God in the New Testament

by Warren Carter

Overview

Author Warren Carter addresses the ways in which New Testament writings present God
by asking four questions about how God relates to others: How is God
presented in relation to Israel? How is God presented in relation to
Jesus and the Spirit? How is God presented in relation to
believers/disciples/the church? How is God presented in relation to “the
world”? Carter uses these questions to help draw out the most important
factors in each of the New Testament writings discussed.

"Rarely
does one exclaim, “This is a real page-turner!” when describing a book
on the New Testament—but I must say it. With his characteristic
concision and clarity, not to mention wit and conversational style,
Carter leads us on a tour of “God-at-Work” in fifteen closely-read
texts. What claims do the various texts make about God? What questions
or “red flags” do these texts raise? What effect do or should these
texts have upon us as readers today?
Carter intrepidly takes up some
of the more challenging and cryptic NT texts and asks aloud many of the
uncomfortable questions we’ve wondered about but might not have voiced
so pointedly. He does not provide tidy answers, but his approach entices
us not to give up, but rather to dive even deeper into the texts, their
world, and ours. In reading this book, I was variously educated,
entertained, challenged, and even moved." -Jaime Clark-Soles
Professor of New Testament and Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor,
Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501824777
Publisher:	Abingdon Press
Publication date:	11/01/2016
Series:	Core Biblical Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	810 KB

About the Author

Warren Carter is Professor of New Testament at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, with a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. Before moving to Brite in 2007, he taught for 17 years at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City. His scholarly work has focused on the gospels of Matthew and John, and he has focused on the issue of the ways in which early Christians negotiated the Roman empire. In addition to numerous scholarly articles, he is the author of many books including The Roman Empire and the New Testament; What Does Revelation Reveal?; The New Testament: Methods and Meanings (with Amy-Jill Levine); and God in the New Testament published by Abingdon Press. He has also contributed to numerous church resources and publications and is a frequent speaker at scholarly and church conferences.

Read an Excerpt

God in the New Testament

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By Warren Carter

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2016 Abingdon Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5018-2477-7

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Constructing God-at-Work in the New Testament

I am on a road trip. God, or constructions thereof, seem to be everywhere — at least according to the billboards I see along the way. One billboard declares: "Let's meet at my house Sunday before the game. –God." The billboard presents a friendly, chatty God, a regular bloke who is one of us, who's hospitable, who likes football but with the gentle reminder that it's not the most important thing in life. I pass a more threatening and intimidating (or is it reassuring?) billboard that declares: "I'm closer than you think. –God." Another one presents God telling humans how to live: "Be faithful, loving, humble. –God." Apparently God uses billboards to communicate with humans. Another billboard urges me to "Explore God" as though God is a mystery or at least something to be poked and prodded. A bus goes by with "Warriors for God" displayed along the length of it. Apparently this God is in a battle, the general of an army for which humans can sign up. I pass a church sign that announces a friendly God who is with me all the time: "Exercise daily: Walk with God." Another billboard urges me to "Trust in the Lord," which reminds me of the tax bill I got recently from my local county treasurer declaring "In God we trust" on the envelope. I wasn't sure if that meant they were trusting God to enforce the payment of taxes (God does bad things to those who cheat on their taxes?) or that God would pay the taxes for me and I needn't bother to respond.

A Tale of Five Wits

I have found that people respond strangely when I tell them I am writing a book about God in the New Testament. Here's a sample:

Wit No. 1: "How many volumes do you plan? Seven or twelve?"

Wit No. 2: "Who's writing the book on whom? Wouldn't want to be you if you get it wrong."

Wit No. 3: "Ah, the ultimate mystery novel."

Wit No. 4: "'I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.' There you go, nothing more needs to be said."

Wit No. 5: "Which God?"

I know they were all trying to be funny in their own way. But at the same time, in these comments all of these folks were saying something about their understanding of God.

Wit No. 1 was drawing attention to the bigness of the topic and the incompleteness of any book on God, thereby highlighting the infinite and boundless nature of God.

Wit No. 2 was recognizing that the human–divine relationship is one of creature and creator and expressing concern that, in overreaching these boundaries, human hubris might provoke a wrathful and punishing response from an angry God.

Wit No. 3, perhaps knowing that I like to read mystery novels, was pointing to the mysterious and ultimately unfathomable ways of God. Apparently Wit No. 3 does not share the optimism of the English poet John Milton who set out in his epic poem Paradise Lost to "justify the ways of God to humans."

Wit No. 4 was quoting the Apostles' Creed, a confession formulated in the early centuries of the Christian church. Its first line confesses God as father (What sort? Close? Absent? Loving? Unaccountable? Punitive? Life-giving?), as all-powerful, as creator of the universe, and therefore as one who has a claim on everything and everyone. The creed echoes a traditional understanding of God as omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (present everywhere). For Wit No. 4, that says it all about God.

Wit No. 5 reflects an insightful perspective that will recur throughout this book, namely that the New Testament presents God in different ways and that humans frequently create God in our image and according to our needs.

Beyond expressing their insights about God, these five wits were also raising another more basic question, namely, how to write a book about God. The topic is obviously huge, seemingly even infinite. And in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, humans have been thinking about and encountering God for millennia. The Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, attests reflections that emerged in the various and changing circumstances of Israel's life in relation to God. Since then, across the Judeo-Christian traditions, classical philosophers, mystics, reformers, enlightenment philosophers, skeptics declaring the death of God, mental-health workers, psychiatrists, and contemporary theologians have continued to articulate understandings, experiences, and evaluations of God. Such a wide span of human experience and reflection is way beyond this small book. We will restrict our attention to some New Testament presentations of God.

Yet even with this restricted focus, the question remains: how do we talk about God? As surprising as it may seem, not a lot of scholars have tried, at least in published form, to write books on presentations of God in the New Testament. One interpreter, Nils Dahl, famously called God a "neglected factor" in studies of the New Testament. No one likes to be neglected.

Those who have tried to talk about God in the New Testament have taken several different approaches. One approach lists attributes of God. An obvious starting point for this approach comprises the four "God is ..." statements in the New Testament: "God is light" (1 John 1:5), "God is love" (1 John 4:8), "our God is a consuming fire" (Heb 12:29), and "God is Spirit" (John 4:24). We could add numerous other attributes: merciful, faithful, just, powerful, holy, wise, righteous, gracious, and so on. A variation on this approach identifies images and names associated with God (creator, father, king, judge, savior, etc.) and often appeals to the parables in the NT Gospels (a sower, a landowner, a slave owner, etc.).

Another approach explores the diverse presentations of God in the various writings in the New Testament. This leads interpreters to examine how God is presented in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John; across the two volumes of Luke and Acts; in the letters of Paul, particularly letters such as Romans and 1 Peter; and in writings such as Hebrews, James, and Revelation. Such studies helpfully underscore and elaborate the variety of presentations of God in the NT writings, as well as provide data for identifying common features.

A third approach employs a different framework. This approach asks questions about the New Testament presentations from a perspective that anticipates the later church understanding of God as a trinitarian being. In the centuries after the NT writings, Christian theologians came to talk about God as one being who existed in three persons, God the Father or the Creator, God the Son or the redeemer, and God the Holy Spirit or sustainer. This third approach sees the beginnings of this trinitarian framework in the NT texts and identifies constructions of God, the interactions between God and Jesus, and interactions between the Spirit and God. This approach tends to harmonize the NT writings rather than highlight different presentations.

All of these approaches are useful and have contributed insights into how God is presented in the New Testament. Since others have used them, I take a different approach in this book. My approach is marked by three distinctive features.

First, instead of focusing on the interaction between God, Jesus, and the Spirit, I want to focus on how the NT writers understood God and humans to interact or, more specifically, how they constructed God to be active in the world and among humans. Basic to this God-at-work approach is the recognition that the NT writers are not much interested in metaphysical questions about God's nature, as later theologians and philosophers have been (how is God God?). Rather NT writers are much more interested in understanding how humans experience God and in discerning what God might be doing among humans and in the world. To use other language, I am suggesting that NT constructions of God are functional rather than ontological. They are concerned with God's activity rather than God's being. They seek to articulate where, what, and how different writers understand God-at-work.

This focus on God-at-work is not only appropriate to the NT writings but also consonant with the interests and concerns that I often hear students articulate in the classroom. What in the world is God doing, if anything? Where is God-at-work? How do I know or recognize God's actions? Is God more absent than present? What does it mean to talk about God's activity or action in the contemporary world where we understand historical and scientific happenings in terms of cause and effect? If I believe in God, what sort of God do I believe in, on what basis, and what is this God doing? If God is active in the world, why is there so much evil and suffering? Contemporary students, like the NT writers, often wrestle with questions such as these with a sense of uncertainty or anxiety about the God to whom they have committed their lives in a cultural and intellectual context that seems regularly to distract from or undermine, rather than sustain, their commitment. I am not offering in this book an apologetic or defense of God. Rather, I name these questions as a way of focusing the discussion that follows. Engaging the NT presentations of God stimulates our own reflections and experiences.

A second distinctive feature of the approach in this book is its textual focus and organization. In the chapters that follow, I discuss texts of varying lengths from across the NT that highlight constructions of God-at-work. I have chosen texts from Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 2 Timothy, 1 Peter, James, 1 John, and Revelation. Clearly I have not included every NT writing nor every reference to God. I am very aware that there are numerous other texts I could discuss, but limits on the size of this book mean I can't discuss all the texts. Sometimes I name some of these other texts in the questions at the end of each chapter. Needless to say, our topic is ultimately infinite and mysterious and no discussion about God in the NT can say everything that could be said. Each chapter offers a snapshot and each chapter could stand alone. Taken together, our sample of selected texts will allow us to notice at least some of the significant contours of the different constructions of God in the NT. I am not trying to build one composite image of God. The sequence of chapters or snapshots follows the canonical order of the selected texts.

In choosing to focus on particular texts, I recognize that these NT texts are contextual or situational. That means that when NT writers write about God, they do so in relation to particular circumstances, questions, or concerns that have arisen. Related to this awareness of the importance of situation is the recognition that NT writers do not write treatises about God or sustained systematic theological reflections. Rather, they write material that is relevant to the particular situations of their readers. One implication of the recognition of the situational nature of their discourse about God is that the NT writings do not say the same thing or even consistent things about God. They construct God in some different ways, and I want to be attentive to those differences as well as to the common affirmations that they may make. An advantage of discussing a number of texts is that it allows us to engage these contextualized constructions of God in some detail even when they are not especially appealing.

In addition to focusing on God-at-work in the world and among humans and on a sample of specific contextualized NT texts about God, a third feature of my approach consists of how I approach the interpretation of these New Testament texts. My interpretation is both descriptive AND evaluative. I take the New Testament texts very seriously, but I do not read them literally and with automatic compliance. I do not take a bumper sticker approach: "the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it." If I read the New Testament that way, I would have to own slaves, think men are superior to women, be committed to genocide, and use violence to eliminate anyone who resisted when I imposed my ways on them. Various biblical writings, though, present God endorsing these practices and, as some argue, if it is good enough for God, then it's good enough for us! But of course, that is not morally acceptable. I don't think any of these practices is acceptable for human beings, let alone for God.

Some readers of the Hebrew Bible have drawn our attention to oppressive and tyrannical presentations of God in those writings. They have referred to passages such as the stories of Hagar (Gen 16; 21) and Tamar (2 Sam 13), for example, as "texts of terror" in which the constructions of God are terrible indeed. But we have not often identified or thought about texts in the New Testament that might also be identified as "texts of terror." Yet as I will note throughout the discussions that follow, they exist.

I can recognize troubling constructions of God and even understand why NT writers might in particular contexts present God in these ways. But reading evaluatively means I cannot endorse their constructions or find them ethically acceptable. At heart in this approach are ethical questions about what sort of God might we believe in, about how we might understand the character and purposes of God-at-work, and about what way of life, what personal and communal identity, and what sort of person result from this belief. Both description AND evaluation provide a third crucial feature of this book's approach.

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In the subsequent chapters, I often highlight these troubling, even terror-full, dimensions of constructions of God-at-work by referring to them as "Red-flag alerts" or by saying something like "the Red flags are waving." These references to "Red-flag moments" are a way of drawing attention to these very difficult and troubling constructions of God-at-work that need our further reflection.

Five Concluding Important Matters

One issue to note concerns the question of the relationship between talk about God and talk about Jesus. Or in theological terms, what is the relationship between theology and Christology? Christians have long recognized Jesus as the revealer and agent of God, so it would be easy, on this basis, to slip into writing a book about Jesus as though God has no life or existence apart from Jesus. But in the New Testament, Jesus never replaces or dislodges God. Jesus is, of course, prominent, and Jesus and God are linked, but they are also clearly distinguished. So in focusing on God, I will attempt to walk a line between paying too much attention to Jesus and paying too little attention to Jesus. Because New Testament writers frequently present Jesus as the agent, revealer, and locus of God's presence, purposes, and activity, understandings about God (theology) contextualize understandings about Jesus (Christology). Therefore, I recognize the need to hold these two things together. God is the origin, author, and sanction for Jesus. Or to put it bluntly, without God, Jesus is of no account. But the reverse is also true for the NT. In the New Testament, God is primarily linked to Jesus. God is the God of Jesus, the one who has raised Jesus from the dead and thereby inaugurated the new age that God will complete in fully establishing God's purposes. The particularity of God-at-work is declared by New Testament writers to be encountered in Jesus. Yet the two figures are distinct and not conflated.

Second, in highlighting the variety of constructions of God in New Testament texts, I am not trying to construct one large image of God from the separate chapters. I am not trying to combine the different constructions of God into one image. For those who want a tidy confessional formula, this result will be messy, but it will be true to the New Testament texts.

A third important matter concerns gendered language for God. Much discussion of God, in the New Testament and since, has used male language for God. This language has included both male pronouns (his/he) and male images (king, father). Many women readers, for example, have found such references excluding or difficult to relate to in a positive way. Throughout, I will try not to use gendered language except when discussing NT texts that do so. But realistically, sometimes the occasional male pronoun will be necessary for the sake of understandable prose.

Fourth, I am not undertaking here an apologetic approach to God. There is a type of Christian discussion called apologetics that makes rational arguments for Christian faith, defends it against criticisms and objections, and tries to convince people to become believers. The NT texts do not enter into discussions about whether God exists or not. They assume the existence and reality of God, and on this basis they focus on trying to discern where and how God is at work among humans. My emphasis is along the lines of describing and evaluating the constructions of God rather than making an argument for God's existence.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from God in the New Testament by Warren Carter. Copyright © 2016 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

"General Preface",
"Chapter 1" Introduction: Constructing God-at-Work in the New Testament,
"Chapter 2" God-at-Work (Matt 1–2),
"Chapter 3" God: Ultra Generous and Ultra Judgmental (Matt 22:1-14),
"Chapter 4" The Good News and Empire of God (Mark 1:1-15),
"Chapter 5" My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me? (Mark 15:34),
"Chapter 6" God and the Powerful and the Powerless (Luke 1:47-58; 6:20-26),
"Chapter 7" Praying to What Sort of God? (Luke 11:1-13; Matt 6:5-15),
"Chapter 8" How to Dishonor God (John 5:1-30),
"Chapter 9" Cornelius, Peter, and an (Im)partial God (Acts 10:1–11:18),
"Chapter 10" God Does Not Play Well with Other Gods (Acts 17:16-34),
"Chapter 11" God Doesn't Throw Thunderbolts (Rom 1:16-32),
"Chapter 12" God's Love Wins? (Rom 8:31-39; 11:25-32),
"Chapter 13" The Household of God and Its Male Guardians (1 Tim 3:1-15; 2 Tim 2:14-26),
"Chapter 14" God the Friend (Jas 4:1–5:6),
"Chapter 15" All You Need Is Love? (1 John 3–4),
"Chapter 16" God on the Throne (Rev 19:1-10; 21:1-8),
"Chapter 17" Conclusion?,