Yesterday’s post on Theology as Story struck a responsive chord in some readers. This post is from last Winter, so I put it up here again in case you missed it. It is about how the Bible itself teaches theology, and surprisingly it is not the usual way we teach it!
In the opinion of many a Biblical scholar, Psalm 139 is one of the most profound meditations on God in the entire Psalter, yea the entire Bible. The psalmist glories in the majesty and the perfections of the One who is the God of Israel and of the whole earth and marvels in reverence at His character. And yet it is at that very point that some treatments of this psalm fall short. Too often it is theologized and removed from its context to become a textbook treatment of the omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence of God. Of course there is some truth to that, but this sort of treatment falls short of what the writer is really saying.
To begin with, these three omni-words are not the psalmist’s but are modern theological terms. It is not wrong to invent such words to convey Biblical truths but the danger in doing so is that when we speak about God in such terms we turn Him into an object to be analyzed and theorized about rather than the Lord to be worshiped and served. The hazard is that we put God into our test tubes to be studied and explained rather than adored and magnified. We run the danger of examining God rather than allowing Him to examine us!
Theology students tend to debate questions about God’s omnipotence like “Can God make a stone so large that he cannot move it?” Or concerning omnipresence, “If Hell is a place of evil, how can the good God be present there as well?” Or they become consumed in defending issues like Divine omniscience against the Open Theists. (In case you are wondering, I believe that Open Theism is fatally flawed!)
The psalmist focuses rather on what these great Divine perfections mean for him personally. A favorite treatment of Psalm 139 divides it into a discussion of God’s omniscience in Ps. 139:1-6 (“Lord you have known me”); of God’s omnipresence in Ps. 139:7-12 (“Where shall I go from your Spirit?”); and God’s omnipotence in Ps. 139:13-16 (“You formed me”). While certainly true on the surface, this approach not only abstracts the composition out of the real life situation of the writer, it also neglects the intensely personal expressions that culminate not in a theoretical knowledge of the Deity but in a impassioned plea for forgiveness at the end (“Search me O God …” Ps. 139:23-24). The pronouns I, me, or mine appear over fifty times in 24 verses! That is not because the psalm is self-centered, it is because the psalmist is personally overwhelmed as he sees himself in relation to the Almighty’s perfections. Yes, this is a psalm about God, but it is more about my personal response to what I know to be true about God!!
This type of reading will also help us to better understand the controversial section where the psalmist prays for judgment on God’s enemies, which makes it one of the perplexing imprecatory psalms. Simply put, we have a hard time understanding these prayers for judgment because we have such a low view of God in our modern mindsets (Ps. 139:19-22).
So, yes, this is a psalm about the attributes of God, but not in the way that those attributes are often studied in systematic theology. They can and should be studied, but our approach and response should be the psalmist’s: “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you” (17, 18).
This is a response that is doxological, not theological.