The goal of God's self-revelation (in the Old Testament)

Taken from Brevard Childs' Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context.

If one asks what was God's purpose, that is, his motivation in revealing himself, the Old Testament is silent. However, if one asks what was God's purpose, that is, his goal toward which his self-disclosure pointed, then the Old Testament is eloquent in its response. God revealed himself that all may see and know who God is:

I am Yahweh, and there is no other;

besides me there is no God;

I gird you, though you do not know me,

that men may know, from the rising of the sun

and from the west, that there is none besides me;

I am Yahweh, and there is no other ...

I am Yahweh, who do all these things. (Isa 45:5-7).

Or again, the prophet Ezekiel never wearies of grounding God's purpose with the formula: 'that you may know Yahweh' - and thus have life.

Characteristic features of God's self-disclosure

The following is taken from Childs' Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 41:

In spite of the great variety of emphases within the Old Testament as to how God is known, there are certain characteristic patterns which emerge:

(a) The God of the Old Testament consistently takes the initiative in his pursuit of mankind. 'Adam, where are thou?' He takes the lead, whether in patriarchal narrative or prophetic oracle, to bring a new and fresh dimension of wonder.

(b) God is not limited to any one means of revelation, but his coming is one of surprise. He spoke to Moses in the fire and thunder, but then chose to disappoint Elijah in not repeating the fireworks. Instead, he let his presence be known in the still, small voice (1 Kings 19.12). The frequent use of irony in this context seems almost to suggest a form of divine humour (cf. the stories of Balaam, Naaman, Jonah).

(c) God both reveals and conceals his identity to Israel. What first seems to be the divine form itself soon emerges as only his outward manifestation: his 'glory', 'messenger' or 'face'. Moses is permitted to converse with God 'face to face', but what he sees is only his fleeting back (Ex. 33.23). When the prophet Isaiah sees the Lord as king, only the smallest tip of his robe engulfs the temple (Isa. 6.1).

(d) It is characteristic of the Old Testament revelation of God's presence to move quickly from the vision to that which is spoken. Jacob, terrified before the awesome theophany, receives a verbal promise (Gen. 28.13ff), as do Abraham and Moses. Because God speaks, his primary medium is his word. He communicates to the patriarchs by calling them by name. If at times his voice is in the thunder, the qôl YHWH soon becomes an interpreted word which Israel can understand. In the prophetic literature the vision is usually subordinated to the all-encompassing force of the word of God: 'Thus saith the Lord.'

(e) The god of the Old Testament is never viewed as a monolithic unchanging entity. The elements of his eternity are held in tension with the imagery of great movement an action (Ezek. 1.4ff.). His transcendence does not undercut his immanence, nor his mysterious otherness his gracious presence. It was not by chance that the Christian church felt constrained to respond to this biblical witness of the Old Testament in trinitarian terminology.

My take on "verbal revelation"

I recently quoted James Smart, who claims that

revelation is in the text itself, in the words ... It is through these words and no others that God intends to speak to us, and, when he does, we know that there is no other kind of inspiration than verbal inspiration.

Criticisms were made in the comments. Particularly insightful were those of Bob Macdonald:

Torah is not text but engagement with the one to who the text points. The medium is neither the messenger nor the source of the message (emphasis mine).

I agree with both points of view. They don't contradict each other, rather, they are pointing to two different dimensions of the issue. Smart's comment refers to the place where revelation is accessed now, whereas Bob's comment refers to the revelation itself. Revelation itself is, as Barth put it, the reality of God-with-us (Immanuel), and this is hardly a text but a living reality.

Nevertheless, what does it mean to say that “God is with us”? What is the nature of this reality? Our dogmatic assumptions must shape our approach to the text.

In the Bible, God's self revelation is seen as progressive (Exodus 6:3). The “one to whom the text points” is a profound being (Andrew Louth puts it eloquently here), one that needs to be sought. He certainly reveals himself suddenly and without expectation—and still does!—but he also hides himself and wishes to be found. In the Old Testament he is to be sought at specific places: cultic centres and ultimately the temple. He also reveals himself through the laws of the universe (the burden of Wisdom literature), through his written Torah, through the example and teaching of elders, priests, and parents. Within this universe, text is at least one medium of revelation.

Within this unfolding story of the Bible, however, we see that texts take on more and more significance. Moses receives his revelation directly from God, but he writes it down and the text becomes the vehicle of ongoing revelation and guidance (see my post, God, Moses, and Scripture). According to Jer 36, Jeremiah has his prophecies written on a scroll which survives to speak to new generations. C. Seitz summarises the implications of this chapter as follows:

the chapter tells of the victory of the Word of God. The king can kill prophets who speak God's word (see Jer 25:23); he can debar God's spokesman from the temple (Jer 36:5); he can callously burn God's word in a brazier until the entire thing is consumed (Jer 36:23). But the prophet lives to speak the word anew, and the scroll is recomposed (Jer 36:32). And more to the point: the new scroll will outlive the divine spokesman and the evil generation headed by Jehoiakim. In the end, God's word cannot be thwarted (ZAW 101:1, 1989, p. 14).

Indeed, Seitz sees a parallel between Jeremiah's scribe Baruch and Moses's successor Joshua:

just as Joshua brough new tables of the tôrāh to a new generation in a new day, so too the scribe Baruch symbolizes the survival of a new scroll from the prophet Jeremiah which will address a new generation of faith “in all the places to which (it) may go” (Jer 45:5) (p. 18).

He concludes that in Jer 45

we see a foreshadowing of the movement of prophecy into a new mode, as clarified in a later rabbinic dictum: “Since the day when the Temple was destroyed, prophecy has been taken from the prophets and given to the wise” (B. Bathra 12a).

We need to add to this our growing understanding of the nature of Biblical tradition itself, which went through a process of textualization or “inscripturation.” We see this in particular in the case of the “Book of the Twelve.” The “reality of revelation” within time and space to particular prophets is one thing, but within the context of God's economy of salvation it seems that the witness to this original Word has been enriched and expanded so that its true dimensions, understood with the advantage of hindsight (e.g. exilic redaction), find literary (“verbal”) expression in the final form of the text.

This is the conclusion of a scholar not known for his commitment to “synchronic” reading: Jörg Jeremias. See his comments on the literary (though not "historical" - in the narrow sense of the word) interrelation of Hosea and Amos:

The book of Amos very probably never existed without Am 7:10-17, and 7:10-17 very probably never existed without its hermeneutical key in Am 7:9. this verse urges the reader not to perceive Amos as an isolated prophet but to relate his message to the message of Hosea. They are to be seen as two messengers with one common message … .

The curiosity of the modern historian about the specific and singular elements in one prophet was quite alien to the traditionists. They did not want the words of either Hosea or Amos to be read with historical interest for a distant past but with a current interest in their words as a help for present problems. They were asking about the one message of God by two messengers (but without creating something like Tatian's harmony of the gospels). … (1996: 181, 182-183)

(I've posted a similar quote by Jermias in German, in Canon and the essence of prophecy)

This is simply a brilliant way to express the key concern of Childs' canonical approach. See also my thread on New Testament scholar Paul Minear, who holds that the Bible's view of “reality” should challenge that of the historian's - with hermeneutical implications.

Heaven and Historiography

I've just finished one of the most fascinating books I've read in a long time. Paul Minear traces the divergences in perspective between the modern historian and New Testament authors. He isn't so much concerned to argue for the superiority of the New Testament's views on eschatology, ontology, and cosmology (how could one do that anyway?) as to show the methodological implications for the historian if he or she were to actually hold this worldview. Faith and the academy are not as easy to separate as some would like to think.

I've read the book far too quickly to give an adequate introduction so I'll just post his overview of one of my favouriate chapters: "Biblical Ontology and Ecclesiology" (doesn't that title just send a shiver down your spine?).

These apostolic and prophetic attitudes toward time become the central concern in the fourth chapter, where I analyze the challenges presented to the historian by specific texts in the book of Revelation. The category of history does not appear in these texts and it becomes quite misleading when the texts are forced into conformity to the modern category. By contrast the category of the heavens, so absent from modern historical discussion, is assumed to be the ultimate reality. Historians are primarily concerned with placing all events within earthly time and the temporal process; biblical writers are essentially concerned with the eternal purposes and time-transcending activity of the creator of the heavens and the earth. Moreover, in sharp contrast to modern thought, which tends to reduce the heavens and the earth to spatial measurement, biblical writers assume the basic and continual interpenetration of the two realms, with the heavens providing the creative source, the daily sustenance, and the final goal of everything earthly. Because the categories of space and time are no longer of use in measuring heavenly realities, biblical thought makes dubious the modern scholar's reliance on those categories (23).

Canon: The History of a Relationship

The shape of the biblical text reflects a history of the encounter between God and Israel. Canon serves to describe this unique relationship and to define the scope of this history by establishing an end to the process. It assigns a special quality to this particular segment of history which is deemed normative for all future generations of this community of faith. The significance of the final form of the biblical literature is that it alone bears witness to the full history of revelation.

B.S. Childs (who else?), The Canonical Shape of the Prophetic Literature, in: Interpretation 32 (1978) 46-55, here 47.