Divine Hiddenness: The Demand for a Sign

I just printed off a stack of articles on Divine Hiddenness from the Apollos.ws website. I haven't read them yet, but based on past experience I'm confident there is something there that would be very helpful for anyone who wants a theistic perspective on this question.

In the meantime, I will press ahead with some Biblical perspectives. (As I proceed, I continue to emphasize that this must be a step at a time, and if this post raises as many questions as it answers, it will come as no surprise to me.) This argument has a history, going back at least to a request the scribes and Pharisees--the religious establishment of his time--asked of Jesus.

"Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, 'Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.' But he answered them, 'An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.'"

Jesus was continually in conflict with this group. They were the religious leaders, quite secure in their positions and proud of it. They were sure of their righteousness and their authority to set and interpret the rules. Jesus didn't go to their seminaries or grad schools, though, and he didn't ask for their stamp of approval. He simply spoke "as one having authority." That drove the scribes and Pharisees nuts. To add to that, he constantly challenged them on their hypocrisy.

They tested him back. Their question on this occasion was a challenge to his right to preach and lead a religious movement. They wanted a sign. The context of it makes the request almost comical: by this point in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus had healed at least seven individually mentioned persons and many others in crowds. He had raised a dead girl back to life. What more could they want? There must have been something, because they weren't satisfied.

Their problem was not that they could not see; it was that they could not believe what they were seeing. They were too invested in their established way of life. Thus Jesus called them "an evil and adulterous generation." It was probably spiritual adultery he was referring to rather than literal, marital adultery; this was a common metaphor for Jews' worship of other gods. They were not seeking the truth, but their own advantage. That may not be entirely apparent from just this one quote, but it comes out clearly in the whole of the New Testament record.

The Bible is saying, then, that many will not believe even if multiple miracles are done before their very eyes. This challenges part of Ebon Musings' argument,

"Premise (3): Many people do not believe in God because of a lack of evidence."

Some people, according to the Bible, will not believe even with plenty of evidence, and the reason is spiritual unwillingness, often based in pride. Ebon Musings actually concedes this may be true, further down in his article. He still wants to say, though, that there may be people who would believe if they had sufficient reason to persuade them. To an extent I agree; that's one reason people like me do apologetics.

But let's not lose sight of what's going on here. The scribes and Pharisees seem to be implying that with the right kind of evidence, they'll accept Jesus for who he claims to be. I don't know what kind of evidence they wanted, but it had to be something other than what Jesus was doing. It had to be something on their own terms. Jesus doesn't play their game. God determines what kind of signs he will display.

The "sign of Jonah" here was a metaphorical allusion to the three days Jesus would be in the tomb, between his death and his resurrection. Jonah was a prophet of judgment, who warned of the coming destruction of Nineveh--but they responded to his word, and they repented. The scribes and Pharisees, for the most part, would not; and they would fall under the kind of judgment Nineveh escaped. The reference to the queen of the South is a parallel, for emphasis, to the same message.

The take-away from this, for our purposes here, is that God is God, and he reveals himself in the way he wills. He won't put on a dog-and-pony show. He doesn't let anyone other than himself set the rules for encounter. We see a hint here that at least some people can stare God right in the face and not see him. I'm not saying this is the case for every person who thinks God is not clear enough to be seen, though. The main point is that God, and not we, sets the course.

This is a partial contribution to a way of thinking about this problem: it suggests that God's "hiddenness" is not all that it appears to be. There remains a lot of work yet to be done.

Part of a Series:

1. Divine Hiddenness
2. Direction-Setting
3. The Demand for a Sign
4. Course Correction
5. Deus Absconditus
6. Starting Over
7. Epilogue

Posted: Fri - April 27, 2007 at 04:50 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

Divine Hiddenness: The Demand for a Sign

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson