Character of the prophetic preaching
Character of the prophetic preaching(TOC)
In view of the pronounced ethical character of the prophetic preaching, we may expect a priori that, on the other hand, this principle of sovereign love will not only be kept in balance by the coordinated principle of righteousness, but even will be made to enter into the closest union with the latter, so as to render it every possible service. This is actually the case. The love of God is never allowed to swallow up the attribute of His justice, as if justice were a mere instrument in the hands of love for the pursuit of its own ends. Even in Hosea and Jeremiah, who both view the approaching judgment as a discipline of love designed for the people's conversion, this mode of viewing it is by no means the only one employed. The judgment has at one and the same time a double meaning: it is referred to love and justice as coexistent divine modes of dealing. In fact, the perception begins to dawn that in reality there are wrapped up in the one national organism two Israels—that of the reprobate mass, for which destruction is determined, and that of the elect remnant, to which the love and the promises belong (Isaiah 4:3, 4; 6:13; 10:20-22; 28:5; Micah 2:12, 13; 4:7; 5:8; 7:18; Jeremiah 24:29; Ezekiel 14:22, 23). Though in Amos and Isaiah the representation of the judgment as retribution stands in the foreground, while in Hosea and Jeremiah it is more definitely viewed as chastisement, this is on the whole but a difference of emphasis, not a diversity of teaching. All agree that as little as the execution of righteousness can destroy the sovereign love of Jehovah, so little can His sovereign love supersede His justice. Still, no less than in the law, it is here recognized that the inner delight of the divine heart is in the exercise of love rather than in that of judgment (Hosea 11:8, 9; Jeremiah 31:20). Most characteristic of prophecy is the manner in which it makes the conception of God's love for Israel do service as a positive factor in the great struggle for righteousness. Jehovah's love from the outset posited for Israel the ideal of righteousness as the only destiny worthy to be the end of such a relationship. When God says in Amos, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities" (3:2), the presupposition clearly is that His loving knowledge of Israel had for its express purpose the training of Israel to moral excellence. But in a more specifically religious direction also the same principle is made to operate. Hosea uses the figure of the marriage union, based on mutual love, in order to contrast most vividly the physical nature of the Baal cult and the spiritual nature of the relation between Jehovah and Israel. The former constitutes a necessary bond to which the deity and its worshipers both find themselves subject by the very law of their existence. The latter, on the contrary, springs from free choice of love, and therefore dates from a definite point in history, previous to which both Jehovah and Israel existed without such mutual relationship. It is obvious that for bringing out this important idea the analogue of conjugal love was better adapted than that of paternal love. The relation between father and son is in its origin a necessary one, whereas that between husband and wife rests on the free consent of both, and in so far more faithfully reflects the historical and spiritual character of the covenant. Here, then, the idea of love has become determinative of the specific difference of the revealed religion of Israel as distinct from the nature religions of the surrounding peoples. And it ought to be noticed that what Hosea, in virtue of this principle, demands of Israel is not confined to the sphere of ethics, but covers likewise the religious attitude toward Jehovah. What God desires of His people is that they shall answer to the love which He bears them with a like affection. The prophetic polemic against the ritualism of the popular cult proceeds from a twofold motive. On the one hand, its watchword is, not sacrifices but righteousness; on the other, not the external service of the altar, but the internal devotion of the heart. In a religion determined by the supreme principle of free spiritual love, every species of ritualism presented an insufferable anomaly. Thus it must be understood when the prophet puts into the mouth of Jehovah, expostulating with Israel, the words, "I have desired lovingkindness, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (Hosea 6:6). The knowledge of God here is that affectionate regard for Jehovah which shall be the reflex of His elective knowledge of Israel. The exact correspondence of the two conceptions may be seen from another passage, where the demand, "Thou shalt know no god but me," is immediately followed by the reminder, "I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought" (Hosea 13:4, 5). In Amos and Isaiah the protest against the externalism of the day springs more largely from ethical motives, though in the latter at least the application of the principle in question to the specifically religious sphere is not entirely wanting-witness the divine complaint: "This people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honor me, but they have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men" (Isaiah 29:13).
The Psalter adds no original viewpoints to those already discovered in the law and the prophets. If anything, we expect to find here the subjective religious response to the revelation of the divine love made in the history of Israel. Undoubtedly utterances like that in the seventy-third Psalm, "Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon the earth that I desire beside thee," or that in the forty-second, "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God," mark not only the highest point to which the aspiration of the pious heart has attained under the Old Testament, but, we may safely affirm the highest point to which it can ever attain in the form of pure, disinterested spiritual love. These are voices coming, as it were, from the world of ideal religion, in which the soul is lifted for a moment above the consciousness even of her own soteriological need and tastes the enjoyment of God as such. But passages of this character are rare: explicit reference to the love of the saints for Jehovah is made no more than six times in the entire Psalter (Psalm 18:1; 31:23; 91:14; 97:10; 116:1; 145:20). More easily the psalmists rise to the consciousness of an indirect relation, such as is expressed by the phrases to love "the name," "the commandments," "the salvation," "the house of Jehovah" (Psalm 5:4; 40:16; 69:36; 70:4; 119:132, 165). This is all the more significant in view of the fact that the Psalter is full of the recognition of the divine love both for Israel and for individuals. But it should be observed that Chesed, the term chosen for this, designates specifically the duteous affection of a superior toward an inferior, therefore a form of love which cannot be reciprocated by man in kind. There seems to be only one well-established instance of the use of this word to describe the love of man toward God, viz., in the passage of Jeremiah where Jehovah declares that He remembers the Chesed of Israel's youth, the love of her espousals. And even here the true nature of the conception still clearly reveals itself. By an exquisitely conceived turn of speech God represents Himself as having sued for the love of Israel, and as having regarded her first answering affection in the light of a favor she condescended to bestow upon Him. In the mind of a psalmist no such thought could have originated.[3] . Even more marked is the absence of the subjective human response to the divine love from the entire wisdom literature. As might be expected from the reflective, practical scope of this class of writings, the fear rather than the love of Jehovah is here the controlling idea. The direct, personal relation to God, of which the Psalter is so full, remains throughout in the background. Only once in Proverbs is mention made of those that love Jehovah (Proverbs 8:17). In two other places of the same book the divine love is spoken of as extending to certain classes of men (Proverbs 3:12; 15:9). Even on the divine objective side the conception assumes a more or less impersonal character. To love becomes equivalent to taking delight in, approving of, just as elsewhere the impersonal object of certain qualities, such as righteousness and judgment, is directly substituted for the personal one (Psalm 11:7; 33:5; 37:28; 99:4).
Before taking leave of the Old Testament doctrine, whose bare outlines have just been sketched, we must note one fact which stands out quite prominently, viz., that wherever the specific term or the specific conception of the love of Jehovah appears, the reference is always to the sphere of the covenant. It would be an inadequate explanation to say that the Old Testament, on the whole, concerns itself with the relation of God to Israel exclusively, and that consequently its silence on His love for other nations is a mere negative datum, from which no doctrinal inference to the particularistic character of the divine love as such can be drawn. In point of fact, the Old Testament has a great deal to teach on the benevolent side of God's self-revelation to the world at large. The strongest of terms are used on occasion to emphasize this truth. Even the covenant conception is not deemed too sacred to be employed for the purpose of describing the solemn manner in which God pledged to the whole of creation, in the day of Noah, His abundant, ever-flowing kindness in the sphere of natural life, His longsuffering in the view of universal sin, His common grace working for the restraint of sin. It is attributed to His righteousness, universally revealed, that He keeps this covenant and preserves man and beast. As Jonah took pity on his gourd, so He pities and spares the Ninevites and their cattle. His mercy is wider and deeper than the ocean of human misery. But when the Old Testament seeks for a general category under which these several manifestations of universal benevolence are to be subsumed, it does not choose the term love. Whatever may be true of later revelation, it is certainly not in harmony with the Old Testament usus loquendi to classify all the benevolent attributes as so many forms of love. Love in the Old Testament is not a genus but a species, be it the highest species in which the genus unfolds itself. On the other hand, the generic name for the several forms belonging to this aspect of the divine character is that of "goodness." "The earth is full of the goodness of Jehovah" (Psalm 33:5); "His goodness endureth continually" (Psalm 52:1); "O that men would praise Jehovah for his goodness" (Psalm 107:15, 21). It is interesting to observe how delicate is the feeling of some of the sacred writers for this distinction. Not seldom where the universal benevolence of God has been dwelt upon and the circle of vision contracts to Israel, immediately the lovingkindness of Jehovah is substituted for the terms used before (Psalm 36:6, 7, 8; 107:15, 21, 43; 147:19, 20; 148:13, 14). Obviously the reason for this phenomenon lies in the absolute character the Old Testament ascribes to the divine love. In His general goodness God bestows various gifts upon the creature; in His love He gives Himself and holds nothing back. Consequently it was felt that wherever such absolute, unreserved covenant self-communication was lacking, the term love could not properly apply. The scriptural terminology on this point was not the product of any abstract theological speculation, but the faithful transcript of the simple facts of experience as interpreted by the Holy Spirit to the mind of the sacred writers.
Passing over from the Old to the New Testament, it needs but a rapid glance to perceive that in the teaching of our Lord, both in its Synoptical and Johannine form, the conception of the love of God occupies a central and controlling place. Not, to be sure, as if the other attributes of the divine character were resolved into the primary element of love. This is no more the case here than anywhere else in Scripture. While Jesus invites us to love the heavenly Father, He, on the other hand, also exhorts us to fear the God who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. So long as the doctrine of eternal punishment is recognized as an integral part of our Lord's message, it will also have to be admitted that He knows of a relation of God to man determined not by the principle of love but by that of justice. Nevertheless by the prominence given to the truth of the divine fatherhood objectively and to the call for faith subjectively, the conception of the gracious love of God is not only drawn into the center, but also made the principal theme of Jesus' preaching. In order rightly to appreciate the significance of this fact, we must take into account the historical circumstances under which the gospel was first proclaimed. Our Lord was confronted with the abnormal spectacle of a religious system which claimed to be the product of special soteriological revelation, and in which, nevertheless, God has been so far removed from man as to be no longer the object of trust and love. In Judaism everything had been put on the basis of commercial intercourse with the Almighty. Over against this it was necessary before all else to awaken the religious consciousness to the recognition of the fact that God is personally interested in man; that instead of merely exploiting man in His service, He lovingly gives Himself to man, and desires to be met in the spirit of trust and affection. But it were utterly wrong to infer that Jesus, by what He taught in this direction, wished simply to brush aside all that previous revelation had inculcated with regard to other aspects of the divine character. The indirect polemic of this teaching is aimed not at the Old Testament, but at its perversion in Judaism. By taking our Lord's gospel out of its historic environment and by refusing to construe it in harmony with the larger movement of revelation as a whole, we may be easily led to impute to Him principles which He would have repudiated. From the fact that to a generation which knew God only as a righteous Judge, and in an atmosphere surcharged with the sense of retribution, He made the sum and substance of His preaching the love of God, it does not follow that, if He were in person to preach to our present age so strangely oblivious of everything but love, His message would be entirely the same. It is quite possible to conceive that in such a case the emphasis would be somewhat differently distributed.