Autor: Murray, John

Buch: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Titel: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Stichwort: Problem Gottes : existenziell (existentiell), funktional - noetisch, onomatisch; die existenzielle und funktionale Frage

Kurzinhalt: existential and functional, noetic and onomastic; "Where is your God?" (Psalms 115:2). Is he with you or not? Is he active in your behalf or not? This was the first form of the post-modern question, "Is God dead?"

Textausschnitt: 16a After this summary exegetical and theological analysis, we are sufficiently prepared, I think, for the third step in our inquiry. The question now concerns the structure and content of the problem of God as it arises in the Old Testament. Hitherto I have simply assembled some data with regard to what the Israelites heard on listening to the divine Name Yahweh. Is it possible to discern in these data what the problem of God was for the man of the Old Testament? I think it will be seen that the problem was complex. As it arose out of the religious situation described, it consisted of four questions or, better, of two pairs of questions, which interlock and overlap. I shall call the four questions, in their order, existential and functional, noetic and onomastic. (Fs)

17a The existential question is whether God is here with us now. The word "existential" bears a biblical sense, referring to the active existence of God in history, his presence in the midst of his people. The question appears frequently in the text of the Old Testament. It appears, for instance, in the story of the Exodus, after the incident at the place called Massah (the place of testing) and Meribah (the place of fault-finding) where water gushed from the rock when Moses struck it at God's command (Exodus 17:1-7). The people had found fault with Moses and with Yahweh himself because they were without water. They "put the Lord to the test" (17:2). The question in their minds was, "Is the Lord in our midst or not?" (17:7). The question was not speculative, academic, merely curious; it was fraught with a profound religious anxiety. The same anxious question reappears continually in Israelite history, with the sharpest urgency during the Exile of the sixth century. Had the sacred history come to an end? Was God now no longer with his people? This was the issue to which Deutero-Isaiah spoke with high poetic passion in the "Book of the Consolation of Israel," as chapters 40-55 of Isaiah have been called. The Holy One of Israel, he reiterates, is still in the midst of his people, and there will be a new Exodus, from Babylon as from Egypt: "At the head of the column Yahweh will march; and your rear guard will be the God of Israel" (52:12). When the tension of the anxiety in the existential question relaxed into religious doubt, the results were the repeated falls of Israel into idolatry. The driving impulse behind all idolatry is not simply to have a god, to have something to worship; it is to have the god here, now, accessible, visibly active, disponible. "Come, make us a god to go ahead of us," said the people to Aaron (Exodus 32:1) in the absence of Moses (which was to them somehow also the absence of the God who had made Moses their leader). When they saw the golden bull, frequently the symbol of divinity in the ancient East, they cried: "Here is your god, O Israel!" (32:4). Finally, the living nerve of inner religious anxiety about the presence of God was touched by the taunt flung at the Israelites by the surrounding pagan nations. The challenge took the form of a question, not philosophical but existential in tenor; it bore not on God's being but, as it were, on his location in time and space. Mockingly, the nations asked: "Where is your God?" (Psalms 115:2). Is he with you or not? Is he active in your behalf or not? This was the first form of the post-modern question, "Is God dead?" (Fs) (notabene)

18a The second question is inseparable from the first. The God who is here with us-what is he? That is, what is he toward us? What is he here to do for us? This is the functional question. It has to do with the power of God, his action in history, his attitude toward the people with whom he is present. (Fs)

18b This question underlies the elaborate orchestration of the theme to which reference has already been made-the twofold role of Yahweh, who is present among his people both as Savior and as Judge, in steadfast love and in wrath. The functional question also lies behind the long Old Testament polemic against idols, in a negative form. The polemic, which is often greatly sardonic, especially in Isaiah, deals with the crucial issue, what God is not. This is the first and all-important question to ask about God: what he is not. A mistake here means idolatry; hence the theme of the polemic is that God is not his creation. He is not to be identified with any of the forces of nature or the artifacts of man. These forces and artifacts have no divine function; there is no power of salvation in them. Isaiah says of idols, "They are not-the whole lot of them. Their works are nothingness; air and emptiness, their carved images" (41:29). (Fs)