Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

The human being/son of man is thus a symbol for the ultimate and final royal rule of God, but at the same time a figure for the true Israel that serves God the Father alone. The two cannot be separated, for the royal rule is “given” (Dan 7:14) forever to this true, eschatological Israel. And that royal rule comes from God; it is God’s own rule, now revealed in all its purity and without blemish—in a finite human society.

Daniel 7 only shows in a carefully developed form what appears in many other late Old Testament texts: the reign of God and the people of God belong together. The “field” within which the reign of God appears is first of all and primarily Israel. It is true that God reigns as king over the whole world, but that royal rule is revealed in Israel. It never manifests itself to the nations independently of Israel but always in connection with Israel and through Israel.

The Abraham Principle

Why is that? Why is there this unending fixation on Israel in the Old Testament? Is this the inferiority complex of a little nation that had to fear for its existence all the time and therefore almost of necessity developed a theological megalomania? Most certainly not. If we read the Old Testament from beginning to end—from Abraham to Daniel, so to speak—then looking back, considering the whole of it and at the same time incorporating the great revolutions in world history, we could say:⁴ The God of the Bible, like all revolutionaries, desires a complete overturning, the radical alteration of the whole of the world’s society. For in this the revolutionaries are right: what is at stake is the whole world, and the change must be radical, simply because the misery of the world cries to heaven and because it begins deep within the human heart. But how can God change society at its roots without taking away its freedom and its humanity?

It can only be that God “starts out small,” beginning at a single place in the world. There must be a place—visible, comprehensible, subject to examination—where liberation and healing begin, that is, where the world can become what it is meant to be according to God’s plan. Starting from this place, then, the new thing can spread abroad. But it most certainly cannot happen through indoctrination or violence. Human beings must have the opportunity to view the new thing and test it. Then if they want to they can allow themselves to be drawn into the history of salvation and the story of peace that God is bringing into being. Only in this way can the freedom of the individual and of the nations be preserved. What drives one toward the new thing cannot be compulsion, not even moral pressure, but only the fascination of a world transformed.

So God has to start small, with a small nation. More precisely, God cannot even begin with a nation. God must start with an individual, because only the individual is the point where God can build on change undertaken freely.

That is precisely what the stories of the patriarchs in Genesis tell about. The first pages of the Bible had told of the creation of the world, the development of the story of humankind, and—in a few hints—the growth of human civilization and culture. But along with all that the Bible also spoke immediately of disobedience to God and thus of the growth of destructive rivalries and brutal violence.

But then Genesis 12 starts over with something new. It suddenly ceases to look at humanity as a whole and begins to talk about an individual: Abraham. God begins to transform the world by starting anew, at a particular place in the world, with a single individual:

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen 12:1-3)

So God makes a new beginning with an individual. However, he will not remain a lone individual. He will become a great nation. That is unavoidable, since an individual could not show what God wants: a new society. So the individual has to be there at the beginning, but in the end the result must be a new society because redemption, salvation, peace, blessing always have also—and indeed, primarily—a social dimension. At the very end of the Bible we will find the image of the “holy city,” the “new Jerusalem” (Rev 21)—and the city, the polis, was in antiquity the proper image of society.