Lying Prophets, or Loving Fathers?

What Are the Prophets Doing with the Variously Impassioned God?

The following is my speaking notes for a lecture I gave recently (please read them charitably as such!), handling the thorny issue of why and how the scriptural propositions involving God’s passions are proper/formal—the fact of which being the main biblicist critique of the traditional position.

Introduction

Theologians are forced by e.g., Aristotelianism to run roughshod over holy Scripture and rejigger its propositions involving divine passions as saying anything but. Regardless of what holy Scripture says–and it frequently and frankly says that God is angered, that he is merciful, and so on–regardless of this, the facts are altogether otherwise, facts as we know them from Aristotle. And there are quite remarkable gymnastics which manifest just how doggedly this “altogether otherwise” is followed. Perhaps the most vivid example is when theologians confront scriptural propositions like God being angered and reach for almost anything else besides anger to handle the letters. God being angered means everything from Satan himself to divine love, but does not and cannot mean God being angered–at least according to the Aristotelian system, wherein is demonstrated that God has no passions, anger (and many others) being among them.

But theologians also suffer other constraints besides Aristotle. They also have the duty to do justice to the letters of holy Scripture. Yet as those whom I will call “biblicists” rightly point out, pleading metaphor has not done so. By pleading metaphor, I mean interpreting God being variously impassioned as anything else except somehow having said passions. And there are very many possibilities here besides said passions: e.g., God being merciful is interpreted as we are saved–an interpretation which not only posits nothing of mercy in God, but also says nothing actually about him.

Biblicists say that these sorts of accounts, pleading just metaphor, do not do justice to the letters of holy Scripture. The scriptural propositions involving divine passions–whether God being angered, being merciful, etc.--are differentiated from obvious metaphors like God being a rock. They are obviously proper/formal, indistinguishable from propositions like God being love–which even theologians admit is not a metaphor. The prophet uses these propositions as principles of argument for many conclusions; and in order to sufficiently argue such conclusions, the propositions must be understood properly/formally–else there is no argumentative force. The prophets will even argue extensively for these propositions: God being angered is not just a premise, but also a conclusion. All this and more manifests that for the prophet, these are not just metaphors. And theologians have not done justice to the letters by pleading such.

In this lecture, I basically want to concede and say guilty as charged. Except, the biblicist critics have only heard half the story that theologians tell, the half where they plead just metaphor. There is also the second half, where theologians actually try and do justice to the letters. That other half of the story is that these propositions, God being angered, him being merciful, etc., are dialectical principles of argument, and taken at face value they are used by the prophet to conclude many truths. The whole story then involves two perspectives: from the perspective of the prophet, the propositions are true but only metaphorical; yet being proposed dialectically, the same propositions are from the perspective of the people proper, although admittedly false. This is the whole story, the whole position: it holds that these propositions are both true, yes, but also proper–although considered in different modes.

I should say upfront that this second half of the story is not going to be agreeable to the biblicists. In point of fact, it will likely be more alarming: it amounts to saying, to put it aggressively, “Fine, the propositions are proper, but accordingly false.” It’s something of a pick your poison: either true but metaphorical, or proper but false.

Still, besides being the case, this account has the advantage of actually doing justice to the letters of holy Scripture–and the fact that justice is done, I believe biblicists will have to admit (although again they will not appreciate this position). Still and what is important for us, is that this provides at least an equally adequate account as the biblicist position to explaining the concrete phenomenon of holy Scripture, the actual data. The biblicist simply cannot claim that he has a leg-up when it comes to the letters, as if they are a point in his favor. No, biblicism is one attempt, ultimately errant, to do justice to the letters; and the theologian’s appeal to dialectical propositions is an equal attempt to do justice to the same, and ultimately that attempt is the correct one.

We have a lot to cover here, but we want to expound our central point: that our propositions involving divine passions are dialectical and thus proper/formal. First, we’re going to unpack what this means. Then second, we’re going to handle how these dialectical propositions still are grounded according to the prophet’s judgments. Talking about this is the same as doing allegory, rather than reading the text ad litteram, which concentrates on (for lack of better terms) the dialectical use. Then we will conclude by circling back and facing off the way the theologian faces the text, versus the way the biblicist.

What Are Dialectical Propositions?

First of all, what do we mean by dialectical propositions?

Let me begin by initially alarming you–ultimately I hope to quiet your fears, all the way at the end of the lecture. But you need to hear the scary part first.

Recall Plato in his Republic famously advances the γενναῖον ψεῦδος, today badly rendered as the one Noble Lie, which would serve as the founding μῦθος of the City.