Birds of a Feather

And they shall make Me a Tabernacle, that I may abide in their midst.  Exodus 25:8  Robert Alter

Abide – The Hebrew root describing God’s desire to abide with His people is šākan.  Perhaps you’ll recognize that this is precisely the same root of the word miškān, “Tabernacle.”  Here the author chooses a nice play on words: “They shall make Me a dwelling that I may dwell.”  Of course, there’s a connection to the Gospel of John.  John uses the same Hebrew idea when he writes that the Messiah will “tabernacle” among us (John 1:14  “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us;”).

Aside from the interesting word play, something else is happening here.  God declares Himself an imminent deity.  He is not the far-off God of the heavens, or beyond.  He is not the aloof, disinterested Creator of the wind-up universe.  He is “in the midst,” present, intentional, involved.  This is a startling and crucial declaration, one which the West has done a great deal to negate.  “The God revealed to Israel, and in Yeshua, is not the philosopher’s God.  The chief difference is that the God of the Bible is living, present.  Philosophy makes rational inquiry absolute.  Prophets make experience of the divine absolute.  Reason alone does not explain life.  To reason must be added revelation (God’s revealing of himself, divine disclosure).”[1]

Our system of belief begins with a transcendent God, the creator of heaven and earth, the God outside of time and space, immutable, infinite, ineffable.  “I believe in God the Father Almighty” might seem innocuous enough, but the trajectory takes us out of the created universe, as a quick glance at most systematic theology texts will confirm.  In Christian thought, this divine chasm is bridged by Jesus—until the full implications of his divinity as the second person of the Trinity are embraced.  When those become apparent, then Catholic theology takes over and the real gap between human and divine is bridged by Mary.  Once Hellenism infected Jewish thinking the same issues with transcendence appeared.  But it wasn’t a problem for Moses.  Why?

Perhaps we don’t fully appreciate how much of the ancient world parallels are incorporated into Israel’s thinking.  The Tabernacle is a good example.  Egypt and Babylon had moveable shrines of their gods.  They also had blood sacrifice rituals, atonement procedures, and priestly requirements—all very similar to the descriptions in Exodus and Leviticus.  The real difference between Israel and other ancient civilizations isn’t found in the uniqueness of the practices but rather in their intention.  Practices in other cultures were intended to placate the gods and prevent the harm of evil spirits.  The intention in Israel is to draw God closer.  Israel’s uniqueness in the ancient world was a God who lived with His people.  In the modern world, that is no longer the case.  The modern world has exiled God out of the creation.  What we have effectively accomplished is a return to Babylon, a theology that removes God from intimacy with His creation.

I know this doesn’t sound quite right.  After all, we speak comfortably about “Jesus in my heart” and we pray for God’s presence in our worship, but, at the same time, we espouse theological ideas that deny precisely this kind of involvement.  Our God is not like us—in any way.  Take a look at Thomas Aquinas’ via negativa and you will be convinced.  The gap between divine and human is ontologically unbridgeable.  In truth, the West has a schizophrenic theology, claiming that God is both transcendent and imminent, principally because we just can’t live with the deists’ god even if we declare Him to be the “holy Other.”  Rationally, God is gone.  Emotionally we hang on to the hope He isn’t.

Israel never had such psychological distress.

Do you suppose we’ve irreparably damaged ourselves with our Greco-Roman orientation?  Do you think it’s still possible to allow God to “tabernacle” with us?

Topical Index: tabernacle, miškān, šākan, dwell, imminent, transcendent, Exodus 25:8

[1] Derek Leman, Yeshua Our Atonement (2012), p. 24