When God saw what they (the people of Ninevah) did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened. - Jonah 3:10 (NIV)
So God "relented?" What about His sovereignity? This moment in Jonah's story raises all sorts of questions like this for people, and I will certainly need to make reference to them this Sunday in the sermon. I'm also happy to make these thoughts from a commentary that I am using available as well. They are from:
Bryan D. Estelle, Salvation through Judgment and Mercy: The Gospel according to Jonah, ed. Tremper Longman III and J. Alan Groves, The Gospel according to the Old Testament (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2005).
We must not
forget before whom we stand. God is infinite in majesty. His ways are not
totally comprehensible to creatures. Therefore, Scripture speaks to us in terms
of analogical discourse. This is not
a new or recent way of talking about the nature of scriptural language. One
Reformed apologist, Michael Horton, has said: “When one says that ‘God is good’
and ‘Sally is good,’ the predicate ‘good’ is used neither univocally (i.e.,
identically) nor equivocally (i.e., with no actual similarity), but analogically.
Analogical thinking, then, identifies certain aspects of the unknown in terms
of the known and familiar.” (Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox, 2002), 8)
Cornelius Van Til, the apologist at Westminster Seminary who
labored alongside J. Gresham Machen, expressed himself in similar terms when he
talked about the system of Scripture being an analogical system. (See
especially Cornelius Van Til, A Christian
Theory of Knowledge (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1969), ch. 3)
None of what has just now been asserted calls into question the veracity or
truthfulness of Scripture. Quite the contrary.
These
apologists stand in a long tradition of theology that has recognized and
grappled with the nature of scriptural revelation. For example, Calvin argued
strenuously that God’s truth is accommodated to our capacity as finite
creatures. In Calvin’s terms, God talks to us in baby talk. As a mother stoops
to talk to a child, so God speaks to us in such terms that we may grasp his
truth. These kinds of categories enabled those wrestling with the meaning of
difficult passages of Scripture to handle sensitively figures of speech,
metaphors, and the question of when a passage should be taken literally and
when figuratively.
For example,
when the Bible speaks to us about God and his relations with his creatures, it
often speaks in language that is anthropomorphic
(i.e., it ascribes human characteristics to a being that is not human, i.e., to
God). Sometimes Scripture uses anthropopathisms
(it ascribes human emotions or passions to God) as well when speaking about
God’s relations and actions with human beings. Being aware of these matters
helps students of the Bible, professionals and laypersons alike, to interpret
the authors of Scripture as they intended their writings to be understood.
An example is the description of God’s grieving at the way mankind had become so morally destitute just before the flood: “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (Gen. 6:5–6). The passage says that God “saw,” and yet God does not have eyes like men. The passage also says that he was “grieved,” but this is different from a man’s or woman’s regret or grief. The language is meant to communicate similarity to human grief but also something quite different when applied to the almighty Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of the universe.
The distinctions and differences between the Creator and the creature should always be borne in mind, especially when it comes to feelings described. It is not that God does not have emotions or feelings toward his creatures, but he is not, for example, moved to anger as we human beings are; he does not “fly off the handle,” so to speak.
What God does
when he speaks to us in his Word is accommodate to our weakness. Along these
lines John Calvin has expressed in very helpful terms how we may understand
God’s workings and providence in light of those passages that talk of God’s
“repentance”:
What, therefore, does the word
“repentance” mean? Surely its meaning is like that of all other modes of
speaking that describe God for us in human terms. For because our weakness does
not attain to his exalted state, the description of him that is given to us
must be accommodated to our capacity so that we may understand it. Now the mode
of accommodation is for him to represent himself to us not as he is in himself,
but as he seems to us. Although he is beyond all disturbance of mind, yet he
testifies that he is angry toward sinners. Therefore whenever we hear that God
is angered, we ought not to imagine any emotion in him, but rather to consider
that this expression has been taken from our own human experience.… So we ought
not to understand anything else under the word “repentance” than change of
action, because men are wont by changing their action to testify that they are
displeased with themselves. Therefore, since every change among men is a
correction of what displeases them, but that correction arises out of
repentance, then by the word “repentance” is meant the fact that God changes
with respect to his actions. Meanwhile neither God’s plan nor his will is
reversed, nor his volition altered; but what he had from eternity foreseen,
approved, and decreed he pursues in uninterrupted tenor, however sudden the
variation may appear in men’s eyes. (John
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian
Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, 1.17.13)
An
appreciation for the complex nature of how language works in Scripture will,
then, aid us in understanding difficult passages such as Jonah
3:10. Perhaps more importantly, such an appreciation of how
scriptural language works will also aid us in wrestling with the problems of
suffering, affliction, and injustices not only in our own lives but in the
lives of others as well. God is not capricious. If we are honest men and women,
there will indeed be times when we will struggle greatly under the weight of a
so-called frowning providence. Nevertheless, we may always reassure ourselves
with confidence that God is on his throne and that his house (i.e., his world)
is in order. God is never taken by surprise, nor is he ever mesmerized or
baffled by any turn of events.
Ultimately and some day, all injustices will be eternally adjudicated. Even when bad things happen to “good” people, it is not outside the purview of our heavenly Father, “the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love [hesed] and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished” (Ex. 34:6–7).
