| Has the word of God failed?
The testimony given to the word of God in Scripture suggests its inexorable success, even within apparent failure. This is an ancient story. It is reiterated in Romans 9–11, the locale of our question. Paul speaks of Israelites, his kin, as recipients of God’s call and adoption expressed through covenants, oracles of righteousness, worship and messianic promise—expressions of God’s faithfulness. With anguish for his people and their response to the gospel of God, Paul nevertheless insists that the word of God has not failed. Yet what are we to make of its apparent failure in human life? v The word of God appears to fail where grace becomes confused with conceit within the privilege of grace. It fails to be heard when it is not heard as a dramatic word on the folly of humans in their hubris and as another possibility for human life within grace. The word of God can be confused with the word of tradition, tribal privilege or yet the word of partisan ideology. God’s imperative for Israel is faithful testimony, in word and deed, to a word that exceeds the thought and scope of human existence—the promises or word of God. In New Testament testimony, faithful dissemination of the word is an imperative of the Christian church. Humans will always be inadequate to this task. This is the context of grace and life in the Spirit. A word that is only heard and relayed as interpreted according to certain tribal or partisan criteria, ancient or modern, fails to be heard. The word of God must be heard if it is to be received as good news. These themes pervade Paul’s exposition of Israel’s response to the word in which dissonance exists between call and hearing. Yet even failure to hear, adds to the success of God’s word. In biblical testimony, apparent irregularities—strength in weakness, the last declared first, the lowly exalted or things hidden from the intelligent and disclosed to infants—articulate the failure of human valuations of the word’s strange incursion within human life. In resistance to Esau and in favour of Jacob, the natural heir is displaced by the non-heir. This example follows the creative possibility of Isaac—of God who calls to be things that are not. The overwhelming impetus of Israel’s tradition is toward an unmerited call to life and distinctive witness in contrast to assumed natural right. Election or grace exceeds any claim to either tribal heritage or theological pedigree. A prevailing sin that Paul counters throughout Romans is conceit within the privilege of receiving grace, which is forgotten as grace and in turn, anchors such privilege to particular expressions of theological identity and religious practice. Paul counters variations of this conceit among all Christians. Conceit within privilege suggests a failure to recognise the significance of grace in God’s call and the Spirit yearning for our spirit. If resistance to human valuations appears arbitrary, it is to affirm mercy instead of self-acclaimed right or privilege. Israel and Christian faith give testimony to the word of God that comes to humans as both crisis and grace—testimony to another word that speaks otherwise than the resources of mortal human existence with its fallible attempts to secure the holy, just and good. This testimony to a paradoxical word of negation and affirmation takes hostage even as it gives freedom. This word unnerves human self-confidence while engendering confidence beyond human resources. The people of God are children of grace by virtue of God’s loving-kindness. Their call can never be defined by a privileged monopoly on the word by which it is heard. Within the machinations of human life, the word of grace ceases to be a word of grace as it becomes a fulcrum for any diminution of triune initiative toward a unique possibility for all. v The word fails to be heard when it becomes confused with human possibilities—social, political or religious—given that the word of God speaks otherwise than any human possibility. If it cannot speak beyond our possibilities, the reality of God means nothing for human life. If the word of God cannot speak otherwise, faith in God could only be regarded as a dangerous delusion as humans seek to make their own meaning in life. Attempts to certify a word of God according to certain partisan criteria only reveal the yawning gap between a distinctly different word and human possibilities. A word fails to be heard within the constraints of human appropriation. Riddled with posturing according to finite ideals, the living oracles of righteousness—the holy, just and good—are staked out as a partisan claim, only to become a site of arrogance and enmity. Romans is radical! Before God, human articulation is invariably faithless when the privilege of its articulation becomes an occasion for conceit in the claim to superior theology, right politics or better ecclesiology. Yet the word of God as a word otherwise than human possibilities will always come as a paradox to human experience—a word of judgment and grace at the one time. The word calls into question the very projects, theological, political and religious, that become aligned with its articulation, even as the word is a source of grace beyond anything these projects can offer fellow humans. The people of God exist in hearing a different word on human existence. Yet call that is assimilated to human expectations and horizons is also a locale in which this word ceases to be heard, even though it resonates throughout the world for those with ears to hear. Paul identifies with a remnant that has given faithful testimony to the word of grace amid the perennial failure of humans to secure righteousness—the holy, just and good—whether in religious ascent or alternatively, descent into the depths of elemental flux in an attempt to decipher it there. The radical failure of any theological word is inevitable when it ceases to hear a word otherwise than its own in the human propensity to adjudicate on everything. In our time, the word of God is given, heard and will succeed in spite of, not because of sophisticated methods of rational assimilation and arbitration over what it can speak and of what it must remain silent. The word of God is given to human hearts and minds in the rich array of words, metaphors and images of human language and relationships. This is seamlessly one with the triune movement of incarnation in which the word became flesh. It is precisely in disclosing this initiative of triune love and human possibility as transformed life in the Spirit that the promises of God speak otherwise, even through human words and dialects. v Has the word of God failed? Its partisan appropriation, whether political or theological, will always fail. The word of God will always succeed in demonstrating this. In the relay of Christian testimony, it also demonstrates more within a unique community of faith, worship, invitation and deed. The word is as near as the response and confession of faith in Christ as the definitive word of God among us. In Christ, God calls, invites and draws near on the basis of unspeakable grace. We can speak it, yet in utter grace and nothing else. In the faithfulness of that utterance, the word of grace will be heard with joy for those with ears to hear. |
