Incarnation in Exile

Incarnation in Exile November 19, 2015

Ezekiel’s initial vision is of the Lord’s chariot-throne, coming with whirling wheels and a sound like thunder, to visit him at the River Chebar. Though the prophet is in exile, the glory of the God of the temple is with him. Robert Jenson (Ezekiel) highlights the “incarnational” force of the overall vision. Not only does Yahweh come to be with His people, but He comes in a chariot that lumbers along the river, His heavenly throne entering earthly reality. Contrary to some commentators, who see the wheels as a piece of crude literalism, Jenson claims that this only reinforces the incarnational thrust of the passage.

This incarnational setting provides the context for Jenson’s elaboration of the historical character of the prophecy. Ezekiel addresses his prophecies to Israel, not merely the specific generation of Ezekiel but Israel “as a temporal entity with a consistent character” (48), a history that Ezekiel can summarize in one word “rebellion.” Moderns view the idea that one can see a single narrative shape to the complex history of a people with skepticism, and Jenson thinks that the skepticism is warranted: “if there is no God, there can be nothing like what the Western tradition has called history” (48-49). 

On the other hand, if God is the Lord of history, if history has a shape and a telos, then God seems to be a threat to human freedom. The text does nothing to dispel this fear, and in fact “the Lord seems close to saying that he has himself determined that Israel’s story will be a story of rebellion” (49). Does that not reduce human actors to mere puppets? Does that not rob history of the very character that makes it history?

At this point, Jenson might find some assistance in his favorite Calvinists, Edwards or Barth, but instead he sticks with Ezekiel. He finds a “key” though not a solution in the very incarnational context of the vision: “The Lord’s determining of Israel’s temporal being is not done by arbitrary decision in heaven. It is done precisely by the presence of his word in Israel’s life, by prophets being among them.” God’s word determines history, but that word is not high in heaven or in the abyss, but “fully involved amid the clashing and joining bodies.” The incarnational character of the chariot vision shows that “God does not rule only from without the rough and tumble of history but also from within it” (49). 

Jenson’s comments on Ezekiel 3:20 are starker. The prophet warns that both the impenitent wicked and the faltering righteous will die. Verse 20 adds, “If the righteous turn from their righteousness and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block before them, they shall die.” He makes the grammatical point that the stumbling block is part of the protasis rather than the apotasis; it is part of the condition, not the Lord’s response to sin.

Does this mean that the Lord will “trip the once righteous into their sin?” Jenson’s only answer is to affirm the text in all its terror: “The Lord can be that devious. . . . If the rest of scripture does not do it, Ezekiel will surely undo simplistic ideas of God’s moral relation to history, whether traditional or modern-liberal”(51-52). Jenson makes no effort to avoid or smooth over the offense. The offense is there in the text, and he simply lets it stand. “Deal with it,” he tells the reader.


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