 
# Hosea: The Great Reversal of the Great I-Am  
And Other Essays

By John McKenna

Copyright 2013 Grace Communion International

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Table of Contents

Hosea: The Great Reversal of the Great I-Am

On the Theology of the Word of God

Comforted by the Word

God's Names and Titles

The Freedom of the Person of Christ

The Glorious Freedom

A Visit With Tom Torrance, Master Theologian

The Message of Hosea 11

About the Author

About the Publisher

Grace Communion Seminary

Ambassador College of Christian Ministry

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## Hosea: The Great Reversal of the Great I-Am

The Book of Hosea is the first book of the Book of the Twelve, the so-called Minor Prophets of the Old Testament. Hosea is given primary place among these prophets for good theological reasons. His prophecy (750-730 B.C.) is second chronologically behind Amos (about 760 B.C.), but Hosea is first because of the fundamental notions he works with to explain Israel's past as the people of God and to foretell its future.

This explanation and proclamation involves the great reversal of the Great I-AM with Israel as his people, the object of his divinely passionate attention in a world that is his creation.

The eighth century before Christ was a watershed in the history of Israel. Before this time, prophets did not write down their ministries. No books are attributed to Elijah or Elisha.

The vitality of the eighth-century prophets is bound up with the way they saw beyond Israel's punishment for breaking the covenant between Israel and God. They saw a new world coming in the latter days that is and will be the destiny of God's people with their Lord.

They wrote down their ministries as if to say: "We see that you will not obey. You have not listened, even from the beginning of our covenant with God. But the Day of the Lord will come, when you will hear, and you will be his people. Time will prove that we are the true prophets of the Lord."

Fundamental to Israel's sin history is the breaking of the covenant established by the Great I-AM of God through Moses at Mt. Sinai.

When God appeared to Moses in the incident of the burning bush, Moses asked God what his name was (Exodus 3:13, Revised Standard Version). "God said to Moses, `I am who I am.' And he said, `Say this to the people of Israel, `I am has sent me to you'" (verse 14).

Hosea 1 introduces us to the problem the Great I-AM has with his people. Hosea 1:1 is a historical introduction that places the prophecy before the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C.

Hosea 1:2-2:1 introduces us to the fundamentals of this problem. The marriage between the prophet Hosea and his wife, Gomer, a temple priestess, is to be used as a metaphor to describe the relationship between Israel and the Lord God.

The prophet embodies the Word of God whose message he must bear to his people. God is to Israel as Hosea is to Gomer.

Other metaphors are also used in the book. Hosea 11:1 will render the covenant in terms of a father-and-son relationship. The love of a father for his son may also be used to explain the nature of the covenant relationship between God and his people. But the marriage relationship is primary to the prophecy of Hosea.

The marriage produces three children. The names of these children signify the nature of the history of the covenant between God and Israel. In the Semitic world, names were vital.

The first boy born to Gomer is named Jezreel (Hosea 1:4-5). It is a play on words with the name of Israel. The end of the kingdom of Israel is prophesied to come just as surely as King Jehu once massacred the followers of the Baalim in the Valley of Jezreel (2 Kings 9-10).

Jezreel means "God will sow." Much bitter irony is inherent in this name. Jacob means "bent," and Israel means "God will straighten." Israel was once bent, and now the God of Jacob will sow his judgment with what must be straightened again. Like the Baalim of Tyre and Canaan, the Lord will remove Israel from the land.

The second child is a girl. She is named "Not-Pitied." This name belongs to the beginning of God's determined passion to struggle with his people in order that they might come to know him for who he truly is. We may refer to Exodus 34:6-7. Even after Sinai, Israel prefers a golden calf to the great I-AM of her Exodus from Egypt. She can reject her husband. But to live without the deep compassion of God for humanity is to not know the love of God that shapes the beginning of every true marriage. It is to believe that conception belongs to something other than the Living God's care, compassion and holy love for that which has been conceived. On the other hand, it is to be pitied to know the womb-like character of the Lord God's care for his conception of Israel. This is the Hebrew meaning of the word for pity.

The third child is a boy, who marks the completion of the accusation the prophet makes against Israel. The boy is named "Not-My-People," the reversal of the covenant name given Israel in relation to the Lord (Hosea 1:9a). Ratification of the covenant concluded with the proclamation that Israel belonged in marriage to the Lord God (Exodus 19-24). He declared her to be "His People." Not to be "His People" is to join other nations in their opposition to the Creator and Redeemer of the world. It is to bring down on their own heads the curses inherent in the covenant between God and the world.

The reason for naming the boy "Not-My-People" is explicit. Because you have named me, says the Lord, "Not-I-AM," I have named you "Not-My-People." The reference must be to Exodus 3:14 and the Self-Naming God (I am Who I AM) of Israel's deliverance from Egypt.

Scholars have observed in Hosea 1:9b that the people called God "Not I-AM," using the word found in Ex. 3:14. But our Bibles still read this way: "Then the Lord said, `Call him Lo-Ammi, for you are not my people, and I am not your God.'"

I read the Hebrew as follows: "Call his name `Lo-Ammi' (Not-My-People), because you are not my people, since I am `Not-I-AM' to you." The point is that behind the names of God for the biblical world lies the great I-AM of the ministry of Moses at Sinai with the people of God.

The fundamental sin of Israel in covenant with her Lord is to turn the great I-AM that God is with her, into something that does not exist.

This temptation allowed Israel to marry the name of Yahweh Elohim (translated Lord God in English Bibles) to the Baalim of the Canaanite world. It is this syncretism that allowed her to break her marriage vows with the Holy One.

We should feel the finality of the divorce if we are going to appreciate the vitality of the restoration of this marriage. Only then may we understand the depths of our opposition toward the Creator and Redeemer of our lives.

Only then may we hear a real word of redemption for our lives. God and God's salvation cannot be divorced from one another, and in time Israel will know him for who he truly is.

That is the time in which Hosea sees, according to the Wisdom of God, the ultimate destiny of Israel.

We shall try to follow the way the prophecy announces both Israel's judgment and her salvation in the latter days. Israel will not be forever Jezreel. She will become "Pitied" again. She will become "My-People" again.

Because of her future I title this study "The Great Reversal of the Great I-AM of God." The prophecy sees a future for Israel as a time when God will be known for who he truly is with her, when she will be his people, and they shall enjoy majestically the fruits of their marriage to one another.

In the latter days, the purpose of the covenant relationship between the Lord God and Israel will be fulfilled among the nations. His people will possess real knowledge of God. This knowledge will be understood among the nations.

We can learn much of the Lord God when we take the time to reflect upon this great reversal of Israel's fortunes.

### Part 2

In the beginning of our study of the book of Hosea, we saw how the I-AM of God in Israel's Exodus (Exodus 3:13-14) lies behind the development of the prophetic vision of the People of God.

We saw how the People of God became Not-My-People because they turned the I-AM of God into the Not-I-AM and made way for themselves to "marry" their idols to the names of God in the Old Testament.

Hosea's marriage to the temple priestess Gomer and the three children she bore him portrays God's judgment upon Israel.

The final consequence of this judgment will bring about, in the latter days of the history of God's People, a great messianic salvation for Israel. It is with the grace of this judgment and the judgment of this grace that we can see the book's shape and substance for us.

If we consider chapters one to three as an introduction to the whole of the vision, then we notice that both judgment and salvation are bound up with one another in the mind of the author with a passionate and personal commitment to the covenant between God and his people.

God and Israel are in relationship with each other just as Hosea and Gomer are married to one another. The reversal of their broken marriage is surprisingly described throughout the book. Though an oracle of judgment is announced, Israel's ultimate salvation is proclaimed (Hosea 2).

Then the call of Israel to hope in her God is made with great anticipation (Hosea 3). We cannot understand the judgment apart from the salvation proclaimed in the book. We cannot understand the reversal of her fortunes foretold in the book apart from this judgment.

How can we learn to think the modes of judgment and salvation in the being of God's great I-AM? How may we develop some meaningful concept of the message of this prophet to the People of God?

After this introduction to the prophecy of Hosea, we begin to read two judgment speeches. They are addressed first to all Israel and her corruption of the covenant with her God (Hosea 4) and secondly to Israel's priesthood (Hosea 5:1-7).

To come to an appropriate understanding of the judgment, we may study Hosea 4:1-3: "Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites, Because the Lord has a lawsuit against you: There is no faithfulness, there is no covenant love, there is no knowledge of God in the land. Instead there are only curses, lying and murder, stealing and adultery. All the boundaries are broken, and violence follows bloodshed. Because of this, the land mourns, all who live on it waste away. The beasts of the fields, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea are dying" (my translation).

This judgment speech begins with a call to attention. The exhortation is important in Israel. Deuteronomy 6:4 ("Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One!") also calls Israel to attention. Without hearing the word of God, his people will not obey.

Once the attention is obtained, the covenant lawsuit is announced against the nation. In it God will act through the message of the prophet as a prosecutor of his people. The irony is not lost upon the prophets. His people will be convicted and punished through the very prophets they refuse to hear.

This is because they have turned the great I-AM of God into a Not-I-AM, according to what we have read in chapter one: "There is no truth or faithfulness, no covenant loyalty or love, and no knowledge of God throughout the nation living on God's promised land."

These three terms mark the reason for the judgment just as, in the introduction to the prophecy, the names of Gomer's children marked the curse of God upon the monarchies of Israel and Judah.

1) There is no truth, no ultimate reality upon which Israel can rely. She is doomed for desolation.

2) There is no covenant love (hesed) in the land. Scholars have studied this term thoroughly. It is the fundamental concept by which the promise of God in covenant with his people will be kept.

He took it away from Saul's house, but promised never to remove it from the House of David (2 Sam. 7:13-14). It is with the freedom of the Lord God's divine passion to keep the promise made once to Abraham that the term achieves its significance. The whole history of Israel is bound up with its meaning (see Psalm 136).

There is no knowledge of God in the land. Knowledge of God is knowledge gained in an intimate and saving relationship with him. This knowledge cannot be divorced from the wisdom by which the Lord gives himself to be known in covenant with his people.

When they turn the great I-AM that he truly is into the Not-I-AM that he is not, then whatever they possess as knowledge is no knowledge. It is but the dumb and deaf dreams of idols and idol makers. It is also the stuff that allows the Torah of God, given through Moses at Mount Sinai, to go unheeded.

That is what the list of sins against Israel are—deafness to the Torah of the People of God. There was a prohibition against swearing and cursing in the Law. There was a prohibition against lying and deceiving in the Law. There was a prohibition against murdering, thievery and adultery in the Law.

When all these are broken, what can the land do but mourn, and when the land mourns, what happens to those who live upon it? They waste away. Beasts of the fields, birds of the heavens and fish of the seas die.

In his lawsuit against his people, we are plainly taught that all of the creation suffers under the curse upon God's people. When Israel is cursed, the whole world suffers. The creation itself is made to bear witness to this judgment.

The covenant lawsuit of the Lord God against his people does not result merely in a lack of knowledge about him, from lack of loyal love for him, from lack of a faithfulness that belongs to his truth's faithfulness, but it results in the demise of the whole world.

When Israel is punished, the whole world knows death rather than life.

The profundity of this judgment must be announced throughout the society of ancient Israel. Beside the people, priest, prophet and king must understand the thoroughness of its accusation against all Israel.

Thus we read the progress that is made with the writhing repetitions of judgment that whirl on throughout the rest of the chapters of the book's accusations against Israel.

Though all of society protests, still Israel is judged. Hosea announces in no uncertain terms the reasons for the judgment against people, priesthood, prophet and royal rule alike.

All of them together shall experience not only the thoroughness of the judgment, but surprisingly also the faithfulness, the holy love and the wisdom of God in his covenanted interaction with Israel.

Without this kind of judgment, there will be no salvation of the God who would be known among his people. In the latter days he will be known for who he truly is.

It seems that the judgment is absolutely devastating, but it also is not the last word from the Lord God.

There will come again the salvation of the Lord God for them. There will be real knowledge of God in the land. There will true loyal love for God among his people.

Faithfulness and holy love will be wed in Israel once again. Israel will know in the latter days the deep and profound love of God for her. He will win her back to himself. We shall look into the nature of this passion in the salvation speeches we find in Hosea for Israel in our next study.

### Part 3

We have shown in the last two studies how Israel turned the great I-AM of the Lord her God into the Not-I-AM that allows her to break her covenant vows to Yahweh and marry herself to her idols.

For this sin against her covenant-making God, the People of God bring down upon themselves the fire of his judgment against their evil opposition to him. The children of the marriage of the prophet Hosea to the temple priestess Gomer bear names that embody the divine judgment against Israel.

We have also studied the nature of this judgment. When the great I-AM who covenants with his people is denied his real presence with Israel, the result is disobedience throughout the land.

Instead of faithfulness, loyal covenant love and real knowledge of God in the land, there are false swearing of oaths, murder, stealing, adultery and ecological crises in Israel.

Yahweh's case against his people is won with evidence not even the heavens and the earth can deny.

Ignorance of who God truly is in his acts toward his people mean for Israel a complete breakdown of her existence and eventual exile from the land at the hands of the Assyrian Empire.

But we have also seen that this judgment is not the last word of the prophet. Hosea also knows of a salvation that is the ultimate word of the Lord for Israel.

In fact, it is the point and counterpoint resolution of divine judgment and salvation that is marked by the whirlwind of God's word blowing through the land. The holy passion of the divine judge is experienced with a purpose that rests ultimately in the promise he will keep with his people. We may study this passion by looking at the love songs in the Book of Hosea (Hosea 11:1-11 and Hosea 14:1-8).

Hosea 11:1-11 involves a change in the main metaphor of marriage in the Book of Hosea. It relies on the father-son relation rather than the husband-wife relation for speaking about the covenant between God and Israel.

It sees Israel being delivered as a son from his slavery in Egypt. The whole history of the People of God in covenant with the Lord is rehearsed in this complaint of a father over his son.

Even though the Lord brought Israel forth as his son from Egypt into the land, yet the boy would not return to his Father's love. Even though the fire of the sword was upon him, Israel did not turn to his Father.

And then we read this:

"How can I give you up, O Ephraim!  
"I will deliver you, O Israel!  
"How can I give you up as I did Admah?  
"Or treat you as I did Zeboim?  
"My heart writhes within me!  
"With compassion, I long to be with you!  
"I will not be angry with you!  
"I will not turn and destroy Ephraim!  
"For I am God and not a man,  
"The Holy One in your midst!" (author's translation).

For me, these texts are some of the most powerful verses in the Old Testament.

They show us the great I-AM in covenant with his people. In his divine and holy freedom he decides to save Israel, as if Israel were his son, even though his son is only and always the rebel toward him.

This verse demonstrates the loyal love of the Lord God in covenant with his people and the great pathos in God's divine determination to save Israel as his people, in spite of their disobedience.

The salvation of Israel is rooted in the divinely free will and holy passion of God as Father for Israel his son. God is not only present with Israel in the history of the world, but also present with Israel as the son of his holy love.

Here, Israel's fortunes are turned at last to the great I-AM. The same lion that devours his people in judgment shall gather them back together with a roaring love that none shall be able to deny.

The other love song appears in Hosea 14:1-8. Here words of love are put into the mouth of Israel.

"Wipe away our iniquity and embrace us with goodness that the peace offering may be the fruit of our lips."

As the bride of the Lord God, Israel is to enjoy union and communion with her husband. In this way, their marriage will be restored. The covenant promise will be fulfilled.

These are words of love that remind us of one of the greatest love songs—the Song of Solomon.

Hosea declares that Jezreel will become once again the Lord's Israel. Not-pitied will become Pitied. Not-My-People will become My-People. The Not I-AM shall be at last the great I-AM the Lord her God—all this with a love that drops down from the heavens to drench like the morning dew the thirsty land of the People of God.

It is possible to read verse 5 of this love song in the following way: "I-AM is as the dew with Israel!"

In this way, we might hear the usual translation "I will be as the dew to Israel" as the great reversal of the great I-AM with Israel. The Lord with his people would be as the dew is to the land.

According to the words of Hosea's prophecy, this means that Israel will blossom in her covenant with her God. She shall be fruitful in his loyal love. She shall be healed in the shadow of his goodness, enriched in the beauty of his passion for her.

She shall know and be known by the great I-AM who is the Creator and Redeemer of the world. She shall be found embraced by his promise. The Ephraim that could not be given up is freed from her idols.

"O Ephraim, what more have I to do with idols?" (Hosea 14: 8)

The day will come for the People of God when, freed from their idols and idol-making, freed from her betrayal of her husband, she will know the joy of union and communion with her God.

She will bear the Messianic promise. She will know no more the idols of her disobedience against the Lord, but rather she will bear the fruit of their covenanted love for one another.

This fruit will be as of the olive tree. It is a fruitfulness that comes when the great I-AM, the Lord God who is with her, fulfills his vows to her. Perhaps this is the greatest love song in the world.

These love songs teach us, even in the midst of the divine judgment, the source of the relentless freedom with which God pursues the one he loves.

In this covenant, God is for his people with such fearsome love that, beyond all the punishment of his judgment against her, they will experience the great promise of the Lord. The great I-AM will not be denied. In the world, Israel shall become his faithful wife.

The whirlwind of this judgment and salvation in the Book of Hosea ends with an exhortation that calls attention to the role of wisdom in the prophecy of the history of Israel:

"Who is wise? He will discern these things.  
"Discerning, he will know them,  
"For the ways of the Lord are right,  
"And the righteous walk in them,  
"But transgressors stumble in them" (Hosea 14:9).

The question asks the readers to be wise in such things as the book contains. The prophet would have his readers understand the future to which his ministry would point the People of God.

The righteousness of God in covenant with his people will be confirmed. His people will become fully justified. The wicked will stumble in the Lord God's judgment against the unrighteous. They will perish. Wisdom and holy passion will come together so that Israel will experience in the latter days the joy of God's redeeming love.

Next, we will consider the relation of wisdom to prophecy.

### Part 4

We have seen in the previous three studies that the Book of Hosea is to be read in the light of the great reversal of the Great I-AM, the Lord God of Israel.

Because his people turn the I-AM into the Not-I-AM, they become the Not-My-People, the Not-Pitied and the Jezreel rather than His People, Pitied and True Israel.

They have rejected their Redeemer and Creator. The prophecy of Hosea is thus a vision of this reversal of Israel's fortunes. We saw how the marriage relation between Hosea and Gomer embodied this prophetic word of Yahweh with Israel. We saw how the holy passion of the Lord God roars like a whirlwind through Israel to destroy her in the Promised Land.

His judgment is devastating. He gives his people into the hands of the Assyrian armies. Israel as his bride is to be taken into exile by her enemy, with whom she has willingly committed adultery.

She does not know the grace or loyal love of Yahweh Elohim. We saw how with one judgment speech after another the prophecy applies to the whole of Israel's affluent society, people, priest, prophet and king alike.

Without knowledge of the loyal love of the Holy One, Israel will not remain in the Promised Land.

Yet, judgment in Israel is not the last word. The judgment is ministered with a view to the keeping of the ancient promise. This view is given to us in the form of salvation oracles and love songs that follow the announcements of the judgment.

We are asked to hear the music of the Great I-AM himself with his Israel. Like the marriage relationship and the like the relationship between a father and his son (Hosea 11), the One who is divine shall ultimately deliver and save his people (Hosea 11:9-10).

If he can roar in judgment against his people, he can roar for Israel's salvation. Thus, Israel is to know both the judgment and the salvation of the One God. Prophecy is to be understood in the light of the great reversal wrought by the Great I-AM in covenant with Israel.

Hosea concludes with a call that embraces the sage in Israel (Hosea 14:9). Who is wise? Let him realize these things! Not without wisdom shall the prophecy be understood.

True wisdom in Israel is that which knows the ultimate salvation of the people of God. This is the wisdom of the messianic hope of the prophets in Israel.

Beyond God's judgment are the acts of his loyal love and salvation. In the final days, he will be known as the great I-AM that he truly is.

Consider the role of this wisdom tradition in the prophecy of ancient Israel. Scholars have struggled to relate biblical wisdom to biblical prophecy in a clear theology. Two great German Old Testament theologians, Walter Eichrodt and Gerhard von Rad, were criticized for the manner in which they related the wisdom tradition to their understanding of Old Testament theology.

Since then, many have sought for a center around which a theology might be built that would include more naturally the wisdom and the prophetic traditions among the people of God.

It has not been an easy center to discover. Part of the reason may be credited to the way biblical theology in the early 20th century responded to the systematic theologies of the 18th and 19th centuries.

People had grown weary with the abstract notions of God developed in the so-called Age of Enlightenment.

They sought to realize afresh the dynamic God of the Bible, the God who acts in the history of his people.

That became the focus of the biblical theology movement—the acts of God in history. But when this focus denied that the being of God could be identified with what we can know of him in his acts, then a loss of relationship was experienced from which we have not yet recovered.

I liken this loss to the fundamental sin of Israel against her Lord and God. We have in this manner turned the Great I-AM the Lord God into something that he is not.

Only because God is who he truly is may we look for his salvation. The church, like Israel, must come to realize that in the Savior we are not merely given a little knowledge about God, but we have been given the knowledge of God that can only be given and actually has been freely given by God himself.

In Jesus Christ we are not given merely knowledge about God, but knowledge of who the Lord God is in his own being and nature. Thus, we must understand that the Messiah of Israel as the Lord Jesus Christ, the Great I-AM that the Lord is with his people, reveals the Father Almighty, maker of the heavens and the earth.

It is in this spirit that we may realize the things Hosea once called the people of God to understand.

We have been given those transcendent relationships that allow us, as he makes us into his people, to know him for who he truly is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as the one true God of all things created.

The nature of the great I-AM is such that divine and human realities have been made in himself to correspond with one another so that the creation and the Creator are made to reflect each other.

The wisdom of the Creator and the Redeemer of the world is to be realized in this one person. The Great I-AM of the burning bush and the Great I-AM of the Incarnation are the same as the revelation of the Lord and God of all creation.

Both the Old and the New Testaments are to be understood according to these transcendent relations established for us by God in Christ.

To acknowledge this is to understand the final exhortation in Hosea: Who is wise? He will realize these things!

What do we make of all this?

God is not merely "out there" somewhere, intervening occasionally from the "far away heavens." God is our all in all, the root and substance of our being.

"In him we live and move and have our being," Paul wrote. And despite our sin and rebellion, God's love is faithful. He comes to us in redemption and salvation to restore us to wholeness—to oneness with him.

He calls on us, as he did to Israel, to believe in him for who he truly is so that we may be restored to who we really are as his own children.

We can trust in God's love. He is ever faithful, and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we can know him for who he truly is in Jesus Christ, the perfect revelation of the Father. Praise be to God!

### Bibliography

David Alan Hubbard, Hosea, Tyndale Old Testament Commentary, InterVarsity Press, 1989.

Francis I. Andersen and David N. Freedman, Hosea, Anchor Bible, Doubleday, 1980.

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## On the Theology of the Word of God

Karl Barth's concept of the threefold form of the Word of God may be stated as follows:

• The Word of God is first of all and preeminently the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

• The Word of God appears in written form as the Holy Scriptures of the people of God, the Bible of the Old and New Testaments.

• The Word of God is the proclamation of the church of Jesus Christ as the revelation of his Father by the Spirit of God.

This three-in-one concept of the Word confronts us with a dynamic reality whose intelligibility is to be grasped with the rigors and precision inherent in knowing God in this way in this world.

### God's divine freedom

The Word of God comes to us in his divine freedom. He is God who comes personally and freely as a man among his people. The Holy Scriptures are the written form of this Word. The canon of this literature bears witness to his majestic truth.

With his truth, the Lord God has established his dialogue canonically between himself and his people. With it, his people are made to hear his Word and to proclaim him in the world.

The Word of God comes as a man within the structures of the created world for his own purposes. He is in this way the fulfillment of the ancient covenanted promises to Israel. The dynamic character of this dialogue, with its commands and promises, shapes the substance of his people's hearing. We are listeners being formed to understand and proclaim the very Word that he is when he speaks to us.

Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of Israel's prophetic hope. He spoke the heavens and earth into existence. He spoke to Abraham and then with the fathers of Israel's faith. He spoke with Moses and David, and then through Israel's prophets. He spoke through the apostles, and he speaks through them still with the Bible.

When the church began to proclaim this speaking of God's Word within the Greco-Roman world, it was on the attack. The church had to attack the very foundations of knowledge that prevailed throughout the Roman Empire.

The gospel of God in Jesus Christ questioned the way human thought conceived of the reality of God, the cosmos and the human race. A new way for God and humanity to be in this world had been defined. It was not readily accepted.

Israel's messianic hope was the realization of the covenanted promise the Lord God made with his people. The church was to hear this Word for Israel, his people, and to proclaim him throughout the world. Greek rationalism heard this Word of God as folly. Judaism heard it as blasphemy. The church heard it as the majestic truth of God himself.

The church grew steadily then and flourished. Its faith in Jesus Christ gained for it a certain place and time in world history. World history has since never known itself without the church of Jesus Christ.

The Torah of the Jews and the Pax Romana of the caesars provided no room for this new reality. The Person of the Lord Jesus Christ lit up this darkness in such a way that human knowledge was seen to require an entirely new basis for its development.

Christ had showed the church a whole new way of seeing everything. It was the beginning of a whole new creation, to which all are called even in our own time.

I would argue that this Logos, which became flesh, established a rational basis for understanding the created order and human freedom in the universe that is uniquely the Christian gospel's contribution to the development of our scientific culture. It attacks the Greek philosophical views of an eternal world and the immortality of the race of men.

This Logos also transforms the views of Judaism. The Creator of the heavens and the earth and his interaction with his creation cannot be divorced from Israel's redemption. Far from blasphemy, he is the solid truth that the Lord God is faithful to keep his promise to Israel. He is the Holy One in our midst.

This Word challenges, in fact, every idea we possess about the holy and divine, the cosmos of the world, and the humanity of the created orders.

With the revelation of this Logos in mind, Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian, set out to write his Church Dogmatics. I have found his concept of the Word of God fruitful in my own life and efforts to read and understand the Bible.

I believe that most of the problems the church has faced in the history of its proclamation of the gospel must be resolved with a proper understanding of the intervals of the threefold form of this Logos.

The interval between the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Bible. With the church's study and understanding of the Bible as witness to the Word, it learns to speak of his personal reality as the Revelation of God in the world. He himself is then the source of the canonical truth of the biblical world. This canon of the church's faith cannot be divorced from the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Eternity, history and our times are bound up with this literature. Inspiration, history, historical-critical methods for interpreting the Bible, the relationship of science to the Word of God—all must find their places within the domain of this interval.

The interval between the Person of the Word of God and the church is bound up with the way his incarnation as this Logos of the Spirit of God creates and commissions the church to proclaim this Word. Jesus Christ is the union of the divine and human natures of the Lord God and a man in this world. He is the revelation of his Father. These concepts cannot properly be understood without the interval between the church and the Bible. In this domain is established the church doctrine of the Trinity of God.

The intervals between God and the Bible and God and the church impact upon the interval between the church and the Bible. The church at all times must remain under the authority inherent in the Bible, but it must not worship the Bible. The church must worship the Word revealed there of the Father and by the Spirit. Biblical interpretation and theology are developed here.

These intervals, distinguished from another and yet dynamically related, are understood as one in a unity that Barth attempts to keep in mind throughout his Church Dogmatics.

Divine and human freedoms are at the poles of these intervals, and I believe they possess the secret of the nature of the covenant relations taught us in the Bible.

My mentor in this theology of the Word of God, Professor Tom Torrance, wrote that the church, in its efforts to proclaim this Word and his kingdom, must face three facts about itself in regard to its mission to the world (Theology in Reconciliation, 1975):

#### The church must overcome any built-in obsolescence that endures because of faulty assumptions.

#### The church needs to learn to keep from joining the world in its desire to make the world the place and time of its own righteousness.

#### The church must recover her mission of healing and reconciliation in the depths of being. Superficial analyses and fashionable assessments about our futures will only land us within our already wounded boundaries, our already fragmented forms, our already alienated individuals and communities. Revelation and reconciliation must be heard together with one another from beginning to end.

We need to learn to live and have our being in the grace and truth of this Word and enjoy him and his life and being forever. May he reconcile us to himself and give us to know him for who he truly is for us in our time.

### Resources:

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Volume I, 1 and 2.

Bernard Ramm, After Fundamentalism.

T.F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction.

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## Comforted by the Word

It is amazing how often we read in the Bible this exhortation from God: "Don't be afraid. Don't be terrified!"

It seems that again and again we need to hear these words from the Lord: "Do not be afraid. I am with you!" The Bible is plain that we are called to follow the Lord God without fear.

But who lives fearlessly? We all find ourselves afraid at times as we are confronted with life's tragedies, traumas and crises. Reading the Bible, which assures us of God's never-failing presence in our lives, helps us through these times.

To know the God of the Bible is to be assured of his care for us, even when we have to face something that makes us naturally afraid.

"I will be with you!" If these words came from anyone other than the Lord God of our lives, we would have good reason to be afraid.

No one we know is with us forever. We are not even with ourselves forever, because we often betray ourselves.

If these words, "I will be with you," were the words of someone who is not God, we would find less comfort from them.

That is why we can have confidence when we read the Bible. The Bible is not another market niche magazine, nor is it merely a book among the books of the world.

The Bible is the Book among the books of the world. The Bible comes down to us through the many centuries of the history of God's people.

That history begins with ancient Israel's confession that her deliverance from slavery in Egypt was from her Lord and God.

The Bible creates through Israel a sure hope that has come to be known as messianic hope.

It is the certain hope that God will keep his promise to her and send his Messiah to her.

This hope is realized through Jesus Christ. In Christ, God has kept his promise to his people by sending them his Son. Through Christ, God is present with his people forever. That is why we can believe and not be afraid.

Every day, our God is present with us and will be present with us forever. Our reading of the Bible is meant to help us with this hope and belief. The Bible is the Book among the books of the world because it teaches us of Jesus Christ.

Every book of the Bible is given to us to teach us about and draw us deeper into Jesus Christ. Because Christ reveals the love of the Lord God for us, he is the center from which we may learn to know and love God.

In Jesus Christ, God has revealed the secrets about his ways with us. Jesus is the way God has chosen to be with us. "Do not be afraid, I am with you always, even to the end of this age."

If these words were not the words God has spoken to us, we would have much to fear. But because they are his words, we may be sure he has kept his promise to us, and he will never cease to keep his promise to us.

The more I read the Bible, the more he enriches me with assurance about his promise. The Lord God is gracious and faithful in the promises he has made to his people. The more I read, the more certain his hope grows in me.

The Bible has a way of mastering my fears and me. We do not read the Bible so that we can master it. We read the Bible because God has committed himself to comforting us through it. We read the Bible, and we find his comfort for us.

Great is the comfort of the Lord. He takes away our fears. He makes his presence known to us. He comforts us with the comfort that only he can give us.

"Don't be afraid, I am with you." God has given us the Bible so that we might hear his words of comfort for us. I like to think of it as listening to the greatest music we could ever hear. How amazing and thrilling it is to hear God speak with us.

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## God's Names and Titles

The names of God and the words used for God found in the Old Testament reflect a Semitic world's commitment to the relationship between the nature of anything and the name of that thing. The name could not be divorced from the nature of the actual being of the thing. When we say that the revelation of God belongs to the divine freedom of the Self-Naming God, we mean that the various names of God in his acts with his people in the world cannot be divorced from his actual nature and being. All the names of God must refer to who he truly is with Israel and the world.

Even the most common name of God found in the Old Testament – YHWH (used 6823 times) – must refer to the great I-AM of God established in his divine freedom to be present with Israel in the Exodus tradition. The fundamental assertion of the five books of Moses or the Pentateuch is that YHWH is none other than the Elohim (used 2550 times) of the world.

It is the nature and being of this one that would establish both the redemption of his people and the creation of the world. Deuteronomy 32:3, in the Song of Moses, the poet declares that he will proclaim the name of YHWH, he will praise the greatness of "our" Elohim. Here we have the strong polemic inherent in the use of these names that demythologizes the world of the ancient deities. With the use of these names Israel confessed the unique power of the oneness of the "Lord our God" with her (Deuteronomy 6:4).

The names YHWH and Elohim are translated for the most part today by the English words LORD and GOD. We believe that it is imperative to understand these names as referring at once both to the Deliverer of Israel and the Creator of the universe – the heavens and the earth.

In a few places, the King James Version translated the consonants YHWH with the vowels from the word Adonai; the resulting hybrid was "Jehovah." The four consonants of the name that the Jews would not pronounce in the synagogues of Judaism were read aloud as 'Adonai' and the scribes recorded the practice in a conflation of the consonants from YHWH and the vowels of Adonai. Transliterated in the King James Bible, the word Jehovah was produced.

Modern scholars believe that in some sense YHWH is to be associated with the verb 'to be' in Hebrew and may have been pronounced something like 'Yahweh'. That is the way the name is sounded among them today. Modern Jews cling to their reverence for the name and simply say in their congregations, when they see the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) in the texts, "Ha Shem" meaning, "The Name." The important thing to understand is that "Lord God" refers us to the actual nature and being of the actual existence of his deity with us in the world.

If we understand that, because of his actions in delivering Israel from Egypt, YHWH is the name confessed by the people of God, and that Elohim, the name associated with his creation in the beginning of the world, is affirmed as being none other than YHWH, we do not exhaust the ways the Lord God in his divine freedom chose to interact in covenant with his people. There are many other names of God to be found in the Old Testament.

Associated very directly with the Lord God (YHWH Elohim) is the name Elohim in construct form with the fathers of Israel. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel (Exodus 3:13-15). Other forms of YHWH may be observed: YHWH Yireh (Genesis 22:14, "He sees"), YHWH Rophekah (Exodus 15:26, "He heals"), YHWH Nissiy (Exodus 17:15, "My Banner"), YHWH Meqaddishkem (Exodus 31:13, "He makes you holy"), YHWH Shalom (Judges 6:24, "Lord of peace"), YHWH Tseba'oth (1 Samuel 1:3, "Lord of hosts"), YHWH Tidqenuh (Jeremiah 23:6, "Lord, our righteousness"), YHWH Shammah (Ezekiel 48:35, "He is there"), YHWH Elyon (Psalm 7:17, "He is most high"), YHWH Ro'iy, (Psalm 23:1, "He is my shepherd"), and others.

The whole book of Ezekiel may be understood as a prophecy that shows that God does not name himself in vain: "I am YHWH" is announced over and over again throughout the book. The rhetoric is clearly that, when the prophecy is fulfilled, the whole world will know him for who he truly is.

Combinations of terms with El or Elohim are also quite frequent in the Old Testament. Genesis 14:18-22 possesses a play on the names for the Lord God and claims the El Elyon (God Most High) as the begetter (Qoneh) of the heavens and the earth is the one who is Abram's Shield or Protector. El Shadday (God of Provision, Genesis 17:1) was known commonly among the ancestors of Israel (Exodus 6:3), long before the great I-AM had given Moses the name YHWH with which Moses could confront Pharaoh.

El in certain combinations can refer to angels, mighty heroes or men, as well as the supreme God. El Olam (God of Forever, Genesis 21:33) bears the interaction of God's eternity with created time. El Rachum (God of Compassion, Exodus 34:6) signifies the way God is in the conception of Israel, even in spite of Israel's opposition to who he truly is. El Emunah (God of Faithfulness, Deuteronomy 32:4) refers to the God whom Israel can trust with her future. The confession in Exodus 34:6-7 shapes a "credo" that forms much of Israel's understanding of the Lord God in covenant with her and the development of her history in the world. Here YHWH is the El of that compassion, favor, patience, and great grace and truth that is inherent in the way the great I-AM has chosen in his divine freedom to be present with Israel's past, present and future.

Besides these combinations of names with YHWH and El or Elohim, the term Adonay can be employed in the superlative to refer to the Lord of Lords (Deuteronomy 10:17). In Genesis 15:1, the Word of YHWH calls himself for Abram a Megen (Shield). In Exodus 31:13, YHWH calls himself the one who makes Israel holy (Meqadish), a name especially important in the Levitical law (Leviticus 20:8; 21:8; 22:32). He is in his interaction with his people of a dynamic nature and being.

YH and a shortened form YHu can be found throughout the ancient Near East to signify a deity in the pantheons of some city-states as well as the God of the Old Testament (Exodus 15:2 and with many names of places and people). El and Elohim are commonly found among the mythologies and cosmogonies of the ancient civilizations. These names for the gods of the temples and palaces in the city-states of the ancient civilizations are reflected even among the pantheons of the Greek gods. The Canaanite Baal, Mesopotamia's Marduk, and the Greek Zeus may all be understood as storm-gods bound up with the fertility myths of these peoples.

We do well to understand that these gods serve as background for the names of the Lord God that we find in use in ancient Israel. But Israel employs what was common in this background with unique significance. The names of the Lord God in the biblical usage could never be understood free from the actual being and nature of the one true Creator and Redeemer of the world in opposition to the other gods. He is to be known in Israel as the great I-AM, the one who makes Israel the people of God (cf. Hosea 1:9). She is to know this one for who he truly is in the world (cf. the "I am YHWH" of the Book of Ezekiel). This is the prophetic power of the self-revelation of the self-naming God that lies behind the use of the divine names and titles in the Old Testament.

Thus, the use of the words "Kurios" and "Theos" in the New Testament resounds in the Greco-Roman world the names of YHWH and Elohim in the Old Testament.

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## The Freedom of the Person of Christ

It is necessary to grasp the meaning of three freedoms if we are going to be able to explain the full significance of freedom. These three freedoms are 1) divine freedom, 2) created freedom and 3) human freedom.

1) Divine freedom is to be understood as the uncreated freedom of the one, sovereign and free God who is the Creator and Redeemer of the world. Divine freedom, as uncreated freedom, is noncontingent freedom. This means that this type of freedom possesses the absolute freedom to exist. It depends on nothing outside of itself for its existence.

2) Created freedom, on the other hand, is a contingent freedom. Created freedom has boundaries that differentiate it from God's type of existence. We say that God is the eternal reality, but that the world is not. As God's creation, the world possesses a created freedom that is different from God's uncreated freedom. The world's created freedom may reflect in some ways the divine freedom, but the one cannot be confused with the other. The divine, uncreated, noncontingent reality of the transcendent and sovereign nature and being of God can never be thought to be the same as the material, created, temporal and contingent things of the Earth.

3) Human freedom can be understood only as it exists within the created freedom of the world. In a unique way, human freedom is allowed to echo divine freedom.

Outside of the Lord Jesus Christ, no integration of divine, created and human freedom is possible. Outside of him, we remain alienated and fragmented in our understanding of how God has actually accomplished the integration of these three freedoms. We turn the apparent freedom we enjoy into an idol when we are unable to integrate into our thinking the transcendence and the immanence inherent in these freedoms. There is a Christological center, if you like, to the secret of the rationality and intelligibility of human freedom. It is the subject of this center that I now wish to address.

When I teach students in my theological courses at university or seminary level, I like to show them how we have progressed from the Ptolemaic cosmology of the ancient world (where philosophers tried to transcend the earthly aspects of thought to reach the "perfect and eternal forms" that philosophy seemed to see with its "mind's eye"), through the Newtonian "system of the world" (which reduced everything to empirical systemization of cause and effect) to modern scientific method (which is committed to understanding the world according to its real nature). We seek through thought to comprehend the real universe in ways that are faithful to its nature. We do not merely subject the world to our speculations about it, but allow it to teach us to know it for what it really is.

The history of human thought and human freedom have experienced real transformations as we have brought our minds into a creative relationship with the actual nature of the world we live in. These transformations only affirm the truth we find in the gospel. They are, I believe, a good indication of what is meant by our freedom as our civilization has developed under the providence and prophecy of God's Word.

Thus, I would argue for the cogency of the Judeo-Christian tradition in shaping human understanding about both human and divine freedom. In this tradition, Christology shapes and forms the substance and content of the center of world history with a freedom whose nature has integrated for us the three freedoms we have been dealing with. As we understand the freedom of the Person of Jesus, we shall understand the freedom of God, the freedom of the creation, and the freedom of humanity. So, how do we go about this?

I wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on the Alexandrian grammarian John Philoponus (a.d. 490-560). He was misunderstood by the church as a heretical monophysite. He had tried to write a treatise on the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ for the Emperor Justinian. It was hoped that some reconciliation between the Eastern and Western Sees of the church in Justinian's empire might be realized if a fresh understanding of the Person of Christ could be arrived at. I learned the following from Philoponus about the freedom in Christ Jesus as the Eternal Son and Word of God.

The ancients recognized that understanding Christ meant resolving in some way the problem of the divine and human natures of Jesus. Thus, the Person of Jesus Christ is bound up with the resolution of the ancient philosophical problem of the whole and the parts. Philoponus argued that, in the case of the Person of Jesus Christ, the impossible had occurred and we had to face this fact or deny God his divine freedom. The Person of Jesus Christ was neither brute fact nor some pious phantom. The wholeness of the Person of Jesus Christ is at once bound up with the wholeness of the life of God himself and the humanity of the Word become flesh. When he assumed his flesh in the Virgin, a new reality, unknown in the cosmos prior to Jesus' birth, entered the world. And here we have the key to understanding the different types of freedom.

Creative freedom thus wills to make mankind in the image of God, a profound restoration of all that mankind had lost in its disobedience to the Word of God. With a divine freedom that only he possesses, God has gone out of himself and become something or someone he had never been before, while at the same time, remaining who he truly is. With this uncreated and divine freedom he has acted to make himself known as a man to all mankind. He has entered into his creation and as a creature within his creation he spoke the Word of God whose truth would free men and women from their covenants with death, sin and evil and prepare them for the new creation. In this way, the Creator as our Redeemer has indicated the way we must learn to think about the interaction between the divine and the human in the created reality of God's universe.

There are, Philoponus thought, different ways of conceiving the relationship between a whole and its parts. Take a house, for instance. It is made up of parts – floors, walls, roof, etc. Each of its parts occupies its own space. We lump together the number of these spaces when we want to define the house as a whole. We may say that a house is the sum of its parts. Number rationality is sufficient for us to define the house. But when we consider the wholeness of a bronze statue of a person, we cannot simply number the spaces of the parts. The bronze metal of the statue and the form of a person occupy in this case the same space. Its parts do not occupy their own places. The two are one, not by the numbering of their places but because both belong to the form and content that is the one space of the statue. We may think of this kind of wholeness as having an aesthetic kind of rationality, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Here we think beyond mere number rationality for our grasp and appreciation of this whole statue. However, neither of these cases is adequate for explaining the whole and the parts of the divine and human nature of the Word become flesh.

In the incarnation, the divine freedom of God's Word creates its own space-time for the flesh he assumes. Only the divine Word that God the Son is can define the particular man Christ exists as, in the nature of God's creation. The Word establishes his own reality within the space-time structures of the world. This is a divinely free act that creates what is utterly new in the history of the world. Here we understand the importance of imageless knowing in theology. God in his eternity has made himself present with and for us in his creation, that is, on earth. In this way, human freedom from within the free creation has been given real union and communion with the Lord God's very own divine freedom.

It is important to understand that the Word did not leave some place in order to become this particular man Jesus. It is also important to understand that human time has here been given real touch with God's eternity. All that we mean by divine freedom and all that we mean by human freedom is bound up together in the Person of Jesus Christ. The Word did not go into a flesh that existed outside of himself, but assumed his holy flesh as the man Jesus Christ. The Father did not assume this flesh. The Spirit did not assume this flesh. But God, in his own divine freedom, assumed this flesh as the Word or Son of God. This is to say that it was with a very particular mode of his free being that God became incarnate. In this way, Philoponus sought to appreciate the Person of Jesus Christ as the Light of the World.

His long-standing condemnation by the church is not easy to understand. It has been only very recently that the Eastern Orthodox Church has changed its mind about the anathema against him. I believe that this represents a new appreciation for the meaning of freedom. I believe that this Alexandrian grammarian put his finger on a very vital point. To explain the free interaction of a free God with a free world and its humanity we need a fresh appreciation for the significance of this Person in his freedom to be with us now.

I would argue that, unless we can understand him in his freedom, we shall not understand any of the three freedoms we have been discussing. We cannot turn human freedom into either some abstract or idealistic philosophy or some brute fact or autonomous will intrinsic to the nature of the human race. We must learn to appreciate our freedom in the freedom God has made known to us in Jesus Christ. Unless we can appreciate this kind of creativity, we shall not understand how it is that the Incarnation is the confirmation of the divine freedom of God to create in the beginning, and the affirmation of every true beginning in God's good creation. Without an appreciation of this divine freedom in all beginnings, we shall not grasp in all its depth the meaning of human freedom.

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## The Glorious Freedom

World Mission University  
Los Angeles, California  
Commencement, 2005

Beginnings, old and new, are essential for understanding the world, and I love new beginnings.

Across the pages of the Holy Scriptures we read of the way that God with his divine freedom is free with himself to renew his covenanted relationship with his people. Ultimately, the Bible teaches us that God shall fulfill his covenanted purposes for his people with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the biblical covenant relationship we are taught by the Bible, new beginnings are absolutely necessary for his people. I speak to you today of the new beginning you are making as the 2005 graduating class of World Mission University. It is a commencement that belongs to the way of Jesus Christ.

Let me quote from the apostle Paul:

#### I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not of its own choice, but by the will of the One who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. (Romans 8:18-21)

It is with this glorious freedom you make your commencement today. The immediate context for Paul's claim about the glorious freedom of the children of God is provided by Romans 8:1 ("There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus") and Romans 8:38-39 ("For I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord").

Behind us lies "no condemnation." Before us is the "love of God." We as his children are a people free from condemnation and for the love that God is. The creation, we are informed, itself bears witness to this glorious freedom of the children of God and waits for the full realization of its purpose.

Thus, the glorious freedom of the children of God is crystallized in a context where no condemnation can be found for the people of God, and where God's love shall never fail with his creation. A solid understanding of this freedom cannot be apprehended without the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Within the boundaries of his divine forgiveness and love we may grasp the meaning of the glorious freedom we have been given by our Savior. It is a freedom that transcends every created thing and rests upon Christ's love of his Father and his Father's love for him.

For this reason, we may say that without condemnation and for the love of God we live beyond the vanity of the creation. Even the vanity of the creation waits to be free as we have been freed for the glorious freedom. The whole of created reality waits for the time when the glorious freedom of the children of God shall be realized utterly. The doctrine of the vanity or frustration of the creation is known to Paul through the proclamation of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes. All is vanity, says the Preacher. All is vanity, says Paul, about the Old Testament world.

But about the New Testament world, Paul can say that in and with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, all that was vanity has been vanquished. The Preacher's call to the people of God to trust their God is not vanity. It is a call to trust even in the vanity of the creation that God will give meaning and significance to life in the creation.

With the same freedom that the Lord God delivered Israel from Egypt, he will give ultimate meaning and significance to the vanity of the creation. The whole of God's creation beholds the way the Lord has kept faith with this trust in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.

As his children, the people of God are called to trust him as their Creator and their Redeemer, and their destiny belongs to the beginning he has made with himself in the world. The creation itself now waits for the full realization of this beginning and its promise to his sons and daughters. Because of this beginning, they live in the glorious freedom without condemnation and for the love of God for all creation.

This Creator-Redeemer is known to Paul as the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the revealer of the Father by his Spirit. This person has revealed his Father to the apostle Paul and by the Holy Spirit given Paul to know the One who is who he truly is. It is in the light of this only One that the apostle can teach the believers to trust their Redeemer and their Creator for their destiny.

The believers in Christ can know that they participate in a beginning that is without condemnation and led by the love that God is for them to their destiny. The believers are to give up all condemnation, including all self-condemnation, and they are to live following him whose divine freedom and will shall never fail them in this world. Thus, they are in Christ the sons of God, the children of God. They live in the glorious freedom that is without condemnation and with the love of God.

In our time, the concept of freedom calls anew for our attention. As Americans, we believe in the freedom of the human race. At the founding of our nation, the concept of freedom played and continues to play a central role.

Freedom from the rule of an English king was foremost on the minds of many Americans. "Give me liberty or give me death," was a cry heard round the world. Better to be dead than a live slave to the tyrant. That is the beating of the American heart from the beginning. But the freedom to worship God according to our conscience was just as much on the minds of the Founding Fathers.

President George W. Bush even now makes our concept of freedom central to his policies at home and around the world. Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, we have witnessed a new beginning of a new resolve in our nation's freedom against the tyrants of this world. It is a resolve that must be compared with the resolve our country possessed in its beginning.

Now we are saying that our freedom has value not only from an English monarch, but for the whole world of nations. It possesses a universal value that peoples everywhere ignore with jeopardy. It is a liberty for which we are prepared to fight around the world.

All the laws and all the might of all the nations in this world are only made to serve this freedom. This freedom and the responsibility for human rights go hand in glove together against every tyrant on our globe. Yet it is a policy whose cry is not easily heard by everyone. Freedom can and does mean different things to different people. Evidently, the concept of freedom needs explanation that does not meet the naked eye.

Great minds have contemplated it. In his book, The Logic of Liberty, Michael Polanyi argues that freedom sought by communities and individuals cannot find coherence except upon a transcendent ground neither individuals nor communities can afford to ignore. Freedom evidently makes demands upon us that take us quite beyond ourselves as individuals and as communities.

Polanyi argues that freedom's real meaning cannot be grasped without consideration of the role of the transcendent in communal and individual freedoms. One cannot understand, he says, the value of the role of freedom in the various fields of human knowledge and endeavor without taking into consideration the value of the transcendence in human life.

If freedom does have meaning, it possesses significance from beyond our communities and our individualities. The responsibility of freedom comes from beyond us, from beyond the dimensions of our sciences and our religions. The loss of this transcendent, Polanyi shows, plagues our modern world with a disease that involves the real loss of the meaning of freedom in our time.

Korean-Americans are no strangers to this struggle for freedom's meaning in their history. The folk song Arirang is to Koreans what "God Bless America" is to Americans. From "the tears of sorrow and separation" to freedom in the United States, Koreans have suffered, fought and died beside Americans for freedom's sake.

When Sammy Lee became the first Asian-American to win an Olympic gold medal in 1948, he brought a newfound freedom for the Korean people in America. And even in our own times, beyond the 1992 riots in Los Angeles, Korean-American people have learned again to suffer and to die for this freedom's sake. No doubt World Mission University will stand for this freedom in the future. The concept of freedom for which we suffer and die and again live is vital for all of us. It deserves real attention.

We may consider the explanation of freedom by contemplating the faces of what I have called freedom's counterfeit coin. On the heads side of the coin, we have engraved the face of freedom as an abstract idealism, a timeless principle that we may apply all the time everywhere, as if it were the same as eternal truth. With it, we may seek to provide an explanation of all the order and reason we may experience in the world.

Greek philosophers could swoon passionately over this kind of principle. Their logos was the source of all that was beautiful and orderly and eternally true in the world. For these philosophers, the heavens themselves appeared eternal, their motions divine, while the temporal things on the earth appeared but temporarily in a decaying world. The contrast between the heavens and the earth was absolute. Everlasting life had to do with being free from earth's temporal things and free for the eternal things of the heavens. Salvation rested among the eternal verities in the heavenlies.

On the tails side of the coin, we have engraved a romantic idealism. Freedom is understood on this side of the coin as individualistic freedom. It is bound up with the autonomy of the freedom of the individual and existential decision-making that in the vast impersonal nature of things is rendered ultimately meaningless.

Modern existential philosophers understand human freedom in this way. Humanity is imprisoned in the nothingness of the world that shapes a theatre of the absurd for the existence of human life in a universe vastly indifferent to our humanity. We are free to make our decisions in the world, but the nature of this world is absolutely indifferent to the autonomy of our freedom. Our freedom has no ultimate consequence in the large picture of things. Human existence as vanity is surrounded by the nothingness of a world where we romantically work out our destinies in it, but without any ultimate significance.

When freedom is understood either as abstract idealism or as romantic idealism, we must realize that both sides of the coin are inadequate to explain real freedom. Neither the timeless principles of communal beliefs nor the autonomous assertions of free individuals can justify our concept of freedom.

I believe that we must face the fact that the whole of this freedom coin is a counterfeit. When it comes up heads and we live responsibly in our public commitments, we tend to suppress the real significance of individual freedom. When it comes up tails and we exercise our freedom as individuals without coordination with public freedom, we tend to suppress the external controls necessary for true spontaneity and creativity. If it is heads, we may find ourselves boasting. If it is tails, we may find ourselves despairing. But neither the pride of our boasting nor the sloth of our despair can stand for the real face of freedom.

In its pride and in its sloth, writes the great theologian Karl Barth, the human race seeks its consolation with the Liar, and its condemnation. "The man of sin," he wrote, "in his fully developed form as a liar is the man who goes forward to his condemnation" (Church Dogmatics IV.3.1, p. 462). We must learn to strike a whole new coin.

But to strike a new coin of freedom without the glorious freedom of the children of God is, I believe, impossible. The transcendence for which Polanyi has argued can have nothing to do with abstract principles or existential passions, but must be defined by the transcendence of the ascended Lord of all space and time, the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Jesus Christ, we know no boasting or despair. With the glorious freedom he has given us we belong to that for which the whole creation longs to see. We belong to his new creation. In this way, we belong to the Spirit of Almighty God. We belong to the One who alone can give human life in this world. In this freedom, the human race lives as children of God. In this freedom, we shall be established as the children he has raised up for himself, as the Creator and Redeemer. It is with this freedom that we may proclaim as his church the kingdom of Heaven, Christ and God.

It is with this freedom that we may live beyond the vanity that the world is without him. It is with this freedom that we may discard the lie of the Liar. It is with the freedom of this truth that the apostle John writes: "So if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed" (John 8:36).

Like Paul, the apostle John crystallized his thoughts about the freedom of the believer in Jesus Christ within a certain context. In John 8:12, we read Christ's claim as the Son of God to be light of the world. And then before the religious leaders of his time, he claims an identity with the Great I-AM of the burning bush to be who he truly is even before Moses, even before Abraham, who he once called out of Babylon (John 8:58).

Between these two claims lies this truth. Man in Christ is given his freedom for God. They are given to participate with him in the new beginning he has made with himself. It is this divine and human freedom that is the transcendent ground upon which we stand and grasp the meaning of the glorious freedom of the children of God in Christ's new creation.

In Galatians 5:1, the apostle Paul writes once more about this glorious freedom: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." Even in the midst of an unbelieving world, we may stand as his children with this glorious freedom. We are neither Jew nor gentile. We are sons and daughters of the free God.

We know that death shall have no dominion over us. We know that we live in him without condemnation. We know that we may live in him for the love of God. We who once lived in Adam as slaves in this fallen world, now may live in Christ for his new creation. We live as his people with this glorious freedom. We live because he lives in this glorious freedom.

You are the graduating class of 2005 of World Mission University. You are ready to begin your new lives and ministries in the world. We are deeply grateful for you. We thank our Lord and God for you. We pray that his rich and great blessings will be upon you in the glorious freedom of your love of God. We pray that you will go forth in this glorious freedom, free from condemnation, free for the love that God is, and free to proclaim his light and life to the world.

Only as you go in this glorious freedom shall we be able to explain the existence of World Mission University and its freedom in this world. We believe it is, indeed, a glorious freedom!

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## A Visit With Tom Torrance, Master Theologian

I first met my mentor, Tom Torrance, in 1982 at Fuller Theological Seminary, when the visiting professor delivered the Payton Lectures.

At the start of my trip to visit my mentor, Tom Torrance, in Scotland, I sat beside an English girl whose father left Baghdad as a Muslim years ago and now lives in England as an Anglican.

One of his sons had become a producer in Hollywood, and Ellie, his young daughter, was still seeking for her way in life. She took my business card and promised to read books written by Tom Torrance before too long.

On the plane from Heathrow Airport in London to Edinburgh, George Harrow, a real estate broker, sat beside me. He was a truly Scot businessman and gentleman. Surprisingly, he offered me a ride from the airport to my hotel. I promised to send him in the way of thanks something from Pasadena, California. He hoped I would enjoy my visit with my old mentor.

### Arriving in Edinburgh

The Braid Hills Hotel overlooks one of the seven hills of Edinburgh and a green and windy golf course. On one of these hills rests the Royal Castle, overlooking the old city's baroque architecture. The trees wave in the wind upon the hills, the clouds move swiftly above in a sky that brings rain and sun quickly. With nothing else to do, you can watch them write in rain and sun God's own secrets above you.

The waves of light and darkness move across this good earth at Edinburgh's latitude bringing long days and short nights with them, and the unpredictable cycles of the weather. The hotel is used by Scottish golfers and international tourists alike.

The halls of the hotel are lined with portraits of golfers Frederick Guthrie Tate and John White Melville, as well as those of great personages such as Sir Walter Scott, Mary, Queen of Scots, Flora MacDonald, Lady Charlotte Campbell, Prince Charles Edward Stewart and James VII. The stained glass windows along the hallways contain images not of saints but golfers. It is a truly civilized place, with small well-kept rooms just right for the traveler.

I begin my stay through some hours of anxiety. When Tom left the hospital after being treated for his stroke, he did not go home to his family, but to the Braid Hills Nursing Home. There he had a fall, bruising himself but not breaking any bones. I must wait to see him. I feel sick.

The next day, Tom's brother James and James' wife Mary picked me up at the hotel and took me for lunch at a wonderful country pub. We ate Scottish salmon, boiled white potatoes and fresh vegetables, and James taught me his Trinitarian Theology.

James and Mary Torrance with John McKenna at an Edinburgh country pub.

Professor James B. Torrance bears heavily the burden of the Christian church's tendency to interpret legalistically the grace of our Lord for us. Legalism thus confines congregations all over the world to a worship that is cut off from real union and communion with our Creator and Redeemer. Communion with the Blessed Trinity, not truly realized, breeds a nominalism that imprisons people in a religion alienated from the real power of the gospel. The believer is not truly free for the gift of God's freedom for his people.

Legalistic repentance is not biblical, he goes on. It turns upside down the relationship of grace to repentance. Whole congregations can become alienated who worship God in this manner. They remain fragmented in their faith, unable to participate actually in the divine nature and being of our Lord. The church then becomes absorbed by the world's agenda. Once Professor Torrance makes sure you understand these things, then you may move on to speak of family, friends and far countries.

After the good food, James and Mary drove to their home for tea. Mary showed me pictures of their clan, their children and their children's children dressed at a wedding party together in full kilts. A wonderful family indeed! The grandchildren possessed considerable musical abilities, she boasted. James gave me two books that his students had written, students now pastoring churches. He was happy to hear about our transformation and liberation from legalism, about a community seeking truly by the grace of God to worship in Spirit and truth the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of the Blessed Trinity. After tea, James drove me to the nursing home to greet Tom.

### Seeing Tom in nursing home

I hate nursing homes, because I once served as an intern in them in Los Angeles. It was not easy for me to contemplate the Very Reverend Professor Thomas Forsyth Torrance living in one of them. But the Braid Hills Nursing Home was pleasantly laid out and surprisingly free of the smell of sickness, and full of an aroma that only comes with great care.

Tom looked up at us from his bed in his room, much older than I had ever seen him, and smiled a smile at me and said, "John, how are you?" I was delighted. Whatever his stroke meant for his arms and legs, however much he had to live with his short-term memory loss, it was clear to me immediately that there was plenty of life in him yet.

AILING MENTOR--Tom Torrance (left) and John McKenna in Edinburgh, Scotland.

James did not need to reintroduce me to his brother. "How is [your wife] Mickey?" "How is [Mickey's son] Paul?" I showed my old mentor their greeting cards. I gave him a Coptic newspaper published in Cairo, Egypt, in which appeared my article on John Philoponos, the sixth-century Alexandrian scientist Tom has championed.

But the man whom I consider to be our greatest living theologian seemed unable to attend all at once to all these things. (His eyes may be failing him.) We simply agreed then to begin our meetings together the next morning. As we left the room, James told me that I was fortunate that Tom had recognized me right away. Fortunate, indeed, I was to be able to visit with the Torrances of Scotland, champions of trinitarian theology in the Church of Jesus Christ and its relationship to our scientific cultures.

I felt that my visiting with Tom might have a good effect on him. I believed we would be able to cut beneath his problems and get to that which remained substantial for him. I looked forward to our times together. Driving back to the hotel, James pointed out the Hermitage Park, where I might walk in the evening. I took the hint and that evening met a Scot with his dog along the wonderful park's path. We exchanged words easily. I learned that dogs in Edinburgh are never aggressive, unlike so many in Los Angeles.

The walk took me mysteriously through the woods farther from the hotel than I realized, and I found myself back at the Braid Hills Nursing Home. Yes, tomorrow Tom and I would begin our visits there. I had the home call me a cab. I was too tired to retrace my steps. From my hotel room I called Mickey. She was as excited as I was.

In the morning, at 10 a.m., I was back in the nursing home. Tom was sitting up next to his bed finishing his breakfast. He moved his old body to his bed to give me his chair. I put on a tape recorder and he said hello to Mickey into it. But he is not really up to confronting things thrust upon him like that.

I spent some time showing him the latest results from Kip Thorne's LIGO project with the California Institute for Technology. We looked at how gravitational waves would open up for us a new window on the universe, take us all the way back to Planck time just after the original Big Bang.

We remembered together John Archibald Wheeler and Jim McCord of Princeton University, and then others we have known, Geoffrey Bromiley, friend of Barth's Dogmatics, Lloyd Ogilvie, a former student just retired as U.S. Senate chaplain, Ray Anderson and more.

He talks easily about his childhood in China. He remembers his visits to Fuller Theological Seminary. He speaks about Elmer Colyer's book, and we agree that the Methodist theologian has done an admirable job apprehending and explaining the scope of Tom's works.

It seemed that Tom could readily recover from the effects of the stroke. He could go home again. But when I asked him about his stroke, he says he can remember nothing of it. He describes his problem as follows: "If I can get back enough independence, I will go home. If I cannot, I am ready to go to heaven. I am looking forward to it."

Back in my hotel room, I read in Tom's Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons. The "hypostatic union" cannot be properly understood except in the context of the "homoousial relation" between the persons of the Father and the Son.

Love comes for us in this way and no other, exposing the mystery of God's being for us as this man that he truly is in the world. Love never fails. Nothing can separate us from his love. Even in all of our grief and sorrow, there is this love of God for us in Christ. This is the God who is love. This is the God we need to know.

When I spoke again with Mickey on the phone, I was delighted to hear that Paul Drew, her son, had agreed to come to Scotland to take care of Tom, if that would help. Paul is a caregiver, and he said it would be for him, an artist, like taking care of Picasso. But when I speak about this with Tom's wife, Margaret, genuinely pleased for my visit with her husband, she is sure it will not be necessary. But she was happy for my visit. It was most kind of me. She felt sure, she says, that it was good for both of us. Yes, divine love conquers all.

There lived a somewhat demented woman next to Tom in the nursing home. She cries out loudly at times: "Help me! Where am I? Help me! Where am I?" Tom refers to her as a "poor soul." After a number of visits, I thought he actually looked forward to having lunch with his new colleagues in the home. I believed, with plenty of the old pluck in him, he pastored them.

Tom was still the evangelist at heart whom I first met when he delivered, in 1982, the Payton Lectures at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. We had ample opportunity to speak again and again of our Lord and the worship of His Blessed Trinity and the wonderful theology of grace which we must develop through our communion with him in our time.

The third evening, Thomas Spear Torrance, Tom's youngest son, visited me at the hotel. I was surprised by the range of his interests. He is an investment banker who likes to talk about black holes and multiple universes and mathematics. He explains to me the algorithms of prime numbers employed to protect the business of the banking community.

He informs me that both he and his brother Ian started out studying philosophy in Edinburgh. Ian has become the moderator of the Church of Scotland. Thomas, besides his banking career, handles the family affairs at 37 Braid Farm Rd. In the midst of our conversation, Mickey calls, and also speaks with him. He seems happy with us.

Thomas Spear Torrance gives me Tom's latest book, Theological and Natural Science, and we discuss Tom's final studies of the relationship between theology and science. His dad traces in this book, from John Philoponos through James Clerk Maxwell to Albert Einstein and Michael Polanyi, his lifelong engagement with the epistemological development of this relationship. This, for Tom, is the way to follow Christ, when the church will be relevant to the way the world is going.

In the morning, Tom looked better than the day before. His short-term memory loss is not a problem for us. We talked about Philoponos and Maxwell. They both wrestled with the problem of light and the nothingness of the creation. Both impetus and light theory were important to understand not only for physics, but also for theology.

I pointed out that, if the gravitational waves took us back to Planck time and electromagnetic waves to 100,000 years after the Big Bang, the invisible structure of an "impetus" theory had to provide the context in which light became what it is. Perhaps Philoponos and Maxwell wait still for the ultimate justification of the meaning of their physics? Tom said he would think about it.

John McKenna's doctrinal dissertation was The Setting in Life for the Arbiter of John Philoponos. The book is available from the publishers at www.wipfandstock.com  
or Amazon.com. Two papers by Dr. McKenna on Philoponos are available to read at www.quodlibet.net.

Also, we spoke about our imageless knowing. I told him how last night at the hotel, Thomas had suggested I use the square root of minus one as an illustration for it. Tom simply replied that no one pictures a soul or a mind either. We know ourselves and God without image finally or we do not know either at all, except in fragmented forms. We shook hands then and I left him to his nap and lunch.

Because Tom had suggested I go and visit Professor David Ritchie at Maxwell's home, now a museum for the great Scottish scientist and a active center for mathematical physics, I made my way to downtown Edinburgh. The Maxwell home was closed on Sunday, but I found a pub near the castle just off the Royal Mile. The waitress was a girl from Paris. She was in Edinburgh to learn English. It was a friendly city, she said. But John Philoponos' "impetus" theory kept ringing in my ears, its embrace of a light theory was new in my imagination. I felt grateful to God for this place.

Tom appeared even better the next morning. He smiles with deep satisfaction in his eyes. He was successful in gaining some independence of movement. He talks easily of people again. Even if we go over some things two or three times, I do not find it merely repetition. There is a melody being played with him in a rather grand symphony.

He signs the book Thomas gave me and we talk about its essays. He agrees with me that the overlapping in the essays is no mere repetition. How often and in how many contexts must we hear before we truly hear what it truly is that is being said? It is more like a melody in a symphony.

He spoke about some trouble he had with a dream, his boyhood in China, and he recalled his confrontations with Dan Fuller. He spoke then of Pannenberg and Moltmann, disappointed in their tendencies toward reductionism.

Finally, he mused about what Karl Barth would think of what he has done. He is adamant about the natural theology to which he has pointed us. It is not the natural theology to which Barth had uttered his "Nein." He wags his head strongly against those who would think to use it as such for their apologetics.

The natural theology for which he seeks is real only within the light of the revelation of God's reconciliation of the race to himself as the Creator and Redeemer of the world. The fact that we must allow the Incarnation to inform us as to the justification of the creation out of nothing in the beginning cannot escape our attention, if we are going to get things right.

We speak then about the "perichoresis" in the relations of the Son with the Father, the differentiation that must be understood between that of the "hypostatic union" of the divine and human natures of the Person of the Lord and that of His "homoousial relation" with the Father by the Spirit. The spacetime of the Incarnation cannot be separated in these relations from the eternity of God Himself. It is under the compelling reality of this One that science has been developed in our world. Everything must be understood in this light or not at all.

We speak again of Mickey and Paul, of Margaret, Alison, Ian and Thomas. We speak of his brother James and Mary, and he says he is tired. We exchange places again—he to his bed, me to his chair. On the bed, he is soon ready for his nap. I remind him about the chocolate fudge cake I brought for Alison from the Buckstone, where once he and Barth lunched and talked together. Then I say good-bye.

Beside the nursing home, horses feed in a green field. The winds move the clouds across the sky speedily, and it is sometimes rain, sometimes sun one after another too quickly for me to walk back to the hotel. I call a cab. I never leave him without feeling a vague regret in my soul. I remember his smile. Once back at the hotel, I plan to read his Christian Doctrine of God again.

But I tell the cabbie to drive me to downtown Edinburgh. I wandered the city in the rain and sun, watched three young men formed into a rock and roll band playing beside a statue of General Wellington reared up on his horse near the Jenners department store. Edinburgh is at once Medieval and modern. Here Christian memory still produces a respect for intelligence. Self-destruction appears restrained. I liked wandering purposelessly its streets.

Tired at last, I stopped at a bar-restaurant near the cabstand that would get me back to the Braid Hills Hotel. I ate fresh baked Scottish salmon and drank some wine. My waitress is from New York, so we talked a bit. She is here just for the experience, like the girl from Paris.

Somehow we get round to speaking about Israel and Israel's great Shema: "Hear O Israel, The Lord our God, the Lord is One." When I write the words down in my journal, she leans over and we recite them together. She tells me she has not said them for many years.

Thomas Spear Torrance had asked me why it seems the church is losing its members so steadily, why the church appears so irrelevant to the modern world. I thought how that Jesus is way out ahead of us all the while, calling his people to himself. No matter if it is Hollywood, Broadway, Paris or the others, we need to be able, do we not, to look forward to going to heaven? Everywhere, we need, do we not, divine forgiveness? The regret I felt to leave Tom was now long gone from me.

This morning, June 23, Thomas called me just before I was about to leave the hotel for Tom's room at the nursing home to inform him that his dad had fallen again. They had taken him to the infirmary for X rays. I would not be able to see him again before I left for California. I caught a cab for downtown and found the Maxwell house again. XIV India Street is a Centre for Mathematical Sciences in his honor. I spend an hour looking at the place of his birth and memorabilia of his science.

Today, the science of this radiation is much devoted to medical uses. I leave a card on which I put Tom's greetings to Professor Ritchie. I walk the streets again, buy a shirt for Paul Drew at the Hard Rock Cafe and then find the Guildford Arms, where men are still men and they stand at the bar hanging on the brass rail under the well lit dark wood and ales provided for their conversations. Time and space sometimes curve in such a way that even what seems lost may be found. The human race is lost and found, like the long days and short nights of Edinburgh, like the sun and the rain the winds with the clouds bring, like our good-byes and our hellos.

The last time I visited him, Tom Torrance asked me to tell him about our denomination. What do I do for it? How is it doing? Both James and he are happy to hear that we are committed to learning to worship by his grace the Blessed Trinity of God in Christ. It is the Truth that sets us free, indeed. It is the Truth that makes the church always relevant in the world.

On behalf of our denomination, I said good-bye to the Torrances in Scotland, knowing full well we would say hello again, even if it is sometime in heaven. It was good to know on the plane back to Los Angeles that they are praying for us.

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## The Message of Hosea 11

By Michael Morrison

Hosea 11 illustrates God's persevering love for his children – a love so strong that it continues despite rebellion, a love that leads God to restore his people after he has punished them.

Hosea 1-3 illustrates God's persevering love for Israel by using the real-life drama of a husband who loves his wife so much that, despite her adulteries, he works to restore the marriage. Each of these three chapters illustrates the theme. In chapter 1, verse 2 sets forth the metaphor and alludes to Israel's unfaithfulness, vv. 4-9 describe Israel's punishment and alienation from God, and vv. 10-11 promise a restoration. In chapter 2, verse 2 sets the scene, vv. 2, 5, 8 describe unfaithfulness, vv. 3, 6, 9-13 describe punishment, and vv. 14-23 promise restoration. In chapter 3, v. 1a sets the scene of restoration, vv. 1c, 3c allude to unfaithfulness, v. 4 to punishment, and v. 5 to restoration.

Hosea 11 illustrates God's persevering love using a parable built on the metaphor of a father's love for a rebellious son. The theme is developed in a similar way: unfaithfulness and rebellion, punishment and restoration. The message, as it is developed in Hosea 11, is like a four-act drama in which Hosea is the only actor, speaking for God.

### Act 1: The case against Israel (vv. 1-4)

#### When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more I called Israel, the further they went from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images. It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them.

The scene is that of a court in which the father is testifying against his rebellious children. ("Son" is singular in v. 1, but subsequent verses use plural pronouns for Israel.) He recounts his love for them, citing actions such as calling them out of slavery (v. 1), teaching them to walk (3a), and comforting them when they fell (3b-c). But the response was persistent rebellion (2) and ingratitude (3c).

Act 1 ends with more evidence of the father's love: leading the sons with leniency (4a-b), making life easier for them (4c-d), and, to top it off, humbling himself by leaning down to attend to their needs (4e). Mention of these actions of love serves two functions at the end of Act 1: First, they are the father's self-defense, indicating that he was a loving parent and that the sons' rebellion was not caused by poor parenting. Second, they soften the emotional tone from accusation to love, making the punishments of Act 2 seem more severe in comparison, subtly preparing for the remorse and compassion of Act 3.

### Act 2: Punishment pronounced (vv. 5-7)

#### Will they not return to Egypt and will not Assyria rule over them because they refuse to repent? Swords will flash in their cities, will destroy the bars of their gates and put an end to their plans. My people are determined to turn from me. Even if they call to the Most High, he will by no means exalt them.

The scene is still the courtroom, and Hosea is still speaking for God, but now he plays the role of a judge giving a sentence on the rebellious children. The benefits the Father had given Israel will be reversed. Whereas God had taken Israel out of Egypt (v. 1), now Israel will be sent back into Egypt (5a). Whereas they had persistently gone away from God (2a-b), they now will return (shub) to Egypt because of their refusal to return (shub) to God (5c). Whereas they sacrificed animals to Baalim (2c), they themselves will be killed (6a). Whereas they burned incense to idols (2d), their cities will be consumed (6b-c). Whereas they were not grateful for God's easing their yoke (4c-d), they will be put back under the yoke of slavery (7b). Whereas they did not acknowledge that God shortened their pain through healing (3c), their pains will not be removed (7c).

The sentencing proceeds in an alternating pattern: punishment (5a-b), reason (5c), punishment (6), reason (7a), and punishment (7b). The last phrase of Act 2, "none shall remove it," gives a note of finality to the sentence, as if the judge had banged the gavel.

### Act 3: Anguish of the Father/Judge (vv. 8-9)

#### How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I turn and devastate Ephraim. For I am God, and not man — the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath.

Acts 1 and 2 presented God in two roles, first as Father and then as Judge. But there is a tension between those two roles, and Act 3, in the emotional peak of this four-act drama, airs the inner turmoil of the Judge who has to pronounce such an awful punishment on his dearly loved children. In an American courtroom, a judge's emotional anguish might be confined to a back room, but in an Israelite open-air court in a public meeting place, the anguish would be evident to all who were present. A respected member of the community, as judge, was being forced, as his duty to the community, to publicly expel, disown and punish his rebellious children. He pronounces the sentence, bangs his gavel and begins to weep.

How can he cast his children completely away? (8a-d). Though they are rebellious, they are still his children. The Judge has a change of heart; he becomes compassionate again and resolves to stop short of complete destruction (8e-9b). Why? Because he is God, not a human (9c). He is not bitter or vengeful (as a human might be), because his love endures forever. Because he is faithful, the Israelites are not destroyed (cf. Malachi 3:6). The punishment that Israel is to experience is designed for redemption and rehabilitation, not destruction. God, since he is holy, loves his people and keeps his commitment to them; he cannot be unfaithful as a human might be. He is beyond reproach or accusation; he is qualitatively different in motive and emotion. His holiness is inextricably linked to his love and his desire to redeem. He has a holy purpose for the nation as he works in their midst (9d). Therefore he will not return (shub) to destroy them (9e). The punishment will be, in judicial terms, commuted.

### Act 4: Resolution of the dilemma (vv. 10-11)

#### "They will follow the LORD; he will roar like a lion. When he roars, his children will come trembling from the west. They will come trembling like birds from Egypt, like doves from Assyria. I will settle them in their homes," declares the LORD.

How can Israel be both destroyed (v. 6) and not destroyed (v. 9)? How can God's compassion be reconciled with the punishment he has already pronounced? The final act in this drama presents a solution to this dilemma. Acts 1 and 2 were clearly judicial in nature; Act 3 becomes less typically like a court of law. Act 4 becomes even less judicial in nature, but if we wish to continue the judicial theme, here we find the Judge explaining how the commuted sentence will be an effective way to deal with the wayward children.

Though the nation's cities and fortresses will be destroyed (v. 6), the people will continue to exist, although in captivity (5, 7). After a period of captivity, the children will return humbly to their homes (11). They "shall go after the LORD" (10). The Hebrew word for "seek" is not used in v. 10, perhaps because physical movement is meant more than spiritual. But it does seem significant that the people are mentioned first; they are taking some initiative to return to God. And God will lead them like a lion (10 b-c). Though Hosea describes God as a destructive lion in 5:14 and 13:7-8, here the image is more like that of a protective lion leading the cubs to a new den. (In several places Hosea uses a word in both a positive and a negative context.)

Whereas in the original Exodus, the Israelites went out with a high hand, this time they will return trembling (11:10d-11a; "in fear," says 3:5). Whereas they had flown like a dove to Egypt and Assyria searching for help (7:11), now they will fly like a dove back to God (11:11b). And God will return them not just to houses, but to "homes" (11c). They will be rehabilitated. Other sections of Hosea (such as 1:10-11, 2:14-23, and 3:5) describe the restoration in greater detail, but this is sufficient for the drama of Hosea 11. The tension has been resolved. The rebellious children have been both punished and rehabilitated; the Judge has fulfilled his roles as faithful parent and as upholder of standards of conduct. The drama ends with a note of finality: I will do this, "says the LORD."

### Epilogue

Hosea's drama has taken four slices of history's timeline to illustrate God's continuing love for his people. Act 1 is from the past; Act 2 is about the near future. Act 3 presents God's current emotions, and Act 4 gives a glimpse of the future. Through these four segments of history, we see some of the complexity of God's relationship with Israel. God's love prevails.

This is a message the Israelites needed to hear. Destruction was just around the corner for them because they had rejected God and his covenant. But this did not mean that God would cast them away forever. There was hope. Yahweh is not a God of destruction – he is a God of salvation – in the past, in the present and in the future. God can accomplish what humans cannot; he can achieve his holy purpose even in a rebellious people. The God who loved them in antiquity still loved them and would continue to love them. (The implication is that even God's punishment is motivated by love.) There would be a restoration not only of the nation, but also of the people's relationship with the Father.

The meaning of Hosea 11 is that God continues to love his people. An application of this truth to today reassures us that God continues to love us. Even though we may have rebelled and rejected God, he continues to love us. If he allows punishments to come, we can have confidence that such trials are not vindictive – they are intended to be restorative. Though we may backslide or fall away for many years, we can have confidence that God wants to restore the relationship and its blessings. This is a message needed by those who despair that they have lost their love, neglected the faith or fallen back into the captivity of sin.

Hosea 11 reminds us that God's love does not depend on us – it depends on him, and he is dependable. Let us skim through the chapter and adapt some of the principles for Christians today: God initiated his love for us (cf. v. 1); since our actions did not initiate it, our actions cannot terminate it. While we were yet sinners, he provided for us a Passover and a way out of sin's bondage (1b). Though some of his people refuse his invitation, though they seek the world and its values, he continues to invite them (2a). He has taught us how to live (3a), he has rescued us from some of our folly (3b), yet many people fail to recognize him as Savior (3c).

Yet, despite this inadequate response, God still loves his people with compassion, and he still eases their burdens and supplies their needs (4). Though humans may be unfaithful, God is consistently reliable. To help them understand how much they've been given, the gifts may be taken away for a while, and they may return to bondage (5-7). But God allows such trials only with anguish (8a-d). He still has concern and compassion and a commitment to his people (8e-f). He is holy, not carnal; his holiness does not allow him to discard his desire for his people (9). So, as they repent and turn to follow him once again, God will roar with pride and protection (10). They will humbly come and God will restore them to their place in his kingdom (11).

All of us can be encouraged by Hosea's reminder of God's undying love for his children.

### Ethical implications of Hosea 11

Hosea 11 is a metaphor or parable primarily about God's behavior toward his people. If we wish to infer some principles about our behavior, we should start with an acknowledgement that our observations will be tentative and limited.

We can see that God punishes his people for disobedience. Some of their sins are briefly mentioned (sins relevant to the father-son analogy), and we may infer that we should avoid such behavior. But punishment usually comes after instruction and warning, not before. It seems best to base ethical concepts on scriptures that give instruction or direct commands rather than try to infer them from metaphorical accusations.

We can also see that God continues to love his people despite their disobedience. We might infer that we should act as God does, but this is not always a safe inference. We know which attributes we should imitate from other scriptures. We should base our ethical understanding on those other scriptures, not on Hosea 11. Hosea 11 is only an illustration that might be adapted for ethical instruction.

After stating those cautions, I would like to comment on three ethical principles illustrated in Hosea 11.

1) We should acknowledge God. Hosea accuses Israel of worshipping idols (11:2). It is well known that idolatry was a serious sin against God; this requires little explanation. However, Hosea also accuses Israel of the sin of not knowing that God healed them (v. 3c). Why is ignorance a sin? The Israelites should have known their national traditions about God's role in the nation. They claimed to know (8:2), but Hosea criticizes them for a lack of knowledge (2:8, 4:1, 4:6, 5:4, 8:14, etc.). The problem was not just a failure to know God in the sense of having a relationship with him, it was also not knowing the fact that he was the giver of their blessings. The Israelites gave the credit to idols (2:5, 2:12) and to themselves (12:8). Acknowledging God as Giver is fundamental to our relationship with him. As Paul criticized the gentiles, "although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him" (Rom. 1:21). Being a provider is one of God's Fatherly functions, and it is good for us to be aware of the source of our blessings.

2) If we punish, it should be done in love, for rehabilitation rather than vengeance. This is true for parental discipline and for congregational discipline. Hosea 11:2 shows us that warnings (calling the children back to right conduct) should come before more severe discipline; love should be shown throughout. Before punishment, the wayward children should be assured of love and desire for reconciliation, just as the Israelites were given a promise of restoration.

3) We should always desire reconciliation and restoration, whether of rebellious children or fallen Christians. The latter situation is perhaps the most significant contemporary ethical implication of Hosea 11. How we ought to hope for the restoration of those who have fallen away! How can we cast them away? It is only with anguish that we can see them even temporarily separated from God's people. How can we be content while they are falling short of God's blessings? Our hearts should burn within us for the return of the lost sheep. We should consistently call them back to the right path. We should continue to teach that God is the source of all blessings, of every good gift, of the spiritual healing and nourishment that we all need, of the help that we need with our burdens.

Our Father always desires to pick us up when we stumble and fall, and we, as his children, should have the same desire and the same actions toward wayward children. No matter how far they stray, no matter what false gods they serve, we should yearn for their rehabilitation and restoration. We should never "write off" or forget someone who falls away, even someone who becomes bitter and turns against us. Though they go into exile away from the church, though they become captive to the bottle or the dollar, we must let them know that restoration is possible. And more than possible! Restoration is earnestly desired by us and by our Father. And as we make it known, we encourage it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Return to the Lord and follow him, and he will restore us to our homes in his kingdom. Our hopes and hearts need to be in the eventual restoration of our brothers and sisters.

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## About the Author

John McKenna is adjunct professor at Grace Communion Seminary. He studied under Thomas F. Torrance at the University of Edinburgh and received his Ph.D. from Fuller Theological Seminary. He is the author of:

The Setting in Life for the Arbiter of John Philoponus, 6th Century Alexandrian Scientist and

The Great AMEN of the Great I-AM: God in Covenant With His People in His Creation.

His e-books include:

A Gracious God, in the Old Testament and the New: Interviews With John McKenna

The Concept of Nature in the Thought of John Philoponus

Michael Morrison is Dean of Faculty at Grace Communion Seminary. He received his PhD from Fuller Theological Seminary in 2006. He is the author of several books and e-books.

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## About the Publisher...

Grace Communion International is a Christian denomination with about 50,000 members, worshiping in about 900 congregations in almost 100 nations and territories. We began in 1934 and our main office is in North Carolina. In the United States, we are members of the National Association of Evangelicals and similar organizations in other nations. We welcome you to visit our website at www.gci.org.

If you want to know more about the gospel of Jesus Christ, we offer help. First, we offer weekly worship services in hundreds of congregations worldwide. Perhaps you'd like to visit us. A typical worship service includes songs of praise, a message based on the Bible, and opportunity to meet people who have found Jesus Christ to be the answer to their spiritual quest. We try to be friendly, but without putting you on the spot. We do not expect visitors to give offerings—there's no obligation. You are a guest.

To find a congregation, write to one of our offices, phone us or visit our website. If we do not have a congregation near you, we encourage you to find another Christian church that teaches the gospel of grace.

We also offer personal counsel. If you have questions about the Bible, salvation or Christian living, we are happy to talk. If you want to discuss faith, baptism or other matters, a pastor near you can discuss these on the phone or set up an appointment for a longer discussion. We are convinced that Jesus offers what people need most, and we are happy to share the good news of what he has done for all humanity. We like to help people find new life in Christ, and to grow in that life. Come and see why we believe it's the best news there could be!

Our work is funded by members of the church who donate part of their income to support the gospel. Jesus told his disciples to share the good news, and that is what we strive to do in our literature, in our worship services, and in our day-to-day lives.

If this e-book has helped you and you want to pay some expenses, all donations are gratefully welcomed, and in several nations, are tax-deductible. If you can't afford to give anything, don't worry about it. It is our gift to you. To make a donation online, go to www.gci.org/participate/donate.

Thank you for letting us share what we value most — Jesus Christ. The good news is too good to keep it to ourselves.

See our website for hundreds of articles, locations of our churches, addresses in various nations, audio and video messages, and much more.

Grace Communion International  
3129 Whitehall Park Dr.

Charlotte, NC 28273-3335

1-800-423-4444

www.gci.org

### You're Included...

We talk with leading Trinitarian theologians about the good news that God loves you, wants you, and includes you in Jesus Christ. Most programs are about 28 minutes long. Our guests have included:

Ray Anderson, Fuller Theological Seminary

Douglas A. Campbell, Duke Divinity School

Elmer Colyer, U. of Dubuque Theological Seminary

Gordon Fee, Regent College

Trevor Hart, University of St. Andrews

George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary

Jeff McSwain, Reality Ministries

Paul Louis Metzger, Multnomah University

Paul Molnar, St. John's University

Cherith Fee Nordling, Antioch Leadership Network

Andrew Root, Luther Seminary

Alan Torrance, University of St. Andrews

Robert T. Walker, Edinburgh University

N.T. Wright, University of St. Andrews

William P. Young, author of _The Shack_

Programs are available free for viewing and downloading at www.youreincluded.org.

### Speaking of Life...

Dr. Joseph Tkach, president of Grace Communion International, comments each week, giving a biblical perspective on how we live in the light of God's love. Most programs are about three minutes long – available in video, audio, and text. Go to www.speakingoflife.org.

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##

Grace Communion Seminary

Ministry based on the life and love of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Grace Communion Seminary serves the needs of people engaged in Christian service who want to grow deeper in relationship with our Triune God and to be able to more effectively serve in the church.

Why study at Grace Communion Seminary?

 Worship: to love God with all your mind.

 Service: to help others apply truth to life.

 Practical: a balanced range of useful topics for ministry.

 Trinitarian theology: a survey of theology with the merits of a Trinitarian perspective. We begin with the question, "Who is God?" Then, "Who are we in relationship to God?" In this context, "How then do we serve?"

 Part-time study: designed to help people who are already serving in local congregations. There is no need to leave your current ministry. Full-time students are also welcome.

 Flexibility: your choice of master's level continuing education courses or pursuit of a degree: Master of Pastoral Studies or Master of Theological Studies.

 Affordable, accredited study: Everything can be done online.

For more information, go to www.gcs.edu. Grace Communion Seminary is accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission, www.deac.org. The Accrediting Commission is listed by the U.S. Department of Education as a nationally recognized accrediting agency.

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## Ambassador College of Christian Ministry

Want to better understand God's Word? Want to know the Triune God more deeply? Want to share more joyously in the life of the Father, Son and Spirit? Want to be better equipped to serve others?

Among the many resources that Grace Communion International offers are the training and learning opportunities provided by ACCM. This quality, well-structured Christian Ministry curriculum has the advantage of being very practical and flexible. Students may study at their own pace, without having to leave home to undertake full-time study.

This denominationally recognized program is available for both credit and audit study. At minimum cost, this online Diploma program will help students gain important insights and training in effective ministry service. Students will also enjoy a rich resource for personal study that will enhance their understanding and relationship with the Triune God.

Diploma of Christian Ministry classes provide an excellent introductory course for new and lay pastors. Pastor General Dr. Joseph Tkach said, "We believe we have achieved the goal of designing Christian ministry training that is practical, accessible, interesting, and doctrinally and theologically mature and sound. This program provides an ideal foundation for effective Christian ministry."

For more information, go to www.ambascol.org

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