Seilhamer directs attention to “the Hebrew concept of the extension of the personality, human or divine” —
The “how” of this extendibility has many facets that still need clarification.
What does Seilhamer mean by the “extension of the personality”? His emphasis seems to be on the agency of the person; indeed, agency would seem to be essential to personhood. With humans, this is obvious: people do things. But with the divine personality, there is often a quietly sneaking tendency to view God more as what He is, but less as what He does.
“This subject” of the extension of personality “is important for both Jewish and Christian thought and life,” notes Seilhamer:
Luther’s writings on the “Word of God,” on the other hand, are voluminous. Very few things that he wrote, and he was a most articulate person, were completed without some discussion of the “Word.” The “Word of God” is the footer upon which so much of his theology is built, so it is not surprising that literally shelves full of his treatises, sermson, and various other writings are available to give us an insight into this primary concept.
This truism about Luther’s thought, and about the centrality of text in his thought, is so obvious that it needs no repeating or explanation, as even the most casual reader of Luther’s writings will know. But what is worth noting is the connection between Luther’s concept of the Word and the Hebrew concept of God as active.
God is essentially so active that His presence and His activity seem to be inseparable. He is “personally present and active in the created order.” From the earliest events recorded, to future events yet to occur, God’s Word often is His action: His word creates in Genesis and heals in the New Testament. So a triad emerges: God’s Word, God’s presence, and God’s action. Where one is found, the other two are usually at hand.
The Hebrew “concept of the extendibility of personality” is first more obviously understood “as it relates to man,” and then by analogy, taking the same line of argument further, “the subject of how God, in a similar manner, is able to extend himself and be really present wherever he chooses, and in whatever medium he selects, is” understood:
Both the ancient Hebrews and Luther had a similar basis for their dynamic, throbbing awareness of the real presence of the God they worshipped.
Not only is their awareness “dynamic,” but the presence of which they are aware is also “dynamic.”
For the Hebrews, one of the major differences between God and humans is that God’s functions have a spiritual basis, while human functions have a physical basis. Such a general statement, of course, needs close and careful unpacking, but for the moment, it can stand as expressing the notion that humans are more physical and less spiritual than God. Hence the need for an incarnation. The danger of leaving the statement without closer reading is that it can create the impression that God is only spiritual and not at all physical; such an impression would be mightily wrong.
To see how the Hebrews conceived of God as active, Seilhamer examines who they conceived of human personhood as active. The way in which the text expresses human agency can then be transferred into the way divine agency is expressed:
This essential difference notwithstanding, in the Hebrew’s experience God still functioned in many ways much like man.
The Hebrew phrase nefesh hayyah means living soul, and is often used as a circumlocution for ‘human being’ in the text. “Many of Yahweh’s characteristics and qualities parallel those of” such a nefesh hayyah, but this should not be taken for an anthropomorphism. On the contrary, human beings were conceived in God’s image. But the similarities between God and humans remain:
One of these similar abilities of God was his capacity to “extend” himself in the same way as man could.
God is like man, not because God was imagined in man’s image, but because man is framed in the likeness of God. “Just as man, with all his” soul, “could ‘reach out’ beyond the contours of his body, God, in his ‘totality’ could do the same.
For God, as for his creatures, the “word” was one of the very potent forms of this extension.
“For the Hebrew the ‘word’” was both a verbal — written or spoken — expression, as well as the physical object or event which was connected with that word. It “was one with the ‘thing’ which it was to perform.
The “word” was the power of the personality to do the thing for which the “word” was spoken. The “word” was the person in the action.
God is active: this understanding is central both for the ancient Hebrews and for Martin Luther. Yet a subtle tendency exists to see God as distant, impassive, and disentangled from the world. This tendency leads the believer to suspect that God might only rarely rouse Himself into action, prodded by fervent prayer. Many wrongly assume that God’s activity is found seldom at best in the world.
To the contrary, however, the ancient Semites and Luther point out to us the God is always and everywhere active and in motion. God is continually interfacing with every human being on earth.
To this end Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians that God “began a good work in you” and “will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” This is a concept of God whose continuous action spans centuries and millennia. Paul reminds his readers that “God who works in you.”
God is in ceaseless motion, and so it is good to ask not only about what God is, but also about what God is constantly doing.
