Abstract
In Portraits of a Mature God, Mark McEntire provides the opportunity for much needed conversation about key interpretive challenges in the Hebrew Bible. The last quarter of the twentieth century saw Old Testament scholars move dramatically away from the focus on historical-critical research to embrace the narrative features of the text. It became clear that Wellhausen and those who followed him searched for answers that could not be found. More importantly, the conclusion increasingly reached was that the search itself was wrong-headed. The obsession with all things historical does not automatically equate with understanding what is most important in the biblical text.
Although the historical-critical methodologies continue to have value and assist in developing a fuller understanding of a given text, the attention to the final form of the text has proven to be far more rewarding to most scholars than the often atomistic approaches of the mid-twentieth century. Widespread attention to the literary qualities of the Hebrew Bible enables McEntire to delve as he does into the presentation of Israel’s God as a literary character. Drawing upon the important contributions of a variety of scholars in recent years, one of McEntire’s valuable contributions is his summary and evaluation of much of that work. He reminds those of us who cut our teeth on von Rad and Eichrodt why it was that, although we found value in reading and relating to both, we were somehow unsatisfied with the end result. The ideas of both were stimulating and insightful, but both ended—as most attempts to describe Old Testament theology do—with gratitude for the contributions made, but with questions still unanswered.
McEntire also introduces those who have not read as widely in the field to significant work that has been carried out in the last decade or so. The summary he offers in the introductory chapter, as well as the dialogue he has with some of these other conversation partners, is very helpful.
Of greater value is the focus on those questions about the God of the Bible that have long been the source of struggle for thoughtful readers of the text. Most readers long for a “mature” God. We are troubled by some of the descriptions of God that reflect anything but maturity, even when the subject is the deity. Like Thomas Jefferson, we are prone to excise some of those descriptions from our Bible, even if we do not use a penknife to do it. McEntire offers a helpful way of looking at some of those challenging “portraits.”
McEntire’s focus, however, is not actually upon the development of God’s maturity, but in the changes that take place in God as a character in the various aspects of the biblical message. To summarize briefly the key thesis of the book, God is portrayed in much more dynamic ways in those portions of the Hebrew Bible that are distant memories, even for those who are first telling the stories. As the contexts move nearer to the actual experience of those responsible for the shaping of the text, the character of God becomes much more elusive and much less active in the lives of the human characters. In other words, readers are introduced to God as a character who is less likely to interact directly with human characters and who is far more likely to be a mysterious presence. There is much less in the way of divine intervention to determine the outcome of events. When divine presence is assumed, the effects are more indirect, with human characters perceiving the actions that should be taken in order to achieve a needed outcome.
The book begins with an examination of Genesis and a focus on “a creative and energetic God.” In Genesis 1–11, McEntire posits an extremely active and dynamic deity, fully engaged in the challenge of creation. This includes a creation focus that is found beyond Genesis in a number of psalms and even a brief but important text in Ezra–Nehemiah. Human characters at first say and do very little and are rather unformed. With the transition to the ancestral stories, God becomes less dynamic and the human characters become more fully developed. One also glimpses apparent inconsistencies in the way God, as a character, functions. There is a degree of unpredictability in the relationship between God and human characters. Can God even be trusted in every instance?
With the move into the key texts that describe the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage, the energetic deity returns in force. Human characters, as with the ancestral stories, tend to be more fully developed, though some more so than others. Throughout these texts, the same questions regarding the consistency of God’s behavior surface. God acts dynamically on behalf of Israel, but there is often a terrifying sense of threat associated with the people’s relationship with God. As with the ancestral stories in Genesis, God becomes less engaged as Deuteronomy brings the Pentateuch to a close. God speaks through Moses and “even when the divine character appears directly … Moses stands between the divine character and the view of the reader” (p. 85).
The nation-building God continues to be a very dynamic and involved presence in the narrative in the deuteronomistic history. Here, the reader encounters dramatic portrayals of the warrior God—clearly one of the more problematic characterizations of God for most interpreters. The violence is chilling, especially because the deity commands it. Ambiguity surfaces again when God acts both on behalf of Israel and as the cause of her defeat.
McEntire next examines the nature of God during the rise of the Israelite monarchy under David and Solomon. Although there is an impressive quality to the beginnings of David and Solomon as kings, the divine character seems to have “misgivings” about the development. Achievements are balanced with the difficult relationship that exists between the kings and God. McEntire identifies two lasting aspects of this period of the monarchy on the enduring identity of Israel as a people. This brief period offers a glimpse of what Israel “could be as an independent political entity” (p. 129). The building of the Temple is the second aspect that would be utilized by Israel for centuries into the future, even after the monarchy itself was a thing of the past.
With the advent of the prophets and the beginning of Israel’s decline (at least as the flow of the biblical text would emphasize it; it is quite possible that the days of Omri in the ninth century were actually the greatest days for Israel in terms of power and influence), there is a marked change in the characterization of Yahweh. Yahweh begins to be more a character of words than of actions, and these words are often uttered by the prophets, who, according to McEntire, replace the angel of Yahweh as the mediators of divine presence.
When the classical prophets come on stage, the role of the prophets takes on even greater significance as a rendering of the divine character through words. In the four major prophetic scrolls, the emphasis on divine judgment is inescapable. At the same time, none of the prophetic messages is without its corresponding word of hope. McEntire sees the prophets as participating in the powerful judgment focus of the Old Testament as well as in the later turn to restoration and new beginning.
The books of Lamentations and Job are included in the chapter that deals with texts that relate to the movement toward Israel’s end. These texts portray the deity as at times incomprehensible. Job, as a possible representation of Israel, suffers at the hands of God inappropriately and out of proportion to anything deserved. Many scholars interpret the decline of Israel and Judah as the just punishment for a wayward people. Many texts in the Old Testament support this view, but others call attention to suffering that is far greater than punishment would warrant. The closer Israel’s story came to its end, however, the less influential that story became in the development of theological perspectives.
From the outset of the book, McEntire moves toward his most important conclusion: to highlight the centrality of the God “at the end of the story.” He demonstrates rather conclusively that the characterization of God in the biblical texts associated with the restoration period is almost non-existent compared to the emphasis on the more dynamic divine character who performs “mighty acts.” This is demonstrated with greatest clarity in McEntire’s discussion of the absence of references to Ezra–Nehemiah in prominent works of Old Testament theology published within the last several years.
He challenges us to consider the possibility that the more subtle divine character is worthy of more attention. He argues persuasively that this is how God was perceived by those who were responsible for shaping the biblical text, which traces the development of the divine character. McEntire contends that the divine character of the distant past, with all of the great deeds associated with that character, should not be ignored, but that more consideration should be given to the divine character that represents, if not a more mature God, a more mature understanding of God.
The contribution that Mark McEntire makes in this book relates to the way his descriptions of the “maturing” character of God allow readers to give direct attention to some of the most problematic theological issues in the Hebrew Bible. He refers to the blindness with which we too often read the Bible, because we are so familiar with what it is supposed to mean and what it is supposed to say about God that we fail to see the dramatic discontinuities that are right before our eyes. This is true of all readers of the biblical text: well-trained biblical scholars, seminarians, pastors, and lay people.
We seem to have an uncanny ability to overlook the jarring characterizations of God that are absolute contradictions of most of the affirmations of faith to which we testify. How do we ignore the God of genocide, and God the abuser of women? Although the depiction of Yahweh as an abusing God is a metaphor, McEntire points out that the metaphor’s use surely leads to the parallel understanding that allows or encourages the human abuser. I routinely push my students to read the text with care and to set aside, at least temporarily, what they already know about it. What does the text itself have to say and how do I understand its meaning? When what the text says contradicts my understanding of God, then I should pay much closer attention. Rather than reading over such texts or ignoring them, we should undertake a conversation with the text, albeit a difficult one.
McEntire offers a way of introducing the biblical text’s portraits of God as portraits of an evolving character. Thus we do not need to embrace the concept of the “evolving” character of God, but rather an “evolving” understanding of God by our ancestors in the faith, and, thus, by ourselves. The author points the reader to various texts that reflect that evolving understanding of the nature of God—some are easy to understand; some are difficult and disturbing. The reader is encouraged to allow them to engage us in productive dialogue about the very nature of God in all its ambiguity rather than ignoring them.