God as otherwise and intimate in Christ

God as otherwise and intimate in Christ
Stephen Curkpatrick

God is only known as to character through Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh as the crucified and risen One, who is present in the Christian community through the Holy Spirit. Within the context of diverse religious allegiances or human perspective, Christian proclamation might appear arbitrary and arrogant. Why this claim and not another? Why does this claim surpass or imply the inadequacy of all others, religious or philosophical?

What then does Christian faith claim that cannot be met within religious allegiance or a philosophical perspective? Inasmuch as the religious propensity seeks to bind reality into a cohesive cultural vision, it will be offended by Christian truth. Inasmuch as philosophy seeks to corral the diversity of phenomena within a reasonable principle, it will suspect Christian faith of folly. Inasmuch as Christian faith declares that God remains unknown as to character without an initiative of disclosure in intimacy, religion is scandalised and philosophy is irritated.

Inasmuch as the religious propensity seeks to bind reality into a cohesive cultural vision, it will be offended by Christian truth. Christian faith states a reality that remains an offence to religion. Except for God’s initiative in self-disclosure, God is ultimately unknowable as to character and therefore unnameable as to intimacy. This assertion is consistent throughout biblical testimony. The failure to remember this in Israel becomes a site of critique, either for lapses into the idolatry of various phenomena or the pursuit of alliances other than trust in the LORD.

As unknown, the LORD is disclosed in the intimacy of call to distinction or holiness. The call to distinctive vocation is grounded in the holiness of the LORD. As sovereign in freedom, the LORD refuses to be correlated with other possibilities in phenomena, natural or cultural. Inasmuch as the community called into existence by grace heeds this lesson, it too lives in the distinction of this call.

A religious quest is initiated, in either Israel or Church, when God who “calls into being things that have no being,” ceases to be sovereign in grace and life within human existence. The vocative word of God is always a stumbling block to the religious itch that seeks to anchor existence meaningfully on its own cultural terms.

Inasmuch as philosophy seeks to corral the diversity of phenomena within a reasonable principle, it will suspect Christian faith of folly. The philosophical quest seeks to give a coherent account of reality even if ironically, a coherent conclusion is asserted that there is no coherence! Philosophy gives reasons for the diverse forms of apparent coherence and obvious plurality in existence, and how humans integrate diverse phenomena into a cohesive perspective. Philosophy has difficulty integrating God into a wholly rational view of reality. In Christian testimony, reality coheres in grace and truth disclosed in Jesus Christ. This disclosure transcends any quest to establish coherence merely by reason.

Religion and philosophy have difficulty with a Christian vision of reality in Christ crucified and risen, which shatters a premise necessary to both—religion and philosophy are forged from human experience, culture or reason. By contrast, biblical testimony articulates the disclosure of God in sovereign freedom and grace, approaching humans in vocative intimacy. The initiative of God is given unique focus in Jesus Christ as self-giving love in death, with the capacity to summon life out of death in resurrection.

In biblical testimony, humans are encountered by God who exceeds any human initiative by desire or thought. This encounter occurs as surprise in grace and call to response in repentance and communion as personal and relational. God ultimately remains unknown as to character without the initiative of disclosure. This claim scandalises religion and irritates philosophy. Who then is God in Christian testimony that these responses should be invoked?

We encounter the personal as unique and other or not at all. Humans experience this phenomenon in genuine encounter with others. It is instruments and objects that are named and assimilated, while genuine relational encounter is both intimate as vocative and inscrutable as with another. Without intimacy and otherness, the personal ceases to exist. The personal is only known as a narrative of previous self-disclosure, surprise, anticipation, trust and continual experience of gift or grace within free volition.

It is often suggested that humans can only know each other within existing parameters of familiarity, such as like attracts like. Personal encounter occurs within mutual interests and familiarity, yet similar passions, ideals and loves exceed the nomination of data. Common familiarity with the most comprehensive data does not account for the personal. As familiar, humans also remain otherwise as unique, even within the closest and most enduring relationships. There is always a reserve—not by intention or deception—that remains inscrutable as personal, invoking vulnerability and trust.

The otherness of God is not a problem to be solved but a prerequisite for personal encounter. The quest to integrate God within the categories of one’s own experience or culture is to create an idol. The quest to integrate God within categories of thought is to destroy distinction or holiness as the possibility of trust and communion. The biblical phenomenon of naming God in holiness is vocative within the context of relationship, not nominative within the context of phenomena. As vocative, naming suggests personal encounter and intimacy with God in distinction, not the utility naming of an object or the label of an abstract concept.

God is encountered otherwise in a genuine vocative relationship with another. As personal, there is correlation with our experience of relational and volitional freedom of encounter, yet precisely as personal, God is also otherwise. The philosophical quest to nominate either a first cause or a reasoned coherence of reality pursues something that is exceeded by the vocative God of biblical testimony who calls to personal encounter as sovereign and living LORD. Only as vocative, personal and redemptive, the LORD who calls to be by a word is encountered as and confessed Creator.

God who is integrated within the categories of human coherence, cause and effect, ceases to be God who transcends natural, cultural or rational possibilities. God approaches human life as the possibility of vocative encounter in relationship that transcends any religious binding within cultural phenomena or philosophical nomination within rational categories. In Christian Scripture, God is unknowable from phenomena but named intimately as personal.

Christian faith scandalises religion and irritates philosophy. Yet this seemingly arbitrary confrontation occurs from a profound humility. Scandal and irritation arise because Christian faith gives audacious testimony to the humility of God’s disclosure of self-giving love in Jesus Christ. Such humility demonstrates reality cohering in no other possibility than grace and truth defined in a person, as the Word of God who calls integral human life into being, without circumscription by any culture, ritual, tradition or ideal.

If religion seeks to bind reality together within a particular cultural or social image—for religion is to bind—it remains a contestable possibility among many possibilities, generating hegemonies and factions. If by reason, philosophy seeks to balance coherence and plurality, it always threatens to wobble into imperious abstraction or fracture into endless multiplicity.

The humility of God in the passion of self-giving love in Jesus Christ is uniquely Christian. Testimony to this reality can only invoke response as relational not command it as a claim that is endorsed within religious phenomena or by philosophical reason.