Friday, May 8, 2020

Eric L. Johnson on Isaiah 55:8-9



For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isa 55:8-9)

Some often take this text as a saying that God can be illogical and/or we can engage in illogical argumentation. Notwithstanding, apart from being anti-intellectual, it is eisegetical. As Eric L. Johnson (not to be confused with Eric Johnson, the hack anti-Mormon activist and member of Bill McKeever’s organisation) noted:

The cause of this exclamation in context is the “scandal” of God’s offering forgiveness to sinners (who humans might suppose God would simply destroy). The argument moves from the particular to the general: God can forgive sinners (the particular) because (in general) his ways and thoughts are not equal or identical to ours. Thus, a useful principle is being stated: God’s understanding transcends ours. We are being encouraged not to assume that just because something makes sense to us, we necessarily have the fullest understanding. His greater understanding brings in other considerations that may show our perspective to be deficient. (Eric L. Johnson, “Can God Be Grasped By Our Reason?” in Douglas S. Huffman and Eric L. Johnson, eds. God Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents God [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2002], 71-103, here p. 77 n. 18)


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