exploring mormon culture, thought and texts
We pause for a brief NT interlude…mostly because I had to speak at a fireside last night. The year-long theme of the group has been the armor of God pericope from Eph 6:10-20. My part of the operation was v. 17, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit.
But as a Bible Dork, I simply cannot confine myself to one verse. Text without context is pretext, or something like that. So here, for what it might be worth, are my notes.
The Book of Job closes as it opened, with two speeches by Yahweh. In his first two speeches, Yahweh effectively gave the Satan permission to strip Job of everything except his life. By virtue of his response to these disasters, Job also retained his integrity.
1st Point: Integrity. It can be given up but never taken.
Three of Job’s sage-friends appeared to mourn with Job. After seven days, Job explodes in a curse against his nativity. As good sages do, his three friends apply their wisdom to the situation as they understand it and therefore counsel Job to repent. Unfortunately, the friends do not really understand the situation.
2nd Point: Understanding. It’s not wise to attach moral value to a tragedy.
The three friends are adherents of retributive theology, AKA “reaping what you sow.” Since Job was reaping disaster, he must have sown wickedness. Job also held to retributive theology but he knows slightly more than the friends, because he knows that he is innocent. In light of his own innocence, he uses RT to draw the conclusion that God is criminal.
3rd Point: Retributive theology. Is Job’s approach really superior to that of the three friends?
Starting from his perception of God as criminal, Job becomes increasingly fixed on confronting God in litigation. At the conclusion of the four-way dialogue, Elihu popped in, making it perfectly clear that God will not answer Job. Then God answered Job, making it perfectly clear that Elihu is a twit.
4th Point: God. If there’s one thing that’s clear about this narrative’s message, it’s that you can ask God some pretty straight-up questions.
Continue reading “The God From Within the Whirlwind: Job VI”
Here’s Norm Habel’s translation of the text of the speeches from the whirlwind. You’ll see that there are two distinct speeches, each responding to something Job said, but never speaking to Job’s innocence or explaining the prologue. So the question is, in what sense is this a response?
If I might make a suggestion, you may find that you’ll enjoy this more if you lift it into a word processor and print out a copy. Then read it a couple of times just for the flow of the words and the impact of the poetry. After the mythical beasts tamed by God in the creation and whatnot begin to seem familiar, then try to fit it into the larger narrative of Job.
Let’s cut to the chase. Here’s what Elihu thinks about God:
Therefore hear me, intelligent people:
Far be it from El to be in the wrong!
Or Shaddai to be guilty of injustice,
For he pays humans for their work
And requites mortals for their conduct. (34:10-11)Behold the heavens and see;
Look at the clouds high above you.
If you sin, what are you doing to him?
If your transgressions are legion, how do you affect him?
If you are righteous, what do you render him?
Or what does he receive from your hand?
Your wickedness affects mortals like yourself;
Your righteousness fellow human beings. (35:5-8)
Ah. Finally we get to some ideas about God that make good sense. He’s the Almighty, of course, standing above the fray. His judgments are just and neither wickedness nor righteousness affects him.
Except…er,…except… The reader knows from the prologue that God is affected by human behavior, at least enough to get involved with the Satan on the matter. And the reader also know that Job’s current situation is anything but what he would enjoy if God really did “requite mortals for their conduct.” Beyond that, the Elihu chapters have a prologue, and prologues in Job seem to be, um, important. Indispensable, in fact. So maybe we’ll go read the Elihu prologue.
The thing to understand about Job is that he, like his three friends, assumes that God ought to react to human actions, to reward the righteous and punish the wicked. The three friends used this approach to God to argue that Job’s pitiful condition demonstrated his guilt. Job, on the other hand, knows his own innocence and so concludes that God is a criminal. And since God is a criminal, what is needed is a trial.
Aye yi yi. Most heroic stories display a hero with the moral fiber who stands up to evil and defeats it. Job is a hero whose moral fiber brings him into confrontation with God.
Things change dramatically at the conclusion of the prologue. God, the Satan, and Job’s wife all disappear and the latter two never re-appear. Their places are taken by three friends who have come to comfort Job: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. The action then, is built around two conflicts: one between Job and the absent God, the other between Job and his three nearby friends.
But the effects of the prologue remain, for the prologue has created a near-omniscient reader. This reader knows that Job did not sin (1:22; 2:10b) and knows that everything that happened to Job and his family happened because the Satan incited God. The reader is in a position to judge the responses of the four friends, none of whom share the reader’s insight. The cruelty and irony displayed throughout are exquisite, although time prevents an adequate demonstration.
And yet, the reader doesn’t really understand God, either…
The first two chapters of Job, called the prologue, are quite shocking for modern Christian readers because of the picture they paint of God. Without a doubt, this is a god that you are not inclined to either worship or even know. It’s a long, long way from Job’s prologue to the Sermon on the Mount.
Job’s got some real problems. The book I mean, not the guy. He has problems, too, but that’s another story – the story, in fact.
You know that list of things you’d like to know about biblical literature before you actually try to read it? Things like author(s), date, and place? Well, we don’t know any of that.
After reading Don Clifton’s short post on forgiveness over at Nine Moons, I spent the rest of the day feeling somewhat sad. It sounds like the gentleman in question was well-taught on the subject of sin, but less conversant with respect to forgiveness. That sort of imbalance strikes me as unhealthy.
Forgiveness of sin through Christ is not found explicitly in the uncontested letters of Paul unless perhaps paresis in Rom 3:25 is translated as “remission” rather than “passing over.” Instead, forgiveness appears in Colossians and Ephesians as an extension of Paul’s thoughts on redemption.
Continue reading “The Effects of the Christ-Event: Redemption and Forgiveness”
The Book of Revelation features four female figures: Jezebel (2:20), the Cosmic Woman (12:1-5, 13-17), the great Whore (17:1-17; and the Bride of the Lamb (21:9-11). The two most prominent figures are the Whore and the Bride. Feminist interpreters are almost uniformly alarmed by images John evokes with these figures. For example, John writes of the death of the Whore:
[The kings] and the beast will hate the whore; they will make her desolate and naked; they will devour her flesh and burn her up with fire. (17:16)