn't make sense as a history book for the sake of history.

He also discounts the book as being about moral instruction. That's the approach that I've most heard taken, but if it's meant to teach us about morality, why is it so silent about the morality behind so many decisions? Was Lot wrong to choose the land he did? Was Isaac wrong to prefer Esau over Jacob? Was Jacob wrong to be so deceptive? Was Joseph wrong to imprison Simeon? We can make moral judgments about these people, but Genesis rarely ever does. Not even when Abram and then Isaac lie about their wives.

So Walton reaches the same conclusion Kurt did. It's a book about covenant history. The first couple of chapters reveal that God created the world to be perfectly connected with him, but it went horribly wrong. Chapters 2 - 11 reveal the need for people to have a relationship with God. Chapters 11 - 36 reveal God's establishing that relationship with Abram and the other patriarchs in Palestine. Then chapters 37-50 reveal what Walton calls the "incubation" of that relationship as the patriarchs moved to Egypt.

I've just tried to sum up about twenty pages full of fascinating information, so I've of course had to leave a ton of stuff out. I expect that Walton will revisit some of it as he moves through the book, so I hope to be able to talk more then about the various genres in Genesis. For example, our modern expectations of how, say, a genealogy works aren't necessarily the same as how ancient Near Eastern people read them. That's important stuff because it affects how we understand, for instance, Methusaleh's apparently reaching the age of 969. But it'll have to keep until later.

One thing I do want to capture here though - because it may not come up again - is the question of authorship. Though Genesis itself makes no claims about its author, tradition cites Moses and Walton doesn't see any reason to doubt it. He's unsure whether Moses was the primary author or more of an editor, but he doesn't see either option as a threat to Genesis' status as an inspired document. The books of Chronicles freely admit to being edited from other documents and no believer is concerned that that somehow makes them less valid as the Word of God.

The next section of the Introduction covers what Genesis actually reveals about God, after which Walton will begin digging into the book. Hope you're looking forward to that as much as I am.

Equality vs Heirarchy: Which Does God Prize?

I've got some friends and at least one close relative who struggle with God. They believe in God, but they don't agree with him - or at least think they don't - so they reject him. One of the biggest issues is the concept of hierarchy vs equality.

In studying Genesis more carefully, I'm hoping to resolve some things in my own mind about the difference between the wrathful, apparently quick-acting God of the Old Testament and the merciful, infinitely patient God of the New. Between the God who at first look appears to have instigated a patriarchal, racist, slavery-tolerant culture and the one who claims to have removed all gender, racial, and class barriers. I've got ideas about how that works, but I'm looking forward to testing them.

I'm barely into John H Walton's commentary on Genesis, but he's already brought up this important issue in his Introduction. Addressing the need to bring the original audience's culture into the discussion of any Biblical writing, Walton points out that there are huge differences between modern, Western culture and the ancient, Near Eastern culture that readers of Genesis are assumed by the writer to be familiar with.

He has a long chart that illustrates this, but one theme continually pops up in entry after entry. In the modern West, we prize individualism: egocentric identities, independence, uniqueness, and equality. In the ancient Near East, they prized socialism: group-centric identities, interdependence, conformity, and hierarchy. We still see evidence of those kinds of values in the Near and Middle East today.

Without casting any judgments about this yet, it's important and eye-opening to realize that the culture Genesis was written in (and to) didn't care about independence and equality like we do. I'm hesitant to try to foresee Walton's point in bringing this up, but I expect to find out that God worked in that existing culture rather than divinely ordain it himself. That would go a long way towards explaining some of the - from our perspective - heinous things he appears to have allowed in the Old Testament.

On the other hand, it's also possible that ancient Near Eastern culture developed that way because of God's influence. This is one of the things I'll be trying to figure out in this study.

In the beginning...

I've been thinking about the idea of revelation a lot lately because I've been studying Ephesians where Paul talks about glory (Ephesians 1:11-14; 3:20-21). Which reminded me of 2 Corinthians 3 and Exodus 33 and all that stuff I wrote about on Sunday. But what got me thinking about it as a major theme in the Bible is the commentary I'm reading on Genesis.

I've struggled with Genesis for a long time; especially the first 6-11 chapters. I grew up with a very literal interpretation of the Creation account, Noah, and the Tower of Babel, but as I've grown older I'm not as easily able to accept that the literal interpretation is the one we're supposed to take. I'm not saying that it's not; I just honestly don't know.

Because I don't know, I'm neither equipped for nor interested in debating things like Macro-Evolution, the Day-Age theory or the Omphalos hypothesis. It's a fascinating subject to think about and I don't mind a gentle and curious discussion of it, but since it's ultimately unknowable in this lifetime I don't find it worth arguing over. I do believe that God created the universe; I've just been willing not to sweat the details of how he did it.

Having said all that, my curiosity about it - and the book of Genesis in particular - is itching enough that I'm no longer content with shrugging my shoulders when the subject comes up. I want to at least know where I stand, even if I don't think it's important to convince anyone else to join me there. A while back I borrowed the NIV Application Commentary volume on Genesis from a friend of mine and I've finally decided to bump it to the top of my reading pile.

I love the NIV Application series. It's my primary reference for all of my Bible study because I love the approach it takes. Each section of Scripture is talked about in three parts. First, it analyzes what the text likely meant to it's original audience. Then it looks at the concepts in the passage that are timeless, rather than applicable only to the specific culture of the original audience. Finally, it makes application of those timeless concepts to the church in the modern West. All three of those are vital components of understanding and applying Scripture and too few commentaries manage to appropriately balance them.

I also like that the volumes aren't all written by the same guy or group of guys. No one can be an expert in every book of the Bible and the editors of this series recognize that. They hire a scholar of that particular book - someone who's spent a lifetime loving and studying that book - to write the volume covering it. For that reason, I know I'm in good hands with John H Walton, the author of the volume on Genesis.

Not that I expect to just lap up whatever theories and interpretations Walton endorses. I haven't done that on the other volumes in the series and won't start now. But I fully anticipate reading some well-researced thoughts that will get my mind working and developing my own theories and interpretations. Which I plan to share here.

I've already noticed one thing I want to mention. In the Editor's Preface, the series editor explains his take on Genesis and he claims that it's all about... get this... revelation. Now, in the other volumes of the series I've studied, the series' editor and the volume's author don't always agree on the primary focus of the book under study, so I have no idea if Walton will agree with the editor's assessment here.

But it's always fascinating to me to see these themes recur throughout Scripture. How I was introduced to the concept of Christian Suffering in my study of John's Revelation and then kept seeing it reappear throughout Paul's letters and Mark's gospel. How Paul clued me in that God's trying to reveal himself to the world and now here it is again as (possibly) a major focus of Genesis. I'll be paying close attention to see what Walton has to say about that.

The Face of God and Salvation

This is an addendum to my previous post where I boiled down all of Scripture to the simple idea that God is trying to reveal himself to humanity. I realized after I posted it that I never explicitly mentioned salvation or the gospel, so I want to fix that. I meant to imply those concepts, but including them in the idea of revelation probably deserves some spelling out.

First of all, I really sort of don't like the word "gospel." As an English translation of a Greek word, it's very unhelpful in defining what we're talking about. Even the term Good News is pretty vague. Good News about what exactly? And depending on how we think about it and present it, the Good News doesn't always sound so good. Even if we don't come right out and say it, the way we deliver it can come across as, "God really would love to send you to Hell, but lucky for you he gave you a loop-hole. Do you know Jesus?" I have to believe that people who communicate it that way are doing so because that's truly their perception of God.

I've taken to using the term "God's message." That's really all the gospel is. It's something God wants the world to know. And, like I was saying in the other post, that has everything to do with his revealing himself to us.

Here's the story of the Bible in its essence:

In the beginning, humanity not only knew God, we walked with him and talked with him and looked him in the face. What's more, we were like him. We were made "in his image;" a spiritual likeness that involves a lot more than humanoid features and the ability to reason. But selfishness crept in and we walked away from all that. We gave up being like God and did things the way we wanted to because that's how we wanted to do them.

Ever since then, God's been trying to remind us what we gave up. He's been trying to show himself to us so that we'll want to be with him again. Want to be like him again. That's what Noah was about. That's what Abraham was about. That's what the nation of Israel was about. And that's what Jesus was about.

Jesus perfected it though. Not only by showing us in a physical way what God looks like, but also by removing the last barrier between us and God. Sin is nothing more than non-God-likeness. It's the opposite of God. It's acting in ways that God doesn't act. That's why it separates us from him. It's the very definition of disconnection from God. But Jesus removed that barrier. Or, at least, the consequences of it.

Sin still exists. We can still disconnect ourselves from God, but the miracle of Christ's death is that we don't have to stay disconnected. Because God's shown us what he's like, we now know who we're trying to connect to. Because Christ died, we now have nothing keeping us from making that connection. And the Holy Spirit... well, that is the connection. It's all about connecting to God and being transformed back into his image again (2 Corinthians 3:18). But the first step is seeing the image.

Which goes back to where I left off in the last post. Our job is to help the world see the image. That's what the Good News is. God's message to the world is, "Here's what I'm like; you can be like this too." John very succinctly sums up what God is like in 1 John 4. He says it twice (in verses 8 and 16): "God is love."

People are hungry for love. And they know that they are. Our job, as God's people, is to give it to them. God's message to them is, "You can have love. You can be love." And that... that is very good news.

Looking at the Face of God

Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory."

And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live."

Then the LORD said, "There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen."

...When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the LORD had given him on Mount Sinai.

When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. But whenever he entered the LORD's presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the LORD.

Exodus 33:18-23; 34:29-35 (NIV)

As I've studied the writings of Paul, I've come to a new understanding of the word "glory." For most of my life, I've thought it was synonymous with "radiance" or "honor," and it does have connections with those words. But look what happened when Moses asked to see God's glory. God told him that "no one may see me and live." For God, revealing his glory was the same as looking him in the face. "You can't handle that," he said.

And I believe he was serious. I believe that we fragile, physical humans can't handle the full-on glory of God. Fortunately though, we can handle a glimpse. A look at the back. A peek at a reflection. Like Perseus' using his shield to see Medusa without suffering her deadly gaze. And I believe that the Bible is nothing more than the story of God's showing us how to do that.

What was Jesus if not a look at God? "When a man looks at me," he said, "he sees the one who sent me." (John 12:45) He told Pilate, "For this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth." (John 18:37) What truth? The truth about who God is. When Jesus claimed to be "the truth" (John 14:6), he was claiming to be the truth about who God is. He was claiming that he could accurately show us God. Not in full, face-on, spiritual glory, but in the only way we're capable of experiencing him: as a physical representation.

Before Jesus left the world, he made a promise to his followers. "Don't be sad that I'm leaving," he said. "Because I have to leave in order for you to get something even better." I'm paraphrasing John 16:6-8, but that's essentially the message. Christ had to leave in order for the Holy Spirit to come. And he said that the Holy Spirit was better. "It is for your good that I am going away."

How is the Holy Spirit better than Christ? In the congregations I grew up in, that idea is almost heresy. How can anything be better than Christ? Not only that, but those congregations were so afraid of Pentecostal/charismatic theology that they were practically afraid of the Spirit. We didn't get taught a lot of John 16:6-8. We didn't want no scary Spirit taking up residence in our bodies.

But Jesus said that he had to leave so that "for your good" the Spirit could come. And that totally makes sense when you see Jesus' role as revealing God to humans. Jesus could show us what God's like, but the Spirit is God... living inside of us. Directly touching us. And not only that, but changing us into people who are also like him.

Talking about Moses' Law, Paul said, "Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?" (2 Corinthians 3:7-8) In other words, if God revealed himself through Moses and the Law and that was too much for the people to handle? How much more awesome will the revelation be when God contacts us directly through his Spirit?

In 2 Corinthians 3:9-11, Paul continues contrasting the Law with the Spirit. The Law, he says, may have revealed something about God, but it was also temporary and ultimately brought only condemnation. The Spirit, on the other hand, is permanent and brings righteousness. And he brings righteousness precisely because he's better at revealing God. After all, he is God.

We're not like the people of Israel who had to look at God through the veiled, reflected glory on Moses' face. "The Lord is the Spirit," Paul writes, "and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3:17-18) Because we have the Spirit, we're directly connected with God. He not only shows us what he's like, he transforms us into people who are just like him, so that his revelation to us is ever-increasing. As he reveals more, we change more, and he reveals still more, and the cycle continues. That's way better than just seeing God in someone else. Even if that someone is Jesus Christ.

Our job then, is to pass it on. To reveal God (that is, "glorify" him) to those who haven't yet seen him. In the absence of Jesus' physical body, God has us, his Spirit-filled surrogates, the Body of Christ. Giving the world a look at the face of God.

How are we doing with that?

The Tangible Kingdom

This just went on my To Read list:



More info at TangibleKingdom.com.

Christian or Believer?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the name "Christian" and whether or not I want to wear it in a world that distrusts people who call themselves that. I've been using "believer" and "follower" and "God's people" almost exclusively.

So this article by Jason Byassee is very much talking to me:

There’s some sleight of hand here. Imagine a banker in the current financial crisis objecting when you name her job description. “I’m not a banker, I’m a cashier.” You would be unimpressed. Or a Major League Baseball player seeking distance from the steroid scandal this way: “No no no, I’m not a baseball player, I’m a second baseman.” It’s as if my alma mater, Davidson College, disgraced itself in some horrible way. When people cluck their tongues at me, I cleverly respond: “Not me, I’m innocent, I’m not from Davidson, I’m just a Wildcat.” I’d be fooling no one. So too with these non-Christian Christians.

Byassee's point of view is that we need to own our past and even the uglier side of our present. Not to be proud of it, but cop to it and beg forgiveness for it. And, like the elbow can't only claim allegiance with the head while disavowing a connection with the wrist, we can't pick and choose which Christians we accept as part of God's family. Byassee says that we can't claim Mother Theresa without also having some responsibility for Pat Robertson.

This gives me something to think about. Because oh man how I don't want anything to do with Pat Robertson. I don't want Jesus to have anything to do with Pat Robertson either, but as I type those words, I realize how wrong they are. I don't know Robertson and I certainly don't know what his deal is, but if I want grace to cover my sins, I have to let it cover his too. That doesn't mean I have to hug him, but I do need to be very careful about judging him.

And whatever else I do, I certainly need to rethink whether or not I want to let him define "Christianity" for me.