We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
God’s “Ways” and “Thoughts” are Higher
Isaiah 55:8-9 is one of the more often quoted passages in the Bible. It reads:
… my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways …
As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts (vss. 8-9).
This passage is frequently cited as an expression of God’s “wholly other” transcendence, sometimes even being invoked to protect incoherent theological positions from reasonable objections. However, is this what God’s “ways” and “thoughts” are referring to here?
If we read from verse one in this chapter, we see that verses 8-9 actually conclude a larger section where the Lord confronts the nationalistic myopia of his people by announcing that anyone from any nation who is thirsty or hungry can come and feast at his banquet table for free (vss. 1-2). He promised all who come to his feast that he will bring them into the “everlasting covenant” that he “promised to David” (vs. 3). For, the Lord says, David was raised up not just to be the earthly king of the Jews but also to be a “witness” and “ruler” of all nations (vs. 4). If Israel was God’s chosen nation, we see, it was only to be used to help all nations realize that they too are “chosen.”
The Lord reiterates this point further when he goes on to proclaim to his nationalistic-minded people that they will someday “summon nations you know not, and nations you do not know will come running to you” because the Lord “has endowed you with splendor” (vs. 5). Only then can we see what is really going on when the Lord proclaims the nature of his “ways” and “thoughts.”
Yahweh is here confronting the myopic, nationalistic mindset of his people. His ways are “higher” than theirs precisely because, while Israel always had a tendency to think Yahweh somehow belonged uniquely to them, everything Yahweh was doing in and through them was in fact being done with a view of reuniting and blessing all humans by bringing them under his loving reign.
Image by Samuel Zeller.
Category: General
Tags: Covenant, God, Israel, Nationalism, Transcendence
Topics: God
Verse: Isaiah 55
Related Reading
Crucifying Transcendence
The classical view of God’s transcendence in theology is in large borrowed from a major strand within Hellenistic philosophy. In sharp contrast to ancient Israelites, whose conception of God was entirely based on their experience of God acting dynamically and in self-revelatory ways in history, the concept of God at work in ancient Greek philosophy…
Don’t Be a Functional Atheist at Christmas
All of us raised in Western culture have been strongly conditioned by what is called a secular worldview. The word secular comes from the Latin saeculum, meaning “the present world.” A secular worldview, therefore, is one that focuses on the present physical world and ignores or rejects the spiritual realm. To the extent that one…
Was Jesus Really Human Like the Rest of Us?
Did Jesus really live as a human like you and I do? Or did he walk around with special divine powers that we don’t have? In the previous post, I introduced the question: How was God both fully God and fully man? I explained the classical model of the Incarnation which views the incarnate Jesus…
What Makes the Good News So Good
While God was revealed in various ways and to various degrees through the law and the prophets of the Old Testament, in Jesus we finally have the one who is “the exact representation of God’s being” or essence (hypostasis, Heb. 1:1-13). This is the heart of the Good News that reverberates throughout the New Testament.…
Podcast: Do You See a Difference Between Patriotism and Nationalism?
Greg separates the wheat from the chaff in this allegiance-busting politically provocative episode. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0380.mp3
Making God in Our Own Image
In this video, Greg introduces the idea of how we make God into our own image instead of allowing God to define himself through the revelation of Jesus. In an interview performed by Travis Reed from theworkofthepeople.com, we have a basic, quick introduction to a core element of Greg’s theology. This is a great piece to…