| ... things into which
angels long to look
Prophetic testimony is given to days that are coming when God will be the source of a new level of engagement with the good and the true as a possibility inscribed on human hearts. This possibility is given by God alone as the one able to rewrite the human heart—also attested by the same prophet as being desperately deceitful yet entirely culpable. Jeremiah gives testimony to another kind of writing—transformative writing—not on stone but in the inner being of humans. The heart is inscribed by God in an intimacy that by-passes the privileged criteria of knowledge and information. This writing is as accessible to the least, who are deprived of opportunity or education, as to the greatest, who are endowed with knowledge and rhetoric. The living word is not bound by any human construct, regardless of how some have thought Scripture should be read. v Today, with our horror at Marcion’s truncated little canon that excluded everything explicitly Hebrew (c. 150), any imbalance of focus in the use of both testaments of Christian Scripture has rightly been addressed. It is not a new thing for Christians to be living amid pluralism. Is there nevertheless a reticence to use the last part of Scripture, with its explicit claims to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in our self-consciously pluralist era? It would take the audacity of Marcion, in reverse of course, to quell the New Testament’s enthusiastic announcement that something truly momentous and unique has occurred with its focus on Christ the Lord. The gospels are everywhere bursting with excitement concerning the time fulfilled and good news that something truly momentous has occurred. In John, the stakes are raised considerably or at least explicitly, with testimony to the Son who comes from God in filial intimacy—whoever has seen me has seen the Father. Pertaining to the Son, the Spirit continues to be the triune presence and teacher within the believing community. Acts is permeated with news of a new-day dawned. Surrounded by a plethora of religious possibilities, this narrative of an exuberant church declares that no other name under heaven is finally adequate to the extraordinary testimony concerning human transformation they proclaim. In Pauline witness, Christian affirmations are fully-fledged as the fullness of time now present—the time of life in the Spirit, in tangible participation in days that were always coming. This is eschatology, by which is meant the future of God anticipated and now begun to be experienced in the Spirit. Hebrews too, gives this primary testimony, citing the many and varied ways in which God has spoken but now having spoken definitively in Jesus Christ. Hebrews twice recites Jeremiah’s announcement of a new covenant as it weaves a narrative that was always anticipated. Other epistles and Revelation consolidate the exalted themes of Christ as Lord of creation in whom all things have come into being and continue to cohere until the final drama in which God will make all things new through Christ, the Alpha and Omega of our existence. v The seeds of anticipation are everywhere sown—the longing or desire for a day when God will declare a new thing within creation. Yet this anticipation is accompanied by an ever-present divide between liberation and faithfulness, prophetic word and tangible deed, call to uniqueness and distinction among the nations. Where then does the uniqueness of Israel find its final purpose? Where are the promises fulfilled? Where does a nation sustained alone by Yahweh’s loving-kindness have its integral end? Where does a chosen people who are called to be out of nothing by a word that was always on the cusp of the new have its realisation? How will Israel be a blessing to the world so that after the Psalmist, God’s name is honoured among the nations? In what circumstances does Jacob’s nocturnal wrestling have its correlation in testimony, from the least to the greatest, that we have beheld his glory? The first hearers of the word of God sought a word and a time that would clarify these issues and inklings. With its message of judgment and salvation in both testaments, Christian Scripture never promises to deliver the self-justifying word for humans. What then does it mean to hear the prophets tell us variously, that all our righteousness is as filthy rags? What does it mean for us to hear the word of breaking down as a precursor to building up? What does it mean for us that the prophets looked forward to another time in which God will initiate a new thing, summoning the human good through redemptive grace and transformative life in the Spirit? What does it mean that the many words to and about God have their final focus in the Word who was always with God, who became flesh as the definitive expression of grace and truth for all our words and deeds? What then do we confess concerning the biblical story that is unique and distinct from any other explorations of this veritable library, however interesting these might be? What do we declare concerning a story that can be written indelibly on human hearts, simply, yet with profound dignity—in the delight of faith, as an imperative to tangible deeds and as a joy in our articulation of good news in Christ the Lord? Anticipation of the last part of Scripture and the need for it is already installed, excessively, in the first part—the longing or desire for a day when God will give the possibility and resources for a radically new horizon in human life. The last part of Christian Scripture is the antiphonic response to the first part with its anticipation of a day when God will do something entirely new. v It is somewhat trendy to cite the sheer diversity of thought and expression in the writings of Israel. This is misleading if within a Christian perspective, diversity is assumed to be an end in itself. Either diversity that never finds a point of coherence or speculative hypotheses for coherence are inevitable in engagement outside faith that biblical testimony calls forth from its hearers. Pervasive anticipation in the Old Testament exhibits a call to distinction. To what is Israel called? To what are we called in the same hearing of Scripture? Human destiny in the call to distinction lies in the future and most specifically in the grace of God, not in any selected motif of culture or civic life, the focus on which is potentially idolatrous. Abraham is called from a world of idolatry to the future of God in faith, not knowing where and to what he is called, trusting God as the creative future of this call. If on the cusp of anticipation, the call of God in Scripture is always forward in time that is never repeated, response will also be crucial, even as many complementary strands are interwoven with singular anticipation of God’s future disclosed in Jesus Christ. If the story anticipating the future of God in Christ remained things into which no less than angels long to look, its eventual disclosure could only be a source of tremendous joy for the world.
Marcion (c. 150) constructed the first canon of Christian
Scripture. Marcion articulated a theology of two gods—one of law and wrath (Jewish
writings) and the other of grace and love (Gospel), with a docetic form of Christology
(Jesus was not born a human but merely appeared like an angel in human form).
His selection of writings consisted only of selected and edited Pauline letters
and an edited version of Luke. |
