I have never been a big fan of some of the OT though the stories are certainly interesting. I have just finished Genesis and the opening chapters of Job. So what is that about ‘the council of the gods’ complete with ‘the satan’ (the accuser / adversary) present and in dialogue with God. OK I know some people make that fit into their theology, but I think I will give that one a miss. We do read the internal conflict that seems to be present as their theology is developed; compare these two texts on the same incident:
Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, count the people of Israel and Judah” (2 Sam. 24:1).
and the later reflection acquits God of this action and applies it directly to Satan:
Satan stood up against Israel and incited David to count the people of Israel. So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, “Go, number Israel, from Beer-sheba to Dan, and bring me a report, so that I may know their number” (1 Chron. 21:1,2).
Maybe we can say that the later reflection is that Satan simply fulfils the will of God; all neat and tied up! Doesn’t cut it for me.
And in Genesis and again in Job we get some way dodgy theology. The brothers sold Joseph to Egypt and obviously are a tad worried once they later meet up and Joseph is the one who is second in command to the mighty Pharaoh. They fear he will take revenge, but he assures them that
Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today (Gen. 50:20).
So it was not you who sent me here but God (Gen. 45:8).
Joseph sees the hand of God throughout, but I think he does rather overstate it! Jumping forward to Job we get some well known verses that Job utters after he loses everything, including his own offspring:
[T]he Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21).
Yes we can take hold of such verses that help us understand that we won’t understand certain events / tragedies that take place… but the Lord taking away in that way? I don’t think so.
To simply endorse the above as ‘good theology’ as opposed to ‘good responses’ presents us with a God who does good and exercises evil as and when. That goes far beyond ‘I don’t have an answer’. The ‘sovereignty of God’ when stretched to that extent seems to badly portray God. Submission in the light of a lack of total sight is one thing, but to attribute activities such as that to God is something else.
It does help that Job seems to be a story that is set up to force a dialogue in the wisdom tradition – with Proverbs ‘do this and good happens, do that and bad happens’; Job with ‘a good geezer but bad things happened’; and Ecclesiastes with ‘the most fortunate human is a dead one for all is vanity’. That dialogue is still ongoing and those three books set it out for us.
We cannot simply lift a text here and there and then have our theology… the story of Scripture that points to the revelation of God in Jesus is the guiding narrative. Jesus might give us a different take on some OT events, for when he encountered the story of ‘judgement from God on a people’ he seemed to more put it down to ‘one of those things that happen’!
At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the other people living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.” (Luke 13:1-5).
There is judgement against wrongdoing recorded in both testaments, but Jesus seemed to emphasise that for our own good we should dismount the high horse of knowing it all. In so doing we might end up also with some dodgy theology – maybe simply different to the dodgy beliefs that can be espoused when on the horse, but hopefully with more humility and without the need to resort to the strange ‘God is sovereign’ response. For sure when we pray ‘let your kingdom come’ it might come through a strange path but probably not as a result of an active plan worked out between God and the Satan with us trying to work out ‘did God do this’ or ‘it was the work of Satan’.
Still great to read the Old Testament… but so glad we got Jesus the image of God.
