Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 7: God in the New Testament

The “Living God” in the Old Testament does not differ essentially from the “Son of the Living God” in the New Testament. Our experience and understanding through the revelation of Jesus Christ and through the knowledge of faith and personal experience has changed our minds. The previous chapter started with the names of God and the history of the people of Israel. The Israelites were named as a people after Jacob wrestled with an unknown angelic body, which turned out to be God. Jacob asked, “Please tell me your name” and he received no answer. But in a twist of events, the God of the Old Testament bestowed a new name on him, namely, Israel. These stories and real experiences are also personal. But the tension continues to this day between the Creator and created because we keep trying to reveal a hidden God and God keeps revealing who we really are ourselves. We use words and names to try to describe him and know him and reveal him to ourselves, but it’s never enough to say even what we can manage to say about Him. Metropolitan Hilarion starts with God’s revelation to us with all of the same themes of the Old Testament brought to light for us all. A further confirmation that God is Living is witnessed by the Son of God becoming man, dying, and returning from the grave because He is ever living. 

 

A gradual deeper understanding of God developed as an image of a Father instead of as a master-servant relationship. The Old Testament seems to attribute man-like characteristics to God such as judging, jealous, angry, regretful, war-like, and also merciful and tenderly loving like a spouse or parent. Although those descriptors do not absolutely give us God’s essence or name Him, the Word of God became a man in the New Testament, and He lived among us. That starting point also gives us the deeper revelation of God as a Triunity of Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. However, the fact that Jesus Christ is both God and Man and we say that the name of the “Son of God” is divine does not mean that we now know God’s essence. But the knowledge of God through faith tells us that Jesus Christ is divine and alive; He is the cornerstone of Christianity that causes great minds and nations to trip and totter. Jesus’ name is powerful and works wonders. Just as the Old Testament Israelites were prohibited from misusing the name of God, likewise in the end those who do not believe in Jesus Christ and suffer for His name we will be prohibited from entering the promised land too. And still the perfect unity of the Son of God and God the Father and the Holy Spirit is a unity we can strive to imitate, even though we are hidden from the essence of the Trinity. The hiddenness and namelessness of God does not leave us in the realm of nominalism or irreverence. Metropolitan Hilarion explains that the apostles preached and endured everything difficult, even to death, because of Jesus’ name; we are baptized into life through the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The mysterious ending on the idea of divine names and humankind’s attempt at finding who God is by name is hinted at in Revelation. St. John the Theologian tells us that Jesus’ name will triumph in the battle against the Accuser, the Anti-Christ. The Lamb will also be at the center of the kingdom of God where all the saints will have new names written on them while they all “sing out his name” in victory.