In the Bible, "wrath" doesn't come up as often as "love" or "bless". So why, in some churches or denominations, does wrath have such a prominent place in preaching or theology? Why do some ministers feel as if they haven't presented the good news unless they have described God's wrath?
It turns out that talk of "wrath" is not evenly distributed in the writings of the Bible. The two books of Revelation and Romans account for roughly half of all the "wrath" talk in the New Testament. So the more that someone favors those books over the others, the more their version of the gospel will over-focus on wrath, compared to an understanding based on the New Testament as a whole. It follows that it's a risk of starting with the book of Romans: it easily leads to an over-emphasis on wrath, since that one book contains a focus on wrath that is out of proportion to the New Testament as a whole. The same could be said of Revelation.
What is the right emphasis to give it? We could take our lead from the New Testament as a whole, if the goal is to be consistent with the New Testament as a whole. Or some might contend that it is best to keep it in the same proportion as in the gospels. (That would be a small place.) But as for the extremes -- whether denying the existence of God's wrath or making it a constant major focus -- I don't see how either of those is consistent with the Bible. If we want to be thoroughly Biblical, it is not enough for a thought to be found in the Bible; we also need to gauge its relative importance in the same way.
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4 comments:
An interesting thought, using Biblical proportion, as it were. Based on that, I suppose some churches/pastors should dial back what they have to say about homosexuality, for example.
I haven't actually known anyone who harped on that topic, but no doubt it's been done somewhere by someone.
If the goal is to be Biblical, then some churches/pastors would have to preach more about it, some less about it, and some the opposite thing about it. :)
Take care & God bless
Anne / WF
I think the most important angle in the discussion of wrath is to understand hat it is and against whom and/or what it is directed. Maybe I will write (again) on this...
I think the most important angle in the discussion of wrath is to understand hat it is and against whom and/or what it is directed. Maybe I will write (again) on this...
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