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The God of Israel: The Image of God in the Old Testament

The God of Israel: The Image of God in the Old Testament. Why Start with the God of Israel?. The God of Israel is the same God that we Christians believe in The Christian concept of God is not a totally new beginning; it has a pre-history in the faith of Israel.

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The God of Israel: The Image of God in the Old Testament

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  1. The God of Israel:The Image of God in the Old Testament

  2. Why Start with the God of Israel? • The God of Israel is the same God that we Christians believe in • The Christian concept of God is not a totally new beginning; it has a pre-history in the faith of Israel. • To understand Christianity's concept of God as Triune, one must begin with the understanding of God in the faith of Israel.

  3. Exodus The Exodus-experience as primordial event of Israel where God revealed himself through his saving deeds

  4. Yahweh the God of Israel • Yahweh is based on the Tetragrammeton - YHWH. As it is written in the Hebrew Scriptures there are no vowels, the reader was expected to supply the vowels. • It has mistakenly been interpreted as YeHoWaH (Jehovah) • YaHWeH • Yahweh is often translated as I AM WHO AM. This may also be interpreted as: I AM THE ONE WHO WILL BE THERE WITH YOU ... IN THE WAY I WILL BE THERE.

  5. God as Liberator • God liberated his people from oppression and slavery in Egypt. • He entered into a covenant-relationship with them: "I will be your God, you will be my people." • This covenant stipulates that they honor and worship only one God. (God as a jealous God who cannot tolerate the worship of other gods). • God promised to give them a land they can call their own

  6. Thus, from polytheism, Israel turned to henotheism. They still believed in the existence of other gods, but they worshipped only one God - Yahweh • There was a gradual development from henotheism to absolute monotheism. The prophets (especially during the post-exilic period) were the ones that promoted monotheism. For the prophets there is only one true God - Yahweh. All the rest were false gods or idols.

  7. You yourselves are my witnesses, declares Yahweh and the servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe me and understand that it is I. No God was formed before menor will be after me. I, I am Yahweh, there is no other Savior but me... (Isaiah 43:10-14)

  8. The Israelites gradually come to a realization that there is only one God, there is no other God but Yahweh. Yahweh is not only the God of a tribe or a nation but of all the nations and peoples. • The faith of God as liberator of Israel emphasized the notion of God as the God of Israel. It was the gradual realization that the God who liberated Israel is the same God who created the world -- that opened the way for an absolute monotheism. If God is the creator of all things and of all humans, then God is the God of all.

  9. God as Father • Although the image of God as father is not central in the faith of Israel, it is not altogether absent. • The fatherhood of God is not based primarily on the idea of God as creator but on God as liberator who entered into a covenant relationship with Israel. • In Exodus, Yahweh calls Israel as his first born son: "So you shall say to Pharaoh: Thus says the Lord: Israel is my son, my first born. Hence I tell you: Let my son go, that he may serve me." (Ex 4:22-23). • If Israel is Yahweh's first-born son, then Yahweh is Israel's father.

  10. In Deutero-Isaiah, God is explicitly addressed as Father: "O Lord, hold not back, for you are our father. Were Abraham not to know us, nor Israel to acknowledge us, You Lord are our father." (Isaiah 63:15-16) • The few times Father is used of God, the usage is clearly a metaphor, an image employed to express some aspect of God's relationship with his people. The term expressed the absolute authority of God over Israel and his saving concern and loving tenderness towards them.

  11. God’s Transcendence & Immanence • Israel believed in a God that is transcendent - totally above and beyond the world, Wholly Other. • Yet this transcendent God is also present in the world and active in history. This God is also immanent. • The problem: how to speak of the immanent features of the transcendent God?

  12. The answer: anthropomorphism - picturing God present and active on earth like a human being. • It also made use of metaphors: Dabar Yahweh (the Word of God) and Ruah Yahweh (the Spirit/breath of God). These concepts represent the POWER of the transcendent God going forth and accomplishing in various ways God's design on earth. • Closely related to these concepts of Word and Spirit is the theme of the Wisdom of God as developed and presented in the Wisdom literature. The concept of Wisdom here describes God's immanence in creation and in human life.

  13. The concepts of Dabar (Word) and Ruah (Spirit) are literary devices to describe the activity in history of the transcendent God whereby he controls and directs the destiny of the Chosen People. • The immanent activity of God expresses his providence and guiding presence in history. It is by means of this liberating providence that God is revealed. The history of salvation is also the history of God's self-revelation, his self-communication.

  14. God's self-revelation is never immediate and direct. It occurs by means of something other than God - thru a chosen medium of communication which becomes God's self-expression, sign, sacrament. • God's Word and Spirit may be considered as God's media of communication and revelation. • They go forth from God but in accomplishing their purpose they represent the very presence of God. These media may both be identical with God and at the same time also distinct.

  15. Ruah Yahweh - the Spirit of God • The concept of Ruah Yahweh appears in the literature of Israel in the context of the settlement in the land of Canaan. • The expression represents a symbol for transient manifestations of God's power breaking into history guiding the destiny of God's people. • This power manifests itself in the charismatic leaders of Israel called the Judges, in warriors such as Samson, and especially in the prophets - the Nebiim. • Thus, in Isaiah the Spirit is associated with the prophetic/messianic mission:

  16. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the lowly to heal the broken To proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners To announce a year of favor from the Lord and a day of vindication by our God to comfort all who mourn.. (Isaiah 61:1-3)

  17. The prophets proclaimed the coming of a messianic age when there will be a universal and abiding outpouring of the Spirit of God. This will be one of the messianic blessings. • The Spirit of God not only manifests God's liberating presence in history, it also expresses God's powerful activity in creation. Thus, in Genesis we have the Spirit of God hovering over the mighty waters. In the J creation account, we have Yahweh breathing on his creation - thereby giving him life. The Spirit of God therefore expresses Yahweh's creative and life-giving power.

  18. Dabar - the Word of God • The word Dabar refers to both word and deed. Unlike the english equivalent - Dabar is not merely an expression of idea or thought. It is much more powerful. It effects what is says. Thus, in Genesis, when God says "Let there be light" there was light. • For ancient Hebrew, when it was said it was done. Saying made a deed, formed a thing, caused an objective fact.

  19. The meaning of Dabar is best expressed in the passage from Isaiah: For, as the rain and the snow come down from the ksy and do no return before having watered the earth, fertilizing it and making it germinate to provide seed for the sower and food to eat, so it is with the word that goes from my mouth: it will not return to me unfulfilled, or before having carried out my good pleasure and having achieved what it was sent to do (Is 55:10-11)

  20. Nearly half of the occurences of the "Word of God" are prophetic Word/event formula: "The Word of God came to me..." The call of Jeremiah is paradigmatic of the formula use: The word of Yahweh came to me, saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you came to birth I consecrated you; I appointed you as prophet to the nations." (Jer 1:4ff)

  21. God's Word tends to promote the historical transformation of a people by "shaping them up" in quite particular ways. Yahweh's Word is a more programmatic effective presence of God. • The Word of God takes people where they are in their own lives, their own times, and their own histories. It then summons them on those ground to the creative transformation that covenant offers.

  22. There is an intimate connection between Ruah and Dabar. In the creation account, the Spirit of God and the Word of God are collaborative. There is the Spirit's role of disposing the chaos, and the Word's role in naming the particular configuration into which the chaos is to be transformed. • The fullness of God's immanence and formative presence in covenant history are often experienced and described as Spirit and Word. These are metaphors that interpret and mediates God's effective presence. God makes the world through them, and redeems history through them.

  23. Next meeting: New Testament Origin of the Trinitarian Faith • Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society, 25-35

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