05.08.07

Let God Be God — Part II

Posted in Reading, Scripture at 7:02 pm by Anthony

In The Spirituality of the Cross, Gene Edward Veith, Jr. describes his journey from atheism through mysticism and liberal theology to faith.* He found that the God of the Bible–specifically the Old Testament–revealed a sovereign God who will not conform to our image of what he should be or who we would like him to be.

I remember when I first began to read the Bible seriously. As I read the Old Testament, I was overcome with its sublimity, later horrified by passages such as God’s commands that the Canaanites be slaughtered. I began to realize that God was something “other,” someone far above my comprehension. I realized that I had been constructing God according to my preferences, positing qualities that I liked and ascribing them to the deity I believed in. In effect, I was making God in my image. But the God I was reading about in the Bible, whose energy blasted those who touched the Ark of the Covenant without the mediation of blood, was very different from myself, numinous, holy, and dangerous. And yet He rang true.

I probably never really believed in the vague, domesticated spirit of niceness that I had constructed for myself and found in my humane liberal theology. The real universe, with its danger and consequences and hard edges, such as cancer, shows no trace of having been created by such a sentimental deity. I probably knew, deep down inside, that I was making up a private little religion to make myself feel better, … . But this God I was reading about in the Bible had hard edges. He is absolute, utterly mysterious, and despite all appearances radically righteous. I began to see God in a completely different light, the light of holiness. And I saw myself in the rebellious children of Israel, ungrateful, inconsistent, and idolatrous. (pp. 39-40)

Veith, of course, doesn’t see God as all “hard edges.” He says that

“the reader comes to realize that this God of wrath is also the God of grace, that from the beginning He provided for sacrificial blood to cover His people’s sins, that He came in Jesus, that His wrath is swallowed up in the cross. As we read … we encounter the Law and the Gospel, through which the Spirit works to change our hearts and bind us to Christ.” (p. 39)

*This book is an explanation of Lutheran theology. I find much in common with my understanding of biblical Christianity, but also several important points of difference.

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