( Job 33) onstrated that that Person is greater than I am on the
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man. A man may keep silent not because he is really modest, but he does not intend to speak until he gets a proper audience—"I do not intend to bring out my notion of things until people are prepared to listen; I do not wish what I say to go into the mere rush of ordinary conversation, so I shall wait for a suitable opportunity." This does not altogether diagnose Elihu, but he certainly exhibits this characteristic.
say that your credal exposition of God is wrong. By your creed you prove me to be wrong where I know I am right; therefore if the facts I do know are disproved by you, how can I accept your explanation of the facts I do not know?" Elihu says God does not explain Himself, and you have no right to try and find Him out, it is sufficient to know that the autocratic authority of the Omnipotent has spoken, therefore you must submit. Job's sufferings have produced in him this attitude—"I want to know where what you call the supreme authority of the Almighty gets hold on the moral line of things, where it agrees, in part at least, with what I understand as worthy."
Elihu says that the inspiration of authority comes from God simply because He is God, and not from any sense of right in Himself. Job stands up against this; he says, in effect, "I will not accept any authority on the ground of superstition; I must know the moral ingredient in the authority." This is the element Elihu loses sight of altogether.
The same thing occurs in matters of religious controversy. Am I going to submit to the authority of a Church, or a Book or to the authority of a Person? If I submit to the authority of a Person it must be demonstrated that that Person is greater than I am on the "worthy" line, the line which is recognised as worthy by the majority of sane humanity; if He is greater there, then I will bow down to His authority at once.
2. The Insistence of Autocratic Authority ( Job 33) The Spiritual Consciousness of Submission Behold, in this thou art not just: I will answer thee, that God is greater than man. Why dost thou strive against Him? For He giveth not account of any of His matters. ( Job 33:12–13)
3. The Indictment of Autobiographic Antagonism ( Job 34–35) (a) The Suffering Chastisement of Sinfulness
The antagonism of the friends in battling for their creed was an indication that they were getting shaky regarding it. But Elihu is not shaky, he does not accept the creed of the other three, he has a notion of his own based on the conception of autocratic authority, viz., that no man has any right to enquire whether God is good; it is a question of His supreme authority, and submission is the only line to take. It is dangerous to be conscious of submission to a spiritual power. The difference between fatalism and faith lies just here. Fatalism means, "My number's up; I have to bow to the power whether I like it or not; I do not know the character of the power, but it is greater than I am, and I must submit." The submission of faith is that I do know the character of the Power, and this was the line Job took—"Though He slay me, yet I will trust the fact that His character is worthy." This is the attitude of faith all through—I submit to One whose character I know but whose ways are obscured in mystery just now." We do know the character of God, if we are Christians, because we have it revealed to us in Jesus Christ—"He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." Anything that contradicts the manifestation given in and through the Lord Jesus Christ cannot be true of God. Therefore we know that the character of God is noble and true and right, and any authority from God is based, not on autocracy or mere blind power, but on worthiness which everything in me recognises as worthy, therefore I submit. Elihu was moved with indignation because Job said, "I cannot submit to the fact that God has decreed such things as you say; you must give me room to
( Job 34:35–37) Job hath spoken without knowledge, and his words were without wisdom. My desire is that Job may be tried unto the end because of his answers for wicked men. For he addeth rebellion unto his sin, he clappeth his hands among us, and multiplieth his words against God.
Elihu sums up the autobiographic side, the subjective side. The great phase at present is the sophistic conception that a man is a law unto himself. Elihu is in advance of that: he says there is an authority other than myself. Job is looking for an authority, and he gives his own subjective experiences as the reason for disbelieving the presentation of God which has been given. On the ground of what he was going through, he was indignant at this presentation. Elihu says, "Your experiences are explainable on the line that you are a sinful man, not a hypocrite, as the others have said, but sinful, and God is chastising you. You have spoken rashly and wildly, and this is the way God is answering." This kind of view presents a conception not really based on facts, but which easily melts down any opposition by its sentimental presentation.
(b) The Sentimental Conception of the Supreme
( Job 35:10–11) But none saith, Where is God my maker, who giveth songs in the night; who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the fowls of the heaven?
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There is no pretence about Elihu; he says some sublime things, but in his tirade against experience he introduces a line that stirs up human sympathies without the basis of facts underneath. The sentimental line stirs up a conception of things which overlooks both the actual and the real facts and sweeps a man off his feet. It is all very well to have experiences, but there must be a standard for measuring them, and a standard more worthy than my own on the line on which I know I am worthy. The standard for Christian experience is not the experience of another Christian, but God Himself. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." "If you are My disciple," says Jesus, "the standard by which you are to measure your experiences as a regenerated saint is the character of God." "They took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus." The apostles bore a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, their experience and their character were being brought up to God's standard.
in: "no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me." On the ground of His absolute, not coercive, authority, every man recognises sooner or later that Jesus Christ stands easily first.
(a) The Supreme Character of the Sublime
( Job 36:22–26) Behold, God exalteth by His power: who teacheth like Him? ( Job 36:22)
Job's contention is that he has proved by experience that what he has been told about God cannot be true, "because," he says, "when you try to explain the facts I know in the light of the One whom you call God, you have to deny those facts; therefore I must conclude that your exposition of God is wrong." Elihu goes back to the position that it is no use trying to find out whether God is worthy; it is sufficient to know that He is supreme, a Being who issues His orders without the remotest regard to moral right; and the man who dares to try and discover whether the authority of God is morally right is a blasphemer and a dangerous man. Voltaire's scurrilous talk about God was mainly tremendous indignation at the presentation of God then prevailing.
There must be an authority which is internal as well as external. The tendency nowadays is to have no authority at all. A man says, "I will have no Church, no Bible, no God, nothing but my own selfrealisation." This is the modern phase of sophistic religion. Every bit of morality a man has demands that there should be, not a coercive or autocratic authority, but a worthy authority. Elihu is speaking to Job on the subjective line as though Job were saying that there was no authority whatever binding upon him; whereas Job is getting at the right relationship to the real standard, and his protest is against a presentation of the standard which is not worthy.
There is always a tendency to produce an absolute authority; we accept the authority of the Church, or of the Bible, or of a creed, and often refuse to do any more thinking on the matter; and in so doing we ignore the essential nature of Christianity which is based on a personal relationship to Jesus Christ, and works on the basis of our responsibility. On the ground of the Redemption I am saved and God puts His Holy Spirit into me, then He expects me to react on the basis of that relationship. I can evade it by dumping my responsibility on to a Church, or a Book or a creed, forgetting what Jesus said—"Ye search the Scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of Me; and ye will not come to Me, that ye may have life" ( John 5:39–40, rv). The only way to understand the Scriptures is not to accept them blindly, but to read them in the light of a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. If we insist that a man must believe the doctrine of the Trinity and the inspiration of the Scriptures before he can be saved, we are putting the cart before the horse. All that is the effect of being a Christian, not the cause of it; and if we put the effect first we produce difficulties because we are putting thinking before life. Jesus says, "Come unto Me, and if you want to know whether My teaching is of God, do His will." A scientist can explain the universe in which common-sense men live, but the scientific explanation is not first; life is first. The same with theology; theology is the systematising of the intellectual expression of life from God; it is a mighty thing, but it is second, not first.
4. The Interpretation of Absolute Authority ( Job 36–37) Elihu also proceeded, and said, Suffer me a little, and I will shew thee that I have yet to speak on God's behalf. ( Job 36:1–2)
If one may say it reverently, Almighty God is nothing but a mental abstraction unless He becomes concrete and actual, because an ideal has no power unless it can be realised. The doctrine of the Incarnation is that God did become actual, He manifested Himself on the plane of human flesh, and "Jesus Christ" is the name not only for God and Man in one, but the name of the personal Saviour who makes the way back for every man to get into a personal relationship with God. Jesus Christ declares that He is the exclusive way to the Father—". . . neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." Any theology which ignores Jesus Christ as the supreme Authority ceases to be Christian theology. "I am the Way," said Jesus, not the road we leave behind us, but the Way we stay