New Gods!
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
It is staggering to ponder the opportunity and freedom to choose “new gods.” Such choosing requires the renunciation and rejection of old gods as inadequate and unreliable and inclined to oppressiveness. My comment on the notion of “new gods” is in three parts.
First, Israel in the Old Testament is a new people in world history whose identity is in response to and trust in YHWH, the God who rescued them from slavery in Egypt. Israel was not formed as a people until its emancipation and covenant-making at Sinai (Exodus 19-24). Israel has a long tradition of needing to choose and re-choose to trust in, rely on, and obey the God of the Exodus. Early on, in the new land Joshua could summon his community to such a decision. The urgency and immediacy of such a decision is because loyalty to this God in every circumstance is one of freedom or oppression, of life or death (see Deuteronomy 30:15):
Not with our ancestors did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today (Deuteronomy 5:3).
Thus Joshua could issue a summons in his circumstance:
Now therefore revere the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if are you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:14-15).
For now I am persuaded that the “conquest” of the land of promise was a revolt by oppressed peasants who were exploited by the urban elites who are labeled “Canaanites.” Thus the summons of Joshua is to reject the gods who legitimated the exploitative economic system, and to pledge loyalty to the God of emancipation who is in contradiction to the gods of exploitation. The choice of “a new god” by Israel under the leadership of Joshua evoked in the Books of Joshua and Judges massive retaliation against the “Canaanites” and their totems of exploitation. The account in the Book of Joshua can detail the extreme violence wrought by the peasants against their overlords. The Israelites, empowered by YHWH, acted against the city states. Those cities were citadels of exploitative violence and for that reason must be destroyed. In the same way, Elijah put before Israel a sharp either/or concerning the god of the urban elites (Baal) and the God, YHWH, the God of emancipation:
How long will you limp along with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him (I Kings 18:21).
The contest at Mt. Carmel exalts the rainmaking power of YHWH, the Lord of creation, who is contrasted with the feeble, dysfunctional Baal.
The matter is given sharp articulation in the Song of Deborah (Judges 5). This early extended poem features the God from Seir (Sinai) who causes rain and earthquakes (vv. 4-5). Deborah and Barak sing of Israel’s prosperity and success with the affirmation that “new gods” were “chosen” (v. 8). Israel embraced the storm-God of Sinai and rejected the gods of Sisera and his “Canaanite” ilk:
When new gods were chosen,
then war was in the gates.
Was shield or spear to be seen among forty thousand in Israel?
My heart goes out to the commanders of Israel
who offered themselves willingly among the people.
Bless the Lord (v. 8).
It follows, in the poem and in the life of Israel, that the embrace of YHWH filled Israel’s warriors with courage and eventually with a great victory. That great victory, according to the poem, is solely due to the power and engagement of the great creator God who fought against Sisera and the Canaanites with all the resources of creation, including the stars and torrents of rain:
The stars fought from heaven,
from their courses they fought against Sisera.
The torrent of Kishon swept them away,
the onrushing torrent, the torrent of Kishon.
March on, my soul, with might (vv. 20-21)!
Jael is featured as a woman of great courage who was able to prevail even against the Canaanite general (vv. 26-27). The weak Israelites are mightily empowered by the embrace of YHWH, so much so that we are made witnesses to the sorry ending of Sisera and his company (vv. 28-30).
This breathtaking articulation makes clear that the “choice of YHWH” greatly impacted the socioeconomic-political practice of Israel. The poem attests to the truth of Karl Marx’s belated aphorism:
The criticism of heaven is thus transformed into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of heaven into the criticism of politics (David McLellan, The Thought of Karl Marx: An Introduction, p. 22).
That is, religious claims have a decisive impact for the ordering of public life in the world. Or conversely, Marx might have judged we could start with the public life of the world and reason backward to the agency of God. Thus the great victory of Israel is in real life, but the ultimate agent for the victory is YHWH, the God whom Israel has yet again embraced. Long before Marx, John Calvin begins his Institutes with the same awareness. Calvin begins his testimony with “knowledge of God.” But he acknowledges that such knowledge begins in self-awareness:
No one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he “lives and moves” (Acts 17:28)…Accordingly, the knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God, but also, as it were, leads us by the hand to find him. Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked on God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself (Institutes of Christian Religion Book 1, Chapter 1, 35-27).
Thus Deborah and Barak can see that the “new God” led to Israel’s victory. Conversely, one might begin with Israel’s victory and reason back to the “new God” now chosen. Thus Deborah and Barak, and Calvin and Marx after them, insist on this deep linkage between the agency of God and our life in the world. One can begin either way, and reason to the other. Deborah and Barak have no doubt that Israel’s success, prosperity, and victory result from God’s rule. It is for good reason that Israel saw that emancipation and wellbeing necessitated a break with the gods who legitimated the “Canaanite” practice of exploitation.
This linkage is elemental for faithful living, even though we habitually seek to deny the connection, opting for the gifts of YHWH, but not responding to their source. That disconnect is later recognized by the prophet, Hosea, who sees that Israel has thanked the wrong gods (Hosea 2:8). Israel mistakenly judged that wellbeing came from Baal. Joshua, Elijah, and here Deborah and Barak know very well that Baal cannot and does not give good gifts. That is why we sing:
All good gifts are sent from heaven above.
O thank the Lord, O thank the Lord,
for all his love.
We affirm that the good gifts of our lives are from the creator God. We boldly deny that such gifts could be given from elsewhere. The covenanted people of YHWH are always again needing to choose this “new god” who overcomes oppressive systems and make prosperity possible.
The warriors of Israel, energized by YHWH and celebrated by Deborah and Barak, struggled mightily against the “Canaanite” power of the urban elites. Thus the narratives that follow this poem in the Book of Judges attest to the recurring defeat of the oppressive overlords, notably by Gideon. For good reason, the much later writer can celebrate this company of those empowered by YHWH:
And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight (Hebrews 11:32-34).
Once YHWH is chosen and Israel is empowered, brave emancipatory action is possible as human emancipators trust fully in the will and purpose of YHWH. The Book of Judges, from the poem to the narratives, witnesses to the deep, decisive impact of theological reality on the public life of the world.
Second, I was alerted to this matter of “new god” as I read The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C.L.R. James (1963). James traces the difficult contested route whereby Haiti threw off the colonial rule of France and became a nation of free people. The primary agent of this emancipation from colonialism, as James shows clearly, was Toussaint L’Ouverture, who became the undisputed leader of revolutionary emancipation and wisely and boldly mobilized his people to liberating action.
The decisive agency of Toussaint is beyond question. But at the same time James is attentive to theological reality. This is the prayer those who were enslaved recited:
The god who created the sun which gives us light, who rouses the waves and rules the storm, though hidden in the clouds, he watches us. He sees all that the white man does. The god of the white man inspires him with crime, but our god calls upon us to do good works. Our god who is good to us orders us to avenge our wrongs. He will direct our arms and aid us. Throw away the symbol of the god of the whites who has so often caused us to weep, and listen to the voice of liberty, which speaks in the hearts of us all (p. 87).
James writes of the enslaved:
They knew that as long as these plantations stood their lot would be to labour on until they dropped (p. 88).
Behind bold human agency was the act whereby a “new god” was chosen. The revolution was, however, grounded beyond strategy in faith. James contrasts two gods, the creator god and the god of the white man. The god of the white man, into whose sphere the vulnerable Black people had been seduced, gives sanction for a brutal exploitative system of plantation labor. As long as Black enslaved people adhered to the god of white political power and exploitation, such exploitation appeared to be not only legitimate but beyond question.
The embrace of this “new god” led to two realities. First, it evoked violent rejection of the totems of this god. Thus emancipation required the destruction of the legitimating symbols of the plantation system. Second, it led to vengeance against the plantation owners and thus brutality. The two go hand-in-hand, symbols and political, economic realities. We are able to see in Haiti a reiteration and re-performance of the narrative of Joshua. A new theological choice evoked new practice on the ground. So Calvin understood that “knowledge of God” would lead to emancipatory fidelity. So Marx understood that critical awareness of the things of heaven, of religion, and of theology must, of necessity, lead to critical awareness of the earth, the law, and politics, that is, the constraints and vehicles whereby power and meaning are to be enacted. In Haiti the enslaved became alert to emancipatory possibility when they perceived the will and power of “the god who created the sun” who readily outflanks the capacity of the god of the white man. As James articulates it, that critical awareness arose through singing, dancing, rites, and the generation of a zone of freedom that was outside the governance of the god of the white man. (It is no wonder, in the old South of the United States, that white plantation owners practiced careful supervision of the worship of slaves.) It is the capacity of the “new god” to evoke critical awareness that leads to emancipatory action. So it was in the days of Deborah and Barak as in the days of Toussaint L’Ouverture.
Third, I have pondered how this pattern of new god-restorative action might pertain to our social context, as to the social contexts of Pharaoh and the slaves in ancient Israel and colonialists and Black enslaved people in Haiti. To consider this matter we may begin with a critical reflection on the “old gods” that flourish among us. I could think of four such gods among us:
There is the god of the state who endorses the status quo of power arrangements, and who is the author of capitalist ideology. This god, not unlike the god of the Solomonic temple, is a legitimator of the present order (see I Kings 8:12-13).
There is the god of the philosophers who is marked by omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, who is unmoved and incapable of pathos.
There is the Jesus of evangelicalism who in a transactional process has created salvation for those who believe.
There is the god of progressives, a god who tilts toward unengaged deism, who authorizes the world and then summons us to do the work of redemption and reconciliation.
One can readily note that in this index of gods, there is no god who exercises emancipatory agency in the world. Thus these gods, in their several manifestations, are objects to be adored and relied upon, but from whom we can expect no newness. The church, moreover, variously colludes with these tiresome articulations of a god who matters very little in the life of the world.
In the face of such theological reductionism, the “new god” whom the church may choose and embrace is a God of transformative agency in the world. Against the “omni” metaphors, this God is capable of pathos, of being moved by the suffering of the world. Against the remote god of the state, this God is fully engaged on behalf of needy suffering people, and so on occasion against the status quo that produces and sustains suffering and misery. Against the transactionalism of some evangelicals, this God is dialogical, can be impinged upon, and can be summoned into circumstances of crises. Against the deism of some progressives, this God is an active agent in the socioeconomic, political life of the world. This “new God” does not live by and through syllogisms and formulae, but by and through narratives that celebrate specific interventions and transformations, and by and through song and poetry that refuse our most reliable explanatory practices of certitude. This new God lives in the singing of the congregation, is addressed by the prayers of the congregation, and is received from the lips of the preacher. The practice of narrative, song, and poem, unlike syllogism and formula, allows for the freedom of God to be engaged with the world in emancipatory and summoning ways. Thus I suggest that when the church has courage about its claims, nerve about its life, and honesty about the woundedness of the world, it may indeed choose this God. We may stand in the procession of Joshua who summoned Israel to “choose this day.” We may follow in the narrative of Elijah in his uncompromising either/or. We may, after the manner of the disciples, “follow” him in glad obedience…unless we have “great possessions” (Mark 10:22). We may be in the company of Deborah and Barak in choosing a new God.
When the new God is chosen, it follows that there will be restorative action. Thus the peasants in Israel, after Deborah and Barak, refused and rejected exploitative power, and sought to reorder society in covenantal-egalitarian ways. The enslaved of Haiti, after Toussaint, sought to reorder their society against colonial exploitation in the interest of freedom. And now we may ask about transformations evoked by the new God of emancipatory agency for those who sign on in faith. The response to this new God in ancient Israel and in Haiti led to revolutionary violence. It may indeed be that in extreme and unbearable circumstances of abuse and exploitation the response will inescapably be one of violence. But response to this new God need not be one of violence. It can be, rather, one of sober and disciplined justice. Thus the prophets of ancient Israel trace out responsive obedience to this new God of covenant in terms of justice, righteousness, steadfast love, faithfulness, and compassion (see Hosea 2:19-20). Or in the categories of the Apostle Paul, response to this new God is one of transformation (Romans 12:1), that issues in generosity (v. 7), hospitality (v. 13), solidarity (vv. 15-16), and a resolve to “overcome evil with good” (v. 21). Read through the prophetic repertoire and the index of Paul, a response to this new God in violence is incongruent with the character of God, even if on occasion circumstance evokes such destructive action.
The parallel between the new God of Deborah and Barak and the sky God of those enslaved in Haiti invites us to relish and embrace the new God who is filled with grace and truth. It is precisely the agency of this new God that evokes a new agency among us for transformative, restorative action. It is the work of the church, in its witness and worship, to make this new God available and credible, in order that we may stake our lives on the faithfulness of God who is among us. So says the good preacher, so says the congregation in its singing, so says the assembly that prays boldly, in freedom for the newness of the world.
Walter Brueggemann
Walter Brueggemann is one of the most influential Bible interpreters of our time. He is the author of over one hundred books and numerous scholarly articles.
