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Ezekiel's Awkward God: Atheism, Idolatry and the Via Negativa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2013

Andrew Mein
Andrew Mein*
Affiliation:
Westcott House, Cambridge CB5 8BP, [email protected]
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Abstract

Can a biblical text be idolatrous? Ezekiel's God has always been theologically awkward and difficult to handle. For early Jewish and Christian readers of the book the most troublesome (and indeed dangerous) parts of the text were the prophet's initial vision of the divine glory and its subsequent reappearances. Voltaire was perplexed and revolted by God's command that Ezekiel eat bread cooked with dung.1 For some twentieth-century Protestant commentators, Ezekiel's God is altogether too concerned with ritual at the expense of ethics.2 But for contemporary readers it is the unrelenting harshness, violence and especially masculinity of Ezekiel's Yhwh which proves most problematic. My aim in this article is to examine some of the theological implications of this divine awkwardness. In what follows I will attempt three things. First, I will offer a brief examination of the problems Ezekiel's God poses and a few recent Christian responses. Second, I will outline Roland Boer's proposal that Ezekiel 20 (along with 16 and 23) tends towards a kind of ‘anti-Yahwism’ or ‘protest atheism’: a vision of God so appalling as to be impossible to accept. Finally, I will explore the value for theological interpretation of taking seriously such an apparently unpromising conclusion, and suggest that the apophatic tradition may provide resources for embracing such radical negativity within scripture.

Keywords

apophaticEzekielidolatryprotest atheismRoland BoerVia Negativa
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 66 , Issue 3 , August 2013 , pp. 261 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2013 

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References

1 Voltaire, , Dictionnaire philosophique (Paris: GF-Flammarion, 1964), pp. 184–7Google Scholar.

2 So e.g. Kennett, R. H., Old Testament Essays (Cambridge: CUP, 1928), p. 57Google Scholar; Robinson, H. Wheeler, Two Hebrew Prophets: Studies in Hosea and Ezekiel (London: Lutterworth, 1948), p. 102Google Scholar.

3 A selection of some of the most important treatments would include Galambush, Julie, Jerusalem in the Book of Ezekiel: The City as Yahweh's Wife, SBLDS 130 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1992)Google Scholar; Darr, Katheryn Pfisterer, ‘Ezekiel's Justifications of God: Teaching Troubling Texts’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 55 (1992), pp. 97–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Day, Linda M., ‘Rhetoric and Domestic Violence in Ezekiel 16’, Biblical Interpretation 8 (2000), pp. 231–54Google Scholar; Exum, J. Cheryl, ‘The Ethics of Biblical Violence against Women’, in Rogerson, John W.et al. (eds), The Bible in Ethics: The Second Sheffield Colloquium, JSOTSup 202 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995)Google Scholar; Exum, Plotted, Shot and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women, JSOTSup 215 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), pp. 101–28; S. Moughtin-Mumby, , Sexual and Marital Metaphors in Hosea, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, OTM (Oxford: OUP, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Patton, C. L., ‘“Should Our Sister be Treated Like a Whore?”: A Response to Feminist Critiques of Ezekiel 23’, in Odell, M. S. and Strong, J. T. (eds), The Book of Ezekiel: Theological and Anthropological Perspectives, SBLSS 9 (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2000), pp. 221–38Google Scholar; Shields, Mary E., ‘Multiple Exposures: Body Rhetoric and Gender Characterization in Ezekiel 16’, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 14 (1998), pp. 5–18Google Scholar; van Dijk Hemmes, Fokkelien, ‘The Metaphorization of Woman in Prophetic Speech’, Vetus Testamentum 43 (1993), pp. 162–70Google Scholar; Weems, Renita J., Battered Love: Marriage, Sex and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995)Google Scholar.

4 See esp. Galambush, Jerusalem.

5 NRSV translates the final line ‘when I forgive you’, but the Hebrew term רפכ is rather more associated with ritual purgation or cleansing; cf. Baruch Schwartz, ‘Ezekiel's Dim View of Israel's Restoration’, in Odell and Strong, The Book of Ezekiel: Theological and Anthropological Perspectives, pp. 48–9.

6 Van Dijk Hemmes, ‘Metaphorization’, pp. 164–8.

7 Moughtin-Mumby, Sexual and Marital Metaphors, p. 198.

8 Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, p. 113.

9 Van Dijk Hemmes, ‘Metaphorization’, p. 169; Shields, ‘Multiple Exposures’, p. 15. While it is possible that Ezekiel is attempting to shame his own audience of fellow exiles (cf. Patton, ‘Should Our Sister’, pp. 232–3), it is worth remembering the degree to which the book emphasises the contrast between the exiles and those who remained in Jerusalem (cf. esp. 11:14–21; 33: 23–9).

10 Block, Daniel I., The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 1–24, NICOT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 469Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 470.

12 Ortlund, Raymond C. Jr., Whoredom: God's Unfaithful Wife in Biblical Theology, New Studies in Biblical Theology, 2 (Leicester: Apollos, 1996), pp. 182–3Google Scholar.

13 Cf. Darr, ‘Ezekiel's Justifications’, p. 115; van Dijk Hemmes, ‘Metaphorization’, p. 169.

14 For one historical example see the discussion of Calvin in my article ‘Ezekiel's Women in Christian Interpretation: The Case of Ezekiel 16’, in Joyce, P. M. and Mein, A. (eds), After Ezekiel: Essays on the Reception History of a Difficult Prophet, LHBOTS 535 (New York: T&T Clark, 2011), pp. 169–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Shields, ‘Multiple Exposures’, p. 18.

16 Shields, Mary E., ‘Self Response to “Multiple Exposures”’, in Prophets and Daniel: A Feminist Companion to the Bible, 2nd series, ed. Brenner, Athalya (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001), p. 155Google Scholar.

17 Weems, Battered Love, p. 109.

18 Ibid., p. 115

19 Ibid., p. 83.

20 Brueggemann, Walter, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), p. 384Google Scholar.

21 O'Brien, Julia M., Challenging Prophetic Metaphor: Theology and Ideology in the Prophets (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), pp. 40–4Google Scholar.

22 Boer, Roland, Marxist Criticism of the Bible (London: T&T Clark, 2003), pp. 133–57Google Scholar.

23 Bloch, Ernst, Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom, trans. Swann, J. T. (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972)Google Scholar.

24 Boer, Marxist Criticism, p. 136; Bloch, Ernst, The Principle of Hope, trans. Plaice, N., Plaice, S., and Knight, P. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

25 Boer, Marxist Criticism, p. 139.

26 Ibid., p. 140.

27 Ibid., p. 145.

28 Ibid., p. 147.

29 Darr's earlier article ‘Ezekiel's Justifications’ also treats all three texts together.

30 It is hard to escape Baruch Schwartz's conclusion that ‘from the very outset Yhwh's resolve to return the Israelites to their land is not a reprieve but part of the punishment’.

31 Boer, Marxist Criticism, p. 152.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid., p. 154.

34 Ibid., pp. 154–5.

35 Block, Book of Ezekiel, p. 629.

36 Ibid., p. 630.

37 Ibid., p. 639; cf. Davis, Ellen F., Swallowing the Scroll: Textuality and the Dynamics of Discourse in Ezekiel's Prophecy, JSOTSup 78 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989), pp. 114–16Google Scholar.

38 Block, Book of Ezekiel, p. 658.

39 On Ezekiel's theocentricity see Joyce, Paul M., Divine Initiative and Human Response in Ezekiel, JSOTSup 51 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

40 The often repeated comment that atheisms are normally the reflex of some particular kind of theism is probably relevant here. Boer is quite candid about his rejection of a Calvinist upbringing (Boer, Marxist Criticism, p. 146). Block, for his part, might well agree with Boer that the logical outcome of a thoroughgoing feminist critique is atheism!

41 Fewell, Danna Nolan and Gunn, David M., Gender, Power, and Promise: The Subject of the Bible's First Story (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1993), p. 18Google Scholar.

42 Carroll, Robert P., ‘The Aniconic God and the Cult of Images’, Studia Theologica 31 (1977), pp. 59–60Google Scholar.

43 Shields, ‘Multiple Exposures’, p. 15.

44 There is some debate as to whether the expression might refer more specifically to phallic images. I have argued elsewhere that the general sense of ‘male’ is to be preferred, not least because Jerusalem is said to feed and clothe the idols: Mein, Andrew, Ezekiel and the Ethics of Exile, Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: OUP, 2001), p. 116Google Scholar.

45 Chapman, G. Clarke Jr., ‘Jürgen Moltmann and the Christian Dialogue with Marxism’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 28 (1981), p. 439Google Scholar; Bloch's assent to this is evident from the fact that both catchphrases appear together on the cover of the English translation of the work!

46 Chapman, ‘Jürgen Moltmann’, p. 438.

47 It is noteworthy that only here in Ezekiel does Yhwh explicitly assert his kingship.

48 Bloch, Atheism, p. 83.

49 Most notably as presented in Ruether, Rosemary Radford, Sexism and God Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

50 Boer, Marxist Criticism, p. 155.

51 Ruether, Sexism and God Talk, p. 67.

52 Turner, Denys, ‘Marxism and Liberation Theology’, in Rowland, Christopher (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), p. 212Google Scholar.

53 Turner, Denys, ‘Apophaticism, Idolatry and the Claims of Reason’, in Davies, Oliver and Turner, Denys (eds), Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and Incarnation (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), pp. 12–14Google Scholar.

54 Ibid., p. 16.

55 Ezekiel 1 was one of the key texts used by pro-Nicene authors such as the Cappadocians, John Chrysostom and Theodoret to counter the Neo-Arian doctrine that Christians are able to comprehend God in his essence: see Christman, Angela Russell, ‘“What did Ezekiel See?” Patristic Exegesis of Ezekiel 1 and Debates about God's Incomprehensibility’, Pro Ecclesia 8 (1999), pp. 338–63Google Scholar.

56 Turner, ‘Apophaticism’, p. 17.

57 Turner, ‘Marxism and Liberation Theology’, p. 216.