I was reading a comment about a debate this morning. The debate was between biblical scholars Douglas Moo and Douglas Campbell. It was about the definition of Pauline justification.
I have not watched the debate yet. The commenter, though, was
highlighting what she believed was an area of difference between the two
debaters: one was presenting God’s glory as God’s main goal, whereas
the other was saying that God’s goal is a relationship with human
beings.
These are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Moo and Campbell
themselves may not believe that they are mutually exclusive. What I
often heard in an evangelical Bible study group that I was in years ago
was that God glorifies himself for our benefit. We get the privilege of
worshiping God. It satisfies us to admire God’s beauty. In short, God
glorifies Godself in pursuit of a relationship with human beings. The
group was drawing this insight from some of C.S. Lewis’ reflections,
particularly Lewis’ Reflections on the Psalms.
This needs to be developed further. In the Bible, God does act in
the world as a way to make Godself known, in God’s justice, power, and
mercy. In many cases, part of God’s goal is to exalt Godself against
God’s earthly enemies. The question would then be, “Why?” Is God
pursuing a relationship with those enemies? Is God exalting Godself
over God’s enemies in order to encourage Israel to worship and find
strength in God? Is God trying to attract a third party to the worship
of God?
Some prophets in the Hebrew Bible are more inclusive of Gentiles than
other prophets. But there are inclusive prophets who forecast Gentiles
coming to Jerusalem or Israel to worship God. Again, the question I
would ask is “Why?” Is that out of love for these Gentiles? Is that
God’s way of feeling superior to the Gentiles and manifesting final
dominance over them? Is it God’s way of encouraging Israel that her god
is the best, and now everyone sees (and acknowledges, perhaps
grudgingly) that her god is the best?
There is also the question of whether the Bible has a concept of a
“relationship with God,” at least in terms of how many evangelical
Christians may understand it. Granted, the biblical writings do present
a relationship with God. In the Hebrew Bible, a person offers a
sacrifice of thanksgiving to God. A person gives God what is God’s
due. But do the biblical writings manifest a concept of people adoring
God, and God filling them and meeting their deepest psychological
needs? I do not rule that out. Perhaps the case can be made that such a
concept is there, at least implicitly. I just wonder, though: When we
read the biblical prophets and see Gentiles coming to worship God, are
they necessarily enjoying God, in a John Piper sense? Maybe they are
simply giving God God’s due.
There is what the Bible says. And there are the things that people
read into the Bible. What people believe are God’s motivations, in my
opinion, often fall into the latter category. I am reading John Frame’s
A History of Western Philosophy and Theology. Frame
essentially believes that autonomous human reasoning ultimately leads
nowhere, and that philosophical and theological problems can be solved
if people believe in the Bible. I do not rule that out entirely, but I
also doubt that believing the Bible resolves everything. Texts can be
ambiguous. Not only is there the struggle to understand what specific
words mean, but there is also the struggle to understand what God’s
motivations were.
Many Christians may say that we should look to Jesus as the
revelation of God, and interpret the rest of the Bible in light of that,
or at least prioritize Jesus’ revelation. Perhaps that can work. We
can look at Jesus’ act of love in sacrificing himself on the cross, and
allow that to inform our understanding of God’s motivations. I am not
necessarily against that. I am against looking down on people who have a
different understanding, however.