But What About God's Wrath?

The Compelling Love Story of Divine Anger

Kevin Kinghorn

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780830873678
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religionsphilosophie

How can a loving God also be a God of wrath?God's wrath stands out in the minds of many as the single most puzzling aspect of God's character. Often Christians who would like to reconcile divine love with divine wrath—while remaining faithful to the Bible—can't figure out how to do so. Kevin Kinghorn and Stephen Travis offer a way forward.Using a philosophically informed line of argument and a careful study of the relevant biblical texts, Kinghorn and Travis show how these two aspects of God's character can be reconciled. Often God's wrath is viewed as an expression of holiness or justice, with the implicit assumption that God's just response to people is incompatible with a loving response. The authors instead view God's love as a strictly essential divine attribute, with justice as a derivative of love.But What About God's Wrath? will appeal to Christians eager to engage this puzzle more deeply, more philosophically, and more biblically, beyond pat answers and devotional platitudes.

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WRATH AS A PATTERN OF ACTION

In the age before tablets and cell phones, families would often pass the time on long car trips by playing the game “Twenty Questions.” That game always begins with the initial question: Is it an animal, vegetable, or mineral? Similarly, any analysis of God’s wrath needs to start by clarifying what wrath refers to. Is it an emotion? A disposition? An action? Something else?

WRATH AND THE EMOTION OF ANGER

An answer here is not immediately obvious. This is because the term wrath can be used to denote a variety of occurrences in Scripture. One kind of repeated reference to wrath seems pretty plainly to refer to an emotion. Consider, for instance, Proverbs 15:1: “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” The context here seems to be how a gentle answer soothes the emotion of wrath. First Kings 14:22 indicates that God’s wrath can indeed be “stirred up.” Similarly, Jeremiah 32:32 tells how the people’s actions have “provoked” the Lord. Yet again, we read in Deuteronomy 9:8 that “at Horeb you aroused the LORD’s wrath so that he was angry enough to destroy you.” This is language one naturally associates with the rising and falling of an emotion. Wrath in these contexts might be thought of as a synonym for “feeling angry.”

We could substitute other English words here besides anger. In English we have a variety of words that point to similar kinds of emotional states: displeasure, annoyance, resentment, rage, fury, and so forth. In Hebrew too there are a variety of words for this general kind of emotional reaction, which the Old Testament uses in describing both humans and God. Although it would be possible in English and in Hebrew to trace out all the subtle differences among these related terms, for our purposes there is no need to do so. The point remains that God is frequently described in Scripture as having emotions associated with anger or wrath.

The term wrath seems often to be the preferred choice of people today when talking about this angry side of God we see in Scripture. Otherwise, though, in everyday speech it is rarely used. It is a bit like the English word ire. You may know what the term means, but when was the last time you used ire in a conversation? So it is with discussions about God’s wrath. There is nothing unique about the term. I will use it in this book to refer generally to God’s anger or expressed displeasure, as depicted in Scripture.

It is actually a great irony that the term wrath has become something of a special theological term for God’s anger or displeasure. The irony is that the biblical use of the term is specifically not intended for the context of abstract, academic discussions. References to God’s wrath are meant to convey the intensity of God’s reaction to real-life situations. They convey God’s rage, his fury, as he relates to humans in our world, made messy by injustice, oppression, and human suffering.

Some people are surprised to find the Bible using such words as fury or wrath to describe God. They think of such language as crude or primitive, not suitable for a mature and enlightened conversation about the character of God. But the biblical language—particularly the Old Testament Hebrew—is direct, vivid, earthy. Centuries later, Christian writers in the early church drew from the more abstract and sophisticated language of Greek and Roman thought. They made subtle theological distinctions using such terms as Trinity, substance, and essence. But the Hebrew language in particular speaks with a much greater vibrancy. Using this language, biblical writers emphasize God’s aliveness, his character as someone who loves, cares, acts, feels joy and regret and anguish as we do.

I do not, of course, mean that God is just like us. God is infinitely greater than we are. But the Bible’s vivid language of human emotion is the best way for us to see that God cares about us and that we can relate to him. After all, we humans are emotional beings. Our strong reaction to a harmful event includes our emotional reaction. If I witnessed a friend having no emotional reaction to a dramatic movie, I would conclude that he was just not moved by the subject matter.

It seems impossible to imagine how we could understand a revelation from God of his personal interest in us, if emotional language were not part of that revelation. Wrath is part of the emotional language used in the Bible to convey the care God has for us. Just as we, at our best, react strongly and purposefully when someone we care about is mistreated or when justice is undermined, so does the God of the Bible. God is not like a judge in a courthouse, suspending his personal feelings in order to act objectively. He is more like a parent who feels affronted when her daughter is bullied in school and who takes steps to confront the offender.

THE PLACE OF RIGHTEOUS ANGER

This example of an enraged parent helps make the point that an emotion associated with wrath can be completely legitimate. We sometimes refer to it as righteous anger. A virtuous response to instances of injustice and oppression should include righteous anger. If you were to witness a marginalized person being exploited by someone in power, and if your reaction weren’t one of righteous anger, then questions could surely be asked about your moral character. How could you be oriented toward the good, toward the fullness of life that God intends for people, and not be unsettled and outraged by cruelty, scandal, and sin of all kinds?

God’s anger as legitimate jealousy for people’s affection. Sometimes the biblical accounts of God’s anger take the form of God’s jealousy. We read, for example, in Deuteronomy 32:16 that God’s people “made him jealous with their foreign gods, and angered him with their detestable idols.” Admittedly, jealousy for someone else’s affection can sometimes be unwarranted and destructive. For example, a husband might be improperly controlling of his wife, demanding to know her every movement and becoming furious if she even looks at a stranger. Or a woman might stalk an ex-boyfriend and try to secretly undermine any subsequent relationship he tries to form.

All the same, at other times jealousy for someone else’s affection can be wholly justified. A husband and wife pledge at their wedding ceremony to be faithful to each other. If one spouse then grows unduly attached to someone else, the other spouse is right to have the kind of righteous anger we associate with jealousy. In this context, feelings of jealousy are entirely appropriate. Something would be wrong if a spouse didn’t feel jealousy for the unique affection that was pledged at the wedding ceremony.

The Bible in a number of places describes God as in this sense a jealous God for his people. God is recorded in Exodus 34:14 as warning his people against worshiping other gods, “for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” In the New Testament, Paul writes of sharing in this same kind of jealousy: “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him” (2 Corinthians 11:2).

Just as legitimate jealousy can exist within the relationship of husband and wife, it can exist within other kinds of relationships as well. Hosea 11:1-9 vividly portrays God as a mother who feels betrayed by her child, Israel. She has cherished him, taught him to walk, given herself to his growth and development. But he has rebelled against her and rejected the values she taught him by chasing after the Baals (Canaanite gods).

God’s anger at people’s mistreatment of others. Another biblical context of God’s righteous anger involves the harm that one person does to another, especially to those on the margins of society. God is the one who warns his people that “my anger will be aroused” if they “take advantage of the widow or the fatherless” (Exodus 22:22, 24). For a God who values justice and righteousness, disregard of the laws designed to safeguard the poor and vulnerable is a serious offense. In Isaiah 5:8-30 we find a series of woes in which God denounces the powerful people such as landowners who take advantage of poor farmers forced to sell their land because of accumulated debts—contravening the laws of Leviticus 25:23-28, 35-43. The book of Isaiah also contains God’s well-known complaint against the worship and fasting of his people: “On the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers” (Isaiah 58:3). For this reason God has turned away from them, declaring, “You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high” (Isaiah 58:4). God then explains to the people what they should already know:

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice

and untie the cords of the yoke,

to set the oppressed free

and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry

and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked, to clothe them,

and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? (Isaiah 58:6-7)

Turning to the New Testament, Jesus’ own recorded instances of righteous anger typically involve this same context of people impeding the well-being of others. We read in Mark of a Sabbath when Jesus is in the synagogue, along with a man with a paralyzed hand (Mark 3:1-6). Critics of Jesus watch intently to see whether he will attempt to heal the paralysis—which in their view would count as forbidden work on the Sabbath. “Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored” (Mark 3:4-5). Jesus is angry that people would use the Sabbath law to prohibit doing good to someone in need.

Jesus’ anger is notably focused on those who hinder the flourishing of children. In Mark 10:13-14 we read of a time in which “people were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.’” The word indignant is not a mild response, in the language of the New Testament. It is the same reaction the chief priests and teachers of the law are recorded in Matthew 21:15 as having at hearing children shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David” after Jesus cleansed the temple and healed sick people there.

Perhaps the starkest expression of Jesus’ righteous anger within the New Testament is found in Matthew 18:6. After picking out a little child who is present, Jesus remarks, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

So there are plenty of examples in Scripture of God’s anger being directed toward those who harm others. In addition, a large set of examples can be found of God’s anger directed at those who bring harm on themselves. This context for God’s wrath is worth considering carefully.

God’s anger at people’s self-destructive behavior. This context of God’s angry reaction to people’s self-destructive tendencies is an overarching context throughout the whole narrative of Scripture. Even where God’s anger is linked with his jealousy, we also find this element of being troubled, being angry, for our sake. Jeremiah 7:18-19 makes this point explicitly: “‘They pour out drink offerings to other gods to arouse my anger. But am I the one they are provoking?’ declares the LORD. ‘Are they not rather harming themselves, to their own shame?’” (see also Jeremiah 25:7). In damaging our relationship with God, we cut ourselves off from the one source of fullness of life. A God who cares about us would naturally be troubled, for our sake, at our sins against him.

In the New Testament as well we find God troubled by people’s self-destructive tendencies. A clear example is Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37). Would God’s feeling of lament mix with anger, in the context of his concern for us? The clear answer to this seems to be yes—if our own experiences as parents are any guide to how God reacts to seeing his loved ones act in self-destructive ways.

For parents, it is worth reflecting on the anger we can sometimes feel when our children put themselves in danger. Especially when we have warned our children about the hazards of some activity, seeing our children then endanger themselves can cause powerful emotions in us. Some toddlers, for instance, seem to have an enthusiasm for running toward parking lots and other areas where there is traffic. A parent of a toddler once confided to me, “I can’t believe the level of rage I experience when my child runs toward the street.” Of course, it is entirely appropriate for parents to feel a kind of protective anger. There would be something wrong if parents’ strong emotions weren’t aroused when the safety of their children was at stake.

This same protective anger is a strong, overarching theme throughout the biblical references to God’s anger. It is interesting to note the pattern of God’s wrath within the Old Testament. Nearly always this wrath is directed toward God’s own people, Israel. (Only later in the Old Testament, and with fewer references, is God’s wrath directed toward other nations.) These are the people whom he has specially promised to guide and care for. His anger at their rebellious ways comes in the context of his constant striving to renew them as his cherished people.

When the Bible attributes wrath or anger to God, it is not describing a God whose rage is like the tantrums of a three-year-old, or a God who flies off the handle like a boss whose employee has yet again ruined a work project. God’s anger is not an uncontrolled emotion. It is instead more like the controlled anger of a parent whose teenage daughter has stayed out way beyond the expected time of her return home and has thereby not only worried her parents but also made herself vulnerable to unwelcome dangers. Such anger is motivated by concern for the well-being of the person toward whom it is directed. It expresses disapproval within a context of care and concern, and it aims at a more responsible and trusting relationship moving forward.

Anger in this context can still be intense. The Bible’s depiction of God includes God reacting passionately, furiously, when his people fail to respond to the avenues toward healing and restoration that he himself is providing. Again thinking...