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A podcast focusing on issues related to nonviolence, and a member of the Kingdom Outpost.
Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. Circumscribing God. I often read the Bible with an air of arrogance. Sometimes I elevate myself above the foolish Israelites who, even after seeing God part the Red Sea or deliver them from empire, still choose to rebel against this omnipotent and benevolent God. At other times, I'm appalled at the ancient Near East's barbaric practices, like that of sacrificing their own children to the gods.
Derek:Clearly, I am so much better than they are. But perhaps there is no greater area in which my pride is pandered than when reading about ancient peoples and idolatry. How is it that people could be so ignorant and foolish as to attempt to house their gods in inanimate blocks of wood or stone. A few weeks ago, I read George Orwell's Politics in the English Language. Towards the end of the piece, Orwell said something which slapped me in the face as he revealed to me that I, in a way, am an idolater no better than those ignorant ancients depicted in the Bible.
Derek:Orwell said, quote, when you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly. And then if you wanna describe the thing you have been visualizing, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract, you are more inclined to use words from the start. And unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meanings as clear as one can through pictures and sensations.
Derek:Afterwards, one can choose, not simply accept the phrases that will best cover the meaning and then switch round and decide what impression one's words are likely to make on another person. End quote. If Orwell is right about how humans think and how words function, then words can, like wood or stone, be crafted and hewn to house the gods. Sure, words can provide explosive expressions which break out and color the world in accurate descriptions, but they can also take people, ideas, and gods captive. This is particularly true about a god who is spirit and abstract in many ways.
Derek:Orwell shows us how words can control and confine just as easily and perhaps more easily than they can express and describe. In being described, a thing often becomes circumscribed. When we're talking about circumscribing a finite thing, that may not be all too problematic. But when we attempt to circumscribe the God of gods, what have we become but idolaters who craft a home for our house deity so that we may control him in the comfort of our understanding. Perhaps another angle may help to elucidate my argument.
Derek:Voltaren de Clari made a similar point to Orwell when discussing the topic of legislation. He said, quote, make no laws whatever concerning speech and speech will be free. So soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you'll have a 100 lawyers proving that freedom does not mean abuse nor liberty license and they will define and define freedom out of existence, end quote. To name a thing is either to declare equality with or power and dominion over that thing. This is something we see in the Garden of Eden where Adam names Eve, his equal, and also names the animals.
Derek:We also see the idea of naming in the Old Testament where God declares in Exodus 23 that my name is in him, referring to the angel of the Lord, presumably a theophany. Naming, defining, and legislating are all forms of equality or dominion or control or identity or authority. With that equality or authority comes the power to manipulate. There's extreme power in circumscription, whether that's a circumscription in a physical object or in verbal and written words. Despite the potential for the idolatry of words, most of us are stuck with a rigid definition of what idolatry means.
Derek:In my denomination, there are quite a number of individuals who believe that depicting Jesus in images is idolatrous regardless of the intent behind those images. It doesn't matter if the purpose of our visual images is to teach rather than to worship as the ancient Near East did with their house idols. To depict Jesus in the form of an image is to circumscribe God in an attempt to finitize the infinite. Yet isn't an image worth a thousand words? Wouldn't it be far less restrictive to an infinite God to circumscribe him in a thousand words than in circumscribing Him by defining Him in just a few?
Derek:How is it that an image is any more confining than locking God into being depicted by words? How is it that describing God in strict terms is not doing exactly what Orwell and De Cleary warned us Didn't the Pharisees take the lex talionis with all biblical seriousness and at face value? And didn't Jesus subsequently overturn their understanding? Didn't all of Israel take the words of a vengeful Messiah slaughtering the Gentiles seriously and therefore seek a savior who would destroy others while uplifting them, the righteous ones? Yet didn't that suffering servant alter this understanding of the prophecies, prophecies which were seemingly so clearly expressed and defined in the very inanimate words of God?
Derek:As we read and contemplate the New Testament, we don't find God warring against the physical inanimate idols of the ancient Near East as He did for much of the Old Testament. And yet we find that idolatry didn't disappear at all. What we see is that what God wars against in the New Testament is no less an idolatry and rather an idolatry of words. God will not be imprisoned and entombed in any form that we seek to use to contain and constrain Him. Of course, what I'm arguing here has some serious implications for what we Protestants hold so dearly, the words of God as contained in scripture.
Derek:My goal here is not at all to argue against inerrancy per se or the importance of words, though you're free to do so yourself. My goal is rather to make us aware of how we moderns can fall into idolatry just like the ancient Near East or like the religious leaders of Jesus' day. There are forms of inerrancy and religion which are clearly idolatrous and circumscribe God into a confined box which can be controlled by those who wield the definitions. I want to expose such circumscription to avoid the bibliolatry which is common today. To do this, I'll briefly lay out four indicators which point towards the worshiping of a God idolized in words.
Derek:Number one, reducing the spirit. The Bible was written over thousands of years by tens of authors in three major languages. Even if one adheres to inerrancy, that inerrancy only applies to the original manuscript and the original languages. See article 10 of the Chicago statement on biblical inerrancy. As texts are edited, as words and meanings change over time, and as words are translated into different languages, there's no possible way that the words we have today are God's inerrant words to the same extent that they were originally.
Derek:Infallibly used? Sure. But even as one of the more stringent documents on inerrancy declares, only the autographs would be fully inerrant. If one's hope is in circumscribing God in words, recognizing this dissonance between the original expression and current translation can feel scary or devastating because our certainty of ideas and our control of God is lost. However, if one recognizes the centrality of the spirit to the Christian life, particularly in regard to discernment and abiding in Christ, then one recognizes that the power of God may often be brought through the words of God, but they are only effectual when brought and illuminated by the Spirit of God.
Derek:This means that the power and meaning of words are living when they are breathed by the Spirit. Any form of Christianity which minimizes the Spirit is likely flirting with idolatry as the Spirit blows wherever it wills, and denouncing or minimizing the Spirit is a quick way to ensure we don't have to deal with that which is out of our control. When the Bible becomes a tool to fondle our felt need for certainty or a means whereby we seek to control others, we discover that we have fashioned an idol. Number two, underrating narrative. People commonly conflate description with prescription when it comes to the Bible.
Derek:There's a lot which is described in the Bible that is not meant to be prescribed. I think much of this misunderstanding lies in the common notion that the Bible is a manual of sorts for our lives. Sure, there are significant parts of the Bible which are illuminating and convicting, but there's also much of the Bible, maybe the majority of the Bible really, which is narrative. It depicts stories. In fact, when we see God refer to Himself, He often refers to a narratival grounding of Himself as the grounding for faith.
Derek:I am the God who brought you out of slavery in Egypt. God less frequently points directly to any ambiguous or abstract attributes whose definition we can finagle. Rather, God points us to what He has done in the lives of the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us. There may be important textbook like sections of the Bible, but any view which downplays the importance and prevalence of narrative in the Bible and instead heavily favors prescription over description is likely courting idolatry. Number three, denying mystery.
Derek:I don't know that there are any Christian denominations which fully deny mystery as the Trinity and the Incarnation are often viewed as mysteries of sorts. However, that's where the mystery ends for a lot of Protestants. God is described and therefore circumscribed in most places. And this is one area where I think the Eastern Orthodox Church can provide some significant help as they are much more comfortable with mystery. They recognize the problems with trying to define God and place Him in a box.
Derek:Therefore, they have developed what they call apophaticism or negative theology. Apophaticism, rather than seeking to define God by declaring what He is, instead identifies what He is not. By discussing what God is not, we often get a clearer image of who God is, yet in a way which doesn't make us feel as though we have conquered an infinite God by defining Him in a finite way. Any view which feels the need to describe God and avoid mystery is one which has married itself to idolatry. Number four, denying development.
Derek:There are a lot of Christians who seem to think that the way God worked or revealed Himself in the past has to be the same way He reveals Himself through history all the time. They think that because God doesn't change, neither do His actions. Yet these people fail to recognize that while God doesn't change, He works with those who do. God's changing methodology in no way indicates that God is a changing God, but rather that God is a merciful and gracious God who stoops to incarnate Himself to where His people are. We could point to a multitude of ways in which God's revelation has changed in regard to practice, like circumcision versus baptism, or expectations, like allowing polygamy and divorce, to becoming more stringent on both.
Derek:While God's moral standards and requirements don't change, His grace and allowances do change in regard to the revelation He has given and the people to whom He's interacting. We recognize this in the individual sphere and call it sanctification. Ten years into our Christian walk, we look back and we praise God that He didn't judge us then for something we've only now come to fully realize the gravity of. A flat reading of the Bible which requires the denial of development is one which has almost assuredly steeped itself in an idolatry that seeks control. In conclusion, the primitive people of old enshrined their gods in statues and images.
Derek:Today, we primitive intellectuals enshrine God in words. When we view the Bible as the end of God's speech rather than a tool through which the Spirit begins and continues to speak, we have become idolaters. The small w word of God is intended to point us to the true capital W word, which is not a written word, but an image. The perfect image of God painted for us in a thirty three year long narrative. The incarnate Word is testified to us by the written Word.
Derek:The ultimate power of Jesus Christ lies not in the words He left with us, but in the Spirit which He died and interceded for on our behalf, that we might be partakers of Him as well, the Word in us, and multiply the narrative of the kingdom of God in communities of dependence and interdependence. This community living independence upon and growth in the Spirit is the antithesis of idolatry. Community of the body is a living organism, not a dead idol. Whereas idolatry seeks power and control, yet is lifeless, true Christianity connects itself to the living vine and becomes life filled hands and feet to the world in need. We become not the dead children of a God circumscribed in a tomb of words, but rather children of the God of Gods resurrected as the living Word incarnate.
Derek:That's all for now. So peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to nonviolence and Kingdom Living.