It seems that humankind has always lived in a tension about the presence of God, especially the physical presence. We have continually "sought signs and wonders" (John 4:48), physical evidence, as it were, of God's activity and presence. On the other hand, we also suspect that such a thing as the actual presence of God is impossible. There is after all the dictum, "the finite cannot bear the infinite" (finitum non est capax infiniti)! But Christians have confessed that God is present everywhere; we even have a word for it, "omnipresent." Yet, if God is so "omnipresent," why are we not able to "see" Him? In his critique of evangelicals, Mark Noll chides their weakness of "immediatism," (1) the wish that God would deal with his people in a less mediated way, less through instruments and in a rather more physical way.
But God does deal with us daily in a physical way. As we pray the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer, "give us this day our daily bread," (and confess in the first article of the Apostles Creed), God does provide our daily needs through all sorts of physical instruments. God answers our prayer by a host of people who are working to provide for us. God is not only Creator, He is also Provider and Protector, through an array of very physical instruments. In a similar way God pro-vides for the forgiveness of sins. Some imagine this as a leap from the material to the spiritual; but "spiritual" is not necessarily "non-material." In the language of St. Paul, our resurrected body will still be physical, but now imperishable, without corruption, and adaptable to live with God forever, a body similar to Christ's resurrected, glorified physical body (cf. 1 Cor. 15:44-49; Phil. 3:21; Luke 24:36-43).
It doesn't seem to help much when Luther speaks of the "hiddenness" of God (the Deus absconditus). Of course, he did not mean by that that God was not present. Luther distinguished between the omnipresence of God and God's presence-for-us. (2) That special, unique presence is his presence in the incarnate Christ, in the church, and in the divine service of worship. Though present everywhere, God remains invisible or hidden to sinful man. Nowhere except in Christ can he be found or seen. Seeking God anywhere else, one finds not him, but the devil. The difference is spoken of in Scripture in various ways. We learn of the "mysteries" of the faith (Col. 1:26-27) or the "secrets of the kingdom" (Matt. 13:11). The Gospel, Paul warns, is foolishness to Gentiles and a scandal to Jews (1 Cor. 1:23). Jesus spoke in parables which some heard yet did not hear, some saw without seeing (Matt. 13:13). "He who has ears, let him hear" (Matt. 13:9).
This hiddenness of God-especially his love and mercy, his for-us-ness-is made visible only through the means of grace, the Gospel and the Sacraments. And these means of grace are nowhere more prominent, more available, than in the divine service. "God can be found only where he adds the Word to his work." (3)
When Luther talks about the "spiritual" presence of God, he does not mean "immaterial," for God chooses very material things as the means of his presence. These are "material things" which are "comprehended in God's command and connected with God's Word." (4) In this way, "the most ordinary and earthly things of this world become spiritual realities when by faith they have been linked with the Word of God." (5) In this way, God makes what is earthly, "profane," into some-thing heavenly, "holy." In the divine service we are, as it were, suspended between the two.
Christians have also believed that in Jesus, God truly took flesh, assumed a very physical presence. They have confessed that he "came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man." Never-theless, the history of the church chronicles one group after another which has sought to "spiritualize" God, unable as they were to confess any manner of God's revelation of himself except in a nebulous, non-physical manner. About this Luther told a story:
The following tale is told about a coarse and brutal lout. While the words "And was made man" were being sung in church, he remained standing, neither genuflecting nor removing his hat. He showed no reverence, but stood there like a clod. All the others dropped to their knees when the Nicene Creed was prayed and chanted devoutly. Then the devil stepped up to him and hit him so hard it made his head spin. He cursed him gruesomely and said: "May hell consume you, you boorish ass! If God had become an angel like me and the congregation sang: 'God was made an angel,' I would bend not only my knees but my whole body to the ground! Yes, I would crawl ten ells down into the ground. And you vile human creature, you stand there like a stick or a stone. You hear that God did not become an angel but a man like you, and you just stand there like a stick of wood!" Whether this story is true or not, it is nevertheless in accordance with the faith (Rom. 12:6). (6)
In the early centuries of the New Testament church, the nature of God's presence among humans became a matter of fierce debate. Many were influenced by Greek philosophical notions that matter, including flesh, was itself evil. Several early heresies featured this emphasis, among them Gnos-ticism and Marcionism. The Docetists held that Jesus could not have taken a real physical human form but only "seemed" to do so. At the Council of Chalcedon in a.d. 451 these questions were addressed: How are divinity and humanity joined in Jesus Christ? How can the im-mutable, eternal God be joined to a mutable, historical man? The answer was articulated, among others, by Gregory of Nazianzus: "For that which he has not taken up he has not saved." To our ears this is a curiously compact way of speaking. It was a way of confessing what had been taught in the scriptures, that "the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us" (John 1:14), "being in the likeness of men" (Phil. 2:7). Thus Chalcedon asserted that the virgin Mary actually bore God. It became part of the orthodox faith to refer to her as "Theotokos," literally, the "one who gave birth to God." "Even Arius and Athanasius were agreed that 'God was in Christ' and that 'in Him the whole fullness of Godhead dwells bodily.'" (7)
The language of John 1 is instructive; it directs our attention, for instance, to the Old Testament, to "the beginning." From the beginning God's "physicality" has been part of the record of sacred Scripture: "Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Gen. 3:8). Yes, we call this an anthropomorphism: that ascribes to God, who is after all a Spirit, characteristics of humans. But there is more to it than that. Throughout his dealings with his creatures, the Creator God has shown himself to be merciful and gracious in that he has made accommodations; he has used material things as gifts of his presence among his people.
Our "problem" about the presence of God, that tension of which we spoke at the beginning, is not new among the people of God. Even Jacob-he of "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob"- had the problem. At Bethel ("House of God") he found the presence of God perplexing: "'Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.' He was afraid and said, 'How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven'" (Gen. 28:16-17). Jacob's admission, "I was not aware of it," might be a common refrain today. Bethel, the place where God chose to be present for Jacob, was holy ground, like the place where the Angel of the Lord was present for Moses at the Burning Bush at the mountain of God (Exodus 3:2). Holy ground, holy place, is a place "set apart."
John 1 based its message in the Old Testament also in the words, "made his dwelling among us." Literally the word used by John is that God "tabernacled" among us (1:14). That makes reference to the gracious way that God announced his presence for his people Israel; he was present for them in the Tabernacle. The book of Leviticus teaches us that "God is preeminently present in worship," that it takes place "before the Lord." (8) God's presence was especially in the tent of meeting, the place of Israel's worship. Here is where God "dwelt"; thus, he caused his name to dwell here (Deut. 12:5, et passim.).
The association of God's name with his presence is a promise richly given in the Old Testament. Already in the time of Adam and Eve, after the birth of Seth, it is reported that "at that time men began to call on the name of the Lord" (Gen. 4:26). (9) In his journeys, Abram/Abraham built altars and there "called on the name of the Lord" (Gen. 12:8; 13:3f; 21:33); likewise his son, Isaac (Gen. 26:25). And, of course, so did Isaac's son, Jacob at Bethel. In his dramatic encounter with the prophets of Baal, Elijah on Mt. Carmel offered the challenge: "Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord" (1 Kings 18:24). First Kings also records the building of the first temple: Solomon announced his intention "to build a temple for the Name of the Lord my God, as the Lord told my father David, when he said, 'Your son whom I will put on the throne in your place will build the temple for my Name'" (1 Kings 5:5). At the dedication Solomon prayed: "The Lord has kept the promise he made: I have succeeded David my father and now I sit on the throne of Israel, just as the Lord promised, and I have built the temple for the Name of the Lord, the God of Israel" (1 Kings 8:20). In response the Lord renewed His promise: "'I have heard the prayer and plea you have made before me: I have consecrated this temple, which you have built, by putting my Name there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there" (1 Kings 9:3, cf. 2 Chr. 7:16).
In the New Testament then, the declarations of the early church about Jesus are all the more interesting. In the Lord's vision to Ananias, the disciple reports to Jesus about Saul: "And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your [Jesus'] name" (Acts 9:14). That very same Saul, now Paul, would later declare: "To the church of God in Corinth to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ-their Lord and ours" (1 Cor. 1:2).
In the Old Testament tabernacle and temple, God's presence was "located" specifically in the Most Holy Place, on the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant (Ex. 25:22). Access was limited. (10) But in the New Testament, access to God is freely ours through Christ.
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place (11) by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (Heb. 10:19-22).
When God in Christ took human form, he set aside his glory and power and exposed himself to all that could be inflicted on the body, even crucifixion (Phil. 2:8). In Christ, God's power and glory are hidden under the lowliness and shame of the cross, his wrath under love. Even after his ascension, God's grace was made present for us through the physical realities of his Word and through water and bread and wine. God, who causes his name to dwell among us in the divine service of worship, gives himself through the everyday things of life. As Christ, the Logos, became incarnate in flesh, so God's Holy Word continues to be "incarnate" in the written, material word. His word gives his presence in water, in bread and wine.
There is fresh meaning to those familiar liturgical words: "In the NAME of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." They announce to us each time the promise that "where two or three come together in MY NAME, there am I with them" (Matt. 18:20, emphasis added).
Matter does matter to God! After all, he redeems even our bodies!
2 [ Back ] Vilmos Vajta, Luther on Worship, An Interpretation (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1958), 85.
3 [ Back ] Ibid., 87. E.g., "We can state with certainty that where the Eucharist, baptism, and the Word are, there are Christ, forgiveness of sins, and eternal life." Luther on Genesis 2:3, in Luther's Works, American Edition, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1955), Vol. 1, 79 (hereafter as AE).
4 [ Back ] The Small Catechism, Baptism, Part I.
5 [ Back ] Vajta, op cit., 88.
6 [ Back ] Martin Luther, "Sermon on the Gospel of St. John Chapters 1-4," in AE, vol. 22, 105.
7 [ Back ] Hermann Sasse, Church and Lord's Supper, soon to be published translation of Kirche und Herrenmahl, eds. Matthew Harrison, Ronald Feuerhahn, & Paul McCain, trans., John R. Stephenson, manuscript, 84.
8 [ Back ] Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus in The New International Commentary on the Old Testament, 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 16.
9 [ Back ] Luther commented: "Seth, who was born later, as well as his descendants, had a definite promise, definite places, definite ceremonies for the worship of God, whereas, in contrast, Cain was a wanderer." AE, vol. 1, 301.
10 [ Back ] "The Lord said to Moses: 'Tell your brother Aaron not to come whenever he chooses into the Most Holy Place behind the curtain in front of the atonement cover of the ark, or else he will die, because I appear in the cloud over the atonement cover'" (Leviticus 16:2).
11 [ Back ] In the Septuagint the word for "atonement cover" is the same one used of Christ and translated "sacrifice of atonement" in Romans 3:25, "God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood."
