Conversations with Scripture: 2 Isaiah (Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars) - Softcover

Cook, Stephen L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081922149X ISBN 13: 9780819221490

Verlag: Morehouse Publishing, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

The God of Second Isaiah, the “Holy One of Israel,” is increasingly foreign to modern Anglicans, who are often uncomfortable with the uncanny, fiery side of God. Unfortunately, this may leave Anglicans frustrated both with God’s “non-rational” ways and with morality-centered Christianity.

The new research behind this book reveals Second Isaiah as priestly temple literature, expert at the Holy and its coming dawn on earth. Second Isaiah highlights priestly themes and quotes the temple texts to help readers approach that which is utterly mysterious. To study this material is to rediscover the overwhelming, absolute worth of God.

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Stephen L. Cook is Catherine N. McBurney Professor of Old Testament Language and Literature at Virginia Theological Seminary. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

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CONVERSATIONS WITH SCRIPTURE: 2 ISAIAH

By STEPHEN L. COOK

Church Publishing Incorporated

Copyright © 2008 Stephen L. Cook
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2149-0

Contents

Chapter One

Second Isaiah and the Theology of Reverence

Concentrate on your breathing and pay no heed to your lightheadedness. Ignore your clammy palms and the cold sweat soaking your clothes. Those goose bumps on your skin, the shivers up your back, and the quaking of your knees are just a fluke. It is only the book of Isaiah, right? It is only a mere Old Testament prophet, approved for general audiences—or, did they get that wrong?

Isaiah's God is the safe companion and gentle shepherd we have always imagined—or, are we sure?

What if we experience in reading the book of Isaiah— perhaps for the first time in our lives—a spine-tingling encounter with the uncanny otherness of God? What if Isaiah imparts to us, its readers, true knowledge of what religious thinkers like to call "the Holy"? Then, in studying Isaiah, we would be in for a serious engagement with the towering self-existent being of God.

Brace yourself, because you are in for just such an engagement in the pages you are about to read. In meditating on Isaiah's prophecies, encountering Isaiah's holy God, you will be aiming a steady gaze at the "high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy" (Isa 57:15). So prepare for smarting eyes and a spinning head. To proceed farther is to put one's self and one's lifestyle of comfort at risk.

Holiness: The Otherness of God

Presently, I shall introduce you to the book of Isaiah and its contents. But, first things first. Have you met Isaiah's God?

Throughout Isaiah, God goes by the name "Holy One of Israel." The word "holy" in the Bible (Hebrew kadosh) has less to do with moral excellence than with radical separation and hiddenness. To be holy is to exist apart from and be other than the creation. To put it plainly, God's holiness is all about God's otherness.

Characteristically, Isaiah's Lord asks, "To whom will you liken me and make me equal, and compare me, as though we were alike?" (Isa 46:5). The question is rhetorical, the answer obvious. The God of Isaiah is matchless, incomparable, and radically other. "There is no other," God declares in Isaiah 46:9, "there is no one like me." In Isaiah's celebrated vision of God in Jerusalem's temple (Isa 6), the Lord is surrounded by flaming creatures. Do you recall what they are they saying? They cry to one another, "Yahweh is Other! Other! Other!" (my translation).

The God we meet in reading Isaiah is unlike anyone or anything else we know, whether in the world around us or in the dazzling films we see in our theaters. God's awesome, compelling otherness encounters us head on in the prophecies of Isaiah.

We barely have the images or concepts to imagine divine holiness, Isaiah's God is so awesomely other. As God, God's self, declares, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isa 55:9). This deity is as far removed from an Einstein as from an amoeba. The Lord's otherness is immeasurable. In unapproachable light, separated from us by an infinite gulf, Isaiah's God dwells apart from the world.

Silence! Hush! Reading the book of Isaiah and encountering Isaiah's God, we clam up. We stand in awe, taken aback—disoriented (Isa 52:15). We feel exposed and conscious of our profaneness, yet captivated and impelled to experience more. True holiness is not only daunting but also uniquely fascinating and entrancing. It even inspires self-surrender—indeed, rapture.

What is this holy God up to? According to Isaiah's book, God's endgame is a tangible dawning of holiness on earth. As the goal of history, God's holy presence will physically shine on God's people for the entire world to see. When this happens, the nations of earth will finally recognize the truth of God, and they will worship. "The LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together, they come to you," God declares to daughter Zion (Isa 60:2-4).

The church today often appears myopically focused on preaching and teaching about day-to-day living, not on this advent. Isaiah would believe we are missing our calling as a consequence. Instead of offering techniques for living healthy lives, Isaiah would have us tenaciously direct the nations' attention toward the dawning of the sacred on earth. God's claim in Isaiah is unambiguous: "I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall see my glory" (Isa 66:18). Are we serious about this claim?

Appreciating the Virtue of Reverence

The challenge of knowing God in God's otherness is as relevant now as it was at the book of Isaiah's first appearance two and a half millennia ago. Now, as then, we are finite, dependent mortals, able to grasp our significance only by coming to know the one who fashioned us in the divine image. Still today, just as in biblical times, knowing God is crucial to knowing ourselves, our place in existence, and our destiny.

Knowing God is also crucial to becoming more humane persons, aware of our finitude and need of each other. This brings us to the topic of reverence. To encounter God's holiness is to savor a taste of reverence, a crucial virtue but one that is almost forgotten these days. We in the global north have largely lost reverence, which we can define as the capacity for awe at those things truly greater than ourselves, which we cannot change, or control, or fully understand. We have lost our capacity for the one virtue uniquely capable of reminding us of our mortality, of binding humanity together in mutuality and compassion.

Reverence is about much more than just being serious during ceremonial rites and church liturgies. It expresses itself strongly in respect for the human dignity of our neighbors and for the wonders of the natural world. We tend to value even the lowly and the marginalized among us when we come to acknowledge that we share with them a common human frailty and ignorance. We begin to shudder at the thought of desecrating the environment when we realize that we cannot control what will happen if we do.

Awe before Isaiah's God refreshes our reverence. It submerges the ego, paving the way for owning up to our frailty. It turns us outward from concern with self to the need and suffering of others, especially the poor and peripheral. As we repose ever more deeply in God's mystery, the Lord who is absolutely sufficient for our succor increasingly works through us to relieve others' brokenness. Simultaneously, the Holy transforms us into ever more reverent advocates of the natural world.

Introducing the Book of Isaiah

Isaiah is one of the biggest books in the Bible (1,292 verses), and one of its greatest. As we shall see, it is among the richest and most theologically profound of the Scriptures. Because Isaiah affords God's people absolute basics of the faith, the book has long been a favorite of both synagogue and church. From the beginnings of Judaism and Christianity, the faithful have granted Isaiah's book a large presence in their lives. Copies of Isaiah were most numerous among the documents of the Dead Sea Scroll community at Qumran. Along with the Psalms, Isaiah is the most quoted biblical book in the New Testament. Today, we hear Isaiah in...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Morehouse Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 081922149X
• ISBN 13: 9780819221490
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 158
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar