Transcendentally Disengaged
And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 2 Corinthians 12:9 NASB
Weakness – Is God weak? Our immediate reaction is “No! Of course not! God can do anything. He is all-powerful.” But maybe we didn’t really understand the question. Maybe our doctrine got in the way of our thinking. What if I asked the question a different way? Is God vulnerable? Be careful how you answer.
If you replied, “No, God can’t be vulnerable because vulnerability implies weakness” you would be in line with the great Christian philosophers of the past. Man is weak; therefore, God cannot be weak. That’s the via negativa approach. Heschel commented that such a God “will be beneath its dignity to be affected by anything which it has itself caused to come into being. But it is a dogmatic sort of dignity which insists upon God’s pride rather than love, upon His decorum rather than mercy.”[1]
In other words, if you want your God to be transcendentally immune to weakness, then you will have to sacrifice mercy for dignity. You will also have to sacrifice the biblical view of God. But no matter, you can hold on to the God of Plato, Boethius, Aquinas, Calvin, Luther, and Piper. Oh, but you’ll have to give up on Paul.
Paul says that God said, “power is perfected in weakness.” That sounds quite odd until we think about it. Paul uses the combination word asthĕnĕia, a negation of sthĕnŏō. Literally, it means something like “strengthlessness.” But Paul must be wrong. Doesn’t Moses call God El Shaddai, typically translated as “God Almighty”? How can God be all-mighty and tell us power is perfected in weakness? If God is perfect, wouldn’t that mean that His power is also perfected in weakness? Maybe the mistake in our thinking is the translation of teléō, the verb Paul uses that we translate “perfected.” Let’s consider the use of the verb in the LXX. “In the LXX teléō has such various senses as ‘to carry through,’ ‘to actualize,’ ‘to complete,’ ‘to conclude,’ and religiously ‘to dedicate oneself’ (but only to the service of a pagan god).”[2] And this: “To understand télos and teléō in the NT one must remember their dynamic character; they denote ‘fulfilment’.”[3]
So, power is fulfilled in weakness. Doesn’t that sound like an utter contradiction? Of course it does—if we hang on to the transcendental model of God in philosophical theology (and interpret the text accordingly). But it’s not a contradiction at all, in fact, it is an absolute necessity, if “Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences.”[4] Perhaps we could add a footnote to Genesis 1:26. “Let us make man in our own image—vulnerable.”
Brené Brown shows us that vulnerability is a choice. If we choose, we can also be like the God of the philosophers, like Joseph in his response to his brothers (Genesis 50:19). Or we can be like God who made Himself vulnerable (by choice) when He decided to create us. If vulnerability is at the core of human meaningful experience, it is also at the core of divine meaningful experience. There is no God of Israel without vulnerability, risk, and possible defeat.
“Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness.”[5]
But that’s precisely what the Greek paradigm, Western theological world wants us to believe—that feelings are weakness. What Paul asked for isn’t possible in a human-divine relationship. Paul wanted invincibility. God gave him humanity.
Topical Index: vulnerability, feelings, weakness, asthĕnĕia, 2 Corinthians 12:9
[1] Abraham Heschel, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 122.
[2] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (p. 1162). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
[3] Ibid., p. 1161.
[4] Brené Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 12.
[5] Ibid., p. 33.
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