The Overton Salon

By Austin

Last week I continued this series by looking at the fact that God is the sole creator of all things. The conclusion I came to was that we as humans are being fully what we are, and hence fully free, when we are fully dependent on God. There is no contradiction between our freedom and God’s, because God is not a “thing,” and hence there is no paradox between the human and the divine. I mentioned that for post-Enlightenment humanisms this is a problem. Kant called such an idea “heteronomy” (law from outside) and opposed it to “autonomy” (law from the self).

Yet Kant’s autonomy, along with the modern individualism that it gives rise to, has been considered idolatry by the Christian tradition. Why? Because it refuses to acknowledge the second basic conviction of the Judeo-Christian tradition: God is the sole ruler of all things.

A little history. The Israelites began an experiment in the Ancient Near East. Scholars like Norman Gottwald and Paul Hanson have argued that the tribal confederacy represented in the book of Judges was a revolutionary pattern of governance in this world. The laws represented in the Torah were laws that governed a de-centralized, monarch-less group of peoples. This wasn’t democracy, but it was more formalized and orderly than other tribal societies. The three basic convictions of this community, as seen in later prophetic texts as well, was “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic 6.8).

This concern for justice did not come about by philosophical thought a la John Locke on the “rights of man,” nor through a post-colonialist desire for nationhood, but through “encounter with the God who delivered slaves from bondage. Israel understood community essentially as a response to God’s gracious act of salvation. Israel was called into existence as a people when it was called forth from bondage to be a nation of priests consecrated to God’s redemptive purposes” (Hanson).

What Hanson is arguing is that the idea of the law was a response to God. And what did this really mean? The act that it responded to was a gracious giving of freedom. More specifically, it was the giving of freedom to a group of slaves in order that they worship God, and create a just community.

These two things – worship and justice – always go hand in hand in the Torah, because the creation of Israel as a people happened in response to a king (Pharaoh) who had set himself up as god. Everything about the Exodus story points out that God is opposing himself to the gods of Egypt, as represented by Pharoah. The basic representation of Pharoah is his power to oppress a people simultaneous with this inability to protect his own, while God’s power is seen in his ability to unleash and then restrain chaos, while simultaneously protecting his own.

The power of Pharoah is emblematic of all political power, which ultimately makes a theological claim for its legitimacy, and its right to inflict violence. The Jewish and Christian belief that God is the sole ruler is the first step to relativizing this political theology, and making all kings and leaders of the world only a penultimate, not an ultimate, authority.

For Israel, and the church, this worked out most essential in the notion that God has a people – and the people have a God. That this God is also the sole creator of all things further intensifies the relativization of all earthly authority. As the history of Israel shows, the community was never fully reconciled to a king, and the anti-monarchial sentiment in parts of Deuteronomy, and the whole of Kings and Chronicles (not to mention the prophets!) shows this relativization in clear colors.

In summary, our status as dependent creatures makes most political sense when we recognize the basic fact that God is the sole ruler of all things. Next we’ll look at these two together when God becomes human, dies, raises, and is exalted - Jesus is this Lord.