God is Wrathful Because God is Love

Interesting quotation from Miroslav Volf

A Pilgrim's Friend

“Our God is a consuming fire.” Hebrews 12:29

If God is loving then how can He be wrathful? Isn’t wrath or anger inappropriate for a God who is love?

Yale Theologian, Miroslav Volf provides one great answer. He was born in Croatia and lived through the nightmare years of ethnic strife in the former Yugoslavia—including the destruction of churches, the rape of women, and the murder of innocents. He once thought that wrath and anger were beneath God, but he came to realize that his view of God had been too low…

“I used to think that wrath was unworthy of God. Isn’t God love? Shouldn’t divine love be beyond wrath? God is love, and God loves every person and every creature. That’s exactly why God is wrathful against some of them.

My last resistance to the idea of God’s wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia…

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“I will make your enemies your footstool”

“A common motif found in Ancient Near East reliefs shows a monarch placing his foot on his enemy. One illustration of this is the large relief showing the Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser III (reigned 745-727 B.C.) with his foot on the neck of an enemy. Tiglath-Pileser III is known as Pul in the Bible.”

Ferrell's Travel Blog

A common motif found in Ancient Near East reliefs shows a monarch placing his foot on his enemy. One illustration of this is the large relief showing the Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser III (reigned 745-727 B.C.) with his foot on the neck of an enemy. Tiglath-Pileser III is known as Pul in the Bible.

Pul the king of Assyria came against the land, and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that he might help him to confirm his hold on the royal power. (2 Kings 15:19 ESV)

So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, the spirit of Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and he took them into exile, namely, the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river Gozan, to this day. (1 Chronicles 5:26 ESV)

The Assyrian relief below is displayed in…

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Footnote 35 – Teaching by Implication, Drawing Necessary Inferences

Footnote 35 — Christopher J.H. Wright, Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament (2nd ed., Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2014), pp. 71, 256-257.

Learning Biblical truths by implication (and the inferences drawn from narrative, prophecy, poetry, legal mandates or prohibitions, etc.) has been a topic of controversy in some religious circles for awhile now. Christopher J.H. Wright’s work connecting various Old Testament texts with Jesus provides some insight into how that process was used by the Lord himself to teach those who were seeking the truth about him.

“In order to explain Jesus, the New Testament connects him to a whole range of Old Testament Scriptures that are all perceived as expressing God’s promise – whether directly or by implication” (p.71, chapter 2).

Wright picks up this dangling thread later in his work, for example, in explicating the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-13) –

“And once again, in the conversation afterward, Jesus helps them to understand the significance of John the Baptist. They knew the accepted teaching of the experts – Elijah must first come before God arrives. The staggering challenge lay in the implications. Here is the logic:

Elijah comes first, then God will come down (drawn from Mal 4:5).
 You know that John has already come first, and then Jesus came.
 So if John was Elijah, who is Jesus?
 Get it?
“In ways like this Matthew shows that Jesus used Scripture that spoke about God in ways that pointed to himself. He did not stand up with a banner proclaiming, ‘I am God.’ He did not need to. The people around him knew their Scriptures. Jesus pointed to those texts, pointed to himself, and in effect told them to draw their own conclusions.” (pp. 256-257).

Part of the issue, of course, is not so much about whether Jesus, and Biblical authors, taught by implication. That they did is an obvious truism — and expected others to draw the logical conclusions. The problem seems to be some of the UN-necessary inferences which some have drawn from Biblical teachings – “whether directly or by implication.”

Think about it, and draw your own conclusions!

Don’t end up just banging dustbins

Worth a few moments of your time …

Building Jerusalem

It is amazing how certain comments stick in the mind. It is hard to know whether it is the context in which they are spoken or the sheer simplicity with which the comment nails its intended target, but nonetheless some things remain with you. I am regularly reminded of one of the funniest, and yet searingly clear, comments I received whilst engaged in mission work.

The context was my regular pilgrimage to the Holy Land; or, Llandudno as it is more commonly known. I was co-leading a week of mission. Much of the work involved cold-contact evangelism; approaching folk on the promenade and trying to generate conversation. The aim would be to share something of Christ and perhaps leave them with a Christian book or piece of literature to read in their own time. Sometimes conversations take off – often in ways you wouldn’t expect – and excellent theological discussion can…

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Mount Arbel and the Sea of Galilee

Ferrell's Travel Blog

Our photo today was made from NW of the Sea of Galilee. The formation on the right is known as Mount Arbel. The agricultural area you see slopes down to the Plain of Gennesaret which stretches about 2½ miles to the Sea (Matthew 14:34).

View of Mount Arbel and the Sea of Galilee from the NW. Photo by Ferrell Jenkins.

Across the Sea of Galilee is a portion of the Golan Heights, known in Old Testament times as Bashan. This territory was taken by Israel from Og the king of Bashan and eventually became territory belonging to the tribe of Manasseh.

Then they turned and went up by the way to Bashan. And Og the king of Bashan came out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. But the LORD said to Moses, “Do not fear him, for I have given him into your hand…

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Gate A-4

Gate A-4 By Naomi Shihab Nye:

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” Well— one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her . What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly. “Shu-dow-a, shu-bid-uck, habibti? Stani schway, min fadlick, shu-bit-se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be…

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“Me, Too.”

Well said, Randy — thanks!

Randy Daw

Lust has had its way for too long.  In entertainment, at school, and even in church we hear story after story of women who have been assaulted by powerful or even “trusted” men.

Among the teenaged and adult women you know, probably one in every three has been violently assaulted.  More than half have been sexually coerced or harassed.

Note:  Violence includes manipulation or threats which result in sexual compliance. Any touch is violence when consent is coerced, or when consent cannot be legally given.

Many courageous women have told their stories in recent weeks.  Others by the (literally) millions have responded on social media and other fora by answering “Me too.”

Other men have often seen and done nothing.  Worse, they have conspired to keep an assault secret, rationalizing that the woman must have done something to bring it about.  If a man knows something and does nothing, he…

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