Round Pegs, Square Holes
“Who knows, God may turn and relent, and turn from His burning anger so that we will not perish.” Jonah 3:9 NASB
Who knows? – Nineveh is a problem. Not because it was an evil city that needed to be eradicated. Not because Jonah resisted announcing God’s intention. No, Nineveh is a problem because of what God doesn’t do. God says He will destroy the city. Jonah is counting on the reliability of God’s declaration. But Jonah also knows that life is contingent. Even divine promises are subject to conditions. If Jonah doesn’t proclaim God’s judgment, then the people will continue in their wicked ways and God will destroy them. As they deserve! But if Jonah does go to Nineveh, and the people somehow change as a result of God’s declaration, well, then anything can happen. And Jonah will look like a fool. Much better to just let sleeping dogs lie.
What kind of God goes back on His word just because some king tells the people to repent? Why should the wicked get away with it? Problem number one: God’s ethics.
And then there’s problem number two. “Who knows?” We imagine that God knows. It’s possible (probable?) that men don’t know what will happen in the future, but certainly God must know. How could He be God if He doesn’t know? Having inherited a philosophical, Western idea of a transcendent God, we can barely entertain the possibility that God didn’t know what the people of Nineveh would do? If God knew that the people of Nineveh would repent and He would relent of His intention, then sending Jonah with a message of destruction is almost a sham. At best, it’s play-acting. Jonah is a puppet in God’s real plan because the outcome is known in advance, and since it is known by an infallible God, it couldn’t be otherwise. Problem number two is the direct result of believing that a transcendent, omniscient God knows everything, including those human actions (choices) that we as human perceive as contingent. For God, nothing is contingent.
This problem hinges on a particular view of truth. Zornberg uses Isaiah Berlin’s analysis to explain.
“The notion that knowledge of reality is singular, absolute, static, and eternal is tested in these midrashic narratives of the foundational events in Jewish history. The midrashic versions convey a plural, contextual, constructed, and dynamic vision of reality. The ‘Platonic ideal’ in the history of philosophy is described by Isaiah Berlin: it posits:
‘. . . that all genuine questions must have one true answer and one only, all the rest being necessarily errors; in the second place, that there must be a dependable path towards the discovery of these truths; in the third place, that the true answers, when found, must necessarily be compatible with one another and form a single whole, for one truth cannot be incompatible with another—that we knew a priori. This kind of omniscience was the solution to the cosmic jigsaw puzzle.’”[1]
But it wasn’t the solution to the biblical puzzle. As the rabbis were fond of saying: “God is sovereign; man is responsible.” They make little attempt to reconcile these biblical ideas. But that hardly satisfies the theologians of the West.
You might consider the (illogical?) argument of John MacArthur or this one from a Messianic (supposedly?) perspective.
Just two examples of forcing the text to fit into a priori philosophical commitments. Once we accept the Parmenidean idea of perfection and apply it to God (as does Aquinas), we will be forced into this sort of equivocation. In the end, the biblical text doesn’t attempt to resolve this problem, because it isn’t a problem. God knows every possibility, but that isn’t the same as knowing every actuality, and the difference between the two leaves plenty of room for “surprises.” Jonah knows this, and, like most Western believers today, he doesn’t like it. He wants absolute rules, not fuzzy ethics. If this makes you uncomfortable, maybe you’re more like Jonah than you realize.
Topical Index: knowing, perfection, future, Nineveh, Jonah 3:9
[1] Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus., pp. 4-5.
Jonah’s discomfit knowing that God’s permutations of man’s possible responses always favor God’s long-suffering mercy and grace demonstrates the necessity of God to select a man— a king— “of his own choosing”… “a man after his own heart.”
“Look! here is my servant; I hold him, my chosen one, in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit on him; he will bring justice forth to the nations. He will not cry out and lift up and make his voice heard in the street. He will not break a broken reed, and he will not extinguish a dim wick. He will bring justice forth in faithfulness. He will not grow faint, and he will not be broken until he has established justice in the earth. And the coastlands wait for his teaching.” (Isaiah 42:1-4)
“Father, if you are willing, take away this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42)