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 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 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: Jer 1:1-10.
The work of the forgiver: Jer 30-33.
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.