Jeremiah
David Cowles
“God places his words in Jeremiah’s mouth. How can this be consistent with Jeremiah’s status as a free and independent entity?”
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you… See, I place my words in your mouth. Today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms: to uproot and to tear down, to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant.” (Jer 1:1 -10)
“Before I formed you…I knew you.” Phrases like this have often been mistakenly understood to mean that God has blueprinted the world. Omnipotent, his will would progress from conception to execution instantaneously and without any assistance.
But this is not our God! Ours is an historical and material God; he rolls up his sleeves and gets his hands dirty. But like a General Contractor, he also relies on loyal subcontractors, us, to realize the details of his grand vision. He calls us on each of us as needed, and we, sometimes unwittingly, help bring his designs to fruition.
A different sort of god would have no need of others…but what a poor god this would be! I am reminded of Richie Rich, playing with his fancy toys, alone.
But that is not what’s happening in Jeremiah. God addresses his prophet in the second person familiar (du). He does not talk about Jeremiah the way some Frankenstein might talk about his monster. He does not order Jeremiah about as if he were Alexa.
God addresses Jeremiah as a true “Other” (Sartre), a genuine “Thou” (Martin Buber). To recognize Jeremiah in this way is to recognize him as an NFL free agent, a co-creator, not a slave, not a tool. (Unless we have ‘issues’, most of us do not make a habit of talking to our tools.)
Yet God knew Jeremiah before he formed him and dedicated Jeremiah before he was even born. Further, God places his words in Jeremiah’s mouth. How can this be consistent with Jeremiah’s status as a free and independent entity?
One key to unraveling this paradox lies in understanding Jeremiah’s mission: “to uproot, to tear down, to destroy, to demolish, to build, to plant.” God did not appoint Jeremiah to design the Kingdom of God; that’s God’s job. Jeremiah is not God’s architect; for that he has Sophia. And God is his own general; Jeremiah is God’s sub.
Jeremiah is God’s “change agent”. He is the one who raises the old structures, levels the ground, to make way for the new; he is God’s wrecking crew. Jeremiah tears down ‘Sin City’ so that God can build New Jerusalem in its place.
Jeremiah does not impress God’s image upon the world. Rather he smashes the world’s icons and melts them back into raw material so that the evolutionary/historical process, God’s praxis, can make its mark. He was the Abbie Hoffman of his time.
God knows the world’s origin: Logos (Gospel of John), the Word of God (God’s values). God’s Word (capital W) is reflected in the words (small w) that Jeremiah speaks. Jeremiah proclaims God’s values. Without God’s Word, God’s values, Jeremiah would have nothing to say. God being God is what makes it possible for Jeremiah to be Jeremiah…and, BTW, for you to be you. It is God’s words that Jeremiah speaks; what else?
A similar ontological map can be found in the New Testament Letter to Ephesians (2:10): “For we are…created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.”
The works that are “prepared in advance” are the logical and practical consequence of God’s immutable values. But those works do not spring to life until we animate them. It is up to us to step into those works so that we might “live in them”.
God knows the world’s destiny; but knowing is not controlling. God’s knowledge (Parmenides’ Aletheia) is outside of time; it is the spaceless and timeless foundation through which the space-time universe (Parmenides’ Doxa) comes to be, on which that universe rests and into which it ultimately resolves itself.
God’s eternal knowledge in no way compromises the radical freedom of the intentional events that occur in our space-time universe. In the non-temporal sense (and only in that sense), we may say that God’s gnosis “precedes” (logically, not temporally) his praxis (the world): He thinks before we act! But make no mistake, it is we who act! We are all called to be Jeremiah…in our own time and on our own scale.
That is the sense in which God knew Jeremiah before he was formed and dedicated him before he was born. The function of the free and independent Other in the space-time universe is to broadcast God’s Word and to remove impediments to the realization of his Kingdom in the material/historical world (“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”).
Whether the Other accepts that function and performs it, and how the Other performs it, are matters entirely outside God’s control. That’s your free will. The only thing certain is that someone, someday will step up. (It was Jeremiah then; will it be you today?)
The praxis that draws the world toward its destiny is ultimately God’s, but it calls on others to project (speak) God’s vision (words) and to remove the world’s barriers (sin). Destiny is a lure, not an engraver’s plate. It works like a vacuum, created by the anticipation of what is not yet and by the negation (Sartre) of what already is. As such, God’s praxis draws the process we call “World” gently, unevenly, often imperceptibly, always unpredictably, but inevitably and inexorably toward its goal.
In the New Testament we encounter John the Baptist, in many ways a later day version of Jeremiah. It is clear from the texts that God also knew John before he was formed and dedicated him before he was born. God also put his words on John’s tongue. John’s mission: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” (Mt. 3:3)
In fact, the world is in perpetual need of Jeremiahs (and Johns). Like the Tower of Babel, the world’s hardened structures need to be uprooted so that God’s praxis can perfect or replace them. Our Jeremiahs are indeed “appointed over nations and kingdoms” because existing social structures must always give way so that something greater and better can take their place: i.e. the Kingdom of God.
Sin then, is another name for ‘institutional inertia’. Every earthly kingdom must someday be laid low so that “God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15: 28). In this context, we may recognize in Jeremiah the world’s first genuine “anarchist”, and Jeremiah may be a ‘first edition’ of The Anarchist’s Cookbook?
Jeremiah rests on the certain belief that the world is inevitably evolving in a positive direction and that our primary job as political actors is to tear down those anti-social social structures that prevent the world from following its natural course, its Tao.
“Grace is flowing like a river”…steadily and at all times. But so-called ‘vested interests’ erect barriers, damns that restrict or, worse, redirect that flow. Prophets (like Jeremiah) are ice breakers, clearing the jam and allowing the flow to resume its natural course.
However much we may deny and resist it, we are all in our own ways prophets. Intentionally or not, we all uproot the old and plant the new…which God will ultimately harvest. Therefore, we are all known before we are formed and dedicated before we are born.
We are not God’s tools, nor his robots, nor his slaves. Individually and collectively, we are that Other (‘Thou’) into whose eyes God perpetually stares. As the true ontological Other, we are by nature iconoclasts; as such, we are all called to participate in God’s praxis…however much we may “know not what we do”.
David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com.
purpose and devotion.
