The stirring prophecy in Isaiah 40 is one reason to long for Jesus' return - to fully straighten out the crooked and to raise and lower as appropriate, to make a way for the LORD to dwell among us. We have partial fulfilment of this prophecy in Jesus' first coming. Origen (183-253), whatever else he got wrong, has some thought-provoking words on this:
Now let us turn to that part of the prophecy which also concerns the coming of Christ and see whether this too has been fulfilled. The text continues: Every crooked way shall be straightened. Each one of us was once crooked; if we are no longer so, it is entirely due to the grace of Christ. Through his coming to our souls all our crooked ways have been straightened out.
If Christ did not come to your soul, of what use would his historical coming in the flesh be to you? Let us pray that each day we may experience his coming and be able to say: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
Jesus my Lord has come, then. He has smoothed out your rough places and changed your disorderly ways into level paths, making in you an even unimpeded road, a road that is absolutely clear, so that God the Father may walk in you and Christ the Lord make his dwelling in you and say: My Father and I will come and make our home in them. [from Origen, Homily on Luke’s Gospel 22, 1-4: SC 67, 300-02]
Sometimes I wonder how much symbolic reading of the Old Testament we can do before we're reading too much into it. After all, isn't Isa 40's emphasis on the making straight of crookedness on a universal (or at least all-God's-people) scale rather than on an individual level? And yet the universal levelling out in preparation for God's glory to be revealed cannot happen universally if it does not happen individually, or can it? Are we promised merely a levelling out 'whether we want it or not' (every knee shall bow, willing and unwilling) or are we promised what Origen reads into it, an individual transformative levelling out? And if Isa 40 does not directly promise the latter, are we still justified in reading that individual transformation into this passage, in the context of the overall revelation of God's plans and promises throughout Scripture? I'd love to hear your thoughts, so do respond!
(By the way, is anyone besides me able to post? I would like you to be able to participate not merely by comments responding to posts, but by initiating posts too...)
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5 comments:
Interesting theological questions Val. Thank you.
My general feeling is that, while at the Last Day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess ... whether one wishes to or not, Christ in his grace ransomed us from our bondage to sin and unbelief, so that we can now, out of our own free will, proclaim Jesus as Lord of all. We want to call him Lord. Therein lies the distinction. In his death and (especially) in his resurrection, Christ buys us back our humanity. We begin to become truly who we are created to be: Human, Adams and Eves, in that single act of proclaiming God to be our Father, our God. That is a great liberation and an extraordinary gift.
As to whether we should understand Isaiah 40 corporately or individually: why not both? While the modern Western mindset errs on the side of individualism, and I understand the need to remember the universal corporate nature of the Church, our Lord is one who knows the hairs of each of our heads, as well as the sovereign God of the nations. The voice of Gods calls to the people of Israel (40:9), and the glory of the Lord is for the marvelling of the nations (40:5), yet he is still the shepherd who would leave 99 sheep to find the 100th, and who speaks tenderly to his people (40:11). God's grace and love is broad - enfolding all of his people; his love is deep - penetrating the heart of each sinner.
The trick is to hold both, not so much in tension, as in happy harmony with each other. Why pick sides when both individual and coporate understandings of God are present in the Bible? If justice and mercy can kiss each other at the Cross, why not this?
By the way, I think you have to have a blog to post. But I could be wrong.
By the way, are we the only two people who are reading this Blog? Where are all the other comments, people?! You have brains, you have thoughts, you have keyboards, and I presume, fingers?
I don't think it's so much a question of picking sides as deciding in any given passage whether when we read it as individual in its application, we are misusing that passage of Scripture to say what other passages of Scripture say, rather than to say what it does say, if that makes sense.
Of course passages targeted at a group, be it the church or Israel or a nation or a particular congregation or the apostles, can have individual applications, but as to what the legitimate individual application is, who decides this and how?
God straightening out our crookedness in terms of our individual hearts is a fantastic idea and really encouraging, and we can get that from Jeremiah, for instance, with his talk of God putting a new heart in us to obey His new covenant...but I wonder if we can get that individual regeneration from Isa 40?
What do other people think?
Point taken Val. I think I was expressing some general sentiment about application. But you're right in saying that the context is very important ...
I think perhaps we might also look at whether an individual application of a given passage might end up with a different "result", so to speak, as an corporate application of the same passage? That is to say, if the individual application ends up being the same as a corporate application, then the very least you can say about it is that there is no chance of erring. But of course it is much more important to determine what the Author mean by it, in context.
I think Origen is stretching it a bit - altho' it's hard to tell with prophetic/peotic stuff, what is meant by it, and what it is referring to. How *does* the voice make straight the highway of the Lord? How do we understand the poetic language of every valley being raised up, or the rugged place being made plain?
This side of the Cross we can determine that it is about the Coming of Christ, and perhaps, if, taken with Romans 3:21-26, something akin to the Righteousness of God being manifested (the glory of God both in Incarnation and Death and Resurrection perhaps?) but now *I* am stretching this massively! Probably because I've just been working on Romans 3:21-26 and it's fresh in my mind!
What do you think? We should talk some more about Hermeneutics (and the shipwrecks thereof!)
When John the baptist comes, he preaches repentance and turning back to God in righteous living and proclaims that the righteous one is coming, quoting this Isaiah passage. So I think our reading of it as being fulfilled in Jesus who inaugurates God's righteous kingdom is justified. And perhaps we can look to Revelation's picture of the new heavens and the new earth, the 'home of righteousness', for a more detailed picture of what straight roads and even ground looks like.
Thank God for the whole counsel of Scripture! Imagine if we were trying to work out Isaiah 40 in isolation because we didn't have access to other bits of God's word...
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