{"id":754,"date":"2019-07-08T15:42:43","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T20:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/?p=754"},"modified":"2019-07-08T15:42:43","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T20:42:43","slug":"the-wrath-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2019\/07\/08\/the-wrath-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wrath of God"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The wrath of God is a topic unpopular in the present era.\u00a0 Much theological ink has been spilled in the modern period in an attempt to explain away or otherwise neutralize the idea, despite its clear presence in the scriptures and in the writings of the fathers.\u00a0 An entire fully developed complex of ideas in later Western theology, including not only God’s wrath but also a particular conception of his justice and of penal substitution, is seen by many modern commentators as an inextricably linked whole.\u00a0 This complex idea is then caricatured in various ways and rejected wholesale.\u00a0 To reject the teaching of the church at the foundation, however, along with the later erroneous edifice built upon it is to deform the Christian faith.\u00a0 Rather than, as many of St. Paul’s original hearers, seeking to justify themselves, post-modern thought demands that the faithful justify God in the face of a denuded sense of morality.\u00a0 This approach makes the concept of true repentance utterly unintelligible or at best a bland form of self-improvement.\u00a0 Worse, it makes the cross of Christ an embarrassment once again as it was to so many in the ancient world.<\/p>\n

Though the wrath of God as a concept is expressed using words related to emotional anger, it is not intended to express a passionate or emotional state.\u00a0 This is an important distinction in breaking the popular caricature of the “wrathful God.”\u00a0 What is described by the terms relevant to the wrath of God is a particular experience of God by human persons and those who witness that experience.\u00a0 It is never used in the scriptures to portray God as fickle or intemperate.\u00a0 Quite the opposite.\u00a0 An oft-repeated theme of the Hebrew scriptures is that God is slow to anger (in Hebrew idiom, literally “long of nose”), describing the long period of patient mercy which precedes the experience of his wrath.<\/p>\n

In order to understand the origin of the human experiences described as the wrath of God, two interlinked concepts need to be understood.\u00a0 The first of these is the concept of justice or righteousness.\u00a0 Both the Hebrew ‘mishpat’ and the Greek ‘dikaios’ describe the world as being in a rightly ordered state.\u00a0 Existence and non-existence and therefore Yahweh’s act of creation in Gen 1 are conceived in the scriptures as bringing order to chaos<\/a>.\u00a0 Humanity was originally created to continue the work of creation in cooperation with Yahweh by bringing the order and beauty of Paradise with them to make the whole creation into Eden.\u00a0 Humanity, however, was expelled from Paradise into this present world of chaos and violence under the power of sin and death.\u00a0 The great promise of the Hebrew scriptures is that a day, most often called ‘the day Yahweh’ will come when he will establish perfect justice in the whole creation (Isa 13:6, 9; Jer 46:10; Ezek 13:5; 30:3; Joel 1:15; 2:1-31; 3:14; Amos 5:18, 20; Obad 1:15; Zeph 1:7-14; 14:1; Mal 4:1-5).<\/p>\n

Though this is a promise, that on a final day Yahweh will bring his great work of creation to its completion in bringing it to perfect order, a casual perusal of the Old Testament passages above gives a rather horrifying description of that day.\u00a0 From these descriptions, however, certain motifs relating to the nature of God’s wrath as expressed on that day emerge.\u00a0 The first of these is fire.\u00a0 Specifically, a fire which tries and tests all things (eg. Mal 4:1-5).\u00a0 This fire has two effects on two different groups of people.\u00a0 For one group, this fire is destructive and consumes them utterly.\u00a0 For the other group, this fire is purgative and they emerge from the day of Yahweh purified like gold from the dross and stain of their sins and transgressions.\u00a0 This latter group are those who are justified, made righteous or made just.\u00a0 Rather than being consumed with their sins and wickedness they are purified from them by a burning away.\u00a0 This burning fire is rightly described by scripture and the fathers as God’s wrath.<\/p>\n

Undergoing this fiery trial, with either result, is “judgment” in its Biblical sense.\u00a0 In the new covenant, this justification, being made righteous or just, being set in order as God’s creation, begins in this life in this world.\u00a0 In his prophetic ministry, St. John the Forerunner speaks of the wrath to come using this motif of cleansing fire (eg. Matt 3:7-12).\u00a0 He also, however, links this fire to the Holy Spirit, and specifically to baptism with the Holy Spirit (3:11).\u00a0 The phrase generally translated ‘baptize you with the Holy Spirit’ in English is directly parallel to St. John’s statement that he ‘baptize[s] you with water’ for repentance.\u00a0 It literally describes being immersed or submerged in the Holy Spirit and, as he here makes clear, fire.\u00a0 Repentance is therefore linked here to, and serves as the precondition for, the cleansing fire of the Spirit.\u00a0 Repentance is here not seen as self-improvement or growth, but as testing and trial by fire.\u00a0 It is bringing one’s self under judgment now in order to remove the fire of judgment on the day of the Lord (1 Cor 11:31).<\/p>\n

The other major motif surrounding the day of Yahweh in the Hebrew prophets is that of distributive justice (eg. Obad 1:15).\u00a0 The state of this present world, as it is still God’s creation, still reflects his character.\u00a0 Humanity is still the image of God within it.\u00a0 It is therefore not abject chaos and destruction, but a broken order which requires the cleansing and purification described above.\u00a0 This distributive justice character of judgment sees the final completion of the ordering of creation as shoring up and repairing the order which still persists therein.\u00a0 It is a restoration of balance and order.\u00a0 This restoration will necessarily affect some positively and others negatively based upon their thoughts, words, and deeds (Rom 2:6; 2 Cor 5:10).\u00a0 Many scriptural categories describe the two poles of this experience of God, such as reward and punishment, blessing and curse, and vindication and wrath.\u00a0 Punishment, curse, and wrath are all ways of describing the experience of those who suffer loss in this restoration.\u00a0 This loss is not merely shame or embarrassment but is quite real.\u00a0 For the Egyptians, their massacre of the male children of God’s firstborn, Israel, was rebalanced by the death of their firstborn sons.\u00a0 For two hundred years of apostasy, the northern kingdom of Israel was scattered back into non-existence.\u00a0 For 490 years of ignoring the Sabbath year, the southern kingdom of Judah faced 70 years of exile in a foreign land.\u00a0 That this sort of massive upheaval is coming is a constant theme of Christ’s own preaching (eg. Matt 19:30; 20:16; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30; 16:25).<\/p>\n

The various punishments or consequences for sin in the Torah are grounded in this twofold understanding of the wrath of God.\u00a0 The Torah never imposes suffering or pain as a means of recompense for sin, though this is not uncommon in other ancient cultures.\u00a0 Sin in the Torah is handled either by death, corresponding to the consuming fire of wrath, or by restitution, the suffering of loss to restore the right order of justice.\u00a0 Restitution is, therefore, a critical and necessary element of repentance (Luke 19:8-9).\u00a0 This understanding gave rise to the concept of penance in the church.\u00a0 It is also a constitutive element to the church’s understanding of asceticism.<\/p>\n

The second concept, linked with the understanding of the wrath of God as the experience of judgment and righteousness, is that the experience of God’s wrath stems from his presence.\u00a0 In Hebrew idiom, what is generally translated in English as being in God’s presence is actually to be “before his face,” which is itself a reference to seeing him.\u00a0 God is righteous.\u00a0 God is holy. God is surrounded by the fullness of his glory.\u00a0 These are not merely adjectives correctly applied to God as if he were being judged against some external standard.\u00a0 Rather, just as God is love, he is also righteousness, holiness, glory, etc.\u00a0 This is why for Moses, to see his glory would be to see God himself (Ex 33:18-20).\u00a0 This is why St. Paul can say that Christ is the righteousness of God (1 Cor 1:30-31).\u00a0 The experience of a sinful human person coming into the presence of God is dramatized in Isaiah’s prophetic call (Isa 6:1-13).\u00a0 The prophet experiences his own undoing in his experience of the righteousness, holiness, and glory of God (v. 5).\u00a0 In order for him to speak the words of God, his lips must be purified by fire (v. 6-7).<\/p>\n

God’s coming to bring judgment upon the gods of Egypt and to vindicate his people is therefore referred to in the Torah as him visiting his people (Gen 50:24-25; Ex 4:31).\u00a0 The day of Yahweh is therefore also referred to as the day on which he will visit his people (Ex 32:34; Lev 26:16; Isa 23:27; 29:6; Jer 15:15; 27:22; 29:10; 32:5).\u00a0 In the prophetic timeline, the day of Yahweh would come first upon Judea, preceded by the coming of Elijah.\u00a0 Judgment would come upon God’s people first, through which a remnant would be refined by fire.\u00a0 After this would come a period, the last days, during which the nations would stream to Jerusalem to worship Yahweh, concluding in Yahweh’s judgment of the entire creation and the completion of his creative work.<\/p>\n

Basic to the understanding of the New Testament authors is that this timeline was advanced in their day.\u00a0 Jesus Christ is Yahweh and he has come to his people in Judea.\u00a0 His very presence in their midst brought about judgment.\u00a0 Most were cut off through their rejection of Christ.\u00a0 A remnant, however, found repentance and justification in Christ.\u00a0 Following this, the Gentiles were added to this remnant, reconstituting the assembly of Israel, the church.\u00a0 The apostles bore witness to these events and attest to them in the scriptures.\u00a0 This means, as they attest, that we are now in the latter days during which Christ rules in the midst of his enemies.\u00a0 At the conclusion of this period, described by St. John figuratively as a thousand years in the Apocalypse, Christ will again visit his creation to complete the eighth creation day begun by incarnation and resurrection.\u00a0 Thus he will judge the living and the dead.\u00a0 The word “Parousia,” generally translated in English as “return,” more literally means “presence.”\u00a0 All of creation will be brought before the throne of Christ.\u00a0 All of creation will stand in his presence.\u00a0 All will see his face.\u00a0 This will bring all of creation to order and completion.\u00a0 Human persons will either themselves be justified, purified by fire, or will be purged, losing even what little they may presently possess.\u00a0 For the first, this experience will be reward and joy, but for the second punishment and wrath.<\/p>\n

As a final note, this understanding of the presence of Christ is firmly embedded in the church’s understanding of the Eucharist.\u00a0 In the Eucharist, a human person receives Christ himself into his own person.\u00a0 The presence of Christ, as has already been seen, can bring either purification or destruction, forgiveness or wrath.\u00a0 St. Paul speaks of this when he describes the consequences of receiving the Eucharist in an unworthy manner (1 Cor 11:27-34).\u00a0 The priest’s prayers reference the purification of Isaiah described above (Isa 6:6-7).\u00a0 The prayer of St. Symeon the Translator after receiving the Eucharist is a profound meditation upon these themes.\u00a0 Repentance and the purification of our souls and bodies can be painful and difficult, but they prepare us to stand before the face of our Lord Jesus Christ and for the eternal righteousness, holiness, and glory of the world to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The wrath of God is a topic unpopular in the present era.\u00a0 Much theological ink has been spilled in the modern period in an attempt to explain away or otherwise neutralize the idea, despite its clear presence in the scriptures and in the writings of the fathers.\u00a0 An entire fully developed complex of ideas in later Western theology, including not only God’s wrath but also a particular conception of his justice and of penal substitution, is seen by many modern commentators as an inextricably linked whole.\u00a0 This complex idea is then caricatured in various ways and rejected wholesale.\u00a0 To reject the teaching of the church at the foundation, however, along with the later erroneous edifice built upon it is to\u2026 <\/i> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"The Wrath of God - The Whole Counsel Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2019\/07\/08\/the-wrath-of-god\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Wrath of God - The Whole Counsel Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The wrath of God is a topic unpopular in the present era.\u00a0 Much theological ink has been spilled in the modern period in an attempt to explain away or otherwise neutralize the idea, despite its clear presence in the scriptures and in the writings of the fathers.\u00a0 An entire fully developed complex of ideas in later Western theology, including not only God’s wrath but also a particular conception of his justice and of penal substitution, is seen by many modern commentators as an inextricably linked whole.\u00a0 This complex idea is then caricatured in various ways and rejected wholesale.\u00a0 To reject the teaching of the church at the foundation, however, along with the later erroneous edifice built upon it is to\u2026\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2019\/07\/08\/the-wrath-of-god\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Whole Counsel Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-07-08T20:42:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2019\/07\/Ottheinrich_Folio298r_Rev16A.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fr. 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