Judgment and Forgiveness: The Prophets
Reading: Romans 1:17.
- After Disobedience
Philosophers and theologians (especially Pelagians and Arminian & Calvinist Augustinians) tend to sketch our relationship with God in terms of divine and human agency interacting at the level of individual choice.
However, Deut 31-32, the 'latter' prophets, and Romans 9-11 focus on Israel as a people, and as experiencing both.
The Deuteronomic covenant's blessings and curses are theoretically options (30:19), but practically they're destinies (31:16-19):
-
| death |
life |
| disobedience |
obedience |
| vice |
virtue |
| forgetting |
remembrance |
| folly |
wisdom |
| idolatry |
worship |
- In contrast to typical philosophical and theological treatments of divine-human agency, in the Bible
- God engages societies/cultures/peoples, not just individuals.
the covenantal trajectory is not simply reward or punishment of attitude or conduct (cf. Islam),
but judgment and restoration through grace (good news).
- Case Study: Jeremiah
The office of a prophet:
- Appointed with God's word "over nations and kingdoms, to uproot ... and to plant" (Jer 1:1-10).
- The burden of judgment:
- Oracles of judgment deliver and illuminate God's acts of judgment (Jer 1-28, 34, 44-51).
The volume of judgments compiled in the major prophets is burdensome, reflecting a prophet's long and apparently ineffective career.
Their audiences largely resist them and persecute God's messengers, but a few have ears to hear (Jer 35-43).
- The work of the restorer: Jer 39-33.
The legacy of history: Jer 52.
- The subsequent course of events vindicates the true prophet and renarrates the prophet's previous career.
- New Testament fulfillments:
- Jesus' advent, appointment of disciples, ministry, rejection, atonement, restorations, Pentecost, coming parousia
(i.e., life from the Father, death in the Son, and resurrection through the Holy Spirit).
Ways of Engagement
God's prophetic way of 'engaging a culture' is revolutionary and remaking, by the power of the Holy Spirit upon us.
- This compares with other modes of engagement in Israel and especially Jesus' career:
patriarchs (beginning, going/following, bequeathing: manifesting the Spirit before us),
kings (commanding, authorizing, judging: manifesting the Spirit over us),
sages
(contemplating, discipling, wooing, training: manifesting the Spirit in us), and
priests (interceding, healing, teaching: manifesting the Spirit into and through us).
- All of these involve 'grace' directed at 'nature' through various means:
- nurture (patriarchal?),
legacy and blessing (patriarchal?),
evangelism, preaching, and words of knowledge (prophetic?),
sacraments, blessings, sacred space and objects (priestly?),
prayer and encouragement (priestly?),
authority and influence (royal?),
service (royal?),
advocacy (royal?),
analysis and insight (sagistic?),
strengthening presence (sagistic?), etc.
- Means of grace are treated differently in distinct later Christian traditions:
- Catholics/Wesleyans (and Orthodox): God infuses justifying/divinizing grace and sanctifying virtue.
Lutherans: God imputes grace with the power of the gospel, received (and lived out) in faith.
Both: The church is God's instrument for continuing this mission.
- Human choice is responsive, and remains integral to our relationship with God.
