The God Who Makes Himself Known

The Missionary Heart of the Book of Exodus

W. Ross Blackburn, D. A. Carson

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780830884193
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The Lord's commitment to make himself known throughout the nations is the overarching missionary theme of the Bible and the central theological concern of Exodus. Countering scholarly tendencies to fragment the text over theological difficulties, Ross Blackburn contends that Exodus should be read as a unified whole, and that an appreciation of its missionary theme in its canonical context is of great help in dealing with the difficulties that the book poses. For example, how is Exodus 6: 3 best understood? Is there a tension between law and gospel, or mercy and judgment? How should we understand the painstaking detail of the tabernacle chapters? From a careful examination of Exodus, this New Studies in Biblical Theology volume demonstrates that- the Lord humbled Pharaoh so the world would know that only God can save- the Lord gave Israel the law so that its people might display his goodness to the nations, living in a state of order and blessing- the Lord dealt with Israel's idolatry severely, yet mercifully, for his goodness cannot be known if his glory is compromisedIn the end, Exodus not only sheds important light on the church's mission, but also reveals what kind of God the Lord is, one who pursues his glory and our good, ultimately realizing both as he makes himself known in Christ Jesus. Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles. The NSBT series is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead.

Chapter One

Introduction

Concerning biblical mission

The God Who Makes Himself Known will argue that the Lord’s missionary commitment to make himself known to the nations is the central theological concern of Exodus. Therefore, a word about the use of the term ‘mission’ is warranted. One danger of using a well-known term is that ideas commonly connected with the term are often read into the argument, sometimes bringing in unintended associations. For instance, despite its definition as ‘any remedial activity pursued with zeal and enthusiasm’,1 it is difficult for the term ‘crusade’ to be divorced in the minds of many readers from violence and coercion. Likewise, despite its definition as ‘a specific task with which a person or a group is charged’,2 ‘mission’ also carries with it meaning (e.g. direct, usually Christian, evangelistic endeavour) that may be too suggestive to be useful. There are, however, important reasons for using the term. First, the contemporary use of the term ‘mission’, particularly as defined above, fits the following argument. Many contemporary institutions, whether religious or secular, use the term ‘mission’ to speak of their purpose; hence the popular use of the term ‘mission statement’. However, while the terms ‘mission’ and ‘purpose’ overlap, the former has a distinctively proactive sense that the latter often does not. Sunglasses serve the purpose of reducing glare, but one would hardly speak of the mission of a pair of sunglasses. Mission, on the other hand, implies both purpose and the corresponding effort and strategy to achieve that purpose. The word ‘mission’ therefore fits the following argument, which addresses both the Lord’s purpose in Exodus and the means by which he pursues that purpose.

The second reason for using the term ‘mission’ lies in the context in which I believe the argument is appropriately considered. Using the term ‘mission’ positions the following argument in the wider discussion of biblical mission. Too often the concept of mission in the OT has either been generally denied, or the OT has been used as a short prologue to a discussion of biblical mission, which usually means mission according to the NT.3 Furthermore, many discussions of mission in the OT tend towards a focus on a handful of texts that appear to address more explicitly missionary themes, texts such as Genesis 12:1–3, Exodus 19:4–6 and the book of Jonah.4 While the importance of these texts cannot be denied, OT mission is much more than a collection of extracted proof texts. In fact, the reason that those texts above are appealed to with such frequency is that we have read the OT through the lens of the NT, particularly the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20), and therefore look to texts that explicitly refer to the nations to inform our understanding of mission. The problem is that when this happens, the whole notion of mission in the Bible is severely truncated, even distorted. It is noteworthy that the Great Commission is spoken by Jesus in Matthew, the Gospel that most explicitly and frequently grounds itself in the OT. And yet much of the modern church reads the Great Commission as if Jesus were commanding something entirely new. How is the Great Commission to be carried out? To whom is it given? What is the message? Is proclaiming a message even an appropriate way to understand Jesus’ command? What are disciples, and how are they made? These are all issues firmly rooted in the OT. An important implication of the following study is that we cannot even understand mission as expressed in the NT apart from a thorough grounding in the Old.

Two publications help lend definition to the term, at least as used in the following discussion. First, Seitz (2001) has suggested that mission, biblically understood, fundamentally involves God’s seeking to put right what has gone awry; that is, the evil inclination of the human heart. Christian evangelistic proclamation, with which mission is commonly associated, may be understood as one means by which God sets right what is wrong, but it is only part of that larger concern:

Mission means getting at the something awry, when we look at the issue theologically and not sociologically. Stated differently, the notion of missionary ‘sending’ is an earthly subset of a theological reality, and it is this theological reality that makes mission have a divine and not a natural or simply human mandate. Mission is God’s address to humanity’s forfeit. Understood in this way, it is an Old Testament theme as well as a New Testament theme. Indeed, it could be said to be the theme of the Old Testament as such. (2001: 147, emphasis original)

If Seitz’s understanding is applied to Exodus, that which has gone awry is a condition in which the world does not know the Lord. ‘Getting at the something awry’, for Exodus, is simply the Lord’s effort to make himself known among the nations for who he is, the God who rules over the universe and redeems those who call upon him. The goal of the following, then, will be to demonstrate that this commitment to right what is awry, or to move Israel and the nations from ignorance to knowing him, is the Lord’s motivation behind his actions in Exodus. In this way the theme is missionary. Whether or not mission, thus understood, is ‘the theme of the Old Testament’, as Seitz suggests, is beyond the scope of this work, but I do intend to argue that it is the governing theme of Exodus.

The second work, Bauckham’s Bible and Mission (2003), examines biblical mission in terms of the relationship between the particular and the universal in the Bible. Bauckham understands mission in both the OT and the NT in the light of this movement. The Lord particularly chose Abraham for the universal purpose that all families of the earth might be blessed. The Lord particularly chose Israel for the universal purpose that the nations might acknowledge that he is God. The Lord particularly chose Zion, with its Davidic king, for the universal purpose of extending his rule throughout the earth. In each case the particular always moves to the universal, leading Bauckham to argue that the Lord never chooses a particular person or people for its own sake, but for the sake of the world. This movement, for Bauckham, is biblical mission.

The relationship between particularity and universality is of crucial importance in understanding the book of Exodus, especially in arguing that the central concern of Exodus is missionary. One of the chief burdens of the following argument, then, is to demonstrate that the particular existence of Israel has a universal goal, and that Israel’s existence is unintelligible apart from her mission to the nations. In other words the following argument will seek to demonstrate that the existence and nature of Israel cannot be rightly understood apart from the Lord’s universal mission.

Finally, a point about the language Exodus uses to express this missionary commitment. Often, mission in Exodus is expressed in terms of knowing the Lord or knowing his name, such as in the oft-repeated phrase ‘they shall know that I am the Lord’. Sometimes the Lord’s mission is expressed in terms of his being glorified or honoured (e.g. 14:4, 18), and other passages suggest that the Lord acts as he does for the sake of his name (e.g. 32:12). While each of these expressions may have different nuances, they convey the same general meaning. As we shall see, the Lord desires to be known as God, and, further, as a particular kind of God, a God who is both supreme and good. In other words the Lord seeks to be known for who he is, and (the corollary, while obvious, needs to be said) not for who he is not. Knowing the Lord implies honouring him for who he is. The terms ‘honoured’, ‘glorified’ and ‘known’ will be used at different points in the discussion, depending on which seems to fit best in relation to a given passage. It bears mention, however, that they all point in the same direction.

Purpose and approach

The New Studies in Biblical Theology series of which this volume is a part seeks to address one or more of three areas: issues related to the discipline of Biblical Theology, the exposition of the structure of thought of a particular book or corpus, and the delineation of a particular theme across part or all of the Scriptures. The following work seeks to address all three.

First, recognizing that hermeneutical decisions often turn on the contexts in which particular passages are interpreted, The God Who Makes Himself Known makes a case for the importance of canonical context in interpretation.5 As Olson (1985: 3) writes, ‘A major obstacle to the appreciation and interpretation of any literary work is a perceived lack of coherence or organization’. One of the problems of much critical interpretation is that it has increasingly assumed a lack of coherence,6 which has led some interpreters increasingly to explain difficulties in the text by resorting to different sources, traditions or editorial processes. Now, of course, some will argue that critical scholarship has not assumed a lack of coherence, but rather has demonstrated it.7 Aside from the obvious point that there is significant difficulty in assessing coherence, particularly in a text far removed both temporally and culturally, one’s assessment of what a text is informs how it will be read. Practically, the more that one fragments the text, the greater the tendency to fragment it further becomes. This is not to say that there are not places of real difficulty in the text, some of which have been brought to light by critical scholars. But it is to say that the impulse has made interpretation increasingly difficult.8 If A does not appear to fit with B, it may be that we are discerning different sources or editorial layers, or it may be that we simply have not yet discerned how they do indeed fit together. For example, is Van Seters’s (1994:323) judgment that Exodus 33:18–23 is ‘so entirely out of character with [33:12–17] that it must be considered an addition’ an accurate reading of the text, or might there be a connection between the two sections that Van Seters misses? It is noteworthy that Van Seters’s assessment closes down theological discussion, for he simply asserts 33:18–23 as an addition without enquiring as to its theological function. The point of this work is not to repudiate critical scholarship, per se, but rather to demonstrate that the impulse to retreat to sources or editorial histories is sometimes due to the fact that we have not taken the canonical context of the Scriptures seriously enough.

In addressing this hermeneutical concern, each chapter follows a similar pattern. Beginning with a (usually well-known) hermeneutical problem, each chapter moves to argue that the particular section at hand points to the Lord’s missionary commitment to be known as God, then ends with a suggestion of how appreciating that missionary commitment helps make sense of that hermeneutical problem. In addition, occasionally I suggest specific examples where critical decisions have been made, to my mind unnecessarily, on theological grounds or due to a lack of appreciating the canonical movement of the text. In order not to discourage readers not primarily interested in these matters, I have left these examples mainly in the footnotes.

Secondly, this volume argues that the Lord’s missionary commitment to be known as God governs the book of Exodus. Breaking the book up into five commonly accepted divisions, I have sought to demonstrate that this missionary commitment is the reason why the Lord does what he does in each section, whether it is the manner of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, the giving of the law, or the Lord’s response to Israel after she made the golden calf.

The effort to argue for a governing trajectory in Exodus brings up another, related, issue in Biblical Theology that has brought forth much discussion: whether or not it is appropriate to speak of a ‘centre’ of Biblical Theology.9 The objection to searching for a centre is the very real concern of imposing a particular theme or structure that would in effect flatten or silence the sometimes diverse voices of the Scriptures. Yet the corresponding danger of such a fear is to rule out the possibility a priori, and therefore possibly miss ways in which the Scriptures might be read as a coherent whole. In the end, whether or not there is a centre of Biblical Theology is an issue that cannot be settled theoretically, but must be joined exegetically, with proposals being offered and subsequently evaluated. Whether or not one wants to use the term ‘centre’, the argument in this volume is that the Lord’s commitment to be known as God throughout the earth governs all the Lord does in the book of Exodus.

Consistent with my own commitments, this work is written from a confessional evangelical perspective. I bring to the work an understanding of Scripture as the word of God, and thus an expectation that it is the product of a unified voice. As suggested above, this commitment can mute our understanding of the Bible’s witness, which is of particular concern when arguing for a ‘centre’. However, it must be recognized that more critical approaches to the Bible can have a similar effect. Barton’s (1996: 84) critique of Childs’s canonical method is pertinent:

But doesn’t this all amount simply to a return to pre-critical exegesis? If we are going to read Scripture as a unified work, doesn’t that mean that we are going back to all the old abuses – allegory, harmonization, typology, and even downright falsification of the text – from which the historical critical method has freed us?

While Barton rightly raises several potential dangers, his allusion to the historical-critical method as a type of hermeneutical saviour from pre-critical exegesis suggests not only a deep scepticism of attempts to read the OT as a unified whole, but also an approach to the text that is less concerned with understanding how the Bible might fit together, thus running the danger of muting the witness of the biblical text from another direction. If, however, the Bible is given by God, then its unity and coherence should be able to be discerned exegetically (even if imperfectly). In the end, it is my hope that this work will serve as an encouragement to take difficult texts and read them in the light of the whole, listening to them as they are given to us in their canonical form. The unified voice of the Bible, if real, need not just be insisted upon a priori, but ought to be increasingly appreciated as we continue to engage with it.

This leads to one further comment concerning the perspective of the work. Writing from a confessional evangelical perspective (and particularly admitting it!) has the effect of ruling out one’s contribution in some circles of biblical scholarship. We do well to recognize, however, that prior commitments are unavoidable in all interpretation. For example, in arguing for the academic community as the appropriate community for Biblical Theology, Collins (1990: 8) writes:

We are shaped by the rational humanism that underlies our technological culture and political institutions, no less than by the Bible (usually far more so). It is possible to have critical dialogue between our modern world view and the Bible, but we cannot simply abandon the twentieth century for the ancient world.

In referring to ‘the twentieth century’, Collins speaks not of a period in time as much as a viewpoint informed by rational humanism. However, it cannot be said that all people in the twentieth century (or all people living in the West) hold that particular perspective, as Collins seems to assume. The ‘we’ to whom Collins refers is a particular community, the academic community, which, by his definition, holds the presuppositions (or dogma) of rational humanism. Whether or not this is true of the academic community in toto, Collins is clear that he approaches the text from a humanistic perspective as ‘confessional’ as the one he dismisses, even though his perspective rules out God. In all cases interpreters inevitably are governed by specific assumptions and concerned with specific questions.

Finally, the wor...