Issues
Facing Missions Today: 40 Naming God in the Face of Suffering and Tribulation
Introduction:
Islam speaks of the 99 names for God.
Names in many cultures have meaning.
They reveal something about the person—the day of his or her birth, an
event, something significant about the child, and so forth. So, too, our naming of God. Moses famously asked after God’s name in
Exodus 3 and was told by God, ‘I AM has sent you’ (3.14).[1]
The following study concerns naming God in the
context of tribulation. This is a deeply
personal concern, but it is also missiological: the revealing of God in an evil
world full of suffering and persecution—as the two witnesses prophesying in sackcloth
in Revelation 11. For this study,
Revelation 15 and 16 will be the focus texts as they provide significant depth
to our understanding as Christians about naming God when there is suffering and
evil. We are not only interested in
knowing what to call God. We are
interested in knowing how to name God in tribulation, in the situation of the
first readers of this book. We will also
critically engage the theology of the Roman Catholic, postmodern theologian, David
Tracy.
I remember a woman from Rwanda's words after the
genocide in the 1990's in her country: 'Sometimes things are so bad that one
forgets God,' she said. The book of Revelation
is a reminder not to forget God in times of tribulation, persecution,
injustice, and unrighteousness. It is
also a book that reveals, uncovering
the hiddenness of God in suffering through the revelation of the Lamb.
David Tracy
and Naming God
David Tracy, a Roman Catholic theologian, has made
it his project to name God. How shall we
name God? Following Hans Urs von
Balthasar, Tracy thinks theology took a bad turn when Thomas Aquinas turned to
Exodus 3 to answer this question. God's
revelation to Moses that He was the 'I am who I am' began a trajectory of
naming God in terms of 'Being'. But
Western scholars like von Balthasar and Tracy are dusting off a 6th
century Middle Platonist theologian of significance in Eastern Orthodoxy,
Dionysius the Areopagite, who understood God's names in a hierarchy of possible
names, with 'Being' occupying the lowest level.
At the very top of God's names, said Dionysius, God is named 'Good'. For the Catholic theologian von Balthasar,
God is 'Beauty.'
Now, all this rather changes things for
theology. If God is 'Being', then
theology focuses on epistemology, on knowing God. But if God is 'Good', then theology has to
attend more to ethics, or if 'Beauty,' theology must attend more to
doxology. How shall we name God? In a somewhat related way, we might here
interject, missiologists also struggle with this question: 'Should we name God
using the names for deities already used in a non-Christian religion and
culture?' What difference does this make
for theology? As Christians, we name God
through the revelation of Jesus, as we see in Revelation. Thus, God is named not in some generic way that
can just as well be a name in some other religion but in the very concrete
person of Jesus.
Tracy takes some further steps in his project of
naming God. He understands these to
involve 'Postmodern' theologising. If
Modernity has to do with building solid structures on absolute foundations,
Postmodern viewers point out the fragments left unused in such buildings. 'Look at what is left unused, look at the
fragments,' they say. Not only so, but Postmodern viewers begin to pick at the
foundations of Modernity's structures, begin to fragment them and watch them
crumble. If you want an example, think of how Liberation Theology fragmented
Catholic theology by shifting the focus from the Magisterium to the
Marginalised of society. God was not in
the robes, icons and grand cathedrals of the Church but in the poor and
powerless. Look at the fragments: not
God as divine Being but God as the face of the poor.
Tracy sees the incarnation, cross, and Second
Coming of Jesus as fragmenting the totalising theology of Christendom. And he carries this through in exploring two
fragmenting names for God: God the 'Hidden One' and God the 'Incomprehensible
One'. Both God's hiddenness and God's
incomprehensibility fragment the theology of Modernity with its totalising
systems and claims to certainty. For
Tracy, Martin Luther offers a beginning for a theology of God's
hiddenness. There are two senses of God
as the 'Hidden One' in Luther: God's revealing Himself in contraries, and God
revealing Himself as sheer power. Tracy says,
… most
of the time and with great consistency, Luther spells out this position on
God's hiddenness through his articulation of his theology of the cross. The
heart of Luther's insight into God is, of course, that God's revelation is
through hiddenness—that is, that God discloses God's self to sinful humans—sub contrariis—life through death,
wisdom through folly, strength through weakness. A hidden God is not merely
humble but humiliated—deus incarnatus,
deus absconditus. The hidden God is deus
crucifixus—the crucified God (Moltmann). That is the God also implicit in
much liberation and political theology and implicit, in my opinion, in the
recovery of an apocalyptic sense of history itself is found in Luther.
The second sense of God's hiddenness in Luther
goes deeper. Tracy says,
At the
very least, this literally awful, ambivalent sense of God's hiddenness can be
so overwhelming that God is sometimes experienced as purely frightening, not
tender, sometimes even as an impersonal reality—"it"—of sheer power
and energy signified by such metaphors, such fragmentary metaphors as abyss,
chasm, chaos, horror.
Without understanding God as 'Hidden', the
argument goes, we cannot understand God and suffering in the world. If we understand God in a totalising theology
as 'All knowing' and 'All powerful,' then what can we say of God when faced
with injustice, plague, famine or suicide bombers? If we are too rash in making claims about
knowing God, His character, His Being, then how can we explain His hiddenness
in such tragedy? The lament psalms speak
of God's hiddenness; the wisdom literature of God's incomprehensibility. But for Tracy, the hiddenness of God is best
captured in apocalyptic literature.
Here, faced with injustice, suffering, and even martyrdom, the Church
turns from its totalising theological rhetoric to the genre of
apocalyptic. Tracy finds this
apocalyptic perspective in the Gospel of Mark, in Paul's first epistle to the
Thessalonians, but especially in the book of Revelation, itself an apocalyptic
work. A marginalised and oppressed
community in the Roman Empire responds to its power with an apocalypse in which
the Beast's number of 666 equals 'Nero Caesar', in which Babylon is a code name
for Rome, in which Emperor worship and Empire wealth are pictured in terms of
beasts and a drunken whore. But also in
the Apocalypse the blood of martyred saints cries out from underneath the altar
of sacrifice, "Sovereign Lord, holy
and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the
inhabitants of the earth?" (Rev. 6.10).
Revelation
15 and 16
Ah, but is the book of Revelation really about
God's Hiddenness in the way in which Tracy understands this? Even in this verse (Rev. 6.10), God is named
as 'Sovereign Lord, holy and true.' And
the souls under the altar do not resolve their experience of injustice through
God's Hiddenness but through His Justice: 'how long will it be before you judge
and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?' This could be discussed in terms of Luther's
first sense of God's hiddenness, in contraries, but not in the second sense of
God as Abyss, Power, Chaos. So, let us
look more carefully at Revelation's naming of God.
Our focus is Rev. 15 and 16. As Richard Bauckham notes, Rev. 15 is the
culmination of two separate sections in the book.[2] Chapters 4-11 find their culmination in
chapter 15, as do chapters 12-14. The
resolution of both sections is in the opening of the heavenly Temple. Rev. 11 ends with a revealing of the ark of
the covenant in this Temple. One could
easily move directly from the end of ch. 11 to ch. 15. By multiplying visions and recapitulating
themes, John is able to emphasise both delay and inexorable progress towards
the end. The delay of ch. 15 comes with
the recapitulation of the heavenly battle with the dragon and the earthly
battle with the beast in chs. 12-13. Ch.
14 pictures the victory of the Lamb upon the earth, and ch. 15 returns to
heaven to show the conclusion of the drama: the opening of the tent of
witness. In ch. 13, a beast rises out of
the sea, a symbol of chaos, but in ch. 15 the heavenly sea is a sea still as
glass--there is no chaos. In ch. 13 are
revealed the two beasts, one from the sea and the other from the land. In ch. 14 is revealed the Lamb on Mt.
Zion. In ch. 13 there are those who bear
the number of the beast, 666. In ch. 14
there are the 144,000 who bear the number of the lamb and his Father. These constrasts culminate in ch. 15, with
the revelation of the temple of witness.
But what name of God is revealed to these two
groups, those following the beast and those following the Lamb? With the
opening of God's Temple is the revelation of God's glory; He is named. There is no one name for God, but the
revelation of God is a revelation of His glory, to which people respond. His glory fills the Temple so that no one can
enter it (15.8). In ch. 16 there are two
contrasting responses to the revelation of God's glory, two very different
namings of God.
Positive Responses
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Negative
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Rev. 15.3
And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the
Lamb: "Great and amazing are your deeds, Lord God the Almighty! Just
and true are your ways, King of the nations! 4 Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and
worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed."
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16.9 but
they cursed the name of God, who
had authority over these plagues, and they did not repent and give him glory.
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16.5And I
heard the angel of the waters say, "You are just, O Holy One, who
are and were, for you have judged these things; 6 because they shed the blood
of saints and prophets, you have given them blood to drink. It is what they
deserve!" 7 And I heard the altar respond, "Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, your judgments are true and just!"
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16. 11 and cursed the God of heaven because of
their pains and sores, and they did not repent of their deeds.
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Revelation
16:14 These are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings
of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty.
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16.21they cursed God for the plague of the
hail, so fearful was that plague.
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The positive namings of God in chapters 15-16
speak of God as Pantokrator--Almighty. This name is found elsewhere in
Revelation. It is connected with God's
control over all things more than an abstract notion of omnipotence.[3]
Revelation 1:8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, who is and
who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
Revelation 4:8 And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of
eyes all around and inside. Day and night without ceasing they sing, "Holy,
holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty,
who was and is and is to come."
Revelation 11:17 singing, "We give you thanks, Lord God Almighty, who are and who were, for you
have taken your great power and begun to reign.
Revelation 15:3 And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the
Lamb: "Great and amazing are your deeds, Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, King of the nations!
Revelation 16:7 And I heard the altar respond, "Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, your judgments are true and
just!"
Revelation 16:14 These are demonic spirits, performing signs, who
go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the
great day of God the Almighty.
Revelation 19:6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the
sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying out,
"Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty
reigns.
Revelation 19:15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to
strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will
tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.
Revelation 21:22 I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is
the Lord God the Almighty and the
Lamb.
This name, 'Almighty', is 'El Shaddai' in the Old
Testament. It is the name by which God
makes known His justice. But God's name
connected to His revelation of His covenant with Israel is 'YHWH.' God the Almighty is also the God of the
covenant.
Exodus 6:1 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Now
you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh: Indeed, by a mighty hand he will let
them go; by a mighty hand he will drive them out of his land." 2 God also
spoke to Moses and said to him: "I
am the LORD. 3 I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name 'The
LORD' I did not make myself known to
them. 4 I also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of
Canaan, the land in which they resided as aliens. 5 I have also heard the
groaning of the Israelites whom the Egyptians are holding as slaves, and I have
remembered my covenant. 6 Say therefore to the Israelites, 'I am the LORD, and I will free you from the burdens of the
Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an
outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my
people, and I will be your God. You shall
know that I am the LORD your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the
Egyptians. 8 I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob; I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD.'"
Both 'YHWH' and 'El-Shaddai' are revelations of
God's glory. Both are associated with
God's covenant with Israel. But 'YHWH'
is the name of deliverance, redemption, salvation, and presence. It is not spoken, for it is holy and is the
name that names God's very glory. To His
enemies, God's glory means judgement. He
is the Lord God Almighty. In Rev. 15-16,
God's enemies see His glory poured out in bowls of wrath upon their
wickedness. They name Him, but with
curses. But to His covenant people,
God's glory means presence, dwelling with His people, redeeming them,
protecting them, fulfilling His covenant promises to them.
In Rev. 21:22,
John says that he saw 'no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.' The
twofold glory of God is His Almighty Justice and His Lamb. Slowly, inexorably, Revelation moves along to
the full revelation of God. He is
named. As He is named, His hiddenness is
removed. The Apocalypse is not about
God's hiddenness but His being revealed in all His glory in the world. But this glory is terrible to behold for the
unrighteous who have not given God the glory.
It is terrible for Sodom, Egypt, Babylon or Rome to behold the
revelation of 'El Shaddai', the Lord God Almighty.
But the
revelation of God's glory for His covenant people is a revelation of a special
name only for His people. Rev. 14.3 speaks of the new song that the 144,000 who
follow the Lamb sing:
and they sing a new song before the throne and
before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that
song except the one hundred forty-four thousand who have been redeemed from the
earth.
Rev. 15 calls this song the song of Moses. It is also called the song of the Lamb. They are the same song, because they are both
a song of God's covenant mercies, His judgement, and His redemption. Only the redeemed can sing it, those who follow
God's anointed one. For God's covenant people, God is Almighty to save. For them, God's glory means His holiness, that
there is no one like Him in righteousness and justice. For them, God's glory means that He is true,
faithful to His covenant. His glory, the
depth of His being, is named, not as 'Being.' 'YHWH' in Revelation is the title
'Alpha and Omega' or 'the one who is, who was, and who is to come.' As Richard Bauckham says, the titles
equivalent to YHWH indicate 'not God's eternity in himself apart from the
world, but his eternity in relation to the world.’[4]
This is seen, he argues, in the alteration of the 'who was, who is, and who is
to come' title (1.4; 1.8; 4.8) to 'who is and who was' (11.17; 16.5) in
eschatological contexts. As we will see,
this is especially true because in Revelation the full revelation of God's
glory is made through the Lamb.
Rev. 15 speaks of God's glory in the Temple, which
is the full revelation of God. The basic
meaning of the Hebrew word for 'glory' is 'weightiness', and this seems to me
to be a better way to speak of what Tracy is in part trying to say without
taking the concept in the wrong direction, as Tracy seems to do. 'Hidden' and 'incomprehensible' are only two
possible aspects of 'weightiness.' There
are also 'holy' and 'love', as Tracy elsewhere notes. In our passage, when the glory of God fills
the heavenly Temple, no one can enter.
He is 'wholly other,' 'hidden,' and 'incomprehensible.' But He is so only in a certain, limited sense. He is so in His holiness, not as a God of
chaos or unpredictability, as Tracy would have it. In fact, God's hiddenness is a revelation of
His character as Holiness. And His
incomprehensible character is not unpredictable but fully predictable in the revelation
of Righteousness and Justice. This holy
glory issues forth in ultimate and inevitable judgement on all that is unholy.
We see this in the echo in Rev. 15 of several OT
passages where the glory of the Lord fills the Temple. 2 Chr. 7.1-2 says that when the glory of the LORD filled the
temple, the priests could not enter the house of the LORD. The people then worship and give thanks to
the LORD by naming God: 'For he is good, for his steadfast love endures
forever' (v. 3). In Isaiah 6, Isaiah sees the glory of God in the Temple. The seraphs called to one another 'Holy, holy,
holy is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory'. But this means for Isaiah that he becomes
aware of his own sinfulness before God and that of the people. In Ezek.
43 and 44, when the glory of the LORD fills the temple, God declares that
Israel will no longer defile His holy name.
The glory of the LORD filling the temple means that God's closer
presence demands goodness, holiness, righteousness, and where this is not the
case, there will be judgement. In Rev. 15.8, the glory of the LORD fills
the Temple so that none can enter the Temple, and out of this glory and
presence come seven angels with seven bowls of judgement to pour out on the
unholy and unrighteous world. The apocalyptic depth of God is not the
incomprehensible Abyss of Valentinian Gnosticism or David Tracy, but the glory
of God, the weight of His goodness, holiness, and righteousness made known.
In Revelation, the apocalyptic naming of God, the
making known of His glory, is focused on the revealing of the Lamb, of Christ. Have you ever wondered why in Revelation
there is one throne for God and for the Lamb?
This is a profound statement. The
Lamb is the revelation of God. Several
times a voice from the throne speaks (16.17; 19.5; 21.3). Two people need two thrones, but the Lamb and
God have one throne. The Lamb has
already conquered through dying on the cross.
The glory, the holiness, the Almighty power of God are known through the
Lamb who was slain and who reigns from the throne of God. He has conquered by His sacrifice. He is already reigning upon the throne of
God. He will come again to Judge the
earth. While still future, the Lamb's
coming to bring justice to the earth is no longer part of God's hiddenness, for
John has taken us through the open door of heaven to see that it is true. The Apocalypse, far from being about God's
hiddenness, is indeed a revelation of God.
It is the revelation of His glory through the Lamb.
This is why Revelation continuously moves toward
worship and why this worship is directed to the LORD and the Lamb. It is not God's incomprehensibility that
takes one beyond reason, beyond a cataphatic (knowledge of God through
affirmation) naming of God to an apophatic (knowledge of God through negation) naming
and then to an excess of meaning beyond language. Rather, worship is the proper response when
God is rightly named. It is worship, not
God's incomprehensibility or His hiddenness that struggles with rational
categories and can, with the Spirit's gifting, lift worshipers into new
dimensions of praise. This is not awe at
the edge of a great Abyss, as the Gnostics would have it, but awe at the edge
of knowing God.
Exodus 34,
Deuteronomy 32 (Song of Moses) and Revelation 15
What is it to name God in contexts of suffering,
persecution, injustice, unrighteousness?
This was the question of Moses and the Israelite slaves in Egypt just as
it was the question for the first Christians who received the Revelation of
John in the 90's A.D. The purpose of
Revelation is to help Christians name God in presence of suffering and persecution
at the hands of the Roman Emperor, Domitian.
Let us conclude with a closer comparison of Moses' naming of God in
Exodus 34, the song of Moses, and what we find in Revelation.
God's revelation of Himself as YHWH to Moses in
Ex. 34.6-7 is as follows:
6 The LORD passed before him, and proclaimed,
"The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and
abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for the
thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no
means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the
children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth
generation."
The literary techniques of delay and
recapitulation in Revelation express God's mercy, grace, and slowness to
anger. God's abounding in steadfast love
and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin in Exodus have to do with God's
covenant relationship with Israel. This
too is expressed in Revelation with repeated words about the protection of
those sealed with the name of the Lamb.
Yet this is not the God of Universalists, for Exodus and Revelation
agree that the revelation of God involves judgement--by no means clearing the
guilty, as Exodus has it, or pouring out bowls of judgement on all
unrighteousness on the earth, as Rev. 16 has it. In all this, the revelation of God in Exodus
and Revelation are agreed.
Where we advance in Revelation beyond Exodus is in
focusing this naming of God on the Lamb, on Jesus Christ. This new dimension allows Christians in
contexts of suffering, persecution, injustice and unrighteousness to name the
same God of Moses with greater understanding and depth. The Lamb reveals the hidden glory of
God. This revelation is twofold, a
positive revelation of God's covenant mercy and a negative revelation of God's
judgement.
First, the
revelation of God's grace, slowness to anger, covenant love and faithfulness
are revealed in Rev. 5 when the Lamb
is revealed:
9 They sing a new song: "You are worthy to
take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your
blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and
nation; 10 you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and
they will reign on earth."
This is why the Lamb is worshipped:
5.12 "Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to
receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and
blessing!"
The song of
Moses reveals the same God of mercy and covenant love. Now, compassion could be thought to flow from God as El-Shaddai, the Lord God Almighty. This is logical, although not accurate for
either Moses or Revelation. This is a
matter of understanding God in terms of personal power: the one with all power
has the freedom to behead or to show compassion and may and will do either as
He pleases. This view of God is one
where God functions like some medieval sovereign or Arabic prince, or an
African dictator wielding personal power in judgement or mercy. But for Moses, God's compassion is associated
with His covenant faithfulness: it is not out of His power to do as He pleases
but out of His being bound in covenant relationship with His people that God
pours out His compassion.
In Revelation, God's glory is also seen in
covenant love, but it is seen more clearly and fully because of the revelation
of the Lamb, who was slaughtered to redeem a people from all peoples. Here compassion intensifies; covenant is not exclusive
but inclusive, and compassion becomes sacrifice. The Lamb challenges us to understand
compassion this way. A theology for
development ministry, e.g., needs to see compassion flow from covenant
relationship with a people rather than from the power of resources that can be
showered on a needy people. But a
Christian ministry of compassion follows the Lamb further: compassion invites
all, and it becomes sacrificial and redemptive.
Revelation also reveals God's judgements through the Lamb.
Rev. 15.3-4 gives the words to the song of Moses and of the Lamb that is
sung at the beginning of final judgements with the full coming of God's
glory. This is not a song apart from the
Lamb, as though mercy and justice are separated. The revealing of divine judgements is also
the work of the Lamb who was slain for covenant faithfulness and love.
3 And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of
God, and the song of the Lamb: "Great and amazing are your deeds, Lord God
the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, King of the nations! 4 Lord, who will not fear and glorify your
name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for
your judgments have been revealed."
Here too we see a consistent testimony between the
God of Moses and the God of the Lamb as to the identity of God. The song of Moses in Deut. 32 ends with these
words:
43 Praise, O heavens, his people, worship him,
all you gods! For he will avenge the blood of his children, and take vengeance
on his adversaries; he will repay those who hate him, and cleanse the land for
his people.
In Moses' song, judgement does not merely stem
from God's Law but also from God's mercy, lovingkindness, and faithfulness in
His covenant with Israel. Judaism was
not a legalistic religion but one of covenant faithfulness. Judgement in our societies often follows
directly from Law: the breaking of Law results in punishment. But Moses' song reveals more about divine judgement: it proceeds from God's
goodness and compassion. This brings a
whole new meaning to just judgements: judgement is more than deserved when
people not only break God's Law but also spurn His covenant faithfulness.
Yet here again we see a difference between the
song of Moses and the Lamb. For Moses,
this kind of justice could only apply to Israel, who reject God's covenant
faithfulness. It leaves open the
question of those outside this relationship.
But the song of the Lamb includes all nations, for the mercy that Israel
knew in God's covenant with them has been extended to all nations through the
blood of the Lamb. The Lamb has, it is
repeatedly made clear in Revelation, redeemed some from every tongue, tribe,
people and nation.
It is Jesus, the slaughtered Lamb, who reveals
God's compassion and judgements in Revelation.
This naming of God was made known to Moses, but its depth, the full
glory of God, is revealed in Revelation.
Far from showing God as hidden or even incomprehensible, the logic of
God's character is revealed through the Lamb of Revelation.
Conclusion
Our challenge as a missional church is to name the
God of Moses not just for the covenant people but for the nations and to do so
where there is suffering, injustice, unrighteousness, and persecution. We can only do so by naming God with
reference to the Lamb. In this way, the
Song of Moses becomes the Song of the Lamb on our lips, a full revelation of
God's glory in both covenant invitation and righteous judgement to all nations.
[1] 'In
the history of Western theology and philosophy, no greater change occurred in
the naming of God, than when Thomas Aquinas read Exodus 3:14 in the Latin
translation of the Deus sum qui sum 'I am who I am', and developed what Etienne
Gilson nicely named Thomas's Metaphysics of Exodus 3:14. Thomas thereby
insisted that God's principal name was not, as it was for his contemporary
Bonaventure and the whole Dionysian thought prior to him, the Good, but Being.
That is to say God's principle cataphatic or positive naming was Being, the one
Being whose very being it is to be. The one being where there is no distinction
between essence and existence for God's very essence is to exist. That is a
brilliant metaphysical insight, but it shifts everything theologically' (David Tracy,
‘Form and Fragment: Recovering of the Hidden and Incomprehensible God,’ in
Werner Jeanrond Aasulv Lande, eds. The
Concept of God in Global Dialogue (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2005). [Page numbers were taken from a different
printing of this text online and therefore pages for quotes in the essay will
not be given.]
For Dionysius the Areopagite, God’s hiddenness was in his
incomprehensibility. For Martin Luther,
God’s hiddenness was in his revelation through the cross: ‘life revealed in
death, wisdom through folly, strength through weakness.’ Tracy notes a second sense of God’s
Hiddenness in Luther: ‘At the very least, this literally awful, ambivalent
sense of God's hiddenness can be so overwhelming that God is sometimes
experienced as purely frightening, not tender, sometimes even as an impersonal
reality—"it"—of sheer power and energy signified by such metaphors,
such fragmentary metaphors as abyss, chasm, chaos, horror.’
[2] Richard
Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of
Revelation; New Testament Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1993).
[3] Ibid.,
p. 30.
[4]
Ibid., 29.